J. FRANK DAVIS – The Chinese Label. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, 1920. A. L. Burt, hardcover reprint, no date. Also available in various Print on Demand editions; it can be read online here.

   When the United States Treasury learns from secret sources that two famous diamonds, stolen from the Sultan’s sash, will probably be smuggled into this country, it sets its machinery quickly to work.

   Napier, of the Secret Service, is the agent chosen, and San Antonio is selected as the likeliest place in which to unearth the plot. Napier’s task is a hard one, but with skill he picks up clue after clue from insignificant happenings, implicating Chinese and Mexicans, and American arms officer, and an international spy.

   All are linked with the two diamonds, which are supposed to be concealed in a can of opium bearing a Chinese label.

Bibliographic Note:   Accoring to Hubin, Davis worked for newspapers for 20 years as drama critic, special writer, managing editor, etc. This was the only crime novel to be published under his own name. As Nick Sherlock Collier, he also wrote Frenological Finance (Clark, 1907).

   There seems to have been a few compilations of mystery stories under this title, but presented below is the earliest I could find. The stories appeared in the Sunday Constitution Magazine of the Atlanta Constitution and what makes them unusual is that they were condensations of the original tales by Arthur B(enjamin) Reeve of Craig Kennedy fame.

   Some of the readers of Mystery*File may have online access to the Atlanta Constitution, but for those who do not, your local library should be able to borrow the microfilms of the issues involved.

   The list is arranged by story number, story title and date of publication. So here goes:

1. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe [not noted as a
Masterpiece of Mystery]-June 10, 1928
2. File No. One-Thirteen, by Emile Gaboriau [also not noted as a Masterpiece
of Mystery] June 17, 1928
3. The Sign of the Four, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. June 24, 1928
4. The Outcasts of Paris, by Eugene Francois Vidocq. July 1, 1928
5. Zadig, by Voltaire. July 8, 1928
6. The Adventure of the Hansom Cab, by Robert Louis Stevenson. July 15, 1928
7. Inspector Bucket, by Charles Dickens. July 22, 1928
8. Sergeant Cuff, by Wilkie Collins. July 29, 1928
9. The Story of the Three Burglars, by Frank R. Stockton. Aug. 5, 1928
10. The Horla, by Guy de Maupassant. Aug. 12, 1928
11. The Biter Bit, by Wilkie Collins. Aug. 19, 1928
12. The Doomdorf Mystery, by Melville Davison Post.. Aug. 26, 1928
13. A Scandal in Bohemia, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sep. 2, 1928
14. The Purloined Letter, by Edgar Allen Poe. Sep. 9, 1928
15. The Safety Match, by Anton Chekhov. Sep. 16, 1928
16. Some Scotland Yard Cases, by Sir Robert Anderson,. Sep. 23, 1928
17. Gentlemen and Players, by E. W. Horning. Sep. 30, 1928
18. The Riddle of the Rope of Fear, by Mary E. and Thomas W. Hanshew,
Oct. 7, 1928.
19. The Sign of the Shadow, by Maurice Le Blanc. Oct. 14, 1928
20. The Murder at the Jex Farm, by Oswald Crawford. Oct. 21, 1928
21. The Border, by Henry C. Rowland. Oct. 28, 1928
22. The Man Who Was Lost, by Jacques Futrelle. Nov. 4, 1928
23. The Mystery of the Steel Door, by Broughton Brandenberg. Nov. 11, 1928
24. The Mystery of the Seven Minutes, by Louis Joseph Vance. Nov. 18, 1928
25. The Lost Room, by Fitz-James O’Brien. Nov. 25,1928
26. The Woman in the Case, by Arthur Train. Dec. 2, 1928
27. The Yellow Cat, by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Dec. 9, 1928
28. The Oblong Box, by Edgar Allan Poe. Dec. 16, 1928
29. A Suspicious Character, by William Hamilton Osborne. Dec. 23, 1928
30 The Mystery of the Steel Room, by Thomas W. Hanshew. Dec. 30, 1928
31. The Great K & A Train Robbery, by Paul Leicester Ford. Jan. 6, 1929
32. The Mystery at 89—-St., New York, by George S. McWatters. Jan. 13, 1929
33. The Adventure of the Toadstools, by Sax Rohmer. Jan. 20, 1929
34. The Fenchurch Street Mystery, by Baroness Orczy. Jan. 27, 1929
35. The Case of Mrs. Magnus, by Burton. F. Stevenson. Feb. 3, 1929
36. Cowardice Court, by George B. McCutcheon. Feb. 10, 1929
37. Cheap, by Marjorie. L. C. Pickthall. Feb. 17, 1929
38. The Great Valdez Sapphire, by Anonymous. Feb. 24, 1929
39. The Episode of the Black Casquette, by Joseph Ernest. Mar. 3, 1929
40. The Listener, by Algernon Blackwood. Mar. 10, 1929
41. The Mysterious card, by Cleveland Moffett. Mar. 17, 1929
42. A Study in Scarlet, by A. Conan Doyle. Mar. 24, 1929
43 [not used]
44. The Lost Duchess, by Anonymous. Mar. 31, 1929
45. The Pipe, by Anonymous. Apr. 7, 1929
46. The Hand on the Latch, by Mary Cholmondely. Apr. 14, 1929
47. [not used}
48. The Beast with Five Fingers, by William F. Harvey. Apr. 21, 1929
49. The Mystery of Marie Roget, by Edgar Allan Poe. Apr. 28, 1929
50. The Risen Dead, by Max Pemberton. May 5, 1929

