BILL PRONZINI – Snowbound. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1974. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, UK, hc, 1975. Reprint editions: Fawcett Crest, pb, 1975; Futura, UK, pb, 1975; Carroll & Graf, pb, 1994; Stark House Press, trade pb, 2007 (combined with Games).

   This was the first of many books by Bill Pronzini that I have read, and one whose story and execution has stayed with me for many years. It is almost a model of how to do a closed world suspense novel (i.e. a suspense novel set in a single confined location such as Joseph Hayes Desperate Hours or W.L. Heath’s Violent Saturday) and a perfect blend of action, suspense, and character development.

   Hidden Valley is a small isolated mountain town where nothing much happens. This is the story of one week, from December 17th to December 23rd when a snow storm cuts them off from the rest of the world, and the town is enveloped in terror.

   Likely anyone who has ever been on a ski trip in the Western States has seen this little scene, passed through or visited this little town. It is typical of Pronzini that in so few words he sketches in this familiar setting and yet subtly paints a slightly ominous note — the “dark winter-afternoon sky” and the “vaguely fraudulent” look of the village foreshadow what is to come without any hint of manipulating the reader or forcing his vision.

   Zachary Cain, is a newcomer to Hidden Valley. He lives in an A-frame cabin and while friendly enough is something of a mystery. All anyone really knows is he may come from San Francisco and receives a monthly check.

   In Sacramento a heist is going down — a big cash-and-carry giant department store is being hit by three men: Brodie, the wheel man, capable and intelligent; Loxner, big and slow witted, not the man they wanted for the job; and, Kubion, the brains, the planner. But the best laid plans as the saying goes … the whole thing goes wrong.

   Meanwhile in the valley individuals private lives unknowingly move toward unexpected crisis as their lives are about to spiral out of control.

   If you have ever read a suspense novel you know where this is going. Pronzini makes no bones about that as he sets the action up with a kind of grim inevitability that like Hidden Valley is both unreal and achingly true to life. The mark of a great suspense novelist is that ability to let you see what he is doing and at the same time keep you turning the page as the inevitable happens. Pronzini is a master and shows it here.

   Like one of those John D. MacDonald novels where a series of disparate people are drawn together toward a moment of violence and crisis Snowbound has an inevitability about it like watching a car wreck happening and not being able to do anything about it. You want to shout out, to warn someone, but no one is listening. No one can hear you, or would listen if they could…

   I won’t give away much plot detail. The crooks reach Hidden Valley and a slide closes the only road out of town. Kubion begins to plot how to get out and to take advantage of the situation by effectively holding up the entire valley, aware that they are sitting ducks when the road opens and the police begin to pour in. Meanwhile local tensions grow and the reader begins to sense that pressure like a pot about to boil over. Something has to give…

   And give it does in a sudden display of violence, and as the fear and helplessness of the villagers and the brutality and desperation of the criminals dovetail together it becomes increasingly certain that the outsider Zachary Cain is the only man equipped to restore order with his own brand of chaotic violence and his own need for redemption.

   Cain, it turns out has something to prove to himself, something to atone for, and maybe if he can save the people of this small village from these three brutal men he can save his own soul.

   Along the way Pronzini draws a number of well-etched characters among the villagers with an almost cinematic eye and a few deft strokes of the pen — just enough that their fates matter to us, but not so much that their stories get in the way of the building tension and suspense. That’s a fine line to walk, and it is a tribute to his skill at writing this sort of book that he makes it look effortless.

   The action is orchestrated like an Alistair MacLean novel, and the suspense rapidly reaches the unbearable level as Kubion goes increasingly blood simple in his desperation and Cain’s growing personal involvement raises the emotional stakes for him.

   It is difficult to review a book like this without giving away too much. Let me just say the payoff is both viscerally and emotionally satisfying in the way only the best suspense novels ever manage to be.

