REESE SULLIVAN – Deadly Like a .45. Ace Double M-140, paperback original; 1st printing, 1966. Published back-to-back with Last Stage to Gomorrah, by Barry Cord.

   The first story by Giles A Lutz (1910-1982) to have been published in the western pulp magazines may have been “Square in the Saddle,” which appeared in the July 1945 issue of Western Story Magazine. (Thanks to the online Western Fiction Index for this information.)

   From the mid-50s on, according to his entry on Wikipedia, Lutz not only wrote under his own name, but he also used Wade Everett, Alex Hawk, Hunter Ingram, Reese Sullivan, and Gene Thompson as bylines for the huge amount of western fiction he produced, mostly in the form of paperback novels.

   Even though it barely qualifies as a novel — Deadly Like a .45 is only 132 pages long, and there’s only one story line — it’s a good one, and in it, it’s up to Gard Hubach, deputy marshal for a small town in eastern Oregon, to be one of the few to stand up for what’s right.

   It’s this way. Breck Costigan, owner of the large ranch not far out of town figures he owns the whole town as well, and when a small farmer rustles one of his cattle, he thinks nothing of having his crew break him out of jail for a good old-fashioned lynching.

   The sheriff is in Costigan’s pocket. The only one who will stand with Gard is Dolph Emery, the town blacksmith. The only other important character is Emery’s daughter, Martha. Lutz writing as as Reese Sullivan manages to wring all of the drama out of this fairly standard set-up and make the reader wish for more.

   It’s also a dark, violent tale on more than one occasion, surprisingly so. Short, and while not a deep story, nonetheless an effective one.

PostScript:   The other half of this Ace Double, a story by Barry Cord, a pen name of Peter Germano, also a western pulp writer of some standing, is not nearly as successful. The length is the same, and both the plot and the number of characters are a lot more ambitious, but what it boils down to is this: A stagecoach carrying a fortune in gold disappears and a mine played out long ago suddenly starts producing high grade ore again. Much action ensues, but only in peripheral over-busy fashion.

GAVIN HOLT – Six Minutes Past Twelve. Prof. Luther Bastion #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1928. No US edition.

   Luther Bastion, O.B.E., D.Sc., F.R.S., F.A.S.L., and Major Kettering-Bevis, D.S.O. only, are holidaying in the country after strenuous travel abroad. The man from whom they are renting their cottage, Samuel Dubeyne, a chap who is the company promoter personified, is found one morning partly in the local creek, shot to death with the pistol by his side, a definite, according to the police, suicide. Professor Bastion, however, has other ideas.

   Well, of course, the Professor is correct. He and the Major, with the Major protesting occasionally, begin their own investigation, and they discover that Dubeyne was a thorough scoundrel, that he was murdered, and that many people had reasonable cause to do him in.

   For a time, the Professor and the Major work with the police, but then their ways part, somewhat against the Major’s wishes. The Professor knows, or is guessing, more than he is telling, and he wraps the case up to his own, though certainly not the police’s, satisfaction. He is also not above a spot of burglary and concealing evidence.

   This is not a fair-play novel. Much information is withheld from the reader. Several people who were not known about before are brought in at the end. But the enjoyment in the book should come through following the investigations and the machinations of the Professor, with the Major travelling along behind physically and mentally.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   There were sixteen Professor Bastion novels to follow, the last appearing in 1936. Gavin Holt was the pseudonym of Charles Rodda, (1891-1976); he also wrote mysteries as by Gardner Low and Eliot Reed.

MARTIN L. SHOEMAKER “Not Far Enough.” Novella. Captain Nick Aames #4. Lead story in Analog SF, July/August 2017.

    Michael L. Shoemaker is a new author for me, but he’s been writing science fiction since 2011, mostly of the nuts and bolts “hard” variety, and was nominated for a Nebula for Best Short Story in 2016 (“Today I Am Paul,” Clarkesworld #107).

