W. R. BURNETT – Underdog. Knopf, hardcover, 1957. Bantam A1819, paperback, 1958.

   Underdog finds W.R. Burnett at the top of his form, which is about the best there is. Clinch, the aptly-named, emotionally-constipated anti-hero of the piece, is an ex-con working as a chauffeur to a powerful political boss who befriended him in prison.

   He isn’t long on the job, though, when he discovers (a) that his boss has a lovely and restless wife, and (b) the up-and-coming powers-that-will-be want to put said boss out to pasture — and whether he’s eased out or carried out depends on how much trouble he gives them.

   Naturally, for this sort of thing, the Boss makes trouble for the new guys, and Clinch finds himself framed for murder, whereupon Burnett puts his own special slant on the old same song: Clinch doesn’t try to clear himself or catch the real killers; he just goes out to get back at the mugs what done him dirty. And what he does and how he does it makes for some of the most taut and violent reading to come my way lately.

   Burnett was one of the few writers who could carry off this sort of thing perfectly. He evokes Clinch as a memorably ordinary guy, out for himself but loyal to his friends and nagged by his relationship with an underage hooker who wants to be a wife to him.

   Additionally, the Boss, his wife and their “associates” come off the page in neat cameos that linger in the mind. As for the action scenes, well they’re the kind of writing that put hard-boiled literature on the map, and I can recommend this highly to lovers of the stuff.

THEY CALL IT MURDER. TV movie, 17 Dec 1971. NBC / 20th Century Fox TV /Paisano Production. Based loosely on the book The D. A. Draws a Circle and characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner. Cast: Jim Hutton as D.A. Doug Selby, Lloyd Bochner as A.B. Carr, Jessica Walter as Jane, Leslie Nielsen as Frank, Jo Ann Pflug as Sylvia, Robert J. Wilke as Sheriff Rex Brandon, Edward Asner as Chief Otto Larkin. Written and developed by Sam Rolfe. Directed by Walter Grauman. Executive Producer: Cornwell Jackson. Associate Producer: William Kayden. Executive Story Consultant: Erle Stanley Gardner. Available on DVD and for downloading (Amazon).

   This TV Movie pilot for NBC is the only time the Selby character has been adapted for TV or film. Doug Selby first appeared in Country Gentleman magazine in 1936. The first of a series of nine books, The D. A. Calls It Murder was published in 1937. This story was loosely based on the third book The D.A. Draws a Circle (1939).

   There is evidence the TV movie was filmed in 1969 but did not air until December 17, 1971, and that Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) was involved. Garner died February 11, 1970, yet is credited as executive story consultant. Executive producer Cornwell Jackson was Gardner’s literary agent.

   More than one reference book gives 1969 as the date made. In an article about Ed Asner (New York, March 15, 1982), Pete Hamill wrote than when Grant Tinker was casting Mary Tyler Moore in 1970 he remembered this pilot from his NBC executive days and asked Asner to read for the part of Lou Grant.

   They Call It Murder was a better than average TV whodunit. Set in a small town called Madison City, Doug Shelby and Sheriff Brandon had recently won election pledging to keep the evil big city Los Angeles from taking over the town. The local Police Chief, Otto Larkin was on the other political side and supplies comedic relief. (He has his police car stolen while he is in it.)

   A dead body is found in the swimming pool of Jane Antrim’s home. She shares her home with her disabled father-in-law Frank Antrim. Frank lost the use of his legs in a car accident that killed his son and Jane’s husband Brian. They are waiting for the insurance company to pay their $500,000 policy, but an insurance investigator refuses to approve the payout.

   The victim did not die in the pool, but was shot elsewhere, twice, with two different guns using the same entrance hole. The first bullet killed him, but which gun fired the first bullet?

   Selby spends his time interviewing suspects and potential witnesses, despite having his own “Paul Drake” aka Sheriff Brandon. The defense attorney’s “Hamilton Burger,” A.B. Carr arrives and actually beats Selby in the single very brief courtroom scene as Selby loses his fight to keep his murder suspect in Madison City jail. Instead the suspect is transferred to big city Los Angeles.

   Selby realizes it all ties into the accident involving Frank and Brian a year ago. He asks his questions, nearly gets run off a mountain road by a bad guy, finds the clues and reveals all in the end.

   Even Sam Rolfe (Man from U.NC.L.E., Delphi Bureau) was unable to install a personality into Hutton’s Selby. The script relied too much on the stiff boring Hutton and the equally boring Selby.

   The supporting cast from the books was underused and their relationship to each other implied rather than explained. It was the relationship between Mason, Drake, Della, and Burger that made Perry Mason so much fun to watch. That was sacrificed here to focus on Selby.

