COLLIN WILCOX – Power Plays. Random House, hardcover, 1979. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, December 1979. No paperback edition.

   Much to the surprise of everyone involved, an apparently minor traffic accident on the streets of San Francisco unexpectedly coughs up the body of a murder victim.

   Found stabbed to death in the back seat of one of the cars is a one-time Washington columnist who in recent days had reportedly been hot on the trail of a surefire comeback story. The trail of the killer leads Lt. Hastings of Homicide on a merry chase as well. Higher and higher he goes into the upper echelons of the rich and powerful on both coasts; at stake is nothing less than his job itself.

   A lot of fast-paced action scenes keeps the story’s arteries pumping, leaving little time-out for the usual details of Hastings’ home life. What makes this not the totally successful peek behind closed doors it’s intended to be is a certain naiveness in such matters — and a lack of depth in terms of the muck that’s being raked up.

   If it matters, though, Hastings as a character pleases me, and I liked the book anyway.

Rating:   B.

Bibliographic Data:   Collin Wilcox, 1924-1996, wrote a total of 21 Lt. Hastings novels. Power Plays was the 10th in the series. One of the books, Twospot, was a joint venture with Bill Pronzini, with Hastings and Bill’s “Nameless” PI sharing the detective work. In another of the books, Except for the Bones, Wilcox’s other series character, theater director Allan Bernhardt, makes an appearance.

MYSTERIOUS DR. SATAN [and] THE DRUMS OF FU MANCHU. Both Republic, 1940. Serials: 15 chapters each. Directors: John English & William Witney.

   Back in Grade School I used to leaf eagerly through Famous Monsters and Screen Thrills Illustrated, tantalized by stills from old serials filled with costumed heroes, mad doctors, robots, and death rays, chock-full of perils to dazzle my pre-adolescent imagination.

   As I grew older, my tastes remained pretty much pre-adolescent, the serials became available on video, and I discovered most of them were about someone trying to conquer the world with two guys and a truck.

   That’s true of the later post-war serials, when everyone got a bit tired of it all, but Drums and Satan were made back when somebody cared about giving the kids a thrill, and each is fifteen chapters of constant action, delivered by the able directing team of William Whitney and John English, abetted by Republic’s hyper-kinetic stuntmen.

   We get car crashes, plane crashes, robot crashes, leaps from cliffs, daggers, pistols, trapdoors, gloating … everything, in short, that a kid dreams his world will be filled with when he grows up.

   The heroes of these things are your typical stalwart and two-fisted sort, but the eponymous baddies of these two efforts are memorable indeed. Doctor Satan (I guess some folks don’t care what they name their kids) is played by Eduardo Cianelli with the kind of dapper old-world charm you don’t see much in Mad Scientists anymore.

   Cianelli is remembered best as the evil religious fanatic (“Kill for the love of killing!”) in Gunga Din, but he was playing suave Gangsters ever since Winterset in 1936, and he wound down his career as an ancient medicine man in the surreally bloated Mackenna’s Gold.

   Fu Manchu, in Drums of… is a less showy part, written with stereotyped oriental reserve, but he’s played by Henry Brandon, who was probably the most notable movie villain you never heard of.

   Brandon started out in the movies (as Henry Kleinbach) hamming it up as evil Barnaby in Laurel & Hardy’s Babes in Toyland. Before Fu, he did dirty duty in serials like Buck Rogers and Jungle Jim, and afterwards served as the character model for Captain Hook in Disney’s cartoon Peter Pan, but his most critically respected effort is probably his few scenes as Chief Scar in John Ford’s The Searchers.

“Over Fifty? Steal.” The original Hawaii Five-O (Season 3, Episode 11, 25 November 1970) and “Odd Man In” (Season 4, Episode 14, 28 December 1971).

Jack Lord (Steve McGarrett), James MacArthur (Dan-O), Zulu (Kono), Kam Fong (Chin Ho), Hume Cronyn (as Lewis Avery Filer), Richard Denning (The Governor), Harry Endo (Che Fong), Jiro Tamiya (Goro Shibata), Lane Bradford (Moose Oakley). Writer: E. Arthur Kean. Directors: Bob Sweeney, Paul Stanley.

   Imagine an intelligent, extremely clever “gentleman thief” in the tradition of Raffles and Robin Hood.

