FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER – Design for Murder. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, hardcover, 1936. Arrow Mystery Novel #11, digest-sized paperback, no date [1944].

   Stephen Ransom, a playwright who has written not necessarily a successful but at least a produced play about a detective, is invited to lunch at the home in Washington, D.C., of Mrs. Thomas Kirby, wife of a prominent United States Senator. There Ransom meets Ann Vickers, an interior decorator who is living in the Kirby house while redecorating it. Jokingly he and she discuss a plot for a burglary and the murder of Mrs. Kirby for her jewels.

   That night Ransom returns to the house, for reasons the author does not make persuasive, and notices someone leaving by a window. He investigates, of course, and finds that Mrs. Kirby has indeed been murdered. Vickers, who had overheard some peculiar dialogue and had heard the clock strike twelve when it was still fifteen minutes before the hour, also comes down to investigate.

   It is obvious to Ransom that Vickers couldn’t have done it; she’s too attractive. It is patent to Vickers that Ransom couldn’t have done it; he, after all, has humorous eyes and rust brown hair.

   Near the end of the novel Vickers remembers more about what she heard just before Mrs. Kirby’s death. Unfortunately, she won’t mention it over the phone, and thus we are vouchsafed the seemingly obligatory scene of the heroine placing herself in the best, maybe the only, position for the murderer to get at her for foul purposes.

   Create credulity, which is more than the author could do, and you may be able to enjoy this one.

Note: For some information about the author, fairly prolific in his day, you might wish to check out John Norris’s blog here, where he reviews The Scarecrow Murders, the first of two recorded cases of Judge Henry Tyson. John liked it considerably more than Bill Deeck cared for this one.

SWORDFISH. Warner Brothers, 2001. John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Sam Shepard, Vinnie Jones, Camryn Grimes. Directed by Dominic Sena.

   As a recently released felon, famed computer hacker Stanley Jobson (Jackman) is recruited by the beautiful and alluring Ginger (Halle Berry) to work for the mysterious (and ruthless) Gabriel Shear (Travolta). Needing money to help regain custody of his young daughter (Camryn Grimes), Stanley accepts, and during the rest of the movie he learns to regret his decision, many times, over and over again.

   This is pretty much one of those movies where you are better off not asking questions and sitting back to enjoy the ride. If, that is, you are not bored with watching someone typing at a keyboard and pretending they are breaking into various money accounts scattered around the world. The less-meaningful (but eye spectacular) action that takes place is largely confined to a mini-prologue that works about as well as anything in the movie (a bank under siege with hostages wired to blow up) and in the last thirty minutes or so, when all of the safety latches are set free.

   Lots of large-scale explosives going off, in other words. Cars careening around busy city streets and smashing into each other, large guns being fired and causing all kinds of havoc, and tons of other vehicles of several makes and models veering out of control and smashing into tall buildings and on several different levels. That still leaves an hour to fill, which of course does not mean there are not plenty of bad guys willing to do all kinds of bad things in those remaining sixty minutes.

   Travolta and Jackman have the good parts, and both do well in them, with Travolta taking (in my opinion) top honors as a truly Machiavellian mastermind, over the top and subtly clever at the same time. Amazing. (Unfortunately, with the need for pyrotechnics to keep the action crowd happy, “over the top” seems to prevail, more often than not, over common sense.)

   Halle Berry appears too aware of herself to be truly sexy, but those commentators who have described her much-maligned topless scene as “gratuitous” should watch the movie again.

   Or if not, at least the ending. (Think subtle.)

EVIL UNDER THE SUN. Universal, 1982. Peter Ustinov (Hercule Poirot), Colin Blakely, Jane Birkin, Nicholas Clay, Maggie Smith, Roddy McDowall, Sylvia Miles, James Mason, Denis Quilley, Diana Rigg. Based on the novel by Agatha Chrsitie. Director: Guy Hamilton.

