BANSHEE “Pilot.” Cinemax. 11 January 2013. Antony Starr, Ivana Miličević, Ulrich Thomsen, Frankie Faison, Hoon Lee, Rus Blackwell, Ben Cross. Created and written by Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler. Director: Greg Yaitanes.

   This is a pilot that pretty much does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It sets up the characters and the situation, tell a story as it does so, and makes the viewer want to  come back for more. In this case, though, it takes the entire hour’s length of running time to squeeze everything in, and the average viewer  (me) will still have a lot of questions. I guess I’ll have to watch the next one!

   I’ll start with the characters, then, and maybe fill in the situation as I go. It’s rather complicated, but I’ll try to make things simple, if I can. A man (an appropriately tough-looking Anthony Starr) is just out of prison, and with the help of an old friend (Hoon Lee) he’s is able to find his way to the small Amish town of Banshee PA, where a former girl friend and (as it turns out) accomplice (Ivana Miličević), who is now married to the D.A. (Rus Blackwell), who trying his hardest to put a local mobster (UlrichThomsen) behind bars. On the ex-convict’s trail back in Manhattan is a crime boss (Ben Cross) who has a powerful reason for finding him.

   I hope you’re still with me, since the most outrageous piece of the plot line is yet to come – and this occurs early, so I’m not giving too much away, I hope – the convict manages to take the identity of the new sheriff in town before he can present himself to the mayor who has just hired him, sight unseen.

   That’s enough story line for a full season of ten episodes, wouldn’t you say? The show was, in fact, popular enough to be on for four seasons, probably based on that last gimmick, but I’ve resisted temptation and not looked that far into the future. Except an unnecessary focus at the results of some ultra-violence, I enjoyed this one and will go along for the ride, at least for now.  You might even say I’m hooked.

GEORGE CHESBRO – Shadow of a Broken Man. Mongo #1. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1977. Signet, paperback, 1978.

   This is the first Chesbro novel featuring Dr. Robert Fredrickson – a professor of criminology who doubles as a private detective, is a dwarf, and is known to his friends as Mongo. A onetime top circus performer, Mongo possesses some very useful skills for tight situations, among them tumbling and gymnastic ability and a black belt in karate.

   While preparing to leave for vacation in Acapulco, Mongo is approached by Mike Foster, who married the widow of’ famous architect Victor Rafferty. Foster’s wife. Elizabeth, happened to see a photograph of a new museum in an architectural magazine, and is convinced that the design is the work of her husband. But Victor died five years ago, and the museum’s design is listed as the work of a man named Richard Patera. Victor Rafferty died from a fall into an open melting furnace, so there was essentially no body to be recovered, and Elizabeth is haunted by the conviction that Rafferty is still alive. Mike Foster’s marriage is suffering; he wants Mon to clear up this matter so he and Elizabeth can get on with their lives.

   Mongo assumes there won’t be too much complication here, so he postpones his vacation and accepts the case. His first move is to consult professor of design Franklin Manning, resident architectural genius, who flatly tells Mongo that the museum is Rafferty’s design, without question. And suddenly Mongo is involved in something much more complex and dangerous than he imagined. Russian and French agents are part of the package, as are U.N. Secretary Rolfe Thaag and more than one victim of Communist brutality.

   The writing here is literate and fast-paced, the plot is intricate, the concept is bizarre yet entirely plausible. This is a well-spiced recipe that results in haute cuisine.

   Chesbro is also the author of City of Whispering Stone (1978), An Affair of Sorcerers (1979), and The Beasts of Valhalla (1985), which likewise feature Mongo.

      ———
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.

Bibliographic Note: By the time his career in books was over, Mongo had appeared in a total of 13 novels and one story collection, most of which had previously been published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine or Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

E. V. CUNNINGHAM – The Case of the Sliding Pool. Sgt. Masao Masuto #5. Delacorte, hardcover, 1981. Dell, paperback, 1983.

   On page one we are told that Masao Masuto is a Zen Buddhist. On page two, that he is a Nisei, which means that he was born in the US of Japanese parents. And on page three we learn that when called upon, he serves as half of the homicide squad of the Beverly Hills police force. He’s a complex character, and it shows.

   This is not his first case, and if, like me, you haven’t read any of his earlier ones, you’ll want to go back and get your hands on them. In the one at hand, heavy rains sweep away a huge concrete swimming pool, leaving behind the burial ground of what now is nothing more than a thirty-year-old skeleton.

