(Give Me That) OLD-TIME DETECTION. Spring 2025. Issue #68. Editor: Arthur Vidro. Old-Time Detection Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd. 34 pages (including covers).

   THE LATEST issue of OTD could be a nostalgia trip for a lot of readers, especially those who were turned on to detective fiction when they were adolescents. As you’ll see, editor Arthur Vidro will show us the part he has been playing in the nostalgic revival.

   THE ISSUE begins with Edward D. Hoch, which is always a great start. There’s an interview Hoch had with EQMM in 1976, followed by an essay Hoch wrote for THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE in 1979. In the interview he cites the first influential adult book he ever read to be an EQ novel and explains his affinity for the short story form. (Which book? you ask. Read OTD and see.) In the essay Hoch does a good job of connecting real-life criminality with fiction. Even Theodore Dreiser got into the act!

   LIKE MOST fictioneers, Stuart Palmer had his own way of going about writing detective fiction, and we have a short summary of it here.

   ONE LONG-RUNNING detective fiction character was Hugh Pentecost’s John Jericho, whose adventures were collected by Crippen & Landru in 2008 and for which S.T. Karnick wrote an introduction. In it Karnick notes Pentecost’s primary interest in social corruption and personal responsibility. And were there prefigurings in Jericho of Jack Reacher?

   EQ’s 1949 classic serial killer novel CAT OF MANY TAILS has recently been reissued by Otto Penzler with an introduction by Richard Dannay, Frederic Danny’s son, that provides background information on that book and the two cousins’ involvement in detective fiction in general, but focuses primarily on Frederic Dannay’s individual scholarly contribution, which in itself was prodigious.

   THE FICTION PIECE is Agatha Christie’s “A CHESS PROBLEM,” a story guaranteed to make you think twice before you sit down at the board.

   NEXT, the reigning expert on theatrical versions of mysteries, Amnon Kabatchnik, gives us the background for J. B. Priestley’s AN INSPECTOR CALLS, which he characterizes as a “mystery parable” with “an unexpected twist ending.”

   IF YOU enjoyed THE THREE INVESIGATORS series of juvenile mysteries when you were younger, then you’ll be happy to hear that “THE THREE INVESTIGATORS ARE BACK” in deluxe paperback and electronic editions. Arthur details how he came to be involved with the project, modestly claiming to be “A SMALL PART OF THE ACT.”

   WHAT WAS POPULAR in paperbacks for the detective fiction fan fifty years ago? Some of the best stuff to come along, reports Charles Shibuk, classics all: Raymond Chandler, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, John Collier, Stanley Ellin, Dick Francis, Ellery Queen, and Josephine Tey.

   MICHAEL DIRDA offers his personal selection of “MYSTERY NOVELS SO CLEVER YOU’LL READ THEM TWICE,” which includes a couple of books by relatively unknown writers.

   THEN WE HAVE perceptive reviews by Jon L. Breen of CLOUD NINE by James M. Cain, a wildly erratic writer, and Arthur Vidro of THE REGATTA MYSTERY AND OTHER STORIES by Agatha Christie, who never suffered from Cain’s affliction.

   COLLECTING THINGS, especially detective fiction, is an honorable pursuit and two collectors, Nina Mazzo and Donald Pollock, talk about it.

   THE PUZZLE PAGE might present a problem for readers who haven’t been exposed to Hollywood’s B-films from the 1930s.

   THE SPRING ISSUE of OTD is well worth your time – and a subscription.

Subscription information:

– Published three times a year: Spring, summer, and autumn. – Sample copy: $6.00 in U.S.; $10.00 anywhere else. – One-year U.S.: $18.00. – One-year overseas: $40.00 (or 30 pounds sterling or 40 euros). – Payment: Checks payable to Arthur Vidro, or cash from any nation, or U.S. postage stamps or PayPal. Mailing address:

Arthur Vidro, editor
Old-Time Detection
2 Ellery Street
Claremont, New Hampshire 03743

Web address: vidro@myfairpoint.net

JOHN D. MacDONALD – Free Fall in Crimson. Travis McGee #19. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1981. Fawcett, paperback, 1982. Reprinted a number of times since.