   Now imagine this thief couldn’t care less about righting wrongs or fighting oppressive government — he just wants the money.

   Such is Lewis Avery Filer, a character who appeared in two episodes of the original Hawaii Five-O.

   In his first appearance (“Over Fifty? Steal”), Filer is an insurance investigator who has just been forcibly retired, a victim of a corporate takeover.

   Filer feels he’s been treated shabbily and sets out to exact his revenge. He initiates a series of robberies against the “new boss” that has McGarrett and Co. jumping through hoops trying to track him down.

   Unlike most of McGarrett’s foes, Filer eschews violence, using his formidable intelligence to execute his crimes with great precision. At one point, he even confronts McGarrett in the middle of a news conference! Predictably, the media glorify this new “Robin Hood,” much to Five-O’s collective chagrin.

   Eventually, Filer slips up, allowing McGarrett to capture him just at the moment of his greatest triumph.

   When he next shows up, some time in the next season (“Odd Man In”), Filer is in prison, but he’s overheard something there that prompts him to escape: A $4 million drug money deal is about to go down, and Filer wants it all.

   Filer’s target this time isn’t a legitimate corporation but “The Corporation,” Asian drug dealers, and these boys play rough.

   Even while McGarrett is in hot pursuit, with Five-O always just one step behind him, the wily Filer plays the mobsters like a violin, knowing that one slip-up would prove instantly fatal. It’s a very dangerous “game” he’s involved in, but Filer is up to the task.

   However, can Lewis Avery Filer manage to rob from the rich (the Mob) and give to the poor (Lewis Avery Filer) without getting caught by Steve McGarrett? Need you ask?

   Both episodes featured Canadian-born Hume Cronyn (1911-2003), who must have relished playing Filer, transforming into many other characters at will. Cronyn’s first major film role was also memorable, as the snoopy mystery-novel addict in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

   These shows featuring Lewis Avery Filer are a lot of fun, with an unaccustomed sense of humor for this series, and worth your time.

   Later on in Season 6, in an episode entitled “30,000 Rooms and I Have the Key” (26 February 1974), David Wayne played a very similar character but with a different name. Since E. Arthur Kean wrote this one too, we could conclude that it was intended as another Filer escapade — but, alas, it was not to be.

R. C. WOODTHORPE – Death Wears a Purple Shirt. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1934. First published in the UK as Silence of a Purple Shirt, Ivor Nicholson & Watson, hardcover, 1934.

   Nicholas Slade — “an eminent author whose name was known to everybody, though his works, with one exception, were read by nobody” — is asked by his niece to do what he can to free the niece’s estranged husband from a murder charge. The husband is a member of the Purple Shirts, a fascist organization in England, and the man killed is a high-level member of that group who is up to no good.

   Slade is known by one book — the rest being dull satires — The Gods Are Just, which he describes as “an eruption like the pimples on the face of adolescent youth: natural but unpleasant, and best forgotten once they are gone,” and at which he shudders whenever it is mentioned.

   He and his cockney, although he doesn’t talk like one, assistant, Alfred Hicks, who spends most of his time reading the articles in John Bull, go to the scene of the crime. The two of them put up at the Island Hotel, a most extraordinary inn with a most extraordinary staff.

   There is a great deal of humor in this novel, arising both from the circumstances and the characters. The portrayal of the Purple Shirts should be enough to make any fascist organization blush, assuming it was capable of it.

   The publishers say that Nicholas Slade “will inevitably come to occupy a niche in the gallery of immortal detectives of fiction.” Well, we all know what publishers are like, but they had somewhat of a point here. There was, however, only one other novel featuring Slade (ed.–The Necessary Corpse), and two works an immortal do not make.

   Still, the potential certainly existed, and any reader who enjoys the classic mystery with humor and interesting characters should find this well worth seeking out.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   As a mystery writer, Ralph Carter Woodthorpe, 1886-?, was the author of eight detective novels published between 1932 and 1940. Two of these featured Nicholas Slade as the leading character, as Bill pointed out; a former schoolmistress named Mathilda Perks appears in another two. One of these was Death in a Little Town, an early eccentric cozy which Bill reviewed in the same issue of Poisoned Pen. Look for here on this blog soon. (He enjoyed it.)

