CHRIS WILTZ – The Killing Circle. Macmillan, hardcover, 1981. Pinnacle, paperback, 1985.

   I like private detective stories. Ordinarily, the first in what promises to be a new private eye series is a matter for rejoicing. Add a plot that begins with a set of missing books, rare editions of William Blake, and the vividly moody back-ground of New Orleans, and what we get this time is, well, a book that just doesn’t live up to its potential.

   The detective is named Neal Rafferty, and his biggest problem in life is that his father doesn’t understand him, and his love life is in trouble too. He’s quit the police force under fire, and they don’t like him too well either.

   The plot is nicely twisted, although heavily tangled at times in massive coincidence. Rafferty meets a girl he can respond to, of course. The problem here is that the converse does not seem to be wholly true.

   What lets us down is the writing. The art of subtlety seems beyond Wiltz’s capabilities. Most of the story she tells is stiff, formal, perfunctory and placid.

Rating: C minus.

[UPDATE] 12-17-13.   I ended this review in its first appearance rather smugly with a PostScript commenting on the fact that all the while reading this book I was under the impression (false) that Chris Wiltz was male. Further comment in this regard unnecessary. A re-do on this one might be in order.

       The Neal Rafferty series —

1. The Killing Circle (1981)
2. A Diamond Before You Die (1987)
3. The Emerald Lizard (1991)
4. Glass House (1994)

   Chris Wiltz has written one other work of crime fiction, that being Shoot The Money (2012), described by one source as a “racy gumbo of suspense, comedy, and ‘sisters-in-crime.'”

GENE FOWLER – Salute to Yesterday. Random House, hardcover, 1937. No paperback edition.

   The lead-in to this review is long and fairly pointless, but I’ll tell it anyway.

   Around Thanksgiving I decided to lighten the Holiday Mood by watching some old W.C.Fields movies (there aren’t any new ones) and reading a couple books on the old master: Robert Lewis Taylor’s W. C. FIELDS, HIS FORTUNES AND FOLLIES and William K. Everson’s THE ART OF W.C. FIELDS.

   Everson does his usual fine job analyzing and evaluating films which at the time it was written (1967) were nearly impossible to see. I think he over-praises Fields’ Paramount films, some of which seem slow and self-indulgent to me (but others, like THE OLD FASHIONED WAY and TILLIE & GUS are lots of fun) and he misses the fun of Fields’ Universal films, which are fast and pleasantly surreal… but he’s entitled to his opinions.

   Everson also takes some pains to point out that Taylor’s book on Fields is filled with inaccuracies and downright lies, which may be true, but it’s also one of the most fun-to-read biographies I’ve ever opened, which seems only fitting for a subject like this. And while perusing FORTUNES & FOLLIES I came upon mention of SALUTE TO YESTERDAY, a novel written by Gene Fowler, a close friend of Fields, Barrymore, Flynn and the crowd they ran with.

   Taylor’s story is that Fields loved this book and wanted to buy it for the movies — there’s juicy part in it that would have suited him perfectly. Fowler, however, knew that Fields tried to cheat everyone he did business with, and he didn’t want to put a strain on their friendship, so all his life he refused to do any professional work for him. More’s the pity that this was probably a wise decision.

   At any rate, the story inspired me to seek out a copy of SALUTE TO YESTERDAY, which is probably the most enjoyable book I’ve read all year. Fowler fills his story with colorful characters, hilarious happenings and humorous asides that had me laughing out loud as I read.

   The plot revolves around Captain Trolley, a colorful and rather talkative veteran of the Civil War, who was a gunner’s mate on the Monitor but earned the nickname “Captain” later in life when he was in a brothel that got caught in a flash-flood and swept downstream, whereupon Trolley (the story goes) assumed command, fashioned a rudder out of a headboard, quelled mutiny on board as he piloted his Magdalenic Ark to shore, and held back the gentlemen present at gunpoint until the ladies had all safely debarked and was himself the last to leave the sinking bark of ill-repute.

   Fowler fills SALUTE with charming incident like this, and also eventually gets around to a plot of sorts involving Trolley, his daughter (equal parts Goneril and Regan, but a very likable character when she appears) a suicidal reporter, venal politicians, cops (corrupt inefficient and inept) a faded harlot with whom the aged Trolley dallies, and a really nasty local millionaire who years ago legally murdered Trolley’s son, and whose own murder sets off a chain of events that are only wrapped up by one of the finest amateur sleuths in literature, anthropologist Otto Thumb, whose criminological creds are that after thirty years of research he proved conclusively that Egyptian queen Hatshepsut poisoned her husband, Pharaoh Thotmes II.

