FLORENCE STEVENSON – Mistress of Devil’s Manor. Kitty Telefair #4. Award AN1130, paperback original; 1st printing, 1973.

   Florence Stevenson, the author of the short-lived Kitty Telefair psychic detective series, of which this is the fourth, seems to have been published only in paperback originals. I loved the first one I read, Altar of Evil, and knowing of my fondness for these marzipan confections, a good friend recently sent me this one and The Sorcerer of the Castle.

   In Mistress, Kitty goes off to a resort hotel to find out what has happened to her friend, Gillian Bond, who has disappeared on a honeymoon trip to a Western ghost town. The ghost town is, of course, inhabited by something more frightening than Patrick Swayze, and even Kitty’s psychic powers seem, for a time, perhaps not equal to the horror she find there.

   But our girl, outfitted in silk shorts, Levis and riding boots, wins out, although her powers are somewhat diminished by a roll in the hay with Professor Darius Flynn, a hot-blooded Irish academic.

   The moral dilemma posed by Kitty’s betrayal of her relationship with her fiance is neatly disposed of in the last paragraph. I like Kitty a lot. She’s not the fainting type, has a healthy appetite, and buys clothes that flatter her figure: “At about four in the afternoon I drove to Goldwater’s Department Store and bought three pant suits of the thinnest nylon I could find; I also bought Levis, riding boots and a white Stetson that probably spelled ‘dude’ in mile-high letters across the hat band, but since it was madly becoming, I did not care.” Right on, Kitty.

   And right on, Florence Stevenson, too. She probably dashed these off for the public’s sweet tooth, but she has a sharp eye for telling detail and the story generates suspense and a goosebump or two. Oh, and by the way, there’s a treasure map and a lost cave in a forbidding mountain range, guarded by … but why don’t you look this one up and find out?

      The Kitty Telefair series —

The Witching Hour. Award A868, 1971

Where Satan Dwells. Award A883, 1971
Altar of Evil. Award AN1107, 1973
Mistress of Devil’s Manor. Award AN1130, 1973
The Sorcerer of the Castle. Award AN1219, 1974
The Silent Watcher. Award AQ1413, 1975

The Horror from the Tombs. Award AD1658, 1977.

EDITORIAL UPDATE:   That last line, as it has turned out, is quite a teaser. This review first appeared in Walter’s DAPA-Em zine for September 1990, and in the meantime, copies of this particular paperback have all but disappeared. There is only one to be found for sale on the Internet, and that one in the $40 range. Of some of the others, there are only one or two copies, often in only fair to good condition, with none at all of Altar of Evil or The Horror from the Tombs. In fact, of the latter, it was not known to Hubin until now that Horror was a Kitty Telefair novel.

   Thanks to Ken Johnson and his online Fantasy Gothic checklist for assisting on the bibliographic data above. Covers to all may be found there as well.

FREDRIC BROWN – Night of the Jabberwock. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1950. Paperback editions include: Bantam #990, April 1952; Morrow-Quill, 1984. Based on two pulp stories: “The Gibbering Night” (Detective Tales, July 1944) and “The Jabberwock Murders” (Thrilling Mystery, Summer 1944).

   This entertaining novel, which takes place in one bizarre night, is a perfect example of Fredric Brown’s somewhat eccentric view of the world. Doc Stoeger, editor of the Carmel City, Indiana, Clarion, sometime philosopher and devotee of the works of Lewis Carroll, has just put the small-town paper to bed. He has a drink in his office, wanders over to Smiley’s Tavern for a couple more, and laments the fact that nothing ever happens in Carmel City.

   What wouldn’t he give, Doc says, for just one important story? Then, just as he is about to go home, things start to happen. At first they are mundane: Tuesday’s rummage sale is canceled and there is now a nine-inch hole in the front page; a messy divorce story needs to be rewritten because the charges against the husband were not true. But these are nothing like the surprise that visits Doc later at home.

