ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE October 1967. [Special international issue.] Overall rating: **½.

MICHAEL GILBERT “The Terrorists.” Behrens & Calder. Novelette. First published in Argosy (UK) April 1967, as “Double, Double.” A plot to assassinate an Arabian ruler in London fails, thanks to the work of Behrens and Calder. (3)

JOHN D. MacDONALD “No Business for an Amateur.” Novelette. First published in Dime Detective, February 1947 as “Dead to the World.” Roadhouse protection racket, told in pulp style so strong you can smell the yellow pages. One great line, on page 36. (3)

HEINRICH BOLL “Like a Bad Dream.” First published in Harper’s Magazine, October 1965. Translated by Leila Vennewitz. A wife has to show her husband how to have an excavation bid accepted. Distinctly German. (5)

NOEL BOSKER “Best Laid Schemes.” A murder plan is ruined when someone beats him to it. (3)

JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI “The Thief.” First appeared in Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki, Knopf, hardcover, 1963. The story of a highly moral thief’s college days. (4)

ALBERTO MORAVIA “Only the Death of a Man.” First appeared in The Atlantic Monthly December 1958, as “The Secret.” Translated by Helene Cantarella. Hit-and-run bothers a truck driver’s conscience, but not his girl friend’s. (2)

LEO TOLSTOY “The Man of God.” Reprint. Comparatively clumsy treatment of a man wrongly sentenced to Siberia. (3)

JOSEF SKVORECKY “The Classic Sererak Case.” First appeared in Smutek Porucika Boruvky, Prague, 1966. Young sergeant’s efforts to show suicide was murder are unnecessary: Lieutenant Vorovka needs to ask only two questions. The humor depends on an obvious situation, except for clue withheld until the end. (3)

HERNANDO TELLEZ “Enemy in His Hands” First appeared in Great Spanish Tales, Dell, 1962, as “Just Lather, That’s All. ” Translated by Donald A. Yates. A barber has an enemy captain in his chair. (3)

GEORGES SIMENON “Inspector Maigret Pursues.” First appeared in English in Argosy (UK) January 1962, as “The Man on the Run.” Maigret spends five days following man who does not dare go home. Ending misfires. (3)

M. PATRICIA DOBLE “The Quest Gest.” The ghost of Shakespeare returns. Pointless? (1)

JAMES POWELL “The Beddoes Scheme.” Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock. Novelette. An advertising campaign on the behalf of peace and brotherhood. Wild, gets wilder, then stupid, finally boring. (0)

LAWRENCE TREAT “C As in Crime.” Mitch Taylor & Bill Decker. Mitch Taylor thinks he has solved a murder case, but he doesn’t have it quite right. Last line doesn’t make sense. (3)

ANDREW GARVE “Line of Communication.” A kite is used by a boy to escape from kidnappers. Nothing more. (3)

PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER. 20th Century Fox, 1935. Victor McLaglen, Freddie Bartholomew, Gloria Stuart, Michael Whalen, C. Henry Gordon Based on the story “Gentlemen, the King,” by Damon Runyon. Directed by Tay Garnett.

   Well done mix of adventure, sentiment, and comedy finds ex-Marine Colonel Michael Donovan (Victor McLaglen) at the nadir of his career as a soldier of fortune around the world, from Siam to Nicaragua, playing bodyguard to American playboy George Foster (Michael Whalen) in Paris. After rescuing Foster from his own profligate ways in a comic Paris night club brawl, Donovan dumps the unconscious playboy at their hotel room, where two men show up with a proposition.

   It seems one of those comic opera kingdoms so popular in the era in the Ruritania/Graustark mode need Donovan to kidnap their popular king so they can carry off their revolution (“We are not Bolsheviks or National Socialists…”) and then return the king to his throne once the crooks who have control of the country are gone. Donovan is a little disappointed he won’t be leading the army in the revolution, or at least assassinating the king, but the money offered is $50,000 and even covers hospitalization.

