KAY CLEAVER STRAHAN – Death Traps. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1930. Reprint hardcover: Grosset & Dunlap, no date (shown).

   There are several mysteries about the shooting of Gilbert Dexter in San Francisco. Would his brother, Bob, have shot him? Would Bob have managed only to wound him at point-blank range? Were the French windows open or locked? Why were there two revolvers in the room? Further and deeper puzzlement develops when the next-door neighbors are found dead in their locked room with no sign of foul play and no explanation of their deaths.

   Since the head of the Dexter family is a retired judge, the authorities investigate the shooting in a gingerly manner, and, so it would seem, there is not much involvement by the police in the locked-room case. Fortunately, Bezaleel Lucky, millionaire former grocer and husband of one of Judge Dexter’s daughters, takes it upon himself to investigate in amusing fashion with his proverbs, his constant interruptions, and his complaint that all anyone, but not him, wants to do is talk.

   Sometime I will have to take another look at Strahan’s Footpnnts, which I vaguely remember as being one of those dreary psychological novels in which turning pages is a chore. Maybe I missed something.

Editorial Comment:  According to Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, the detective of record in Death Traps, as he was in all seven of Kay Cleaver Strahan’s mysteries, was a fellow named Lynn MacDonald, whom Bill Deeck did not mention. If anyone reading this is familiar with the book, where does MacDonald fit in, and what kind of name is Bezaleel Lucky?

      The Lynn MacDonald series —

The Desert Moon Mystery (n.) Doubleday 1928.
Footprints (n.) Doubleday 1929.
Death Traps (n.) Doubleday 1930.
The Meriwether Mystery (n.) Doubleday 1932.
October House (n.) Doubleday 1932.
The Hobgoblin Murder (n.) Bobbs 1934.
The Desert Lake Mystery (n.) Bobbs 1936.

   C. (Cyril) M. Kornbluth (1923–1958) is a well-known science fiction author. What is less well known, however, is that he was also a successful crime writer. In the second half of the 1940s he wrote detective stories for pulp magazines. Later, he published crime novels under the pseudonyms Jordan Park and Simon Eisner. According to Hubin’s bibliography, these were:

   A further novel, written jointly by Pohl and Kornbluth, can be found in Hubin: Gladiator-at-Law (Ballantine, 1955). In addition, there were Kornbluth’s novels Takeoff (Doubleday, 1952) and The Syndic (Doubleday, 1953). These novels have elements of a criminal plot, but because the action is set in the future and these novels are generally considered to be science fiction, I omit them here.

   Kornbluth’s earliest crime stories include the two detective stories in Black Mask: “Beer-Bottle Polka” (September 1946; Vol 29 #1; pp 35-43) and “The Brooklyn Eye”, 29, No. 2 (Nov 1946; Vol 29 #2; pp 79-94). The hero and narrator in each case is Tim Skeat, a private detective in New York City. Some action elements from earlier Pulp stories are reused in the crime novels.

   The Naked Storm tells of a train journey through a snowstorm from Chicago to San Francisco. The locomotive eventually gets stuck in the snow on a pass in the Rocky Mountains, and the people on the train are cut off from civilization for three days. Using numerous observations and experiences, the novel describes how individual persons prepare for the train journey while the snowstorm is approaching, as well as the journey itself and the catastrophe.

   The novel has no underlying continuous narrative thread, but is instead constructed from larger and smaller illustrations of impressions and actions on the part of the persons involved. The combined narrative particles generate an overall impression that constantly changes, like the pictures in a kaleidoscope. While the reader is at first somewhat clueless, due to the diversity of the impressions and experiences, events intensify during the train journey around four persons:

   Both Boyce and Greer have their eye on Joan Lundberg. Foreman supports Boyce, as he hates lesbians like Mona Greer.

   The novel describes how environmental conditions influence people’s behavior, in particular how they compulsively abandon their moral standards in the face of snow and freezing ice. The bar is plundered, drugs are stolen from the doctor’s bag, insults and fistfights abound. And Foreman decides to murder Greer.

