So, Heidegger has this concept called ‘being towards death’. It basically is just a fancy way of saying: constant awareness that you are going to die. (There are a lot of examples, of course — but one I fancy is kerouac’s poem:

   
   Speaking and acting conscious of your imminent mortality. ‘The only thing worth reading is what’s written in blood’, Nietzsche cautions. It is the reason that there is a hearsay exception for ‘dying declarations’. There is a presumption of authenticity for your very last words. ‘Rosebud’ is the key to the meaning of Kane’s life. In O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find the Misfit tells us:

   So what is hardboiled lit? What is it that ties together slave narratives, prison memoirs, John Brown and Eugene Debs’s statements to the court, Gold Medal paperbacks, proletarian lit, Hammett with Hamlet, Whitfield with Whitman, Dennis Wilson with Charles Manson, Mozart’s Requiem with Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads, the Diary of Anne Frank with The Inman Diary, the last words of Dutch Schultz with William S. Burroughs, the book of Revelations and the Tibetan Book of the Dead?

   It’s this: when you’re at your rope’s end, your last cigarette has turned to ash, your dream at Owl’s Creek Bridge is nearly waked, and you are given your final words; you ain’t gonna waste your precious breath on bullshit words, on idle chatter, on echolalia that just don’t matter; your gonna say what you mean and say it quick, and say it with words that cut to the quick, while you sink in the sand that pulls you under, your book turns to flames, your words burned asunder.

   And this is why I only read hardboiled lit. I hate small talk in life. Life is too short. Say what you mean, or forever hold your peace.

   You are what you eat. Adorno says every time you read a newspaper you become less of a unique individual. There’s a homogenizing effect to consumption of mass culture.

   But homogenization ain’t necessarily bad as long as we’re homogenizing an amazing product. Wanna make me great, go right ahead. But I fear the homogenization is towards mediocre mendacity, mendacious mediocrity. Hence my lack of alacrity.

   When you watch and read and write and speak and act in less hardboiled ways, you establish habits of how you will be, the way you will think and live and love and act now and into the future. And in the end it is these very small choices added ad infinitum that comprise a life.

   If you want to live authentically: speak from the heart, read what’s written in blood, listen to final words, listen only to those who are trying to tell you something. But listen with all of your heart. The time is nigh. Read hardboiled, write hardboiled, speak hardboiled. Or forever hold your peace.

TODD DOWNING – Vultures in the Sky. Hugh Rennert #4. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1935. Coachwhip Publications, paperback, 2012. American Mystery Classics, hardcover, 2020.

   Hugh Rennert, special investigator for the U.S. Customs Service, is on his way from Laredo, Texas. to Mexico City by train. One of his fellow passengers reports to him a sinister conversation overheard by his wife the night before, in Laredo, in which a threat to “blast the train” was made and there was a cryptic comment about earrings and cuffs and “don’t forget the extra edition.”

   While Rennert ponders the meaning of this, the train enters a long tunnel through El Paso de Los Muertos-and when it emerges, he finds one of the other passengers dead in his Pullman chair.

   Who was the dead man and why and how was he killed?

   And which of the odd group of remaining passengers is responsible? Was it the drunken reporter, the badly sunburned man who hides behind dark glasses, the religious fanatic, the novelty supply salesman, the girl traveling under someone else’s name, or the strange woman who seems totally devoid of emotion and who looks at life with the eyes of a spectator at a play?

   Rennert’s job is made all the more difficult by a strike of Pullman employees of the Mexican National Railway, soldiers sent out by the government to keep order, the kidnapping of the three-year-old son of a wealthy Anglo-American family, another murder, and an unscheduled stop deep in the Mexican desert. But matters take their deadliest turn when the Pullman containing Rennert and the suspects is mysteriously uncoupled, stranding them-with the murderer in their midst-in the middle of nowhere.

   This is an expertly crafted whodunit, well-written (except for a mildly annoying overuse of commas where there should be periods) and offering a vivid, detailed portrait of Mexico in the mid-l 930s. Although an American (and one-quarter Choctaw), Todd Downing lived in Mexico for many years and his work reflects not only intimate knowledge of the country but a deep love and respect for it and its people. Anyone who likes his mystery plot enlivened by frequent glimpses of another culture both old and new is certain to find Downing’s work enjoyable.