   The surprise is a man with the unlikely name of Yehudi Smith, who claims to be a member of a group of Lewis Carroll enthusiasts called the Vorpal Blades (a name taken from Through the Looking Glass). Smith invites Doc to a midnight meeting in a haunted house, and Doc is fascinated enough to accept. However, other events intervene: Doc’s best friend is injured in an accident and no one can find out what happened; the bank is robbed in a strange way; an escaped lunatic is run to earth; and big-time criminals are on the loose.

   By the time Doc keeps his appointment with Yehudi Smith and the Vorpal Blades, he has covered and, for various reasons, had to suppress more major stories than most editors do in a year. And when he and Smith go to the haunted house, Doc is embroiled in an Alice-like adventure that leads him not down a rabbit hole or through a looking glass, but to the sheriff’s office.

    Night of the Jabberwock is definitely not a novel for reformed alcoholics or those with strong principles against the consumption of alcohol. Doc partakes of enough drink so that, in reality, he would have passed out by chapter 3. In spite of that — and the fact that there are enough holes in the plot to drive a liquor truck through — no reader will ever forget this one astonishing night in Carmel City, Indiana.

         ———
   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.

THE TERMINAL MAN. Warner Brothers, 1974). George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard Dysart, Donald Moffat, Michael C. Gwynne, Jill Clayburgh, James Sikking. Based on the book by Michael Crichton. Producer-director-screenwriter: Mike Hodges.

   Adapted from Michael Crichton’s 1971 novel, The Terminal Man is an auteur project the likes of which could never be released by a mainstream film studio today. Written, directed, and produced by Mike Hodges, this offbeat science fiction thriller features George Segal as Harry Benson, a man suffering from a form of psychomotor epilepsy that causes him to occasionally fly into uncontrollable violent rages. A genius computer programmer, Benson was in a car accident that left him with a seizure disorder that has crippled his life. Not only does he experience auras and seizures, he also now has delusions that computers are going rise up and control humanity.

   Benson decides that he wants to volunteer for an experimental medical procedure, one in which electrodes are implanted in his brain. If his disorder makes him violent, he figures he would rather give over what is left of his free will to a computer if that will prevent his violent behavior. The irony of a man afraid of computers rising up against humanity agreeing to such a procedure is not lost on his psychiatrist, Janet Ross (Joan Hackett). A moral, humanist voice, she urges her colleagues not to go through with this procedure. But to no avail. As you might imagine, the surgery doesn’t go quite as planned and it is only a matter of time before Benson escapes from the hospital and begins a murderous rampage.

   That the movie’s plot. But this isn’t really a plot driven film. It’s a visual experience, more arthouse than grindhouse. It’s one in which symbolic imagery and set designs in stark hues of blue and gray are utilized to convey meaning. It is a stark, dehumanizing world. The essence of what it means to be fully human is explored not so much through dialogue, but through shots of bleak, empty hospital hallways, a brightly lit tunnel, and a graveyard.

   For a movie that deals with cerebral topics – both literally and metaphorically — The Terminal Man isn’t a film that was made to make viewers think so much as to feel. Perhaps that was the whole point.

AGATHA CHRISTIE – Appointment with Death. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1938. US paperback reprints include many editions from both Dell and Berkley over the years, as well as other publishers. First published in the UK: Collins, hardcover, 1938. Published play: French, softcover, 1956. Film: Cannon, 1988 (with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot & Lauren Bacall). TV movie: ITV, 22 September 2008 (Season 11, Episode 4, of the series Agatha Christie’s Poirot; with David Suchet as Hercule Poirot).

   The book opens thusly, with a quiet gentleman standing unseen in an open window above the following snippet of conversation:

      “You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?”

   It is night, the setting is Jerusalem, and among a group of tourists is the man who accidentally overhears this cry for help — for that is what it is — none other than Hercule Poirot. Among the other travelers are the domineering aged mother of three grown stepchildren, the wife of one, and a young daughter of her own. She is hated by all of them, but they are totally dependent on her psychologically as well as financially, and they cannot break away from her.

