IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. Universal International, 1953. Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson, Kathleen Hughes. Screenplay by Harry Essex, based on a story treatment by Ray Bradbury. Director: Jack Arnold.

   When an amateur astronomer named John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his girl friend (Barbara Rush) see a giant fireball fall from the sky and land nearby, they rush to investigate. As one of the first two on the scene, Putnam goes down into the hole alone and so is the only one to see a huge metallic spaceship that has crashed deep into the earth. He then escapes before the ground crumbles around it and covers it up.

   Is he believed when he tells his story to the first responders, including the local sheriff (Charles Drake)? In a word, no. Not until a series of strange events begins to occur, including people disappearing only to return walking around as if in a daze.

   Originally filmed in 3-D, the first such for Universal, not even the unusual camera work (designed to show off the medium and no other reason), makes this movie anything more than slow-moving. It may have been extremely innovative at the time — including the fact that the aliens turn out not to be hostile — but I’m sorry to say that I found it a yawner today.

MIKE RIPLEY – Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed. HarperCollins, UK, hardcover, May 2017. US edition: September 2017. Foreword by Lee Child.

   Just as there are novels that appear that seemingly had to be written, and characters whose time has come to emerge, there are books about books, even in the genres, that appear and the proper reaction to them is why wasn’t this book always here?

   We can all name texts in the broad genre covered on this blog that were like that going back to ur-texts like Howard Haycraft’s Murder for Pleasure and Vincent Starrett’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Ellery Queen’s Queen’s Quorum; Richard Usborne’s The Clubland Heroes, about the between the war works of Buchan, Yates, Sapper McNeile; Julian Symons’ first critical study of the genre; Ron Goulart’s essays in the anthology The Hard-Boiled Dicks; Kingsley Amis’s A James Bond Dossier; Barzun and Taylor’s A Catalog of Crime; the oft quoted, in these pages, 1001 Midnights by Pronzini and Mueller et al — these are just a few examples.

   Now added to that list is Mike Ripley’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (the title taken from a dismissive remark by Ian Fleming about his own work) a work which wisely narrows its focus to the Golden Age of the modern British Men’s thriller, roughly 1950 to 1980.

   Though Ripley wisely chooses to mark his territory with two hallmarks of that era, 1953’s publication of Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, and the 1970’s publication of prolific Jack Higgins first mega-hit The Eagle Has Landed, the book begins before Fleming and ends with the rise of the American spy novelists such as Robert Ludlum and Charles McCarry.

   Mike Ripley, for anyone who doesn’t know, is the leading historian of the British thriller — I wouldn’t limit him like that, but since that is the subject of this work I will– an astute critic who not only writes about the genre, but who went to the trouble in the recent past of hunting down many of these writers, often thought dead, and bringing some of their work back in print.

   Here he concentrates on writers who came of age as thriller writers in the era covered, so Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Dennis Wheatley, and Peter Cheyney though active in the period, are assigned to an earlier pre-war era, but writers like Hammond Innes and Victor Canning who began writing, but reached their first great success in the 1950’s, are well within the self-imposed limits.

   Along the way Ripley regales the reader with personal anecdotes on writers as diverse as Fleming, Innes, Household, Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, Gavin Lyall, John Le Carré, Len Deighton, Dick Francis, and many lesser known figures.

   He also manages to discuss their important works, the traditions they arise from, and in some cases created or recreated, as did Fleming, Deighton, Le Carré, Wilbur Smith, and Dick Francis. He is frank in his assessment of their successes and their creative downturns, and the societal and political trends and events surrounding them.

   He is particularly good on writers like MacLean, who while a major figure had always remained a bit of a cypher to me as a person. He also briefly discusses the impact of film on the success of some writers for good and ill.

   At close to 500 pages there is still much that there simply isn’t time to discuss. There is nothing greatly original about the revelation that these writers represent a reaction against, and in some cases a celebration of, the fall of Imperial England and the post war mental rebellion by the British male against post war hardship and Little England mindset.