   In a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement, Julian Symons complained mightily about the betrayal of the Christie novel on which this is based. Chris Steinbrunner, in the July 1982 EQMM, recognized the tinkering with the novel but thought the result was splendid.

   I haven’t read the novel, but, apart from competent performances by good actors — of whom the most amusing are Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, and Diana Rigg (whose archness is, however, beginning to wear thin) — good tunes by Cole Porter attractively orchestrated by John Lanchbery, and handsome location filming on Majorca, there is no reason to pay more than a bargain matinee admission for this film.

   It is too long, the narrative sags intermittently as the camera doodles across the landscape and sets, and there is the curse of a campy performance by Roddy MacDowell as a critic who is probably modeled on the insufferable Rex Reed.

   This might warm you if there’s a blinding snowstorm outside, but this is television fare dressed up as a big screen offering.

WILLIAM P. McGIVERN – A Choice of Assassins. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1963. Paperback reprints: Bantam F2851, 1964, and Pyramid V3386, 1974. Film: France, 1967, as Un Choix d’Assassins.

   I read William P. McGivern’s A Choice of Assassins back in High School and thought it quite stylish — almost poetic. Fifty years on, a lot of it looks a bit silly, but there’s some interesting stuff nonetheless.

   The plot sounds like David Goodis moved a bit upscale: Tony Malcom, one-time photo-journalist turned Wino in a Spanish resort town finally hits bottom: so desperate for a drink he offers to kill himself in exchange for one.

   The proposition amuses a local bully who gives him the drink and a gun — which misfires at the crucial moment, leaving Malcom owing him a Death. How he repays the debt forms the crux of a story spun out with smuggling, corruption, and easy-going violence.

   It’s also filled with patent absurdities. The notion of a bottle-a-day drunk quitting cold-turkey with no unpleasant side-effects carries poetic license a bit far, but no further than a bit later on, where a man who has never fired a gun before puts three bullets in the bad guy’s heart on a dark, wind-swept beach.

   Fortunately, though, there’s enough poetry in Choice to justify the license, specifically McGivern’s role-playing tricks with his cast: A mouthy drunk becomes a silent killer, a prostitute is also a police informant, a bar-keep is an insurrectionist, a peasant becomes a baron, and the local Cop is in business for himself. And in a charming turn, the only “straight” character is a mystery writer whose ruminations on Plot lurch the whole story to a nifty conclusion.

J. STORER CLOUSTON РThe Mystery of No. 47. Moffat Yard & Co., US, hardcover, 1911. Published in the UK as His First Offence: Mills, hardcover, 1912. Film: Lenauer (France), 1937, as Dr̫le de Drame.

   The Mystery of No. 47, by J. Storer Clouston, does not pretend to be anything more than a diverting extravaganza, the thesis of which, so far as it has any, is simply the utter unreliability of circumstantial evidence.

   A quiet, and eminently respectable young couple are thrown into a state of mild consternation when the husband’s uncle, an eminent bishop, happens to invite himself to dinner on the very night when the cook has chosen to take sudden leave. There seems to be only one thing to do: the bishop must be told that the wife has gone away for a day or two, to visit a sick relative — while, as a matter of fact, she simply retires to the kitchen, to provide for his entertainment.

   Now the bishop happens to be a suspicious and evil-minded man, who quickly discovers that his nephew has been lying to him, and is incapable of imagining any innocent motive for the lies. He leaps to the conclusion that the nephew is carrying on a clandestine affair with the pretty housemaid, and that, finding his wife a stumbling block, he has made way with her and probably buried the body in the back garden. Accordingly he forthwith notifies Scotland Yard.

   Now the nephew is a novelist, and at his wife’s suggestion, instead of telling the truth and clearing up the mystery, he helps his wife to go into hiding, while he himself assumes a disguise, and, posing as a detective or reporter, returns to his home, intending to pile up evidence against himself and utilise it for a forthcoming novel.

