WILLIAM COLT MacDONALD – Powder Smoke. Berkley Y814, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1953. Berkley Medallion X1718, paperback 1969. Five Star, hardcover, 2005. Leisure, paperback, 2006. (The latter two editions also include the short novel The Son of the Wolf.)

   There’s some justification for this book to be included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, but I’m sure Al knows best, and in spite of all the criminal activity in it, it’s not.

   Most of the tale is taken up with the attempt by “Powder Smoke” Peters, owner of the PSP ranch, to clear young Owen Thorpe from the charges that he killed his brother. The main evidence against Owen is the fact that his gun is found on the ground next to the body, so obviously the case is not that strong to begin with.

   The sheriff, Milton Lapps, is not so very bright, and this also helps keep the case alive. (At one point Powder Smoke nicknames him “Mental,” which tells you something about the book, but I’m not sure what.) I kept waiting for the big twist at the end, but even though I know it’s already come and gone, I feel as though I’m still waiting.

   My email traffic has been buzzing with Peter Cheyney messages, both “to” and “from.”

   UK bibliographer Steve Holland of the Bear Alley blog, which has in the past run several lengthy posts about this hugely successful author of thrillers in the 1940s and ’50s, recently wrote to say: “Amazing to see all these forgotten works by such a major author turning up.”

   Now available at Roy Glashan’s freeread.com.au (a Project Gutenberg offshoot) is The Deadly Fresco, which made its first appearance as a newspaper serial in Australia in 1932.

   In Roy’s pipeline are several more such full-length works, written as much as eight years prior to publication of the “first” Cheyney novels recorded at Wikipedia, the Thrilling Detective website, the Official Peter Cheyney website, etc.

   Just a few days ago I told Roy about The Sign on the Roof, serialized in the Auckland Star from September 14 to October 5 in 1935, and about Death Chair serialized in the New Zealand Herald from May 21 to July 16 in 1932. (Very incidentally the NZ Herald was the first paper I worked on after arriving here in 1967, and I was an Auckland Star sub-editor at the time of its closure in 1991.)

   Roy replied, “I wasn’t aware of the existence of this novel [The Sign on the Roof]. ”

   Steve Holland found an advertisement in a British newspaper announcing serialization of Death Chair in the Sheffield Mail in 1931. It said, “Mr Peter Cheyney is already well known to Sheffield Mail serial readers who remember his splendid stories The Vengeance of Hop Fi and The Gold Kimono.”

   Both these serials were also syndicated and ran in Australian and New Zealand newspapers, such as the Auckland Star and the New Zealand Herald. Digital image files can be seen at PapersPast, a website of the National Library of New Zealand.

   Roy tells me he has ebook versions of the pair in the pipeline for his RG Library at freeread.com.au. The Vengeance of Hop Fi‘s first appearance that he knew of was the serialization in the Auckland Star beginning on July 7, 1928.

   The FictionMags Index has novella, presumably abridged, versions of the Hop Fi and Komino stories listed under the pen-name “Stephen Law” and published in 1937 in single issues of the Amalgamated Press’s Detective Weekly. FictionMags also lists a newspaper serialization of The Sign on the Roof in The Hawick News (Scotland) in 1935.

   Whetting my reading appetite for these well and truly forgotten books, not known to have been in print since the 1920s and ’30s, is this quote from the NZ Herald:

    “The Death Chair is an astounding story told by a great writer in his most brilliant form. It is drama, pathos, humour, a story that captivates the minds of all who read.”

Note:   Part Two of this two-part article appears here.

THE TIME TUNNEL. 20th Century Fox Television, 2002. [See comment #22.] Unaired pilot. David Conrad, Andrea Roth, Max Baker, Bob Koherr, Tawny Cypress. Written by Rand Ravich, based on the original series created by Irwin Allen. Director: Todd Holland.

   The first and only season of the original Time Tunnel series was on ABC during the 1966-1967 season. I was not a fan. I made sure I was on hand for the first episode, though, and I was so disappointed after seeing it that I never watched it again. There were so many holes in the plot that I found what was on the air next to worthless. That’s what growing up reading Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke will do to you.