   I am not a fan of the puzzle mystery. I am a fan of Perry Mason but ignore the story until Mason gets involved. I rarely care who the murderer is. But this proved to be an interesting puzzle with who did it not as surprising as the twists in who did it.

   There was little visually interesting about They Call It Murder, a whodunit more interested in clues than action. However the filming of the denouncement scene by director Walter Grauman was creative. As Selby explains, in voice over, what happened and who did what, the picture broke up into picture within a picture (slightly similar to the Mannix opening theme).

   Fans of TV whodunits might enjoy They Call It Murder and wish it had been made a series. But the D.A. as the hero cop working for the establishment (compared to Perry Mason doing the opposite) did not have much appeal at that time. Plus, Hutton’s Selby had virtually no appeal as someone you would want to watch every week. They Call It Murder may have had a good whodunit, but it was no Perry Mason.

      ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

Justice Denoted, by Terry White (Greenwood, 2003)

IMDB.com

“Murder by Proxy.” An episode of Cannon (1971-76). Season 3, Episode 5. First broadcast: October 10, 1973. William Conrad (Frank Cannon), Anne Francis (Peggy Angel), Linden Chiles (Ray Younger), Marj Dusay (Mrs. Farrell), Charles Bateman (Lt. Paul Tarcher), Ross Hagen (Wendell Davis), Charles Seel (apartment house manager), James Nolan (Sparks Foster), Jack Gaynor (man). Writer: Robert W. Lenski. Director: Robert Douglas.

   There was a time when many, perhaps most, detective stories were whodunnits — the identity of the malefactor(s) would be withheld until the final “reveal” at the finale. (Personally, I prefer them.)

   But there is another type of crime fiction called the “inverted detective story,” a kind pioneered by Freeman circa 1912, and which is so ably described by its inventor just above.

   In the inverted, the reader/viewer knows more than the detective; and if done well, it can be just as entertaining as a whodunnit.

   In the wake of the phenomenal success of the Columbo TV series, which with only one exception were all inverteds, other television shows tried their hand at it — bringing us to “Murder by Proxy.”

   This particular Cannon episode could be regarded as a model of the form.

   Peggy Angel (Francis) is a business woman who often frequents a certain bar after hours to unwind. She has no idea that she’s being set up to be framed for the murder of someone she doesn’t even know, by people she’s never even met.

   The bartender slips her a mickey, and after a few minutes the world is just a blur to Peggy. The man with a mustache at the end of the bar offers to help her to her car– but when she comes to in an unfamiliar apartment with the murder weapon in her hand and a dead man on the floor, she understandably loses it.

   As it turns out, the helpful man with the mustache (Chiles) is the murderer. He’s working on behalf of one of his clients (Dusay), for whom he has more than just professional feelings. (No, I’m not revealing too much — remember, the emphasis is not on whodunnit but “whydidtheydothat” and “howdowecatch’em.”)

   With Peggy passed out on a couch, Younger (Chiles) goes about methodically executing his plan. The victim has been lured to the same apartment on some pretext, and Younger guns him down without compunction. He then moves a floor lamp from near the sliding doors to the other side of the room, gathers up some extension cords, stands on a chair to fetch something attached to a suction cup inside the skylight in the foyer, removes a tape from the cassette player, puts the gun in Peggy’s hand, and makes his exit.

   And that’s just Act I, roughly the first fifteen minutes, an admirably efficient piece of film making requiring about half the time it would take a Columbo episode to relate.

   Enter Frank Cannon, an old friend of Peggy’s and an ex-cop turned PI. As usual, all of this circumstantial evidence is solidly against her, and she’s languishing in jail as a guest of the county. It’s fairly obvious clearing Peggy is going to be a tough job.

   Unlike many Cannon episodes, which suffer from a lot of filler — usually in the form of car crashes, gun fights, helicopter chases, and so forth — “Murder by Proxy” shows its protagonist in full detective mode, with any attempt to terminate our hero left to the next-to-last scene.

   Cannon’s investigation has, as Freeman indicated, “the effect of new matter.” That moved lamp, for instance: Cannon notes the markings on the rug and the lamp’s removal and correctly concludes how it was used to establish an alibi for the killer(s), as well as to exploit Peggy’s well-known temper.

   He finds fragments on the rug in the foyer and, using a chair, locates that easily overlooked suction cup in the skylight (the police forensics was pretty sloppy in this case, nevertheless), and reasons out its connection to the floor lamp, as well as just how the cassette player figured in all this.

