Thanks to Turner Classic Movies I recently discovered a detective film series I had never heard of before. Before Midnight (RKO, 1933) debuted on TCM in June and starred a young Ralph Bellamy as Inspector Trent of the NYPD.

   A procedural this ain’t: Trent comes out on a dark and stormy night to a Toad Hall fifty miles from New York City at the request of a millionaire who expects to be killed before the ancestral clock strikes twelve. Sure enough, the murder takes place, and Trent immediately takes over the investigation, such as it is, smoking up a storm as he interrogates the dead man’s lovely ward, the doctor who loves her, the enigmatic Japanese butler, the sleazy lawyer, etc. etc.

   Eventually, donning a white lab coat for forensic cred, he holds up two test tubes with blood samples in them and announces to his bug-eyed stooge that both came from the same person. How he managed to do that, generations before anyone ever heard of DNA, remains a mystery after the murder method (obvious to most viewers) and the murderer (obvious to all) are exposed.

   A bit of Web surfing taught me that Before Midnight was the first of four Inspector Trent films, all starring Bellamy and dating from 1933-34. The titles of the other three are One Is Guilty, The Crime of Helen Stanley and Girl in Danger.

   Columbia had released an earlier detective series with Adolphe Menjou as Anthony Abbot’s Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt but had dropped it after two films. The Trent series lasted twice as long but who today has ever heard of it? Bellamy of course went on to star in Columbia’s bottom-of-the-barrel series of Ellery Queen films (1940-41).

   Second of the four EQ films with Bellamy in the lead was Ellery Queen’s Penthouse Mystery (1941). For most of my life I was unsure whether this picture was based on any genuine Queen material.

   In Royal Bloodline I speculated that it might have come from one of the early Queen radio plays. Recently I learned that my hunch was right. Its source was the 60-minute drama “The Three Scratches” (CBS, December 13, 1939).

   Someday I’d love to compare the Dannay-Lee script with the infantile novelization of the film by some anonymous hack that was published as a tie-in with the movie, but unfortunately that script was not included in The Adventure of the Murdered Moths (2005).

   Does the name Peter Cheyney ring any bells? He was an Englishman (1896-1951), the son of a Cockney fishmonger who specialized in whelks and jellied eels.

   He had never visited the U.S. but in 1936 began writing a long series of thrillers narrated in first person by hardboiled G-Man Lemmy Caution, beginning with This Man Is Dangerous (1936).

   For the most part these quickies were laughed off as unpublishable over here but became huge successes in England and also in France, where translation concealed Cheyney’s habit of peppering the dialogue of American characters with British slang, not to mention self-created idioms which are like nothing in any language known to humankind.

   The one that has stuck in my mind longest is “He blew the bezuzus,” which is not a musical instrument but just Cheyney’s way of saying “He spilled the beans.”

   According to Google the only known use of the word was in Sinclair Lewis’s novel Babbitt, where a character is said to have a degree from Bezuzus Mail Order University.

   Could Cheyney have read that acerbic satire on the American middle class or did he come up with the word independently? Googling “bezuzus” with Cheyney’s name produces no matches, but I suspect that situation will change as soon as this column is posted.

   With The Urgent Hangman (1938) Cheyney launched a series of utterly conventional ersatz-Hammett novels about London PI Slim Callaghan, and during World War II he wrote a series of rather bleak espionage novels, all with “Dark” in their titles and lavishly praised by Anthony Boucher and others.

   I don’t know if he’s worth rediscovering, but you can catch him as he looked in newsreel footage from 1946, dictating his then-latest thriller to a secretary, by going to www.petercheyney.co.uk and clicking first on “Links” and then on the image at the bottom of the screen.

   The mail has just brought me the proof copy of my latest assault on the forests of America. Cornucopia of Crime is a 449-page gargantua bringing together chunks of my writing over the past 40-odd years on mystery fiction and some of my favorites among its perpetrators, from Gardner and Woolrich and Queen to Cleve F. Adams and Milton Propper and William Ard, not to mention screwballs like Michael Avallone and mad geniuses like Harry Stephen Keeler.

   One small problem with this copy: on the title page the author’s name is conspicuous by its absence. This glitch will soon be corrected but I’m told that ten or twelve uncorrected copies are on the way to me by mail.

   If they arrive before I leave for the Pulpfest in Columbus, Ohio late next week, I plan to bring them with me and — assuming there are a few collectors in attendance who are in the market for perhaps the most limited edition of any book on mystery fiction ever published! — sell them off. Consider this an exclusive offer to Mystery*File habitues.

Editorial Comment. 07-22-10.   Inspired by David Vineyard’s comments on Peter Cheyney’s contributions to the world of crime fiction, I checked out the website devoted to him that Mike mentioned. It’s definitely worth a look. I especially enjoyed the covers, a portion of one I’ve added below. Who could resist a book with a lady like this on the cover? Not me.

