JAMES W. HUSTON – Balance of Power. Wm Morrow, hardcover, May 1998. Reprint paperback: Avon, April 1999. Deluxe (tall) paperback: Harper, May 2009.

   For the record, this is not the kind of book I normally read, but it was my local book club’s February book, so I manned up and dived in. To make an overly long story short, an American merchant vessel is seized by pirates pretending to be terrorists. They kill everybody.

   The Speaker of the House invokes an obscure clause of the Constitution to circumvent the President’s preferred course of action.

   No point. No character development. Or so it seemed. Imagine my surprise when the woman in the group who used to work in military intelligence enthusiastically presented the binder of research she’d put together to accompany the discussion.

   Evidently, if a military-political thriller filled with the names and model numbers of boats and helicopters and amphibious craft is something you enjoy, this is an excellent, accurate example of the subgenre.

JOSIAH E. GREENE – Madmen Die Alone. Wm Morrow & Co., hardcover, 1938.

   Joseph Parisi, a homicidal inmate at the Exeter Hospital insane asylum, turns up missing one night. Circumstances are such that it is unlikely he managed to escape on his own; and it appears the only person who could have freed him is brilliant research psychiatrist Dr. Hubert Sylvester.

   But then Sylvester is found on the premises, brutally stabbed to death. Captain Louis Prescott of the local police is called in to investigate, and finds himself confronted with a maze of conflicting relationships among the hospital’s employees, not to mention attitudes and behavior that make him wonder if perhaps some of the keepers aren’t just as insane as their charges.

   A second murder, of a shady Italian restaurant owner named Luigi Toscarello, intensifies the hunt for Parisi; it also implicates Parisi’s family, thereby opening up a whole new can of worms for Prescott to sift through. Did Parisi kill both Sylvester and Toscarello? Did someone else kill both of them? Or are there two murderers, one at the asylum and one outside it, each with different motives?

   Despite some first-novel flaws — viewpoint lapses, too many exclamation points — and a bunch of ethnic stereotypes, Madmen Die Alone is a solid novel of detection, with a well-depicted background, interesting insights into psychiatry circa 1938, and a neatly clued solution. Fans of fair-play deductive puzzles should enjoy it.

   Greene published one other mystery — The Laughing Loon (1939), set in the Minnesota lake country — before abandoning the genre to write mainstream novels.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

HARRIETTE R. CAMPBELL – Crime in Crystal. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1946. No UK edition.

   As Simon Brade sits in the study of the Rev. Christopher Tyrell Dawes preparing to ask him about his new client, Lady Vanessa Lorrister, a seemingly crazed man rushes in and confesses to having strangled Lady Vanessa.

   The vicar doesn’t believe him, but it turns out that Lady Vanessa was definitely strangled. That didn’t kill her, however. Someone had come along a bit later and beaten her to death with a poker.

   The vicar contends that Lady Vanessa was loved by all — in more ways than one, it turns out. But her husband, a possible future prime minister, didn’t care for her, nor did his secretary who had ambitions for him. It is also possible that Lady Vanessa was the head of a black market in clothing during the war and was prepared to tell all, thus jeopardizing others.

   If it weren’t for his income from detecting allowing him to purchase precious jade and porcelain, Brade wouldn’t detect at all. Furthermore, he is at a loss without his fellow sleuth, Inspector Ivy of Scotland Yard.

   Ivy determines the facts. Brade then “sees” connections, working with his “bricks.” As Ivy explains it:

   Brade, at least in this novel, isn’t all that interesting. The other characters, however, particularly the Reverend Dawes, who accompanies Brade in his sleuthing, make up for his blandness.

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

CAMPBELL, HARRIETTE R(ussell). 1883-1950.   Born in New York, the daughter of the state’s attorney-general; married a Scotsman and settled in London. SB = Simon Brade.