   And for Ellery Queen fans, there’s even a dying clue.

   About the cast: William Conrad (1920-94) starred in 121 episodes of Cannon, 14 installments of the short-lived Nero Wolfe (1981), and 104 episodes of Jake and the Fatman (1987-92).

   Anne Francis (1930-2011) featured in 30 episodes of Honey West; she also gave a superb performance in the Twilight Zone installment “The After Hours” (1960).

   Linden Chiles (born 1933) specializes in character parts; he appeared in four episodes of Banacek as the frazzled insurance company executive.

   The director, Robert Douglas (1909-99), was a worthy successor to Basil Rathbone as a Hollywood villain (59 titles to his credit); he also directed mostly TV (39 titles), including Surfside 6 (7 episodes), 77 Sunset Strip (12), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (4), Adam-12 (6), Cannon (5), The F.B.I. (13), The Streets of San Francisco (4), Baretta (9), Future Cop (2), and one Columbo (“Old Fashioned Murder,” 1976).

   PulpFest 2012 continues the proud tradition of a summer pulp con, now entering its 41st year. PulpFest is the summertime destination for fans and collectors of vintage popular fiction and related materials. It will be held at a new venue, the Hyatt Regency in downtown Columbus, Ohio. It will begin on Thursday evening, August 9th and continue until Sunday afternoon, August 12th.

   PulpFest continued to grow in 2011 with more than 430 registrants. It was the largest crowd ever for a summertime pulp con. Reviews were generally very positive, from Walker Martin’s “…when the dealer’s room opened officially, it was obvious that this was another rousing success,” to Ron Fortiers’ “…a truly fun and exciting program with a little of something for all pulp enthusiasts,” and newcomer Sean Levins’ “This was, without a doubt, the best convention I’ve ever been to!”

   Sellers of pulp magazines, vintage paperbacks, and other paper collectibles and related items are already filling up our exhibit space. There will be more than 100 tables of pulps, books, vintage comics, original art, B-movies and serials, and similar items available for sale, daily from 9 AM until 5 PM. The evening hours, from 7 PM until midnight, will see a variety of programming.

   2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Under the Moons of Mars,” better known by its book title A Princess of Mars and, more recently, John Carter, a major motion picture from Disney. Robert E. Howard’s Conan the barbarian will also be 80 years old in 2012. PulpFest will be celebrating both of these occasions during their highly regarded evening programming. The award-winning science-fiction writer and noted Burroughs authority, Mike Resnick, will also be appearing as the convention’s guest of honor. Author readings and an art show featuring work by illustrators Jim and Ruth Keegan and, possibly, Mark Schultz, are also planned.

   For further information, please visit the convention’s website at https://www.pulpfest.com/ or write to David J. Cullers, 1272 Cheatham Way, Bellbrook, OH 45305 or via email at jack@pulpfest.com.

   The contact phone number for the hotel is 1-614-463-1234. Be sure to mention PulpFest 2012 when booking a room to get the convention rate. Hotel reservations can also be through the convention’s website through a dedicated link to the Hyatt Regency Columbus.

Price: $15.00 – $35.00

Member Discount: A three-day prepaid membership will cost $30. Send payment to David J. Cullers, 1272 Cheatham Way, Bellbrook, OH 45305. Payment at the door will be $35 for a three-day membership. Daily memberships will cost $15.

   Doug Anderson has just started a new blog focused on “Lesser Known Writers” of weird fiction.

   He says in part: “…many of the authors covered wrote supernatural fiction and are today fairly forgotten. Most of the entries are illustrated with photographs and dust-wrappers. Some of the authors wrote for Weird Tales (e.g., Bassett Morgan, and Lyllian Huntley Harris). Others wrote supernatural novels (Marion Fox, and C. Bryson Taylor). Interested in cricket fantasies? Check out the entry for Alan Miller.”

   Authors covered so far:

Vivian Meik (with newly discovered information), author of Devil’s Drums (1933)

C. Bryson Taylor, author of the vampire novel In The Dwellings of the Wilderness (1904)

Marion Fox, author of Ape’s Face (1914) and The Mystery Keepers (1919)

Blanche Bloor Schleppey, author of The Soul of a Mummy (1908)

Alan Miller, author of Phantoms of a Physician (1934) and Close of Play (1949)

Lyllian Huntley Harris, author of one known short story in Weird Tales, the subject of a later-day fraud

Bassett Morgan, prolific Weird Tales author

   And many others, with more to come.

