CALIFORNIA. American International Pictures, 1963. Jock Mahoney (Don Michael O’Casey), Faith Domergue (Carlotta Torres), Michael Pate (Don Francisco Hernandez), Susan Seaforth (Marianna De La Rosa, Rodolfo Hoyos, Nestor Paiva. Story & Screenplay: James West. Producer-Director: Hamil Petroff.

   I didn’t realize they were still making low budget black-and-white westerns like this as later as 1963, which is when I first started grad school. The stated ambition of the film, according to a short prologue, is to tell the story of California’s fight for independence.

   All the fighting, though, except for a well-choreographed sword fight between leading man Jock Mahoney very near the end of the proceedings, is the stock footage of Mexican soldiers marching their way up the coast to wreck havoc on all the disloyal landowners who stand in their way.

   Once the movie itself begins, it settles down instead to your basic four-sided romantic triangle. Half-Irish half-Spanish Don Michael O’Casey is in love with heiress and black-eyed beauty Carlotta Torres, who is engaged to be married to sinister Don Francisco Hernandez (who not so incidentally was responsible for the death of O’Casey’s father), who spends his time and kisses with cantina owner Marianna De La Rosa.

   The story is mediocre at best — I kept wishing that Zorro would show up — not that Jock Mahoney (looking very much like Yancy Derringer, for some reason) is not very nearly the next best thing, or he would have been, had the story taken a turn for the better that way.

HARRY STEPHEN KEELER – The Skull of the Waltzing Clown. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1935.

   I picked this one up at the last minute to read on a Plane Ride a while back, and I have to say I couldn’t have picked any better.

   It had been a few years since I’d read any Keeler, and though I remembered him fondly as the author of the Strangest Mysteries Ever Written, I’d somehow forgotten just how uniquely talented a writer he really was — in his own way.

   I’ve never read a line of dialogue in a Keeler book that really rang true, never paused over an evocative description nor savored a poetic passage. Keeler’s characters are memorable enough, but none have ever really sprung to life for me, and there are no striking action scenes, breathless chases, or any of the other fol-de-rol that marks lesser writers like Woolrich, Hammett or Chandler.

   No, what makes a Keeler novel is his sheer audacity. No writer before or since has ever dared give such free rein to his own imagination, thrown down the gauntlet to Conventional Realism with such elan, hazarded Disbelief so cavalierly, or sneered so easily in the face of Wildest Coincidence. Nothing is too outrageous for a Keeler novel, and it is this sensation — that literally anything at all might occur — that makes reading him such a delight.

   The Skull of the Waltzing Clown consists mostly of an extended conversation between two men in a room in Chicago. At the same time, though, it’s much more than that: Tales are told, adventures recounted, characters described, letters produced, facts and fictions proven and disproven, bought and sold, until finally the conversation turns into a sort of Metaphysical Crap Shoot, where the players take turns tossing dice at Reality until the classic, last-paragraph denouement.

   I could describe the plot more concretely, I guess, but there’s no point in summarizing a Keeler novel. They have to be read, experienced, to be appreciated, and this one … well it was the perfect literary equivalent of DisneyWorld.

Jazz singer Janice Borla often refers to herself as a “vocal instrumentalist.” To help understand why, listen to this John Coltrane song included on her 1996 album Lunar Octave.

HELEN REILLY – Not Me, Inspector. Random House, hardcover, 1959. Ace Double G-531, paperback, 1963 (packaged with the author’s The Canvas Dagger). Macfadden-Bartell, paperback, 1971.

   Puzzle plots were beginning to make their way out in the late 50s, as far as mystery fiction was concerned, but the authors who’d been writing them since the 30s and 40s were still holding on. Helen Reilly is an author who fits the bill. By 1959, she’d been writing mysteries since 1930 (The Thirty-First Bullfinch, a standalone novel), with this one the 25th of 28 Inspector McKee mysteries.

   Not Me is not a sudden throwback to a period some 15 or 20 years earlier, but rather a continuation of good but not outstanding detective novels by Reilly. The not-so-good news is that while the intricately worked out puzzle works to perfection — it really does — there is a huge problem with the telling of it, and I’ll talk about that shortly.

   It’s not entirely because Inspector McKee has such a small role to play in it, but in a way, it is, because that leaves the characters themselves, innocents and suspects alike, to carry the load, and for a long portion of the book, they don’t.