   SALUTE TO YESTERDAY abounds with enjoyable twists like this and turns of plot that keep the reader (this one anyway) entertainingly engrossed from start to finish. A book I’m glad I discovered, and one I’ll cherish.

ROBERT GALBRAITH (J. K. ROWLING) – The Cuckoo’s Calling. Mulholland Books, US, hardcover, 2013. First published in the UK by Sphere Books, 2013.

   It was no surprise that this critically acclaimed book went from near obscurity to bestseller status when it was revealed Robert Galbraith was none other than J.K. Rowling, the mega-selling author of the Harry Potter series. It was no real shock the book was well written. It may, however, come as a surprise to some readers who avoided the book that its virtues are its own and not second hand Pottery. The Cuckoo’s Calling is one of the better debut mysteries I’ve been lucky enough to read in recent years written by anyone under any name.

   Cormoran Strike is a burly London-based private investigator who lost a leg in Afghanistan, and runs a one man operation. He’s more in the line of the Continental Op than Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, and neither a mental or physical superman nor tarnished knight. If any kind of knight he’s the Green Knight whose wound never heals.

   His artificial leg is a realistic problem, but never used as a gimmick. It’s something that happened to him and effects his life, but not melodrama. He’s not angry or bitter, but he isn’t happy about it either. It’s more often an obstacle and hindrance — or a source of unwanted vulnerability. For all his size, training, and toughness, vulnerable is a word you will associate with Strike.

   We meet Strike as he’s about to hire a new temp from the Temporary Solution Agency. Her name is Robin Ellacott, an attractive twenty-five year old engaged to her boyfriend Matthew that same day. Robin is the closest the book gets to a character who might fit in the Harry Potter saga. She’s smart, she’s quick, and she is just a shade out of step with the world around her. She’s no Lucy Hamilton, Moneypenny, Della Street, or John J. Malone’s Maggie. She is more involved in the action and more important to it, something Strike didn’t know he needed, a crutch.

   And she is thrilled when she finds out what Strike’s profession is; she’s dreamed about this since she was a child. An engagement and her fantasy job — what a great day.

   She and Strike meet cute. He runs into her on the stairs and nearly sends her toppling. He’s gruff and just a bit wounded in a slightly romantic way and she is young and optimistic. He agrees to try her out, but only because he has a client coming. It won’t be for long, he can’t pay her what she should get anyway.

   John Bristow is the client, and he thinks his half sister’s suicide was foul play. His sister was Lula Landry, the supermodel known as Cuckoo, and the reason for the haunted look in Cormoran Strike’s eyes. Lula wasn’t easy either: “… the lies she told were weaved into the fabric of her being, her life; so that to live with her was to become enmeshed by them, to wrestle her for the truth …”

   She’s dead now and the fabric of lies has to be unraveled, even those he may have told himself to stay with her.

   The case grows deeper, it becomes clear there was murder involved, and Strike finds himself relying more and more on the bright and empathic Robin. As the book progresses it is clear to us and to Strike that Robin is something he has needed for a long time, a connection with humanity.

   Strike may not strike a Byronic figure at first glance, but the shadows haunting him are real and deep, the book is dark, but never gloomy, and Robin’s touch of optimism and a trace of whimsey keep Strike and the novel in balance. There is no Dis-Pollyanna voice here, no brutal violence in place of plot, no poor imitation of Spillane or Parker. This is a mature and exciting hard boiled mystery with what promises to be an important new protagonist.

   This could easily have gone wrong in other hands, the Byronic wounded soldier either too much a romantic figure or too pitiable, but it is kept in perfect balance. You pull for Strike for the same reason Robin does, because he won’t give up, even when the darkness gathered in his soul tells him to. His one connection to Harry Potter may be that he is an orphan of sorts — especially from the army, as set apart by his artificial leg as Harry was by that scar on his forehead. The scars are visible reminders of the darkness that has touched them.

   The pair find themselves plunged into the artificial world of multimillionaire models, designers, rock stars, drugs, champagne, and all that accompanies it until there is another murder, and Strike himself is in danger.

   Long before this was revealed to be Rowling’s work it was getting critical praise if few sales (about 15 K in the UK — there was no American edition), many of them praising Galbraith for bringing the hard-boiled private genre back to life with an important new character in Cormoran Strike.