WITHOUT MOTIVE. ITV, UK. Series One, Fall 2000, 6 x 1 hour, less adverts. Ross Kemp, Kenneth Cranham, Jamie Foreman, Hazel Ellerby, David Kennedy, Lou Gish, Sean Murray, Jane Hazlegrove.

   Without Motive doesn’t have the same philosophical ambitions about the nature of crime as did the recent Tough Love [reviewed here ]. It is an investigation, pure and simple, of a series of rapes and murders committed in the Bristol and South Wales areas.

   Taking title lead is Ross Kemp as DC Jack Mowbray, who is part of the investigating team. We see him at work and at home where the stresses of the investigation cause friction and create problems. The investigation drags out over a year and though suspects are found it is impossible to find evidence to convict.

   The pressure mounts on the team leader, Detective Superintendent Henderson, played superbly by veteran Kenneth Cranham, but suddenly (in episode 6) the killer makes a mistake.

   Enjoyable watching without being any great shakes and a little disappointing, as often, in its ending. Kemp was enticed by ITV away from his starring role in the BBC’s EastEnders with the promise of lead dramatic roles but so far he has done little to suggest he has the acting range to cope.

NOTE:   A second series was aired in 2001. Both seasons are available on DVD in the US in a fairly expensive box set of four disks.

ROBERT BARNARD — At Death’s Door. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1988. Dell, paperback, 1989. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1988.

    — Death and the Chaste Apprentice. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1989. Dell, paperback, 1990. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, 1989.

   In At Death’s Door, Cordelia Mason, the daughter of actress Dame Myra Mason, is writing a tell-all biography of her (still-living) mother and decides to visit her half-brother, who is caring for their senile father, once a successful novelist. Cordelia was the outcome of a brief affair between the two, and wants to go through her famous father’s private papers from that period.

   Her mother, anxious not to be painted as “Myra Dearest,” also visits, to keep Cordelia from going through with her plans. Shortly after a heated argument between mother and daughter, Dame Myra is found murdered.

   In The Chaste Apprentice, the Ketterick arts festival is staging an Elizabethan play, “The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe,” in the courtyard of an old English Inn and everyone involved in the production — plus a number of Arts Festival participants — is staying there.

   The one incongruous character in the entire milieu is the new manager of the Inn, who spends his brief hour upon the page butting into others’ affairs with unwelcome advice and/or ferreting out their secrets for psychological blackmail. I somehow managed to keep my jaw from dropping in astonishment when he turned up murdered in his room after the first performance.

   I don’t know, but it somehow seemed to me that Barnard couldn’t seem to hit his stride in either of these efforts. The characters are serviceable but hardly memorable, and neither story has any great originality, except for a slight twist at the end of Door, unrelated, alas, to the plot.

DANA STABENOW – Though Not Dead. St.Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books, hardcover, February 2011; paperback, November 2011.

Genre:   Licensed Investigator. Leading character:  Kate Shugak; 18th in series. Setting:   Alaska.

First Sentence:   The black death didn’t get to Alaska until November.

   Old Sam, a tribal leader and surrogate father to PI Kate Shugak, has died. He has made Kate his executor and primary heir but some of his bequests come as a surprise. Kate hadn’t known how much land Sam owned, including a homestead within gold-mining country.

   Then there’s the letter simply saying, “Find my father,” and how does this tie to a missing Russian icon which was a tribal artifact? Kate doesn’t know but something thinks she does as they keep trying to kill her.

   In the meantime, Kate’s lover, Sgt. Jim Chopak, has been summoned home for his father’s funeral. The relationship between him and his mother has always been chilly, but never more so than now that his father bequeathed Jim his locked writing box in which he finds a photograph of his mother and someone Jim has never before seen.

   It is nice to see Ms. Stabenow returning to a more serious style. Not that her trademark humor is not longer apparent — it is — but this story is more layered, complex and a bit more serious than previous, recent entries.

   Maps are a useful and wonderful way to provide the reader with a sense of location and perspective; I’m glad they are there. Complimenting them is an incredible ability to create a sense of places and people through Ms. Stabenow’s vivid descriptions:

   Okay, I’ll admit being partial to that particular description as I loved the “Angelique” books, but the scene of Kate’s wolf/dog Mutt interacting with wild wolves against the snow under a full moon also becomes one you are not reading, but seeing.

   Characters come to life as well: “Judge Singh…had such immense dignity that she always seemed to be attired in her robes…” and “At the desk sat Jane Silver, who looked like she out to be hunched over a steaming cauldron chatting in chorus with the other two weird sisters.”

   The people and relationships are real, including Kate’s relationship with Mutt, which adds, funny, touching and fearful moments to the story. The inclusion of a surprising and unexpected character only adds to the story.