   What is original and invaluable here is Ripley’s encyclopedic knowledge of and critical evaluation of these writers and works, his style which is at once scholarly and colloquial, and a fine appendix that covers brief biographical and bibliographical material about most of the best-known names to come out of England’s thriller writing stables in that period.

   He even includes multiple covers of books and where needed discusses the importance they played in the books success. It is telling that both Ian Fleming and Len Deighton paid out of their own pocket to assure they got the covers they wanted for hardcover editions of their work.

   Aside from how well it is written and how accessible it is, there are a handful of ways to properly judge books such as this, A: Does the work in question give the informed reader information he did not previously know? B: Does the work lead the reader to discover new writers or old he has missed or rediscover older writers he has forgotten or neglected? C: Is the volume likely to become dogeared and worn from frequent reading and reference?

   Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang does all those things. It is the perfect gift for anyone interested in the too often underappreciated Thriller genre, it offers simple and easily definable definitions for the types of thrillers it discusses, and while there are one or two minor caveats on my part, personal hobby horses unridden, it is for the most part the book I always hoped would be written on the genre, by that rarity, a man who is fully qualified to write it both in terms of knowledge and literary gifts.

LIZA CODY – Stalker. Anna Lee #3. Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1984. Warner, US, paperback; 1st printing,March 1986. First published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1984. Televised as an episode of Anna Lee, ITV, UK, 6 March 1994 (Season 1, Episode 2) with Imogen Stubbs as Anna Lee.

   I watched Anna Lee: Headcase, the pilot film for the TV series, back in 2011, and you can find my review of it here. I mentioned at the time that I had not yet watched any of the five episodes that comprised the series itself, and here I am now admitting to you that I still haven’t gotten to them.

   While I enjoyed that pilot movie, I also pointed out that as the author of the books, Liza Cody did not like the way the series was going, and worse, as I understand it, she somehow lost her rights of Anna Lee as a character. She was upset enough that she even decided to stop writing novels about her.

   How accurate everything in the paragraph is, I do not know, and you should take it with a grain of salt. As for the printed version of the character, Stalker is now the first of the books I’ve read. The review itself starts here.

   It’s a short book, less than 200 pages of larger than average print, and as I was reaching the halfway point, I was saying to myself that this may be the best book about a female PI that I’ve ever read. But by the time I finished the book, all I could was wonder what it was that went wrong.

   Anna Lee does not work on her own. She’s a member of a Private Investigation agency, and the newest one to boot, subject to having to follow orders from the head of the firm, Commander Brierly, promptly and precisely, and properly submitting all the receipts she receives to the agency’s secretary, who runs a very tight ship, indeed.

   Her assignment? To track down a missing carpenter to whose business their client had given financial backing, but who has since seemed to have disappeared. Anna, a good woman for details and possessing the tenacity and determination needed to track people down, is the perfect person for the job.

   She soon discovers the missing man was also interested in antiques, was into deer hunting as a sport, and has a wife who does not seem to know where he is either. The mystery deepens as the woman also seems to have two men quietly acting as bodyguards, and Anna is unable to learn more from her.

   Not to be deterred, Anna follows the deer hunting lead into the wilderness of quiet English village life, where Anna is like a fish out of water — far from helpless but definitely out of her natural element.

   So far, very satisfactory indeed, but it is downhill from here. Much of the second half is taken up with a romantic encounter between Anna and a man of some wealth and distinction that one would think would have some bearing on the case, but alas it does not. The question is instead, will the liaison last? — and I will not tell you the outcome of that.

   The solution to the case she was assigned is eventually solved, but Anna (and the reader) learn the full story only offstage and via second hand reports. Half a book is better than none, you might say, but not when it comes to mystery fiction.

MICHAEL BRETT – Slit My Throat, Gently. Pocket Books, paperback original; 1st printing, April 1968.

   Michael Brett’s series of paperback originals about private eye Pete McGrath were likely intended to provide Pocket Books with a series character to rival Fawcett’s Shell Scott, Dell’s Mike Shayne, and Signet’s various Carter Brown series. McGrath appeared a bit late in the game and apparently failed to find a loyal readership, since only one of the books made it past a single printing. (Sales were probably not helped by the unattractive photo covers.)

