DEATH IN PARADISE “Arriving in Paradise.” BBC One. 25 October 2011 (Season 1, Episode 1). Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole), Sara Martins, Danny John-Jules, Gary Carr, Lenora Crichlow, Don Warrington (Police Commissioner). Created & written by Robert Thorogood. Director: Charles Palmer.

   Switching from watching all of season eight and going back to season one required a lot of adjustment from me. The only member of the cast that is common to both is Don Warrington, the commissioner who is in charge of the police force the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie. Everyone else was someone new who had to be introduced to me as the story went on.

   Not only that, but the active members of the force themselves are forced (…) to deal with the murder of their former boss, DI Charlie Hulme, who has been found dead in the locked panic room of a resident English aristocrat’s home while a party was going on. Sent from England to investigate is an uptight detective, DI Richard Poole, who is a fish out of water if there ever was one.

   He doesn’t like the heat, nor his accommodations, nor the small creatures he is forced to share them with, and he especially doesn’t like the heat. Why, then, does he travel around on the case wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie? Probably because he doesn’t intend to stay on the island any longer than he has to. Which means that he has to solve the case as soon as possible and get on a jet plane back home.

   A panic room is, according to Wikipedia, “a fortified room that is installed in a private residence or business to provide a safe shelter, or hiding place, for the inhabitants in the event of a break in, home invasion, tornado, terror attack, or other threat,” and a dead body found in one, locked from the inside, makes for quite a puzzle, and this is a good one.

   Without trying to give away too much [WARNING] this is a prime example of a tale told in which nothing is what it seems to be [END OF WARNING]. As such, even though DI Richard Poole is going to have some getting used to — and yes, no surprise, he’s going to stick around — this is an impressive beginning episode for this long running series.

W. J. BURLEY – Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery. Wycliffe #19, St Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. Published first in the UK: Gollancz, hardcover, 1993.

   This has been an “old reliable” series for me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that it’s reached #19.

   Fifteen years ago, the troubled and troublesome son of a prominent Member of Parliament went missing while on a walking holiday in Cornwall. Now a dog scratching in a dune has uncovered his body, and he proves just as troublesome dead as alive – for six local people (three mixed pairs) who spent a wild weekend 15 years ago, then for Wycliffe (who gets bashed in the head), and finally for a nosy landlord who is forcibly assisted from this vale of tears. The still-influential father of the dead youth provides Wycliffe with a matching pain in the other end of his anatomy.

   If you know Burley and Wycliffe, you know what to expect. If you don’t, you’ll find a solidly constructed plot, good Cornish background, interesting characters, and a well-told story. All these are present here, but for some reason I didn’t find the whole to be anything exceptional. I don’t think Burley can write a book I won’t enjoy – at least he hasn’t yet – but this isn’t his best.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC UPDATE: Burley was to write but one more in the series, that being Wycliffe and the House of Fear (Gollancz, 1995). There was a British TV series based in part on the books entitled Wycliffe (1993-1998) as the cover image above would indicate, but none of the episodes seem to be based on this book.

THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE. Hammer Films, UK, 1963. Universal International, US, 1963. Clifford Evans, Edward de Souza, Noel Willman, Jennifer Daniel, Barry Warren. Writer: Anthony Hinds (as John Elder). Director: Don Sharp.

   Neither a Dracula film nor part of the Karnstein Trilogy (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil), The Kiss of the Vampire is a lesser- known, but thoroughly enjoyable, stand-alone vampire movie from Hammer Films. Combining the standard tropes of vampire films with atmospheric dread, the movie neither aims for cheap thrills, nor does it condescend to its audience. Much of the on-screen horror in the film is psychological rather than physical. The battles fought here are as much internal as they are external.

   The plot follows Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne Harcourt (Jennifer Daniel), a newly married couple traveling on their honeymoon. When their car breaks down somewhere in Bavaria, they are forced to stay at a local inn run by an elderly, seemingly childless couple. Within hours, they receive an invitation for dinner from one of the village’s most prominent citizens, one Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman).

   Ravna, along with his two adult children, seem to take a strong liking to the Harcourts and invite them back for a masked ball. But little does this mild-mannered English couple know that Ravna is a vampire and the leader of a demonic cult. Once Marianne gets swept up into their satanic grasp, it’s up to Gerald and the alcohol-ravaged Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans) to harness supernatural forces to (literally) beat the devil.

   While the film doesn’t tread too far off the beaten path in terms of storytelling, what it does, it does well. Indeed, it’s a film that I’ve already watched more than once, and I confess I enjoyed it even more the second time around. The masquerade sequence is exceptional. One wonders how much Roman Polanski was influenced by it, given how a masked ball plays a similarly important role in the third act of his The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Final thought: the final frame is hauntingly memorable and involves a swarm of vampire bats. Chillingly effective stuff.

NGAIO MARSH – Photo Finish. Roderick Alleyn #31. Little Brown, hardcover, 1980. Jove, paperback, 1981. Reprinted several more times.