THE SENTIMENTAL AGENT. ITC Entertainment; ATV Production. September 28, 1963 through December 21, 1963. 13 episodes @60 minutes. Carlos Thompson as Carlos Varela, Burt Kwouk as Chin, Clemence Bettany as Miss Suzy Carter, John Turner as Bill Randall. Executive Producer: Leslie Harris. Producer: Harry Fine.

   It is not uncommon for a great series to decline as time goes by, but The Sentimental Agent might hold the record for how fast a great series can turn into one of television’s worst.

   The Sentimental Agent began as an episode of another ITC series, Man of the World. The episode entitled “The Sentimental Agent” introduced the character Carlos Barella (Carlos Thompson), owner of an import-export business.

   Man of the World featured the adventures of Michael Strait (Craig Stevens), world famous photographer-reporter, as he traveled around the world with his assistant Maggie (Tracy Reed). When Michael was arrested in Cuba, Maggie goes to Carlos for help. The story focused on Carlos as the series regulars spent most of their time off screen.

   The episode was one of Man of the World’s best and led to the character Carlos getting his own weekly series. Carlos Barella became Carlos Varela, owner of Mercury International import-export business. He moved to London and lived in a fancy office-home above the company’s warehouse.

   His staff was introduced. Chin, Carlos’ Chinese servant, had endless contacts (cousins), enjoyed gambling on horse races, and ruled with absolute power over what clothes Carlos wore. Miss Carter was the usual loyal pretty young efficient secretary. The interaction between the three characters added to the series charm.

   The highlight of the series was Carlos Thompson’s portrayal of Varela. Carlos had the charm to con anyone including the viewers. Varela was entertainingly too perfect. He knew everything and everyone. Confident, irresistible to beautiful women, he was always one step ahead of everyone else. He avoided violence, preferring to outsmart his opponents.

   Each week Carlos would be in a different part of the world on business only to be caught in the middle of danger and intrigue. The writers made creative use of Carlos’ occupation. Stories ranged from Cold War spy plots (“Express Delivery”) to adventures in exotic lands (“Scroll of Islam”). The series worked best featuring the light escapism of such episodes as “May the Saints Preserve Us.”

   In that episode, future Monty Python’s Flying Circus favorite female, Carol Cleveland played a young beautiful headstrong heiress from Texas who wanted Mercury International to ship her Northern Ireland ancestral castle to her home in Texas. The story used the expected twists as MacGuffins, action that bordered on the silly, and dialog full of humor.

   Even in the beginning the series had its flaws. Stock footage filling in for the exotic locale of the week was overused and obvious. Direction was average. And a warning, after repeated listening, the theme music “Carlos’ Theme” can get stuck in your head and refuse to leave.

   Reportedly, ratings were not as good as expected, but far worse was the alleged problems with the star. Carlos Thompson’s performance was near perfect, yet it is claimed the Spanish-speaking actor had problems with his English. Thompson lasted eight episodes (plus the final episode in perhaps the worst use of stock footage in television’s history).

   Replacing Thompson was John Turner as Bill Randall. The storyline had Randall filling in for the absent Varela who was away on business and no doubt having more entertaining adventures than the ones Randall had. The audience suffered through five episodes featuring Bill Randall. He was the complete opposite of Carlos. Randall was a dull, clueless, average looking Englishman. It was as if they had replaced James Bond with Felix Leiter.

   The switch of leads was rushed and clumsy. It wasn’t until the final episode, “A Box of Tricks” written by story editor Ian Stuart Black, that the character of Randall, and how Chin should fit in, was finally figured out. The episode also gave all the characters a happy ending.

   A special treat of watching old television shows is seeing future stars. “A Very Desirable Plot” written by Brian Clemens (The Avengers) featured the first television appearance of Diana Rigg.

   The Sentimental Agent is worth watching. The Carlos Thompson episodes are entertaining, at times brilliantly so. But avoid any episode with John Turner, it would just spoil any fond memories you have of this series.

      SOURCES:

Cineology.

Double O Section. (Warning to spoiler-phobics. This review has spoilers.)

Note:   A DVD set (Pal Only) of the 13-episode season has been released, but NetworkDVD.net no longer carries it. A five minute clip from an episode called “The Beneficiary” can be seen here on YouTube.

        #8. CANDID JONES, by Richard Sale.