   A recipe for disaster, you think, and you would be right. The most common means of murder in Agatha Christie’s novels is poison, I suspect, and so it is here. A close reading of the timetable that Poirot puts together (pages 146-147), plus a list of ten Significant Points (page 180), along with a keen ear for the clues he gathers from everyone involved, and you may solve the mystery as quickly as he. Or not, as the case may be (mine).

   One by one each of the possible suspects are interviewed, and one by by one, each of the suspects is eliminated — or are they? From the facts, it is impossible for anyone to have killed her, but the primary fact is that the idious old woman is dead.

   What makes this particular case to be solved by M. Poirot so clever is that it turns out to be so simple — after he explains. Did I name the killer? No, but I did come close! I think this short novel (only 212 pages in the Berkeley paperback) qualifies as the best detective puzzle I’ve read all year. And it bears repeating. There’s nothing cozy about an Agatha Christie murder mystery. She was a keen sharp-edged observer of the human race, and she had the knack of making her characters as real as the people you see around you every day.

   Not only that, but she sure knew her poisons, too!

WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL. J. Arthur Rank, UK, 1971. Cinerama Releasing Corp., US, 1971. Anthony Hopkins (Philip Calvert), Robert Morley (‘Uncle Arthur’), Nathalie Delon, Jack Hawkins, Corin Redgrave, Derek Bond. Screenplay: Alistair MacLean, based on his own novel. Director: Etienne Périer.

   From what I’ve read about it, this one was produced with the idea of creating a film franchise to compete with the James Bond films. The hero was to be a young and rather fit-looking Anthony Hopkins as a secret agent named Philip Calvert. (The book was his only print edition appearance.)

   But the resulting product turned out so badly, and apparently the box office receipts as well, than any thoughts of further adventures of Hopkins as Calvert disappeared very quickly. The story is confusing, to begin with, and even worse, it’s dull. It’s not clear on a first viewing, but it has something to do with a series of hijackings of cargo ships in the Irish Sea, the most recent one carrying a fortune in gold bullion.

   The trail leads Calvert to the port town of Torbay somewhere along the coast of Scotland, where he snoops around a lot, gets into trouble a lot more, and after the grand finale (with a bit of surprise for anyone still awake), the movie’s over.

   Only the presence of Calvert’s boss, Sir Arthur Arnford-Jones, also known as “Uncle Arthur” (Robert Morley), livens up the proceedings. He’s his usual prim and proper (prissy?) self, humorously so, but he shows he can still do what he needs to do in a pinch.

MARGARET MARON – Shooting at Loons. Deborah Knott #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995.

   Maron swept the 1992 mystery awards with Bootlegger’s Daughter, the first in the Judge Deborah Knott series, though it remains to be seen if the second, Southern Discomfort, will win any. For reasons known only to the MWA, it didn’t even make the 1993 Edgar short list. Maron’s earlier stories of policewoman Sigrid Harald were good, but the voice she has found with the Knott books is excellent.

   Deborah Knott, lady Judge, is far from her normal stomping grounds, filling in at coastal Beaufort near North Carolina’s Outer Banks. She’s staying in a cousin’s cottage there, and is quickly involved in the area’s complicated politics when she discovers the murdered body of a local fisherman who headed up an independent fisherman’s association.

   The region is a hotbed of politics, with small island fishers, commercial fishers, environmentalists, and developers at each other’s throats. She’s drawn further into the mess by a local developer’s pressures on the wife of a fellow judge to sell the family’s commercial fishing business.

   I keep waiting for Maron to stub her toe with this series, but she hasn’t done it yet. Once again she has combined background, character, and crime into an excellent story. Deborah Knott is one of the best realized protagonists to grace crime fiction in recent years, and Maron is without superior in her use of locale as a backdrop.