SIMON BRETT – Situation Tragedy. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1982. First published in the UK by Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1981. Dell/Murder Ink #57, paperback, 1986. Warner, paperback, 1990.

   In case you’ve never come across one of these mystery adventures of actor-sleuth Charles Paris before, be forewarned: there will be times when you will be convinced that if there is any detection going on it is definitely taking second place to Simon Brett’s witty, caustic commentary on the world of show business, British style.

   In this, his seventh case, Paris tackles the world of commercial television. Somewhat to his own surprise, he has a bit part in a new sitcom. It’s a continuing part, at least — but so’s the series of fatal “accidents” that begin to plague the show, and even before the first episode is ever aired.

   Also be forewarned that Charles Paris is something of a tosspot and a womanizer, but he is certainly also one not to be overly impressed with the glamour of show-biz. There are also a couple of digs at the peculiarities of some mystery collectors. (Nobody who doesn’t deserve it!)

   The ending is tragic, scarcely believable, and yet, mostly a fitting one.

Rating: B

The Charles Paris series —

1. Cast in Order of Disappearance (1975)
2. So Much Blood (1976)
3. Star Trap (1977)
4. An Amateur Corpse (1978)
5. A Comedian Dies (1979)
6. The Dead Side of the Mike (1980)
7. Situation Tragedy (1981)

8. Murder Unprompted (1982)
9. Murder in the Title (1983)
10. Not Dead, Only Resting (1984)
11. Dead Giveaway (1985)
12. What Bloody Man is That (1987)
13. A Series of Murders (1989)
14. Corporate Bodies (1991)
15. A Reconstructed Corpse (1993)
16. Sicken and So Die (1995)
17. Dead Room Farce (1997)
18. A Decent Interval (2013)

KONGO. MGM, 1932. Walter Huston, Lupe Velez, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Bruce, C. Henry Gordon. Director: William J. Cowen.

WHITE WOMAN. Paramount, 1933. Carole Lombard, Charles Laughton, Charles Bickford, Kent Taylor, Percy Kilbride. Director: Stuart Walker.

   Caught a couple of of lush tropical melodrama-cum-horror flcks a few weeks back; both are based on stage plays and both quite fun.

   Kongo is a sweaty, steamy, depraved-looking thing, with Walter Huston… well, I almost said he was in excellent form, but here he plays a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair and determined to wreak baroque vengeance on the man who put him there (a role he played on Broadway before Lon Chaney took it up in the film west of Zanzibar).

   To this end, he has set up a trading post in the African jungle, where he cows the natives with stage magic, helped along by Lupe Velez, who radiates her own steam, thank you very much.

   Houston wriggles about the place like a grimy spider, moving his victims about like game-pieces, marking the days till he springs his trap on a calendar scrawled iver with the words “HE SNEERED!”