   I’ve been doing some research. The first Travis McGee story was entitled The Deep Blue Goodbye, and it was published first as a paperback in May of 1964, back when a book sold in softcover would set you back all of forty cents or so.

   It’s now exactly seventeen years, eighteen books, and an equal number of colors later [1981], and real money, the folding kind, is going to be what it takes to get your hands on a copy of the latest in the series. [$10.95] No more loose pocket change!

   This negative sort of progress notwithstanding, what this does is to illustrate one of the most remarkable aspects of John D. MacDonald’s long writing career. Ignored by the critics until just recently, he began in the late 1940’s writing hundreds of stories published in the pulp magazines {and mostly still buried there). In the 1950’s, with the demise of the pulps at hand, he switched to novels, with a list of them fully a page long, but all of them in paperback and in paperback only.

   Only in the last five or ten years has it been that his books have come out first in hardcover, and now when they do, they head straight for the bestseller list. Readers have known all along. They’ve known that MacDonald’s name on a story has meant just what they’ve been looking for.

   Today, of course, MacDonald is best known for his adventures of Travis McGee. Other than myriads of articles for TV Guide and blurbs for the dust jackets for the books of other authors, he seems to be writing nothing else. It seems a little strange for those of us who’ve been with him all the while, but apparently McGee is enough to keep the demands of the vast majority of his legions of fans satisfied.

   The format is restricting, but given the continued storytelling drive of a Free Fall in Crimson, plus the usual amount of free-wheeling MacDonald-ian philosophy thrown in for good measure, it seems unlikely that any change is due in the near future.

   In the opening chapters, McGee is still mourning the loss of Gretel, lost but then avenged when last we met him, in The Green Ripper. He is doing a lot of thinking about “destiny,” and not until this new case comes along does he extricate himself from the deep, self-induced funk he’s dug himself into.

   He is asked to investigate, long after the fact, the strange death of an artist’s estranged father. The man was dying of cancer, but perhaps not fast enough, for before he does, he is beaten to death by persons unknown in an isolated wayside rest area. His heir is his wife, from whom he was legally separated. Her current boyfriend specializes in making R-rated biker movies, but his latest films have not been faring well.

   McGee’s solution, when it comes to it, as it always does, is to give fate a handy shove in the right direction. Fate’s response, as is usual in JDM’s books, is tough and uncaring. Unfortunately, McGee neglects some loose ends this time, and as a result, in the next book it will be his best friend, Meyer, who will need some rehabilitating.

   In the Travis McGee universe, it is not wise to stand too close to the target area.

Rating: A minus.

711 OCEAN DRIVE. Columbia Pictures, 1950. Edmond O’Brien Edmond O’Brien, Joanne Dru, Otto Kruger, Barry Kelly. Director: Joseph M. Newman

   Edmond O’Brien stars in this remarkably average crime drama about the bookmaking racket. He portrays Mal Granger, a telephone company technician who works his way up in the criminal world, eventually becoming a top Syndicate figure on the West Coast. Along the way, he has a rival murdered, steals the rival’s girl (Joanne Dru), and then proceeds to knock off the hitman who he hired in the first place. All the while trying to outwit the Syndicate’s Cleveland-based boss (Otto Kruger).

   Tough stuff, with O’Brien giving a solid performance as a man whose heart is increasingly hardened by his chosen line of work. Unfortunately, it takes a long time for the movie to get going. The first half hour or so, especially, is a drag. Too much time is spent on Granger’s ability to rig a telephone system for a low-level bookie, one that would allow said bookie to get near instantaneous results from the track.

   This might have been interesting in 1950 – and I say might – but it is a drag now. The movie does perk up in the second and third acts, with the film culminating in a well executed and photographed chase and fight sequence set in and around the Hoover Dam in Nevada.

   Overall, 711 Ocean Drive is, as I said previously, average. I just don’t know what the title refers to! It’s never mentioned in the film (as far as I could tell) and it doesn’t seem to indicate anything special, other than possibly Granger’s fictional Malibu address once he becomes a big shot.

