BRUNO FISCHER – The Fast Buck. Gold Medal #270, paperback original; 1st printing, November 1952. Cover art by Barye Phillips. Reprinted as Gold Medal s783. paperback, 1958.

   As a rule, not a hard and fast one, I don’t read books about crime and criminals, gangsters and their molls, or hoodlums and crooked cops. I do read “heist” novels, though, and sometimes books about slick-talking con men. I also make exceptions for crime novels from Gold Medal, and I always exclude books by Bruno Fischer, no matter what genre they may fall into

   Case in point, although there was one point at which I admit that was beginning to wonder. I’ll get back to that. Bert Peake is a two-bit hoodlum, his life is going nowhere, and he knows it. Desperate for a fresh break in life, he goes the wrong way and asks a childhood buddy for a job. The old buddy is now on top of the rackets in New York City.

   And Bert does get a job, one that will pay him $5000, although not on any regular payroll. No, what Lumm wants him to do is to kill a guy, target to be named later. That’s the opening, and it may be enough to get a lot of readers through the occasional rough patches tht lie ahead.

   To wit. Now that he’s in the money, he can have a girl move in with him, not an innocent my any means, but a nice girl, one he socks in the face when he loses his temper. At length she forgives him, but I don’t know as she would if she knew he was hanging out with a rich man’s daughter who thinks he is a brute, he proves it, and she is all the more attracted to him because of it.

   Overshadowing these ominous overtones, though, is a mystery to be solved, who does Lumm want to have killed, and why is he encouraging the romance between Peake and the rich man’s daughter?

   This is a complicated story, but at heart it’s also a simple one. Is the love of a good girl enough to pull a heel out of the morass he’s about to fall into? This is a book that doesn’t work on several levels, but Fischer somehow creates enough sympathy for Peake that the story manages to succeed in spite of itself. My opinion only, though, and I may change my mind tomorrow.

HERO. Columbia Pictures, 1992. Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, Andy Garcia, Joan Cusack, Maury Chaykin, Tom Arnold. Director: Stephen Frears.

   I’ve never seen Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie, but in every other movie he’s been in that I have seen, he’s stolen the show. This one’s no different.

   You probably know the story. He’s the petty crook (dealing in stolen goods) who, in spite of his own basic cynical outlook on life, helps rescue all of the passengers on a downed airliner, then sees someone else steal the glory while he’s spending time in the pokey.

   One of the passengers is hard-nosed newslady (Geena Davis) who’s just won an award for her (um) hard nose for news. I know the story itself is meant to be satire, and TV news is a pretty easy target, but I think they might possibly have ladled it on a little more lightly.

   Some of the zingers pack a pretty good punch, but most of them suffer from a surfeit of superciliousness, shall we say. (This comment does not apply to Dustin Hoffman. He’s one who makes the film as watchable as it is, no doubt about it.)

KEITH LAUMER – Catastrophe Planet. Berkley F1273, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1966. Included in the collection The Breaking Earth (Tor/Pinnacle, paperback; June 1981) with two non-fiction essays by other authors. Also included in the collection Future Imperfect (Baen, softcover; May 2003).

   This one takes place some 30 years or more in the future from the time it was written, and although it’s definitely a science fiction novel, a good portion of it would make the best James Bond movie never filmed. The reason for the title is that massive plates in the Earth’s surface have begun to shift, causing earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, typhoons and all kinds of similar disaster all over the world.

   In the James Bond role is a guy named Mal Irish to whom all kinds of strange events happen, and he’s just the kind of adventurous guy to go with them. If anything similar were to happen to either you or I, we’d just find the nearest corner and curl up in a ball.

   First he comes across an old sailor trapped in a mostly demolished building who tells him a fantastic story of an expedition to Antarctica where they found a hidden city filled with signs of an ancient civilization. But strange beings nearly wiped out the party; the dying man may have been the last survivor.

   But before dying, the man gives Mal a strange coin, which he takes with him to the island of Miami, which is now one of the last remnants of life going on as before on the planet. In fact there is a coin collectors’ convention going on. He takes the coin in for evaluation, and when he leaves, he finds the coin has been switched on him.

   Mystified, the trail leads him to Crete, and to get there he crosses the Atlantic in a small one-man boat. There by sheer happenstance he meets an old friend, who by chance knows a fisherman who just happens to have been hired to strange two groups of strange men out to sea, where they have jumped overboard and disappeared.

