NGAIO MARSH – Enter a Murderer. Pocket 113, paperback reprint; 1st US printing, July 1941. Previously published in the UK by Geoffrey Bles, 1935. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including (and shown): Berkley F703, US, 1963; Fontana, UK, pb, 1968, 1983; St.Martin’s, US, pb, 1998.

   I’m far from being an expert on Ngaio Marsh, so I can’t tell you what the circumstances were that Enter a Murderer was published for the first time in the US as a Pocket Book paperback, and not as a hardcover. But I imagine the story’s known, and perhaps someone reading this who can fill in the details will do so. (I’ve found nothing on the Internet so far that’s relevant.)

   Enter a Murderer was only her second novel, which may be part of the explanation, and the first of five detective novels Marsh wrote which took place in the world of the theater, one of the loves of her own long life. (She was born in 1895, most reference sources say, and passed away in 1982.)

   Dead is an actor, shot to death onstage, with dummy bullets having been replaced with live ones in the gun another actor used as part of the play, with the two directly facing each other.

   That the dead man was a blackmailer (as it is soon discovered), a womanizer and a thwarted lover (as was well known), plus various and sundry other flaws, gives a motive to everyone on or near the stage. A blackout to open the final act gave everyone an opportunity.

   The investigation that results, carried out by Chief-Det. Inspector Alleyn (primarily) and his assistant on the case, Inspector Fox (secondarily), is both aided and abetted by news journalist Nigel Bathgate, a friend of Alleyn whom he invited to the play, which they watched together to its final and deadly conclusion.

   It’s not always an easy relationship. Bathgate is willing to let Alleyn censor his reporting, but he’s not always inclined to ask potentially embarrassing questions of friends who happen to be under suspicion.

   Sometimes the investigation (from the reader’s point of view) is told with Alleyn as the protagonist, and sometimes it’s from Bathgate’s point of view. It’s a combination that Marsh may have thought she needed to present the story more efficiently from several angles, but it’s not as smoothly done as I thought it might have.

   The action in and around the stage is clearly delineated, though, many times over, even to a final reconstruction of the crime at the end – always a welcome touch in classical detective fiction, resembling as it does the “isolated country house” theme in certainly the most essential way.

   But the business of the blackmail never seems to be addressed directly. It’s as if it were shunted to the side, not abruptly, but Marsh never seems to tackle it head on, leaving the motive for the killing murky, while a full spotlight is shed upon the setting. (At times you can all but smell the greasepaint.)

   Upon finishing the book I was more than satisfied with the solution – nicely done – but I’m still uneasy about there being some loose ends that I didn’t (and still don’t) feel as though they were wrapped up properly enough.

   This has nothing to do with the actual solution, mind you. I like the ending well enough that I haven’t felt the need to poke around into that pile of red herrings stacked over there in the corner (figuratively speaking). It’s just the sense that I ought to, in order to give you an honest report.

   But I’ve decided not to – go back through the book and poke around, that is – and what you’ve just read is as honest as it’s going to get.

   Do I recommend the book? Yes, I do, but I assume you’ve already read and recognized all of the caveats (both major and minor) for what they’re worth as well.

   Between 1959 and 1966 Black Mask veteran Willis Todhunter Ballard penned seven books as Neil McNeil for the Gold Medal line of paperback originals about a pair of private eyes named Tony Costaine and Bert McCall:

Death Takes an Option. Gold Medal 807, pbo, September 1958.
Third on a Seesaw. Gold Medal s844, pbo, January 1959.

2 Guns for Hire. Gold Medal s898, pbo, July 1959.

Hot Dam. Gold Medal 964, pbo, January 1960.
The Death Ride. Gold Medal 1055, pbo, November 1960.

Mexican Slayride. Gold Medal s1182, pbo, January 1962.
The Spy Catchers. Gold Medal d1658; pbo, 1966.

   Though the series was never a major hit, they are highly entertaining superior light private eye fiction much in the mood and style of such popular series as 77 Sunset Strip and Peter Gunn on television. Costaine and McCall are the epitome of the cool, hip, buttoned-down PI’s of the period, distilled through the Rat Pack school of middle aged hipster, a group of slick eyes that rode the wave between Mike Hammer and James Bond.

   Anthony “Tony” Costaine is the brains of the outfit, slick, smart and tough, the button-down collar Brooks Brothers suit half of the team, who first teamed up with McCall back in their FBI and OSS days, six lean feet of muscle and brains.

   Bert McCall, a giant handsome Scot (born in Scotland) and topping six feet six in his stocking feet is the other half of the team, a born hedonist with an eye for the ladies, and a penchant for finding trouble and playing the bagpipes. Between the two of them they are the highest paid eyes of their day — so as you can imagine their clients tend to be rich, powerful, and in big trouble.

