P. D. JAMES – The Lighthouse. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover. First US Edition, 2005.

   I won’t dignify these comments by suggesting they in any way constitute a review. I’ve read only five pages and looked at the sixth, and that’s as far as I’m going to go. I hit a cropper on page five. What you will read below constitutes all but the first sentence of a paragraph taking up most of the middle of that page.

   Commander Adam Dalgleish is in a briefing room with several other governmental officials about the investigation he is about to be put in charge of:

   I submit you that this is English, that it does make sense, but when my eyes hit this passage, all it did is make my head spin.

   I did go on and take a look at page six, as Dalgleish continues to be filled in on the case and its significance. Most of the page consists of single paragraph almost twice the size of this one.

   This is a hardcover copy of the first American edition that I have in hand, and in perfect condition. It must have been sent to me as a review copy, as I doubt that I would have purchased it on my own. The list price is $25.95, and it is 335 pages long, not nearly as some novels today, but long enough to get your money’s worth, you would think and perhaps you do.

   I came across it yesterday while cleaning off the stairs to my upstairs study, and since I have never [truth be told] never been able to read a P. D. James novel before, I decided that selling it on Amazon would bring me in a small but tidy sum.

   Wrong! The going price for hardcover editions of this book is 98 cents. And up, of course, but since Amazon takes 15% off the top and provides sellers only $2.64 for mailing the book out, I couldn’t see listing the book there at a competitive price only to lose money. (Postage alone, even without the cost of packing materials, would set me back at least $3.22.)

   You do the math. Of course my copy is a First Edition, which in days past might have meant something, but not any more. Most sellers do not describe their wares on Amazon in any detail whatsoever. I suspect that the one offered at the 98 cent level may even be a Book Club edition. Obviously most buyers do not care.

   I will donate this book to my local library for their next Friends of the Library sale. I thought I’d give it a trial run before I did so, but the next person who buys it is on their own.

THE LADY VANISHES. BBC, UK, made-for-TV movie. First broadcast: 17 March 2013. Tuppence Middleton, Keeley Hawes, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Sandy McDade, Pip Torrens, Stephanie Cole, Gemma Jones, Benedikte Hansen, Jesper Christensen, Selina Cadell, Tom Hughes, Alex Jennings. Screenplay: Fiona Seres, based on the novel The Wheel Spins, by Ethel Lina White. Director: Diarmuid Lawrence.

   The original version of this film, the one done by Alfred Hitchcock back in 1938, is generally considered to be a classic, and with one or two reservations, I think rightly so. There was an earlier remake of the movie in 1979 with Cybill Shepherd, Elliott Gould and Angela Lansbury, but I’ve never seen it. (I’ve been tempted, but should I?)

   The basic story is this, in both the Hitchcock version and this most recent one. A young girl gets on a train somewhere in eastern Europe, having been hit on the head before boarding. With her as a companion is a lady she’s just met who’s also heading back to England, after having worked as a governess for a wealthy family in that country for several years.

   After having tea together, they go back to their compartment, the girl falls asleep, and when she awakens, the lady is gone. She has vanished completely, without a trace.

   The other passengers in the compartment claim they have never seen her, including a sinister looking baroness. Even worse, no one else on the train says they saw her either. What comes next is the crux of the tale, including a good-looking young man who comes to the assistance of the even better-looking young woman, and eventually even comes to believe her.

   The Hitchcock version is often described as a comedy-mystery, and I’ve never felt all that comfortable with many of the scenes that that are meant to be amusing. In contrast, this latest made-for-TV version is fairly serious all the way through. No Charters and Caldicott, for example, the two potty British gentlemen who claim not to have seen the missing woman on the grounds that if there is a delay, they will not get home in time for some important soccer matches.

   In their place this later version does have two dotty ladies who need to get home to attend to their roses, but their later role in the movie is negligible, unlike Charters and Caldicott.

   The underlying plot, the reason for this elaborate charade, is slightly different in the two films, and I think the later one is the better one. In neither movie does the conspiracy make sense, however. How could the perpetrators be sure that everyone else on the train would have reasons to say the had never seen the lady?