   Have I mentioned the beautiful girl who speaks a strange exotic language but who seems to be the object of a worldwide hunt for her by persons unknown? The trail leads at length back to Antarctica, where things revert to pure science fiction, if not epic fantasy, at last what we have been waiting for, a grand finale replacement for the much more prosaic adventures it took to get there, at least in comparison.

   If you stop to think about it as you go, however, you will realize what a bunch of nonsense this all is. But like a James Bond movie, to continue the parallel, if you can sit back and let Laumer slide you along from location to location, you may find yourself enjoying this all out assault on your senses immensely. Mind-blowing? Yes, absolutely.

   Unfortunately, I made the mistake of stopping and trying to pick up the story line later on. It has its moments, but all in all, as you may have gathered, I think Laumer has done much better work than this. (Note that the later two versions may be expansions of the Berkley novel from 1966, which is the one I read.)

JONATHAN STAGGE – The Dogs Do Bark. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1937. Popular Library #350, paperback, 1951. Also published as Murder Gone To Earth (Joseph, UK, hardcover, 1936).

   A question is often raised about whether it is worthwhile to spend time and space reviewing a poor novel. Why bother? Well, if nothing else, to warn prospective readers that they may be in for a disappointment. And a disappointment is what The Dogs Do Bark definitely is in this reviewer’s opinion.

   Here ! must flout our distinguished editor’s admonition not to give anything away in a review. How else describe this book’s weaknesses?

   A headless and armless female body is found during a fox hunt in Massachusetts. Since a female is missing from the area, her father, a religious fanatic, is asked to view the presumably naked torso of the corpse and identifies it, more or less, as his daughter, while throwing in some wild religious quotations to prove his fanaticism. Don’t ask me how this zealot was so familiar with his daughter’s naked body. (And the author certainly didn’t want anybody to ask.)

   After the father has viewed the corpse and identified her, more or less, he is then read a description of the body, presumably another author’s ploy so that the authorities can say that she was not virgo intacta, although not pregnant, and thus must either have been married or immoral. The coroner and the doctor — the latter is the amateur detective in the novel — who had been deputized by the sheriff both seem to think that sexual intercourse is the only way that the hymen can be broken, no doubt a fond delusion during the 1930s.

   Later on in the book we are told that the girl identified as the corpse thought she was pregnant. Do the doctor and the sheriff look at one another with wild or even mild surmise? Of course not. The primary reason for the head and arms being removed from the body does not occur to them, either. If it had — and some thought was given to another female’s disappearance, one who looked much like the corpse — the book would have ended at chapter 3 or 4. And what then would have become of the so-much-per-word story?

   The arms are found in the hunting pack’s kennels, stripped to the bone by the dogs. The head is located later elsewhere, kept by the killer for reasons never made clear. The deputy doctor seems to have only one patient, a hypochondriac, so he has plenty of time to blunder around and nearly get himself killed in a had-I-but-known-or-even-given-it-some-thought fashion. He comes close to being burned to death in an old barn by the murderer, and it would have served him right. Once the corpse is correctly identified, a telegram from another police force points out the killer.

   Recommended only to those who have a mild interest in the U.S. fox hunting scene.

   
Editorial Comment:   I believe but I am not positive that the doctor Bill refers to in this review is Dr. Hugh Westlake, who appeared in all nine of Jonathan Stagge’s detective novels, of which this is the first. (I do not know who the deputy doctor might be.) Stagge was a pseudonym of Richard Wilson Webb, (1901-1970) & Hugh Callingham Wheeler, (1912-1987), who also collaborated on books as by Q. Patrick and Patrick Quentin.

MICHAEL CONNELLY – The Concrete Blonde. Harry Bosch #3. Little Brown, hardcover, 1994. St. martin’s, paperback, 1995. Reprinted many times.

   Connelly won a Best First Novel Edgar for The Black Echo, the first book about LAPD detective and ex-tunnel rat Hieronymus (“Harry”) Bosch, and followed it with a second Bosch tale that I thought was even better. Third time charmed?

   Harry is on trial. He’s being sued by the widow of a man he shot and killed four years ago while attempting to arrest him as a serial killer. Now the civil suit claims he acted imprudently, but there’s worse to come. An anonymous note is delivered to the police claiming that Bosch killed the wrong man, and that the serial killer is alive, well, and in operation — and it directs them to a body to prove it.