    “Not Far Enough” is the fourth in a series of stories chronicling the adventures of a space captain named Nick Aames, but the blurb a the beginning of the story adds the additional information that a pair of crew members named Anson Carter (Lieutenant Jr. Grade) and Smith (Ensign, and female) are in at least two of the three earlier ones.

    The latter is the one telling this particular tale, that of the fate of a pair of simultaneous landing parties on Mars, six members in each. After a series of serious accidents, including one to the mother ship still in orbit, they find themselves stranded there, with little hope of rescue. How they manage to survive is the crux of the story. What it takes is sheer smartness and determination, and despite some serious interpersonal relationships that have to be worked through.

    Typical Analog material, in other words. Parts of the story are very good, especially the technical end of things. Details at the beginning could have been more clearly delineated, however, and some of the dialogue seems awkward and stilted to me. But overall, though, if you’re interested in what the early history of what exploration in space might be like, keep an eye out for this one.

  LAWRENCE BLOCK – Death Pulls a Doublecross. Ed London #1. Gold Medal s1162, paperback original, 1961. Reprinted as Coward’s Kiss by Countryman Press, 1987; Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1996.

   The private eye in this case is a fellow by the name of Ed London, and while this is the only full length novel he appeared in, he did show up again later in three novelettes from the men’s magazines in the 1960s, stories that have since been collected as The Lost Cases of Ed London (Crippen & Landru, hardcover, 2001).

   Based in Manhattan, Ed London was a relatively high-scale operative in the true Playboy sort of image: a pipe smoker, fond of both Courvoisier cognac and Mozart, with fine books and Bokhara rugs in his apartment. He’s hired in this case by his sister’s husband to dump the body of his dead mistress in Central Park, a task that I don’t believe had ever come up before in the annals of PI fiction, or since. He found her shot to death in the apartment he kept for her, and he has no idea who might have done it.

   Task completed, with his brother-in-law in the clear, the case takes on unexpected added complexities when several interested parties call on London, each wanting a briefcase that should have been in the girl’s apartment. London doesn’t have it, but he can’t make anyone believe it. He has to play offense, he decides, rather than getting beat up again, and by professionals.

   Although not similar in most other ways, including the lack of comic overtones, the voice of Ed London, telling his own story, is remarkably the same as that of Bernie Rhodenbarr, Lawrence Block’s hero of all his later “Burglar” books. It’s a complicated tale, but the long explanation of how London knew what he knew and when he knew it seems to hang together.

   It’s too bad there was the only one novel with Ed London in it, but with all of Block’s other books and series, most of which I have yet to open, I don’t imagine there’s really any reason to complain.

      The Ed London short stories —

“The Naked and the Deadly” (1962, Man’s Magazine)
“Twin Call Girls”(1962, Man’s Magazine)
“Stag Party Girl” (February 1965, Man’s Magazine?)

      A little late, but the wishes are still good:

THE TELLTALE CLUE. CBS. July 18, 1954 to September 23, 1954. CBS Television / Charles E. Martin Productions. Cast: Anthony Ross as Detective Captain Richard Hale, Chuck Webster as Sgt. Kohler, and Nat Frey as Sgt. Riley. Produced and directed by Charles Martin.

   As with many early television series, the roots of THE TELLTALE CLUE trace back to radio. In 1934 NBC radio aired a program entitled JOHNNY PRESENTS. Johnny was Johnny Roventini, a midget who played a hotel bellhop with a unique cry of “Call for Philip Morris” that would open and close various Philip Morris shows on radio and TV (you will see a sample in the first video below).

   Philip Morris was one of radio and early television biggest sponsors. In its beginning radio’s JOHNNY PRESENTS featured fifteen minutes of orchestra music followed by various fifteen-minute dramatic programs.

   JOHNNY PRESENTS would switch networks to CBS in 1937. In September 1938 JOHNNY PRESENTS added the fifteen-minute drama called THE PERFECT CRIME (Philip Morris & Co. through agency Biow Co. New York.) The program ran through March 1941. JOHNNY PRESENTS returned to NBC November 4, 1941. THE PERFECT CRIME returned May 26, 1942.

