ANTHONY MORTON (JOHN CREASEY) – Meet the Baron. Harrap, UK, hardcover, 1937. US title: The Man in the Blue Mask, Lippincott, hc, 1937.

   As 1935 rounded to an end, John Creasey was broke and out of work — not unusual in those days — but there was a writing contest offering a handsome prize, and Creasey had his eyes on it.

   He had already had some success with the adventures of Gordon Craigie of Z5 and the Toff at Monty Hayden’s Thriller , and he knew he could win that prize if he could finish the book he had in mind.

   But he only had six days left.

   For anyone else this might have been hopeless, but we are talking John Creasey, so I can’t wring much suspense from that end.

   What’s remarkable is the book he churned out in those six days.

   John Mannering, the Baron, is perhaps the most unusual of the gentleman crooks who dominated British thriller fiction between the wars. He is no swashbuckling Saint or decadent Raffles. He has a code, but it is unique to him, as is his sense of justice. He is the only one of the gentleman crooks who would have been perfectly at home in Black Mask (though The Saint did make it there, he didn’t really fit) along side Erle Stanley Gardner’s Phantom Crook, Ed Jenkins.

   John Mannering stole for one very simple reason — he needed the money. He is an upper middle class gentleman who has a small income and a little land, and he would like to keep his comfortable life exactly as it is.

   He could never find a job that would support that lifestyle, but crime… And true to his nature, he pursues his new career with a practical and no nonsense application of common sense.

   No avenger he, though he does have a sense of justice that will give him trouble at times.

   Mannering had been engaged to a well-to-do socialite, but when his money ran out she dumped him peremptorily without a second thought. Something changed in John Mannering, and the Baron was born.

   The Baron began his new career even while he was hunting down old lags to teach him the skills he would need. He preyed only on those who could afford the loss, but unlike Raffles he didn’t mind stealing from his host. In fact it was a specialty of his. He even robs his ex-fiancee. At one point he steals a valuable wedding present, and then reminds the policeman guarding it to check the gifts while he tells the host.

   The Baron persona is only born when an innocent man is accused of one of Mannering’s crimes. He writes the police a hectoring letter in the style of Arsene Lupin, and signs himself the Baron. Then he strikes again to prove his point.

    Scotland Yard in the form of Bill Briscoe is drawn in. Briscoe is no helpless Ganimard (Arsene Lupin’s nemesis) or Claude Eustace Teal. He is a bright policeman, and he is soon on the trail of the Baron — whom he suspects is his friend Mannering.

   Thus begins a long history of suspicion. Even in later years when Briscoe leaves the Yard to work for Mannering at Quinns, the exclusive auction house the Baron acquires after marrying his love, the portrait artist Lorna, and going straight, he still suspects his old friend of being the notorious Baron.

   But he never proves it, despite Mannering’s seeming inability to stay out of trouble and his insistence on using the skills of the Baron to extricate himself and others from danger. Even at the end of Meet The Baron, when Mannering is wounded and risks his neck and freedom to rescue Briscoe, he manages to keep the Baron’s secrets.

   Most of the gentleman crooks went into intelligence work when WW II came along. Mannering was a desk sergeant at an RAF base. It somehow seems fitting.

   The Baron was the first of Creasey’s heroes to reach the American shores — for some reason called Blue Mask here — and a huge success in France and Italy where he became film auteur’s Jean Cocteau’s favorite crime fiction character. Umberto Eco made a special nod toward the Baron in his recent novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Lorna (2005).

   The ITV television series The Baron had little to do with Creasey’s creation, with Mannering becoming American oil baron Steve Forrest who acquires Quinns and is drawn into adventures via that. Sue Lloyd and Barry Morse co-starred.

   A forty year run is pretty good for any gentleman crook, forty seven outings from Meet the Baron (1937) to Love for the Baron (1979).

   Creasey always seemed to put a little extra effort into the Baron’s adventures. Mannering reformed, but he never felt any angst or guilt about his past, and he was always willing to break out the Baron’s bag of tricks in the pursuit of justice — not terribly patient with police work, this fellow.

   Meet the Baron by all means. He’s something a bit different from the usual run of gentleman crooks. But be warned, like candy, one calls for another, and there are forty-two years of adventures to catch up with.