   Harry is convinced that the man he killed was guilty, which would mean that there is a copycat killer. But is he right? And if he is, how does the copycat know what he knows about the original killings?

   Meanwhile in the courtroom, the attorney for the plaintiff is making hash of Bosch;s incompetent City Attorney, and she, too, seems to know things she shouldn’t, particularly about the copycat.

   To answer my opening question, yes, I think so. I’ve thought Connelly’s writing powerful from the start but had a few minor reservations about his plotting, particularly in the first book. I have no such problems here. He knows how to tell a story, and this is not a given among today’s crime novelists. Bosch is a strong character, and the supporting cast is drawn in enough depth to fill the roles creditably.

    The Concrete Blonde moves Connelly into the top rank, if you hadn’t already placed him there.

THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE. Phoenix Cinematografica, Italy, 1971, as La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba. Phase One, US, 1972; dubbed. Anthony Steffen, Marina Malfatti, Enzo Tarascio (as Rod Murdock), Giacomo Rossi Stuart. Direcctor: Emilio Miraglia.

   The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave starts off as an uncomfortably sleazy enterprise before transforming into a gripping, moody Gothic thriller. Directed by Emilio P. Miraglia, this stylish Italian giallo film has the typical sex and violence that is prevalent in the genre. But what it also has – what gives the film a little something extra – is a Gothic atmosphere that owes as much to Roger Corman’s cinematic adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories and poems as to the emerging Italian proto-slasher genre of which it is indubitably a part.

   Although an Italian film with dialogue in Italian (there’s also apparently an English language version), the movie is set in England. Aristocrat Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) lives a decadent lifestyle in his family’s estate. His wife, the beautiful redheaded Evelyn, has recently died. But not before he was able to confront her about her infidelities. So Alan is a little … mentally unbalanced. So much so that he has a penchant for bringing red headed prostitutes back to his lair so he can have his way with them.

   All that changes when he meets Gladys (Marina Malfatti), a stripper who Alan decides is going to be his next wife. All seems well finally for the tormented Alan. But when Alan’s family members begin to die in horrifically mysterious ways, it seems as if he may be cursed. Perhaps his wife Evelyn has indeed come back from the grave to exact revenge. Or maybe someone is playing a giant prank, a cruel trick to send the wealthy Alan over the edge in order to inherit his large fortune.

   If you can manage to overlook the giant plot holes in the story, you might just find yourself a bit enthralled with The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave. Although it’s not nearly as good a film as Dario Argento’s output from the same era, it has a stylish flair, some really dark humor, and an effective score composed by Bruno Nicolai.

COMPANY BUSINESS. MGM, 1991. Gene Hackman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kurtwood Smith, Géraldine Danon. Screenwriter-Director: Nicholas Meyer.

   An aging former member of the CIA is called out of semi-retirement to oversee the clandestine end-of-the-Cold-War swap with the KGB, with a side payment of two million dollars thrown in.

   Of course things go wrong, and both the agent and the prisoner he’s supposed to turn over go on the run. And they become buddies, after a fashion, and you know how the story goes. The two stars make the movie fun for a while, but overall the best they can make of it is low key and non-involving entertainment, and little else.

LOUIS TRIMBLE – The Surfside Caper. Ace Double D-505, paperback original; 1st printing, 1961. Published back-to-back with In a Vanishing Room, by Robert Colby (reviewed here ).

   To be absolutely honest, Larry Flynn is not a private eye. He’s really a trouble-shooter for a worldwide hotel chain, which ordinarily would be close enough. I may be stretching the point, though, since in this case, he’s working on his own time. Does it matter, though? He talks, thinks and acts like a PI, and that’s all that really counts.

   As it turned out, The Surfside Caper was the only book he ever appeared in. Starting as far back as 1941 with a book from Phoenix Press, Trimble wrote perhaps two dozen crime and detective novels, most of them along the same lines as this one, and in those books he made use of only one series character, an insurance investigator named Martin Zane (Cargo for the Styx, Ace, 1959, and The Dead and the Deadly, Ace, 1963). After 1963 he turned to writing science fiction and westerns only.