   The story itself is very good and very much about relationships. They really are the point from which the various lines of the story evolve.

   It’s not a perfect story. At times, it felt as if there was one thread too many and it bogged down. I found myself wanted to skip portions, although I didn’t, but it did feel overly long; too many scenes with Mutt, not enough “mystery” or flow to the story as I’d have hoped. Perhaps it’s just a case of my expecting more from an author who is so good.

   Don’t misunderstand; I enjoyed the book very much for its characters, humor, sense of people and place, and tense scenes of strength and determination to survive. Although the plot could have been a little tighter, I’ll be right there read to buy the next book in the Shugak series.

Rating: Good Plus.

I’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER. Warner Brothers, 1934. Joan Blondell, Pat O’Brien, Allen Jenkins, Glenda Farrell, Eugene Pallette, Gordon Westcott. Director: Ray Enright.

   This light and lively (and just a little risque) pre-Code comedy is well worth your time and money, if the opportunity should ever come your way. Pat O’Brien and Allen Jenkins, his somewhat dour sidekick, play a couple of telephone company repairmen, and I’ve Got Your Number is filled to the brim with tales of their various adventures.

   Among which are being asked to install longer cords in a luxury apartment inhabited by a coterie of beautiful call girls (if I can fill the gaps, then you should be able too, but one blonde’s backless dress goes a long way in giving it away); unmask a phoney medium (Glenda Farrell) who’s using her phone line to flimflam her clientele who think she’s connecting them to their dearly departed: and finding a new job for a good-looking hotel switchboard operator (Joan Blondell) who lost her job playing along with a practical joke that turned out not to be so funny.

   And it also turns out that Pat O’Brien is quite the operator himself. Getting Joan Blondell to agree to go out for dinner with him is quite a task, but it’s one that he’s more than up far – what with his very persuasive rat-a-tat non-stop vocal ability. It is great, as always, to see a man with a way with women in action, even if he is so good-looking.

   Allen Jenkins claims to hate the ladies, but when he turns up later on with Gloria Farrell as his lady friend on a double date with the other two, we are not surprised (and, I have to admit, just a little jealous).

   Most of the tale is centered on Joan Blondell and her propensity for getting into trouble. It’s not her fault – well, not completely – when some bonds go missing while she’s on duty at the switchboard on the new job O’Brien gets for her, and getting her out of trouble again takes all of her brash young suitor’s formidable abilities.

   What makes the story the most fun, though, is that the players seem to be enjoying themselves as much as they’re hoping the members of the audience will, and I think they must have.

FRANK THOMAS – Sherlock Holmes and the Treasure Train. Pinnacle, paperback original, March 1985.

   Frank Thomas was — just in case you’re wondering if he might have been — the movie actor who gained considerable fame playing the lead role in the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series on the small screen, a role so well known that I’m sure it stayed with him the rest of his life. After his TV days were over, though, he also became an expert on the game of bridge and (most relevant to us here) a mystery novelist.

   Besides a handful of short stories about Sherlock Holmes, Thomas wrote four novels about the character, of which this was the third. Watson, of course, in all of them as well, as the purported narrator, and so is Mycroft Holmes – at least in Treasure Train – but (as far as I recall) never onstage. He’s only referred to, and as it so happens, quite often.

   There are a couple of other short cases to deal with at first, but the crux of the matter of hand is the theft of £500,000 in gold that has been stolen from a well-guarded and armored railroad car as it’s being transported across the English countryside. If it sounds like an “impossible crime” to you, it did to me at first as well, but Holmes makes quick work of that part of the mystery, alas.

   The problem, then — having become one of whodunit, not how — loses momentum quickly as the intricacies of international finance and banking come into play. Thomas does his best to keep things interesting through the middle of the book, but I found my eyelids getting heavier and heavier throughout the denser chapters, of which there were, unfortunately, too many.

   Thomas also does his best to make the reader believe his characters are the same as those created by Conan Doyle, but while solidly done, he never convinced me. Two gentlemen. good detectives each, with the same names and outer mannerisms as the real Holmes and Watson? Yes, I found myself going along with that, but I also regret to report that clones, even above average ones, are seldom little more than stand-by replacements for the real thing.

      The Sherlock Holmes novels by Frank Thomas —

Sherlock Holmes and the Golden Bird. Pinnacle, pbo, 1979.

Sherlock Holmes and the Sacred Sword. Pinnacle, pbo, 1980.

Sherlock Holmes and the Treasure Train. Pinnacle, pbo, 1985.
Sherlock Holmes and the Masquerade Murders. Medallion, pbo, 1986.