THE WESTLAND CASE. Universal, 1937. Preston Foster (Bill Crane), Frank Jenks (Doc Williams), Carol Hughes, Barbara Pepper, Astrid Allwyn, Clarence Wilson, Theodore von Eltz. Based on the novel Headed For A Hearse, by Jonathan Latimer. Director: Christy Cabanne.

   The Westland Case is part of Universal’s short-lived “Crime Club” series — which would be usurped in the 40’s by the dreary Inner Sanctums, but that’s another story.

   It’s a jaunty little effort, fast-paced and well-played. Preston Foster and Frank Jenks put just the right soupcon of boorishness into their portrayals of a pair of hard-drinking PI’s, Bill Crane and Doc Williams, coming off flip and obnoxious without being crude – no small trick, that.

   They are ably supported by a hand-picked cast of no-names, including third-billed Barbara Pepper, who has about ten minutes of screen time, no relation whatever to the Plot [a locked-room affair] and delivers a devastating Mae West impression.

   She is matched perfectly by Clarence Wilson, a diminutive, squeaky-voiced Adolphe-Menjou-wannabe who seems to know he’s got the best role of his career here and positively shines as a stuffy, lecherous lawyer.

Editorial Comment:   Follow this link for a list of the other films in the Crime Club series, and Walter Albert’s review of one of them, posted on this blog about a year ago.

TALL, DARK AND HANDSOME. 20th Century Fox, 1941. Cesar Romero, Virginia Gilmore, Charlotte Greenwood, Milton Berle, Sheldon Leonard, Stanley Clements, Marc Lawrence, Addison Richards, Vicki Lester, Nestor Paiva, Marion Martin. Dances staged by Nick Castle; music and lyrics by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone. Shown at Cinevent 40, Columbus OH, May 2008.

   I’ve included one acting credit more for its incidental interest than as a record of a significant performance in the film. Vicki Lester was, of course, the name of the lead female character in A Star Is Born (played by Janet Gaynor in 1937, and by Judy Garland in 1954). The actress Vicki/Vickie Lester (her real name was “Vickie,” with “Vicki” adopted for the screen) appears to have played her first role (unbilled) in The Vogues of 1938, with her last credit given for 1943.

   Also, my wife reminds me that we saw Cesar Romero in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood in 1991. I recall that he had a glamourous lady on either arm, and was flashing his patented smile. It was not uncommon to spot stars at the Roosevelt, usually there as guests for the Saturday night banquet.

   Anyhow, Romero was in his prime when this film was released in 1941, giving a stellar performance as a Chicago gangster, known for his ruthlessness in handling threats to his power. His bumbling sidekick is played by Milton Berle, his equally ruthless rival by Sheldon Leonard, his female associate by Charlotte Greenwood, and the pretty young thing who causes his best-laid plans to go awry, by Virginia Gilmore.

   This is a comedy, with some music (Greenwood has one number in which she recalls some of the glories of her high-kicking days on the dance floor), and highly entertaining. It was remade in 1950 as Love That Brute, with Romero in Leonard’s role, and Paul Douglas as the lead.

Editorial Comment:   There’s a long series of clips from this film (23 minutes) here on YouTube.

JACK O’CONNELL – Wireless. Quinsigamond #2. Mysterious Press, hardcover, November 1993; paperback, 1995.

   One thing you got to give this O’Connell dude, he don’t do the same old stuff. Box 9 was one of the strangest books I’d read in a while, and Wireless may be even stranger. It’s set in the same decaying New England town, Quinsigamond, and the presence of Lenore Thomas, the freak lady cop of the first volume haunts the second though she is not physically present.

   The plot? Yes, well the plot … there are these anarchist-type radio jammers, you see, and several ethnic criminal gangs, and then there’s this lady cop who’s sort of the spiritual heir of the heroine (?) of his first book, and there’s a couple of dwarfs, a radio show hostess with a late night sex show, and a renegade FBI agent who likes to set people’s heads on fire … no, hell, no, I’m not making it up, that’s who it’s about, and it’s not funny at all, blackly or otherwise.

   The activities of the jammers provide the focal point. but it’s about a lot more than that. All of these weird and diverse people come together and move apart, and things change, and there are several resolutions of a sort. It’s no doubt a metaphor for several weighty philosophical concepts, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to which and how valid.