   Nevertheless, the McGrath novels are entertaining and adroitly written — satisfying, off-the-rack private eye yarns that should please most unfussy readers of this sort of thing. One odd note about the seriesL Brett seems to have been unsure as to what sort of private-eye novel to produce. Some titles, like this one, are straightforward hard-boiled actioners. Others. like The Flight of the Stiff (1967), have a strong farcical element, in the manner of Richard S. Prather. Pete McGrath never quite came into his own as an identifiable character, though in one respect — his penchant for talking to himself — he probably leads the field.

   Here McGrath is hired to find a missing heiress who has run off with a small-time crook and drug addict. Also looking for her — or maybe just for her boyfriend — is a big-time mob boss, who takes drastic measures to get McGrath out of the picture.

   Corpses with their throats cut start turning up, and McGrath has quite a time with it. Two excellent scenes stand out: McGrath adroitly pumping a shady Atlantic City motel owner by posing as a sleazy divorce detective, and McGrath playing hardball with a junkie prostitute to turn up a lead.

   One of the Pete McGrath novels, Lie a Little, Die a Little (1968), much changed, was filmed as a moderately pornographic detective spoof, Cry Uncle, which attained a modest cult status. Other enjoyable books in the series: Kill Him Quickly, It’s Raining (1966), Dead Upstairs in the Tub (1967), Turn Blue, You Murderer (1967).

         ———
   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.

Editorial Comment:   My review of Kill Him Quickly, It’s Raining also included a complete list of the Pete McGrath books, all of ten of them, with covers shown for about half. (You will be able to see for yourself how unattractive they are, just as Art says.)

A live performance of a song that’s also the lead track on Brazilian jazz vocalist and pianist Tania Maria’s 1997 CD, Europe.

A MATTER OF WHO. MGM, UK, 1961; US, 1962. Terry-Thomas, Sonja Zeimann, Alex Nichol, Richard Briers (debut), Honor Blackman, Carol White, Guy Deghy, Martin Benson, Geoffrey Keen. Screenplay by Milton Homes & Patricia Lee, based on her article with Paul Dickinson. Directed by Don Chaffey.

   This unlikely comedy-mystery builds up real suspense with Terry-Thomas playing mostly straight as an eccentric British ‘germ’ detective for WHO, the World Health Organization.

   It begins innocently enough with an American businessman apparently succumbing to too much alcohol on his honeymoon flight to London. Taken to the hospital at Heathrow until the cause of his condition can be determined, his new bride (Sonja Zeimann) and business partner, a fellow Texas oilman (Alex Nichol), meet each other and Archibald Bannister (Terry-Thomas) a representative of WHO while waiting for news of the ailing man.

   When it turns out smallpox and not alcohol is the cause of the ailing oilman’s ill turn, the international WHO organization is mobilized, with British representative Bannister and his assistant (Richard Briers, best remembered for the series Good Neighbors, making his film debut) out to find where the victim acquired the disease and using every means at their disposal to do it.

   That proves more than a little dangerous for both Bannister and the victim’s business partner, as international politics, skullduggery in the cutthroat oil business, the mysterious new bride who knows something she won’t tell, a smuggled dog, a kidnapped corpse, a remote Austrian village stricken with a smallpox epidemic, Bannister a fugitive from the law, and a shady international playboy are all added to the mix until the climax in an Austrian cable car.

   The mystery is excellent, the twists frequent, the heroes meet numerous setbacks, and the comedy is generally played quietly arising from the situation and the people in it and not contrived silliness (there is a contrived car chase).

   Other than his bad driving, clothes, and car, Bannister is presented as a good man who knows his job and does it with rare skill. You likely haven’t seen Thomas like this in a film, and may, like me, be a little surprised how well he handles the role without resorting to his usual schtick.

   This one works fully on all levels. It is sexy and smart, sharply written and played, well directed by Don Chaffey, and both the mystery and suspense well served, both they and the clues arising from the nature of the real criminal, the disease smallpox, and its nature and behavior. And don’t assume you have out-guessed it or Bannister, as both have surprises up their sleeves right to the end.

