DECOY. Syndicated TV. First aired October 14,1957; 39 30min episodes aired at various times around the country. Cast: Casey Jones: Beverly Garland. Executive producer: Everett Rosenthal; technical advisor: Margaret Leonard, Detective 1st Grade (Ret.).

   Decoy is best remembered as the first American TV series to feature, as its main character, a policewoman.

   The series’ episodes were “based upon true and actual cases.” Decoy was dedicated to the Bureau of Policewomen of the city of New York. The stories had little humor and were thick with melodrama. Decoy was much like Dragnet, but with a more feminine point of view. As Joe Friday did, Casey Jones narrated the episodes.

   Decoy featured crime stories dealing with the social issues of the times. Often the villains were portrayed as victims themselves. It was common for at least one bad guy to find redemption in the end.

   In “High Swing,” Casey goes undercover replacing a murdered ‘Come On’ girl, a woman who picks up guys in a bar and leads them to a place to be mugged. The killers were a nice old couple trapped by a tragic past that left the wife hooked on morphine.

   Casey did not have a regular partner, instead she was assigned to a different department every week. She might be in uniform, undercover, or the officer in charge. She worked on any type of crime and in any area of the city. Her fellow male officers accepted a policewoman as routine and treated her with respect.

   While little is revealed of Casey’s life beyond being a policewoman, we do see the effects each case has on her. At the end of every episode, Casey would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, often sharing how the case had affected her.

   The series was filmed, some of it outdoors in the New York area. The productions values were on par with network television of that time. Most of the episodes remain entertaining, yet dated, crime melodrama.

   The writing was weakened by the melodrama. It is hard today not to laugh at lines such as in “The Sound Of Tears”: “There were no kisses in the park that night (pause) unless you want to count the kiss of death.”

   The direction was adequate for its time except for the episode “Across the World.” Casey goes undercover to find a killer, but she is found out, beaten badly, and ends up in the hospital (and out of most of the episode!). Director Teddy Sims apparently had only one camera and limited time. Characters were reacting to things the camera did not show, characters off camera had conversations with others on camera, and it had the worse chase scene ever filmed.

   A talented underrated actress, Beverly Garland was the best part of Decoy. Watching her share the screen with a guest cast that included such talent as Peter Falk, Martin Balsam, and Suzanne Pleshette remains the best reason to watch Decoy.

SOURCES: Internet Archives offers episodes to watch for free. Classic TV Archives has a good episode guide. And the series is available on DVD.

SEVEN THIEVES. 20th Century Fox, 1960. Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, Eli Wallach, Alexander Scourby, Michael Dante, Berry Kroeger, Sebastian Cabot. Based on the novel by Max Catto. Director: Henry Hathaway.

   Context first. To Catch a Thief was filmed in 1955, while Ocean’s Eleven premiered in August 1960. Seven Thieves beat the latter to the gate by a few months, its first showing being in March that same year.

   Of course you can’t really consider To Catch a Thief as a caper film, not in the strictest sense of the word, I don’t think, and there were a number of others that were that came in between, but since both it and Seven Thieves take place in Monte Carlo with the Casino a major part of the plot, it was of course the film I first thought of when I began to watch the latter.

   Only problem is, Thief was filmed in beautiful Technicolor, and Thieves is in “glorious” black and white. As befitting a “noir” film, one supposes, but then why was it filmed in Cinemascope? The noir aspects are minor. Why not have followed Hitchcock’s example and gone with color as well? Monaco is such a beautiful place. It deserved it.

   Thieves is also not nearly as good, plotwise, as Thief, but it is better than Eleven (filmed in color) but whose fame depends on the actors playing in it than the rather disposable details of stealing all that money from the Las Vegas casinos, all to no avail.

   Something always has to go wrong in caper and/or heist films. We’ve said that before on this blog, and Thieves in the long run is no different. But for a suspense film, it runs a leisurely course from nearly beginning to end. Even the twists in the plot are leisurely.