   Faced with this challenge, Detective Sergeant Masuto immediately reconstructs the crime that must have taken place. Forthcoming are some of the most imaginative deductions since the days of Sherlock Holmes. (Or should that be Charlie Chan, whom Masuto is most often accused by his colleagues of emulating?)

   As it turns out, his theories, based on what seems to be little more than educated guesswork, not surprisingly do have some gas in them. Masuto, however, while not as overly modest in regard to his abilities as an Inspector Ghote, say, is also not too proud to change his working hypotheses as he goes.

   If it were not for the sudden, unexpected bombshell Cunningham explodes on the reader on page 152 [of the hardcover edition], wholly unanticipated and completely changing the direction of Masuto’s investigation, this would have had to have been ranked as one of the top detective novels of he year.

   The book is still terrifically readable, but you will feel like giving Cunningham a kick in the spot where he most deserves it for all the holes that are left behind when he’s done.

      The Sgt. Masao Masuto series —

Samantha. Morrow 1967.
The Case of the One-Penny Orange. Holt 1977.
The Case of the Russian Diplomat. Holt 1978.
The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs. Holt 1979.
The Case of the Sliding Pool. Delacorte 1981.
The Case of the Kidnapped Angel. Delacorte 1982.
The Case of the Murdered Mackenzie. Delacorte 1984.

MARTIN KANE, PRIVATE EYE “Black Pearls.” NBC, 27 March 1952 (Season 3, Episode 27). Lloyd Nolan as Martin Kane, Walter Kinsella, King Calder. Guest Cast: Mary Alice Moore, Edith King, Eugene Baxter, Richard Purdy. Writer: Donald S. Sanford. Director: Frank Burns.

   Martin Kane, Private Eye, starring William Gargan, started on radio for Mutual on August 7, 1949, then began on TV for NBC on September 1, 1949. When the radio show moved to NBC  on July 1, 1951, Lloyd Nolan took over the title role for a year on both radio and TV. Lee Tracy followed up on the radio version until the end of its radio run on December 21, 1952.

   Following Lloyd Nolan on the television series were both Tracy and Mark Stevens. The last TV episode was June 17, 1954. (I hope I have all these dates, networks, and actors correct. It got a little complicated on me.)

   I remember the radio show when it was on Mutual. As I recall, it was on Sunday afternoon, just before The Shadow. I never saw any examples of the television version until just now, and I wasn’t impressed. Even though it was state of the art the time, it was cheaply produced, and I somehow found it doubly so by the inclusion of the sponsor’s ads (Sano cigarettes and a couple brands of pipe tobacco) right into the program itself.

   Nor was the story anything for anyone involved to feel especially proud about. Kane is sent $500 in cash to come disguised as a news reporter to a yacht in the Florida Keys. The note is unsigned, but the money is good. Not surprisingly, the only reason he’s brought on board to to be the fall guy in a frame-up in a case of murder and stolen pearls. What was interesting was how one of those new cameras that not only take photos but also develop them internally is involved.

   There is some effort by the part of the screenwriter to make all four people on board look as guilty as possible, but in at least one case, the plot he/she/they had in mind in never followed up on. I usually like Lloyd in either the movies or on TV, but in this particular instance he flubs his lines rather noticeably two or three times. All in all, Martin Kane, Private Eye was not one of the gems of the Golden Age of Television.

A. E. W. MASON – No Other Tiger. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1927. George H. Doran, US, hardcover, Doran, 1927. Reprinted in the UK several times in paperback. Stage play (see bottom photo): First produced at Opera House, Leicester, 3rd December and St. James’s Theatre, 26th December 1928.

   A. E. W. Mason, bestselling author, playwright, spy, producer, and literary bon vivant, is best remembered today for penning one of the classics of the adventure genre, the often filmed The Four Feathers, but to modern mystery readers he is equally known as the creator of Inspector Hanaud, who with his “Watson,” Mr. Ricardo, appeared in popular novels such as The Prisoner in the Opal, They Wouldn’t Be Chessmen, and his most admired classic The House of the Arrow, so it may come as some surprise that his best mystery novel, a fast paced tale of adventure, revenge, madness, mystery, and atmosphere not only doesn’t feature Hanaud, some don’t even classify it with his mystery novels.

   No Other Tiger opens in Burma.