   I spent a long time looking for this one, and I’m pleased to say than other than the theme song, it was no disappointment. A Matter of WHO is a fine little film with a first class cast and more than enough to keep you glued to your seat until the last clue is sorted.

JILL McGOWN – Murder … Now and Then. [Det. Insp.] Lloyd & [Det. Sgt.] Hill #6. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1993. Fawcett, US, paperback, 1995. First published in the UK by Macmillan, hardcover, 1993.

   How many times do I have to tell you? Jill McGown is one of the best British crime novelists currently writing. I put her in the same class with Reginald Hill and John Harvey, and ahead of Ruth Rendell.

   Now, in 1993, Lloyd is in official attendance at a business ceremony where a new owner is taking over a company. A new manager has been promoted, one very unpopular with the old owner. When the new owner walks in, the new manager’s wife faints. Shortly thereafter, the new manager is caught slapping and berating her. Before the night is ended, murder is done.

   Then, 15 years before, the players set in motion a chain of events that culminate in unsolved murder in that time, and lead to murder in the present. Lloyd and Hill were there at the beginning as they will be at the end when all the sealed boxes are opened.

   McGown is noted (at least by me) for her complex plots, and this is one of her twistiest. Viewpoints and times shift back and forth rapidly, and it’s a mark of her virtuosity that the reader is not left completely at sea. Her prose is terse and straight-forward, but by the end of the story all of the major players have become fully realized people.

   Lloyd (first name unknown) and Judy Hill have over the course of the series become among the most realistic of contemporary cops as human beings, and their relationship equally so. There isn’t anything I dislike about McGown’s Lloyd and Hill books, and they’ve yet to disappoint me. There are damned few series about which I can say those things.

Bibliographic Note:   There were 13 books in the Lloyd & Hill series, the last being Unlucky for Some (2004)

ALEXANDER JABLOKOV “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry.” Sere Glagolit #1. Novella. Lead story in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2017.

   Of the three (or maybe four) SF print magazines still remaining, I think the best science fiction stories come from Asimov’s. (Not surprisingly, the best fantasy stories appear in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.)

   Analog SF is tied a little too closely to the traditional SF tale, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what the magazine’s readers want and have come to expect. The science fiction in Asimov’s is considerably more adventurous and what’s more, the stories in it are noticeably better written.

   Case in point, this the first appearance of PI Sere Glagolit. Having had her business stolen out from under her by her former partner, she’s working on her own now, and having a difficult time of it. The planet where she lives, by the way, is not Earth. It’s a world with two suns and in particular, Sere works in a city called Tempest, one that is populated by pockets of all shapes and varieties of alien races, including humans (called the Om).

   She’s hired to find out who’s been buying up the leases of a collected sequence of properties leading from the bottom of Drur Reef to the top. She soon learns that a cleaning organization called Ferrulin is involved, not a criminal enterprise, by any means, but as Sere says, they have “more than a couple of toes over the line.” While working on the case, she also learns how it was that a small time exterminator accidentally killed himself in a tunnel through the mysterious butte, a landmark of some note in the city.

   As in all good private eye stories, there is a lot of footwork (and more) to be done, lots of false leads, lots of non-human characters with non-human motivations to talk to, and above all, a setting with lots of exotic scenery for the reader to gradually learn his/her own way around in. Thankfully, at novella length (over 30 oversized pages of solid print), there’s plenty of time and space to do so.

   More stories are promised, which is good news indeed.

CHARLES WILLIAMS – Talk of the Town. Dell First Edition A164, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1958. Cover artist: Darcy (Ernest Chiriacka). Expanded from “Stain of Suspicion,” a story published in Cosmopolitan, April 1958. This earlier title was also that of the British edition: Stain of Suspicion, Cassell, hardcover, 1959. Reprinted later in the US under the same title: Pocket, paperback, 1973.

   The master at the top of his game, crafting a taut, fast-moving tale back in the days when you could tell a great story in less than 200 pages.

   Bill Chatham narrates the tale and starts out by getting his car badly wrinkled by someone pulling out of a parking space in a small north Florida town. Stuck there for three days, he meets Georgia Langston, the proprietor of the motel where he’s staying, and quickly gets drawn into her problems.