   This could be corny stuff, all right, but everyone plays it to the edge without tripping over. Director William Cowen (who he?) keeps things moving right along and handles the crucial scene — a satisfying and improbable twist that reverses everything we thought was happening — without blinking at the old-fashioned melodrama, and Harold Rosson photographs with what looks like s sheen of sweat over it all.

   Even normally uninspired actors like Conrad Nagel and Virginia Bruce put it across quite well. In all, a movie to set aside your critical faculties and simply enjoy.

   White Woman tiptoes through similar tropical tulips, and does it quite neatly, thanks mostly to a script by Frank Butler that keeps things edgy and unpredictable, pacey direction from Bluert (Werewolf of London) Walker, and the usual Paramount patina of soft-focus splendor.

   There’s moody acting from Carole Lombard as the eponymous “entertainer” who winds up in a remote rubber plantation, Charles Bickford, Kent Taylor, and Charles Middleton, as lost souls slaving away in the heat, but the film belongs to Charles Laughton, who plays the jungle tyrant, and plays it for laughs — which makes a nasty part somehow more disturbing.

   Made up with frizzy hair and a silly moustache, Laughton gads about in a stripes, plaids and polka-dots, inflicting one deliberately sick joke after another on his unwilling workers, oblivious to the mounting tension until he sets off a tribal uprising (in hilarious fashion) and tries to deal with the bloody outcome.

   Where Kongo seems deliberately theatrical, Woman keeps undercutting the melodrama with surprising bits of business from characters who stubbornly refuse to play by the rules of the genre: Laughton in particular is constantly faced with dramatic outbursts, only to respond as if he wasn’t even in the same movie, kidding around with an unnerving humor about as funny as Richard Widmsrk’s laugh.

   The result is that rarity, an old-fashioned tale that keeps one wondering what’s coming next.

  GEORGETTE HEYER – A Blunt Instrument. E. P. Dutton, hardcover reprint, 1970. First UK edition: Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1938. First US edition: Doubleday, hardcover, 1938. Also: Bantam, paperback, 1973; Berkley, paperback, 1987.

   Police Constable Glass, following his appointed rounds, discovers the bludgeoned body of Ernest Fletcher in his study. Fletcher was not a well-loved man, but his only major fault appears to have been womanizing.

   Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway begin an investigation. No weapon is found on the scene, a woman’s footprints are in the garden, and apparently Fletcher had had a busy evening with people both known and unknown visiting him. After comparing the stories of the various participants, Hannasyde and Hemingway nearly conclude that Fletcher, despite the reality of his corpse, could not have been killed. There just wasn’t time for it.

   To add to their problems, P.C. G!ass, who aids in the investigation, is an inveterate quoter of the Bible, usually from the Old Testament and mostly of the unhappier sort.

   Who, how, and why do manage to get sorted out. The who and how I had, most uncommon for me, figured out; the why is not explained until the end. If Heyer didn’t fool me, she probably won’t fool anyone else, either.

   But don’t let that stop you from reading this one. It’s a good investigation, and there are some quite amusing characters in the monocled young lady mystery writer and Fletcher’s nephew, Neville, who would like to be thought of as a ne’er-do-well. Plus, Hannasyde and Hemingway are engaging investigators.

       The Supt. Hannasyde & Sgt. Hemingway series —

Death in the Stocks, Hodder, 1935
Behold, Here’s Poison!, Hodder, 1936
They Found Him Dead, Hodder, 1937
A Blunt Instrument, Hodder, 1938

       The Inspector Hemingway series

No Wind of Blame. Hodder 1939
Envious Casca. Hodder 1941
Duplicate Death. Heinemann 1951

   For more on Georgette Heyer and her detective fiction, the best place to start would be her page on the Golden Age of Detection Wiki here.

MICHAEL KURLAND, Editor – Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years. St. Martin’s, hardcover, November 2004; softcover, January 2006.

    A solid collection of 12 pastiches recounting some of the adventures Holmes had during the “missing years” when he was thought to have died with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. All are original to this volume except for “The God of the Naked Unicorn,” by Richard Lupoff, written in 1976.