   The novel is more of a mainstream novel than a crime novel. Some of Kornbluth’s own experiences are worked into the depiction of Hal Foreman. This makes it all the more dubious that the reader is expected, through the manner in which the novel is written and concludes, to identify with Foreman’s prejudice against and hatred of homosexuality. This diminishes the quality of the novel considerably.

    Sorority House is to an even greater extent more of a mainstream novel than a crime novel. Life in the Eleusis Academy for Women, a college in a small provincial town in Pennsylvania, is presented in a socially critical manner. The head of the college is Dr. Mildred Matthewson, an old maid and historian, who tyrannizes and spies on both students and teaching staff. She is malicious, extortionate and scheming.

   Four female students and three teachers form the centre of events. The four young women are accepted into to the sorority of the Lambs and enjoy the privilege of living in their house. They are Ann Riker, an aspiring writer, who is keen to suppress her lesbian inclinations, Kathryn Jackson, a stipendiary from the lower classes, who wishes to become a Latin teacher, Joy Squires, a beauty who embarks on a relationship with a young lecturer, and Clara Gwynn, a rather chubby student who develops a talent for mathematics. The three lecturers are the young English teacher Jim Henschel, the journalism teacher James McGivern, a drinker, and the new, unapproachable mathematics teacher Dr. Crouch.

   The entanglements that befall the students and lecturers are told in an exciting manner. But the action only takes a turn towards becoming a crime novel from page 166. During a dance party, arranged elaborately by the Lambs, Dr. Matthewson is found dead in the night, away from events, in the Mall. The police investigation, which commences immediately, establishes that the death was violent: it is murder. As the head of the college was not short of enemies, there are numerous suspects. Some detection and dramatic action takes place on the last 25 pages. The solution is no surprise.

   From our current perspective the prejudices against lesbian love and against women who aspire to social mobility by means of an academic education are reactionary. These prejudices become apparent above all at the end of the novel, which is not revealed. There is also an alarming empathy for a kind of self-justice. Finally, the different blurbs on both Lion Books falsify the content of the narrative by means of exaggeration, which I find annoying, and which does not do justice to the authors.

   The hero of the third novel, The Man of Cold Rages, is Leslie Greene. His wife Peg and son Val are run over and killed by a car in Chicago. The car is driven by contract killers who shot Dr. Emilio Hernandez, who was sitting on a bench, and then killed the two likely witnesses to the crime, Peg and Val, with their car. Hernandez had been granted political exile. He came from the (fictional) Republic of La Paz, a small South American country ruled by the fascist dictator General Serrano. Hernandez was obviously murdered because of his oppositional political activities.

   Life no longer has any meaning for Leslie Greene. The only thing that still interests him is the punishment of the murderers. However, the police investigation is unsuccessful. Greene decides to travel to La Paz in order to kill the person who ordered the murders, General Serrano. For an indeterminate period he moves into a hotel in the republic’s capital city, which is decorated by countless portraits and statues of the dictator.

   Because Greene is an artist who can paint excellent portraits, he tries to attract attention by painting the portrait of the hotelier’s cousin, Senorita Isabel Rocas. He achieves this quite quickly, leading to the intended invitation to see General Serrano. It is arranged that he will paint a portrait of the dictator, who will model for the painting regularly.

   At the same time, Greene makes contact with the opposition, which operates underground. The opposition is planning a non-violent upheaval and a general strike. Greene’s plan to murder the dictator is rejected by the members of the opposition. But Greene sticks to his decision. Events take their course and are complicated further by the fact that Isabel falls in love with Greene.

   The Man of Cold Rages is a mixture of political thriller and suspense novel and resembles at times the novels of Eric Ambler. The typical Ambler protagonist lands in terrible danger and political adventure, without knowing what is happening to him; in contrast, Kornbluth’s hero seeks out the challenge cold-bloodedly.

   This novel is not for readers who prefer their books to be as realistic as possible. For example, it is very unlikely that a visitor to a severely guarded dictatorship can transport a loaded pistol in his luggage on an airplane without any prior precautions, so that the weapon is only discovered by an overly enthusiastic chambermaid in the hotel. Otherwise the thriller is well written, with a number of very impressive scenes. It is exciting to read, albeit not without a certain amount of clichés.