   The landscapes in the second film are more lovely (Croatia, supposedly), the scenes on the train are better filmed, as the protagonists make their way up and down the corridor. Truth be told, though, the movie may rely a little too often on visuals, leaving the viewer (at least this one) wondering on one or two occasions what happened, or why.

   The ending epilogue is a bit lame in both, so in that regard the two stories come out even. I’m glad to have seen the second. The players are all fine, although none were known to me at all before a watching. I hope this isn’t out-and-out heresy, but when it comes down to a final summing up, I enjoyed this film more than I did Alfred Hitchcock’s version, mostly because of the sinister, less humorous approach, which I suspect is closer to the book. (I’ve not read it. I wonder how many people actually have?)

PETER HOPKIRK – Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling’s Great Game. University of Michigan Press, softcover, October 1999. John Murray, UK, 1996.

   This is an adventure story, a history lesson, auto-biography, biography, a journal of a journey, and a literary detective story about one of the masterpieces of English literature and world literature, Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Like the author I will not debate the political or racial implications of the novel that takes place in the heyday of the British Raj. This is about the beloved adventure story and its origins, and the India and Northwestern Frontier where they take place, from the hold city of Benares to the Afghan border, the land of the Great Game.

   For anyone who doesn’t know, the war between the Russian and British Empire in India for Afghanistan and the riches of the Grand Trunk road and the gateway to the Far East was fought with actual battles and in the shadowy realm of espionage, dubbed by Rudyard Kipling as the Great Game.

   Kim, Kipling’s novel of half Indian Kim O’Hara, a child of the streets and back alleys of Benares; the strange Lama whose chela or student and servant he becomes and to whom he is wholly devoted; the rascally Mahbub Ali his friend and guardian, a red haired horse trader and secret agent; Colonel Creighton the mysterious head of the British Secret Service on the Indian continent, and all the rest of the motley crew young Kim O’Hara encounters is one of the most beloved books of all time.

   It has been read and influenced writers: John Buchan, Talbot Mundy, T. M. Murari, Frederic Wakeman, M.M. Kaye, T.S. Eliot, Philip Knightley, Mark Twain, …; adventurers, Wilfrid Theisger, T.E. Lawrence, Fitzroy Maclean (a model for James Bond), Patrick Leigh Fermor (the poet and wartime hero of the SOE who kidnaped a German General on Crete); and countless other boys grown to men with a taste for adventure and romance on the Grand Trunk road including a boy nicknamed for him, Harold “Kim” Philby.

   The Great Game, India, and the Raj all form the grand theme of the works of historian Peter Hopkirk, whose bestselling non-fiction recounts the exotic truth of that world with titles as evocative as Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, Trespassers on the Roof of the World, and Setting the East Ablaze knows Central Asia, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East like the back of his hand.

   As one who loved Kim early on, Hopkirk’s paean to the book is a joy to read. He follows Kim’s trail from the relative peace of Benares to the still hazardous and dangerous borderlands of Simla as he tracks down the true locations, and the real people Kipling used in his narrative of life and adventure in 18th century India.

   The result is not only a tribute to the book, but a detective story as he unravels history, legend, and local mythology to bring new life to a living book many of us still turn to for lessons and wisdom. Most of all it is a tribute to a land and people. As Hopkirk concludes: “… the real hero of Kipling’s masgterpiece is neither Kim nor the Lama. It is India …”

   Read this and enjoy a real detective story full of history and adventure, and the wisdom of a young boy who lived in a world so vivid we still seek to visit and recreate, a world no film can do true justice to, a world that once captivated us, and still calls to us across our lives and across time and distance.

RED BALL EXPRESS. Universal International, 1952. Jeff Chandler, Alex Nicol, Charles Drake, Judith Braun, Sidney Poitier, Jacqueline Duval, Hugh O’Brian. Director: Budd Boetticher.

   Although it has a running time just over eighty minutes, Red Ball Express nevertheless manages to pack in many of the familiar tropes of World War II films. There’s the initial backstory setting the film into its proper historical context, a demanding company leader who needs to whip a diverse group of men into a fighting shape, the against-all-odds mission. In Red Ball Express, the mission, however, isn’t so much about combating the Nazis directly as it is supplying the American troops doing the fighting.

