RICHARD ROSEN – Fadeaway. PI Harvey Blissberg #2. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1986. Onyx, paperback; 1st printing, September 1987.

   Former baseball center fielder Harvey Blissberg is now a Boston PI, and his first real case is a doozey: two star NBA basketball players have just been found murdered at Logan Airport, The police naturally think of cocaine, but Harvey keeps digging.

   And ends up in Providence again, where in his earlier adventure, he first solved a murder (and the town really is New England’s armpit). Rosen can write crystal clear page-turning prose, and he can write murky. In this book he does an admirable job at both.

      The Harvey Blissberg series:

Strike Three You’re Dead (1984)
Fadeaway (1986)
Saturday Night Dead (1988)
World Of Hurt (1994)
Dead Ball (2001) .

WILLIAM BRITTAIN “The Zaretski Chain.” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1968. Not known to have been reprinted.

   William Brittain, the author of this small rather obscure tale, was known for a long list of detective and mystery fiction published over the years, most of them appearing in EQMM. Many of them were locked room or impossible crime mysteries. A list of them, along with a good deal of in-depth analysis, can be found here:

https://mikegrost.com/laterimp.htm#Brittain

   In “The Zaretski Chain,” a wealthy man with a fondness for the strange and unusual sets up a confrontation between a PI and a famous escape artist named Wrenn. The former has been on the trail of of the latter for a long time, as that gentleman may also have been responsible for many unusual thefts over the years.

   The challenge presented is this: Wrenn is to be secured with his wrists in cuffed on either side of a flagpole, a chain connecting them on the other side, with a horizontal spar across the pole toward the top. With personal incentives offered to each party, the winner of the contest will be determined on whether Wrenn can escape his confinement within the hour, a captive to be left alone during the allotted time.

   But before the hour is up, the man servant of their host announces that a robbery has taken place. Rushing to the scene of Wrenn’s captivity, he is still there, obviously having escaped and having come back to the place in which he had been trussed up.

   I can think of few stories that take as much time to set up and explain as this one does, but Brittain was a good writer, and it is with some fascination that the devoted reader of such tales (such as I) follows along with quite a bit of interest.

   Even more, the solution to this chronicle about the rather excessive need of someone who is a Problem Solver to unravel it (note the capital letters) is well worth the journey.

JAMES BLISH – Faust Aleph-Null. Serialized in If Science Fiction, August-October 1967. Reprinted as Black Easter or Faust Aleph-Null (Doubleday, hardcover, 1968; Dell, paperback, 1969). Also reprinted as The Devil’s Day, paired with the novel The Day After Judgment (Baen, paperback, 1990).

   Outwardly fantasy, this story is actually a treatise on theology, leading up to the no longer startling conclusion that “God is dead.”

   Some time in the past, God is presumed to have made a compromise with the demons of Evil, in the form of the Covenant, which also allows the practice of Magic. The monastery at Monte Albano, the center of white magic, discovers that the black magician Theron Ware is about to perform a potentially disastrous task for a munitions manufacturer, and so the move to stop it, but without actually interfering.

   The Task? To allow the major demons of Hell freedom on Earth for 24 hours, purely as an experiment. This does not speak wll of munitions manufacturers, of course, but as a class, who else could Blish reasonably pick on? Not acceptable, even given the existence of such demons.

   Naturally the experiment goes out of control, with God’s absence from the scene the factor allowing the demons to stay free, breaking the vows that gave then freedom. End of story.

   More work is needed to make this tale credible as a story; as theology, it may be great stuff.

Rating: ***½

THE CIMARRON KID. Universal International Pictures, 1952. Audie Murphy, Beverly Tyler, James Best, Yvette Dugay, Hugh O’Brian, Roy Roberts, Noah Beery, Leif Erickson. Director: Budd Boetticher.

   There’s more than a hint of grit in Budd Boetticher’s The Cimarron Kid. Not as gritty as the westerns he did with Randolph Scott, mind you, but it’s there nevertheless. Indeed, there’s something a little sweaty, a little dirty and violent about this oater, one starring Audie Murphy in a comparatively early role for him.

   Here, Murphy portrays Bill Doolin, an Oklahoman falsely imprisoned due to his friendship with the Dalton Gang. After being released from jail, Doolin sets out to create a new life for himself. But it’s not to be. Due to an unfortunate incident during a train holdup, when one of the Daltons recognizes him, Doolin (Murphy) once again finds himself on the wrong side of the law. This time, however, he accepts his fate and goes all in with the Daltons, helping them commit a bank robbery in which many of the Daltons are killed.