   The earlier series is out on DVD, though, and this unaired pilot that came along some four decades later is one of the bonuses to be found on the final disc. (If I’m in error about this later show never being telecast, please let me know.)

   It’s actually quite good. If it had picked up as a series, and I’d watched this as the first episode, I’d have watched more, there’s no doubt about it. The tunnel itself is a lot spiffier, of course, but so is the story line, which considers the possibility — if not likelihood — that changing things in the past is more than likely to change the way the present looks now, with no one being aware of it.

   Except for the scientists and technicians who were working underground when a “time storm” was accidentally created. They are also aware of “ripples” in time that mean something has happened to change history as they know it. Their job: to go back to the past to correct it.

   It turns out that a young monk with the bubonic plague has slipped far into his future, 1944 and Germany during World War II. A team from their present has to go back and solve the problem, and quickly. During this highly secret operation, one of the members meets his own grandfather, who is known to have died that day. Can he save him? Or, should he save him?

   The cast consists of a bunch of actors unknown to me, but they do just fine. Even better is the script, which I think does about as good as it’s possible to outline the problems of time-related paradoxes as could be done in less than 50 minutes of running time.

JON KATZ – Family Stalker. Kit Deleeuw #2, Doubleday, hardcover, 1994. Bantam, paperback, 1995.

   I didn’t expect to like this. I had it pegged as a suburban cozy from the title of his first novel, Death by Station Wagon, and the fact that the lead was a PI with an office in a mall, f’chrissake.

   Kit Deleeuw is a refugee from the Wall Street of the 80s, an innocent worker in a firm not so innocent, but nevertheless hounded out of the profession and now working as a private investigator in a New Jersey suburb. His wife works in New York as a social worker while working on her degree in psychology, and he does as many of the parenting and housely chores as she, if not more.

   He is hired by a lady lawyer in his town to investigate a woman that she says is deliberately trying to destroy her family. He doesn’t like divorce work, but that’s not what the woman wants; she just wants to find out why this person is doing what she’s doing. He takes the case, but has barely begun when the lawyer’s husband is murdered. and she seems to be the only suspect. The woman he is investigating has disappeared, and the facets of her character that come to light are puzzling and contradictory. Then there’s another murder.

   I was wrong; it’s not a cozy. It’s really sort of grim, even though Katz uses a lot of words describing suburban life, raising kids, and the characters of Kit and his wife. Oddly enough, I enjoyed reading it all. The things he had to say struck me as interesting and apt, ad while there’s no question that they slowed the story down, I didn’t think they did unduly. I liked his prose, and thought he handled the first person narration well.

   Deleeuw struck me as a reasonably believable character, and not at all typical of either the hardboiled private detective or the cozy sleuth. I found the other characters realistic enough with a few minor exceptions, and though the mystery itself was nothing exceptional, neither was it offensive

   All in all, a pleasant surprise. Maybe that’ll teach me not to pre-judge.

      The “Suburban Detective” series —

1. Death by Station Wagon (1993)

2. The Family Stalker (1994)
3. The Last Housewife (1995)
4. The Fathers’ Club (1996)
5. Death Row (1998)

MURDER BY DEATH. Columbia Pictures, 1976. Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco (Milo Perrier), Peter Falk (Sam Diamond), Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester (Jessica Marbles), David Niven (Dick Charleston), Peter Sellers (Sidney Wang), Maggie Smith (Dora Charleston), Nancy Walker, Estelle Winwood. Title drawings by Charles Addams. Screenplay: Neil Simon. Director: Robert Moore.

   It was a dark and stormy night. Five of the world’s greatest detectives have been summoned, and collectively they’re given a million dollar challenge: solve a murder about to happen, or face the fact that their host, Mr. Lionel Twain, is actually the world’s greatest criminologist.