   The writing, as always with Pronzini’s books, is simple but evocative. Little bits of action or lines that stick in the mind: Kubion rocking in the armored car after the hold-up goes wrong repeating the same words over and over in “a savage litany”; Matt Hughes, a local whose passions will inadvertently set off the violence who suffers from an “almost boyish recklessness”; the people of the village gathered in the local church, “balanced precariously on the edge of panic”; and a dying man as “the black red mist grows and twists through his mind like a helix”.

   Parallel with his private eye novels about Nameless (among them some fine examples of the suspense novel within the hard boiled framework), his westerns, anthologies and criticism, Pronzini has continued to write outstanding suspense novels, alone and with Barry Malzberg and others. His skills at this form of story are considerable and have continued to grow, but this one is very close to a blueprint for how this should be done.

   And I mean this as the highest of compliments, when you turn the last page you will swear you have seen the movie. That’s something only the best suspense novels achieve.

BILL PRONZINI – Son of Gun in Cheek. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1987; trade paperback, 1988.

   Nineteen-eighty-seven was not a vintage year for books about the mystery. There were only eight submitted for Edgar consideration, and they broke no new ground. Yet, in terms of enjoyment many can be wholeheartedly recommended.

   There was, first of all, Bill Pronzini’s Son of Gun in Cheek, the even funnier sequel to his 1982 Gun in Cheek (reprinted in 1987 by Mysterious Press in trade paperback), the book which should have won that year’s Edgar.

   If you liked Pronzini’s first compilation of inadvertent, but hilariously funny, bad lines from the mystery, you won’t want to miss his second as he takes off after such creators of “alternate classics” as F.M. Pettee, James Corbett, and Michael Avallone.

   More famous authors come In for their share of notice, especially when their copy editors let them down. Thus we get lines like the ones quoted from Brett Halliday’s The Violent World of Michael Shayne: “He poured himself a drink and counted the money. It came to ten thousand even, mostly in fifties and twenty-fives.”

   There is also a section regarding B movies, especially the old Charlie Chan films. It’s all deftly organized, with some deliberately funny lines by Pronzini himself as a bridge. I read the book on my flight to Minneapolis for Bouchercon and attracted a bit of attention when I couldn’t keep from laughing out loud. Who said scholarship can’t be fun?

Editorial Comments:   Here’s another– “The blonde strolled to the cabin and unlocked the door. She went in, leaving the door invitingly open. I looked at it and my red corpuscles began to get redder.”    (Milton K. Ozaki, Dressed to Kill.)

   Marv used his entire column in this particular issue of The MYSTERY FANcier to cover reference works published in 1987, books about the field of mystery and crime fiction. They (the books) won’t all be as funny as this one, and in fact I can guarantee that none of them will be. I’ll be reprinting these reviews over the next weeks on this blog. Even though Marv’s comments are 22 years old, for the most part they’re far from out of date.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

      Gun in Cheek (by Mike Tooney)

FOYLE’S WAR. ITV (UK), PBS (US). “The White Feather.” Season 1, Episode 2. 03 November 2002 (UK date). Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Anthony Howell; Lisa Ellis, Charles Dance, Maggie Steed, Paul Brook, Tobias Menzies, Mali Harries, Ed Waters. Series creator: Anthony Horowitz.

   The second episode of Foyle’s War pits Detective Superintendent Foyle against a group of despicable British Nazi sympathizers. Germany is on the march through the Netherlands and Belgium and into France and the British Expeditionary Force looks doomed.

   The Nazi sympathizers meeting at the appropriately named White Feather Inn welcome the German invasion that they think is right around the corner. Then one of them, the inn owner, is murdered, shot during their meeting.

   But was she the intended target, or was it the group’s noxious leader, Guy Spencer (played by the splendidly villainous Charles Dance, who also played the awful Mr. Tulkinghorn of Bleak House)? Foyle’s on the job!

   I thought the mystery plot in “The White Feather” was quite strong, though the overall story was not as compelling as that in the first episode, “The German Woman” (reviewed here ). There are actually two mysteries in the film, who murdered the inn owner and the whereabouts of a purloined paper, the publicizing of which would greatly embarrass the British government at this critical time. Both are nicely handled.