   [Speaking of old pros still at work, as I was in my review of a recent book by Richard Lockridge], the second half of that description goes double for Ngaio Marsh’s latest work. Once again on hand to solve the mystery is her long-time leading character, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard.

   Alleyn’s first appearance, then as a Detective Inspector, was – would you believe? – in 1934. This is his and Dame Ngaio’s thirty-first collaboration together.

   And, coincidentally, the theatre has played a large part in many of their cases as well. The connection this time is not as strong as it is in the Lockridge book, but there is one here as well. The scene is a remote hideaway in New Zealand, where a famous opera singer nicknamed La Sommita has commissioned an embarrassingly bad opera to be performed, and naturally with herself in the leading role.

   Also involved is a photographer specializing. in taking extremely candid shots for the more sensationalistic newspapers. There is a bare hint of illicit drug-dealing. What the detective work depends most greatly upon, however, is the mystery that surrounds the keys to La Sommita’ s locked bedroom after she is murdered.

   Alleyn has no Watson along to bounce his theories off this time – his wife Troy having evidently long ago refused to go along with the idea – and so some of his deductions are rather abruptly announced, on what occasionally seems to be mighty little evidence.

   Marsh’s writing style lacks some of the sprightly sparkle to be found in Lockridge’s work, but the surprise she gives us at the end is greater. This is only the latest in a long series of plots designed over the yearns by the reigning Queen of Mystery to catch the unwary reader. She succeeds again.

[UPDATE.] There were to be only two more cases for Roderick Alleyn to solve, and one may or may not count:

32. Light Thickens (1982)
33. Money in the Morgue (2018) (with Stella Duffy)

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

DEAD END. Goldwyn/UA, 1937. Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrae, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor, Alan Jenkins, Marjorie Main, and the Dead End Kids. Screenplay by Lillian Hellman, from the play by Sidney Kingsley. Directed by William Wyler.

   A year after The Petrified Forest (recently reviewed here), Bogie found himself again playing a gangster on the run in a film based on a popular (and somewhat self-important) play. But in that year, he had learned how to act for the screen, and the difference is agreeable.

   Let’s dispense with the bad news first: Dead End is as pretentious and mannered as The Petrified Forest was, and even more didactic. Sylvia Sidney’s noble working woman; the insulated, uncaring rich people; the feral youths; and especially Joel McCrae as the voice of Progress… they’re all types first and characters as an afterthought. The film only flickers to anything like real life when it leaves them to check in on “Baby Face” Martin’s tragic homecoming.

   That’s Bogart, ably abetted by Alan Jenkins as his dubious stooge, and if you can wade (or fast-forward) through the other stuff, the payoff is rewarding indeed.

   First there’s Marjorie Main as Martin’s weary-unto-death mother, carrying the infamy of her notorious son like a dead baby in her womb. When they meet, we see the first chink in Martin’s tough-guy façade, and Bogie plays it splendidly, like a fighter trying not to show how bad he’s been hurt, taking his punishment and hoping to make the next round.

   When that round comes though, it’s only for Martin to find out his old girlfriend is now a hooker, and not a very classy one at that. As played by Claire Trevor in a moving cameo, her face is a mask of tragedy cast in brass. And Bogart’s face as he realizes the truth is a study in disillusion: disappointment giving way to disgust and disintegration.

   Kingsley writes a small but telling moment into this scene. Anxious to be rid of her, Bogart shoves a wad of money at Trevor, who stashes it away without counting, then asks Martin if he can spare another Twenty! The mix of need and greed in her voice evokes the character as few could, and when she caps it off by asking for one last kiss, for old time’s sake the effect is incredible.

   Director Wyler and the players do what they can with the rest, but it’s all as artificial as the massive and deliberately stagey set built for the film when Producer Sam Goldwyn refused to shoot on location. That said, it’s still worth seeing for Bogie’s bits.

   And yes, the juvenile delinquents in Dead End became stock players at Warner’s as The Dead End Kids, then elsewhere as the East Side Kids and the Little Tough Guys, before settling down at Monogram as The Bowery Boys. Which makes me wonder if Sidney Kingsley ever got any royalties for Bowery Buckaroos.

   I read Frank Herbert’s original novel when it was serialized in Analog SF, thought it was OK, but I never read any of the sequels — and who knew there were going to be so many of them? I also passed on both David Lynch’s movie adaptation(1984) and the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel mini-series.

   Those of you who may be bigger fans of the book than I am, what do think of the new movie coming out in December, based on the trailer below?

   Coming soon to Netflix, a movie remake for movie fans who don’t watch black and white movies. Beware: I think this trailer tells the whole story in only two and a half minutes:

VEXED “Episode One.” BBC Two, 60m, 15 August 2010, Toby Stephens as D.I. Jack Armstrong, Lucy Punch as D.I. Kate Bishop, Roger Griffiths. Created and written by Howard Overman, Director: Matt Lipsey.  Streaming on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Acorn TV.