   Along for the whole ride – figuratively and literally – is Bitter Creek Dalton (James Best) and his Mexican girlfriend Rose (Yvette Dugay), both with whom Doolin forms a tight bond. On Doolin’s trail is the fair-minded Marshal John Sutton (Leif Erickson). There’s a love interest component to the story, too with Beverly Tyler portraying Carrie Roberts, a farm girl who falls for Doolin.

   Much of the movie deals thematically with the question of fate. Was Doolin doomed from the start? Did his relationship with his childhood friends – the Daltons – preclude him from ever having a “normal life”? When the movie ends, it’s not with a bang, but a whisper.

   Overall, a quite enjoyable, thoughtful western with Murphy showing that he had a long future ahead of him in that genre.

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Theft of the Toy Mouse.” Nick Velvet #3. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1968. Collected in The Thefts of Nick Velvet (Mysterious Press, 1978).

   Of the several series characters created by Ed Hoch over his long writing career, I think Nick Velvet, professional thief, is my favorite. Not only is he always hired to steal something outrageous (a complete baseball team, the water from a swimming pool), with all the intricate care that’s required, but he almost always endeavors to learn why anyone would hire him to steal that particular item.

   In this story, which falls early in his early days in his unique line work, he is given $20,000 to steal a toy mouse which, when wound up, runs in circles. It is the focus of a modern film being shot in France, just outside of Paris, a setting which certainly boosts the story’s sense of place. (He does manage to convince his girl friend Gloria to stay home.)

   The story rambles comfortably along and is a lot of fun to read. Unfortunately the location of toy mouse is in a building which has been built (by Hoch) to make it, on reflection, an easy task to steal. And the reason behind the caper is rather mundane. But not, of course while, the story is rambling on.

   Overall, the tale is a bit of a letdown. Being “lot of fun to read” does manage to make up for a good portion of that, though.

ENEMY OF THE STATE. Buena Vista Pictures, 1998. Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, Regina King. Director: Tony Scott.

   Tony Scott’s paranoid thriller Enemy of the State has a lot going for it. Aside from the kinetic direction that doesn’t let up, the movie features Will Smith in his prime alongside Hollywood stalwarts Gene Hackman and Jon Voight. Smith portrays Robert Dean, a Washington DC labor attorney who unwittingly comes into the possession of evidence showing that National Security Agency bigwig Thomas Reynolds (Voight) had a Congressman knocked off.

   With no one to trust, Dean eventually turns to the mysterious “Brill” (Hackman), a former NSA employee who now works as a freelance spy for the right price. The two men – of very different personalities and temperaments – must work together to bring down Reynolds and his henchmen.

   Set primarily in Washington DC and Baltimore, the movie benefits tremendously from on-location shooting, particularly one sequence in Dupont Circle. The movie also has a strong supporting cast, including a youthful Jack Black and a not yet famous Scott Caan, son of Hollywood heavyweight James Caan. Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) portrays a NSA tech guy, though he is for some unknown reason uncredited.

   The politics of the movie, for better or worse, are written on its sleeve. The tension between privacy rights and the government’s desire to monitor threats through surveillance and satellites is front and center throughout the film, with the script taking a decidedly civil libertarian approach to the debate. Notably, the movie was released in 1998, several years before 9/11 would change everything.

   Overall, I enjoyed this one, but I have no desire to watch it again. Final assessment: come for Smith, but stay for Hackman and Voight. They’re both very good here.

PAT CADIGAN “The Sorceress in Spite of Herself.” First published in Isaac Asimov’s SF, December 1982. Reprinted in Isaac Asimov’s SF-Lite, edited by Gardner Dozois (Ace, 1993). Collected in Dirty Work (Mark Ziesing, 1993).

   Pat Cadigan has had a long career as a SF writer, mostly shorter fiction, starting in the late 70s, but she’s produced a handful of well-regarded novels, plus an even longer list of movie and TV tie-in’s.  (These I knew nothing about until I looked up what I could learn about her online just now.) In spite of her long resume, this is the first of her work that I’ve read.

   So, based on very little, or perhaps even on nothing, I’ve assumed she’s been involved solely with what’s called cyberpunk fiction, or perhaps stories centered on near future concepts such as virtual reality. “The Sorcerer in Spite of Herself” proves how wrong I was about that.

   It involves a young woman, married perhaps for half a year, who’s been plagued her whole life by her habit of losing things. She doesn’t know why or how, and when she finally breaks down and tells her husband, he doesn’t believe her. As she explains at some length, he begins to change his mind, gradually of course, but eventually so much so that he begins to wonder how they might cancel out this curse she’s been under for so long.