   The cross-purposes and mystifications that follow, and the extent to which he over-reaches himself, until he almost finds himself in a hangman’s noose, all make excellent nonsense, so long as one is not too exacting. Of its kind, the book is a clever and amiable piece of pleasantry.”

“DIPLOMAT” – Murder in the State Department. Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, hardcover, 1930.

    “Diplomat” dedicates this, his first mystery, to the “pacifists and bootleggers of the United States, without whom the author would have been at a loss for a motive for a murder in the State Department.” This gives you some idea of the tone of the book, and those who are neither pacifists nor bootleggers may read safely on with the pleasant anticipation that someone else’s ox will be gored.

    A guard at the State Department finds Harrison “Handsome” Howard in his office, a steel filing spike transfixing a top-secret unsigned treaty, Howard’s hand, and Howard’s heart, in that order. Also in the office is a revolver with a silencer, unused.

    (Who is it that makes silencers for revolvers? Does anyone outside the characters in mysteries purchase them? Why is there never dissatisfaction with their performance?)

    Only one other person is working in the building — Howard’s rival for position and prestige. He, however, has an unimpeachable alibi. Dennis Tyler, Chief of the Bureau of Current Political Intelligence (Now there’s an oxymoron! Oops. Sorry.) has a low opinion of police investigators, so he takes charge.

    Tyler talks like a mixture of Bertie Wooster and Reggie Fortune; his intellect, at least to this reader, is closer to Bertie’s than Reggie’s. Still, he does come up with the solution, which is for the most part plausible. Those who can accept an exchange like the following with good heart and maybe even appreciation should enjoy the novel:

    Amiable nonsense, for which I admit a weakness.

Bibliographic Notes:   “Diplomat” was, according to Hubin, the pseudonym of John Franklin Carter, 1897-1967. According to Wikipedia, Carter was an American journalist, columnist, biographer and novelist. Dennis Tyler appeared in all of the novels Carter wrote under that name, as follows:

   Al Hubin reviewed this same title earlier on this blog; you may check it out here. In the course of the review and the update that followed, much more information about the author was supplied. (You may also enjoy Al’s opinion of the book, and compare it with Bill had to say.)

“Mission to Italy.” From The John Forsythe Show. First aired: 7 March 1965 (Monday at 8 pm, 30 minutes). NBC – Universal – Forsythe Productions. Cast: John Forsythe as John Foster, Guy Marks as Ed Robbins, Elsa Lanchester as Miss Culver and Ann B. Davis as Miss Wilson. Guest Cast: Jack Kruschen, Susan Silo and Paul Birch. Written by Joseph Bonaduce. Directed by Earl Bellamy. Produced by Peter Kortner.

   Available (at this time) for viewing on YouTube in three parts:

   THE JOHN FORSYTHE SHOW is one of those forgotten series few care to remember. The premise of the series would change more than once. The episode “Mission To Italy” is from the “spy” period.

   General Pierce (Paul Birch) arrives at Miss Foster’s School for Girls to ask Air Force Reserve Major John Foster, who runs the school, to take top-secret plans (for the Space program) to a new tracking base in Italy. Foster agrees, and with his aide the former Sergeant Ed Robbins soon find themselves lost and stranded in a small Italian village. Miss Culver and Miss Wilson are left behind to run the school while they think John is giving a speech at a school related function in Rome.

   There is little to no spy activity in the episode as Foster ends up in trouble when his friendship with a young beautiful but neglected Italian woman is misunderstood. Foster doesn’t understand how the men of the village can reject such a beautiful woman just because she can’t cook. The Italian men can’t understand why any man would want a wife who can’t cook. While the cast tried, some such as Guy Marks and Jack Kruschen tried too hard, they could not overcome the stupid (not unusual for 60s sitcoms) and unfunny story.

   According to Alice B. Davis interview for the TV Academy’s Archive of American Television

(starting at 16:45 and ending at 18:25), the series originally involved Peter Tewkesbury (Emmy award winning director for FATHER KNOWS BEST) as writer and was loosely based on the British films by Alastair Sim based on Ronald Searle’s cartoons and books about St. Trinian’s School for Girls.