   Directed by Budd Boetticher, this Universal-International film is a fictionalized account of the eponymous Red Ball Express, the vast truck convoy network which delivered supplies to the Allies in France after the successful landing on D-Day. The movie is in homage to those soldiers who may not have experienced much in the way of direct combat, but loaded and unloaded supplies and drove trucks through inhospitable terrain. Red Ball Express was intended to assure that these unsung heroes’ sacrifices are not forgotten.

   Jeff Chandler, in a role quite different from some of the escapist, costumer fare he starred in around the same time, portrays the tough, demanding Lt. Campbell. He’s a hard-nosed, not particularly sentimental truck driver originally from Colorado tasked with leading a unit of diverse men.

   These men, some who are experienced in trucking and some who are not, are tasked with a difficult mission. They are to drive trucks to the front lines and deliver much needed supplies to fighting units. Their battle isn’t so much directly against the Germans as against the elements, exhaustion, and their own competing desires, needs, and prejudices.

   Not only is there bad blood between Lt. Campbell (Chandler) and the unit’s second in command, Sergeant Kallek (Alex Nicol), there’s also racial tension, both real and perceived, in the unit. We this through the eyes of the sensitive Cpl. Robertson (Sidney Poitier), who believes he is the target of racial discrimination.

   All told, Red Ball Express remains a significantly above average war film. Even though it’s a short film, the primary characters are all fairly well developed, each with their own personalities and idiosyncrasies. Although the film itself fits squarely into the War in Europe genre, none of the characters are mere archetypes or cardboard cutouts. They’re much better fleshed out than that, providing the viewer the feeling that, under different circumstances, these guys could have been your friends. It’s a war film with heart that doesn’t mask the horrors of war or shy away from difficult issues, quite an accomplishment in any era, but ever more so in 1952.

TIP-OFF GIRLS. Paramount, 1938. Mary Carlisle, Lloyd Nolan, Roscoe Karns, Buster Crabbe, J. Carrol Naish, Evelyn Brent, Anthony Quinn. Director: Louis King

KING OF ALCATRAZ. Paramount, 1938. Gail Patrick, Lloyd Nolan, Harry Carey, J. Carrol Naish, Robert Preston, Anthony Quinn, Dennis Morgan (as Richard Stanley), Richard Denning. Director: Robert Florey.

   In the late ’30s Paramount initiated a series of “B” crime features with a stock company of character players including Lloyd Nolan, Akim Tamiroff Buster Crabbe, Anthony Quinn, J. Carrol Naish and anyone else free that week.

   The films are, almost without exception, fast-moving, tightly-knit and a genuine pleasure to watch. Tip-Off Girls offers Nolan as an Undercover G-Man trying to penetrate a truck-hijacking ring run by Naish (playing in an embarrassing cliche-Italian style that would probably make true Italian lose their lunch) with the sinister aid of Crabbe and Quinn.

   King of Alcatraz, though it sounds like a Prison Movie is actually set aboard a studio-built tramp steamer, captained by Harry Carey and staffed by brawling-over-a-girl-in-every-port tars Nolan (again) and Robert Preston. When escaped super-gangster Naish (a little more restrained this time) sneaks on board with a gang including B-movie icons Tom Tyler, Gustave Von Seyfertitz and Anthony Quinn (again) the Paramount back-lot positively bristles with action.

   You won’t see either of these movies listed in any Year’s Ten Best lists, but they’re both brought off with a style and pace I found quite enjoyable.

   Of all the subcategories of crime fiction, I suppose that hard-boiled private detective stories are my favorites, and I’m sure I read more of them than of any other. [As of the present day, June 1992] who’s the absolute best at writing them now? Gawd, I dunno. I do know that there are a lot of people writing them now, as the lists below will attest.