WILLIAM FULLER – Back Country. Dell First Edition #8, paperback, 1954. Stark House Press, 2022 (Black Gat #36).

   William Fuller, according to his publishers, was a merchant seaman, a hobo, a veteran of World War II, and a bit player in western movies. He also wrote seven novels about Brad Dolan, a big, tough drifter who travels around the south getting in and out of trouble.

   In Back Country, the first book in the series, Dolan’s car breaks down in Cartersville, a small town in central Florida. Many similar small towns turned up in the paperback originals of the 1950s, and Cartersville is filled with all the characters we love to hate — the Boss who runs the county and believes that “nigras” are all right if they slay in their place; the cruel, corrupt, pot-gutted lawmen; the redneck town bigots.

   Dolan enters this environment and makes all the wrong moves: He wins at gambling, insults the sheriff, makes time with the big Boss’s wife. Naturally, he gets beaten and thrown in jail, but that doesn’t stop him. He not only sleeps with the Boss’s wife, he sleeps with the Boss’s daughter. Then the wife is found in Dolan’s room with her throat cut, just as the town’s racial tension reaches a crisis.

   These ingredients may sound familiar, but Fuller mixes them expertly, keeping the pace fast and the characters believable. Dolan’s toughness (and his realization that he’s not quite as hard-boiled as he thinks) is convincingly handled. There’s a spectacularly vivid cockfighting sequence, and the setting is at times drawn with telling realism.

   Also recommended in the Brad Dolan series: Goat Island (1954) and The Girl in the Frame (1957).

———
   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.

   Well,almost. I’m hoping to be able to post something a lot more substantial later this evening, but in case I’m not, I thought a short message such as this might allay any concerns on the part of any of you who have been wondering where the hell I’ve wandered off to.

   Or maybe you’ve never noticed. So be it. But you can blame it on a weird confluence of medical appointments and a balky boiler in the basement of this house which uses it for hot water, including most especially for heat in the overnight. (Spring is still only in its wistful wishful days here in CT.)

   In any case, all is as well here as it can be, and even if slowly, I shall be back in business soon. Those awaiting replies to emails, I will work on those accordingly as well. I promise!

IVAN T. ROSS – Old Students Never Die. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1962. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition.

   School teacher Ben Gordon accepts a weekend vacation at a former student’s country hideaway. The student is Jackie Meadows, now a successful comedian, and one who is now negotiating for his own TV show, which explains the additional presence of the many typical show business types on hand.

   The unexpected return of one of Jackie’s old girl friends upsets things, and leads top her death. The change in Jackie since high school days leads Ben to accuse him of the murder. Admission, attempted suicide, death.

   So far, so good, but the story still has 20 pages to go. Obviously a twist in the tale is yet to come, but for some reason, it is not as satisfactory as it should have been.

   Analogies drawn to high school days are uniformly fine. And they would naturally lead one to conclude that Ivan T. Ross has done a considerable amount pf high school teaching.

   But Jackie Meadow’s jokes are really not very funny.

Rating: ***½

THE WINDOW. RKO Radio Pictures, 1949. Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman, Bobby Driscoll. Based on the story “The Boy Cried Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. Director: Ted Tetzlaff.

   Adapted from a short story penned by Cornell Woolrich, The Window is an above average thriller and a suspenseful yarn that holds your attention from beginning to end. With child actor Bobby Driscoll as the glue that holds everything together, the film is never dull or lifeless.

   Driscoll, whose adult life was marked by tragedy, portrays Tommy Woodry, an excitable, imaginative young boy living with his working class parents in a modest apartment building in Manhattan. He’s known by both his peers and his parents for telling tall tales, stories about gangsters, Indians, and whatnot. So when he actually does witness a murder, no one believes him. He’s the boy who cried wolf.

   Aside from Driscoll, the film benefits from some talented actors. Arthur Kennedy portrays Tommy’s father, a man who is torn between the love he has for his son and his embarrassment at how the boy is seemingly turning into a compulsive liar. The upstairs neighbors, the ones who actually do commit a murder, are portrayed by radio star Paul Stewart and the prolific Ruth Roman. They make a great villainous couple.