   In my comment following Marv Lachman’s review of Nicholas Blake’s Malice in Wonderland, I pointed out that the book had, over the years, been published under four different titles:

      1) Malice in Wonderland (Collins)
      2) The Summer Camp Mystery (Harper-US)
      3) Malice with Murder (Pyramid-US)
      4) Murder with Malice (Carroll & Graf-US)

   I also wondered whether or not this was a record for the most titles one mystery novel has been published under.

   A few days ago I received the email below from British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon. This is not a contest, since while he didn’t quite give the answers, he revealed enough so that anyone with access to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV will be able to discover what he came up with right away. But for the sake of anyone who doesn’t have a handy copy of CFIV or who’d like to give it a try on their own, I’ll wait to reveal all until the first comment to this post.

Hi Steve,

   I’ve not managed to come up with a book with five titles but there are two John Creasey Inspector West books that both have four different titles.

            Regards,

               Jamie

    Mixing genres is a risky enterprise, and the works I’ll be reviewing in this series blend mystery and science fiction/fantasy with mixed results.

1.)   RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1981.

   Randall Garrett has been writing about Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, since 1964. Lord Darcy investigates impossible crimes but the twist is the setting of the stories: an alternate world where magic works while science is looked upon with suspicion.

   The “magic” is actually psi powers developed by the Laws of Magic. The semi-medieval, twentieth-century civilization Garrett develops is convincing both for the primitive science the aristocratic society scorns and for the sophisticated magic most characters possess.

   The interesting point here is that Lord Darcy possesses no psi powers — for that he relies on his sorcerous assistant, Sean O’Lochlainn. Instead, Lord Darcy uses induction and deduction to pull off amazing Sherlockian solutions to the incredible puzzles Garrett presents him with.

   Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of four novelettes: “A Matter of Gravity,” “The Ipswich Phial,” “The Sixteen Keys,” and “The Napoli Express.”

   In “A Matter of Gravity,” Lord Darcy solves a locked-room murder with a double twist ending. In “The Ipswich Phial,” Lord Darcy becomes involved in an espionage mission featuring a beautiful Polish spy, a murdered British agent, and a missing secret weapon. This is the best story in the volume.

    “The Sixteen Keys” presents the puzzle of a dead man in a house with sixteen locked doors. And “The Napoli Express” has more deception than Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

   I highly recommend Lord Darcy Investigates and the other Lord Darcy volumes, Too Many Magicians (Doubleday, 1967; Ace 1981), a novel, and Murder and Magic (Ace, 1979, 1981), a collection of four more novelettes.

      The Lord Darcy series —

* Randall Garrett:

     Too Many Magicians (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1967.
     Murder and Magic (co) Ace, pbo, 1979.

     Lord Darcy Investigates (co) Ace, pbo, 1981.
     Lord Darcy (co) SFBC, 1983. [A omnibus edition containing all of the above plus additional short stories.]

* Michael J. Kurland:

     Ten Little Wizards (n.) Ace, pbo, 1988.

     A Study in Sorcery (n.) Ace, pbo, 1989.

JIM THOMPSON – The Killer Inside Me. Lion #99, paperback original, 1952. Reprinted many times since. Film: Warner Bros., 1976; with Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrrell, Tisha Sterling, Keenan Wynn; director: Burt Kennedy.

   The back cover of this paperback original has the following statement from the publishers: “We believe that this work of American fiction is the most authentically original novel of the year. The Killer Inside Me is Lion Books’ nomination for the National Book Award of 1952.”

   Lion was not a major publisher, even in the paperback field, and their novel had little chance to win. But there are those who believe it should have, because Thompson’s book is one of the most powerful and frightening looks into a madman’s mind that has ever been written.

   Lou Ford, the narrator, is a deputy sheriff in a small west Texas town. He is a “good old boy,” well liked by everyone. He is also a psychopathic killer. Two men in one body, trapped by “the sickness,” he is set off on his trail of murder by a prostitute. Before he is done, he has killed or caused the death of everyone he cares for.