    The String Glove Mystery (n.) Knopf 1936 [SB]
    The Porcelain Fish Mystery (n.) Knopf 1937 [SB]

    The Moor Fires Mystery (n.) Harper 1939 [SB]
    Three Names for Murder (n.) Harper 1940 [SB]
    Murder Set to Music (n.) Harper 1941 [SB]
    Magic Makes Murder (n.) Harper 1943 [SB]

    Crime in Crystal (n.) Harper 1946 [SB]
    Three Lost Ladies (n.) Heinemann-UK 1949

THE DESERT SONG. Warner Brothers, 1943. Dennis Morgan, Irene Manning, Bruce Cabot, Lynne Overman, Gene Lockhart, Faye Emerson, Jack La Rue. Screenwriter: Robert Buckner, based on the play co-written by Oscar Hammerstein II. Director: Robert Florey. Shown at Cinecon 27, Hollywood CA, September 1993.

   After the success of Casablanca earlier that year, this vintage operetta was updated, setting the nomadic Berber Riffs of northern Morocco against the dastardly Nazis and shot in eye-popping technicolor.

   Florey is noted for his stylish films and this was a restored beauty. Both Jim Goodrich and I gasped at the stunning overhead angled shot of a belly-dancer as she fell back onto the floor and spread her multi-colored skirt to fill the screen.

   It’s also a film for fans of Bruce Cabot, with a world-weary but effective one-note performance by Gene Lockhart as a Riff cabaret owner. Fine singing of a lovely score by Dennis Morgan and Irene Manning.

Editorial Comments: This film, as I understand it, has never been shown on television. Complications over the copyright of one of the songs perhaps, and it sounds reasonable, given the amount of money involved, or is it just the principle? The movie had been made once before, in 1929, which was barely into the sound era, but at least parts of it were in Technicolor, believe it or not. It starred John Boles and Carlotta King in the two leading roles.

   And it was filmed once again, in 1953, this time with Kathryn Grayson and Gordon MacRae. This is, of course, the version that most people have seen. (But not me. In 1953 you couldn’t drag me to a movie like this. Based on an operetta? Are you kidding?)

  STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Death Bed. Dial Press, hardcover, October 1980. Paperback reprints: Ballantine, May 1982; Bantam, December 1991.

   Stephen Greenleaf has received a great deal of critical acclaim for his novels featuring John Marshall Tanner, former lawyer turned private eye.

   Tanner’s territory is the San Francisco Bay Area, where his cases take him into the homes of the rich and powerful, as well as into the lowest dives in the city; the author draws heavily on his knowledge of politics, business, and local events to flesh out Tanner’s investigations.

   Greenleaf has been hailed as the successor to the Raymond Chandler/Ross Macdonald tradition, and it is easy to see why. Like Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, Tanner is less a fully developed character than an observer. Hints are thrown out about his past and private life, but they are not elaborated upon, and frankly the reader doesn’t care.

   Greenleaf makes extensive use of simile, as Macdonald did, but with far less success; often he seems to be stretching a point, reaching for a likeness that simply doesn’t come off. He is a successor to the tradition of the hard-boiled private eye developed by these writers in the sense that he is an imitator, and his work makes one wonder why we need further imitations.

   Death Bed begins with a scene reminiscent of Philip Marlowe’s meeting with Colonel Stem wood in The Big Sleep. Maximilian Kottle, dying millionaire, wishes to hire Tanner to find his estranged son, Karl.

   Kottle waxes philosophical about life and death — perhaps too much so for a man in such pain and close to death — and Tanner agrees to find his son for him. Karl’s mother, flamboyant romance novelist Shelley Withers, can give few clues to her son’s whereabouts, but through solid detective work — one of the strong points of this series — Tanner traces Karl, and is getting close when Belinda Kottle, beautiful young wife of Maximilian, calls to say Karl has contacted his father and is coming to see him.

   Shortly afterward, Maximilian dies, and Tanner considers the case closed. He is then free to undertake a search for missing investigative reporter Mark Covington, but soon discovers the Kottle case is not only still open, but also linked to the journalist’s disappearance.