   The series discussed this time is the Candid Jones series, created by Richard B. Sale and running from 1937-41. Sale had five other series running in Detective Fiction Weekly at one time or another: Daffy Dill, Captain McGrail, Casey Mason, John the Cobra, and Owl-Eye Venner. So Sale’s stories, from this evidence, seem to have been popular with the readers.

   The Daffy Dill and Candid Jones stories often were given covers for their issues. The very first Candid Jones story rated a special cover featuring Jones himself with his camera and gun. Daffy Dill describes Candid Jones in a later story: “He was a pretty big fellow, kind of homely, his face filled with freckles, his hair shiny as bright copper. … He had a strong jaw and clean eyes. … There was an air about him that meant Business with a capital B.” (Flash!)

   The stories give a little background about Candid Jones and how he wound up as a photographer. His real first name is Terrence, and the Candid nickname was given to him because of his candid personality. He is a hardboiled character, and had quite a fearsome reputation as an investigator.

   Jones started out being an investigator for an unnamed private detective firm, then after a year of learning the ropes, got a job with the Apex Insurance Company, on “the gumshoe trail of stolen gems and insurance chiselers.” (Make Way for a Dagger)

   Photography was his hobby at that time, and he began selling some of his pictures. He eventually decided to make a business of his hobby and went into business for himself, after resigning in 1932 from his insurance job of thirteen years. His background as an investigator helps him when he gets involved in mysteries, and his success brings more cases.

   His beginnings as a private investigator are seen in a flashback in the story “One Herring — Very Red”, in which he investigates the murder of a friend and mentor of his from that time period. At the end of this story he agrees to work for Apex Insurance Company on special assignments, otherwise he works on his photography jobs. And in another story, we learn of a previous marriage when he investigates a homicide and clears his ex-wife.

   Regarding his hardboiled reputation, Jones admits that maybe he was: “I was never afraid of any man, and I always figured that if a guy was going to get rough with you, the best thing to do was to get rough with him first.” (Long Shot) He also notes that “Bluff is great stuff and so is a front. It goes a long way.” (Murder on the Film)

   However, he noted, eventually you have to use your fists or bullets if it becomes necessary. Another of Sales’ characters, on the other hand, Daffy Dill, is not really a hardboiled character but always carries a gun because he deals with criminals and crimes regularly. Dill is a much easier going person.

   Many series have a policeman as friend or antagonist to the main character, and this series has one. Inspector Harry Rentano is a friend of Candid Jones, and sometimes invites him along on his official investigations. Rentano is also available for any assistance Candid Jones may need on investigations he starts.

   Rentano first met Candid Jones during the time Jones worked as an insurance investigator. He used to be on the police Bomb Squad, and worked on some Mafia cases. He is currently head of the Homicide bureau, and was known as a policeman more interested in knowing the truth about a case than in making an important arrest to impress people. He is married with four children.

   The third member of the cast in the stories is Jones’ girlfriend, Claire Crossman. She is a model from the Frazier Agency, “and outside of being my favorite model, she’s about my favorite girl-friend too.” (Banshee) She often does not appear in a very prominent role in the stories, unlike Dinah Mason in the Daffy Dill series.

   Candid Jones has two items he seems to carry with him everywhere. One is a camera, often a Leica, Model G. The other is his gun, a German 9mm Luger. He does not say where he picked up this weapon, but it is possible he is a war veteran.

   One occasion where Jones used a different camera is in the story “You Can’t Print That!” where he takes an entire strip of twenty-four exposures with a robot camera that automatically takes the photographs and advances the film for the next exposure. It came in handy for the murder he witnessed, and left his other hand free to use his gun on the murderer.

   Jones uses his gun frequently in the stories, and in his own words, “I’ve got to admit I never had any scruples about killing a man. … I don’t like to kill … But when it’s my life against a rat’s.” (Murder on the Film) His camera saved his life on one occasion, when a bullet struck it rather than him. (The Big Top Murders)

   To get an idea of the sort of crimes that Candid Jones becomes involved in investigating, a short survey of some of the stories is in order. “Long Shot”, the first story, involves an attempt to fix a horse race. It is a very violent story, and probably the most hardboiled of the series.