   While Kornbluth’s first Black Mask story is roughly hewn and bursting with violence and cruelty, he refined his narrative technique in the crime novels, using violent scenes in a more differentiated manner. Kornbluth sometimes found himself to be cruel. This was contradicted by acquaintances, who considered his behavior to be friendly.

   The truth is that he was cruel in his fantasy world, as demonstrated in his first Black Mask story and – in diluted form – still in his first thriller. However, his literary attitude towards violence and self-justice obviously changed over the years, as can be seen in his final crime novel.

   It is a pity that the author died so young; we have been deprived of some probably very entertaining thrillers as a result. To those who wish to learn more about Kornbluth I recommend the detailed biography by Mark Rich: C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary.

VICTOR CANNING – The House of the Seven Flies. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1952. Mill-Morrow, US, hardcover, 1952. Berkley #F730, US, paperback reprint, 1963.

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN HAWKS. MGM, UK, 1959. Robert Taylor, Nicole Maurey, Linda Christian, Donald Wolfit, David Kossoff, Eric Pohlmann. Screenwriter: Jo Eisinger, based on the novel The House of the Seven Flies, by Victor Canning. Director: Richard Thorpe.

   Victor Canning’s THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN FLIES (Morrow, 1952) has intrigued me for various and sundry reasons since I came across it in my late teens, but I should tell you for starters, it’s pretty much a generic adventure/crime novel of its time, with little to distinguish it from a dozen others.

   The story opens in 1944 with some Nazi big-wig looting valuable jewels from a Dutch bank—or trying to; the boat he’s leaving in gets sunk in the canals near a city called Veere and the treasure is lost forever.

   Yeah (as they say) right.

   The story picks up again in 1952 with Roger Furse, an American ex-serviceman now operating a charter boat in the North of England. Like any hero in this sort of thing, Roger’s a straightforward guy, but he’s not above bending the law a bit, so when a Dutchman who chartered the boat for a bit of coastal mucking about offers him extra to take him across the North Sea to the Dutch town of Veere, Roger doesn’t need much persuading. But when the Dutchman dies (mysteriously, but apparently of natural causes) Roger decides he should make sure he’s not carrying anything incriminating, goes through the man’s baggage and finds (you guessed it) a map to the “lost” treasure.

   Whereupon Canning rounds up the usual complications: a cute-perky-bouncy young lady who was working with the Dutchman to recover the loot; a lugubrious police detective who tells Furse that his passenger was murdered before he ever got on board, victim of a slow poison; a showy crook with an entourage of nasty thugs, and a lovely femme fatale-type who may have killed the Dutchman.

   Having assembled his cast, Canning puts them through the usual paces: Furse and the cute girl fall in love; the Dutch cop plods patiently; the showy crook offers bribes and threats; his hired nasties get tough, and the femme tries seduction. We get a couple of chases (well-handled, I must admit) a couple fights (likewise) and some sea-going stuff that Canning handles particularly well, all capped by the usual ending.

   Okay so the first thing that intrigues me about this book is the title; who-the-hell would call a book THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN FLIES? Who would publish anything with a title that connotes dull classics and household pests? Who did they think was going to buy anything labeled THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN FLIES? I mean I wrote a book a couple years ago called EASY DEATH, and I have an eight-page list of publishers and agents who won’t even look at it, so how does Canning put out a book with a title like that?

   Well in point of fact, Morrow published it and it was bought by no less than MGM, who packaged it as a medium-budget flick for their declining star Robert Taylor in 1959, adapted by Jo Eisinger and directed by that reliable workhorse Richard Thorpe. Just a few years earlier, Thorpe and Taylor had worked together on big-budget extravaganzas like IVANHOE and KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, but here they were clearly just treading water.