   Just for the fun of it (all listmakers will understand) and my own edification, I thought I’d list those who currently write primarily in that area that I read regularly, and who almost always furnish me with a book at I enjoy, and often one that I like a great deal. What I ended up with were three groups of 10 each, ranked as groups, but listed alphabetically and unranked within each group. And the winners were:

       Group 1:

Lawrence Block
Michael Collins
Loren Estleman
Stephen Greenleaf
Jeremiah Healy
Arthur Lyons
Marcia Muller
Bill Pronzini
Les Roberts
Jonathan Valin

       Group 2:

Linda Barnes
Earl Emerson
Linda Grant
Sue Grafton
Rob Kantner
Michael Z. Lewin
John Lutz
Robert J. Randisi
William J. Reynolds
William G. Tapply

       Group 3:

Marvin Albert
Peter Corris
Wayne Dundee
Timothy Hallinan
Paul Kemprecos
Jerry Kennealy
Edward Mathis
James E. Martin
Sara Paretsky
David M. Pierce

   That my list is so large implies one of two things (I’m sure you’ll be able to guess which interpretation I prefer): either there are a hell of a lot of decent PI writers around today or I’m sadly deficient in discrimination. Also interesting is that 5 of the 30 are female, which I’d venture to say is higher than the distaff percentage of all PI writers. Does anyone have an idea of the actual breakdown?

   Notable by his absence is Robert B. Parker, whom I like very much at his best, but who has been too uneven in output, and is just too, too bad when he’s bad. There must be at least a dozen others that I read fairly regularly, and heaven knows how many more that I’ve tried and discarded, or haven’t read yet. I hadn’t realized how many there were. Amazing.

   I’d really be interested in hearing your opinions — who you‘d move up or down, who you’d put on or leave off, and/or any other thought that strikes you forcefully but non-lethally.

   As long as I’m boiling ’em hard, a few more opinions:

      The 5 most influential:

Dashiell Hammett
Raymond Chandler
Ross Macdonald
Mickey Spillane
Robert B. Parker

   The above, to me, were no-brainers. Note that no comment on quality is intended, merely influence. It is impossible to read a book in the genre today without hearing distinct echoes of at least one of them, and often of several in the same book. I see very little of Hammett, really, but without him there wouldn’t have been Chandler, so–

      The 5 best no longer writing :

Dashiell Hammett
Raymond Chandler
Ross Macdonald
Thomas B. Dewey
William Campbell Gault

   I‘m reasonably comfortable with the first four, but there were several contenders for #5. I gave it to Gault because I felt he was more consistent over a large body of work. Browne, Brown, and Spicer were others I considered.

      The 5 best newcomers (last 5 or 6 years):

Timothy Hallinan
Linda Grant
Wayne Dundee
Paul Kemprecos
James E. Martin

      5 I’d like to see write some more:

Jack Lynch (Bragg)
Max Byrd (Mike Haller)
Joe Gores (DKA)
Timothy Harris (Thomas Kyd)
Doug Hornig (Loren Swift)

   I know some of them have gone on to bigger and better things, but I particularly miss Gores, and thought Harris had real potential as a PI writer. I liked Lynch’s books more than most people did, and though Byrd and Hornig better than average.

   It should be noted that I don’t consider John D. MacDonald, James Lee Burke, or A. E. Maxwell to be private eye writers, though I have seen all categorized as such in one place or another. All would be somewhere on some list if they were, particularly the first two.

   Noted also among the missing is James Crumley, whom I unrepentantly continue to regard as a muddy plotter writing about unappetizing heroes (?), redeemed only by his erratically powerful prose. Another one whose writing I admire but who is nevertheless absent from all lists is Robert Crais. He’s a talented writer, and I’m hopeful he’ll outgrow his macho excesses as exemplified in Stalking the the Angel.

THE GORGON. Hammer Films, UK, 1964; Columbia Pictures, US, 1964. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Richard Pasco, Barbara Shelley, Michael Goodliffe, Patrick Troughton. Director: Terence Fisher.

   It seems only fitting to close out my four-part tribute to Christopher Lee with a Hammer film. Even more fitting is a Hammer production in which he co-starred with long time colleague and personal friend, Peter Cushing.

   The Gorgon, a quixotic, not fully realized, attempt to transplant the terrifying Greek mythological female creature into a fictional 19-century century German fantasia, fits the bill.