   I will not be the first to have pointed this out, I am sure, but what plot behind the caper in Thieves reminded me of most was those that appeared every week on the Mission Impossible television show. Meticulous detail, timed to the second, but while nothing ever seems to go exactly to plan, and a lot of sweat appears on everyone’s brows, there is little to fear that anything goes seriously wrong.

   But of course it does, and I will refrain from telling you just when it does, assuming that you will one day wish to watch this picture. And yet the ending, while perhaps persuaded in the direction it takes by a board of censors, goes down smoothly enough – save the very last scene, where sheer luck seems to be involved more than bad happenstance, if there is a difference, and I believe there is.

   I don’t believe that Edward G. Robinson ever gave a bad performance, and he’s in fine form in this one as the disgraced elderly Professor who puts the details of the theft together, with Rod Steiger coming on board to keep the other players in line. Steiger himself seems a bit out of place among the other members of the gang, a miscellaneous group to say the least, but he’s quite effective, and (surprisingly) quietly so.

   Joan Collins was also in fine form, and here I’m speaking physically as well as performing her role well. She is a dancer in a jazz nightspot in Thieves, brunette, beautiful, slim, lissome and slender, with her two sensuous dance numbers well choreographed by Candy Barr, one of the most well-known true strippers of the day.

   There is some interplay between the members of the gang, some more committed than others, but mostly between Robinson and Steiger, whose character needs a lot of convincing to come in on the job, then later on an attraction between Steiger and Joan Collins begins to bloom.

   The heist itself? While complicated, rather ordinary, I’d have to admit. But being no particular fan of the Rat Pack myself, I’d recommend this one over its more direct contemporary, even though it’s not nearly as well known, even before the remake of Ocean’s crew at work came along and made the earlier version even more famous.

JAMES KENNAWAY – The Mind Benders. Atheneum, US, hardcover, 1963. Signet P2515, reprint paperback, September 1964. UK edition: Longmans, hardcover, 1963.

Film: THE MIND BENDERS. Anglo-Amalgamated Films (UK), American International Pictures (US), 1963. Dirk Bogarde, Mary Ure, Stanley Clements, Michael Bryant, Wendy Craig, Edward Fox. Screenplay: James Kennaway. Director by Basil Deardon.

   The actual experiments in sensory deprivation that took place at McGill University and the University of Indiana and later across the United States were originally designed to test how astronauts might fare after long periods alone in the isolation and zero gravity of outer space, but the sometimes bizarre behavior it induced in participants and the effect on their personalities soon inspired study to move into other areas of the human psyche.

   Much of sensory deprivation theory has been discarded as useless today since it varies so much between individuals and is subject to so many unpredictable variables, but when this novel was written it was still the cutting edge of psychological experiment.

   The TV series Twilight Zone did a memorable episode with Earl Holliman on the theme (though without the classic sensory deprivation tank), and of course Paddy Chayevsky later wrote the novel Altered States that became the over the top Ken Russell film with William Hurt and Blair Brown. It even featured in a memorable episode of Hawaii Five-O with Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett captured by Wo Fat (Kingh Deigh) and subjected to the treatment.

   But by far the best handling of the subject was James Kennaway’s 1963 novel and the Basil Deardon film that followed, The Mind Benders.

   Major “Ramrod” Hall is an old time counter-intelligence agent keeping an eye on Nobel laureate S.V. Sharpey, who maybe disseminating information to a foreign journalist about his work in sensory deprivation (“All men were traitors or patriots, as all eggs were good or bad.”) when Sharpey throws himself from a moving train and is killed.

   That leads to Longman, a scientist who worked with Sharpey in the United States on Reduction of Sensation therapy, and who has recently been absent from his teaching duties. Longman is something of an odd duck who tends to put himself into his experiments.

   As Hall watches a film of Sharpey’s experiments he hears Sharpey’s narration state:

   Which leads to questions: Did Sharpey die because of his studies; could the Reduction of Sensation be used in espionage?

   And has it been?