   For most of its length, THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN HAWKS (as they wisely re-titled it) is as undistinguished a movie as the book was a book. Except for Taylor, there are no big stars or even any memorable character actors. The chase scenes and sea-going stuff are jettisoned for reasons of economy, and the stunt work in the fights could be charitably described as duller than ditchwater. Yet HAWKS stayed in my memory for years, and I don’t know whether to blame Director Thorpe or Writer Eisinger — or to praise them.

   The thing is this: about 20 minutes in, HAWKS segues into a fugue from THE MALTESE FALCON; Taylor (now named John Nordley for some reason!) is approached by an effeminate little perfumed man with a cane who works for a fat, loquacious boss associated with a lying femme fatale. Big chunks of dialogue are ripped from FALCON, with the fat man AND Taylor bluffing about what they need to find out, and later Taylor tells the femme what a good actress she is … then they kiss and he sees the fat man’s henchman outside the window, just as in FALCON.

   Like I say, I don’t know who was responsible for this wholesale rip-off/homage, but it’s worth remembering that Thorpe once re-shot the 1937 PRISONER OF ZENDA scene for scene. Whatever the case, when I saw this on Network TV back in the late 60s, before videotapes, DVD or even Turner Classic Movies, the blast from a classic seemed delightfully amusing.

   Or at least it made the film a little less forgettable.

“All the Time in the World.” An episode of Tales of Tomorrow (ABC-TV, 1951-1953). Season 1, Episode 37 (37th of 85). First broadcast: 13 June 1952. Cast: Esther Ralston (The Collector), Don Hanmer (Henry Judson), Jack Warden (Steve), Lewis Charles (Tony), Sam Locante (Bartender), Bob Williams (Narrator). Writer: Arthur C. Clarke (story, 1951). Director: Don Medford.

   In his stuffy office Henry Judson does no apparent work — which is understandable, since Henry is a mid-level criminal sometimes referred to as a fixer. Like middle management in legitimate business, Henry arranges for things to be done, usually without much personal involvement on his part. Whenever he sees an opportunity for criminal “enterprise,” he fixes things with still lower-level thugs who then do the dirty work.

   But on this hot afternoon, he gets very personally involved with a strange but beautiful woman who is willing to give him a hundred thousand dollars to do a job, with another hundred thousand when he completes it.

   The job? She gives him a laundry list of things to steal, which includes not only rare books but also some of the most valuable paintings in the world. Just walk in, pick them up, and walk right out. Piece of cake.

   Henry’s skepticism is understandable, of course — until the woman, who insists on being called “The Collector,” shows him how it’s done.

   When Henry woke up that morning he never remotely suspected that before the day was through he would be using a bracelet to break into a museum and — even more importantly — agonizing over how to spend the last few precious moments of his life.

   Along the way, this story quietly raises a question: Can it be regarded as a crime if someone steals something in order to save it?

   Retrovision has “All the Time in the World” archived here.

   Arthur Clarke’s original story is online here. In his book, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, he writes: “This was my first story ever to be adapted for TV — ABC, 13 June 1952. Although I worked on the script, I have absolutely no recollection of the programme, and can’t imagine how it was produced in pre-video-tape days!”

——————————————————————————————————–

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0717017/

WADE MILLER – Shoot to Kill. Hardcover: Farrar, Straus & Co., hardcover, 1951. Reprint paperbacks include Signet 1369, 1957; Perennial, 1993.

   This is the last of the six Max Thursday private eye novels that the writing team of Robert Wade and Bill Miller produced, and one can only wonder what might have been. Could they have found anything possibly more to say about their character after the way they left him at the end of this book?

   There is a pair of firsts that occur in this novel, unless someone can come up with some earlier instances of each: (1) This is quite possibly the first private eye novel in which the hero loses his girl friend (police beat reporter Merle Osborn) to his client (sporting goods chain store owner Bliss Weaver). (2) This is also quite possibly the first private eye novel in which the hero manipulates the evidence to make sure the police know that his own client is guilty in a murder case.

   Most fictional private eyes are in some great sense larger than life. Very few real world PI’s ever get anywhere near a murder case, go to bed with their beautiful female clients, or do more than routine routine.

