CHARLES FINCH – The Last Passenger. Charles Lenox #13 (prequel #3). Minotaur Books, hardcover, February 2020. Setting: England, 1855.

First Sentence: On or about the first day of October 1855, the City of London, England decided it was time once and for all that Charles Lenox be married.

   In this third, and final, prequel Charles Lenox is still working to establish himself as an enquiry agent. Asked to visit the scene of a gruesome murder, he finds someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to remove anything which might lead to the victim being identified. Although Inspector Dunn blames the murder on gangs, Lenox convinces Sir Richard Mayne, now Commissioner of the Police, to let him assist with the investigation. On a personal front, Charles is having to fend off his female relatives and friends who are determined to find him a suitable wife.

   It’s lovely to have an opening which makes one smile, as this one does. It’s also nice that, even for those of us who follow the series, Finch provides an introduction of Lenox, his situation, appearance, and ambition, as well as other major characters, including Lady Jane and her husband, Lord Deere. Neither does Fitch overlook the secondary characters. The way in which Finch introduces them, including the members of Lenox’s household, is seamless. No long explanations, yet we have a sense of each character’s personality. In fact, some of them are among the most interesting, particularly freed slave Josiah Hollis from Atlanta, and a young newsboy.

   One appreciates Finch’s voice and that it has something of the formality of the period in which the book is set– “Hemstock strolled in without a care in the world. You had to hand him that much: He had insouciance.”

   The plot is nicely divided between the investigation and Lenox’s personal life. The repartee between him and his older brother Edmund is delightful. His courtship of Miss Catherine Ashbrook provides a delightful excuse for quoting Pride and Prejudice and a lesson in the history of the idiom “mind your p’s and q’s.”

   Finch perfects the balance of providing information on the slave trade, including discussion of the treatment of slaves, but keeping it a part of the plot, rather than the focus of it. It is interesting to see our history through British eyes. Yet an encounter which makes one cringe is Lenox taking Hollis to a doctor who proclaimed– “He was not expert in their kind.”

   This is the transitional book for Lenox showing his passing into maturity both in his life and his business. A conversation between Lenox and Hollis is thoughtful, enlightening, and causes one to reflect. Another conversation with Jane illuminates the reason why marriage for love often wasn’t the priority for women of the period. Both are examples of excellent writing.

   The Last Passenger is a wonderful book. There are well-timed, well-done plot twists. The logic behind Lenox’s deductions is clever, yet not overly contrived. Rather than being focused on suspense, although that is there, it is a book that speaks to injustice, maturing, and friendship; true friendship. The end, particularly, stays with one long after closing the book.

Rating: Excellent.
   

      The Charles Lenox series —

1. A Beautiful Blue Death (2007)
2. The September Society (2008)
3. The Fleet Street Murders (2009)
4. A Stranger in Mayfair (2010)
4.5. An East End Murder (2011)
5. A Burial at Sea (2011)
6. A Death in the Small Hours (2012)
7. An Old Betrayal (2013)
8. The Laws of Murder (2014)
9. Home by Nightfall (2015)
10. The Inheritance (2016)
10.5. Gone Before Christmas (2017)
11. The Woman in the Water (2018)
12. The Vanishing Man (2019)
13. The Last Passenger (2020)

ARTHUR PORGES “Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot.” Stately Homes #5. First published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2004. Collected in The Adventures of Stately Homes and Sherman Horn: Being the Compleat Sherlockian Writings of Arthur Porges (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, trade papeback, 2008).

   Based on this story as my only sample to date, Stately Homes must have been Schlock Homes’ indolent brother. All he seems to do for a full quarter of this four page story is stay in his flat he shares with his assistant Sun Wat (from India) and play his violin, all the while depending on the members of the Baker Street Irregulars to do the leg work for him.

   Dead is a man found shot and killed while  sitting at his office desk with his back to the window, which was open ten inches from the bottom. The door to the fourth floor room was under close observation at the time. Obviously the shot came through the open window, but the only angle possible does not match the point of entry of the bullet.

   It sounds good, but the story fails as a story, unless you consider “humorous,” which I allow was the likely attempt, to include stories as poorly thought out as this one. One essential clue to the solution is withheld from the reader until very nearly the end, and that is that the killer was an expert at billiards. Match this up with the fact that the walls of the room were covered with rare coins and medallions. You can take it from there.