   Viewers should probably be able to guess the murderer (I did!), but the exact mechanics of the crime are very nice indeed, surprisingly more reminiscent of an R. Austin Freeman or John Rhode story than Agatha Christie.

   Though I enjoyed the mystery, I was not as drawn into “The White Feather” as I was “The German Woman.” Much of the time is spent with the repulsive Nazi sympathizers, who let us know they are Nazi sympathizers mainly by disparaging Jews at every opportunity. One gets tired of their company very quickly.

   There are a couple pf lower class characters we are supposed to sympathize with, a maid and her fisherman boyfriend, but these rather dim characters never make much of an impression, unlike their counterparts, the pub serving girl and shop assistant, in “The German Woman.” Only the thwarted intellectual son of the inn owners really drew my sympathetic attention.

   Scripter Anthony Horowitz links the plot to the Dunkirk evacuation, but this almost feels like another film and I didn’t feel like it came off too convincingly. We also meet for the first time Sergeant Milner’s wife, Jane, who tells him she doesn’t want to even see his prothesis leg in their bedroom!

   Personally, forced to choose between Jane Milner and the Nazi sympathizers, I might rather spend time with the latter. What a horrid woman. This marriage will not last, I hazard to guess.

   Once again the aristocratic types come off rather badly. After the first two episodes in the series, one might conclude that the British aristocracy spent most of its time getting their German wives exempted from internment regulations, when not actually attempting to help facilitate a Nazi invasion.

   In real life, while there were Nazi sympathizers among the aristocracy, there were plenty others who weren’t and gave their lives to the fight against the Nazis. Historically, the British aristocracy as a class has served the state in its many wars in large numbers.

   This may sound like a lot of carping, but I did enjoy “The White Feather” and would recommend it. It was not up to the top-flight level of “The German Woman,” in my opinion, but it certainly maintained my interest in the series and made me want to see what will happen next!

Genre:   Historical mystery. Leading character:   Roger the Chapman, 1st in series. Setting:   England–Middle Ages/1522.

KATE SEDLEY – Death and the Chapman. Harper,US, reprint paperback, April 1994. Originally published by Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1991. Also: St. Martin’s Press, US, hc, 1992.

First Sentence:   In this year of our Lord 1552 I am an old man.

   Roger Chapman is 70 years old. As he approaches the last chapter of his life, he decides to write the memoirs of his years spent on the road as a peddler and solving mysteries.

   As a young 18-year old, Roger left the Benedictine monastery for the road with London being his objective. His first investigation is into the disappearance of two separate gentlemen and the servant of the second servant while their bags were left behind.

   Both men were carrying a good deal of money, but their bodies have never been found. At the same time, the Duke of Gloucester wishes to marry Lady Anne Neville; a marriage opposed by her late husband’s brother. Can Roger do a service to the Royal family?

   One of the main reasons I enjoy historical mysteries is that combination of learning and the puzzle. Richard of Gloucester was a figure with whom I was not familiar, yet he achieved positions of tremendous power and responsibility by the age of 19.

   I also had not known about “corpsing,” the recovery of bodies from the Thames, their clothing stripped to be sold and the bodies returned to the river. The most interesting element, however, is the character of Roger. Here we meet him both at the beginning of his years; very young and able to be shocked; and see a bit of him at the end of his years.

   As long as the later doesn’t too much portend the latter, the stories should hold and allow us to see the character develop over time. Sedley knows her period and know how to bring it alive to her reader. Her descriptions engage your senses; sight, sound and nearly smell.

   In fact, there are points where the descriptions nearly overpower the plot. For a first book, the plot is well done although it does rely on some rather large coincidences. I do appreciate it when the author allows that coincidences do happen in life. There is some good suspense at the end, and a satisfying resolution. I did enjoy this book and I look forward to Roger’s next adventure.