   It’s a difficult book to describe coherently, and impossible to categorize. I suspect, though, that semi-smug, middle-class whitebreads like myself are not really its intended audience. It’s well and powerfully written in the present tense, with shifting viewpoints that show each of the major players with sometimes startling clarity; though to say that it illuminates them might be misleading. It’s more akin to flashes of lightning on a stormy night, when a murky landscape is shown in bright relief for a brief instant, and then shadow reclaims the world.

   It’s about alienation and family and love and hate and power, and it’s worth you time to read it, I think. You may not be able to believe in the flickering, off-center world it presents, and then again you may; but in either case it’s likely to drag you along for the ride, shaking your head and wondering where in the hell it’s all going to end. Be warned, though, it’s rougher than a split-oak log.

Bibliographic Notes:   There were two more novels in this series, The Skin Palace (1996) and Word Made Flesh (1998).

    Continuing to Google for information about either the author or his work, the series seems to have gotten more attention from Science Fiction fans than mystery readers. A long interview with the author, Jack O’Connell, can be found online here.

FRINGE. Fox-TV. Bad Robot Production / Warner Brothers. September 9, 2008 through present. Created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci. CAST: Anna Torv as Agent Olivia Dunham, John Noble as Dr. Walter Bishop, and Joshua Jackson as Peter Bishop.

“Neither Here Nor There.” (Fourth Season premiere. September 23, 2011. Friday at 9E/8C.) The teams on the two worlds work together to solve the case of a shapeshifter, and Agent Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel) joins his world’s team when no one remembers the existence of Peter Bishop. (Summary from TV.com.)

   Fringe is a science fiction police procedural series too often ignored by mystery fans. While it is an arc series with occasional stand-alone episodes, the fourth season turns the arc into a circle and offers new viewers the best chance to jump in as everything changes.

   The series is focused on three characters, FBI agent Olivia Dunham, Mad Scientist Walter Bishop, and Walter’s genius son Peter. Fringe is a special unit of the FBI that examines mysteries involving strange science.

   This means dealing with strange crimes that would test Banacek, such as everyone on board an airborne passenger plane dissolving. While dealing with the strange and gross, Fringe discovered the parallel universe and that the other side was here and for an unknown reason causing trouble.

   Only Walter had already been to the other universe and has a secret: both Peters were dying. Our universe Peter died, but the other Peter remained alive but with little time left. The other universe Walter (Walternate) discovered a cure but was unaware of it because of the actions of a baldheaded man called an Observer.

   Little is known about the Observers except they show up at every important moment of time and have a way of being in Fringe episodes like Hitchcock did in his movies. Walter had been watching, entered the parallel universe, took dying Peter to our universe, saved young boy’s life and kept him.

   Well, now Walter had really done it. Both universes began to bump into each other causing death and destruction, with the other side getting the worse of it. The other universe then sent shapeshifters over here to find the mysterious device that would save their universe. Meanwhile, our Fringe division solved the weekly mystery, tracked down the bad guys, and fought off the invasion from the other universe.

   The third season alternated episodes between the two universes where we met our characters alternate universe counterpart (except for now grown up Peter who was from there). We learned the other universe was not evil and only a few had goatees. They, like us, just want to survive.

   Things remained strange but our Fringe finally found the final piece of the device to save the universe by taking out the other. The machine would only work with Peter in it, forcing him to chose between the universes.

   He then was sent into the future and learned the only way one universe would survive was if both survived, So Peter connected the two universes. Our Fringe and theirs must now work together to save both universes. Peter disappeared and no one noticed. Cut to a group of Observers where we learned Peter was not just gone, he had never existed.

   So, got that? Well, don’t worry about it. If Peter never existed, he never died in our universe, he and Olivia never fell in love, he and Fauxlivia (other universe’s Olivia) never had a baby, and Walter never stole Peter from the other universe and the reason for the universes problems change.

   All the characters who had evolved due to Peter’s influence will change to who they would have become if they had never met Peter. Shades of It’s a Wonderful Life without Clarence! This means the writers have a whole lot of explaining to do, and that means you newbies can learn what is going on along with us longtime viewers

   If all this is sounding a little Lost to you, there is one major difference. Lost made it up as they went along; Fringe, from the beginning, has had an ending all ready planned. The clues, the strange twists, the answers all will be revealed and make sense (we hope) when the series stops.

   If you enjoy mixed genre television, with some science fiction and horror tossed in with your FBI police procedural story, give the series a try. Besides Fringe offers viewers twice the universes of forensics than CBS’s CSI:NY.

      

ELIZABETH POWERS – All That Glitters: The Case of the Ice-Cold Diamond. Doubleday, hardcover, 1981. Avon, paperback, 1983.