   It seems Ms. Langston is recently widowed and suspected in the death of her late husband. He was found murdered in the pre-dawn hours by a man who was staying at the motel who had connections in Langston’s home town. Moreover, a woman was seen leaving the crime scene, and when police contacted Georgia they found her wide awake at that unghodly hour. The murderer was killed by police, so he’s not talking, but a cloud of doubt has settled over the widow who is ostracized by the community and persecuted by anonymous obscene and threatening calls.

   I’m always impressed by the speed with which Williams can set up a plot and establish his characters. As the story unfolds we find that Chatham is a divorced ex-cop, kicked off the force for excessive brutality (Read the backstory and see if you don’t sympathize with him.) and Ms. Langston is a tough and resourceful woman slowly being ground down by the community she once called her home.

   Meanwhile, just to keep things roiling, Chatham gets in a fight every few pages, there are threats, vandalism, a near-murder and some colorful side characters to help things along. And it’s here where Williams does a clever bit of writing…

   If I may wax philosophical for a moment, I want to say that in my experience there are two kinds of corruption: Selfish corruption of the sort practiced for profit; and the more altruistic sort, committed by those who feel it’s all right to cut a few legal/ethical corners in a good cause. Williams evokes both sorts, from honest cops who don’t feel much like following up a criminal’s complaints to…

   Well, that would be telling, and it would be a shame to spoil a story as tightly written as this one. Suffice it to say that when the selfish-corrupt ones finally show themselves, they are a nasty sight indeed — very well-limned by the author in a few deft strokes — but perhaps not so scary as those who thought they had Right or God or Whatever on their side.

TARGET ZERO. Warner Brothers, 1955. Richard Conte, Peggie Castle, Charles Bronson Richard (Wyler) Stapley, L. Q. Jones, Chuck Connors. Screenplay: James Warner Bellah & Sam Rolfe. Director: Harmon Jones.

   In the Korean War movie Target Zero, Richard Conte stars as Lt. Tom Flagler, a hard-nosed soldier devoted to ensuring that his men get through the war alive. It’s not a bad trait to have, especially given that Flagler’s patrol has been cut off from their main unit: Easy Company. Joining the patrol for the perilous journey in hostile territory is Ann Galloway (Peggie Castle), a United Nations scientist working in the Korean peninsula, and a British tank crew.

   For a war movie, there’s comparatively little action for large segments of the movie. Indeed, the movie is more of a character-driven, than a plot-driven, film. Although the plot – lost patrol seeks to make its way to safety – it’s the film’s story, or multiple stories – that make it worth watching. Flagler is, on the surface, tough as nails and reminds Ann that “everyone fights his own war” as an excuse for some of the behavior he encounters from soldiers under his command.

   But it’s clear that the war has gotten to Flagler. His effort to please his troops and to pretend he cares about them personally is beginning to look like a charade, a mere veil to cover his own insecurities and worries. Fortunately, Flagler has a relatively competent bunch under his command. There’s Sgt. Vince Gaspari (Charles Bronson), Pvt. Moose (Chuck Connors), and Felix (L.Q. Jones in a standout supporting role). There’s also a South Korean soldier and a Native American soldier in his patrol, giving the 1950s film the racial diversity often found in World War II combat films.

   You’ll probably be none too surprised to learn that there’s a romantic angle to the movie. Despite his initial resistance, Flagler finds himself falling for Ann. Romance during wartime is a standard film theme. But romance blossoming amidst combat in an otherwise all male patrol is somewhat unique and actually works well to flesh out Flagler’s personality.

   Still, Target Zero is primarily a war film, not a romantic drama. There’s a relatively harrowing scene in which the patrol machine guns down a group of North Korean soldiers attempting to escape after Flagler and his men successfully commandeering a communist convoy in order to steal their petrol for the British tank crew. The final battle sequence, however, feels like a bit of a let down. The ending, in which the patrol finds itself on a ridge surrounded by thousands of North Korean troops, has a deus ex machina aspect to it. Did someone say, “Call in air support?”