   It takes a tough mind and a strong stomach to read this book, but the amazing thing about it is that Thompson manages to make his monster sympathetic, and that the sympathy comes from understanding. The reader is made to feel what it must be like to be Lou Ford, and the tortured violence of the book clearly reflects the tortured nature of Ford’s soul.

   One thing that can be said about few books can be said with certainty about The Killer Inside Me: No one who reads it will ever forget it.

         ———
   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.

JIM THOMPSON – The Killer Inside Me. Quill Mysterious Classic (Morrow), 1984. First
publication: Lion #99, paperback original, 1952. Reprinted many times since.

Films: Warner Bros., 1976; with Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrrell, Tisha Sterling, Keenan Wynn; director: Burt Kennedy. In production for 2010: with Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Simon Baker, Casey Affleck; director: Michael Winterbottom.

   If you like first person psychopathic killer stories (which this reviewer does), then this is a marvelous little mystery to pick up. What makes the story even more chilling is the fact that Lou Ford (narrator/perpetrator) is a deputy sheriff in a small Texas town. He refers to his problem (killing) as “the sickness.”

   His first killing was covered up by his father, and Lou’s foster brother, Mike, took the blame, and the prison sentence, for him. Since it was a very heinous crime (the sexual assault and murder of a young girl), an influential townsman arranged for Mike to be murdered upon his release from prison.

   After several years have passed, Lou decides to avenge Mike’s murder. And therein lies the plot of this book. That is, who, how, where and when he takes his revenge.

   An unusual, fascinating mystery, off the beaten path of more traditional ones.

Editorial Comment: For whatever reason, and it was obviously not a good one, I’d not known of the 1976 film version until now. I’ve just ordered it on DVD. And for Jessica Alba fans, here’s what you’re waiting until some time next year for:

● Tormented. Cheviot, 1960. Richard Carlson, Susan Gordon, Lugene Sanders, Juli Reding, Joe Turkel, Lillian Adams. Screenplay: George Worthing Yates. Original story & director: Bert I. Gordon.

● The Lift. Arcade Pictures-Netherlands, 1983, as De lift. Huub Stapel, Willeke van Ammelrooy, Josine van Dalsum, Liz Snoyink, Wiske Sterringa. Screenwriter-director: Dick Maas.

   I’m feeling generous, so I will throw in a good word for Bert I. Gordon’s Tormented. Bert was never the most subtle of auteurs, but his blunt handling of supernatural cupidity somehow makes this tawdry re-hash of An American Tragedy (with ghosts) more credible even when Richard Carlson finds himself haunted by what is obviously a department store dummy.

   Somehow the milieu of cheapness and 60s chic surrounding the characters makes the whole thing believable even when the effects are not.

   Speaking of Cheap, The Lift offers an interesting variation on the movie monster thing, with a tale of a killer-elevator that manages not to be as silly as it sounds.

   The director keeps things tight and suspenseful, and the two leads — playing a repairman and an intrepid girl reporter — put across the concept of working-class folk caught up in a gory mystery pretty ably.

   It’s fun enough, and there’s a dan-dan-dandy climax with the repairman in an elevator shaft, but the concept is a bit confining: it’s hard for an elevator to run amok, after all, so the Lift — like the Mummy back in the ’40s — has to mostly victimize the elderly, unfit and infirm.

   This didn’t bother a young Adonis like me much, but I got to wondering how some of the older, more decrepit members of my reading audience (no names) might react to seeing their ilk objectified as victims.

JOHN GREEN – Paper Towns. Dutton Juvenile, hardcover, October 2008. Reprint paperback: Speak, September 2009.

    The winner of the 2008 Edgar for Best Young Adult Mystery is less a mystery novel than it is a beautifully drawn coming-of-age story.

    Quentin Jacobsen is a nerd. As long has he can remember, he has had a crush on his next-door neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman. Then one night toward the end of senior year, Margo appears at his bedroom window enlisting his help on a night of pranks, adventures, and mostly innocent revenge.

    But the following morning Margo has gone missing, and Quentin is determined to track her down and uncover the mystery of her disappearance.

    With ongoing themes and motifs that range from strings to paper to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Quentin discovers the deep bond that connects people, one to another, and the fragility of their perceptions of each other.