   And that’s why it’s such a shocker to find Thursday essentially a loser, unable to keep his own woman and prone to such human emotions as jealousy and deceit — as human as you or I. His rationale is that he knows that Weaver is guilty, and if he gets himself mixed up in the case, then Merle gets hurt.

   Of course Thursday messes that up as well, and when he’s called on it by his friend on the police force, Lt. Clapp, he confesses right away, and in his sense of guilt and shame, starts to realize that Weaver is very likely not the killer after all.

   I can think of no other mystery novel with a story line anything like this one. If you believe I have told you too much of the plot already, you should note that there are at least two Really Great plot twists yet to come, and I am not going to tell you about those. If you have not come to know what High Intensity means before now, after reading this book, you will know — and I do not mean only “action,” which of course there is. I mean Personal Anguish without letting it show. I mean Tough Decisions to Be Made. I mean, as I said up in the first paragraph above, Where Does He Go From Here?

   Here are the last couple of paragraphs. I believe Wade and Miller were correct to leave Max Thursday at this point, never to write about him again:

PostScript:   For as much information on “Wade Miller” as I could put together at the time, including an interview with Robert Wade himself, check out this page on the main Mystery*File website:   THE AUTHORS WHO WERE WADE MILLER: Robert Wade and Bill Miller.

WILLIAM EDWARD HAYES – Black Chronicle. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1938.

   This, the third novel featuring private detective Arthur Halstead, begins with a remarkable coincidence. Into Halstead’s office comes a goon to employ Halstead to dig up dirt or invent some on Neil Allison. After the plug-ugly leaves, Allison himself arrives to hire Halstead to investigate two attempts on his life. It seems he is involved in, as Halstead puts it, the eternal triangle with a little reverse English on it.” Halstead declines to do anything.

   On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, however, the reverse-English part gets murdered by a cunning killer who, in the hope of disguising his crime, arranges to have the victim’s car run into by a train. Good planning, one would think, but there was no train scheduled for that time. Still, one does show up, sort of machina ex machinus, if I’ve gotten my Latin right. I will spare you the car that at one moment has snow chains on its tires and the next moment is ” roiling smoothly” down the road.

   Perhaps Halstead was delineated well in his previous investigations. Here he is a few idiosyncrasies in a semi-fair-play and rather dull novel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:   All with PI Arthur Halstead.

      The Black Doll. Doubleday, 1936.   Film: Universal, 1938
      Before the Cock Crowed. Doubleday, 1937.
      Black Chronicle. Doubleday, 1938.

   Says Al Hubin of the author in Crime Fiction IV: Born in Muncie, Indiana (1897-1965?); had numerous jobs with railroad lines, then reporter and drama critic for New York Evening Journal; editor of Railroad Magazine; later executive with Rock Island Lines.

J. C. MASTERMAN – An Oxford Tragedy. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1933; Penguin, UK, paperback, 1954. Dover Press, US, softcover, 1981.

   Mysteries set in Oxford have a cultured, leisurely way with them, The protagonists are generally dons; the conversation in the Senior Common Room is on matters of scholarly import, over coffee, port, and good cigars. One feels the ease and contentment of that sort of life, and it’s acknowledged by Winn, the narrator of this one. Then murder breaks in and changes everything.

   The reality of people’s feelings comes out from beneath the veneer of affability. Suspicion clouds the easy daily routine. Such is An Oxford Tragedy. The title informs us that this is more than mere murder. Shirley, an unpopular don, is shot and killed in the rooms of the dean, Hargreaves, who has left a loaded gun on his table and carelessly told the high table of that fact.

   Brandel, an Austrian lawyer with some experience of criminal investigation, happens to be visiting in college for a week. He is immediately brought into the matter by Winn, who acts as his Watson.

   Winn makes a good Watson, “infirm of purpose” and constantly analyzing his own actions and motives. Brendel is almost too good to be true, a Germanic Holmes. The interest in the book, now so dated, lies in its depiction of life at Oxford in the good old days.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   Ernest Brendel solved only one other case that was recorded by author J. C. Masterman for posterity; that is to say, The Case of the Four Friends (Hodder, UK, hardcover, 1957; no US edition). For more on the author himself, you might go first to his Wikipedia entry, which begins thusly:

SEARCH. NBC, 1972-73. Leslie Stevens Production in association with Warner Brothers Television. Created and Executive Produced by Leslie Stevens. Cast: Doug McClure as C.R. Grover, Burgess Meredith as V.C. Cameron.