   It all works out, in a most logical fashion, in a climax that is as funny, say, as it is chilling. A minor work, but one most nicely done.

KEN BRUEN – The Killing of the Tinkers. Jack Taylor #2. St. Martins Minotaur, softcover, 2004.

   The death drive drives to self-destruction. Not just to cease to be, to stop the pain, to nothingness. But towards an earlier incarnation. A oneness with everything. The self is an illusion dividing us against everything and everyone, creating a loneliness we cannot bear. Death is coming, ready or not. But as much as we try to avoid it, to do everything we can to stay alive, to self-preserve, take meds (Christian scientists notwithstanding), to exercise, to exorcise the death from life: It’s coming. And at times we even hurry it along, speed it up along its merry way, brush the front steps, invite it in for tea.

   At the end of The Guards, Jack Taylor kills his best friend. It’s justified. But who gives a crap, justified? What does that mean? What does it matter? Like Sam Spade handing Brigid O’Shaunessy over to the cops. Choosing ‘justice’ over love in this corrupted world. What the hell for?

   So here Jack Taylor finds himself. Alone. Addicted to coke, and drinking himself to death. The usual.

   He gets hired to find out who’s killing the hobos. He fucks up the investigation, gets the wrong guy killed, and hires a hit man to clean it up. The end. A freaking mess.

Meantime, as per usual, he gives the reader a bunch of tips: Songs and books to listen to and read on the road to perdition.

   He reverentially mentions Jernigan. Twice. So I order it.

DAVID GATES – Jernigan. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1991.

   Jernigan is a failed English lit academic who quits to be a half-assed corporate real estate broker, married to another overeducated souse, raising a teenaged boy in the lower Hudson valley. The suburban dream.

   He picks at his wife constantly, little passive aggressive pokes at her laziness and she at his impotence.

   They have a party. It’s the fourth of July. The neighbors are all there. At the pool. And finally she’s had it. She says ‘fuck you—fuck all of you’, strips off her clothes and jumps in the car, backs out of the driveway full speed, eyes full of hate, only to be instantaneously t-boned by a van. Dead.

   Jernigan starts drinking more and more. Gets fired by his firm. And starts screwing his son’s girlfriend’s mom.

   The mom is in a group of suburban survivalists. They squat in suburban buildings, they dumpster dive for barely expired produce behind the supermarkets, they raise bunnies in their basements. To eat. They make their own moonshine. They have no bills. Their kids go to the nice suburban schools. They don’t work. So they can ‘truly live’.

   This kind of life doesn’t suit Jernigan. Does any?

   So he sells his house, moves in with his son’s girlfriends’ mother, and drinks himself into oblivion.

   The end.

   Can’t say I enjoyed this stuff. But there’s something to this death drive. Maybe.

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. Apple Original Films, 2025. John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson, Arian Moayed, Stanley Tucci. Director: Guy Ritchie.

   Given the title of this film and the fact that I’ve placed it in the Action Adventure category, I expect that most of you are thinking right now that you know exactly how the story line will play out, and long before the movie begins.

   And most of you would be right. All but the details, of course, and they don’t matter anyway.

   But for the record, a mostly estranged brother and sister agree to work for a man with lots of money but who’s dying anyway. Object: to find – you guessed it – the Fountain of Youth. The brother is the instigator, who wants to say yes immediately. The sister needs a lot more persuasion, but she reluctantly agrees as well. She’s in.

   The trail leads them from Thailand to the US and then to Egypt and – the Pyramids, where they all have a lot of fun in not only finding what they are looking for but at the same time fending off all kinds of mercenaries on both sides, sort of, plus the police and maybe someone else whom I’ve forgotten.

   Lots of fireworks in this one, folks, and a lot of money went into the production, which is quite superb. It all works well enough – even more than well enough, in fact – except for the fact that it’s all been done before. (The ending suggests that another adventure may even be in the offing. It all may be done again.)

DETOUR. PRC, 1946. Tom Neal, Ann Savage , Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan. Screenplay by Martin Goldsmith, based on his own novel. Director: Edgar Ulmer.

   Fate laughs at a nightclub pianist, hitch-hiking to Los Angeles to see his girl friend. The man who picks him up dies in a strange accident, and when he takes the other man’s money and identity, the events that follow are unstoppable.

   Ann Savage plays the girl that Neal picks up in turn, and she knows he is not who he says he is.Neal is under her constant thumb from then on – willingly or not, we are not quite sure. A low budget film that makes a much larger impact than you might expect.