   In “You Can’t Print That!” Jones witnesses a murder that is connected to the trial of a racketeer, and takes some photographs for his first newspaper job. In “Backstage” Jones makes a bet with Inspector Rentano that he can catch a double murderer by the next day. This one takes place at the local zoological park.

   In “Banshee” Inspector Rentano asks Jones for help on the question of a banshee at the city aquarium, and gets involved with some criminals. In “Make Way for a Dagger” Inspector Rentano asks Jones along on a murder investigation aboard a yacht in the Hudson River, where the weapon is a harpoon.

   In two of the stories Daffy Dill costars with Candid Jones: “Flash!” and “Death of a Glamor Girl.” Both characters appeared on the cover of “Flash!”, thus promoting both series. Daffy Dill also makes a brief appearance in “You Can’t Print That!”

   At the time of the story “You Can’t Print That!” Jones had acquired a staff photographer position on the Chronicle newspaper at the salary of a thousand dollars a month, but he stated in “Banshee” that he had given up that position because there was “Too much of a sameness. I was getting rich without working. I’m on my own again.”

   Photographs play an important part in the stories in the series, often revealing clues and serving as evidence of crimes. Jones’ photograph studio is on Fifth near Forty-Fifth Street. The studio is evidently well-equipped, having been set up for modeling sessions that Jones photographs, plus an excellent darkroom for developing film.

   Jones works not only in black-and-white film but also does color prints, which is “a technical sort of job, involving separation of color values in the negatives and then dyes.” (Backstage)

   There was an extended gap between the last two stories. The last story, “Delayed Action” in 1941, explained that some changes had taken place since the previous group of stories. Jones noted that it had been almost a year since he had been involved in any crime cases, and he intended to continue that way.

   However, in this story he becomes involved in a crime case, and willingly so. He also notes that Claire Crossman has married someone else, so that romance is off. Candid Jones’ ex-wife plays a part in the story, and he protects her from the criminals. Inspector Rentano is mentioned in this story, but does not appear in it.

   The series is worthy of being reprinted. Although not quite as numerous and popular as the Daffy Dill series, it is a good hardboiled detective series worth reading. One advantage to writing these series overviews is being able to reread the stories, especially the better ones like Candid Jones.

      The Candid Jones series by Richard Sale:

Long Shot     January 9, 1937
Neat But Not Gaudy     January 30, 1937
Murder on the Film     April 3, 1937
One Herring — Very Red     May 1, 1937
Flash!     May 29, 1937
The Camera Kills     July 31, 1937
You Can’t Print That!     August 21, 1937
Gaff!     October 30, 1937
The Big Top Murders     November 13, 1937
Back Stage     January 15, 1938
Banshee     April 9, 1938
Make Way for a Dagger     August 27, 1938
Pictures in the Dark     December 10, 1938
Torio Had a Friend     March 25, 1939
Death of a Glamor Girl     April 8, 1939
The Mother Goose Murders     May 27, 1939

Tip Your Hat     August 26, 1939
Someday I’ll Get You     November 18, 1939
Delayed Action     June 14, 1941

    Previously in this series:

1. SHAMUS MAGUIRE, by Stanley Day.
2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.
3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.
4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.
5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.
6. BATTLE McKIM, by Edward Parrish Ware.
7. TUG NORTON by Edward Parrish Ware.

ARTHUR LYONS – Other People’s Money. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1989; paperback, 1990.

   Los Angeles private detective (L.A.P.I. for short) Jacob Asch is hired by a Turkish businessman to keep tabs on his daughter, who has come to L.A. with a Greek gentleman. The Turk even springs for two more investigators to assist in the surveillance, but, shortly after the first report, calls off the case.

   When one of the assistants suddenly turns up missing, Asch noses about a bit and discovers the body of the Greek gentleman, buried in the yard of a rented house, a discovery that unexpectedly propels him into the world of Stolen Artifacts and dealings in same conducted by prestigious museums and fanatic collectors.

   This one’s pretty good; lots of double-crossing, backstabbing, lying, cheating and everything else you look for in a Stolen Artifact book. Try it.

Note:   A complete bibliography for Arthur Lyons was posted on this blog at the time of his death in 2008. Follow the link.

JOHN DICKSON CARR – The Bride of Newgate. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1950. Paperback reprints include: Avon 476, 1952; Avon T-391, 1960; Curtis, 1971; Carroll & Graf, 1986.