   For about 20 minutes this is an absolutely devastating parody of Sam Spade, Charlie Chan, Nick & Nora Charles, Miss Marple and M. Hercule Poirot, full of puns, one-liners and sight gags — about one a minute as a conservative estimate. Guinness as the blind butler, Bensonmum, is nothing but terrific.

   It’s tough to maintain a pace like this, however, as bits and pieces do not a story make, and the last hour simply runs out of witty things to say. The cinematic version of the traditional detective story is an awfully easy target to play around with, but in my opinion, Neil Simon, giving it all he had, wound up and missed.

HELEN McCLOY – Do Not Disturb. William Morrow, hardcover, 1943. Tower Books, hardcover reprint, 1945. Dell #261, paperback [mapback edition]; no date stated [1948].

   When Edith Talbot knocks on the door of the hotel room in which she hears someone frantically sobbing, she can’t imagine what kind of trouble she’s about to get into. The very next day she finds a dead man in her room, and she flees, thinking shes been framed for murder, and that the police are behind it.

   This may sound like an awfully weak premise upon which to base a book, but keep in mind that this was wartime, and everyone’s nerves were on edge. I’d never thought of Helen McCloy as a fine writer before, but after the detailed paces she puts poor Mrs. Talbot through, I’m a believer.

   The story’s dated and flawed by three huge coincidences, but if you’re in the right kind of mood for it, this crisp little detective thriller still has what it takes to make an impact today.

LINDA BARNES – Steel Guitar. Carlotta Carlyle #4. Delacorte Press, hardcover, 1991. Dell, paperback; 1st printing, January 1993.

   In case you haven’t come across any of her cases before, Carlotta Carlyle is a tall red-headed female PI who drives a cab in her spare time (and to make a living) in the Boston area. Whether she ever met a gent named Spenser, I don’t know. I don’t really think so, but it’s fun to wonder whether or not they’d get along.

   A lot of Carlotta’s past comes to the forefront of this one, as a blues singer named Dee Willis who’s now on the verge of becoming a huge success comes back into her life. They met in the folksinger days of their youth. Dee had a voice and a dream. Carlotta decided to pursue other goals, especially when Dee went off with her ex-husband, Cal.

   It turns out, though, that Dee now needs Carlotta. She is being blackmailed for allegedly stealing the songs that made her famous, and she hires Carlotta to find the person behind it. When the bass player (female) in Dee’s band is found dead, thoughg, the stakes, Carlotta realizes, are suddenly a whole lot higher.

   The show business portion of the plot seems authentic, especially when it comes down to old jealousies and friendships. Not as interesting is the real nuts and bolts of the motive, which is always present when there’s big money to be had.

   Carlotta Carlyle’s career lasted for a total of twelve books. She wouldn’t have lasted as long if author Barnes hadn’t always had something to say, and the bittersweet ending added to this one gives it quite a poignancy that few PI novels ever come close to achieving.

      The Carlotta Carlyle series —

A Trouble of Fools (1987)

Snake Tattoo (1989)
Coyote (1990)
Steel Guitar (1991)
Snapshot (1993)

Hardware (1995)
Cold Case (1997)
Flashpoint (1999)

The Big Dig (2000)
Deep Pockets (2004)
Heart of the World (2006)
Lie Down with the Devil (2009)

This track is from the unedited 10″ LP version of Jazz at Oberlin. Recorded March 1953.

Personnel:

Dave Brubeck – piano
Paul Desmond – alto saxophone
Lloyd Davis – drums
Ron Crotty – bass

A KILLER WALKS. Grand National Pictures, British, 1952. Laurence Harvey, Laurence Naismith, Susan Shaw and no one else familiar to US viewers. Screenplay by Ronald Drake, from the play Gathering Storm by Gordon Glennon, based on the novel Envy My Simplicity by Reyner Barton. Directed by Ronald Drake.

   You probably never heard of this quota quickie, but if you come across it, you should give it a try. It offers all the usual flaws of a British-made-to-order cheapie: tinny sound, canned music and jaggy editing because they didn’t shoot enough film to cover things properly, but A Killer Walks has more redeeming qualities than any movie really needs.