      The Stately Homes series –

Her Last Bow (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1957
Another Adventure of Stately Homes (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Nov 1961
Stately Homes and the Invisible Slasher (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2001
Stately Homes and the Invisible Giant (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2003
Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 2004

THE TIGER WOMAN. Republic Pictures. 1945.  Adele Mara, Kane Richmond, Cy Kendall, Richard Fraser, Peggy Stewart, Gregory Gaye (billed here as Gay). Screenplay by George Carlton Brown., based on a play by John Dunkel. Directed by Philip Ford.

   Here is a surprisingly solid B movie from Republic that more than makes up for any flaws with attractive leads in a minor noirish if not quite true noir mode (it’s less noir than damn good hard-boiled pulp) about a tough smart private detective, a beautiful femme fatale of the most fatal kind, and two murders going on three she almost gets away with (not counting framing an innocent for her crimes).

   The private detective in the case is Jerry Devery (Kane Richmond) who only wants to leave on his annual fishing trip but who has an appointment with Sharon Winslow (Adele Mara) chanteuse at the Tiger Club, owned by her husband. Seems her husband borrowed some money from gambler/gangster Joe Sapphire (Gregory Gaye in a nice turn as a suave charming but reluctantly lethal crook) and Joe is threatening to get a little rough.

   Devery gets a friendly greeting from Joe though. He’s done Joe a few favors, mostly legal or at least only skirting the law, and Joe is a convivial type willing to help an old friend. In any case laying off Winslow is no trick because Joe assures Devery Winslow paid up only that morning.

   But when Winslow turns up dead, Devery’s little talk with Joe suddenly puts Joe in the hot seat, something Joe isn’t happy about,.  And who is the mysterious young woman hanging about the Tiger Club who was seen arguing with Winslow and what does she know?

   Devery’s friend Inspector Henry Leggett (Cy Kendall) knows Devery will eventually find out who-dunnit, if he survives Joe Sapphire, the mysterious young woman who is fast becoming a suspect (Peggy Stewart), and of course the lady of the title the very lethal Adele Mara.

   To be honest, there is no need for Spoilers here because there is no real mystery. We know Mara killed her husband and is having an affair with his partner Steven Mason (Richard Fraser).  The only question is will Devery put it together in time, because when Sapphire is cleared after taking Devery and the mystery girl (who turns out of be Winslow’s daughter by an earlier marriage) on a ride the chief suspects are Mason and the girl.

   Then when Mara conveniently pushes Mason from an upper office window as he starts to get cold feet about framing the girl,the evidence all seems to point to Phyllis Carrington (Stewart) and the police have no choice but to arrest her.

   Leaving Devery only one chance, to seduce Mara into taking a trip with him, ostensibly his delayed fishing trip, get her on a train, lower her guard, and get her to confess to the two murders when she tries to kill him.

   Yup, it even has murder, attempted anyway, on a train.

   And I appreciated Devery isn’t attracted to or interested in Stewart’s younger woman. He knows she is innocent and intends to protect her, but Mara is much more his type and he knows it. It’s a nice touch since it would have been so easy to have him fall for Stewart and be a bit more sympathetic, but instead he stays in character.

   Granted that isn’t the most original plot ever, or even the smartest one, but I judge a movie by its ability to pull off that sort of thing so that you don’t think about it during the film and let it ruin things, and on that level the movie succeeds. You want to see what happens on the train between Richmond and Mara, and it may shock you that it is worth watching however contrived.

   It even makes sense, because clever and lethal as Mara’s character is, she is also impulsive, driven by her passion, and like every great femme fatale overly confident of her ability to get what she wants with her body and brains from anything in pants. She is a Tiger Woman, with the strengths that suggests, but also the weaknesses.

   Okay, it’s minor Sam Spade and Bridget or Philip Marlowe and Velma, but for a moderate budget Republic mystery it actually works very well. Among its virtues are that it is shot well, using shadows and darkness well to add mood. It is fairly sharply written, with Richmond’s cynical private eye entirely believable {Richmond is still Richmond, at best an attractive leading man if a bit cardboard, but at least here the cardboard is a bit better made than usual), his relationship with Kendall’s cop played for laughs but never as a dumb cop joke, and everyone’s motives are explained and make sense. At least the kind of sense that real life sometimes makes only the people aren’t half so attractive and the dialogue half as good.