   So we are off to the comic opera land of castles and intrigue where Donovan and Foster kidnap the monarch only to discover his majesty King Peter II is a child (Freddie Bartholomew). Forced to also kidnap Countess Sonia (Gloria Stuart), who Foster flirted with at a costume ball they attended to get the lay of the land, they successfully make off with the King while Gino (C. Henry Gordon), leader of the military junta that holds power, desperately seeks them.

   As you might guess from Damon Runyon’s name in the credits Donovan and Foster were originally a pair of Chicago gangsters in the story, and the screenplay refers to that with King Peter initially thinks they are just that, and that Donovan might be Dillinger. Peter is absolutely thrilled at the idea of being kidnapped and having an adventure rather than the dull old life of a king, even a young one.

   This would make an interesting double feature with My Pal The King, in which cowboy Tom Mix and his traveling Wild West show help King Mickey Rooney stay in power in yet another Ruriatanian setting.

   There are no surprises here. Donovan is crazy about the kid who proves game (he calls the boy “Campaigner” and the boy calls him “Soldier”) and Foster and Countess Sonia fall in love. The bloodless revolution succeeds, and everything seems to be going fine until a camp of Romany peoples camped near the place they are hiding Peter inform Gino of their whereabouts, and in short order McLaglen and Foster are captured, imprisoned and ordered to be executed despite the King proclaiming they are to be freed.

   Before being captured Donovan and Peter make a cross country escape trying to reach the palace and the leaders of the Revolution.

   It seems the King recognizes that the revolution was right and should be in power and plans to support it, and Gino can’t have that so he plans to execute the King by firing squad and blame the two Americans for his death.

   Luckily Sonia learns of the plan in time to free Donovan, but can he take on two hundred and fifty armed men with just Foster’s help until help can arrive?

   Well, maybe, because all along he has been telling some pretty tall tales about doing something just like that wielding an 88 pound Maxim machine gun in his arms (“You have to understand Irish-Americans can do some pretty uncanny things when they’re riled…”), and while no one quite believes him, including Peter, it’s the only chance King Peter has.

   Fast-paced and running under eighty minutes the film is handsomely decked out with costume balls, castles, and chalets in the mountains, while Tay Garnett keeps a tight hand on the reigns and McLaglen, the screenplay by Gene Fowler is snappy and finds a nice balance between the disparate elements of action, comedy, and sentiment, and McLaglen and Bartholomew have real chemistry together. Whether that was real or forced it works and is enough that the scenes between them are funny and charming rather than grating and annoying, and that is the difference between a film like this working or not.

   It plays like Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, and Popular (one half expects Hope’s Rudolf Rassendayl, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barney Custer, and Joseph Louis Vance’s Terence O’Rourke to show up).

   Granted it also has about as much logic and realism as those too, but it makes up for that by never pretending for a minute to be anything than a rousing story well told, a tall tale for grown-ups.

   Tears are kept to a minimum and while there are a few misty eyes before the ending, they are appropriate to the rousing finale which ends as all good Ruritanian romances should. amid trumpets, fanfare, and in this case the Marine Hymn.

CLIFFORD D. SIMAK “Huddling Place.” First appeared in Astounding SF, July 1944. Collected in City (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1952) and in Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D.Simak (Putnam’s, hardcover, 1977; Berkley, paperback, 1978). Reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, hardcover, 1970), among others.

   Modern readers of SF and fantasy won’t remember Clifford Simak all that well, or even at all, but in his time, he was one of the lesser giants of the field. In my case, he was always one of my favorites, right up there with Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Other authors came and went, but the stories of Mr. Simak have always stayed with me.

   A lot of fans and critics have described his work as “pastoral,” and so it was, and it still is. It is so true that Simak himself uses the word to talk about his work at least twice in the foreword to his collection Skirmish (1977), of which “Huddling Place” is the lead story. (Don’t make too much about this statement: the stories are arranged in chronological order.)

   But for example, the opening scene takes place in one of the most physically detailed settings for a funeral I can remember reader. It is of Jerome A. Webster’s father, who has recently died, leaving only Jerome, of a certain age himself, his son Thomas, now in his 20s, and his mother. These are the only remaining members of the Webster family, attended to only my robots, having moved a number of  years ago from the city to this country estate where they now live.