   Tate, one of Longman’s assistants brings him news of Sharpey’s death, which more than upsets Longman’s beautiful and loving wife Oongah (“… originally came from Orkney, or Shetland, or Finland, one of those places where the wind blows a girl until she has the look of a modern statue.”) and lives with Longman and their children in an eccentric but happy and rather sensual household.

   Soon that happy household is going to come under incredible tension.

   The Mind Benders is a slow almost deliberate novel — short — but building an accumulation of details as it builds up its tensions and the impending feeling of terror once Longman submits himself to the experiment that led to Sharpey’s death.

   A psychological novel in the purest sense, The Mind Benders slowly and quietly builds as the experiment begins to unravel Longman’s personality, turning his love for his wife to distaste, then hatred — but enough to lead to violence? Can a man be made to hate something he actually loves merely by suggestion induced under the extremes of sensory deprivation?

   How much responsibility for our own actions can we count on under such pressure?

   Just how far can the victim be manipulated? Longman seeks to find the answer, and more importantly can he fight back. At stake is more than the fate of nations or the solution to mysteries. At stake is Longman’s marriage and his love for his wife.

   There is little action in the book. It is mostly a case of suspense and drama. Talking heads if you will, but exceptionally intelligent and compelling talking heads.

   The Mind Benders is a one of a kind thriller made into a splendidly faithful and thoughtful film with Dirk Bogarde as Longman and Mary Ure as Oongah by Basil Deardon. It’s finally available in Region 1 DVD format and well worth catching, suspenseful, almost Gothic, and more unsettling than many a horror film filled with actual monsters other than those from our unconscious mind.

   A splendid cautionary tale that has the feel of the best science fiction and horror, but is rooted firmly in actual experiment and human behavior, it is one of the most disturbing books and films you will ever read, but ultimately also one of the most reassuring.

MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS – Kiss Her Goodbye. Otto Penzler Books, hardcover, May 2011.

   I read the first six Mike Hammer books back when Mickey Spillane first wrote them – well maybe a little later — but I haven’t read them since, nor I have read anything else he wrote, except a short story, novelette or two. I am submitting this as a preface to the rest of the review just to let you know where things stand.

   The first six were gangbusters, though, and there are parts of them that once read are simply not forgotten. I don’t suppose that I’m the only one who’s always been disappointed by that ten-year gap between Number Six (Kiss Me Deadly, 1952) and Number Seven (The Girl Hunters, 1962), but for whatever reason, it’s there and what’s done can’t be undone.

   Um. Let’s reverse that to say that what was undone can’t be done. Or perhaps it will someday? So far none of them have taken place during the 1952-1962 hiatus, but this is the third collaboration of Max Allan Collins with Mr. Spillane with some scraps of stories the latter had started but never finished.

   The first of these was The Goliath Bone (2008), in which Mike Hammer was updated to a post-9/11 21st century Manhattan, followed by The Big Bang (2010), which took place in the 1960s.

   Jumping forward in time again, the setting of Kiss Her Goodbye is now the 1970s disco era, when cocaine was a recreational drug and the police largely looked away when celebrities gathered to party.

   This would have been when Mike Hammer had a few more years of PI work under his belt and even — could it be? — mellowed out some. He is in fact, when the book begins, recuperating from the injuries he incurred on a previous case, idling away his time in the Florida keys, when news of the death of his good friend Bill Doolan reaches him.

   Could the old ex-cop have committed suicide? Captain Pat Chambers of New York City Homicide thinks so. Doolan was 85 and had terminal cancer. Mike’s not so sure. He’s also not sure he’s ready to return to New York. He has the city out of his system, he says, no nostalgia, no regrets.

   But the case for suicide is not as solid as Chambers has told him, and both that and the knifing of a young girl at the hands of a probably mugger right after the funeral keeps him in town longer than he’d planned on.

   There is also a sexy (and ambitious) female assistant district attorney who catches his eye, and the attraction definitely seems to be mutual. There’s also a gorgeous Brazilian singer in the trendiest night club in town – no Mike Hammer novels is ever without dames, even though by the 1970s they were no longer called dames.