    Dick Darwent is to be hanged in front of Newgate Prison at dawn tomorrow for a murder he did not commit. Caroline Ross must be married in order to collect a legacy, but she does not want a husband. An unholy alliance is made to make her an almost instant widow, and Reverend Horace Cotton, the Ordinary of Newgate, performs the ceremony in Darwent’s cell.

    “The Bride of Newgate” returns to her friends and their pre-hanging party across the street from the gallows. But fate in the form of the Battle of Waterloo cuts down Dick’s uncle and two cousins in the prime of their lives and leaves Darwent the family title. Dick, now a Peer, can only be tried in the House of Lords, who forthwith pardon him.

    The year is 1815. Now armed with a title, money and property, Darwent can track down the evil “Coachman” responsible for the murder that he was to be hanged for. Caroline, heiress and marchioness, falls one-sidedly in love with Dick. Married in name only, she aids and abets his search to unravel the twisted background of the crime.

    Through a set of interlocking puzzles, Dick finds out that he was kidnapped and framed by mistake. With duels, a disappearing room, brawls and arson, the action is fast and violent. The London of 1815 is wrapped around the story until you can almost smell it.

    Reverend Cotton is only one of a cast of colorful characters winging in and out of this spectacle. Scenes range from the House of Lords and the gaming clubs of Mayfair to the meanest gin shops in the East End.

    Time has not tarnished this tale. John Dickson Carr was as noted for his historical fiction as he was for his locked room stories with Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale. This fresh reprint [from Carroll & Graf] makes another fascinating story available in a handsomely bound paperback.

   In his Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (2007) [reviewed here ] Barry Forshaw has a chapter, “Cops,” with 31 novel entries. Merely two of the novels listed were published before the 1980s: Ed McBain’s The Empty Hours (1962) and Georges Simenon’s The Madman of Bergerac (1932).

   Ian Rankin, creator of Inspector John Rebus and currently the most popular crime fiction author in Britain, gets one entry, for The Falls (2001), as well as a page devoted to his works in general. Freeman Wills Crofts, creator of Inspector French, the greatest police detective of the Golden Age of detective fiction (roughly 1920-1940), gets no mention in the “Cops” chapter, nor anywhere else in Forshaw’s Guide for that matter.

   This omission is an injustice to Freeman Wills Crofts. No doubt this author is out of fashion these days, but in his own way he is as important to the history of the crime fiction genre as Ian Rankin is. To be sure, Ian Rankin, the leading figure in the so-called “Tartan Noir” movement, has been a powerful force in moving British detective fiction away from its cozy, genteel, village and country house gentry stereotype, but in his own day Crofts did much the same thing, albeit more gently.

   While Crofts’ most famous creation, Inspector French, is a much more conventionally “nice” individual than Rankin’s John Rebus, Crofts’ tales of French’s criminal investigations give readers a different picture of the Golden Age British detective novel than that which has been derived from the better-known works of the British Crime Queens (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh).

   By exploring Freeman Wills Crofts’ Mystery in the Channel (1931) and Ian Rankin’s Hide and Seek (1990), I want to highlight not only the differences between Crofts and Rankin and their fictional detectives, but — which may be surprising to many — the similarities.

   Crofts created Inspector Joseph French as a series character (he appeared in a long series of novels published between 1924 and 1957, the year of Crofts’ death) in order to get away from the eccentric amateur detective figure so strongly associated with British mystery. French won immediate popularity around the globe, becoming one of the best-known fictional crime investigators of the British Golden Age.

   A plain, no-nonsense, middle class cop, Inspector French stands in stark contrast with such glamorous aristocratic sleuths as Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, Allingham’s Albert Campion and Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn (though Alleyn himself is a cop, he is rather a twee one), as well as Christie’s eccentric Belgian, Hercule Poirot, and her nosy village spinster, Miss Jane Marple.

   In 1936, Crofts’ American publisher, Dodd, Mead, informed potential Crofts readers that the author had deliberately built up Inspector French “as a foil to the theatrical and eccentric fictional sleuth” and that the police detective therefore was “a model of thoroughness, persistence and hardwork” — an ideal embodiment of the bourgeois virtues.