Rating: Good Plus.

The “Roger the Chapman” series —

1. Death and the Chapman (1991)
2. The Plymouth Cloak (1992)
3. The Hanged Man (1993) aka The Weaver’s Tale (US)
4. The Holy Innocents (1994)

5. The Eve of Saint Hyacinth (1995)
6. The Wicked Winter (1995)

7. The Brothers of Glastonbury (1997)
8. The Weaver’s Inheritance (1998)
9. The Saint John’s Fern (1999)
10. The Goldsmith’s Daughter (2001)
11. The Lammas Feast (2002)
12. Nine Men Dancing (2003)
13. The Midsummer Rose (2004)

14. The Burgundian’s Tale (2005)
15. The Prodigal Son (2006)
16. The Three Kings of Cologne (2007)

17. The Green Man (2008)
18. The Dance of Death (2009)
19. Wheel of Fate (2010)

JOHN CURRAN – Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. HarperCollins, hardcover, September 2009.

   Since John Curran is the literary adviser to the Agatha Christie estate he was allowed to enter the two locked rooms of her house after it was donated to the National Trust and opened to tourists.

   The two rooms mostly contained copies and first editions of her various novels, story collections and plays but in the smaller room, on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, he found a cardboard box containing notebooks in which Christie jotted down various story ideas and preliminary plotting for most of her novels, stories and plays.

   These notebooks were in no manner orderly; when Christie had an idea she grabbed a notebook at random and jotted it down on the first blank page available. So notes for various of her works are scattered, most of them in more than one notebook and the numbers on them mean nothing as to when she made her entries.

   Also, despite what is printed on the dust jacket, none of the notebooks contains any of the plot ideas for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd nor Murder on the Orient Express and a few others of her works. (He never discusses Witness for the Prosecution, play or story, so I’m presuming that might be another.) The notes for those works presumably are lost. What is here is an abundance of ideas used and rejected for most of the things Christie wrote.

   One thing Curran discovered was that the last Miss Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, was written in the late 40’s and not during World War II as previously believed. (Curtain is another book not covered here.)

   Sleeping Murder‘s original title was going to be Cover Her Face, but it was changed after P. D. James used that title. The two major finds, however, are unpublished short stories featuring Hercule Poirot, which are printed at the end of his commentary.

   The first story was “The Capture Of Cerberus” the 12th Labor Of Hercules. From November, 1939 through most of 1940 the first 11 Labors had been published by the Strand Magazine. It wasn’t until 1947 that she wrote the 12th story which completed the Labors and made possible the collection of that title.

   This original story was unsuitable for pretty obvious reasons: It features a character clearly based on Adolf Hitler and portrays him in a favorable light since, in this story, he has a change of heart and becomes a proponent of World Peace, which would have been pretty hard to swallow with bombs falling on London.

   And though Curran doesn’t say so it in his notes, a plot device turns up that was used in Hitchcock’s 1940 film Foreign Correspondent: the kidnapping of a political figure and his replacement by a double who is then assassinated.

   The other story is called “The Incident Of The Dog’s Ball.” This is much better, but was never offered for publication because it is a 20 page version of what was to become the novel Dumb Witness (Poirot Loses a Client). Christie must have realized she could easily turn it into a novel so never sent it to her agent.

   Finally, if you haven’t read a lot of Agatha Christie’s output and are planning to, be warned: before every chapter Curran states which novels and stories will have their solutions revealed in his discussion.

   I finished Christie’s detective novels and stories and some of her plays (she wrote 20) a long time ago so that didn’t bother me. For those who haven’t, you might put off reading this until after you have. Also, Curran uses the politically incorrect (racist) original title for And Then There Were None when talking about that book.

ERROL FLYNN —

   It’s been a pretty mixed bag of reading/watching recently, starting with two books by Errol Flynn, Beam Ends (1937) and Showdown (1946) both quite well done and easily enjoyable.