   Imagining John Forsythe in drag is enough for me to understand why that idea (and Tewkesbury) was replaced with THE MISTER AND THE MISSES (the original title that appeared in NBC pre-season ads and press releases and would wisely change before air date to THE JOHN FORSYTHE SHOW). The premise had Air Force Major John Foster inheriting Miss Foster’s School for Girls from his Aunt when she dies. Foster and his aide Robbins retire from active duty to run the school with the help of Principal Miss Culver and gym teacher Miss Wilson.

   The series aired opposite the last half hour of ABC’s 12 O’CLOCK HIGH and CBS’ I’VE GOT A SECRET. The ratings were not good and during the season the format changed from stories about running an all-girl school to stories with Foster and Robbins doing undercover work for the government.

   In his interview for Television Academy Archive for American Television, Forsythe called the series “one of my low points” and “not very good.”

(begin at 28:10 until end). In the next part of the interview he denied the series was a spy series.

   If “Mission To Italy” was typical of THE JOHN FORSYTHE SHOW as a spy series, Forsythe had a point about this not being a spy series. In the “Mission To Italy,” Major Foster was no James Bond he wasn’t even Maxwell Smart (GET SMART). The change in premise was an attempt to open the plots to romantic locales beyond the limitations of an All-Girls school setting.

   â€œMission To Italy” was less interested in the spy plot (which made little sense) than the lame cliché 60’s sitcom plot. Judging by this episode, THE JOHN FORSYTHE SHOW offers nothing to interest fans of spy comedies or anyone looking for a funny sitcom.

      Recommended reading:

TV Obscurities: http://www.tvobscurities.com/spotlight/the-john-forsythe-show

ERIC AMBLER – Doctor Frigo. Atheneum, hardcover, 1974. Bantam, paperback, 1976.First published in the UK by Weidenfeld & & Nicolson, hardcover, 1974.

   As the narrator of this novel, Ernesto Castillo, tells us, “In supermarket French the word frigo is used to mean not only refrigerator of freezer, but also, a shade contemptuously, frozen meat.” And “Dr. Frigo” is the nickname by which Castillo is called at the hospital where he works on the small island of St. Paufles-Alizes, in the French Antilles.

   Castillo, son of the assassinated dictator of a Central American republic, keeps to himself, close to no one but gallery owner Elizabeth Martens. Even in his relationship with Elizabeth, there is a sense of distance; she is an eccentric, a distant relation of the Austrian Hapsburgs, and tends to intellectualize current happenings in terms of the Thirty Years War.

   When Castillo is called to the prefecture one morning, he is puzzled; and he is further surprised to fmd that Commissaire Gillon wishes to talk about Manuel Villegas, nominal head of the exiled Democratic Socialist party of Castillo’s homeland, now residing on the island for reasons of health.

   Villegas has dismissed his doctor and wishes Castillo, whom he knew as a boy, to attend him. Gillon strongly advises the doctor to do so — and to report what he learns about a possible coup being planned for the Central American republic.

   Castillo complies reluctantly; he wants nothing to do with the politics of his native country — or, as some people, including his own mother, have suggested, with a plan to avenge his father’s murder. And as he is drawn deeper into a web of intrigue, Castillo must come to terms with both the events of the distant past and his immediate present.

   Although a bit on the talky side, this is a powerful novel showing a man who is torn between his heritage and the new life he has built for himself, between his basic humanitarian instincts and his desire to preserve his protective facade.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

WILLIAM HOPSON – A Gunman Rode North. Pyramid #225, paperback, 1956. First published in hardcover by Avalon Books, 1954.

   A while ago back I read William Hopson’s DESPERADO, and was taken by the book’s portrait of a man slowly becoming an outcast in his own community. A GUNMAN RODE NORTH isn’t nearly as compelling, but it does have its points of interest — mainly plot devices lifted from old Burt Lancaster movies.