   Years ago Mary Roberts Rinehart’s heroines wandered into trouble in mansions with secret passages. More modern is Viera Kolarova in Elizabeth Powers’ All That Glitters, who travels all over New York City, finding bodies, running from killers, and only as an afterthought informing the police of what she has learned.

   She finds her first corpse just prior to the weekend, saying cleverly, “Thank God Friday only comes once a week.” That offset such Had-I-But-Known lines as “I might have reflected a bit on what was bothering me and have saved myself the trouble of the mess I got into.”

   Incidentally, acting the role of what Boucher called “the Gothic idiot” is not restricted by sex. Many years ago, I observed the same characteristics in a male, Professor Foley in Michael Kenyon’s May You Die in Ireland (1965).

Bibliographic Note:   Viera Kolarova made one later appearance, in On Account of Murder, a paperback original from Avon in 1984. As a refugee from Communist Czechoslovakia who finds work in New York City, her name correctly spelled is Viera Kolářová.

DAVID M PIERCE – Down in the Valley. Penguin, paperback original, 1989.

   David M Pierce, a Canadian with a colorful background (songwriter, co-author of a musical and a cookbook, Shakespearean actor, and poet, most of this in England), arrives on our scene with Down in the Valley. This offers us V. (for Victor) Daniel, 6′ 7-1/4″, ex-con, wearer of Hawaiian shirts loud enough to wake the dead, and private investigator in the San Fernando Valley of LaLaLand.

   Here Daniel has a variety of cases in process, of which the most noticeable (and, apparently, most deadly) has to do with a local high school in which unlawful chemicals flourish.

   Pierce has the PI patter down very nicely, keeps the plot well aboil, peoples it colorfully (to say the least), and entertained me exceedingly well. I could do with more of these, and in fact two more Daniel capers are in print, shortly to be sampled by me.

    The Vic Daniel series —

Down in the Valley. Penguin 1989.
Hear the Wind Blow, Dear. Penguin 1990.
Roses Love Sunshine. Penguin 1990.

Angels in Heaven. Scribner, UK, 1991. Mysterious Press, US, 1992.

Write Me a Letter. Scribner, UK, 1992. Mysterious Press, 1993.

As She Rides By. St.Martin’s 1996.

SHEPARD RIFKIN – McQuaid in August. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1979. No paperback edition.

   Even though Damian McQuaid is a homicide detective, for the NYPD, this is definitely not your average sort of police procedural. It’s August, it’s hot, and McQuaid has only two days to solve a case on his own before someone discovers the body of the girl in whose apartment he spent the night.

   Finding the killer is not enough. Without the usual power of the police department behind him to help gather the evidence he needs, McQuaid is forced to resort to an intricate cat-and-mouse game of active harrassment in order to produce a “voluntary” confession.

   As a leading character, his excursions beyond the letter of the law evoke both admiration and a surprising lack of sympathy; part of the fascination reserved to the reader appears to be watching him stay, barely, on the side of sanity himself.

Rating:   A Minus.

Bibliographic Data:

    The Lt. Damian McQuaid series —

McQuaid. Putnam 1974.

The Snow Rattlers. Putnam, 1977.
McQuaid in August. Doubleday, 1979.

   Not in the series is The Murderer Vine (Dodd, 1970), recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime (2008). It’s a work of fiction based on the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) during the Freedom Summer voter registration drive.

   Rifkin’s other crime novel is Ladyfingers, a paperback original published by Gold Medal in 1969.

SEARCH AND DESTROY. 1979. Perry King, Don Stroud, Tisa Farrow, George Kennedy, Tony Sheer, Jong Soo Park. Director: William Fruet.

   First Blood, the first Rambo movie, was made in 1982, and at the time, that was the earliest post-Vietnam War movie I remember seeing. Until this one, that is. I’m no expert on the genre, but since the war didn’t end until 1975, and no one was very much interested in seeing films about that particular military debacle, Search and Destroy may have been among the first.

   And despite a story line that doesn’t allow much room for digression, it’s a good one. It takes place in 1978, with members of a small platoon of Vietmam vets in the process of being hunted down and killed. It seems that the group was ambushed during one of their missions, and in the confusion of the attack and the haste of the retreat they left an Vietnamese advisor behind. To die, so they assumed, but — you’ve caught on already? — no indeed, he did not.

   Two of the still surviving vets (Perry King and Don Stroud) live in the Niagara Falls area, which makes a terrific background for the action film of retribution and revenge, both the falls themselves and the rather shabby town that’s been built up next to it. (I’m told most of the movie was filmed on the Canadian side, even though it’s meant to be the American, logically speaking.)