   There are a few surprising twists here, but the case builds to a rather predictable conclusion, and the primary villain (there are many, of various sorts) is introduced so late in the narrative that the solution comes a little out of left field. Chandler and Macdonald simply did it better.

   Other novels featuring John Marshall Tanner are Grave Error (1979), State’s Evidence (1982), and Fatal Obsession (1983).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Southern Cross. Wm Morrow & Co, hardcover, November 1993. Paperback reprint: Bantam, February 1995. John Marshall Tanner #9

   After being disappointed by Valin and Lyons this year, and finding Jerry Healy’s mediocre for him, Greenleaf was my last PI hope for 1993. *Sigh.*

   Tanner returns to the Midwest for a reunion of his college graduating class, looking for answers to questions he’s not even sure how to ask. He meets old friends there, and an old lover, and one of the friends asks for his help.

   A civil rights worker in the 60s, the friend is being threatened by a group of racists. He doesn’t know who they are or why they’ve targeted him, but he does take them seriously, and wants Tanner to find out these things and make them go away.

   Still looking for his own answers, Tanner accepts, and [heading for Charleston SC] wanders into a magnolia-scented world that he doesn’t know. As you might expect, everybody has secrets, and as usual few of them are happy ones.

   Greenleaf is different from most PI writers in that he deals with what people do to one another, not only on the small, personal scale, but in terms of larger societal issues as well. He is a social and political liberal, and this attitude infuses his books.

   Here, of course, he has much to say about bigotry and race, and what it’s done to us all. As always, Tanner is as much a man of thought and meditation as of action; another defining characteristic of Greenleaf’s books is that they tend to be much more philosophical than those of other PI writers.

   Cross is a detective story and a mystery of sorts, but there is little violence. Greenleaf’s writing is as powerful as ever, but the story itself didn’t hold together for me. Tanner makes too many connections with too little evidence, and the motivations of the eventually unmasked villain were simply not believable.

   Too many words were spent on Tanner’s angst and Greenleaf’s thoughts on racism, and not enough establishing the connections between the characters that might have rationalized the story.

   I didn’t dislike the book — I like Greenleaf’s writing too well — but it disappointed me considerably.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

       Beyond Blame (by Steve Lewis)

   For a long overview of Greenleaf’s books by Ed Lynskey, and an interview he and I did with the author several years ago, may I recommend that you go here on the main Mystery*File website. You’ll find a complete bibliography there as well.

HULBERT FOOTNER – Sinfully Rich. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1940. Reprinted as a Philadelphia Inquirer “Gold Seal Novel”: August 3, 1941. Hardcover reprint: Books Inc., 1944. British edition: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1940.

   Hulbert Footner was a Canadian-American writer who, nearing the age of forty, began publishing mystery tales about the time World War One ended.

   He soon made a good name for himself in the field, particularly with his tales of an early female detective, Madame Rosika Storey. (Madame Storey is who he is remembered for today, when he is remembered.)

   Many of his novels and stories are more accurately characterized as thrillers; and even his tales of putative detection seem more “mystery” than detection, with the author not paying scrupulous attention to the fair play concept (allowing the reader the chance to solve the mystery for him/herself through deciphering clues fairly provided by the author).

   Still, Footner’s works often have “zip” and are entertaining enough, just not necessarily mentally over-rigorous. A good example of his style is one of his later works, Sinfully Rich (1940).

   In Sinfully Rich, a sixty-seven year old millionaire’s widow who has been living it up in New York City smart society after the death of her tightfisted husband is found dead after a big night, all her jewels missing.

   The police and medical examiners think she died naturally and then was robbed, but ace journalist Mike Speedon (who is to inherit a modest sum of $100,000 dollars from the “old dame”) shows the experts what for (journalists — what don’t they know?). He proves the millionairess was murdered (disappointingly so, as the putatively amazing murder method is taken lock, stock and barrel from Dorothy L. Sayers and Unnatural Death, published a dozen years earlier).