    Highlights are “The Beast of the Guangming Peak,” by Michael Mallory, which has an elderly Colonel in a retired soldiers’ home recalling events 50 years ago in the Himalayas on which he met an explorer named Sigerson (Holmes’s alias) and needy met the abominable snowman.

    “The Case of the Lugubrious Servant,” by Rhys Bowen, has Holmes suffering from amnesia after his encounter with Moriarty and thought to be a half-wit. He’s working as a handyman at a Swiss inn where he meets Sigmund Freud and recovers his memory in time to solve a murder.

    “The Bughouse Caper” features Holmes in San Francisco where Pronzini’s cowboy/PI Jack Quincannon gets jealous of him while working on a burglary and murder case. Michael Kurland’s own “Reichenbach” has both Holmes and Moriarty faking their deaths to go undercover for the British government at the behest of brother Mycroft.

    In “The Adventure of the Missing Detective,” by Gary Lovisi, Holmes crosses into a parallel universe where he died and Moriarty survived to become the power behind King Albert Christian Edward Victor of England (Victoria’s grandson thought by some to be Jack the Ripper) who is turning Britain into a dictatorship.

    And “Cross of Gold” by Michael Collins tells the story of an elderly stepgrandmother telling how the grandfather, a newly arrived immigrant to America, was accused of murdering a wealthy man because of his left-wing sympathies and was cleared by Sherlock Holmes in New York City. The grandson is Dan Fortune.

    These and the other stories here make worthwhile reading and healthy additions to the mountain of Holmes stories written about him since Conan Doyle went to that undiscovered country.

Recently, once again, the old question came up about why wives often hate book and pulp collections and what should be done as the collector gets older.

I can only speak about my own wife and collection but I have heard that many other pulp and book collectors suffer from the hatred of the non-collector. I stress the word “non-collector” because I really have found out during a half century of collecting that the non-collector does not understand the collector at all. I am not talking about a nice little collection of books in dust jackets that sort of look nice in the den.

No, I am talking about filling a house full of books, pulps, vintage paperbacks, DVDs, and original art. My house is a 5 bedroom house with a full basement and a two car garage that I converted into a library. All the rooms have books in them except for my son’s room and the dining room. The family room, the living room, the bedrooms, the basement, are all stuffed with my collection which I have happily accumulated since 1956.

I have found out that it is not reasonable to expect a non-collector to understand the joy and fun such a collection gives to the collector. Most non-collectors see such a large collection as clutter, a hoarder’s sickness, a mess, a waste of money.

If you tell a non-collector that something is worth a thousand dollars, they will say “great, sell it and buy a sofa” or something. I once did a series of posts on PulpMags called “The Loneliness of the Pulp Collector.” I tried to do it with a sense of humor but many other collectors saw my point about being alone with no one to talk to about what you are reading or collecting. My neighbors, my relatives, my co workers, all do not understand me or why I have such a large amount of books and pulps. They think my original cover paintings from the pulps and paperbacks are trash or offensive because most show women in peril or distress being threatened by insane cretins.

I am now 71 and don’t think about getting rid of my collection or selling it or what will happen after I’m gone. It’s been my life for so many years that I cannot imagine being without it. I keep telling myself that I should slow down and maybe stop but I’m still going strong and spending thousands on rare cover art and sets of magazines. I’m not rich but my one vice is I love reading and collecting books and pulps.

To give you an idea of the way I think as a collector, when I was discharged from the army I was so happy that I had survived, that I wrote out some life goals for myself to follow. The first two were to collect complete sets of Weird Tales and Black Mask. Which I managed to do in the 1970’s. In other words my goals were not the usual ones of getting a good job and starting a career, getting married and starting a family, buying a nice car house, etc.

True, I did all these things but my main goals have always revolved around reading and collecting books, pulps, paperbacks, and original art. Speaking of original art, I’ve been trying to stop buying it because I’ve filled up all the wall space and since I’m getting older, why keep buying, etc. But here is another example, recently while at the Windy City Pulp convention in Chicago I saw a beautiful and amazing piece of art, quite large, by Howard Wandrei. It is an unpublished work and cost more than I like to spend but it was so impressive and bizarre that I had to buy it.