   This is the last of four posts examining the TV series SEARCH and its pilot TV Movie PROBE. For earlier posts:

         Probe [Pilot/TV Movie]:   https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=16030

         Search [The Hugh O’Brian episodes]:   https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=20990

         Search [The Tony Franciosa episodes]:   https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=21076

   Of the featured three Probe agents C.R. (Christopher Robin) Grover’s role was the least defined, but it didn’t start out that way. According to Leslie Stevens, originally Grover was to be the stand-by Probe, unassigned to any unit. He would have been a bit of a goof-off, someone motivated only by a pretty girl. He also would have been an incredible Probe agent, tough, brilliant, eager to solve the case and get back to goofing off.

   You can see some of that Grover in his first episode, “Short Circuit,” but that Grover was quickly gone.

   The key to Grover became his youth. He was impulsive, unconventional, had a sense of humor, fallible and insecure from a lack of experience. He was respectful to Cameron and women. Doug McClure was able to take these characteristic and make Grover the most likable character of the series.

   Sadly, the writers failed to take advantage of McClure’s portrayal in a positive way. Stories and locations should have been aimed to appeal to the younger audience. There were few opportunities for Grover to romance the girl of the week, more often the women were married or committed to another man, and even when there was a girl of the week the scripts did not spend enough time exploring the romantic possibilities.

   Without having a purpose such as belonging to a Probe unit, Grover’s cases were generic, dealing with cases that didn’t fit Lockwood or Bianco or worse, were leftovers. For example, the episode “Numbered For Death” where Grover attempts to convince Probe to take a case to help old friends, a married couple. It involved a mobster and blackmail. All of that was more fitting for Nick Bianco than young Grover.

       EPISODE INDEX —

Produced by Robert H. Justman. Probe Control Cast (recurring): Ron Castro as Carlos, Ginny Golden as Keach, Byron Chung as Kuroda, Albert Popwell as Griffin, Amy Farrell as Murdock, Tony DeCosta as Ramos, and Mary Cross as June Wilson.

“Short Circuit” (9/27/72) Written by Leslie Stevens Directed by Allen Reisner. Guest Cast: Marianne Mobley, Jeff Corey and Nate Esformes *** One of the scientists that created Probe’s technology has gone mad and threatens to destroy Probe Control with a new devices that causes feedback in electronic systems until they explode.

   Logic was not this episodes strong point, but it was entertaining enough. A rare case when Grover gets the girl at the end. Hugh Lockwood would have approved.

“In Search of Midas” (11/8/72) Written by John Christopher Strong and Michael R. Stein. Directed by Nicholas Colasanto. Guest Cast: Barbara Feldon, Logan Ramsey and George Gaynes *** Probe is hired to find out if a reclusive billionaire is still alive. Joining Grover on the case is a female gossip columnist, who is one of the few who knows what the billionaire looks like.

   What a mess of a script. Too many characters overwhelmed the Howard Hughes plot. Some scenes were padded while others needed more setting up to work. The romance was neglected and twists were wasted.

“A Honeymoon to Kill.” (1/10/73) Written by S.S. Schweitzer. Directed by Russ Mayberry. Guest Cast: Luciana Paluzzi, Antoinette Bower and George Coulouris *** Heiress is about to inherit a trust that would give her control over her “dying” father’s business that specializes in making military weapons. After her wedding, she is shot at and runs off alone. Her husband hires Probe to find her.

   Good action episode with non-stop chases, fights, and twists. McClure and Luciana Paluzzi made the story more watchable than it deserved.

“The Packagers” (4/11/73) Written by Robert C. Dennis. Directed by Michael Caffey. Guest Cast: Xenia Gratsos, Michael Pataki, and John Holland *** After being exiled to Paris with the Country President’s daughter, a failed revolutionary goes missing, Probe is hired to find him.