   In the classical British manner there is are two wills, a missing nephew, a dubious lawyer, a scheming gigolo and household full of suspicious employees and servants (personal secretary, personal maid, first housemaid, butler and “second man”).

   What more could a mystery fan ask for? Well, a more clever plot, perhaps, but maybe that is being uncharitable on my part. There were many, many mystery novels published in those days, and one cannot reasonably expect sheer brilliance from all of them.

   What is most enjoyable about the book is the interactions of the characters up to the resolution of the mystery. Footner casts a wryly amused glance over the foibles of the wealthy, who have, seemingly, a great deal of time and money to burn.

   Footner treats his readers to glimpses of the high life, US version, but he also encourages them to mock what they see, through the focal character of the cynical, clever, manly reporter, such a classic figure in American film and literature from this period. If it’s rather like a watered-down Dashiell Hammett highball (The Thinner Man, say), at least it goes down smoothly, with no unpleasant aftertaste.

   There is investigation, but no really satisfying ratiocinative process. (I was rather reminded in this respect of the British novelist J. S. Fletcher, whose mystery novels probably were more popular during the Golden Age in the United States than they were in his native Britain.)

   Because there really isn’t fair play, Footner is able to maintain until the end of the novel suspense concerning the question “Whodunit?”; yet some of the fun, for me anyway, is lost.

   If, as Robert Frost opined, free verse is like playing tennis without a net, so is a mystery that does not practice fair play. You can still enjoy it, but you feel a bit cheated! Still, I’ve read far worse mysteries from the period than Sinfully Rich. (See my Carolyn Wells reviews!)

Editorial Comment: A list of the “Gold Seal” novels published in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer (mid-1930s to late 1940s) can be found online here. Many of them were mysteries; others appear to be straight romances.

  GUY ENDORE – Nightmare. Dell D183. 1956. Originally published as Methinks the Lady, Duell Sloan & Pearce, hardcover, 1945. Also reprinted as The Furies in Her Body, Avon #323, pb, 1951.

Film: 20th Century-Fox, 1949, as Whirlpool, with Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer, Charles Bickford; director: Otto Preminger.

   I bought Nightmare (Dell, 1956) at a used book store back when I was Fifteen or so, thinking I was buying a Sex Book — well, look at the cover, can you blame me? — and I read it, thinking I was reading a sex book.

   So you can imagine my surprise when I got to the end and discovered it was actually a Mystery and perhaps a pretty clever one.

   The Narrator tells the story talking to herself (literally, as she narrates first-person, she keeps interrupting to ask questions and argue with herself) starting with the day she became a compulsive thief, flashing back to relate how she married a prominent psychologist who believes her to be the one woman completely free of neuroses, then moving on to tell how she beat a shoplifting rap by seducing a cop, was troubled by recurring dreams of prostitution — described with some relish by the author, so you can’t blame a kid for thinking this is a Sex Book — and finally how she killed a woman (in a cat-fight of pornographic proportions) was tried for murder, found guilty, and then … and then …

   And then Endore suddenly reveals that there was a Murder Mystery going on here all along, in a surprise wrap-up that really dazzled the adolescent I was back in those days. When I re-read it last month, the ending seemed a bit strained, but nicely handled, and still enjoyable.

   Endore’s prose could be charitably described as Soupy, his frequent ramblings pointless, and his concentration on Sex Sex Sex as … well, as lurid and sexy. There’s also a 1940s pop-psychology infusing the book that gets pretty trite sometimes, but I have to admire a talent that could conceal a killer so neatly. Nothing like it since Lolita … which was also a Sex Book.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

      Detour at Night (by Bill Deeck)

ANDREW GREIG – Romanno Bridge. Quercus, UK, hardcover, March 2008; softcover, October 2008.

Genre:   Suspense. Leading characters:  Kirsty Fowler and an ensemble cast; 2nd in series. Setting:   UK/Europe.

First Sentence:   A man on a motorbike finally came to the end of the road.