   There is even some solid detective work, private eye style, that takes place in Kiss Her Goodbye, though maybe there was in those 1950s novels, and I was reading them for other things at the time. But if you were to think that Mike Hammer would have mellowed out at this stage of his career, as a semi-suggested above, you would be badly badly mistaken.

   There is enough violence in this book to make any Mike Hammer fan stand up and cheer, and loudly – with one long shootout in particular not likely to be forgotten by anyone who reads it anytime soon.

   Or in other works, if you are a Mike Hammer fan, you will absolutely love this book. It has the rhythms of New York City down pat – the dark streets, the sex, the fascination with guns and killing – and in every pore and fiber of its being.

   In Kiss Her Goodbye it’s a retro feeling, though, feeding perhaps (if I dare say it) too much on the past. If you aren’t already a Mike Hammer fan from before, for whatever reason — and those of you who aren’t know exactly who you are — this is not a book that will convert you, and it would make no sense for me to try.

Note:   Corrections of a factual nature have been made to this review based on information provided by Max Allan Collins, co-author of Kiss Her Goodbye. See also Comment #3.

[UPDATE] 04-09-11. More from Max:

   There’s been a lot of confusion about these posthumous works, and I keep trying to clarify, but it’s just convoluted and confusing enough to make that hard.

   Goliath Bone was the book Mickey was working on at the time of his death. He was sick and rushing to get it done, so his draft wasn’t polished and ran short, and the last couple chapters weren’t finished. He had done a partial last chapter. That book is probably 60% Mickey, with me polishing and expanding his work.

   The others all start from manuscripts of at least 100 pages, sometimes with plot notes and character stuff, but not always. Each is a different situation. For instance, Kiss Her Goodbye had two false starts from Mick.

   They were the same preliminary set-up but went in two directions — the major one dealt with the late inspector investigating mob/drugs stuff and crooked politics, the other dealt with the Nazi jewels. I wove them together. A major liberty I took was that Mickey was heading for an outdoor heavy metal festival, and I substituted the Club 52-type disco, partly to make the book more overtly ’70s, and also because his notes for the Chrome character indicated more of a disco queen than a rock act.

   These manuscripts are all over the place time-wise. Goliath Bone is chronologically last. The Big Bang is set around 1964. Kiss Her is about ten years later. The remaining three range from extremely early — would you believe 1948! — to the 90s, with one more mid-’60s manuscript in between. I’ll be doing these as well.

   There are another half dozen shorter manuscripts — more like the scraps you describe, opening chapters mostly — that I may develop if there’s a demand. I turned a one-page novel outline into the radio-style audio book, The New Adventures of Mike Hammer Vol. 3: Encore for Murder (with Stacy Keach). I’ve done a few short stories, too, developing the shorter scraps (again, that’s accurate in these instances) into one-off stories.

   Anyway, that’s probably more than you care to know…but once again, thanks very much.

                   Max

It’s been seven days now– I went to the ER a week ago today — and I’m getting around the house, but only with the aid of a walker. I couldn’t do without it, and I still can’t get upstairs to my own computer.

After a burst of optimism at the beginning, I’ve had to realize that the healing process isn’t going to be as smooth and easy as I’d hoped. As many of you warned me earlier, it’s going to slow, uneven and far from easy. They gave me enough pain pills for three weeks. I guess they knew what they were doing.

I’ll be back to regular blogging as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’m doing some reading that I’ve haven’t taken the time to do in a while, but so far, other than watching UConn basketball games, both men and women, not too much TV.

And as a PS to David Vineyard, that was good advice you gave me. I’m trying not to sneeze.

I don’t know what caused it but I had a massive muscle spasm in my right hip Sunday morning, bad enough for us to call an ambulance to take me to the emergency room around 3 pm. They assumed it was a fracture but all of the tests, Xray, MRI and Catscan, were negative.