   This one begins with Flynn being nearly run off the road and down a steep hillside while on his way to the Surfside Lodge, somewhere along the California coast. It’s the other car, however, that goes off the road, and the driver is badly injured. Flynn goes to get help, and before he knows it, he’s accused of two murders and up to his eyeballs in a plot that he knows nothing about.

   The owner of the luxury resort he was headed for is the widow of a good friend of Flynn’s, now deceased, and when she asked him for his help, he came running. Now she acts as though he’s working for someone else, and what’s more, there are plenty of others involved who that someone else might be.

   Trimble keeps the story going by stirring up the plot and the players in it by slight of hand only, keeping Flynn pretty much in the dark most of the way. Lots of secrets and misunderstandings, in other words, with hints of perverse activities that don’t particularly add much to the overall mix.

   To sum it up briefly, competent, but not particularly recommended.

EDWARD D. HOCH – The Thefts of Nick Velvet. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1978. A limited edition of 250 copies was also published in slipcase, numbered and signed by the author, adding the story “The Theft of the Persian Slipper.”

   The best of Edward D. Hoch’s short stories are divided more or less equally among five outstanding series characters: Police Captain Leopold, whose cases are generally of the procedural variety; Rand, the retired spy, who is an expert at solving difficult codes and ciphers; Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a New England country doctor who solves “impossible” rural mysteries in the 1920s and 1930s; Simon Ark, a shadowy figure who claims to be a 2000 year-old Coptic priest and whose detections are tinged with elements of the occult; and Nick Velvet (born Velvetta, but he dropped the last two letters because the name sounded too much like a popular cheese), a master thief with a peculiar code of honor — he will risk his life and freedom to steal any object, no matter how impossible the challenge, so long as the item has no monetary value.

   This quirk alone makes Nick Velvet unique among crime-fiction protagonists, and also makes for some highly unusual, even bizarre, challenges to his professional expertise. “The Theft of the Clouded Tiger,” for instance, in which he is hired (he works by assignment only) to swipe a tiger from a zoo, Or “The Theft of the Silver Lake Serpent,” in which a hotel owner pays him to steal a sea serpent out of a small Canadian lake.

   Or “The Theft from the Empty Room,” in which Nick is evidently hired to steal nothing at all. Some of Nick’s adventures turn into fair-play whodunits in which he is forced to play detective; in others, it is the baffling motives behind the odd things he is asked to purloin that keep the reader guessing; and in still others it is the question “How in the world can Nick possibly accomplish that theft?”

   No matter what type of story it happens to be, it is certain to be wonderfully inventive and entertaining. Hoch’s mastery of the criminous short story is evident in every one of the thirteen entries in this collection.

   Nick Velvet shares one other collection (with Rand, the retired spy): The Spy and the Thief (1971), which has seven stories featuring each character. Simon Ark appears in three collections: The Judges of Hades and City of Brass, both published in 1971, and The Quests of Simon Ark (1985). Also published in 1985 was the first Captain Leopold collection, Leopold’s Way, which contains nineteen stories and a useful checklist.

         ———
   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.

MARGARET MILLAR – Wall of Eyes. Random House, hardcover, 1943. Reprinted in Thrilling Mystery Novel, pulp magazine, November, 1945. Dell #110, paperback, mapback edition, 1946; Lancer 72-994, paperback, 1966; Avon, paperback, 1974; International Polygonics, paperback, 1986.

   I found this to be a strange and very interesting book. Half of it concerns the members of a very wealthy family, and one that’s also totally dysfunctional. A key to the problem is the youngest daughter, who lost her sight two years before in an automobile accident, but now who angrily demands attention almost constantly. Worse, even though she is blind, she is haunted by a wall of eyes staring at her, filled with hate.

   The other half concerns a cheap night club, its bouncer and several of its dancing girls. How the two halves meet is part of the mystery — and provides most of its solution.

   It is Inspector Sands of the Toronto police who’s called upon to investigate the murder of Kelsey Heath, the woman who’s blind, and by the time the case is over, he very nearly plays God too. Millar is well-known for her black humor, and it’s quite apparent in this book. It’s an extremely good detective story, but it’s also one that’s distinctly sour and cynical as well.

Bibliographic Notes:   Inspector Sands appeared in two of Margaret Millar’s other novels, those being The Devil Loves Me (Doubleday, 1942) and The Iron Gates (Random House, 1945). Her other series character, Dr. Paul Prye, also appears in the first of the two.