   In Death Takes an Option Marcus Cadby has hired them to find out why the auditor of MidContinental Mine and Machine commited suicide, but not before his younger and very sexy wife has tried to pry information out of Costaine.

   Then no sooner than their plane touches down in Los Angeles someone takes a pot shot at them, and before long they are involved with murder, a trip to Vegas, and a slick plot twist you will have to read for yourself.

   The trip to Vegas is important, because Costaine and McCall are, as I suggested above, Frank and Dino in not very subtle guise. McCall even calls Costaine “Dad.”

   Third on a Seesaw takes them to Reesedale PA, home of Reese Steel and Tube Company where they clean up the town and a murder — once McCall can be pried away from his bagpipes.

   2 Guns for Hire involves the boys with the car industry and a beautiful woman who paints nudes, and in Hot Dam they encounter a whole community of distant relatives of McCall who are sabotaging a power company by trying to build a dam that will flood their homes in upper New York state.

   The Death Ride takes them into the business of amusement parks, and in Mexican Slay Ride McCall ends up in jail south of the border as the boys take on a job involving fraud and the Mexican government. The Spy Catchers mixes them in with the government and treason in the aerospace industry and secret weapons.

   To be fair, Ballard could do this kind of book in his sleep, but thankfully he doesn’t. The boys are cool and smart, McCall just dumb enough to get them in trouble and Costaine just smart enough to get them out.

   There is a parade of attractive women varying from willing to murderous (and sometimes both), and a wide variety of action. The books aren’t major works or anything, but they are good and well worth discovering. Plotting is better than it had to be, and Costaine and McCall are always fun to be around.

   Ballard was one of the original Black Mask Boys with his tales of movie studio troubleshooter Bill Lennox (who also featured in three novels published as by Ballard and John Shepard), and a frequent collaborator with Robert Leslie Bellem and Cleve Adams.

   He wrote for early television (Dick Tracy) and even wrote a non genre novel about his experiences. Under his own name and as P.D. Ballard and Todhunter Ballard, among others, he wrote well-received westerns, and under the W.T. Ballard name, three books about Lt. Max Hunter of the Las Vegas police.

   His last novel, Murder in Las Vegas, about private eye Mark Foran, is one of the better hardboiled paperback originals of its period.

   That Todhunter is a family name. He was a cousin of Rex Todhunter Stout.

   Costaine and McCall may not be in the top tier of private eyes, but they are well worth discovering. The writing is lean and slick, and the action comes fast and furious. A little action, a soupcon of sex, and a twist or two in the tale are more than enough to recommend these.

   They make good company, and fit right in with Shell Scott and Chet Drum. Make the effort to meet them, but first lock up the Scotch and the women. You just can’t trust that McCall with either.

MICHAEL UNDERWOOD – Crooked Wood.

St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1978. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1978. Previously published in the UK by Macmillan, hc, 1978.

   Mystery stories usually end where this one begins, with the murderer safely behind bars and about to stand trial. Underwood’s forte is the courtroom drama, British style, and here the problem is twofold: who hired the contract killer who actually did the job, and, who’s trying to buy off one of the jurors?

   Sergeant Atwell’s work is clearly not done, and it requires the timely assistance of his ex-policewoman wife Clare and the gathering of an overabundant supply of red herrings before a surprise Mr. X is named. A deftly woven detective tale it is, and an interesting variation from the norm.

       Bibliographic data:

Michael Underwood was the pen name of John Michael Evelyn, 1916-1992, and the author of nearly 50 works of crime and detective fiction, many of them dealing with cases taking place in British courtrooms in one way or another.

   His series characters include (often in overlapping cases) Inspector (later Superintendent) Simon Manton, Martin Ainsworth, Rosa Epton, Richard Monk and Sergeant Nick Atwell. One bookseller describes Rosa Epton as “England’s answer to Perry Mason.”

   Richard Monk is also a lawyer, but the books with Martin Ainsworth appear to be spy fiction (e.g. The Unprofessional Spy, 1964). Many of the cases for Nick Atwell, a police sergeant at Scotland Yard, are shared with detective constable Clare Reynolds, although according to my review, she seems to have been off the force at the time Crooked Wood takes place.

ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN. Columbia, 1936. Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, Thomas Mitchell. Suggested by the story “Purple and Fine Linen” by May Edginton. Director: Edward Ludwig.

   There are actually two stories involved in this moderately entertaining crime-romance trifle. The first is kind of a story within the story, if you will, and it’s the one by May Edginton listed in the credits. But I’ll back up a little, though, before saying more.