   Beam Ends tells the autobiographical tale of a voyage up the coast of Australia from Doney to New Guinea in a ship manifestly unsuited to the task. Flynn was in his early 20s when he launched this bit of adolescent insanity, and in his early 30s when he wrote of it — older but hardly wiser, and the book is suffused with that youthful energy that only comes once in life; somehow we never really appreciate being young and foolish till we get to be old and stupid.

   Flynn’s prose is like his acting: hardly deep and not really skillful, but gracefully done and easy on the eyes.

   Pity, then, that it took him almost ten years to put out his only other book-length effort (I’m not counting the ghost-written posthumous autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways) a slight novel called Showdown.

   But a fun one. Cast almost entirely with stock characters, Showdown tells of a footloose Irish sailor and his run-ins with missionaries, head-hunters, spies and movie stars in the South Seas.

   A wild tale, acted out by a cast of characters no deeper than the thickness of pulp-paper, but fast-moving, suspenseful and quite readable. Turning the last page, I again got the feeling one gets from Errol Flynn’s movies: there’s talent here that’s fun to watch, but with a little more work it could have been something really fine.

GYPSY ROSE LEE – The G-String Murder. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster, 1941. Also published as: Lady of Burlesque, Tower, hardcover, 1942. Ppaperback reprints include: Pocket #425, 1947; Pop. Library Eagle A3635, 1954; Avon T258, 1958. Penguin, 1984; The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2005. Possibly ghost-written by Craig Rice. Film: United Artists, 1943, as Lady of Burlesque, with Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy & Michael O’Shea as Biff Brannigan.

   Burlesque impresario H. I. Moss brings Gypsy Rose Lee to the Old Opera Theater — “GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Laffs! Laffs! Laffs! Boxing Thursday Nights” — and Lee brings her old friend and fellow stripper Gee Gee Graham with her. Soon after their arrival, one of the strippers is strangled with her own G-string, and later another stripper is strangled with yet another G-string.

   Biff Brannigan, the first comic and Lee’s boyfriend, is the unofficial detective in the novel. With his help the police unmask at least one murderer — or maybe a would-like-to-have-been murderer — meanwhile putting Lee’s life at risk.

   Most of the novel deals with the rather unpleasant backstage life of the performers, who aren’t a very mixed crew. Except for the one with a lisp, the strippers are hard to tell apart; they all sound alike in their dialogue, which is mostly puerile and self-centered.

   They aren’t even, if we can believe the rather cattish comments of their peers, attractive physically. Also, more should have been done with what occurred on the stage, certainly the most interesting aspect of burlesque from the customers’ viewpoint.

   Of interest, I would say, only to readers who enjoy show-business-type mysteries, who must be abundant or else there are still many doddering Lee-as-stripper fans around. As evidence, the recent Penguin Books reprint went into a second printing. The earlier Simon and Schuster edition went into printings of double figures, but Lee was still stripping strongly at the time and was in the movies.

   (It appears to be accepted in mystery circles that Craig Rice wrote The G-String Murders. J.R. Christopher’s article in The MYSTERY FANcier 8:3, “Who Really Wrote the G-String Murders?” raises a question about this acceptance.

   In a postscript to the Simon and Schuster edition, Lee is given full credit for the novel. It is said that she did all three drafts by herself, although for the final draft she had the aid of a thesaurus.

   In Erik Lee Preminger’s Gypsy & Me, he mentions The G-String Murders several times, with no indication that anyone other than his mother wrote the book. Responding to a letter I wrote him, he said:

    “The question of Craig Rice’s contribution to The G-String Murders was settled shortly after the book was published. Success has many fathers… Mother’s friend George Davis also claimed credit for G-String.

    “I wasn’t around when Mother wrote the book. Georgia Sothern swore Mother wrote every word, as did Mother. And I saw her write every word of Gypsy.”

   I don’t know what Mr. Preminger meant by Rice’s contribution having been settled, but he is obviously convinced that his mother did indeed write The G-String Murders. My conclusion, for what it’s worth, is that the novel does not have the Rice flair and reads as if Lee were the author — that is, that it is an amateurish effort.)