   To specifics: Mercedes “Dace” Allert’s somewhat weak and definitely bad-tempered husband Harvey disappears soon after it is discovered that he cashed a forged check written on his stepmother’s account. When she dies a lingering death after an automobile accident in a car that Harvey worked on shortly she left the city for upstate New York, he is only spotted here and there, apparently afraid to come home to face the questions that he will be asked and avoiding the consequences. The only thing keeping Dace going is that he does not know that his stepmother died and will not be pressing charges. Not only that, but he has inherited all of her money.

   Reilly was usually very good at pacing her novels, but even the best of authors would find some difficulty in keeping the reader’s attention focused on Dace’s tortured mind, thinking this about her missing husband, then that. In the meantime, though, as a small bonus, we also get a picture of upper middle class society as it was in Manhattan in the 50s, or least one version of it.

   The reason that Inspector McKee is seldom seen in this novel is that there is no obvious homicide victim whose murder needs to be solved, not until page 121 of a 176 page paperback, and that of a woman in Danbury, Connecticut, who has no possible connection to Harvey Allert, other than that a man who called himself Harold Allen had just checked in there, and it was from his room from the dead woman was pushed.

   It seems well nigh impossible for Reilly to tie everything up as neatly as she does, but she does, and no, McKee never has a lot to do with everything but to explain it all up at the end. It’s an ending worth waiting for, and I don’t think the story could have been told any other way, but if there had been, I’d say that this one could have been a contender.

A live version of the title track of singer-songwriter Eileen Jewel’s 2009 CD. You might not want to listen to this CD when you’re down or depressed. I think all of the songs are as melancholy as this one.

JOHN LUTZ – Buyer Beware. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1976. Paperjacks, paperback, 1986. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1992.

   Private eyes tend to specialize these days. Alo, Nudger, for example, comes highly recommended in child custody cases. That he’s not the hard-boiled type is well illustrated by his dependence on antacid tablets, but enough money can overcome many qualms.

   Murder is not in his line, but once persuaded, he takes his investigation into the efficient world of business and finance, which is faced with a deadly extension of the rules it plays by.

   Lutz has an eye for people and background that adds greatly to a tale that holds its own most of the way, yet I did wish the scheme were not ultimately so far-fetched, made all the more so by the rushed wrap-up.

Rating: C plus.

      The Alo Nudger series —

1. Buyer Beware (1976)
2. Night Lines (1985)

3. The Right to Sing the Blues (1986)
4. Ride the Lightning (1987)
5. Dancer’s Debt (1988)

6. Time Exposure (1989)
7. Diamond Eyes (1990)
8. Thicker Than Blood (1993)

9. Death by Jury (1995)
10. Oops! (1998)
11. The Nudger Dilemmas (story collection, 2001)

SUPERNATURAL. Paramount Pictures, 1933. Carole Lombard, Allan Dinehart, Vivienne Osborne, Randolph Scott, H. B. Warner. Director: Victor Halperin.

   Much like White Zombie, which I reviewed here, Supernatural, also directed by Victor Halperin, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There are so many loose strands that one loses count. Add on top of that some sequences that really don’t even fit very coherently into this narratively challenged movie.

   In much the same way as White Zombie, which I caught as part of the UCLA Festival of Restoration last year, Supernatural unfolds like a fairy tale, as if one is caught in a silly dream where plot takes a back seat to a simultaneously innocent and sinister atmosphere and mood.

   Indeed, it’s all rather good, albeit senseless fun.

   Featuring Carole Lombard and Randolph Scott as a couple who must face off against a con man, the disembodied spirit of a recently executed murderess, and possibly a murderer in their close circle, the film has so many subplots that ultimately go nowhere. With an omnipresent musical score than zips right along and a few ridiculously charming attempts at special effects, this pre-code horror (horror-comedy?) programmer still isn’t really what you’d call a solid work of filmmaking. But in spite of its numerous flaws, given the financial and technological restraints of the era, it’s nevertheless a far better product than you might initially think.

THE MAGNIFICENT DOPE. 20th Century Fox, 1942. Henry Fonda, Lynn Bari, Don Ameche, Edward Everett Horton. Director: Walter Lang.

   I haven’t checked Lynn Bari’s filmography in detail, but I have a feeling that this is one of her relatively few big budget movies she’d made up to this point of time, 1942, and maybe even later. It’s a comedy-romance, and even with Henry Fonda as a goofy guy from Vermont come to the big city to be taken advantage of (a role at that time of his career he was born to play), it’s not all that funny.