Maybe you get my point by now. I’m a collector first and foremost and intend to keep at it until I die. I also happen to be a father, husband, retired from a responsible job, etc. But these are things that billions of other people have also done. Being a collector and reader is something special and unusual especially in these times of electronic gadgets, facebook, and twitter. For those looking to stand out in today’s digital age, gaining more Threads followers can help amplify their unique interests and connect with like-minded communities.

So, right now I’m doing nothing about my books except reading them. After I’m gone someone else will read and enjoy them.

OK, enough, I have to tell my wife that I just bought another set of Planet Stories, even though I have the Frank Robinson set already. See, his set is too nice to read and ….

DONALD E. WESTLAKE – Drowned Hopes. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1990; paperback, 1991.

   While it seems to me that Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder series began at its highest point with The Hot Rock in 1970, succeeding volumes have certainly been amusing. And now, with the seventh, Drowned Hopes, you can also add long. Four hundred and twenty-two pages long, in fact.

   Tom Jimson turns up one day in John Dortmunder’s apartment. Rather surprisingly, since Jimson, one of nature’s nastiest creatures, was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms. But prison budgets in New York being what they are, here’s Tom, looking for help in retrieving $700,000 in armored car loot buried twenty years before.

   On land which the state, in its wisdom, has turned into a reservoir, so the money is under three feet of earth and fifty feet of water. If John won’t help, Tom will simply dynamite the dam, killing a few thousand people, and retrieve the money from the reappearing turf.

   It’s a matter of some indifference to Tom how the money is recovered, but John is of finer mettle and begins to plan furiously. There are several noteworthy things about Dortmunder’s plans: they are carefully, thoughtfully conceived, the details are painstakingly worked out, and they usually fail in spectacular ways.

   Pleasant Drowned Hopes is, with chuckles and some poignancy, though it’s a little attenuated and gifted with the season’s least imaginative title.

      The John Dortmunder series —

1. The Hot Rock (1970)
2. Bank Shot (1972)
3. Jimmy the Kid (1974)
4. Nobody’s Perfect (1977)
5. Why Me? (1983)
6. Good Behaviour (1987)
7. Drowned Hopes (1990)
8. Don’t Ask (1993)
9. What’s the Worst That Could Happen? (1996)
10. Bad News (2001)
11. The Road to Ruin (2004)
12. Watch Your Back! (2005)
13. What’s So Funny? (2007)
14. Get Real (2009)

Thieves’ Dozen (ss collection; 2004)

7th HEAVEN. Fox, 1927. Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Ben Bard, David Butler, Marie Mosquini, Albert Gran, Gladys Brockwell, Emile Chautard, George Stone. Scenario by Benjamin Glazer, based on the novel by Austin Strong. Cinematography by Ernest Palmer. Director: Frank Borzage. Shown at Cinevent 38, Columbus OH, May 2006.

   After thirty years of film festivals, there are undoubtedly notable films that have eluded me, but I have finally seen the film that established Gaynor and Farrell as major stars and led to a partnership that lasted for twelve films.

   Still, this is not a partnership that has endured in the experience of current film fans as have the Eddy/McDonald films of the mid-1930s, although for a roomful of viewers at Cinevent I venture to say that the magic of the two distant stars flamed again in their glory, albeit briefly.

   The film follows the fortunes of Diane, a waif rescued from the streets by Chico, a sewer worker who’s just been promoted to his long dreamed-of job as a street cleaner. But, of course, he’s no ordinary blue-collar worker but a dreamer and a poet whose act of rescuing the disreputable waif leads to an undying love that flourishes in a garret apartment where they transform the humble room through the miracle of love into a privileged place where their lives flourish and expand.

   Then, the reality of war intrudes, separating them for years during which their devotion unites them daily in a ritual of remembrance. Finally, a tragic event seems to part them forever, unless a miracle can work its magic.

   Gaynor is the miracle that infuses this film with a life that can touch a contemporary audience. Farrell is an appealing partner, somewhat gauche in his romantic ardor, and certainly lacking the transfiguring grace of Gaynor’s smile (so memorable also in Murnau’s Sunrise) or the gamin-like reticence of her mime.

   The two may have starred in better films, but I suspect that they never appeared together in a more appealing one.