They finally found a medication that killed the pain, and I came home around 5 pm Monday. The pain is still mostly gone and for the most part I can get around, but I’m still too light-headed to do more than post this message to the blog. I’m using my wife’s downstairs computer. I can’t maneuver my way to my upstairs study where mine is. (We live in a split level house.)

I see that a lot of discussion is still going on following last week’s posts, especially the one about the Mannix TV show that Michael Shonk wrote up, but I don’t imagine I’ll be able to post anything new for the next few days. The visiting nurse made her first visit about 30 minutes ago, and I’ll be making a trip to our chiropractor this afternoon, I hope.

I’ll have to see if there’s as easy way from me to read my email from here. My wife uses gmail or hotmail, and I don’t. I’ll probably have to add updates to this post to stay in touch.

[UPDATE] 03-30-11. Here’s the culprit, clinically speaking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piriformis_muscle

Located in men right where your billfold sits in your back packet. I don’t know if a possible cause is having too many bills in your wallet, but since that’s hardly ever true in my case, chances are slim that’s what happened to me. I have pills to take, and they seem to work, but the basic cure seems to be rest. And if something I do causes pain, then stop doing it.

Moving laterally is my biggest problem, which makes getting to my computer upstairs still too tough to do. Right now there’s only a narrow passageway up the stairs and into the room. I’ll be careful and not try to overdo anything I shouldn’t.

Thanks for all the good wishes. This was my first overnight stay in a hospital, though it was only in the Emergency Room. My problem seems awfully minor after seeing the incoming patients and listening to them talk to the the doctors and nurses in the cubicle next door. Everything seemed crowded and chaotic at first, but after a while it was still crowded and chaotic — but under control. The staff seemed to know exactly what they were doing.

David, I think it was you who asked about the MRI exam. It was full body one in a narrow closed tube, though open at both ends. They handed me a bulb to press if I experienced any kind of problem. It took me less than five seconds to press the bulb. It took a small sedative to get me through that. If that hadn’t worked, I think they were ready to use one of the conks on the head that knocked Mannix out every so often.

The blog will be back in business by this weekend, I’m sure, if not before. Thanks again for all the cheer and goodwill!

[UPDATE #2] 03-31-11. R.I.P. H.R.F.KEATING (1926-2011). See Comment #20 and David Vineyard’s tribute to one of the Giants of the world of mystery and crime fiction, followed briefly by one of my own.

FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES – Station Wagon in Spain. Farrar Straus & Cudahy, hardcover, 1959. Paperback reprints include Avon G-1054, 1960; Fawcett Crest 1066, 1967.

   I have to confess, I struggled with Frances Parkinson Keyes (pronounced like skies). I did not want to read her books and I certainly didn’t want to like them.

   From the time I started reading heavily my mother, aunt, and cousin — all female — were pushing Keyes at me, and like a mule I balked. I grew up in the South, I did not need more maudlin memories of the Civil War and fading plantations beneath drooping willow trees. I certainly didn’t need them from a conservative Republican author of New England stock and the wife of a conservative Republican senator.

   Let us just say that at the time that was enough for me to lay in a stock of garlic, wooden stakes, and a crucifix to protect myself.

   Resistance wasn’t easy. Copies of Keyes’ works were everywhere I went, and those three ladies were very persuasive. And Keyes didn’t help. The first time I ate at Antoine’s in New Orleans, all I could think of over the crepe and cherries jubilee was that now I’d have to read Dinner at Antoine’s. Then too, The Chess Players was about the fascinating chess master Paul Morphy who had been a Confederate spy during the Civil War. It was an obvious conspiracy.

   It wasn’t until a ski trip to Red River in New Mexico that fate and Mrs. Keyes caught up to me. I took a nasty spill early that morning on a patch of ice and had a bit of a concussion. The medic told me to go back to the lodge and rest — not sleep — going to sleep alone after a concussion can be the last thing you ever do — just hang around the lodge — under observation lest I slip into a coma — and rest.

   Boredom and minor concern — not a good mix.