   Within hours of his arrival in Burma a man is killed, Maung H’la, who is apparently mauled by a tiger,and true to his nature Strickland takes up his weapon for a dangerous tiger hunt with the local hunter wounded, a hunt where Strickland finds no tiger, but a savage man, a European … “no other tiger passed that way that night,” he encounters in the jungle.

   Mason splendidly evokes the danger and the suspense of the hunt carefully building up the lore of tiger’s danger ( “You’ll hear him suddenly snarling and tearing the kill at the foot of your tree, and you’ll find the impulse to loose off your rifle at that jungle-cat overwhelming. Yes, even though I have warned you! You’ll feel that you must! No other sin in your whole life will ever tempt you more.”) and even more carefully builds to the moment Strickland encounters the human tiger.

   Strickland’s first impression of him, after his shock of surprise, was of enormous power, the power of an animal… For the face he saw was not merely haggard and lined, but to Strickland’s strained fancies, horribly evil, evil to the point of majesty… evil seemed to flow from this man, so savage, so furtive he looked, such a mixture of cunning and cruelty was stamped upon his features… He stood out in the open, his eyeballs glistening in the moonlight, the sweat shining on his face; and he moved his head slowly from side to side like a great cobra before he strikes. There was something bestial, something subtle. Strickland actually shuddered in his retreat. Thus, he thought, must Lucifer have looked on the morrow of his fall.

   The dead native, it seems, had once served in England and was something of a scoundrel suspected of something illegal there, and he recently panicked when he saw the lean tigerish European arrive. And soon Strickland discovers that Lady Ariadne Ferne, the woman he came to Burma to buy a fabulous jewel for, is tied to Maung H’la and the mysterious tiger man through her friend Corinne, the famous dancer, who according to Commissioner Thorne would have stood in the dock with Maung H’la if the latter had been tried.

   On return to England, as you ought to expect from this era, Strickland learns Lady Ariadne is engaged to another, and being a good sport gives her the jewel anyway, but soon, through her crowd he meets the beautiful Corinne and her fiance, the Spaniard Leon Battchilena, a rotter if there ever was one.

   It becomes Strickland’s job to untangle the web that connects Maung H’la and Corinne to the too trusting Adriadne and the mysterious man in the jungle, a mystery that involves a handsome young English bridegroom, a miscarriage of justice, terrible suffering (“he must always have silk against his skin”), a cold blooded murder, and a man turned into beast whose inhuman vengeance is key to the whole business and who must be confronted by Strickland and his beloved Adriadne in a deadly tiger trap set by the treacherous Corinne (a change there was in the very atmosphere of the room, not so much a chill as a tension. Corinne had a feeling that now at last she was put upon her trial ) for her innocent friend as she schemes to escape justice for her crimes.

   The theme of the book is the Victorian horror of atavism that inspired Stevenson’s Hyde, Stoker’s Dracula, and Doyle’s Hound, for though an innocent man is the victim, inhuman temper, strength, and bestiality make him impossible to identify with or pity, he is a beast that has to be put down an epic tragic villain (he…coupled his ferocity with cunning. He took big chances, but not small ones). Mason is never better than when he is portraying the almost inhuman qualities of his two legged tiger who he wisely keeps just outside the readers’ sight as a deadly shadow for much of the book.

   Better yet are the portrayals of some quite strong, intelligent, modern (for the time), and fierce women (“She’s dead now. I know it. She’s dead now,” and the cry ringing out through the windows across the moonlit lawn and glistening river—just at the hour when Elizabeth Clutter actually did die.).

   Even when they faint it isn’t without good reason.

   It is easily Mason’s best mystery novel, with solid detection, mystery, a line of suspense, a splendid villain and some equally splendid characters good and bad (Strickland for one has twice the nerve and brains of most silly ass heroes of this era), even a comical French policeman has quiet dignity.

   It’s only a shame it was never filmed though a BBC radio play version is available that rather gives away all the mystery element in the opening.

   Yes, it is melodrama, but it is well written melodrama.

   Any thriller is only as good as its villain, and this one has a dandy, worthy to stand by those great throwbacks of Victorian nightmare.

   And there is that memorable simple line that says so much and provides the books perfect title.

   No other tiger passed that way that night.

   No other tiger…only the human one.
   