   Her characters are her strength, but almost as refreshing to me is her ability to keep her heroine as the center of the story without resorting to the unrealistic contrivances used by so many other authors, I hate to gush, but I just didn’t find anything at all to dislike here, except that it was too short. Or maybe it wasn’t; I was left wanting more, and maybe that’s how it should be.

AWARDS UPDATE:   As Barry pointed out, Bootlegger’s Daughter was the Agatha Award Best Novel winner (1992), the Anthony Awards Best Novel winner (1993) a Dilys Awards Best Book nominee (1993), the Edgar Awards Best Novel winner (1993), and the Macavity Awards Best Novel winner (1993). Southern Discomfort was an Agatha Award Best Novel nominee (1993).

  ARNOLD HANO – The Last Notch. Black Gat #12, Stark House Press, paperback, August 2017. First published as by Matthew Gant by Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1958. Reprinted under that byline by Pyramid, #G482, paperback, 1960.

   It was Dan Stumpf who reviewed an earlier western by Arnold Hano on this blog, a book entitled Flint, originally published as by Gil Dodge but reprinted by Stark House as this one is under the author’s real name. In that review Dan also pointed out Hano’s more significant claim to fame, that of being the editor of Lion Books, the near legendary paperback publisher of such hard-boiled/noir authors in the 1950s as Jim Thompson, Richard Matheson and David Goodis.

   The Last Notch isn’t in the same league as the work any of those three, but there are very few whose books come anywhere close. What Notch does have, as you might expect, based only on this small bit of background information, is a strong noirish and fatalistic tone to it, a tale that starts slowly but picks up speed as it goes along.

   In essence The Last Notch is the story of Ben Slattery, perhaps the most notorious gunfighter in the territory, and in all likelihood the best, but in this tale he finds himself in a very strange position indeed. He agrees to do one last killing for hire, one that will pay him $5000, quite a sum of money back then, then hang up his guns and take the governor up on his offer of general amnesty to every gunman who will take him up on it, and many already have.

   If I were to pause for a minute and have think about it, by a nasty twist of fate, who do you think it is he’s been hired to kill? That’s the story in a nutshell, but wait, as they say. There’s more. I won’t go into detail — and in a book of 230 pages of small print, there is a lot of story I’m not able to tell you about in a review of less than 500 words — but as it so happens, Slattery has a nemesis, a shadowy figure who follows him closely throughout the book, a gunslinger known only as The Kid, young but with 19 notches already on the handle of his gun.

   There are plenty of other characters in the story as well, each described in quick but distinctive detail. There are a couple of young women too, both beautiful but one considerably more innocent than the other. It is Slattery’s present and past that make it impossible to think of a life and a future with her, or is it?

   The situation Slattery is in is admittedly an artificial construct, but is is one, I submit, that you can find yourself wrapped up in totally and completely, transported to a time and place that may exist only in the minds of authors with some talent. This is also one of the stories that you cannot predict which way it will go, which is precisely why the former statement is as true as it is.

  CASTLE IN THE DESERT. 20th Century Fox, 1942. Sidney Toler, Arleen Whelan, Richard Derr, Douglass Dumbrille, [Victor] Sen Yung. Based on the character created by Earl Derr Biggers. Director: Harry Lachman.

    A Charlie Chan movie, as you may have guessed, and the last done by 20th Century Fox. It takes place, not surprisingly, in an isolated castle in the desert, 35 miles from civilization. Its owner is a medieval historian who insists on doing his research in authentic surroundings, complete with working dungeon.

    What’s more is that his wife, as it turns out, is a descendant of the notorious Borgia family, and when guests begin mysteriously dying, Charlie is brought in. Lots of mysterious events also then begin to happen, but none of them of a substantial sort. Still, this film does contain one of my favorite sayings, even though Charlie himself didn’t come up wth it. Blame this one on his Number Two son:

    “Man who sit on tack better off.”