   I don’t know how many of you are familiar with ski lodges, but they are singularly lonely places when the ski slopes are open. There is no television, no radio (unless you like Mariachi music or country western — it was New Mexico after all), and nothing to read. They are designed only for partying apres skiing and sleeping when you can’t party anymore.

   There was no bookstore in Red River, not even a paperback kiosk at the convenience store. There may have been a library, but no one at the ski lodge knew where and with over 100 inches of snow on the ground and temperatures in the mid teens I didn’t feel like venturing out exploring. It was starting to snow too.

   But there she was, with the only book in the entire town apparently — Frances Parkinson Keyes.

   With all the resignation of a rabbit about to be eaten by a wolf I sat down to my fate.

   I won’t lie to you. It was not the start of a life long love affair. I still resist Southern Plantation novels with the same passion I reserve for cold cauliflower, but grudgingly she won me over. A convert — more of less.

   Between 1919 and her death in 1970, Keyes wrote a whole slew of novels, no small number of which were bestsellers. They are primarily women’s books: vivid descriptions of clothes, elegant meals, lace finery, furniture, chandeliers, and social mores mixed with a bit of melodrama and a good deal of history.

   Keyes was a prodigious researcher and traveler, largely self educated and endlessly curious. She had a reporter’s eye and a pleasant gossipy style that combined to make the ideal mix for her legions of readers.

   And as it turned out she was a fair to middling mystery and suspense writer.

   At least two of her novels are fair play mysteries — Dinner at Antoine’s, which features a well handled change on the least likely suspect theme, and The Royal Box, about a poisoning of an American diplomat in the royal box at London’s Ellen Terry Theater. She also penned three novels of romantic suspense — Victorine, The Heritage, and Station Wagon in Spain.

   Station Wagon in Spain, as you have no doubt already figured out, was the book in the lodge.

   The hero of the novel, one Allan Lambert, has worked all his life and only recently come into money, and he doesn’t quite know what to do, so when he gets one of those infamous Spanish Prisoner letters (the equivalent of today’s Nigerian con) instead of laughing it off or reporting it to the Postal authorities, he buys a beat up old wood paneled station wagon and ships it to Spain to have a little fun.

   This being Keyes, she not only explains what the Spanish Prisoner con was, but gives a nice little history of it dating back to the first instance in 1542 and some idea of how the Postal authorities and Spanish police deal with it.

   Allan soon finds himself knee deep in murder, politics, criminal gangs, romance, and ancient revenge.

   Station Wagon in Spain is an exceptionally good read of its type. Nothing revolutionary, but Keyes’ novelist’s eye adds a depth to the proceedings missing in the standard model. She knows how to choreograph action,, construct a plot, and build to a pay off — in fact the book doesn’t have just one payoff, but two — three if you count the inevitable romance.

   They are pretty good payoff’s too — one of them almost Poesque and damn well handled. It has a real edge and more than a touch of that passionate nature so dear to the Spanish character and history.

   This isn’t the work of a mainstream novelist slumming in genre fiction.

   Well, yes, it’s dated now. Her prose is a little stiff and formal. She lingers over details that her readers loved but most lovers of suspense would as soon skip, and her attitudes are those of a woman of her day, class, and social position — albeit an extremely well traveled and cosmopolitan woman of her time.

   She isn’t Leslie Ford, but she’s not exactly Eleanor Roosevelt either.

   And yes, I have since read a good many of Frances Parkinson Keyes novels — even some of the Southern plantation novels like River Road and Steamboat Gothic.

   She was an obsessive and keen researcher, had a travel writer’s eye for the telling detail, a novelist gift for creating comfortable if not compelling characters, and despite her protests to the contrary, a real gift for suspense and mystery plotting.

   If you like Helen MacInnes, Martha Albrand, Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, Charlotte Armstrong, or Nora Lofts you might well enjoy her suspense and mystery novels, and if you like historical novels she was one of the masters of that form.

   Her work is aimed at her primarily female audience, but there is nothing to keep a man from enjoying them with a little judicious skipping here and there — there is only so much I feel the need to know about Damascus silk, and all that sumptuous descriptions of food remind me of is that I ought to order a pizza for dinner.