   Artwork by John Pisani. For more, go here.

HILDA LAWRENCE – Blood Upon the Snow. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1944. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition: February 1945. Reprint paperbacks: Pocket 336, February 1946; Avon Classic Crime PN320, 1970.

   Hilda Lawrence wrote three novels featuring the odd investigative trio of private eye Mark East and spinster sleuths Bessie Petty and Beulah Pond. In addition, she published a melodramatic suspense novel, The Pavilion (1949), and two novellas, “Death Has Four Hands” and “This Bleeding House” (both 1950).

   She is best known for the East/Petty/Pond books, and for good reason: They present an interesting juxtaposition of the hard-boiled school versus the little-old-lady sleuth, between the customs and mores of Manhattan and those of a small New England village.

   The characters are well drawn, the setting evocative, and the interplay between Mark East and his elderly “Watsons” is entertaining.

   As this first entry in the series opens, the snow is falling and Mark is arriving at the village of Crestwood. His introduction to Beulah Pond occurs when he stops to ask directions to the house where a prospective client expects him.

   When he eventually arrives, he is told he must wait until morning for his interview; and when he meets with Mr. Stoneman, the old man seems to think he is hiring a private secretary rather than a private detective. Mark, however, senses something is very wrong in the house; the old man seems frightened and has a hurt wrist and bruises on his face.

   He agrees to stay on for a few days, assuming secretarial duties, and makes it his first order of business to revisit Miss Pond, whom he perceives — rightly so — as a woman who knows a great deal about what goes on in the village.

   When he arrives at her home, he is introduced to Bessie Petty, and the unlikely partnership in detection is launched.

   The story that follows is one of slowly rising terror. The people with whom Stoneman is staying, Laura and Jim Morey and their two children, also seem disturbed; Stoneman is reported to have been sleepwalking; the housekeeper, Mrs. Lacey, has handed in her notice and seems upset about this; strange mischief has occurred in the wine cellar; and as the black winter night closes in, Mark remembers something Mrs. Lacey said about this being “good soil for evil.”

   A slow-paced but absorbing chiller, as are the other two in the series — A Time to Die (1945) and Death of a Doll (1947).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

  HILDA LAWRENCE – Death of a Doll. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1947. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, April 1947. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #540, August 1948; Avon Classic Crime PN239, November 1969.

   Only temporarily is Ruth Miller, department-store clerk, happy with her move from a furnished room to Hope House, a Home for Girls. Upon entering the lobby of her new domicile, she is frightened by a face from the past. Miller makes plans to get away, but her assisted plunge from a seventh-floor window renders her schemes nugatory.

   A wealthy customer of the department store who liked Miller hires Marc East to investigate because the death is being treated as a suicide. Reluctantly, for he also thinks the death was self-inflicted, East begins checking out Hope House and its denizens.

   More and more evidence, including the bludgeoning of a young lady in one of the bathrooms, accumulates to persuade East that Miller was murdered.

   More or less aiding East are Beulah Pond and Bessy Petty, who are visiting the wealthy customer and who are acquainted with East through some of his earlier investigations. They are a delightful pair, despite Bessy’s slight problem with alcohol. On one occasion, just in case someone might be listening, Bessy spells out a word.

   Often I have problems with people who are in danger, real or fancied, and who dimwittedly attempt to avoid any risk by keeping quiet. Hilda Lawrence convinces here. Miller, the residents, and the help of Hope House conceal information, but persuasive reasons are presented. This novel should not be missed.

Bibliographic Data: Hilda Lawrence was the pen name of Hildgarde Kronmuller, 1906-1976. There are five novels or story collections by her in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Her series character Mark East is in three of them (so indicated by ME). Note that her books often underwent title changes when republished, and that the two long novelettes in Duel for Death have been reprinted individually.

    * Blood Upon the Snow (n.) Simon 1944 [ME]

    * A Time to Die (n.) Simon 1945 [ME]
    * The Pavilion (n.) Simon 1946
    * Death of a Doll (n.) Simon 1947 [ME]
    * Duet of Death (co) Simon 1949

CARTER DICKSON – The Reader Is Warned. William Morrow & Co., US, hardcover, 1939. Wm.Heinemann, UK, hc, 1939. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including: Pocket #303, 1945; Berkley F972, 1964; International Polygonics, 1989.

   A decade or so ago I offhandedly pronounced The Reader Is Warned the best John Dickson Carr novel in the Sir Henry Merrivale series (written under Carr’s pseudonym Carter Dickson). After rereading it I would say I prefer the plainer and comparatively more sober courtroom classic, The Judas Window, but I still rate The Reader is Warned quite highly.