   â€œTHE PERFECT CRIME, a series of detective episodes, with action taking place at the morning lineup at police headquarters…Listeners are given time to figure out the correct solution of the crime towards the end of the program before the case is explained.” (Broadcasting, May 25, 1942)

   A review by “Trau” of Weekly Variety (July 14, 1954) states that: “TELLTALE CLUE stemmed from the old radio series THE PERFECT CRIME.” It also supplies a good deal of information about the series.

   It was the summer of 1954, and Philip Morris needed to find a summer replacement to take over PUBLIC DEFENDER time slot, as CBS and Philip Morris moved PUBLIC DEFENDER to Monday to give I LOVE LUCY a summer break. Charles Martin had been involved in radio’s JOHNNY PRESENTS and PHILIP MORRIS PLAYHOUSE. Martin had produced the TV version of PHILIP MORRIS PLAYHOUSE for Biow agency, Philip Morris and CBS the summer before and was returning with TELLTALE CLUE.

   The Weekly Variety reviewer found the first episode “The Armitage Case” to possess “good production trappings and a know-how cast.” He described star Anthony Ross as “always reliable legit hand.” The episode itself he found routine, and described the audience invited to solve the case with the Detective “an OK though hardly unprecedented participation gimmick.”

   As criminologist detective Captain Richard Hale tells us, there is always a telltale clue that solves the mystery. Each episode opens as we watch the crime take place. Then we are at Hale’s office as the character breaks the fourth wall offering the viewer a chance to follow along to see if they can find the telltale clue and solve the case. This procedural crime series featured nearly all forms of detective work from legwork to forensics.

   â€œThe Case of the Talking Garden.” (July 15, 1954) Written by Haskel Frankel. GUEST CAST: Darren McGavin, Phyllis Hill, Pat Breslin and Frank Campanella. *** A mugging that leaves a man’s wife dead may not be what it seems.

   This second episode of the series is not very good. The mystery is weak, focusing not on whodunit but what clue would catch the killer. Written by Haskel Frankel this would be his only credit listed at IMDb. According to his obit in the New York Times (November 10, 1999), he would become a successful author (as Frank Haskel), ghostwriter, and theatre critic in New York.

   Pat (Patricia) Breslin (PEOPLE’S CHOICE) portrayal of the tramp’s daughter was noticeably flawed from a common problem of this era of live New York TV drama. TV was new and the actors were just learning the difference between acting on stage and reaching the back row and acting on television with its close-ups and camera angles.

   Experienced actor of film and TV Darren McGavin (KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER) hammed up his part, especially the early scenes. Three months after this role he was performing on Broadway in the original run of RAINMAKER (he played Bill Starbuck).

   Charles Martin’s direction was fine for the time, but the camera occasionally stayed too long in the Master shot (the angle including all in the scene) and contributed to the stagy feel of the TV mystery.

   The production for the series was fine, considering the limitations of the time. Today the production shows its age and is too studio bound.

   The Weekly Variety review favorably examined Charles Martin role as long-time Biow agency and Philip Morris producer, and noted the writers for the series would include Harry W. Junkin (THE SAINT), Alvin Sapinsley (HAWAII FIVE-O), Sid Edelstein (no credit at IMDb), and Gore Vidal (JANET DEAN, REGISTERED NURSE). Wait, Gore Vidal wrote for this forgotten TV series?

   A site examining Gore Vidal early TV and radio work has a detailed look at Vidal’s teleplays. It also was where I found the Weekly Variety review.

   While it is believed that Vidal wrote two episodes, the site found proof at the Guide to Harvard Library holdings of Gore Vidal’s papers of only one, “Case of the Dying Accusation” (July 29. 1954). No copy of that episode is known to have survived.