   It is difficult to tell what the creators of this series had in mind that would make it stand out amidst all of the other male-female cop series that have been on the air over the past few years. Perhaps it is its light-hearted approach to crime-solving, such as stepping over the latest murder victim back and forth several times as this episode begins in order to evaluate her apartment as a possible rental.

   He (DI Jack Armstrong and the senior partner) is lazy, unorganized but is in his own inimitable way, charming. She (DI Kate Bishop) is neat, efficient and therefore totally exasperated with her new partner on the force. So of course they mix it up together like cats and dogs. Another aspect of Bishop’s role in the series is that she is worried that her husband is straying from their marriage, while Armstrong shows that he is not quite the ladies’ man he would like to pretend he is.

   This all ties in with what they discover as they tackle their current case. The three women all had loyalty cards with the same store, and someone with access to the accumulated data on their customers could find lonely women to be easily preyed upon. This also gives Armstrong the means to meet by “chance” a woman he saw in a supermarket, while Bishop uses it to spy on her husband.

   In spite of all these threads running concurrently, they don’t really mesh all that well. Both the story and the characters involved are easy enough on the eyes, however, without straining too many brain cells, and the show managed to stay on the air for two seasons, albeit with a a two year separation between them.

   Perhaps, if I give them the opportunity, the characters will grow on me as well.

CRAIG JOHNSON – Next to Last Stand. Walt Longmire #16. Viking, hardcover, 2020. Setting: Contemporary Wyoming/Montana.

First Sentence: Years ago, on one particularly beautiful, high plains afternoon when I was a deputy with the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department, I propped my young daughter, Cady, on my hip and introduced her to Charlie Lee Stillwater.

   Walt receives a call from Carol Williams, the caretaker and administrator of the Veteran’s Home of Wyoming, once Fort McKinney. Charlie Lee Stillwater, the fifth of the group call the Wavers, old Veterans in souped-up electric wheelchairs, has died. Going through his effects, Carol and Walt find a box containing two items of particular note: one million dollars in cash, and a painted canvas which was clearly part of a larger painting. Walt investigates the source of both, and whether the painting, thought to have been long destroyed, was stolen.

   The best characters are ones who grow and change over the course of a series. So too has Johnson done with Longmire. This book is more the Walt we love; the events of the prior two books have understandably changed him as he questions his future.

   Dog is here! Those who are series readers have come to love Dog. Henry is also here. A joke that runs between him and Walt in this story makes one smile. Vic, Walt’s second and girlfriend, is a character who, for some of us, has become tiring. It is nice to see Lonnie Littlebird, Chief of the Cheyenne Nation and Tribal Elder— “Um humm, yes it is so.” But it’s the “Wavers” who are the stars: four elderly veterans in souped-up wheelchairs who wave to passing traffic in front of the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming.

   Walt in evening dress and chasing bad guys through a museum is new, but so are the bad guys. No cowboy hats and boots here— “Do you ever get the feeling that there are people out there who are living lives that we know absolutely nothing about?”

   The plot is interesting and filled with historical information. Unfortunately, it was almost too much information and it slows down the first half of the book. Fortunately, once past that, the pace picks up noticeably. One does wonder where the series is going. Were some of Walt’s comments foreshadowing or merely a frustrating tease?

   The Epilogue is wonderful and worth the price of the book in itself, except for the last sentence, which is annoying, insulting to his readers, and caused me to reduce my rating.

   Next to Last Stand is something of a return to that which fans most love about Johnson’s books. It is interesting, exciting, and filled with excellent characters. However, this is a book one might want to wait to read until the next book is released.

Rating: Good.

HENRY KUTTNER “Don’t Look Now.” First published in Startling Stories, March 1948. Reprinted many times, including: My Best Science Fiction Story, edited by Oscar J. Friend & Leo Margulies (Merlin Press, hardcover, 1949); The Great Science Fiction Stories: Volume 10, 1948, edited by Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW, paperback, 1983); and Tales from the Spaceport Bar, edited by George H. Scithers & Darrell Schweitzer (Avon, paperback, 1987). Collected in Two-Handed Engine by Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore (Centipede Press, hardcover, 2005).

   Mos Eisley and the spaceport bar. What a perfect scene. One that thousands of long time science fiction fans had read about and pictured in their minds for years. And there it was, having come to life right before their eyes.

   Bars where spacefarers come to talk, lie and swap yarns. Not all of them human. All kinds and shapes of aliens used Mos Eisley as a stopover point, a place to restock and refuel and catch up on the news. Or in some cases the bar is on Earth, and the conversation is between two men, and the Martians are the beings secretly ruling the world that one of the men is trying to convince the other he can see. Most of the time they are invisible, lurking just out the corner of your eye, but when you can see them, they are easily identified by their third eye. Right in the middle of their foreheads.

   This is a classic story, first published way back in 1948, and if you go looking, over 70 years later, I’m sure you can find a book in print that it’s in, or if not, then in ebook format. In those years after the war, there was a certain uncertainty, if not outright paranoia, about the possibility we were not alone in the universe, that mankind had lost control of things, and in “Don’t Look Now,” Kuttner, in his most humorous mode, capitalizes on it most excellently.