   What people rightly love about The Reader is Warned is its exceptional impossibility and the sinister idea of “teleforce.” A mysterious psychic, Herman Pennik, pronounces that one of the people at a country house gathering will die at a certain time; and, sure enough, that person does die.

   No indication of how the man came to die can be found. Pennik helpfully declares he killed the man psychically, through the operation of teleforce.

   The next day, the man’s widow challenges Pennik as a fraud and he, nettled by the challenge, tells her that she too will die by the means of his teleforce. And she does indeed die. But how she came to die is yet another mystery. Could it really have been due to teleforce?!

   One can think of thrillers with outlandish premises like this one that ultimately disappoint, but, amazingly, Carr comes up with a plausible (well, by Golden Age standards, anyway) and fairly-clued solution.

   The resolution, which involves a rather melodramatic and implausible trap and a quite incredibly garrulous murderer, is the main weakness of the tale, I think. But the “teleforce” idea that the tale is built around is a brilliant, bravura device and the last lines of the book are unusually thoughtful for Carr (if perhaps a bit optimistic — one thinks of the advent of atomic weaponry).

   Despite my praise of this book a decade ago, in the intervening years I actually had forgotten the culprit and the method. (I find I often forget those details in Carr, but never in Christie.) On the rereading, I saw indications of who the murderer might be be, but I had trouble with the motive question, because I missed another point completely. But it is all is fairly clued, I maintain!

   As for the method, I was pleased to find it rather John Street-ish. In fact, is some ways the novel is similar to one by Major Street from the same year. Since the two men were working on Drop to His Death/Fatal Descent at this time, I suspect they may have discussed the particular murder method in Reader as well.

   Whatever input Street may or may not have on the murder method, the exuberant narrative is all John Dickson Carr. The Reader Is Warned is one of Carr’s most brilliantly constructed and engagingly told detective novels.

Editorial Comment:   Curt has recently been re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr. This is the sixth, and currently the last in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. He Wouldn’t Kill Patience, also as by Carter Dickson, was the fifth, and you can read it here.

THE LAST OUTLAW. RKO, 1936. Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson, Tom Tyler, Henry B. Walthall, Margaret Callahan. Director: Christy Cabanne. Shown at Cinecon 27, Hollywood CA, September 1993.

   One of the sleeper hits of the convention. Harry Carey (Sr.) is released from prison after serving a thirty-five year sentence for bank robbery.

   Carey is initially bewildered by the world he finds outside but soon discovers that crime hasn’t changed all that much. In an unlikely alliance with the lawman who had sent him to prison and with a new, younger friend (Hoot Gibson), Carey dons his pistols, saddles up and goes after the varmints who’ve done him wrong.

   A great shoot-out at a canyon cabin is the perfect conclusion to this delightful, touching portrait of men living by an older code that shows up the inadequacy of the new order.

   This was a remake of a 1919 silent that starred Carey, and was written and directed by John Ford. Harry Carey, Jr. had planned to attend the showing, but illness forced him to cancel his appearance.

Editorial Comment:   This movie was released on video cassette, but it has not appeared as a commercial DVD, to my knowledge.

HARRY GREY – The Hoods. Crown, hardcover, 1952. Paperback reprint: Signet Giant S999, 1953; several later printings. Film: 1984, as Once Upon a Time in America. Director: Sergio Leone.

   This sprawling novel chronicles the career of a mob of Jewish gangsters from New York’s Lower East Side, from their beginnings as a kid gang to their rise in the world of big-time organized crime.

   The narrator is Noodles the Shiv, whose intelligence and sensitivity outdistance his compatriots Maxie, Patsy, Dominick, and Cockeye, but whose deeds are every bit as cold-blooded.

   Grey’s novel is exciting, with various heists and gang-war incidents vividly portrayed, and his portraits of mobsters are believable, backing up the author’s claim to be “an ex-hood himself,” as Mickey Spillane’s cover blurb on the 1953 Signet paperback edition puts it. But the episodic nature of the book makes The Hoods a fast-moving novel that lacks narrative drive.

   The Hoods was a paperback best seller, going through several editions and many printings, but its latter-day claim to fame is as the source for Italian director Sergio Leone’s controversial film Once Upon A Time in America, the screenplay of which was largely written by American mystery writer Stuart Kaminsky.

   Leone’s magnificent gangster epic (starring Robert DeNiro as Noodles — released in a restructured, truncated version as well as in its full 277 minutes of running time) seems destined to be the subject of discussion among film buffs for decades to come.

   Inexplicably, the “movie tie-in” edition published by New American Library was a novelization of the film, rather than a reissue of Grey’s original novel.

   Grey’s other two novels, Call Me Duke (1955) and Portrait of a Mobster (1958), are also gangster tales, the latter novel a fictionalized autobiography of Dutch Schultz.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.