   All but one of his nine whodunits are set in Mexico (the one exception has a Texas border background), and all are well worth investigating. Among the best of the other six featuring Hugh Rennert are The Cat Screams ( 1934), which deals with a tide of eerie suicides in the American colony at Taxco; The Case of the Unconquered Sisters (1936), in which Rennert investigates a railway freight wreck and murder at an archeological dig on the edge of a huge sea of lava; and The Last Trumpet (1937), which has a bull fighting background. Downing’s remaining two novels feature Texas sheriff Peter Bounty: Death Under the Moonflower (1938) and The Lazy Lawrence Murders (1941). The latter title, like Vultures in the Sky, deals with murder and mystery aboard a Mexican train.

         ———
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.

From A Reader’s Guide to the American Novel of Detection  (1993) by Marvin Lachman, and posted previously on the Rara Avis Internet group by Tony Baer:

The Shudders, Anthony Abbot

Charlie Chan Carries On, Earl Derr Biggers

Wilders Walk Away & Hardly a Man is still Alive, Herbert Brean

Triple crown, Jon Breen

The Junkyard Dog, Robert Campbell

Hag’s Nook, 3 coffins, crooked hinge, case of the constant suicides, Patrick butler for the defense, the burning court, John Dickson Carr

Kill Your darlings, Max Allan Collins

The James Joyce Murder & death in a Tenured Position, Amanda Cross

The Hands of Healing Murder, Barbara D’Amato

A Gentle Murderer, Dorothy Salisbury Davis

The Judas Window, The reader is Warned, The Gilded Man, She Died a lady, He wouldn’t Kill Patience & Fear is the same, Carter Dickson

Method in Madness & who Rides a Tiger, Doris miles Disney

Old Bones, Aaron Elkins

The horizontal Man, Helen Eustis

The case of the Howling Dog, …the counterfeit eye, ….lame canary, …perjured parrot, …crooked candle, …black eyed blonde, Erle stanley Gardner

What a Body!, Alan Green

The Leavenworth Case, Anna Katherine Green

The Bellamy trial, Frances Noyes Hart

The Devil in the Bush, Matthew head

The Fly on the Wall, Tony Hillerman

9 times 9, Rocket to the Morgue, H.H. Holmes

A Case of Need, Jeffery Hudson

Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Harry Kemelman

Obelists Fly High, C. Daly King

Emily Dickinson Is Dead, Jane Langton

Banking on Death, Accounting for Murder, Murder Makes the Wheels Go Rounds, Murder Against the Grain, When in Greece, Emma Lathen

The Norths Meet Murder, Murder Out of Turn, The Dishonest Murderer, Frances and Richard lockridge

Through a Glass Darkly, Helen mcCloy

Pick Your Victim, Pat McGerr

Rest You Merry, Charlotte MacLeod

Paperback thriller, Lynn Meyer

The Iron Gates, Ask For Me Tomorrow, vanish in an Instant, beast in View, Margaret Millar

Death in the Past, Richard Moore

Murder for Lunch, Haughton Murphy

The 120 Hour clock, Francis Nevins, Jr.

The body in the Belfrey, katherin Hall Page

The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla, stuart Palmer

Remember to Kill Me, Hugh Pentecost

Generous Death & No Body, Nancy Pickard

Unorthodox Practices, Marissa Piesman

The roman Hat Mystery, the French Powder Mystery, The Greek Coffin Mystery, The Egyptian Cross Mystery, The Chinese Orange Mystery, Calamity town, Cat of Many Tails, Ellery Queen

Puzzle for Puppets, Parick Quentin

Death from a Top Hat, Clayton Rawson

The Gold gamble, Herbert resnicow

8 Faces at 3, Craig Rice

Strike Three You’re Dead, Richard Rosen

The Tragedy of X, The Tragedy of Y, Barnaby Ross

The Gray Flannel Shroud, Henry Slesar

Reverend Randollph and the wages of Sin, Charles Merrill Smith

Double Exposure, Jim Stinson

Carolina Skeletons, David Stout

Fer de Lance, The rubber band, too many cooks, some buried Caesar, the silent speaker, in the best families, the black mountain, the doorbell rang, a family affair, rex stout

Rim of the Pit, Hake Talbot

The Cut Direct, Alice Tilton

The Greene Murder Case, SS van Dine

   News came early this morning of the death of Marvin Lachman, mystery fiction scholar and historian extraordinaire. He was also a long time friend of mine, although I remember meeting him only once. We were members of DAPA-Em together, and he contributed greatly to the second print version of Mystery*File as well as the M*F website that preceded the blog.