   Mystery in the Channel, the seventh Inspector French novel, shows both the detective and the author at the height of their powers, in a typical case involving not misdoings in a baronial mansion or a quaint Edwardian village, but modern corporate corruption and crime involving two countries.

   In the effective opening of Mystery in the Channel, the corpses of two men are discovered on a yacht adrift in the English Channel. Both men were felled by gun shots. It is soon discovered that the slain pair were officers in Moxon’s General Securities. (“You’ve heard of it, of course; one of the biggest financial houses in the country.”)

   Could these deaths be related to the rumors in the City that Moxon’s was headed for a complete crash? It certainly seems so, when it is discovered that a million and a half pounds has been looted from the firm’s coffers.

   Scotland Yard’s investigation involves delving into matters both financial and logistical. What were the two murdered businessmen doing on the yacht and who could have gotten on the yacht to murder them? To some this may sound dry, but Crofts manages to keep the reader in doubt and suspense until a dramatic climax is reached, when the dauntless French nabs the guilty.

   In Mystery in the Channel, Crofts, a retired railway engineer who, admittedly, knew more about trains than he did the workings of Scotland Yard, makes some effort to portray the Yard as the great investigative machine that it was. Besides French, other officials seen working on the Channel case are:

    ● Sir Mortimer Ellison, Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, French’s boss throughout the series.

    ● Police Sergeant Carter, French’s chief underling throughout much of the series.

    ● Inspectors Tanner and Willis. These men both featured in earlier, pre-French Crofts’ novels investigating cases of their own, Tanner in The Ponson Case (1921) and Willis in The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1922). Tanner, we learn, is Inspector French’s “greatest friend.”

    ● Mr. Honeyford, “finance expert from the home office.”

    ● Inspector Barnes, “the Yard’s nautical expert.”

   French also has to deal with local law enforcement officials in both England and France.

   Admittedly, Crofts’ treatment of the police often is naïve, but his books certainly mark a departure from the Golden Age stereotype of amateur detective and country houses/villages. How does Crofts compare with Rankin, a hugely popular author widely deemed the modern master of the British police procedural?

   Hide and Seek, the second Ian Rankin novel about Inspector John Rebus, appeared in 1990. In this tale, Rebus investigates the death of a young male drug addict found expired, surrounded by Satanic symbols, in a squalid Edinburgh “squat” (abandoned building).

   Everyone but Rebus writes the death off as an accidental overdose, but the tenacious and stubborn detective eventually discovers darker truths, namely that the young man was murdered and that a malign conspiracy involving very prominent people is afoot in Edinburgh.

On the surface Inspectors French and Rebus are very different sorts — one might call them British crime fiction’s good cop and bad cop. French has an ideally blissful marriage with his wife, Emily, or Em; and he has a daughter, Eliza. (To be sure, there is tragedy in French’s life in that his son was killed in the Great War, but Crofts later forgot that he had given Joseph and Emily children, so perhaps this loss does not matter so much.)

   Although in a couple of Crofts’ novels Em has what she calls a “notion” and contributes an insight that helps French solve his case, essentially she is a firmly domesticated woman placidly devoted to her husband’s welfare and what the author terms her “mysterious household employments.”

   Contrastingly, in Hide and Seek we learn that John Rebus’s wife has left him and his household behind, taking their daughter, Samantha (Sammy), with her. Rebus leads a much lonelier, angst-filled existence than French, and he has no one to tidily arrange his domestic life.

   Instead, he goes through a series of girlfriends, drinks too much and smokes too much — all patterns of behavior alien to the the abstemious and upright Joseph French. (It is rather shocking when a frustrated French at one point in Mystery in the Channel declares, “Curse it…I could do with a bottle of beer.”) Like French, Rebus seems to have some religious inclinations, but, unlike French, Rebus is unable to sustain them.

   Rebus also has pricklier relationships with his superiors than does French, although Rankin’s old-fashioned and courtly Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas “The Farmer” Watson bears considerable resemblance to Crofts’ Sir Mortimer Ellison. (Over the course of the Rebus novels things continue to change, however: Watson retires in 2001’s The Falls and is replaced by a woman — awkwardly for Rebus one of his former sexual partners.)

   Nevertheless, French as well as Rebus sometimes bucks the system. In Hide and Seek, Rebus finally exposes the criminals by a not-by-the-book stratagem that is like something Bulldog Drummond and his jolly amateur crime fighting pals might have tried in an outrageous Sapper thriller from the 1920s.