   The Gore Vidal Teleplays page quotes Vidal in “The Art of Fiction, No. 50″ in THE PARIS REVIEW, 1974-07. “Absence of money is a bad thing because you end up writing THE TELLTALE CLUE for television – which I did.” Vidal claimed he used a pseudonym he could not remember, but I doubt it as the Weekly Variety review named him. And the link above has Vidal’s contract dated June 30, 1954 with Charles E. Martin Productions, Inc, producer and copyright owner of THE TELLTALE CLUE saying, “You agree that in the event we use the said script, which we are not required to do, we have the option of making use of your name, if we so desire.”

   Episode five offers a much better mystery, a good fair-play whodunit with enough twists to keep even the modern audience interested. Writer James P. Cavanagh would win an Emmy for his teleplay “Fog Closing In” (ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS October 7, 1956). He also was the writer for the 1963 film MURDER AT THE GALLOP (Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple).

“The Case of the Hit and Run.” (August 5, 1954) Written by James P. Cavanagh. Produced and Directed by Charles Martin. GUEST CAST: Peg Hillias, Patricia Smith, Joseph Sweeney and House Jameson. *** A man is run down in the street by a hit and run driver but it was no accident, it was murder.

   THE TELLTALE CLUE starred Anthony Ross, best remembered for his work on the stage (Tennessee Williams’ GLASS MENAGRIE and ARSENIC AND OLD LACE) and in films (KISS OF DEATH and ON DANGEROUS GROUND). His work in television was mainly in anthologies such as SUSPENSE and THE FORD THEATRE HOUR.

   After the series ended in September 1954 Ross returned to Broadway in the role of The Professor in BUS STOP. After the October 26, 1955 evening performance Ross returned home and died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was 46 years old.

   THE TELLTALE CLUE aired on Thursday night at 10pm. The thirty-minute mystery aired opposite the last half-hour of ABC’s KRAFT TELEVISION THEATRE and the first half-hour of NBC’s LUX VIDEO THEATRE. The still alive Dumont network did not schedule any network programming for that time slot.

   Today these are the only two of THE TELLTALE CLUE’s thirteen episodes that are known to survive.

      ADDITIONAL SOURCE:

(ON THE AIR: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OLD-TIME RADIO by John Dunning (Oxford University Press, 1998)

THE GIRL FROM MEXICO. RKO Radio Pictures, 1939. Lupe Velez, Donald Woods, Leon Errol, Linda Hayes, Donald MacBride. Ward Bond. Director: Leslie Goodwins.

   Although not intended to be the first in a series, this movie turned out to be such a big hit that RKO decided to make seven more “Mexican Spitfire” movies. The name is apt. Lupe Velez, as the singer a talent agent named Dennis Lindsay (Donald Woods) finds and brings back from Mexico, is exactly that: a spitfire, a pepper pot, a firecracker.

   And who she has her eyes on is no other than her Denny. Trouble is, he’s already engaged to a society girl his aunt approves of highly. His uncle (Leon Errol) not so much, and when Denny is tied up with work or wedding plans, he starts taking Carmelita out on the town: to a baseball game, a wrestling match, a nine-day bicycle race, and even eventually a night club.

   Complications arise, as perhaps you can imagine, albeit rather tamely today. Lupe Velez, while not a true exotic beauty, must have attracted men in the audience immensely with her torrid and uninhibited Mexican ways, her rapid fire way of speaking, and her deliciously foreign and refreshingly charming personality. Donald Woods’ character certainly is — attracted, that is — as much as he tries to fight it. What women thought of this movie and the seven sequels, I do not know.

   I probably won’t seek out the others in the series, but in spite of its very meager plot, I enjoyed this one.

JANET EVANOVICH & LEE GOLDBERG – The Chase. Fox & O’Hare #2. Bantam, hardcover, February 2014; paperback, November 2014.

   The second outing in this series by bestselling Stephanie Plum creator Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, who penned the Monk television series novels, features con artist Nicholas Fox and FBI agent Kate O’Hare out to take down one Carter Grove, a former White House Chief of Staff, now owner of a ruthless private security organization, who is suspected of stealing a rare artifact from the Smithsonian.