   That may be the biggest shock here, it is a very good hard-boiled eye novel just realistic enough to feel real and just out of the ordinary enough to be fun. Strike may be the most promising and least derivative private eye since the boom of the eighties. I didn’t know what to expect when I gambled on this one, but I never expected how perfect the voice or how far from Harry Potter this is; only the literacy and insight are the same.

   There is no question Rowling writes well. Even if you hate Harry Potter, the writing is very good. That’s true here. The style is nothing like Potter save being in the third person, but it is as perfect for this genre as it was for the juvenile fantasy.

   A few examples:

   We aren’t in Hogwarts anymore. Nor are we in the world of borrowed Chandler and Macdonald. She recognizes and plays with the genres familiar tropes, but she never relies on them for second hand atmosphere or shorthand in lieu of narrative.

   I can’t oversell this. It’s that good, a well-written mystery, a well-observed novel, involving characters, a sense of threat and danger, heroes to cheer for, and believable bad guys to hiss. This is one of the most confident debuts I can remember in the hard boiled stakes. It isn’t perfect, few things are, but I’m concentrating on the good things because I know quite a few hard-boiled fans will likely be put off by the Harry Potter connection or even Rowling’s superstar status. She seems to have done something rare, step out of her comfort zone successfully and be accepted for it. Of course Harry Potter sales didn’t hurt, the Potter books had more than enough adult readers to propel this to the heights.

   Rowling/Galbraith ends on a line of poetry appropriate to this book: I am become a name.

   J. K. Rowling was already a name, but now so are Robert Galbraith and Cormoran Strike.

LES ROBERTS – Full Cleveland. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1989; paperback, 1990.

   Full Cleveland, the second of Les Roberts’ novels about private investigator Milan Jacovich, doesn’t have the high appeal for me that the first (Pepper Pike) did, but it’s agreeable enough.

   Jacovich, a former cop like most PI’s, operates in Cleveland and mourns his lost family (his wife divorced him, and his sons, particularly the older, are drifting away). He consoles himself with no-commitment sex and here accepts what seems a simple and tranquil assignment: track down a downscale swindler who ripped off a bunch of would-be advertisers in his won’t-be magazine.

   But complications soon arise. Milan’s client, a lakeside hotel, invested an incredible amount for an ad, and said hotel proves to have mob connections whom Milan has unhappily met before. Said connections provide Jacovich with a most unwelcome assistant. And why should businesses so little in need of publicity have invested in advertising space?

     The Milan Jacovich series —

1. Pepper Pike (1988)

2. Full Cleveland (1989)
3. Deep Shaker (1991)
4. The Cleveland Connection (1993)
5. The Lake Effect (1994)

6. The Duke Of Cleveland (1995)
7. Collision Bend (1996)
8. The Cleveland Local (1997)
9. A Shoot In Cleveland (1998)
10. The Best Kept Secret (1999)
11. The Indian Sign (2000)

12. The Dutch (2001)
13. The Irish Sports Pages (2002)
14. King of the Holly Hop (2008)
15. The Cleveland Creep (2011)
16. Whiskey Island (2012)
17. Win, Place, or Die (2013) (with Dan S Kennedy)

Note: Between 1987 and 1994, Les Roberts also wrote six mysteries featuring an LA-based PI named Saxon. More recently he has has published two standalone crime novels and one collection of short fiction, The Scent of Spiced Oranges (2002).

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. RKO Radio Pictures, 1932. Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Leslie Banks, Noble Johnson. Based on the story by Richard Connell. Directors: Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack.

   I caught Danger: Diabolik a week or so ago and enjoyed it but wasn’t overwhelmed, despite all the talk about it being just like a comic book on film. If you want a movie that looks like a 60s comic book, try Deadlier Than the Male, with Richard Johnson as Bulldog Drummond battling Elke Sommer. Some real Batman-sty!e visuals here.

   Anyway, the extra features on the Diabolik DVD said a lot about making the movie look like a fumetti, which rang a bell, so I pulled out my tape of The Most Dangerous Game, and I have to say every frame looks like it was ripped from the cover of an old pulp magazine, dyed Black & White, and flung across the screen.

   Splendid sets, atmospheric lighting, fast pace, and as I say, the constant lurid imagery. There’s a bit where Joel McCrae is in the dungeon freeing Faye Wray when a Chinese guy comes at them with a hatchet and McCrae turns and shoots him in one smooth motion. That image, of Wray in bondage, McCrae blasting away at the hatchet man amid the Gothic surroundings … well, it’s just one of thousands in this pulp-cover film.