   The blog does contain many of Marv’s reviews, especially in its early days, but these were reprinted from early mystery fanzines such as The Poisoned Pen and The MYSTERY FANcier. I asked if he’d care to do more, and he declined, saying he had too many other projects he was either working on or committed to, and he was in his 80s at the time.

   I have cut back dramatically the number of obituaries I’ve written and posted on this blog, deciding to let other (younger) bloggers take care of “newsier” items, but this time is an exception, and only on a short personal basis.

   For more of Marv’s many many contributions and awards in the world of mystery fandom, please visit therapsheet.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-fan-and-scholar-like-no-other.

WAYNE V. WELTY – The Evil Place. Manor Books, paperback original, 1979.

   Every year there’s an Old Weird Movie convention here in Columbus. Every year, I attend. Every year, there’s a guy there who sells a small but choice assortment of old books, and every year I pick up an obscure old scary book I’ve never heard of to read at this time of year; something that looks promising, but about which I know nothing. And somehow it’s always fun and forgettable.

   Until this year.

   This year’s book was thoughtful, fast-paced, colorful, rich in characterization and deftly executed. In short, a book that deserves to be better known, and I hereby urge everybody within the sound of my writing to run out and find a copy.

   Evil starts out like many ghost stories, with a framing device. Sid White is an American grad student studying Art in the Lombard region of northern Italy, Pietro is a young Italian who runs the boat rental nominally owned by his aging, superstitious father, and the Evil Place is the fog-shrouded ruin of a once-mighty city a few miles upriver from the village of Pavia, near Milan. Sid ventures upriver, gets lost and oddly frightened in the fog, and returns to Pavia, where Pietro’s father gives him a joyous welcome back, and a stern warning against ever going near the Evil Place again. So Sid heeds the warning, never goes there, and it all ends like a Henry James novel.

   No it doesn’t. Of course not! Turns out Pietro has actually been in the Evil Place, knows the whole story, and will be only too happy to take Sid there for a show-and-tell — as long as they leave before dark.

   Once they get to the ruins, the story proper begins, and it’s a real gem of a thing, filled with evil barons, minor wars, murder, persecution, and a cast of colorful and well-observed characters: priests, nobles, spies, the Devil himself… and an old blind shoe-maker who wants only to be left alone, and so becomes the busiest character and focus of a fascinating and ultimately chilling story.

   But good as it is, that’s just the story-within-the-story. And once it ends, we get back to the framing device: the two young men in the ruins of a once-great city where night is beginning to fall, and something very scary is waiting in the dark.

   And good as that is, once the frame-story is finished, a logical follow-up ensues, just as compelling and scary as what has gone before. This is one book that gives you a lot for your time and money.

   Which in a way is a damn shame, because I don’t find any worthwhile references at all to the book or its author, although Evil seems to command pretty high prices at Abebooks. And Wayne V. Welty deserves to be remembered, just as The Evil Place deserves to be read. And enjoyed!

GUNS, GIRLS AND GANGSTERS. United Artists, 1959. Mamie Van Doren, Gerald Mohr, Lee Van Cleef, Grant Richards, Elaine Edwards, John Baer, Paul Fix. Director: Edward L. Cahn. Currently streaming on YouTube (see below).

   A heist movie, and everyone reading this knows exactly how heist movies, go, if not having possible scripts already in mind and ready to go, if only someone would come along and offer you the money to start filming it tomorrow. In this one, Gerald Mohr’s character has just been released from prison and has a armored car hijacking all figured out.