   And from which Jerome has come to realize he cannot leave. There is no need to. The story was written long before the Internet came along, but the equivalent exists when the tale takes place, and there is no need for him to leave. Not even to perform a life-saving operation on an old friend from Mars, which is where he lived for five years in his younger days.

   He tries, and he is ready to, but as chance would have it, in a sad ending well worth waiting for, he cannot. And he probably won’t. Ever. Leave.

   Interpretations I will leave for you. What I will say that this is a beautiful story, well deserving of its SF Hall of Fame status. Science fiction was growing up when this was published.

GATTACA. Columbia, 1997. Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Gore Vidal, Jude Law, Xander Berkeley, Jayne Brook, Alan Arkin. Screenwriter/director: Andrew Niccol.

   In the not too distant future, societal advancement won’t be determined by one’s resume or skill set, as much as by one’s blood. That’s the underlying premise of Gattaca, an intelligent science fiction thriller that showcases a fictional world officially devoted to the ideology of eugenics. If one happens to have had a natural birth or, worse still, a genetic defect, one’s opportunities in life are severely limited.

   Enter Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), a janitor born of natural birth with a heart problem. His only dream is to be an astronaut and see the stars. These things are simply impossible in the society he was born into. With the help of a shadowy underworld figure named German (Tony Shalhoub), Freeman takes on the identity of the genetically superior Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law) and starts work at Gattaca, an aerospace corporation helmed by Director Josef (Gore Vidal), in his quest to beat society’s rules.

   When a top ranking executive at Gattaca is murdered, Vincent fears his cover will be blown. Especially with the intrepid Detective Hugo (Alan Arkin) on the case. Complicating matters further is Morrow’s growing affection for co-worker Irene (Uma Thurman).

   There’s something rather operatic about Gattaca, a movie that relies heavily on intricate set design, exotic interiors, and orchestral music to tell the story of one man’s quest to escape his predetermined fate.

   It’s intelligent sci-fi that also has the capacity to entertain. True, it takes the suspension of disbelief to really get into the story. But once you do, you’ll find a compelling lead in Ethan Hawke’s character. Don’t expect a lot of action, however. This is a far more cerebral exercise than a physical one.

   Final assessment: with a great cast that takes the downbeat subject material seriously, Gattaca might not be something you’d watch again and again, but it’s solid, mature science fiction that is increasingly difficult to come by. Occasionally slow, but never boring.

STEVE FRAZEE – The Sky Block. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1953. Lion, paperback, 1954. Pyramid, paperback, 1958.

   While fishing his old vacation stream high in the Colorado Rockies, Platt Vencel is pressed into urgent service by both the U.S. Army (in the person of Colonel Julius Catron) and the FBI (agent Clement Raven).

   Something has gone wrong with the weather throughout the country: an unprecedented state of drought that has gone on for some months. The authorities are convinced that the cause is a hidden meteorological “doomsday device” built by an unspecified foreign power. Vencel, because of his intimate knowledge of the wilderness area, soon finds himself at the forefront of a desperate and deadly hunt for the location of the “Weather-Wrecker” and the identity of the men behind it.

   Despite the novel’s fantastic premise and its overtones of the anti-Communist extremism of the McCarthy era, Frazee’s handling of the theme minimizes the melodramatic aspects and makes this an exciting and suspenseful chase/adventure story in the mode of Geoffrey Household and John Buchan.

   Its strong points are several: deft characterization, nicely choreographed action scenes, and superb evocation of the rugged mountain terrain. Frazee’s prose style is also a plus; always terse and smoothly crafted, it takes on at times a kind of dark, rough-edged lyricism that gives the story a sense of stark reality.

   Frazee was primarily a writer of first-rate western fiction. His only other criminous novels are Running Target, expanded from the distinguished short story “My Brother Down There,” which won first prize in Ellery Queen’s annual contest for 1953, and Flight 409 (1969), a tale of survival and adventure about the search for the survivors of a plane crash in which three members of the president’s cabinet were killed.

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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.