   I also want to add a word about Leslie Banks as the villain. Brilliant. It would have easy to play Count Zaroff as just suave and sadistic, but Banks adds a subtle layer of Twit. His Zaroff boasts and preens and leers, but there’s a hint of insecurity in his shifty eyes, a nervousness in the mouth…

   It’s the same look one used to see on those pathetic and obviously chemical-dependent play-actor “sadists” in the old bondage films, or the face one saw on former President Bush when he talked about executions, and it adds a dimension to the part that goes way beyond its pulp-paper charms.

WILLIAM JOHNSTON – The Mystery in the Ritsmore. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, 12 June 1920, $1.75.

   A bride on her honeymoon opens the door of her bedroom closet in the Ritsmore Hotel, and the body of a beautiful stranger with a dagger thrust through her heart falls out at her feet.

   The sympathy of Anne Blair, a young woman guest at the same hotel, is aroused by the sad predicament of the bridal couple, since the husband is at once accused of the murder. From sheer love of mystery, Anne starts an investigation of her own, helped by John Rush, the private secretary of another guest, multi-millionaire Harrison Hardy.

   Her quest leads through a labyrinth of clues, among complications of an international character, into most amazing developments. From a simple murder mystery, seemingly solved without difficulty by the police, it becomes an affair of such magnitude that its finals clearance discloses a plot with almost endless ramifications.

Bibliographical Notes: Of the author, Al Hubin in Crime Fiction IV says: “WILLIAM (Andrew) JOHNSTON, 1871-1929. Born in Pittsburgh; graduate of Western University; newspaperman and public relations executive.” Although it seems possible that it was, this book was not part of a series. Between 1910 and 1928, Johnston wrote nine crime and mystery novels included in CFIV. Of this particular novel, a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review (18 July 1920) said: “Opening a closet door in her room at the Ritsmore Hotel, Betty Le Baron, a bride of three days, is horrified at … This is the beginning of one of the most thrilling and up-to-date detective and mystery stories of the year.”

THE GOLDEN SALAMANDER. General Film Distributors, UK, 1950; Eagle-Lion Classics, US, 1951. Trevor Howard, Anouk (Aimée), Herbert Lom, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Walter Rilla, Miles Mallenson, Jacques Sernas, Peter Copely Screenplay: Ronald Neame, Leslie Storm & Victor Canning, based on the latter’s novel. Cinematography: Oswald Morris. Director: Ronald Neame.

   â€œWe are given eyes, but not without the wisdom to keep them shut.” : Aribe (Peter Copely) to archaeologist David Redfern (Trevor Howard).

   David Redfern is a British archaeologist sent to Tunis to recover Etruscan art treasures washed ashore years earlier in a storm, and now in the cellar of Serafis (Walter Rilla), a wealthy man who lives in the villa Ben Negro in the small village of Kabarta on the coast. For Redfern it promises to be a nice trip, an interesting job of cataloging and repacking the treasures, and a few weeks of sun and fishing in between.

   His arrival is none to promising though, in a driving rain storm and on a narrow rocky road, he runs into a rock-fall blocking the road. Nothing for it but to foot it to Kabarta in the driving rain and the cafe/inn where he has a reservation. But on the other side of the rock-fall he spies a wrecked lorry — and carrying a cargo of Browning automatic pistols. Gun runners.

   When he hears another lorry coming Redfern decides not to get involved and watches from a grove of cork trees near the road. Two men get out of the lorry, Herbert Lom, and Jacques Sernas. Redfern decides to stay out of it though. A little gun running is none of his business. He hikes to the cafe where he meets piano player Agno (Wilfrid Hyde-White) and the beautiful French expatriate owner, Anne Tabu (Anouk) to whom he is immediately attracted. It promises to be a good trip after all.

   The next day he meets Serafis (Walter Rilla), a charming type happy to be rid of the treasures he has been guarding, and Douvet (Miles Mallinson) the local police chief. He has almost forgotten the lorry and the guns until the two men come in the cafe — one Rankl (Lom) and the other Max (Sernas), Anne’s brother.

   There were many fine writers of adventure and suspense in the late forties and well into the eighties, names like Hammond Innes, later Gavin Lyall, Alan Williams, Alistair Maclean, but there was always something more to Canning, a weight, almost a gravity, to his grounded professional heroes, reluctant perhaps, but capable and when needed ruthless.