   He hooks up with a night club owner (Grant Richards) who could use a sizable cut of the loot (somewhere in the two million range) to help finance the robbery. Working for Richards is a singer (Mamie Van Doren) who, as it happens, is/was (I’m not clear on this point) married to Mohr’s cellmate (Lee Van Cleef), who is still in prison.

   I won’t go into how the heist goes wrong, but the movie certainly picks up its rather slow and sluggish pace when Van Cleef breaks out of prison, even with only a few months before he is due for a parole. Livens the movie right up, it does.

   Unfortunately, while Gerald Mohr had a great tough-sounding voice for radio (Philip Marlowe), he has been rather stiff in any of the movies I’ve ever seen him in. Mamie Van Doren is always easy to look at, but in this movie her voice is harsh and bitter-sounding. Lee Van Cleef’s eyes brighten up with glee whenever he can do some damage to whatever the plot is that he’s walked in on, and he walks away with full acting honors in this otherwise lackluster black-and-white crime film.

DONALD McNUTT DOUGLAS – Rebecca’s Pride. Harper, hardcover, 1956. Pocket Books. #1178, 1957. Avon PN321, paperback, 1970. Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1984.

   Rebecca’s Pride is a great home that was formerly a mil1 in the middle of the cane fields on an unnamed Caribbean island; and the man who must investigate the strange events that happen there is police captain Bolivar Manchenil. Manchenil is the “nasty” surname chosen by his grandfather when he was freed from slavery, and it comes from the “lovely, curiously shaped but poisonous tree.”

   Although the captain does not understand why his grandfather would choose to call himself after a tree that has been an agent of death to many, he does not trouble himself about it; he is a man who more or less accepts the world around him at face value.

   When a report comes in that there are “woolies” (ghosts) at the mill, Manchenil must investigate. The owner, a wealthy man named Fordyce (“Dice”) Wales, has not been at his island retreat for many months, and the place is supposedly closed up.

   But there is a light on the third floor, and when Manchenil and two U.S. Treasury men who have been looking for Wales investigate, they find his maggot-infested corpse in the central supporting column where the machinery once was — a place that only a person familiar with mills of this type would have known about. Moreover, when the autopsy is performed, it turns out Wales was poisoned with the juice of the manchenil tree — a method that a native of the island is likely to have used.

   The captain’s inquiries begin with the Von Schook family, to whom the Pride once belonged — and in whose home, coincidentally, Manchenil was raised. There seems to have been some connection between Wales and a Von Schook daughter-in-law, Estralita (who is no paragon of virtue), and surprisingly also with Hannah, a daughter who is an actress living in New York.

   When Manchenil learns that Hannah not only was Wales’s fiancee but also is due to inherit some $40 million now that he is dead, his loyal ties to the family who raised him are strained nearly to the breaking point. Manchenil continues his investigation, however, in his typical low-key manner, until the events set in motion by Dice Wales’s death escalate to an exciting conclusion.

   Rebecca’s Pride, which won a deserved Edgar for Best First Novel of 1956, has recently been reissued in paperback by Carroll & Graf. Douglass wrote only two other books, both featuring the likable, contemplative police captain: Many Brave Hearts (1958) and Saba’s Treasure (1961).

         ———
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.

BATMAN AND ROBIN “The Riddler.” First published in Detective Comics #140, October 1948. Facsimile edition: DC Comics, December 2023. Writer: Bill Finger. Penciler: Dick Sprang.

   I don’t know how many facsimile editions such as this that DC Comics has published — and if anyone can tell me where/how to find out, I’d really like to know — but let me tell you right now and up front, I think it’s a great idea, and I hope they’re making a lot of money at it.

   As far as I can tell, there are only a couple of tiny places in the reprint edition of Detective Comics #140 differs from the original. One’s the price, as indicated on the front cover. In 1948, it was Ten Cents. Here and now in 2023, it’s $4.99. Taking inflation into account, I think today’s price is an out-and-out bargain.

   The other difference is the indicia — the small fine print at the bottom of the first page that describes the publishing info for the comic, all nicely updated for the newer version. The paper and coloring seem nicer too, but the only way to be certain about that is to go back to 1948 and buy a copy fresh off the newsstand. You’d need a time travel machine to start with, though, and then a slim Mercury (?) dime. (I’ll furnish the dime.)