   George Kennedy, in his usual fine pugnacious form, plays the police chief whose job is to stop the violence and keep the general populace safe. (Good luck on both!) Tisa Farrow, King’s slim girl friend looked awfully familiar to me, but the bell didn’t ring until after the movie was over, when I read through the credits again, and her last name finally jumped out at me. Jon Soo Park, who has the assassin’s role, didn’t have any lines to say, as I recall, but he’s quite effective as the methodical, single-minded killer, well-trained in the martial arts and other deadly skills.

   But it’s only when the action moves to the background that the movie takes on any real purpose or meaning: about the buddies you make in wartime, the promises you make to each other, the highs that fighting a war without supervision can give you, and the lows that have to be overcome when you come home and try lead a normal life again.

   If there were a little more of this side of the story, and a little less of firepower and other pyrotechnics, as grand as they may be, I wouldn’t hesitate in calling this a noir film – at least neo-noir. It didn’t have much of a budget, and I’m sure it was all but unknown when it was first released, but if you’re into this kind of film, this is a good one.

STEPHEN J. CANNELL – The Pallbearers. St. Martin’s, hardcover, March 2010; paperback, premium-sized, September 2010.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading character:  Shane Scully; 9th in series. Setting:   Los Angeles/Arizona.

First Sentence:   In 1976 America was just coming out of a protracted depression called the Vietnam War, but back then I was still in the middle of mine.

   Homicide Detective Shane Scully was abandoned as an infant and grew up in the system. The only person who ever tried to give him some sense of being cared for was Walter “Pop” Dix, executive director of Huntington House.

   When Shane is told Pop committed suicide and specifically asked that Shane be a pallbearer, it doesn’t make sense. Shane hadn’t seen Pop in years. When the other five pallbearers, all associated with Huntington House, convince Shane that Pop wouldn’t have committed suicide, and unofficial murder investigation, with a very unofficial team, begins.

   As much as I’ve enjoyed Cannell’s television shows over the years, I’d never read one of his books. It seems I’d have been better staying with television.

   On the positive side, Cannell does create an interesting cast of characters, providing background and dimension to each one, including the cat. He doesn’t assume you’ve
read previous books in the series, which I appreciated. He links the characters by a common thread but doesn’t quite tie off all the ends, which I didn’t mind.

   I did appreciate not having Scully being infallible or supermacho, although there was macho there, such as being able to have sex after virtually no sleep for an extended period of time and having been beaten to a pulp. However, for the most part, his female characters are strong and very capable, which I also appreciated.

   Cannell’s writing can be characterized by short chapters that are very visual and action-packed. On the downside, there are massive coincidences, an entire chapter of portents — those of you who’ve followed my reviews know how I despise portents — and some actions by the protagonist that were completely unbelievable. There points where the plot progression was so deliberately telegraphed it made it predictable.

   I didn’t hate the book but even among airport books there are levels; those you deliberately take with you and those you’re stuck buying at the airport news shop of lack of choice. This is the latter but still an entertaining read to keep one occupied for a few hours.

Rating:   Okay.

IRA LEVIN – A Kiss Before Dying. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1953. Edgar Award, Best First Mystery, 1954. Paperback reprints include, among others: Pyramid R-1067, Green Door Mystery, 1964; Pocket, May 1991 (both shown). Films: United Artists, 1956 (Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward); Universal, 1991 (Matt Dillon, Sean Young).

   I really try to organize my reading, but basically I’ve always been a slave to my own whimsy. So when I caught a passing reference somewhere to Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying, I returned once again to those thrilling days of yesteryear (i.e., books I read in High School) and I’m glad I did.

   Kiss is a classic of the form known as the Inverted Mystery: we know who-done-it and how, the fun is in seeing how they do it and whether they’ll get caught.

   Levin’s anti-hero is a perfectly-sketched sociopath determined to marry a wealthy heiress, but when he gets her pregnant, rather than endure the stigma that will alienate her father — this is 1953, remember — he decides to kill her and free himself to pursue another, a path not completely free of some suspenseful complications deftly tossed in by a writer who knows how to toss them.

   And things get even better in the second half when our hero finds himself the target of a plucky young heroine and a fan of Leslie Charteris. It’s touches like this, the odd bits of eccentric background thrown in, that really put Kiss across, and I’m glad I had a chance – forty years after I first read this — to visit it again.