   Directed by Terence Fisher (The Mummy, Dracula), the movie features Peter Cushing as Dr. Namaroff, an urbane man of science (naturally!) reluctantly investigating a series of bizarre murders in his a small German town. Reluctantly, because he suspects that his lovely female assistant, with whom he is in love, might be behind the murders. Even worse, he believes that she may be possessed with the spirit of the ancient Greek mythological creature known as the Gorgon. Its power: to turn whomever looks at her into stone!

   But the task at stopping the gorgon’s moonlight murder spree can’t be accomplished by the good Dr. Namaroff alone. Enter: the mustachioed Professor Karl Meister of Leipzig (Christopher Lee). He’s brash, forceful, tough as nails, and not willing to take any crap from the local police who’d rather have him abscond back to his university.

   And at the end of the day — or rather, night — it’s up to Professor Meister, silver sword in hand to slay the monster. SPOILER ALERT: When the film ends, it’s Lee’s character, the bold tall man with academic knowledge and physical prowess, that’s left standing. It’s a fitting way to end my tribute to some of Lee’s lesser-known films, don’t you think?

LARAMIE. NBC-TV, 4 seasons (1959-63), 124 episodes. Regular cast: Seasons 1 through 4: John Smith (Slim Sherman) and Robert Fuller (Jess Harper); Seasons 1 and 2 only: Hoagy Carmichael (Jonesy) and Robert Crawford, Jr. (Andy Sherman); Seasons 3 and 4 only: Spring Byington (Daisy Cooper) and Dennis Holmes (Mike Williams).

   Laramie is a relatively undistinguished but nevertheless very enjoyable series. Most of the plots are predictable, nothing any regular Western movie and TV fan hasn’t already seen a hundred times before.

   Despite that, one of the things that makes Laramie so watchable is the characterizations supplied by the two leads, straight arrow Slim (Smith) and edgy Jess (Fuller, a man with a checkered past) as they improbably try to run a ranch and a stagecoach station while gallivanting all over the West tracking down bad guys and gals (which could well explain why they’re always strapped for cash to keep the ranch going).

   As for the stories, most of them are standard fare (somebody killed somebody’s brother, etc.), with only a few really pushing the envelope of credibility. It must have been in the leads’ contracts that they would either get badly beaten or shot at least once every episode. Jess in particular usually takes a bullet through the left shoulder but hardly slows down — a real wildcat, that Harper, even with a hole the size of the Channel Tunnel in his torso. And on top of that, no one suffers any infections from their wounds — these guys are TOUGH.

   Best of all, Laramie features some of the all-time great Western villain actors: Lyle Bettger, Rod Cameron, Jan Merlin, Gregory Walcott, James Anderson, Harry Lauter, Roy Barcroft, Dennis Patrick, L. Q. Jones, and Robert J. Wilke being just a few. Even the future Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley) each takes a turn as a bad guy.

   And then there’s Charles Drake, not your usual idea of a villain. In a Laramie episode titled “The Accusers” (episode 72) he plays a smooth murderer who, like Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, almost gets away with it; if only the finale hadn’t been so badly done.

   It must be an axiom in Hollywood: If you can’t come up with something original, steal. Two outright “lifts” from classic non-Western sources for Laramie plots would have to be:

    ~ “Strange Company” (episode 63) — While some of the locals are desperately trying to rebuild a stage line road, somebody in the crew is systematically killing the workers and Slim doesn’t have a clue as to who or why. If Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (or whatever title you might know it by) comes to mind, you’re not alone.

    ~ “The Lost Dutchman” (episode 49) — Slim gets into a scrape when he’s accused of murder and Jess, turning detective, gets involved in the search for a black bird … no, not really, it’s actually a spur which is believed to have an authentic map (aren’t they all?) to the Lost Dutchman’s mine stuffed in the shank. In this variant of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Robert Emhardt assumes the Kasper Gutman part, Karen Steele takes the Brigid O’Shaughnessy role, and Robert Fuller comes across as a creditable Sam Spade.