   The artifact must be found and returned before the Chinese government finds out it is missing to avert an international scandal, and who better to achieve just that than Fox and O’Hare (Fox and Hare for anyone not paying attention), if they can learn to trust each other, and in his case, that is no easy matter.

   The action opens with a big car chase staged to round up an adventure already in motion (the pre-credits sequence), and then we are off from New York to Shanghai and Montreal on a chase aided by Fox’s criminal associates and by a group of AARP card carrying mercenaries led by Kate’s father.

   So, yes, this is the kind of movie of the week, tired old episodic television business we have seen a thousand times, Moonlighting and Remington Steele country, with the hero and heroine panting heavily and not quite resolving the central question of when the big romance will get to be too much for them, and who will betray whom at what point.

   It just so happens it is very well done, by writers in complete control of the material, it comes in at just about the ideal length for this sort of business — enough to resolve the plot and not enough for overstuffed seams to show — and at the end, which is where the reader of any mystery or crime entertainment is headed, it is satisfying enough you want more. It may not be a very dry vodka martini in the Ian Fleming sense, but it is more than a flat beer and a bag of stale chips.

   If you are in the mood for a palette cleanser or a light dessert these books are ideal, and that is what they aspire to be, mystery, action, romance, served crisp and cool for a summer distraction,

       The Fox and O’Hare series —

1. The Heist (2013)     Reviewed here.
2. The Chase (2014)
3, The Job (2014)
4. The Scam (2015)
5. The Pursuit (2016)

PETER DICKINSON – The Yellow Room Conspiracy. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995. First published in the UK: Little Brown, hardcover, 1994.

   Dickinson is one of the few writers in the field who can be counted on to furnish a really different book with almost every outing. About all one can count on is that it will be literate and well crafted; which, come to think of it, is not too shabby a promise to keep.

   Thirty-six years ago a man died in a fire and explosion. Now, two aging lovers, one slowly dying, decide that it is time to uncover all the things that have been hidden. Each has believed over the decades that the other had murdered the man who died, and now that they know that neither did, decide to recreate the past that led up to the tragedy.

   The story ranges from the playing fields of Eton to the movers and shakers of post-WWII Britain, and centers around the five beautiful Vereker sisters, of whom the dying woman was one.

   The publicity material describes this as “complex, clever, and absolutely chilling,” and yet again I am amazed at the I-hope-not-willful inaccuracy of the people who write these … things. Complex and clever, yes, but nothing here is even remotely chilling.

   It is a mystery — in a sense — and the mystery is solved — after a fashion — but more than anything else it’s a re-creation of a time and way of life now vanished, told in a literate and leisurely fashion. Dickinson is a superb prose stylist, and a master at the creation of characters who are memorable. I’m reminded again that although the lines between genre and non- often blur, sometimes the distinction is clear. This is a novel, and a very good one.

KISS ME A KILLER. Concorde-New Horizons, 1991. Julie Carmen, Robert Beltran, Ramon Franco, Charles Boswell, Sam Vlahos. Director: Marcus DeLeon.

   This late night attraction on one of the pay channels we’ve just signed up for is the first I’ve taped that turned out to be more than I was hoping for. You may or may not believe me, but what this is is an authentic, down-to-earth throwback to the noir movies of of the 1940s, done semi-salsa style.

   It takes place in L.A., where the middle-aged (and white) owner of a bar has a good-looking but bored younger wife, and when he hires a new Latino singer for the house band, fireworks begin to happen.

   In spite of a list of actors who’ve been around but who are still pretty much unknown (at least to me), the acting is top-drawer, if not quite top notch, the music is fine, the pace is fast, and the story makes sense. Julie Carmen, a sultry brunette with a voice so husky it could pull an Alaskan dog sled, as the saying goes, I would not mind seeing again either. This one’s a keeper, that’s for sure.