CALLAN “Where Else Could I Go?” Thames TV, UK, 6 April 1970. Edward Woodward (Callan), William Squire, Patrick Mower, Russell Hunter. Creator/teleplay: James Mitchell. Director: Jim Goddard. Streaming on Amazon Prime; also available on YouTube (see below).

   I’m not as familiar with this series as I probably should be, so starting from the first episode of season three (the earliest to be found on Amazon), means that’s a lot of back story I need to fill in on my own. But it’s clear from the start of this episode that Callan was shot and seriously wounded as the end of season two.

   He’s an assassin for one of those British semi-secret government organizations, or at least he was. While he’s healing physically, his superiors are worried that he’s no longer up to doing the job he used to be number one at. Callan takes to worrying about that, the same as you or I would, am I right?

   Complicating matters is that his former comrade in arms, a lonely and rather meek gent w know only as “Lonely” is now in jail. It is up to Callan to get him out, supposing of course that he can. Resolving the situation is all that this episode is comprised of. Note the title of the episode. This is all I am going to tell you, but the title may tell you more.

   If I had the opportunity to know what had happened before (and YouTube may have episodes available from the first two seasons), I probably would have found myself a lot less at unease while watching this one, but both the cast and the writing are top notch. Callan is a complicated character, and a very young Edward Woodward plays him well.

   With hardly a single additional reservation to add, I’ll just go ahead and recommend this one highly.

ROBERT SHECKLEY – The Status Civilization. Dell 8249; paperback; 1st printing thus, October 1968; cover art by Podwil. Published earlier as a two-part serial in Amazing SF. Aug-Sept 1960 as “Omega!.” First book publication: Signet S1840, paperback, September 1960.

   A standard plot: The static society of Earth is redeemed by the fresh enthusiasm of criminals escaping from the prison planet Omega. Will Barrent is a convicted murderer, sentenced to Omega, who survives the rigors of life there to be contacted by an inner group dedicated to return to Earth. But before the welcome return can take place, the subconscious hypnotic teaching of Earth’s classic school must be overcome.

   By itself, society on Omega is  self-destructive: laws are designed to keep population down, with murder the most prevalent method; the ideal citizen is the one who breaks laws successfully. This is what Earth, stifled by conformity, needs to continue man’s expansion to the stars.

   Memory is removed before sending a criminal to Omega, but evil still seems inherent in the criminal class as previously mentioned. It would seem that the question of evil by heredity or by environment could be investigated under such conditions, but Sheckley’s emphasis is on the law as it exists, independent of those who administer it or live under it, Yet laws of man would have to be less important than the basic laws of nature.

   The writing is mediocre, again especially in comparison to an author such as [John D.] MacDonald. The dialogue is occasionally  stiff and old-fashioned, while the action is rapid, taking place in flashing scenes, without really pausing to reflect on its consequences.

   Thus in many ways, Sheckley’s writing here is like that of an author from the thirties trying to pass for modern. The theme is up-to-date, however, which probably explains why this story hes been resurrected from oblivion.

Rating: **

MAN FROM GOD’S COUNTRY. Allied Artists, 1958. George Montgomery, Randy Stuart, Gregg Barton, Kim Charney, Susan Cummings, James Griffith, House Peters Jr., Frank Wilcox. Director: Paul Landres.

   George Montgomery takes the helm in Man From God’s Country, a 1950s western that doesn’t break any new ground, but is enjoyable enough for a casual watch. Montgomery portrays lawman-turned-cowboy Dan Beattie who, after being exonerated for a crime he didn’t commit, heads out for the town of Sundown. There, he hopes to have his own spread with former Civil War buddy Curt Warren (House Peters Jr.)

   Alas, things don’t turn out exactly as he had planned. Turns out his buddy Curt is knee deep into a criminal enterprise run by local boss Beau Santee (Frank Wilcox) and his henchman, Mark Faber (veteran character actor James Griffith).