    There are hints of crime and mystery throughout the book, beginning in the prologue when as nine-year-olds, Quentin and Margo discover the body of a man, the victim of apparent suicide, propped up against a tree in a neighborhood park. The real mysteries are: Why did Margo disappear and where did she go?

    While set in Orlando, Florida and on an interstate road trip, the real world of Paper Towns is that of high school students. Green’s portrayal of Quentin and his friends is honest and free of cliches. He gives readers a frank look at Quentin’s affection for, and objectification of Margo.

    With its portrayal of teen life, its poetic probing into the soul, and its rich humor make Paper Towns a place worth visiting.

PATRICIA MOYES – Death on the Agenda. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1962. Holt Rinehart & Winston, US, hc, 1962. Paperback reprint: Owl Books, 1984.

   Moyes is a dependable writer; her protagonists, Henry and Emmy Tibbett, are solid and capable, though happily not past a little flightiness now and then.

   This time they’re in Geneva for a meeting of the Permanent Central Opium Board. The cast is international; the scene is Switzerland, both its wealth and its natural beauties playing a part in the story.

   One of the interpreters, John Trapp, is found murdered in one of the offices of the subcommittee Henry is chairing, under circumstances which make Henry the obvious choice as murderer.

   Intrigue about the drug traffic and intrigue about love make the motive hard to determine. Opportunity is even worse, for scarcely anyone but Henry could have done it, so it seems.

   The Tibbetts get to know one of the wealthiest couples in Geneva, and Henry has a belated fling with a lovely young staff member of the subcommittee. Once again Henry and Emmy emerge as real and likable people, enmeshed in a plot that’s not their own, and doing their best to get out of it by finding the real murderer.

   Which they do.

THE HOUSTON STORY. Columbia, 1956. Gene Barry, Barbara Hale, Edward Arnold, Paul Richards, Jeanne Cooper, Frank Jenks, John Zaremba, Chris Alcaide, Jack Littlefield, Paul Levitt. William Castle, director; Sam Katzman, producer. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

    I didn’t know that Castle, before he made something of a name with gimmicky horror films, directed some crime films, and if this film is any indication, quite competently.

    Gene Barry is an oil worker who goes to a local crime-boss (Edward Arnold, considerably thinner than in his years as a major supporting player) with a scheme for skimming off oil from the major companies, installing his unwitting brother-in-law Frank Jenks as the token company president.

    Barbara Hale, almost unrecognizable if you mainly know her (as I did) as Perry Mason’s faithful secretary Della Street, is a nightclub singer and gangster’s moll who hooks up with Barry in his meteoric (and brief) rise to the top of the local mob scene.

    Jeanne Cooper is the pre-crime spree girl friend of Barry who finally catches on to his double-dealing ways, and there’s a tense final shoot-out at the roadside cafe where she works and wears her heart on a sleeve for the errant Barry.

    A fast-paced 80 minutes or so that caught Barry in mid-career between his role as the hero in Pal’s War of the Worlds and his successful career as Bat Masterson (a program I never watched).

   Barry showed something of an edge in the brief interview that followed the screening, shortened I would imagine by his almost total lack of recall of much of his career, with the most uncomfortable moment his confused question, “Have we talked about War of the Worlds?,” a subject that had indeed been covered earlier in the interview.

ELMORE LEONARD – Unknown Man No. 89. Delacorte, hardcover, 1977. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including Dell, 1978 (shown).

   I’ve read a couple of Elmore Leonard’s in the distant past and enjoyed them more than enough to want to read a few more.

   However I’ve only just got around to this other one, which is about process server Jack Ryan who is hired to trace a violent criminal by a man who specialises in finding unclaimed stock issues and the unknowing rights holders.

   Offered a goodly sum, Ryan pursues the criminal but his life changes when at an AA meeting he bumps into the criminal’s wife.

   Knowing that he is being pursued on all sides by violent criminals, he must arrange things so that they are clear of all that, preferable with outstanding money to their credit.

   I raced through the first 50 pages but somehow it all slowed down — probably my own fault — for another 50 pages before grabbing my attention and racing through to the end. I shall have to get to some of the other Leonard’s in my TBR pile.