   Though Canning’s novels became darker, especially about the security services, his capable and professional heroes only grew deeper. Even the hapless vicar in The Great Adventure turns out to be adept at crime and skullduggery. Eric Ambler and Graham Greene’s trapped and often foolish heroes weren’t for him. A Canning hero is always a professional man, engineer, archaeologist, reporter, ships captain, private detective, spy …

   And perhaps because Canning began as a novelist rather than a thriller writer his books had something more, an indefinable quality that you could distinguish in only a few pages. His books were vivid and cinematic, but never at the expense of character or style.

   David Redfern is a typical Canning hero, and facing a typical Canning dilemma: are we responsible to confront evil, or only spectators who should, as Aribe the Arab worker suggests, keep our eyes shut. Among the Etruscan artifacts is a golden salamander and on it engraved: “Not by ignoring evil does one overcome it, but by going to meet it.” The two sides of the coin, alpha omega, become part of the evil by denying it exists, or confront it and risk the consequences.

   Falling for Anne and admiring her brother’s art and devotion to his sister is the difference for Redfern, the weight on the scale, he offers Max a way out — passage to France, and work as an artist, and Max accepts.

   Small actions have big repercussions. A few days later David and Anna spend a day fishing and swim at the beach — where they find Max’s weighted body, murdered by Rankl.

   Guilty and angry David decides to go to the authorities, but Douvet is a pawn of the conspiracy, the phone lines are down to Tunis, and even the mail is controlled By Douvet’s mistress. Finally he goes to Sernas for help, only to find Sernas is the leader of the criminals and plans for David to have an ‘accident’ at the towns big yearly boar hunt the next day. With only Anne on his side he’s hopeless. Even Agno is part of it.

   But Agno has weakness other than absinthe — he loves Anna and Max.

   Location shooting, Neame’s sure hand directing suspense films (David Lean was once his editor), the cinematography by Oswald Morris, camera work by cinematographer and director Freddie Francis, and a fine cast combine for a truly enjoyable adventure, slow to build, but with a fine chase at the end. This is the traditional adventure film, not an endless concussive assault of constant action, but actual characters with inner lives and difficult choices to make.

   Lom is at his slimy best, and manages to even slip a hint of an unhealthy obsession about Max into his meaningful glances, Rilla, always a smooth villain in the Claude Rains mode brings a fine sinister streak to Serafis bluffing a playing up to the last moment, and Hyde-White, different than you usually see him as Agno, the absinthe addicted piano player who observes even participates in conspiracy, but will only go so far, gives a fine little performance looking quite different than you likely picture him.

   Anouk is a revelation here. Wearing little makeup and playing as a sensual innocent she has something of the freshness and promise of a young Ingrid Bergman. You can see why Redfern falls in love with her innocent rather melancholy Anne, and why a man would confront dragons for her — or even salamanders. She is well matched with Howard whose presence as a leading man was as assured as his later character roles.

   Howard did several films in this vein in this period, Malaga (with Dorothy Dandridge), They Made Me a Criminal, the Archers The Adventuress, and the legendary The Clouded Yellow. Neame’s experience in this genre dates back to the fine thriller Take My Life based on Winston Graham’s novel in the thirties and he was adept in other genres as well. It was a natural collaboration.

   This solid entertaining thriller isn’t all that well known, but deserves better. You can watch it online at several movie sites (most requiring a paid subscription), and the print is a good clean one. Catch it and see how effortless they used to make it look. This is a fine example of the British thriller at its near best, and a fine adaptation of one of Victor Canning’s best.

ELIZABETH GRESHAM – Puzzle in Porcelain. Duell Sloan & Pearce, 1945. Bart House #29, paperback, June 1946. Curtis, paperback, no date [1973]. See also below.

   Tom Pottle comes to Hunter Lewis, a tinkerer or handyman, to get a statue of Psyche repaired. Pottle had bent over in his garden and something hissed by him and struck the porcelain statue doing a fair amount of damage. A young man, something of a natural, who lives in the woods and cares for animals of all kinds is blamed for the shattering of the statue.

   Pott!e is a cad, a scoundrel, a bounder, a parvenu, a philanderer, and, much worse, a Northerner who has settled near Richmond, Virginia, and has social and power ambitions. When Lewis goes to see the remains of the statue the next day, he discovers that Pott!e has been found dead at his doorstep, the victim of a rattlesnake bite, Lewis notes some oddities in the death and gets the local police interested.