Note:   Dan Stumpf has also reviewed the film on this blog. Check out his comments here.

FREDRIC BROWN – The Fabulous Clipjoint. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1947. Bantam #1134, paperback, 1953. David R. Godine, trade paperback, 1986.

   Fredric Brown’s vision of the world was paradoxical and slightly cockeyed. Things, in his eye, are not always what you might think they are; elements of the bizarre spice the commonplace, and, conversely, elements of the commonplace leaven the bizarre. Madness and sanity are intertwined, so that it is often difficult to tell which is which.

   The same is true of malevolence and benignity, of tragedy and comedy. Brown seems to have felt that the forces, cosmic or otherwise, that control our lives are at best mischievous and at worst malign, that man has little to say about his own destiny, and that free will is a fallacy. The joke is on us, he seems to be saying on numerous occasions. And it is a joke that all too frequently turns nasty.

   Brown employed a deceptively simple, offhand style that allows his fiction to be enjoyed by those interested only in entertainment and also pondered by those interested in the complex themes at its heart. The Fabulous Clipjoint, his first novel and the recipient of an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America, is a good example.

   On the one hand, it is a straightforward detective story that introduced the Chicago-based team of private eyes Ed and Am Hunter. Ed, the narrator, is young and idealistic; Ambrose, his uncle and a retired circus performer, is much more pragmatic and somewhat jaded- the voice of experience.

   When Ed’s father, Wally, is shot down in a dark alley, Ed enlists his uncle’s help and sets out to find the murderer. Their quest leads them into the seamy underbelly of 1940s society, the world of second-rate criminals, cheap bars, sleazy carnival folk; from a sideshow spieler named Hoagy to a beautiful tramp named Claire Raymond to assorted thugs and tough cops, and finally to a killer.

   On the other hand, there are deeper meanings to the narrative — underlying themes of obsession, a young man’s bitter and tragic coming of age, and the manipulation of those dark cosmic forces that Brown believed are in control of our fives. The handling of these themes is what makes the novel so grimly powerful. Not Brown’s best book, and not for every taste, but unquestionably much more than just another hard-boiled detective tale.

   Brown wrote six other Ed and Am Hunter books, none of which, unfortunately,approaches The Fabulous Clipjoint in quality. Among them are The Dead Ringer (1948); The Bloody Moonlight (1949, which has a werewolf theme); Compliments of a Fiend (1951); and Mrs. Murphy’s Underpants (1963).

FREDRIC BROWN – Knock Three-One-Two. Dutton, 1959. Bantam A2135, paperback, 1960. TV adaptation: “Knock Three-One-Two.” Thriller, 13 December 1960 (Season 1, Episode 13). Film: The Red Ibis (France, 1975; original title: L’Ibis rouge).

   Knock Three-One-Two has one of the most compelling (and chilling) opening lines in all of crime fiction: “He had a name, but it doesn’t matter: call him the psycho.” It is the best of Brown’s later novels, and one of his two or three best overall. It is also — in theme, mood, and final message — his most frightening work.

   On the surface, Knock is a straightforward mystery that interweaves the lives of a maniacal rapist/strangler who preys on women alone at night in their apartments; a liquor salesman named Ray Fleck who is addicted to gambling; a Greek restaurateur, George Mikos, who is in love with Fleck’s wife, Ruth; a mentally retarded news vendor named Benny; Dolly Mason, a promiscuous and mercenary beauty operator; and several other characters.

   But as the opening lines intimate, this is not a whodunit: The identity of the psycho is irrelevant to the plot; rather, he is a catalyst, an almost biblical symbol of evil. The suspense Brown creates and sustains here is of the dark and powerful sort perfected
by Cornell Woolrich, yet uniquely Brown’s own in style and handling. It all builds beautifully, inexorably, to a shocking and ironic climax- Brown at his most controlled, dealing with material at its most chaotic.