   Hot shot crime reporter George Melville (Joel McCrea) is one of those fellows the rest of the guys on the beat love to hate. While he gets along with them fine, he’s by nature smug and self-possessed, and for good reason. He gets scoops that no one else does, not by chance, but by pure intellect and a dispassionate viewing of the facts.

   If a good-looking woman comes along when he’s working on a story, she’d just be another clue, he is ribbed, and he good-heartedly agrees. But when a good-looking woman does come along (Jean Arthur), he falls for her story hook, line and sinker, just like every other guy would. Or is it a story? Well, it’s the one I mentioned by May Edginton above, and it’s a good one.

   You can even read the entire story online right here. It will suck you in too, I guarantee, a tale of a young woman down on her luck who has to resort to picking pockets in order to see her young girl who’s been living with her father and whom the mother has not seen since the divorce went through.

   This first part of the movie takes up no more than twenty minutes of the film, and while I hate to say it, given that I like both Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea as actors, but it goes downhill from here. I also say that even though the second half of the film is one of those grand high-stakes art theft movies I was talking about in regard to crime caper fiction not so long ago.

   What the segue is, and how the story makes the switch from the first part of the movie to the second, I will leave for you to watch (and enjoy) on your own.

   I think what the problem is, relative to the second half of the film, though, is that there’s too much story and not enough plot — and there’s somehow not enough time left to explain (convincingly) what the attraction between the two leading players is, other than that she’s a woman and he’s a man, and of course the twain have to meet.

   Nonetheless, moderately entertaining is what I said up above, and I’ll stand by what I said. But in terms of simple comparisons, if you’re a fan of romantic comedies, The More the Merrier (1943), with (quite coincidentally) the same two stars, this movie is not. Given a choice and a chance, I’d watch that one instead — any time — even if there’s no crime in it.

VENA CORK – The Art of Dying. Headline, UK, hardcover, 2005; paperback, 2006.

   In Thorn (2004), previous to the events taking place in this follow-up novel, Rosa Thorn lost her husband, celebrated Jamaican-born artist Rob Thorn, in a hit-and-run accident, then found that her daughter was being stalked by a shadowy figure who turned their life into a nightmare.

   Now, in The Art of Dying, in the wake of an exhibition of her husband’s last paintings, Rosa herself is stalked by a mysterious figure who she discovers is the half-brother of her late husband. Rosa accepts Joshua into her family but becomes increasingly concerned that he’s something other than the loving brother-in-law he initially appears to be.

   Rosa’s relationship with Josh is not her only problem, as all of her personal relationships seem to be foundering in misunderstandings and hidden agendas.

   This psychological thriller eventually climaxes in a gothic underground nightmare that some readers may find over the top. I rather enjoyed the plot’s ghoulish turn, but I hope that Cork will let Rosa and her family live out their fictional lives in private, without the perilous complications that could confirm that a series is underway.

EDITORIAL COMMENT. There is a third book in the series, Green Eye (2006), in which Rosa Thorn also appears, but there seems to have been nothing from Vena Cork’s keyboard in the three years since. The books are available in the US only as import editions.

From the Tangled Web site: “Vena Cork is from Lancashire, but has lived in London all her adult life. She attended Homerton College, Cambridge, where she was a member of Cambridge Footlights. She is married to the art critic Richard Cork and lives in North West London.”

THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER. Paramount, 1938. Douglass Dumbrille, Sidney Toler, Russell Hayden, Stanley Andrews. Weldon Heyburn, Charlotte Field, Monte Blue. Based on the novel by Zane Grey. Director: Lesley Selander.

   Douglass Dumbrille is the kind of actor one vaguely remembers as a perennial nasty who never really scaled the heights.

   He had his moments, though: pushing bamboo shoots under Gary Cooper’s fingernails in Lives of a Bengal Lancer, chasing Jackie Cooper up the rigging in Treasure Island (center right), or looking down his nose at the Marx Brothers in The Big Store, happy times in a busy career that somehow never achieved the status of, say, Lionel Atwill or Vincent Price.

   Imagine my surprise, then, when he turned up as the out-and-out hero of an engaging B-Western called The Mysterious Rider. Dumbrille stars here for his first and only time as Pecos Bill, the nom du rue of a legendary highwayman who gets a hankerin’ to revisit the old homestead he left twenty years ago, wanted for murder.

   From this point, the story veers toward The Odyssey, with Pecos returning to his old ranch unrecognized, greeted by the dogs and finding his daughter beset by unworthy suitors-then setting about to put things right.