   When the young man who lives in the woods dies shortly thereafter — suicide maybe — the police are convinced that Pott!e was really bitten by a snake, probably handled by the young man. Lewis is unconvinced, and he and Jenny Gilette, a young lady hopelessly, or so it would seem, in love with him, continue to seek out the real story.

   Gilette is the first person narrator of the proceedings and makes for a good Watson. She and Lewis are an interesting and enjoyable pair. The novel is mostly fair play, with the clues, though not the motive, necessary to figure it out along with Lewis.

   There is something of a mystery about Elizabeth Gresham. Puzzle in Porcelain was published in 1945 as by Robin Grey. Another novel under that name was published in 1947, and then came a long silence, broken finally in 1972, 25 years later, with the publication of Puzzle in Paisley and the republication in paperback of her first two novels, this time under her real name.

   Paisley is a gothic-type novel, which nonetheless features Jenny Gilette and, to a small extent, Hunter Lewis. Like Porcelain, it has no specific period setting; both could have taken place at any point, except for the Second World War years, from the ’20s to the ’50s and maybe even ’60s.

The Jenny Gilette & Hunter Lewis series —

    As by Robin Grey:

Puzzle in Porcelain (n.) Duell 1945
Puzzle in Pewter (n.) Duell 1947

    As by Elizabeth Gresham:

Puzzle in Paisley (n.) Curtis 1972
Puzzle in Parchment (n.) Curtis 1973

Puzzle in Parquet (n.) Curtis 1973

Puzzle in Patchwork (n.) Curtis 1973

   The author has five other entries in Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, one indicated as marginally criminous, all from the late 1970s when she was in her seventies, and from the titles, probably romantic suspense novels (Gothics), at their height of popularity at the time.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Fox Film Corporation, 1917. William Farnum, Jewel Carmen, Charles Clary, Herschel Mayan, Rosita Marstini, and many others. Scenario by Frank Lloyd. Director: Frank Lloyd. Shown at Cinevent 38, Columbus OH, May 2006.

   This is a lavish, entertaining version of the Dickens novel, adapted and directed by Frank Lloyd (later director of the 1924 version of The Sea Hawk), which undoubtedly takes many liberties with the original to fit into a seventy-minute running time.

   The most startling departure is the murder of Mme De Farge (certainly well-deserved but not canonical) but otherwise the story sticks to the familiar central plot of wrongs righted with new wrongs committed in the name of “justice,” and Sydney Carton delivering, as expected and anticipated, his famous curtain speech in intertitles.

   The key roles of Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are both played by William Farnum, and played superbly, and the supporting cast is uniformly excellent The 1935 version will probably always be considered the definitive screen adaptation for its typically lavish MGM production and casting, but this silent film seems somehow closer in spirit and style to the historical period.

KALEIDOSCOPE. Warner Brothers, 1966. Warren Beatty, Susannah York, Clive Revill, Eric Porter, Murray Melvin. Director: Jack Smight. A novel based on the movie was written by Michael Avallone (Popular Library 60-2132, pb, 1966).

   Mark me down for one of those guys who distinctly and diligently dislike movies revolving around sporting events of any kind, whether it’s baseball, football, boxing, horse races or even card playing. With everything in the hands of the screenwriter and director, for me there’s not even a dollop of suspense. What happens next is completely in the hands of those two guys. Even if you don’t know know what happens next, it’s not the same as not knowing which two faces of the dice are going to come up.

   Movies simply can’t compete with real life sporting events. If someone were to make a film in which one of two diehard rivals wins a football game with no seconds remaining on the clock by running back 109 yards on a missed field goal attempt, you’d never believe it.

   So Kaleidoscope, based on Warren Beatty’s attempt (under duress) to bring down a notorious crime lord with a Napoleonic complex (Eric Porter) by wiping him out at a game of cards, was a big bad dud of a movie for me, even with some color photography that’s out of the world (taking place mostly in European casinos, but not entirely).

   There’s a long lead-in to this movie that consists of Beatty breaking into a card manufacturing plant and doctoring the backs of the plates used in the process to his own advantage, and along the way attracting the eye of a young and very beautiful Susannah York, who also just happens to be the daughter of a British police inspector.

   Your opinions may vary on card-playing movies like this one, and I grant you that, but as a slow as molasses movie of the “swinging sixties,” that’s another matter altogether. More of Susannah York in this regard may have helped.