   Typical 70’s TV low budget portrayal of a revolution with the twists obvious, the believability nil and Grover at his most bumbling. Final episode of the series to air.

   As prior posts have stated, there was a change in showrunners. Two episodes left over from Stevens as showrunner (red Probe Control), one with Lockwood (Hugh O’Brian) “Suffer My Child” and the other with Grover (“The Packagers”) aired after the eight Spinner produced episodes (blue Probe Control) aired. Spinner produced three Grover episodes.

Produced by Anthony Spinner. Probe Control Cast: Pamela Jones as Miss James and Tom Hallick as Harris.

“Numbered For Death” (1/31/73) Teleplay by S.S. Schiweitzer. Story by Lou Shaw and S.S. Schiweitzer. Directed by Allen Reisner. Guest Cast: Peter Mark Richman, Bert Convy and Luther Adler *** Someone had gotten the numbers to secret Swiss banking accounts and using them for blackmail.

   Production values had collapsed with Probe Control looking like it was operating out of World Securities’ break room. The acting was bad, Bert Convy with an alleged English accent bad. The lack of mystery also hurt, but the overly simple way the blackmailer got the information ruined the episode.

“Goddess of Destruction.” (2/21/73) Written by Irv Pearlberg. Directed by Jerry Jameson. Guest Cast: Anjanette Comer, Alfred Ryder and John Vernon *** A murder of a dealer of ancient Indian art may signal the return of the ancient cult of assassins, the Thugs.

   The story was mildly entertaining but contains no surprises. Budget cuts show the outdoors of Bombay looking so much like Los Angeles you want to chip in to help the producers buy some stock footage. Probe Control was becoming less and less involved to the point where Burgess Meredith got out from behind his desk to visit the art gallery and client.

“Moment of Madness.” (3/14/73) Written by Richard Landau. Directed by George McCowan. Guest Cast: Patrick O’Neal and Brooke Bundy *** Cameron is kidnapped from Probe Control. Searching for Cameron, Grover realizes how little he knows about him.

   Cameron was working nights giving taped orders to various agents around the world. One must wonder if business had gotten so bad Probe laid off the night shift, after all its day somewhere in the world. Seriously, if you have an actor of Burgess Meredith’s talent you need to focus on his character in at least one episode.

   Having Cameron snatched from Probe Control, the top secret headquarters for World Securities was just one of three Spinner produced episodes that portrayed World Securities as a bungling inept organization (the others were Spinner produced Hugh O’Brian’s “Countdown To Panic” where World Securities bungled a scientific experience and exposed the world to a killer virus, and Tony Franciosa’s “The 24-Carat Hit” when Probe agents screwed up and a field agent’s wife was killed and daughter kidnapped.)

   A man who had served in the Korean War under the command of Government Intelligence Officer Captain V.C. Cameron blamed Cameron for his capture by the enemy. Now he sought revenge by forcing Cameron to endure the same torture he did as a POW.

   Grover’s search for Cameron lead him to V.C.’s only surviving family, a niece.

   What made this episode worth watching were the talents of Burgess Meredith and Doug McClure.

   In my last post I looked at the ratings and how the audience rejected the series, so how did the critics feel? Here are some excerpts from reviews of the first episode (“Broadcasting” 9/25/72).

    “It’s a gimmick show and a series can go only so far on a gimmick. Last night it went about two inches.” (Howard Rosenberg, Louisville (KY) Times)

    “Unquestionably, there is a lot to say for SEARCH, like contrived, ludicrous, gimmick, and dull.” (Don Page, Los Angeles Times)

    “The plots demand more reality, the characters should be less cartoony.”(Morton Moss, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner)

   Leslie Stevens’ SEARCH, with the teaming of man and his sidekick technology, tried to recreate the charm of such series as THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. and THE AVENGERS. If he had developed better characters popular enough to overcome the lack of plausibility in the plots and solutions he might have succeed.