   More than anything else, Santee wants to make sure that the railroad doesn’t come to Sundown, lest it destroy his own business interests. When a rumor spreads that Beattie (Montgomery) is a railroad agent, Santee shows he is more than willing to kill to stop the railroad industry’s plans for the west. Rounding out the cast is Randy Stewart who portrays a showgirl caught between Santee’s affections and power and Beattie’s rugged nobility.

   Filmed in Cinemascope with a script by The Wolf Man (1941) director, george waGGNER (that’s how he spelled it folks!), Man From God’s Country has all the elements needed to make a solid western. Gunfights, fistfights, cattle drives, and a morality play. What stood out to me the most, though, was the color design and the lighting scheme. Seems like a lot of effort was made into making the interiors in this B-western look exceptional.

   Overall assessment, thoroughly enjoyable with a solid coterie of actors including the aforementioned James Griffith who you probably have seen many times before, but nothing you absolutely must rush to see. Final note: for a movie nominally about railroads, there were no trains. Now that was disappointing.
   

ANTONIA FRASER – Quiet As a Nun. Jemima Shore #1. Weidenfeld ^ Nicolson, UK, hardcover, 1977. Viking, US, hardcover, 1977. Ace, paperback, 1978. Bantam, paperback, 1991. Norton, paperback, 1986. TV : A six-part version of the book appeared on ITV’s anthology series Armchair Thriller in the UK, 1978. Maria Aitken played Jemima Shore.

   The heroine of this first novel by noted historian Antonia Fraser is Jemima Shore, Investigator — not a detective in the proper sense, but an investigative television reporter in London. Her show carries great influence, and it is on the strength of this that Jemima is summoned back to Blessed Eleanor’s Convent in Sussex, where she attended school.

   Jemima was a Protestant, thrust into the convent world because of the “vagaries of her father’s career,” but her best friend, Rosabelle Powerstock, was a Catholic and later became a nun at the same convent.

   Now Sister Miriam, as Rosabelle was called, is dead under strange circumstances, having starved to death in the black tower built by the founder of the order-a structure commonly referred to by the schoolgirls as “Nelly’s Nest.” People give the nuns strange looks on the streets of town; a cloud hangs over the convent; the air is full of suspicion and distrust; and the Reverend Mother Ancilla turns to Jemima to find out what is amiss.

   Jemima is loath to revisit the scene of her childhood, but an aborted trip to Yugoslavia with her member of Parliament — and very married — lover makes her welcome a change of scene. She settles in at Blessed Eleanor’s in considerably more comfort than she enjoyed as a schoolgirl, but its charms fade when she hears strange footsteps at night, has a terrifying midnight encounter in the chapel, and discovers that politics, while very worldly, are not alien to these hallowed walls.

   Jemima is an interesting character — a complex combination of a hard-driving career woman and a person who repeatedly binds herself into no-win situations with married men; she also has more than her fair share of skepticism about nuns and Catholicism.

   The nuns, in their diversity, are also absorbing, and it is upon their hidden motives, passions, and beliefs that the plot turns. The unusual combination of the trendy contemporary world and the Gothic old convent gives a nice look at how such a place functions in the modern world.

   Subsequent Jemima Shore novels are The Wild Island (1978), A Splash of Red (1981), and Cool Repentance (1982).

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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.
   

   The complete Jemima Shore series —

1. Quiet As a Nun (1977)
2. The Wild Island (1978)
3. A Splash of Red (1981)
4. Cool Repentance (1982)
5. Oxford Blood (1985)
Jemima Shore’s First Case (1986)
6. Your Royal Hostage (1987)
7. The Cavalier Case (1990)
Jemima Shore At the Sunny Grave (1991)
8. Political Death (1994)

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA. 20th Century Fix, 1936. Wallace Beery, Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Alan Hale. Director: George Marshall.

   During the Spanish-American War, an American courier is sent with a vital message to the leader of the Cuban rebels, aided by an ex-American soldier, now a small-time thief and adventurer, and an aristocratic Cuban woman.

   As the courier, John Boles makes very little impression, and while Barbara Stanwyck is immaculately beautiful, the show is really all Wallace Beery’s, as a loutish but devoted oaf, and like the movie itself, twice as large as life itself.