JOSEPH COMMINGS “The X Street Murders.” Short story. Senator Brooks U. Banner #12. First published in Mystery Digest, March-April 1962. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, edited by Mike Ashley (Running Press, softcover, 2006). Collected in Banner Deadlines: The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner (Crippen & Landru, hardcover/paperback, 2004). [See Comment #4.]

   Joseph Commings’ stories of his larger-than-life and impossible-crime-solving sleuth Brooks Banner in the pulps (10-Story Magazine, Ten Detective Aces, etc.) of the late 1940s before transitioning to the digest magazine of the 1950s and 60s (Mystery Digest, The Saint, Mike Shayne), but for some reason, while there were a couple dozen of them, he was never able to get one accepted for EQMM. And that’s a shame, since all of them that I’ve read have ben excellent examples of the form.

   â€œThe X Street Murders” is no exception. It involves the shooting of a man in an inner office by a gun which is immediately found but even though it is definitely the gun that was used, it’s in a sealed envelope (both before and after) with no holes in the packaging. Impossible? Yes!

   Yes, that is, until the explanation, which is a good one. As a character, Senator Banner is a little hard to take. Commings wrote very much in the John Dickson Carr mode, and if you find Dr. Gideon Fell or Sir Henry Merrivale a little over the top, they have met their match and then some in Brooks Banner. But then again, you probably don’t love stories such as this one for the characters; it’s for the puzzle, and I don’t think I’m speaking only for myself.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

FIND THE BLACKMAILER. Warner Brothers, 1943. Jerome Cowan, Faye Emerson, Gene Lockhart, Marjorie Hoshelle, Bradley Page, John Harmon, Lou Lubin, and Jimmy the Crow. Screenplay by Robert E Kent, from a story by G. T. Fleming-Roberts. Directed by D Ross Lederman.

   I’m not really sure what prompted me to watch this, because if I saw it listed on TCM, the cast alone would have made it a “Must-Miss.” I mean, a movie starring Jerome Cowan? Jerome Cowan? Whothehell would ever make a movie starring Jerome Cowan? Whothehell would watch it?

   Well I did, and I’m glad because this little 55-minute b-feature offers wit, speed, and a certain awareness of its own silliness I found irresistible.

   Jerome Cowan tops the cast as D. L. Tree, the least-known Private Eye in town, and selected for that reason by aspiring mayoral candidate “Honest John” Rhodes (Gene Lockhart, who looks like he never did an honest thing in his life ) to deal with a gambler named Molner, who owns a crow he has trained to say, “Don’t kill me, Rhodes!” It seems Molner has plenty of enemies, and if he turns up dead, Rhodes could get convicted on the crow’s testimony.

   Yeah. Convicted on a crow’s testimony. Okay. Well then. Faster than a speeding simile, Tree goes to Molner’s apartment and finds him dead on the floor, in the time-honored tradition of such stories. And so the search is on for the squawking squealer.

   Said search gets quickly complicated by:

   Molner’s rather ineffectual bodyguard (John Harmon) now in search of new employment;

   Tree’s brassy secretary (Marjorie Hoshelle) in search of back pay;

   Faye Emerson as a gold-digger with an inside track on the felonious fowl;

   Cool gangster Bradley Page, who holds IOUs from a dead man;

   A diminutive Hired Gun (Lou Lubin) sort of a smaller, nastier Wilmer Cook type with a ready gun.

   A bent lawyer and the usual too-persistent cop showing up whenever they can be unhelpful.

   That’s a lot of beef to be moving around in a movie this short, and Blackmailer takes the only reasonable course of action — chuck logic out of the script, throw in some rapid-fire patter and hope no one notices this thing makes no damn sense.

   It works. Find the Blackmailer is a near-hour of fast-paced silliness with an ending so ludicrous I don’t dare reveal it – no one would believe me!

THE HARD MAN. Columbia Pictures, 1957. Guy Madison, Valerie French, Lorne Greene, Barry Atwater, Robert Burton, Rudy Bond, Trevor Bardette, Myron Healey. Director: George Sherman.

   The Hard Man begins with a gunfight. Lawman Steve Burden (Guy Madison) faces off against his friend, Ray Hendry (Myron Healey). Hendry is quick with his gun. But not quick enough. For Burden ends up killing Ray. So much for questioning him. As it turns out, there was some question as to whether Ray was truly guilty of murder or whether he had been set up. To find out, Burden travels to a small town where cattle baron Rice Martin (Lorne Greene) and his wife live out a tenuous romantic existence. Martin’s top dog in town and he’s sure to let everyone know it. But being a big shot doesn’t mean that his wife Fern (Valerie French) is beyond straying. In fact, nothing seems to set Martin into more of a rage than knowing his wife may be running around behind his back.