   For his part, French for the sake of expediency on occasion employs skeleton keys to conduct warrantless searches and sometimes “bluffs” recalcitrant witnesses (misleadingly threatens them with arrest) to get the information he wants.

   Not surprisingly, given the tenor of modern times, Rebus’s cases tend to involve much racier subject matters — bad stuff — than those of Inspector French. In Hide and Seek, for example, Rebus confronts a case involving such unsettling matters as Satanism, drug abuse and (male) prostitution. Certainly no such things crop up in Crofts’ Mystery in the Channel!

   Yet in a key respect the subject matters of the books are strikingly similar. In both Hide and Seek and Mystery in the Channel, the specter of business corruption and criminality looms large indeed. Both Rankin and Crofts take quite condemnatory views of the corporate world. Here is Sir Mortimer Ellison on the men of Moxon’s General Securities:

   The author himself chimes in with a similar note, informing us of Sir Mortimer that “for the wealthy thief who stole by the manipulation of stocks and shares and other less creditable methods known to high finance, whether actually within or without the limits of the law, he had only the most profound enmity and contempt.”

   In his influential survey of detective and crime fiction, Bloody Murder, Julian Symons declares that “Golden Age writers would not have held it against [E. C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case character Sigsbee] Manderson that he became rich by speculation.”

   By making such an assertion, Symons reveals he did not sufficiently comprehend the work of Freeman Wills Crofts. When writing Mystery in the Channel Crofts clearly was influenced by the deplorable state of the world since 1929, after the Wall Street Crash and the onset of the Great Depression (events that also have resonance today).

   In Hide and Seek Rankin makes his distaste with Big Business as manifest as Crofts had sixty years earlier. Mark the words Rankin puts into the mouth of one of his businessmen villains, who arrogantly attempts to bribe Rebus:

   But John Rebus, like Joseph French, proves sterling and incorruptible. In the end, Rebus and French share this defining quality with each other and, indeed, with Wimsey, Campion, Alleyn, Poirot, Marple and the rest of the crime and mystery genre’s Great Detectives: a determination to find answers, to establish truth, to restore some semblance of order in a world of chaos and confusion.

MICHAEL SHAYNE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE. 20th Century Fox, 1940. Screenplay by Stanley Rauh and Manning O’Conner based on the novel Dividend on Death by Brett Halliday. Director: Eugene Forde.

   Lloyd Nolan plays Mike Shayne; Marjorie Weaver is the spirited female protagonist; Joan Valerie plays the femme fatale; Donald MacBride is the irascible, incompetent police chief (Peter Painter) with an even dumber but less irascible sidekick, Michael Morris; Walter Abel, Douglas Dumbrille, Clarence Kolb, and George Meeker impersonate a quartet of heavies and candidates for chief murder suspect.

   Irving Bacon, who was regularly flattened by Arthur Lake as he tried to deliver the mail to the Bumstead residence in the popular Columbia series has a cameo as a fisherman neatly manipulated by Shayne into concealing testimony that would have implicated the latter in the murder.

   This is a race-track, night-club mystery and is notable for two things:

   Some really dumb situations for Shayne (his car stalls at the murder scene as the police are arriving; he throws what he believes to be the murder weapon — his own gun — into the bushes from which he handily retrieves it the next day after the police have presumably searched the area; he sticks his head into a dark room into which a man with a gun has just fled and is knocked out by the mug; and in the hoariest and most predictably resolved plot gimmick in the film, he stages a mock murder using ketchup as blood, and when he attempts to play out his mini-drama, discovers that the ketchup has been enriched with some very real blood, from a fatal bullet wound).

   …And the introduction of a Little Old Lady detective (Elizabeth Patterson) whom he embraces at the end as his “partner” while he whispers to her, “And we’ll split the money.”

   I have not seen one of these Lloyd Nolan Shayne films in forty years. I would hope the others in the series have aged better. Patterson is a graceful actress who makes the best of an awkward role. She has read all the Ellery Queen mysteries and the Baffle Book and she keeps wanting to share a particularly difficult “baffle” with Shayne.

   Superior to The Gracie Allen Murder Case, to take an contemporaneous example, but you may not see that as a recommendation.