   I recovered from the concussion — no comments — got back on the ski slopes the next day, and when I got home rounded up all the Keyes novels my family had been pushing on me for years. I still have some of them, battered, dog eared, and once much loved.

   The first one I read was the Paul Morphy novel, The Chess Players.

   I enjoyed it too.

   If you’re in the mood for fictional comfort food, you could do much worse, and for all her flaws, her virtues still out weigh them. She is largely forgotten today, as the once popular works of past generations generally are, but there are still pleasures to be found, and you will likely feel more than a little appreciation for a time and a writer who appreciated literacy, construction, and respected her readers intelligence.

   She was a most literate and accomplished lady.

   As best selling writers from the past go, she is still well worth getting acquainted with.

   Crime Fiction Bibliography:   [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

KEYES, FRANCES PARKINSON (née Wheeler). 1885-1970.

    Dinner at Antoine’s (n.) Messner 1948.
    The Royal Box (n.) Messner 1954.
    Victorine (n.) Messner 1958.
    Station Wagon in Spain (n.) Farrar 1959.

   As a followup to the various lists posted here recently of favorite mystery writers and characters over the years, here’s yet another. This one was announced in the Fall 1994 issue of The Armchair Detective, the results of a survey the magazine had taken of its readers earlier that year.

ALL TIME FAVORITE MYSTERY WRITERS

1. Rex Stout
2. Agatha Christie
3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Raymond Chandler
5. Ross Macdonald
6. Dorothy L. Sayers
7. Dashiell Hammett
8. Ngaio Marsh
9. Josephine Tey
10. P. D. James
11. Robert B. Parker
12. John Dickson Carr
13. Erle Stanley Gardner
14. Dick Francis
15. James Lee Burke

FAVORITE CURRENTLY ACTIVE MYSTERY WRITERS

1, P. D. James
2. Lawrence Block
3. Robert B. Parker
4. Sue Grafton
5. Dick Francis
6. Tony Hillerman
7. Ed McBain
8. James Lee Burke
9. Martha Grimes
10. Elizabeth George

FAVORITE MYSTERY NOVELS

1. The Maltese Falcon
2. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
3. The Hound of the Baskervilles
4. Gaudy Night
5. The Daughter of Time

FAVORITE MYSTERY SERIES CHARACTER

1. Sherlock Holmes
2. Nero Wolfe
3. Hercule Poirot
4. Miss Marple
5. Lew Archer

WRITER WHO WILL STILL BE READ FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW

1. P. D. James
2. Tony Hillerman
3. Dick Francis
4. Robert B. Parker
5T. Ruth Rendell
5T. Lawrence Block

   On the reverse page of the poll results were the Mystery Bestseller Lists for May-June 1994, as reported by several specialty mystery bookshops:

HARDCOVERS

1. “K” Is for Killer, Sue Grafton
2. Tunnel Vision, Sara Paretsky
3. Shooting at Loons, Margaret Maron
4. The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, Lawrence Block
5T. Dead Man’s Heart, Aaron Elkins
5T. Tickled to Death, Joan Hess
7. Till the Butchers Cut Him Down, Marcia Muller
8. The Concrete Blonde, Michael Connelly
9. How to Murder Your Mother-in-Law, Dorothy Cannell
10. Dixie City Jam, James Lee Burke

PAPERBACKS

1. The Track of the Cat, Nevada Barr
2. Missing Joseph, Elizabeth George
3T. To Live and Die in Dixie, Kathy Hogan Trocheck
3T. Blooming Murder, Jean Hager
5. Dead Man’s Island, Carolyn Hart
6. Cruel and Unusual, Patricia Cornwell
7. J Is for Judgment, Sue Grafton
8T. Bootlegger’s Daughter, Margaret Maron
8T. Share in Death, Deborah Crombie
8T. Poisoned Pins, Joan Hess
11. Twice in a Blue Moon, Patricia Moyes