   Of course what really makes this film work is the performance at its center by Adele Mara. Her Sharon Winslow is very much a prowling tiger killing whenever it feels threatened, ruthless, heartless, and at the same time beautiful and desirable. Mara’s Sharon Winslow may not stand up with Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Claire Trevor’s Velma in Murder My Sweet, or Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon, but they would certainly recognize her as a member in good standing of the club. Her bite is far worse than her lethal purr, her claws fatal to any man who falls under them.

   It is Mara, and surprisingly Richmond, who mostly lift this above itself. Certainly her more than him, but if he didn’t handle his own well as a smart tough slightly mercenary private eye more in the Spade or Michael Shayne mode than Philip Marlowe Mara would have no one to play off of. His slight cardboard quality lets her shine but is still attractive enough that you aren’t surprised she is attracted to him. He manages to convey toughness with his brains and not his brawn or his gun.

   You believe he could outwit her, only just, but still outwit her.

   This is much better than most private eye fare from this period and from a relatively low budget (slightly better than a B, but not quite an A). A good cast, a terrific central role by Mara, and good work all around by cast and crew make it worth catching.

   Just watch out, because Adele Mara’s Sharon Winslow has claws.

   It’s taken a while to figure out the new WordPress editor, but with a couple of workarounds to compensate for their mostly expletive deleted system, I’m now able to add both images and videos to the posts on this blog again. In fact, please go back and revisit all of the posts following the short hiatus of a week or so back. You’ll see them all in a brand new light.

   Another problem solved but not yet implemented is the matter of images missing from pre-transition posts. Some people see them. Others don’t. They are still there, but in some haphazard Internet manner, your browser may not recognize them. The solution is easy but time-consuming. I have to go into HTML mode for the posts with problems, and add a jpg extension to the code for the image. Easy, as I say, but not the most fun in the world.

COUNTERPART. “The Crossing.” Starz, 60 minutes. 10 December 2017 (season 1, episode 1).  J. K. Simmons (in a dual role), and a large ensemble cast, both primary and recurring. Created by and screenplay: Justin Marks. Director: Morten Tyldum,

   Shown on the premium channel Starz for two 10-episode seasons, the premise is both simple and complicated. The short description is that a parallel world to our has been secretly tapped into, and while much is the same in the two Earths, the paths for each have been rapidly diverging. The long version takes up the entirety of this, the entire pilot episode, without much of a direction of where the story is going to go from there.

   I’ve listed only J. K. Simmons as the star of the series, as the roles of everyone else revolve only around him. On our side he’s a downbeaten schlub for the company he works for, without no hope for promotion and not much idea what the company he works for actually does (which is tom monitor the point at which the two wolds meet). On the other side he’s the aggressive agent who’s been sent to our side to pave the way for – what exactly, the details will come later.

   As an actor, J. K. Simmos is a revelation. Just by body language alone, you know immediately which Howard Silk he is. It is an utter delight just to see him in action. I’m not a big fan of parallel worlds story lines such as this (I stopped watching Fringe when the emphasis changed from relationships between the characters on our side to uninteresting events happening on the other), but at the moment I’m OK with watching the next in this series, just to see where it’s going from here.

NOTE: This review from the past was first posted on this blog on January 28, 2014. I’ve been prompted to reprint it because (would you believe it) this past week I started reading the hardcover edition of it, and I was a quarter of the way through (and enjoying it) when it said to myself, by golly, I think I’ve read this before. And lo and behold, I had. Here is the review again, complete with previous comments.

      —

ASA BAKER – The Kissed Corpse. Carlyle House, hardcover, 1939. Arrow Mystery #8, digest-sized paperback, 1944.

   The detective in The Kissed Corpse, and the earlier Mum’s the Word for Murder, is Jerry Burke, recently brought in to oversee the El Paso, Texas, police department.

   These are the only two books that Burke and Asa Baker (as narrator) appear in. Asa Baker the writer, is in reality Davis Dresser, of course, who is, as you all know (I’m sure), far better known as Brett Halliday, creator of PI Michael Shayne. The latter first appeared in Dividend on Death in 1939, the same year as this book, and either Shayne became instantly popular or else Halliday/Dresser found more possibilities in writing about a Miami-based PI than he did about an El Paso police detective.

   The style of writing in this last adventure of Jerry Burke, then, has the strong aroma of the pulps, at least in the beginning, but as the story goes on, and as some of the wilder activity dies down, it begins to resemble more and more the formal detective story A small houseful of suspects, that is to say, with the detective(s) trying to uncover the clue that will finally revela the killer’s identity.