   Although the movie is most definitely a Western, there’s something very film noir about the whole affair. A movie nominally about a tough lawman, it really turns out to center around a femme fatale and her ability to skillfully manipulate the men in her life. Fern Martin plays all the menfolk against each other, weaving a devious little web of lies as the body count piles up. In tandem with the film noir plot, the movie also has numerous instances where some exceptionally hardboiled dialogue is employed. These scenes are thoroughly enjoyable, such as when Rice asks his wife why she sits in the dark like a cat, and she answers that it allows her to avoid seeing things she’s rather not see. Good stuff, indeed.

   Now, is The Hard Man a particularly good movie? Yes and no. It’s got some grating orchestral music for a score, and it has a decidedly studio lot feel to it. No wide vistas here. And Guy Madison, while talented, simply didn’t have the screen charisma of John Wayne, Randolph Scott, or James Stewart.

   And yet. If you go into The Hard Man expecting very little, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised. While an overall decidedly average motion picture, this Columbia Pictures release has several things going for it. Although Madison was the top-billed star, it’s really Lorne Greene and Rudy Bond who shine. Both basically steal every scene they are in. Many will primarily remember Greene as America’s favorite TV dad Ben Cartwright on Bonanza or as Adama on the original Battlestar Galactica. In The Hard Man, Greene gets to demonstrate his ability to play a villain with great skill. His physicality, combined with his distinct deep voice, makes for a thundering bravado performance.

   As for Rudy Bond, his portrayal of a hired gunslinger is utterly convincing and delightfully memorable. Bond also demonstrated similar traits in his portrayal of a murderous bank robber in Jacques Tourneur’s Nightfall (1957), released that same year. Rudy Bond double feature? Sounds good to me.
   

ALAN AMOS – Panic in Paradise. Doubleday / Crime Club, hardcover, 1951. Detective Book Club 3-in-1 edition, hardcover reprint, no date stated. No paperback edition.

   Life in Panama was little different in 1950 than it is now, but somehow this story of a hunt for hidden Spanish treasure reads as though it could be happening today, perhaps because only such timeless matters as human frailties and relationships are involved.

   The framework, that of various characters putting down in diary form the story as it passes their way, starts out awkwardly, then becomes a fascinating chain of murders, kidnappings, escaped lunatics, downed bridges, and cut phone lines. Non-stop reading fare.

Footnote: Alan Amos was a pseudonym of Kathleen Moore Knight, a mainstay author for the long-running Crime Club line of books. As Amos she wrote a total of four mystery adventures such as ths one. Under her own name, she was most famous for her series of mysteries featuring Penberthy Island selectman Elisha Macomber, of which there were sixteen. It’s a long way from Cape Cod to Central America, but I don’t think the Panamanian jungle has ever been brought to life more vividly.

LOU MANFREDO “A Study in Mint.” Short story. Gus Oliver #5. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 2013. Probably never reprinted or collected.

   Lou Manfredo, befoe he turned his hand to writing, was a 25-year veteran of the Brooklyn criminal justice system. Upon his retirement he wrote three well-regarded novels about a Brooklyn cop named Joe Rizzo, who also appeared in a handful of short stories about life of a policeman whose primary goal was to do his job and do it well.

   He also wrote five stories about Gus Oliver, who at the time of this story, was the constable in the small farming of Central Islip, Long Island. “A Study in Mint” is in fact the prequel to the other four, taking place in 1939 and telling the tale of how Oliver cracked the case of the first murder to have taken place there since its founding, or well over 200 years earlier.

   The death of one its inhabitants is designed to look like suicide, or so the state trooper who is first on the scene is convinced. By why was the body found near a well-kept garden, Gus asks himself, and why had he already contracted for some home improvements to be done with he month?

   It’s a case of the local cop knowing the people in the town he’s close to, not the outside one who comes in and sees things that are of surface value only. There are no surprises in this story, only good old-fashioned police work. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
   

      The Gus Oliver series –

Central Islin, U.S.A. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Aug 2009
The Home of the Brave. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jan 2012
A Path to Somewhere. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep/Oct 2012
The Star of the Running Blood. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 2013
A Study in Mint. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 2013