   Equally good are Brown’s two other major suspense novels, The Screaming Mimi (1949) and The Far Cry (1951). Mimi is the story of an alcoholic Chicago reporter named Sweeney and his search for both a beautiful woman and a Ripper-style killer; it is also an allegorical retelling of “Beauty and the Beast.” The Far Cry, set in New Mexico, has been called Brown’s tour de force — a fair judgment, for the treatment of its theme of a love/hate obsession is uncommon and its denouement is both horrific and surprisingly bleak for its time.

FREDRIC BROWN – Mostly Murder. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1953. Pennant P-59, paperback, 1954.

   Brown wrote excellent short fiction, including dozens of mordant short-shorts — a demanding form at which he proved himself a master. It can be argued, in fact, that except in a half-dozen or so cases, he was a better short-story writer than he was a novelist.

    Mostly Murder, his first collection, contains eighteen of his best early stories., from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and such pulps as Black Mask and Dime Mystery.

   Among them are his masterpiece of psychological horror “Don’t Look Behind You,” a tour de force in which the reader is the intended murder victim; an unusually dark and powerful treatment of the “impossible crime” theme, “The Laughing Butcher”; an ironic little chiller, “Little Apple Hard to Peel”; a Woolrichian tale of terror and suspense, “I’ll Cut Your Throat Again, Kathleen”; the wryly humorous “Greatest Poem Ever Written”; and two of his best short-shorts. “Town Wanted” and “Cry Silence.” An outstanding collection.

   A second gathering of Brown’s criminous stories, The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders (1963), is likewise first-rate. Also well worth reading are several recent collections: Homicide Sanitarium (1984), Before She Kills (1984), Madman’s Holiday (1985), and The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches (1985), all limited editions of obscure but entertaining pulp stories; and Carnival of Crime (1985), which contains some but not all of his short mysteries, including several from Mostly Murder, and a complete checklist of Brown’s published works.

         ———
   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.

A. A. THOMSON & FALKLAND L. CARY – Murder at the Ministry. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1947. Published earlier as a play (French, 1942). No US edition.

   Clarendon House had once been a mental home, and to some it still appears that way because it now is inhabited by civil servants and scientists working on a top-secret project. The project’s leader, Sir James Reid, receives an anonymous note accusing his wife and fellow scientist Peter Faber of hanky-panky. He confronts the two and shortly thereafter is shot dead.

   There are several suspects besides Sir James’s wife and Faber. There is Captain Knowles-Parker, who is brighter than he appears to be, Lydia Grant, Sir James’s secretary, and Mr. Noote, the nearly perfect bureaucrat.

   Since Faber has the best, if not the only, motive, attention is focused on him. But Sir James’s doctor provides Faber with an alibi.

   Inspector Richardson of Scotland Yard is baffled. Captain Knowles-Parker, who helps in the investigation, is equally bewildered. Only through some hints that Mrs. McIntyre, one of Clarendon House’s charwomen, gives out when she has a mind to, is the villain brought to justice. How anyone understands her Scots accent, however, is beyond me. One can read what she has to say two or three times and extract the meaning, but hearing it once and grasping what she has said strikes me as bordering on the miraculous.

   Like Mrs. McIntyre, I spotted the murderer, although for slightly different reasons. I couldn’t figure out the motive, though, and don’t accept it now that I know it.

   Mrs. McIntyre is a forerunner to H.R.F. Keating’s Mrs. Craggs, though I think she drinks a bit more and certainly more steadily . She is well worth discovering.

Bibliographic Notes:   The two authors collaborated on one other mystery novel, that being But Once a Year (Jenkins, 1951). Murder at the Ministry seems to have been Mrs. McIntyre’s only outing. Falkland Cary’s solo work in terms of crime fiction otherwise consisted only of plays. A. A. Thomson’s contributions to the field include no other novels, but he does have one published play to his credit as well as several short story collections, some of which are criminous.