   The reason for reprinting this particular issue didn’t make any big impression at the time, I’m sure, but it was the very first appearance of one of Batman’s favorite longstanding villains — well, a favorite of Batman’s fans, but perhaps not Batman himself — the Riddler. The latter’s real name was Edward Nigma (I’ll let you work that one out for yourself), and as this story relates it, the soon-to-be villain grew up as a schoolboy who loved puzzles of all kinds — well, so did I, but young Nigma cheated at doing them.

   When older, he became one of those guys who constantly challenged Batman to decipher a riddle or rebus which when unclued would tell the latter where and when the former’s next robbery or holdup would take place.

   All of the Riddler’s storylines were clever and a lot of fun to read. The artwork is still cartoony — but not overpoweringly so. I would like to think that both scriptwriter Bill Finger and artist Dick Sprang are in a comic book Hall of Fame. If not, they should be.
   

         Other stories in this issue:

Robotman: “Robotman’s Double Trouble”
Slam Bradley: “Dog for a Day”
Boy Commandos: “The Dictator from Alcatraz”

   I no longer buy Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine on a regular basis, but I’m glad I did when I spotted the November-December issue at a local Barnes & Noble this past week.

   The “Blog Bytes” column, which was presided over by the late and greatly missed Bill Crider for much of its early existence, is now written by Kristopher Zgorski, whom I do not know, but of three mystery-oriented blogs he covers in this issue, plus one YouTube channel, he had this to say about the one you are currently reading:

   â€œMystery*File in various different formats has been run by Steve Lewis since the seventies, so in terms of longevity, this one is hard to beat. The blog itself is a more recent development but remains an important resource. Like the other entries in this month’s Blog Bytes column, Mystery*File is focused on the past, helping readers to understand how crime fiction has morphed over the years. Readers will constantly find new content on this site – mostly informed and well-written reviews of books, movies and television shows by a collection of consistent reviewers including Steve’s son Jonathan. The tab called Links alone can consume hours of a visitor’s time, including a resource that leads fans to many other sites of interest.”

   And if this blog manages to live up to those very kind words, may I add a huge thank you to all of the contributors and commenters to M*F, as well as all of you who keep coming back on a regular basis, I really do appreciate it. I couldn’t do it without you!

PASSAGE FROM HONG KONG. Warner Brothers, 1941. Lucile Fairbanks, Douglas Kennedy (as Keith Douglas), Paul Cavanagh, Richard Ainley, Marjorie Gateson, Gloria Holden, William Hopper (uncredited, as a worker at the US Consulate). Based on the novel The Agony Column, by Earl Derr Biggers. Director: D. Ross Lederman.

   Passage from Hong Kong takes place before the war and as foreign nationals are warned to leave Hong Kong. Finding a ship that will take them out of harm’s way is a problem, though, but in the chaos a young man (Douglas Kennedy) meets a young girl (Lucille Fairbanks) who catches his eye. She is traveling with her aunt (Marjorie Gateson) who disapproves of him.

   Not knowing the young lady’s name, the young man resorts to a local newspaper’s classified ads section. She responds, but playing it coy, she asks him to write her five letters first before she will decide to meet him or not.

   We do not know this until later, but the young man is a writer of thriller novels, and following the old adage of “write what you know,” the letters he sends her are a series of chapter installments of an serious scrape  he gets into involving both murder and international intrigue.

   It’s all totally fictitious, of course, but the story he tells her, to get into her good graces, as well as her aunt’s, is dramatized for us on the screen, making this a full-fledged adventure film as well as a romance, with a considerable amount of frothy comedy thrown in to boot.

   The Agony Column, the story by Earl Derr Biggers that the movie is based on, takes place in England before World War I, but as in the film, the communications between two would-be lovers takes place through a series of a newspaper’s “agony column,” so there is some similarity. (I’ve not read the book. I’m only stating what I found out about it online.)

   The movie is no classic, far from it. Once watched, quickly forgotten, the players as well as the story line. Especially the story line.