   Anthony Spinner’s SEARCH stripped the charm from the series and turned it into just another MANNIX with corporate security inept and Probe Control reduced to a minor supporting role for the almighty individual agent. Yet Spinner’s SEARCH might have found an audience if NBC had moved it to a different time slot away from CANNON.

   As I remember, SEARCH was a great series, fun and entertaining, but memories are selective. My fondest memory was the character Gloria Harding (Angel Tompkins) who was in two of the twenty-three episodes, and I remembered nothing of Nick Bianco, C.R. Grover or any of the Spinner episodes.

   Returning to the past can be a slap of reality. I found SEARCH a watchable show, at times fun and entertaining and at times the opposite, just like much of television then and today.

   RECOMMENDED READING:

TV Obscurities: http://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/search

Rap Sheet: http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/4009/06/search-me.html

Warner Bros Press Releases: http://probecontrol.artshost.com/publicity.html

THUNDERHOOF. Columbia, 1948. Preston Foster, Mary Stuart, William Bishop, Thunderhoof. Director: Phil Karlson.

   Phil Karlson scored solid hits with films like Walking Tall and The Silencers, but he started out at Monogram with Charlie Chan and the Bowery Boys, and when he won his critical spurs, it was in the “B” unit at Columbia with a seldom-seen film called Thunderhoof (1948) — a minimalist Western about the hunt for a dream and what happens when you get it.

   This one is lean: Three actors, maybe one or two sets, and the rest filmed outdoors against a barren backdrop, as befits the allegorical story. The hunters are Preston Foster as an aspiring rancher, tough as a horseshoe, but possessed of a soft heart, which has led him to marry saloon gal Margarita (Mary Stuart, who achieved greatness of sorts on The Guiding Light) and befriend/adopt a young wastrel known as “The Kid” (William Bishop, whose career remained undistinguished despite his talent.)

   That’s the cast, and the story is equally pared-down; no sub-plots or complications as the three of them track down and capture a legendary stallion with which Foster hopes to start his ranch. But right from the start, it becomes apparent that his avuncular attitude to his wife and buddy is growing irksome to the two, who apparently have some kind of past. And when he breaks a leg, prolonging their return from the wilderness, the tension grows — among the characters and in the gut of the viewer, who feels something dark and disturbing looming above the sagebrush.

   What’s looming is emotional reality; the characters in Thunderhoof don’t talk like cowboys in a B Western, they talk like people in real life. They talk about frustration, jealousy and envy, and when they speak you can feel the weary pain of a heart seeking peace. Not that Thunderhoof is talky. There’s plenty of action to fill the brief hour-and-a-quarter of its running time, and the pace never lags. But by the time the plot resolved itself and left two survivors to carry on, I wasn’t sure if I was watching a Western or some incredibly draining tale of emotional violence. Whichever the case, it’s a film you won’t forget.

PETER N. WALKER – Missing from Home. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1977.

   You’d have to live in the UK to have heard of Peter N. Walker, I suspect, even though he’s written tons of books (figuratively) under not only his own name, but that of Andrew Arncliffe, Christopher Coram, Tom Ferris and Nicholas Rhea too.

   He’s probably best known under the latter byline for his rather cozy “Constable” series, which was also the basis for a TV series called Heartbeat, which may be well known in England, but is far from that over here. (An understatement, I suspect.)

   Missing from Home, written under his own name, is a straightforward and standalone crime novel, but in his own words, Walker says this about one of the series characters whose adventures he also related:

   If there is a detective of record in Missing from Home, it is a lowly (and very new to the job) Police Constable named Keith Bowman, in an even lowlier police outpost in a small village called Brocklesford. It is only Bowman who takes seriously the case of a missing woman, a wife and mother of two small children, a woman who simply would not take off on her own without warning.

   And once it turns out that the woman was kidnapped by an escaped prisoner with a grudge against the system that sent him there, it is also Bowman, in spite of all of the high ranking superiors who by then are on the job, who comes up with the location where the woman is being held prisoner.

   A straightforward crime novel, as I said up above, but down to earth and direct storytelling, and smooth sailing all the way. No depth, one would have to admit, but smooth.