Editorial Comment:   My own review of this book immediately precedes this one; or in other words, right here.

GYPSY ROSE LEE – The G-String Murder. Avon T258, reprint paperback, 1958. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster, 1941. Also published as: Lady of Burlesque, Tower, hardcover, 1942. Other paperback reprints include: Pocket #425, 1947; Pop. Library Eagle A3635, 1954; Penguin, 1984; The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2005. Possibly ghost-written by Craig Rice. Film: United Artists, 1943, as Lady of Burlesque, with Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy.

   The famous stripper helps solve two “impossible” crimes occurring in the rundown burlesque theater where she’s appearing. While extremely mild today, for 1941 this book must have been something else, bawdier and racier than almost anything — except for Thorne Smith’s “Topper” books, of course. The detective work which fills the second half is awfully weak, though — both confused and confusing.

COMMENT: I’ve re-read the final couple of chapters a couple of times now, and I’ve finally decided it’s just not worth the effort.

   I’m not alone, either. Because of the locked room aspects, the book is included in Bob Adey’s book on the same, but when it comes to an explanation, here’s what he says: “The solution could be a second door, an open window, or simply the removal and replacement of the original seal — take your pick.”

   I didn’t read any of this in the book I read. [WARNING] What I thought happened was that the body was put into the room before the wax seal was put on the lock. The second murder, with the body found inside a locked prop room, has an even simpler solution. The killer had a key. (Bob Adey doesn’t even mention this one.)

[UPDATE] 05-26-10.   The comment above was published at the same time (and place) as the review. I didn’t go into the provenance of the book then, but Bill Deeck did when he also reviewed the book, a review that will be posted next.

RUMBA. Paramount, 1935. George Raft, Carole Lombard, Lynne Overmann, Margo, Iris Adrian, Gail Patrick.

Photography: Ted Teztlaff; art direction: Hans Dreier and Robert Usher. Dances and ensembles staged by LeRoy Prinz; specialty dance created and staged by Veloz and Yolanda. Director: Marion Gering. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   Maybe I was just worn down by four days of movie watching, but this second pairing of Raft and Lombard (after their success in Bolero, 1934) didn’t consistently hold my interest.

   Lombard is a socialite, Raft a dancer, both of them with the same winning lottery ticket, but Raft’s is shown to be a counterfeit and he is forced to return the money. When Lombard sees him dance and recognizes his talent, she tries to give him back the money but he refuses to take it.

   The film continues along this path of characters at odds, from different social classes and different temperaments, the. reserved Lombard, the hot-tempered Raft, but fated to be drawn to each other. The complex mix is eventually resolved by a dance that climaxes the film and cements their relationship.

   The film’s strong suits are a pulsating, insidiously seductive Latin beat, and a striking performance by Margo as the Latino dancer who is Lombard’s rival for Raft as a dance partner and as a lover. (Seen with George Raft in the photo above and to the left.)

   On her blog, author Jane Haddam takes issue with my review of her book Cheating at Solitaire here on this one. She’s certainly right to take issue. Overall I didn’t find the book particularly rewarding, and I tried to explain why.

   I did end the review on a positive note by suggesting that “…values are the key to Cheating at Solitaire — hometown values, small town values, I don’t believe it matters either way. Maybe they’re even universal values and and maybe this is why readers keep coming back for more.”

   Earlier on, though, I expressed my displeasure with the lack of actual detection that went on in what I assumed to be a book about a detective, ex-FBI agent Gregor Demarkian, the leading character in most if not all of the author’s books. I had to conclude that solving a mystery, the undoing of a puzzle plot, was not one of the reasons readers keep coming back for more of his adventures.

   Nor does Jane Haddam deny it. Quoting here and there from her comments, and you can go read them in full to fill in any blanks I’ve omitted, she says:

   So there we are, miles apart. Miles. (But you might also want to read my second paragraph above again.)