   Journalist Kirsty Fowler is told a story by an elderly gentleman, Billy Mackie, in a retirement home. What she’s told is that copies of Scotland’s Stone of Scone, or Coronation Stone, have been made and copies hidden.

   She also learns another, much older stone, the Stone of Destiny, the true coronation seat of Scotland’s oldest kings. These stones have been protected by three men, and now their descendants, known as Moon Runners and identified by a heavy silver crescent-shaped ring containing a peridot.

   Someone named Adamson, a very nasty knife-wielding villain, is after the stones, and Billy is murdered shortly after passing his ring on to Kirsty. Now it’s up to Kirsty and her friends to find and protect the stones.

   Dear Authors: If you are writing a sequel, please do not assume the reader has read the prior book(s). Unfortunately, that oversight was, in large part, the reason why I did not particularly care for this book.

   There were a lot of characters, but it isn’t until almost the end of the book we really understand that many of them had all worked together before. Without that information, their coming together now really didn’t make much sense.

   Even had that not been the case, or perhaps because it was, the characters were not well developed; I had very little empathy or even liking of them. The only two characters who did seem significant were Billy, who was literally short lived, and Adamson, a completely sociopathic killer.

   You do eventually learn about the characters, but by the time you do, it’s almost too late to care about them. There were huge coincidences. Everyone seems to make just the right connections and find just the person they are looking for with unrealistic ease.

   You’re running from a killer and you just happen to pass the bus stand where somewhere from your last adventure just happens to be standing?

   There are positive elements to the story. The opening is very visual and compelling. The premise of the story is intriguing, and the suspense is effective and palpable. The author’s voice is quite good, with touches of humor:

   I laughed aloud at this and realized my cats perform the last two of those functions. Although there are a lot of words and expressions which are unfamiliar to me as an American, the context made their meaning clear so I didn’t feel I’d missed anything.

   It wasn’t a non-stop read. It took me a couple days, but I was never tempted to not finish the book. Greig’s style is quite good, but not good enough that I’m likely to read another book by him.

Rating:   Okay.

Editorial Comment:   The earlier book in this series was The Return of John MacNab (1996), a retelling (in modern dress) of John Buchan’s John MacNab (1925). A review of Return, the newer book, appears here (in Lowland Scots).

CRACKER. ITV [UK]. 27 September to 8 November 1993. Robbie Coltrane, Geraldine Somerville, Kieran O’Brien, Barbara Flynn, Lorcan Cranitch, Christopher Eccleston. Series creator and lead writer: Jimmy McGovern.

   The big success of the moment is Cracker. There have been three stories, all written by Jimmy McGovern, the first with two episodes, then three and finally two again.

   The main character is Fitz, a psychologist, played by Robbie Coltrane. In the first story, “A Mad Woman In The Attic”, a student of Fitz’s is killed and he is asked to help by the parents. The gimmick here is that although Fitz can uncover what makes other people tick, he cannot cope with his own life.

   He is a compulsive gambler, a heavy drinker and, during this first episode, his wife walks out on him when she finds out he has squandered all the family money. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the girl turns out to have been the victim of a serial killer, but this turns out to be a taut and entertaining tale.

   The second story, “To Say I Love You”, deals with a stammering youth who, meeting up with a girl, eases his frustration by going on a lawless rampage with her. The ending is tense and exciting.

   The third story, “One Day A Lemming Will Fly”, had, perhaps, more of a message, but I found it the least satisfying of the three. Overall though a series well worth looking out for. Following its overwhelming success, a new series is planned for next year.

Editorial Comments.   Not only was there a new series the next year, but there were four in all, plus (I believe) two standalone made-for-TV movies. Repeats were shown in the US on the A&E cable network, and a US version lasted four months in 1997-98, this one starring Robert Pastorelli (of Murphy Brown fame). All of the above are available on DVD, and the likelihood is high that I will soon persuade myself that I can’t live without them any longer.

   Comments on the US version are welcome. I never saw it. Perhaps very few people did.