   But perhaps it was in 1942. Funny, that is. Today the best it might be considered is amusing.

   Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

   Don Ameche plays Dwight Dawson, the smooth-talking head of a personal success school that’s floundering on the rocks and going down for the third time. Lynn Bari is his level-headed assistant (and steady girl friend) who comes up with a great ad campaign: to create a contest to find the laziest, least successful man in America, give him a check for $500 and a free course in the Dwight Dawson school, and make him a big success.

   You can probably take it from here: Henry Fonda accepts the check, refuses the course, but falls (secretly) in love with Lynn Bari, and decides maybe he needs to become a success after all.

   Question: Who changes who? Henry Fonda or the world of big business? Who gets the girl? Henry Fonda or Don Ameche?

   That’s what I thought. But to their credit, they all play their parts extremely well.

S. L. FLORIAN – Born to the Purple. Zebra, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1992.

   This is billed along the top of the front cover as “A Delia Ross-Marlani Mystery,” which suggests that expectations were that there was going to be more than one. If so, it didn’t happen. There was a point in time when Zebra cut back suddenly and drastically on their line of ongoing mysteries, and that may have been the reason. Or another reason might have been that the author had only one story to tell, and Born to the Purple turned out to be it.

   It isn’t the type of book I usually read, and while this review is generally going to be positive, I have my doubts that I’ll be able to persuade anyone reading this to go track it down. But as that first paragraph might suggest, I have a certain fascination for one-book authors, just to see what they might have to say.

   Let’s start by describing Miss Delia. She’s fabulously wealthy, for starters, the only child of two parents, Lady Adela, the Countess of Ross, and Signor Federico Merlani, who produced Delia and quickly went their own jet style ways, leaving the girl in the hands of Mr. and Mrs. MacPhee and a series of boarding schools but growing up more or less on her own.

   Not only is she beautiful, but she has been a top ranked ballerina, has earned a doctorate in medieval studies at Cambridge, has given concerts playing the harpsichord, taught at Harvard, and competed as an equestrian at the 1984 Olympics. Once married but now divorced.

   Dead is the older sister of the pair of her two best friends, whom she met at boarding school when all three were all very young. The medical examiner’s staff finds nothing suspicious, but Delia is not so sure.

   I hope you are still with me. Obviously with this book she adds becoming an amateur detective to her résumé, and for good reason: Magda was murdered. Assisting her is a good-looking assistant medical examiner, and they (ahem) are soon in bed to together. At which point the courtship begins, and if you don’t mind my saying so, their romance sort of crowds the mystery out of the story for long periods of time.

   But Florian is a good enough writer to overcome all this, and I enjoyed the book. It turns out that the name of the author behind the pseudonym is Susan Sobel-Feldman, whose name I found online on a Jewish magazine’s website, but little more. I don’t know if this oddly charming mystery-romance left anything behind to build another detective story on — but I kind of wish it had happened.

DOROTHY SIMPSON – Wake the Dead. Luke Thanet #11. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1992. Bantam Crimeline, paperback, 1993. First published in the UK by Michael Joseph, hardcover, 1992.

   Simpson’s Luke Thanet books are on my “mildly enjoyable” list. She’s a decent though not outstanding writer, and Thanet, with one exception that I’ll mention later, is an amiable enough detective. Put that together with my general fondness for British village mysteries, and I usually enjoy them.

   A local aristocrat’s bed-ridden mother dies during an annual fête, and the police surgeon (who is attending it) alerts Thanet (who is there also) that in his his opinion it is likely to prove murder by asphyxiation. With bluebloods and several hundred potential suspects, Thanet’s work is cut out for him. Before the investigation gets too far, the MP, his wife, his mistress, and a disgruntled local lady all seem to have motive and opportunity. The dead woman was remarkably ill thought of.

   Thanet is assisted as always by his trusty Sergeant, Mike Lineham. His avuncular patronization of poor Mike is the one consistently sour note in Thanet’s characterization. Wife Joan, daughter Bridget, and son Ben are always part of the books — here, a sub-plot is Bridget’s budding romance is a young man of whom Thanet is dubious. This is an old-fashioned village mystery, with decent, engaging characters. If you tire of the grimmer angst-filled variety, ot will make a nice change of pace.

Bibliographic Note:   There were in all 15 Luke Thanet novels, beginning with The Night She Died in 1981 and ending with Dead and Gone in 1999. For a full list and a wide array of cover images, check out the Fantastic Fiction website.