   Dead are the two participants in a scheme to gain expropriation fees for Americans after Mexico has taken over their oil lands — one a soldier of fortune violently opposed to the idea, the other the rich American behind the plot. Complicating matters is the tough female reporter that “Baker” finds himself falling in love with, but who may actually be the killer. (It is her lipstick that is found on the first body, as well as a strange symbol of a double-barred cross.)

   If I found Jerry Burke and Asa Baker rather bland, it’s no surprise, since I’ve generally found Mike Shayne to be in the same category. The plot and the several twists are interesting, however, and any pulp detective fan who can find this book should read it. I think Laura Yates had possibilities, too, and it’s too bad we’ll never hear about what kind of excitement she got into next. (That she simply settled down and married Asa Baker is a possibility, but it’s one I refuse to dwell upon.)

Editorial Comment:   Mike Nevins reviewed Mum’s the Word for Murder in one of his columns for this blog not too long ago. Check it out here.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

LEE WELLS – Day of the Outlaw. Rinehart, hardcover, 1955. Dell #906, paperback, 1956.

DAY OF THE OUTLAW. United Artists, 1959. Robert Ryan, Burl Ives, Tina Louise, Nehemia Persoff, David Nelson, Venetia Stevenson, Jack Lambert, Lance Fuller, Elisha Cook Jr, Dabs Greer, Robert Cornthwaite, William Schallert, and Paul Wexler. Screenplay by Philip Yordan, based on the novel by Lee Wells. Directed by André De Toth.

   Two very different takes on the story, each memorable in its own way.

   Both deal with an isolated frontier community imprisoned by snow and mud, a tough rancher willing to kill for more land, and a band of outlaws just barely under the control of a hardened chief, who take over the town. But from there on, the book and the film go different ways.

   In Wells’ novel, the Rancher Blaise Starrett (The name seems a deliberate reference to Shane, released two years earlier.) has a foreman, Dan Murdock, who refuses to follow his boss’s murderous program and gets fired for his scruples. From that point on, Dan becomes the book’s central character. There are minor digressions to limn the thoughts and actions of townsfolk and desperadoes, but mostly we follow his efforts to a) unseat the outlaws; b) keep his neighbors and those he loves from gettin’ they fool heads blowed off; c) thwart Starrett’s lethal scheme; and d) get in out of the damn weather, which veers from mudslide to blizzard as only Wyoming weather can.

   Murdock doesn’t always succeed at this, which lends a real sense of uncertainty to the outcome, as we follow his progress through fights & frustrations to a dan-dan-dandy final shootout between the citizens and a last, lethal gunman who bids fair to kill them all. Wells has a gift for detailing fast action and dangerous personalities with equal flair, and the result is a book that kept me up reading past my bedtime. Which is why I became a Grown-up.

   In the film however, Dan Murdock(played by Nehemiah Persoff) gets blind drunk early on and pretty much drops out of the action as Starrett (Robert Ryan at his toughest) decides to gun down the inconvenient nesters in a “fair” fight, only to have his plans smattered (“smattered?”I like that. I think I’ll keep it.) his plans smattered by the dirtiest-looking bunch of renegades to hit the screen till The Wild Bunch.

   These baddies seem on the edge of smattering up the whole town, but they’re held in tenuous check by Burl Ives, who clings to the fantasy that they are a disciplined bunch and he their leader — and Burl Ives is about the only actor possessed of a screen presence imposing enough to carry it off. He actually projects a sense of power over the likes of Jack Lambert, Lance Fuller and Paul Wexler (more on him later) while they convey a sense of incipient chaos you can feel coming through the screen.

   Oh – did I mention Ive’s character is dying of a bullet wound? And if he goes, his owlhoots look all set on rape, murder, and wholesale destruction — for starters.

   It’s all very tense, but I have to say it also gets awfully confining after a while, with so much happening indoors. Even when they get outside, the landscape is flat and uninteresting, and I found myself growing restless until…

   Well I’ll just say the last part of Day of the Outlaw is spectacular and literally chilling, with Robert Ryan and the outlaws struggling through a blizzard to an eerie, silent, haunting climax.

   And now a word about the cast. Ryan & Ives dominate the thing, but I was impressed by what director André De Toth did with the outlaws. David Nelson (Ricky’s older brother) projects youthful angst as a kid gone wrong; Lance Fuller, inept leading man in things like Voodoo Woman and The She Creature, is actually quite good here as a grinning gun-happy back-shooter; Jack Lambert is the only actor who could scowl and sneer at the same time, and Paul Wexler…

   Wexler’s star never rose high nor shined brightly in Hollywood, but I recall him fondly as the sinister butler in The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters and Henry Daniell’s lip-sewn gofer in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. Here he plays a mixed-race desperado whose fixed stare threatens to steal the show from all the better actors.