   For one thing, it’s based on a play and a novel, which means (1) they had to pay someone for the rights, (2) the action is confined to a few simple sets, perfectly suited to economy measures, and (3) the characters and dialogue are handled rather neatly, and in this case by an able cast.

   Laurence Harvey stars as a man who has spent his life working on his grandmother’s farm, and resented every minute of it. Now I don’t know about you, but when I see him on the screen I find it hard to believe Laurence Harvey ever did an honest day’s work in his life, much less tilled the soil, but fortunately the makers of this thing keep him dressed in suit and tie, always just about to go out for a night on the town with his expensive girlfriend, so we don’t have to deal with the sight of him getting his hands dirty in gumboots & dungarees, which would have made the whole thing unbelievable.

   In fact, it quickly develops that Harvey doesn’t like farm labor any more than you’d think he would, and he’s about had it with having to take wages from his grandmother (Ethel Edwards) at a farm he stands to inherit whenever the old bat kicks off. He’s also losing patience with his younger brother (Trader Faulkner) who has some mental problems that seem to have got him into some vaguely-hinted trouble in the past.

   In due course the plot heads where we knew it would, with Larry murdering Gran and pinning it on his little brother, but Killer Walks gets there gracefully, gradually working up to the thing with evocative characterizations from Edwards and Faulkner. As for Harvey, there’s an excellent bit where he tells his brother that old people don’t really want to live anymore, skillfully written, and delivered with baleful relish delightful to behold.

   When the murder comes, it arrives with a bit of polish, probably the work of co-photographer Jack Asher, who defined the look of Hammer’s horror films a few years later with his stylish visuals. In this case he does it on the cheap, with a few odd angles and superimpositions that lend a nightmare feel to the homicide we knew was coming all along.

   The fun in these things, however, is always in watching things unravel; I mentioned somewhere before that we read detective stories to see things come together and crime films to see things fall apart, and in this case they do so in one brilliant scene between the two Laurences (Naismith & Harvey) perfectly written and performed. Suffice it to say that “a killer walks” is the title, not the coda, and things wrap up very neatly indeed.

LORD DUNSANY “The Strange Drug of Dr. Caber.” Included in The Fourth Book of Jorkens (Jarrolds, UK, hardcover, 1947; Arkham House, US, hardcover, 1948). Reprinted many times including Alfred Hitchcock’s Sinister Spies [edited by Robert Arthur], Random House, hardcover, 1966.)

   There is a long tradition of tall tales being told being told by a single narrator in a gentleman’s club or bar. These include, among others, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart and Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers and Union Club mysteries.

   The story in this particular entry in the category is but one of over 150 short stories written by Irish author Lord Dunsany, beginning in 1925, in which the leading character is a chap called Jorkens. “The Strange Drug of Dr. Caber.” is a (very) short fictional work is as much a puzzle as it is a crime or spy story.

   The tale begins in the Billiards Club where the unnamed narrator and others become involved in a debate as to whether pulling off a murder is easy or difficult. There is about to be an emerging consensus “that murder cannot successfully be committed,” when Jorkens. one of those present, begins to relate the story of one Dr. Caber.

   It is Dr. Caber’s tale that is thus presented for the remainder of the story. And it’s a clever one, perhaps more of a vignette than a short story, but nevertheless one I found to be a compelling read. In 1938, a group of likely British secret agents approached Dr. Caber in order to obtain his services for a most delicate project: kill “Norman Smith,” the pseudonym for a German spy in England.

   Caber reluctantly takes on the project and assures the men that he is going to be able to have “Smith” killed. But he will not mess with the enemy agent’s vicious huge Alsatian dog and he won’t utilize poison. He will merely have Smith pricked with a syringe and lead the man to believe he has been poisoned. As it turns out, Smith ends up dead soon enough.

   How Dr. Caber pulls this off and the role the Alsatian plays in the affair is the key to unlocking the puzzle.