   The story starts with Lew Kerrigan in Yuma territorial prison, whence he has gone for the sake of a beautiful girl named Kitty, who is now a gangster’s moll, or rather the mistress of Colonel Harrow, a scheming gold baron, but basically the same figure as Ava Gardner in THE KILLERS (1946).

   We quickly learn (maybe too quickly; there’s a lot of exposition in the early chapters) that Harrow was Kerrigan’s erstwhile partner in a gold strike, but Kerrigan’s stake in all this has vanished in a swirl of corporate chicanery (shades of I WALK ALONE, 1948) and Kerrigan is about to be released into the custody of the man who sent him there, a plot device from ROAD HOUSE (1948) which was not a Burt Lancaster movie, but might as well have been.

   From this point we segue into a bit of BRUTE FORCE (1947) with sadistic prison guards and desperate convicts bent on escape, until Kerrigan is finally released and confronts Harrow, who is flanked by his hired goons — excuse, me, hired guns — and learns that he is now a pawn in another of Harrow’s nasty plans (see CRISS CROSS, 1949) while Harrow has spurned Kitty for a more socially acceptable marital prospect (back to I WALK ALONE.)

   Out on the street/riding the range once more, Kerrigan moves across a landscape peopled with noir figures: bent cops/deputies, a corrupt judge, a too-helpful stranger (back to CRISS CROSS) an old friend who happens to be an honest-cop/deputy and boring as the range is wide (back to THE KILLERS) plus hired killers (ibid) stalking him across the prairie as he pursues his lonely vengeance against all odds. Hopson also throws in a few rampaging Apaches (ULZANA’S RAID, but that came later), who add to the noir feel of a hostile universe.

   Okay so there’s nothing too original here, and the ending’s entirely too pat, but Hopson keeps the plot moving nicely, and he has a sure hand for the action scenes. And A GUNMAN RODE NORTH is fast-reading enough that it’s fired and back in the holster before you have time to say, “Who was that masked man?”

POUL ANDERSON – Murder Bound. Macmillan, hardcover, 1962. No paperback edition.

   A celebrated writer of fantasy and science fiction for more than thirty-five years, Poul Anderson produced three mystery novels (and a handful of short stories) in the 1950s and 1960s featuring Trygve Yamamura, a half Norwegian, half Japanese/Hawaiian judo expert, samurai-sword connoisseur, and private investigator. Murder Bound is the last and in some ways best of the three — an eerie tale of murder and menace spiced with elements of the supernatural.

   On board the Norwegian freighter Valborg bound for San Francisco, a Nazi fugitive named Benrud is discovered masquerading as chief steward. Benrud, armed with a red fire ax, vanishes during the struggle to capture him. He is presumed drowned, and yet doubts linger in the minds of the Valborg’s crew and only passenger, mathematician Conrad Lauring.

   Those doubts prove prophetic: Later, in San Francisco, Lauring finds himself haunted by a faceless form-a man who whistles the Horst Wessel song, who drips seaweed, who carries a red fire ax. Is it the specter of one who died at sea, what the superstitious Norwegian sailors call a draug? Or is Benrud still alive and bent on further crimes?

   Trygve Yamamura is called in to investigate and sleuths his way to the truth in “a truly chilling climax in the ill-lit hold of the Valborg, when natural and seemingly supernatural forces meet and lock in deadly embrace.”

   Yamamura is much more a cerebral detective than a man of action, so the pace here tends to be rather slow. He is also rather colorless and sketchily drawn, despite his ethnic heritage and skills, and tends to hold some curious (and unappetizing) political and sociological opinions. Still, Murder Bound is entertaining, primarily because it is rich in the smell of sea and fog, and the flavor of Norse legends.

   Anderson’s other two Trygve Yamamura novels are Perish by the Sword (1959), which deals with a stolen samurai sword; and Murder in Black Letter (1960), which is concerned with a valuable pre-Renaissance manuscript on witchcraft and the murder of a history professor at the University of California.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.