   Films are too often judged and condemned based on their faithfulness to the book, but I found this one just as enjoyable in its own way. And when I say that about a film from a book I couldn’t put down, well… Try them both.

MARY MONICA PULVER – Original Sin. Peter Brichter #4. Walker, hardcover, 1991. Diamond, paperback, 1993.

    This is a mystery novel that fellow blogger TomCat recently reviewed on his blog. Not only was what he had to say about it rather positive, but (and this almost never happens, and I mean never) I found a my copy of it the very next day in a box of books I just happened to be going through.

    It’s also a book included in Brian Skupin’s recent update of Bob Adey’s classic reference book of of Impossible Crimes (and if you’re interested in Locked Room mysteries and the like, this is a book you absolutely need to have, posthaste).

    And even more than that, Original Sin has all kinds of ingredients in it to intrigue anyone who loves old-fashioned puzzle-type detective stories: (1) it takes place at Christmas, in (2) an old manor house with (3) a detailed drawing of all three floors. More than that, the group gathered there together are (4) snowed in, and at the crucial moment, (5) the lights go out.

    Luckily the story does not take place in the 1920s or 30s, since the house does have a backup generator that can take care of most of the house. Dead is an elderly second cousin of Kori Brichter, wife of police sergeant Peter Brichter, whose fourth recorded case this is. It seems that while remodeling the house the two of them have just bought, she has also been doing some genealogical research into her family tree.

    But as she is talking to her cousin in private, she leaves the room momentarily, and that’s when the aforementioned lights go out. When she returns, the woman is dead, struck in the head by some large (6) blunt instrument. Problem is, there is no blunt instrument in the room, and tracing the whereabouts of everyone in the house, no one could have been in the room but the dead woman.

    The big plus in this tale is how well worked out the woman’s death is. I would have liked more specific attention to have paid to the mystery, however. Perhaps the author believed that if too much emphasis were placed on it, it might have been unraveled too quickly, but I think the secret was sound enough to withstand a little more scrutiny by those involved in the story.

    Not so good, from my point of view, is that all of the suspects, save maybe one, seems to have been friends, relatives, and acquaintances for a long time, and Original Sin was just another group adventure for them. When the circle of would-be killers is narrowed down so much thusly, it not only makes the first time reader of one of their stories feel a little left out (me),but it makes the observant one (not me) think a lot more about not whodunit, necessarily, but howdunit a whole lot more.

   A quibble, perhaps. Original Sin remains a solidly constructed Impossible Crime story, a definite throwback to the days were puzzle stories were de rigeur.

CAGE OF EVIL. United Artists, 1960. Ronald Foster, Pat Blair, Harp McGuire, John Maxwell, Preston Hanson, Helen Kleeb, plus uncredited: Eve Brent, Henry Darrow, Ted Knight. Director: Edward L. Cahn.

       Mostly a play-it-by-the-numbers crime film, with a largely lackluster cast, cheap sets, and no more than workmanlike camera work and direction – all of the ingredients of a mediocre movie, in other words. And yet, in spite of all the odds against it, the movie did manage to keep me watching the whole way through, and these days of abandoning movies quickly on my part, that has to mean something.

       Part of it may have to do with the fact that no matter how much star power the cast may have been lacking, they were all pros at the business they were in, which was telling a story both clearly and cleanly. In perhaps his only leading role in a film, Ronald Foster plays a police detective who keeps getting passed over for promotion, mostly for being very bad at the PR end of things. (He starts slugging possible witnesses when they don’t speak up right away.)

     So it comes as no surprise when he’s assigned to get close to the girl friend (the rather statuesque Patricia Blair) of the hood who’s suspected of pulling off a jewel robbery, we already know one major route the story is going to take. Nor are we wrong.

     Nor, of course, do things go well for the two of them, in true noir fashion. Even though you know what’s coming. what’s still a certain amount of fun is seeing it happen, and just how.

   Just got the word from Mark that everything but two images has made the transition over. I think there’s been an upgrade to WordPress in the meantime, as this editing page is different, but I can handle that. Otherwise all of the links, embedded videos and so on are here at the new location safe and sound. Three cheers to Mark and his colleague at school Nate!