“The Cost of a Vacation.” An episode of Mannix CBS-TV; Season 1, Episode 6 (27 October 1967). Created: Richard Levinson and William Link. Developed: Bruce Geller. Written: Chester Krumholz. Directed: John Meredyth Lucas. Cast: Joe Mannix: Mike Conners, Lew Wickersham: Joseph Campanella. Guest Cast: Joyce: Marlyn Mason, Ramon: Donnelly Rhodes, Leonard: Henry Beckman

    “The Cost of a Vacation” was an entertaining episode despite the flawed premise of the first season of Mannix. The original idea behind the series was to have hardboiled PI Joe Mannix work for a modern computerized investigation agency named Intertect.

    In this episode, Joe had to ask his boss’s permission to help an ex-girlfriend. Would any hardboiled PI ask permission for anything? It weakened the lone hero PI character, and for little reason, as boss Lew Wickersham gives in quickly. You are left wondering why someone like Joe Mannix would work for Intertect.

    In “The Cost of a Vacation”, Mannix’s ex-girlfriend of the week, Joyce Loman asks Joe to find the man she fell for during a vacation romance. Long thought gone, she had spotted him on the street and gave chase. The beautiful but not too bright model failed to realize he was trying to get away from her.

    The script is fast paced with few scenes without a twist or two. The episode overflows with classic elements from hardboiled mysteries. The lying client. Mystery man. His deadly reason to remain hidden from Joyce. A dead man in a dark alley that leads Mannix to an office where he gets knocked out from behind.

    But not before finding a clue. Joe’s legman, the computer, discovers the meaning of the clue as Joe works “the streets.” Joe and disbelieving Joyce are shot at by a killer.

    Later, the killer’s reason for missing them leads to a harrowing scene worthy of the darkest noir. Dark city streets. Camera angles, cuts and movement used to increase the tension of the final chase. What more could a hardboiled PI fan want?

    Mike Conners was the main strength of the series. He portrayed tough guy Joe Mannix straight, as an old fashioned hero, without a hint of the modern day PI’s cynicism or sarcasm. The rest of the cast performed well, but you had to feel sorry for the talented Joe Campanella reduced to little more than telling Mannix, “No. I really mean no. Oh, go ahead, Joe.”

    “The Cost of a Vacation” is an episode any TV mystery fan will enjoy, even those of us who never liked Mannix. You might even find yourself humming Lalo Schifrin’s theme music for days later.

SOURCE:   The source DVD I used is listed at online at the usual outlets with the title Best of TV Detectives: 150 Episodes.

SUTHERLAND SCOTT – Crazy Murder Show. Hillman-Curl, hardcover, 1937. pages. Mystery Novel of the Month #28, digest paperback reprint, 1941, as Murder on Stage. Originally published in the UK: Stanley Paul, hc, 1937.

   During the Majestic Theatre’s presentation of “Crazy Week,” a vaudeville revue scheduled to last at least a month, impressionist Tamara Medina is foully murdered in her dressing room, with her body, but not her face, horribly scarred by acid.

   It is Scotland Yard’s great luck that Septimus Dodds, M.D., consulting detective, and his confidante, Sandy Stacey, are spotted in the area and asked to come observe the investigation. Following the attack of appendicitis suffered by the detective in charge, the Yard asks
Dodds to take charge.

   Which he does with signal success, only two more people being murdered.

   While the plot is a good one, Scott has a tendency to overwrite just a tad. “One could almost see the army of red corpuscles, which had previously staged a disorderly retreat from his facial capillaries, flood back in a joyous stream, leaving the manager a flushed, perspiring, but reprieved mass of protoplasm.”

   If that sort of thing doesn’t bother you and you don’t mind a detective who is given no personality by his creator, you will find this novel acceptable.

Editorial Comment:   Of the twelve detective stories featuring Dr. Septimus Dodds as the primary detective, this is the only one to come out in the US. The first was published in 1936; the last to appear was in 1956. [A complete list of titles can be found in Comment #2.]