   So, is Laramie worth your time? It’s a Western, isn’t it? “People love Westerns worldwide. There’s something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It’s a simpler time.” — Clint Eastwood

THE SPIDER. Fox, 1945. Richard Conte, Faye Marlowe, Kurt Kreuger, Martin Kosleck, Mantan Moreland, Ann Savage. Written by Lowell Brentano, Anthony Coldeway, Irving Cumings Jr., Scott Darling, Jo Eisinger, Fulton Oursler and Ben Simkhovich. Directed by Robert D. Webb.

   No, I never heard of it either, but when I saw it on a cheap DVD at Cinevent and glommed that cast, I had to go for it.

   The Spider isn’t all that memorable, but it does offer a fine bunch of thespians trouping cheerfully through the banality. Conte is a sharp, wise-cracking PI, Faye Marlowe the mysterious female client who (as usual) is not what she seems, Mantan Moreland (in a bigger-than-usual part at a major studio) plays the comic-relief assistant, as only he can, and Ann Savage, that bitch-queen of the B-movies, is ideally cast as a vicious and venal double-crosser.

   There’s also a bit of effective New Orleans atmosphere (everyone seems to be sweating) and a neat red-herring turn by Martin Kosleck, but I’m afraid that’s where the film runs out of redeeming qualities.

   Spider is strictly a noir-by-rote, with perfunctory shadows, routine femmes fatales, a suave obvious killer, standard-issue PI and the thick cops typical of B-movies.

   There’s also a shadowy figure who seems to have nothing to do all day but follow Richard Conte around and kill whoever he talks to. Director Webb tries hard to make it look sinister, but the more we see of this dark presence, the more it looks like The Phantom Blot.

   Story? Well, Faye Marlowe has information that her missing sister may have been murdered, but the mysterious woman who holds the evidence wants her to have Richard Conte pick it up for her — don’t bother asking why, because the writers apparently never thought much about it. In time-honored tradition, the person with the vital clue dies before our hero can get it, leading to a chase around New Orleans (and the Fox backlot) with Marlowe, Conte and the shadowy killer constantly jockeying for position.

   Okay, The Spider isn’t a terrible film, and if you’re in the mood it can even be mildly entertaining. But the chief mystery for me was how it took eight (count’em) eight writers to stamp out such a boiler-plate story.
   

LAWRENCE G. BLOCHMAN – Midnight Sailing. Harcourt Brace & Co., hardcover, 1938. Dell #43, paperback, mapback edition, 1944. First published as a ten-part serial in Collier’s, 26 February through 30 April 1938 as “Sunset Voyage.”

   If a detective novel doesn’t take place on a transcontinental train the next best thing is on a slow freighter going across the Atlantic or Pacific. It is the latter that’s the setting of Midnight Sailing, on the Japanese ship Kumo-maru with plenty of pre-war jitters in the background.

   The detective of note, although this is the only murder mystery he seems to have been involved in, is foreign correspondent Glen Larkin, whose assignment is to follow Dorothy Bonner, the heretofore missing daughter of a rich silk merchant who committed suicide after being confronted by a Congressional hearing in which he was accused of stealing secret blueprints from the Navy Department.

   Also involved but seemingly not connected are some negotiations for valadium mines in Peru, and the ship is filled with many interesting characters, or ones who act suspiciously enough that any one of hem could be the killer of a stowaway (although he could have died accidentally) and the ship’s doctor (out and out murder).

   Larkin’s actions are somewhat less than professional on this assignment, since he finds Miss Bonner very attractive, and she seems to respond. But among the various other passengers are her brother (the previously mentioned stowaway) and her fiancé. The reader soon begins to wonder if his suspicions about the latter are warranted or if something else has come into play.

   The detective puzzle is good enough, however, that by the end, all of the pieces have fallen neatly into place. But I have to confess I gave up early on who had the plans when or if they were copies and if so, who made them and why. As for the valadium, that seemed to be a red herring, but I will not tell you whether I was correct about that or not.

   The sights and sounds (and smells) on a freighter heading to Honolulu from California are well described and are the primary reasons I enjoyed this one. The puzzle, which got rather muddled along the way, at least for a while, is a bonus. The romantic aspects are there only to keep the story moving.