   There’s a lot to admire in The Window, from the acting to the cinematography and lighting. There’s a shadowy menace to the stairwell in the Woodrys’ apartment building, one that is used to heighten the dangerous situation in which Tommy has found himself. There is also a white knuckle ending that takes place in a nearby condemned building.

   This was the second time I’ve had the occasion to watch this movie,and I enjoyed it even more this time. I realized how very much it’s both a Woolrich movie and a New York City one. As much as anything else, this film is about the struggles of postwar life (and death) in the Big Apple.
   

HARRIGAN AND SON “Hello Goodbye.” ABC/Desilu. 12 May 1961 (Season 1, Episode 30). Pat O’Brien (James Harrigan Sr.), Roger Perry (James Harrigan Jr.), Georgine Darcy, Helen Kleeb. Director: Sherman Marks.

   While nominally a lawyer series, one watching the video of this episode below soon comes to the quick and savvy conclusion that it was in reality a comedy show instead. Maybe the thirty minute running time should have been the tipoff. Most of the series featuring courtroom cases and the like were an hour long. A half hour simply isn’t enough time to get into the nitty gritty details of a full-fledged murder case, for example.

   Harrigan and Son was a – well, you guessed it – a small father and son legal firm, with the ever smooth Pat O’Brien as the father, and three relative unknowns filling out the rest of the cast. (You may, however remember Georgina Darcy playing “Miss Torso” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.)

   The series was on for one season, long enough to be able to blink a couple of times before missing it. After James Harrigan the senior has a rough day in court, he decides to retire and let his son take over the firm on his own. After some not really very funny incidents in which he finds he’s not having any fun either, he decides that he’s not really ready to retire just yet.

   Amusing, perhaps, but certainly not laugh out loud funny. I’d never heard of this one before stumbling across it on YouTube, and I’m willing to wager none of you have either.
   

MICHAEL COLLINS “Black in the Snow.” PI Dan Fortune. Published in An Eye for Justice: The Third PWA Anthology, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Mysterious Press, 1988). Collected in Crime, Punishment and Resurrection (Donald Fine, 1992).

   Of the several pen names used by author Dennis Lynds, I believe (but am not absolutely certain) that Michael Collins is the one he  used most often. And of the books and shorter fiction he published under that name, most of them were about PI Dan Fortune.

   The most distinguishing physical aspect of Dan Fortune as a man is that he has only one arm. This fact sometimes comes up as a crucial part of story; sometimes, as in “Black in the Snow,” it’s mentioned only in passing. Which is interesting, and maybe someone could write a master’s thesis about it someday, but in all honesty, I don’t think it’s likely to be all that interesting to anyone else but me.

   Fortune is hired by a lawyer in this one to look into the death of the female half of a married couple, middle-aged or perhaps later. The husband claims he came home to find her dead, stabbed to death by persons unknown. The man suggests a burglar, which is certainly a possibility. The “black in the snow” is that of the wife’s dog, thrown there by the killer. Quite possibly, but why? Fortune has a job to do.

   His investigation is limited. He scours the house for clues and has long conversation with the husband’s sister. I may have made the case sound lengthy and boring, but a writer as good as Lynds can make reading the phone book sound palatable, and Fortune gets to the bottom of things very quickly. (I’d sound like a grouch if I said coming up with all the details he does makes the ending a little sketchy, so maybe I won’t. Or maybe I will.)

LEE THAYER – And One Cried Murder. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1961. Detective Book Club, hardcover, 3-in-1 edition.

   The stiff manners of Peter Clancy’s English butler Wiggar carry over to the stilted language and dialogue of nearly everybody else. For example, how does “So that’s where the unfortunate fellow got it!” (page 128) really sound? For my first introduction to San Francisco detective Clancy, this story is really a failure.

   The death of a rich aunt by carbon monoxide poisoning leads to suspicion of two brothers and a sister, with a mysterious suitor sneaking around in the background. It suddenly turns out that he works for the FBI, and it is [REDACTED], who is the killer. Strictly from nowhere, for the most part. and slow, but interesting in spots.

Rating: **½