   Mysterious Rider shows what magic can be done by a capable director with familiar material. Lesley Selander spent thirty years in Bronson Canyon, Gower Gulch and other stomping grounds of the B-Western, churning out vehicles for Hopalong Cassidy, Buck Jones and Tim Holt, and he always took it seriously, investing his work with inventive camera angles, capable stunting and (most important) snappy pace.

   Here given a modestly off-beat story and an unlikely star, he turns out a fast, fun film, enlivened considerably by Dumbrille’s evident delight in playing a good guy — although his typecast background makes it easy to believe that he may well have been a road agent.

   One additional note: in 1957 Dumbrille, at age 70, married the 28 year old daughter of his friend and fellow character actor Alan Mowbray. They were still married at the time of his death, seventeen years later.

CONSTANCE & GWENYTH LITTLE – The Black Shrouds.

Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1941; Collins Crime Club, UK, hc, 1942, as by as by Conyth Little. Paperback reprints: Popular Library #112, n.d. [1946]; Rue Morgue Press, trade pb, 2002.

   To find fame — her father already has a fortune — on the stage, Diana Prescott has come to New York City. What she discovers, however, is horror at Mrs. Markham’s boarding house, which is occupied by the usual oddities one finds at fictional boarding houses and maybe even the real ones.

   Two elderly and old-maid sisters, an absolutely harmless pair, are found murdered — bludgeoned and then gassed.

   It’s obvious it’s an inside job, but the police, in more ways than one, haven’t a clue. Even when another resident disappears and items appear and disappear and books and other objects are burnt in the furnace, the officials are at a loss.

   Though frightened a fair part of the time, Prescott does her own investigating, primarily to avoid playing bridge with her father.

   For reasons unknown, but perhaps because the inhabitants are generally eccentrics, I enjoy mysteries with boarding-house settings. I’d have enjoyed this one anyhow because the Littles are quite amusing writers, and their Miss Giddens is a delightfully nutty character.

   And if my recommendation isn’t enough, I refer you to Something Wicked, by Carolyn G. Hart, in which her wonderful bookstore, Death on Demand (Annie Laurence, prop.), put The Black Shrouds in its window with several other books to illustrate humor in the mystery.

EDITORIAL COMMENT. For more information on the authors, who wrote 21 mystery novels in very much the same vein as The Black Shrouds between 1938 and 1953, there is no better place to send you than to the Rue Morgue Press website, where publishers Tom and Enid Schantz say in part:

    “If these two Australian-born sisters from East Orange, New Jersey, are not better known today, it’s probably because they chose not to write a series.

    “But if the characters in each of their books had different names, you could always recognize a Little heroine, whether she was a working woman or a spoiled little rich brat. Nothing held her back or kept her from speaking her mind, which may explain why she so often fell under suspicion when a body turned up…”

   To this date, Rue Morgue has reprinted 20 of the 21 novels, all but The Black Gloves (1939). Note that the word “Black” appeared in all of the books by the Little sisters except the first one, The Grey Mist Murders (1938).

ROSS MACDONALD – The Zebra-Striped Hearse. A. A. Knopf, hardcover, 1962. Bantam F2715, paperback reprint; 1st printing, January 1964. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including those seen below.

   If you somehow missed Ross Macdonald’s The Zebra-Striped Hearse in its hardcover edition or in one of the previous twelve (!) Bantam printings, you get another chance, for that publisher has reprinted it again, after a four-year hiatus.

   Because this is one of the best in an outstanding series of private-eye novels, it is a book you shouldn’t miss. You’ll find many elements taken from the author’s own life and placed into the investigation of his detective, Lew Archer, including the runaway father, the canyon forest fire, and California’s unique culture, accurately presented in a book that ranges the state from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

   We see the compassion for which Archer is justifiably known, but there is also ample evidence of his intelligence as his creator has him quote Dante in a conversation so well written that it fits in seamlessly.

      Covers:

    Shown above is the cover of the 12th printing that Marv was referring to. Others covers that have graced this book are shown below, but to my mind, none of them surpasses the Knopf hardcover First Edition:

   Here’s the hardcover UK first edition, from Collins Crime Club, 1963:

   And I believe this to be the first UK paperback edition, published by Fontana in 1965:

   To finish up this short display, a paperback edition from France, Éditions J’ai Lu #1662, 1984.

[UPDATE] 06-22-09.    Submitted by Juri Nummelin, a hardcover edition published in Finland:

   See the comments for a link to a short write-up about Juri about Macdonald, including this book.

   This is the second in a series of three reviews covering movies that were made for TV in the 1960s and 70s, the heyday of such film-making. Most of them were no more than ordinary, to be sure, but a few were well above average — small gems in terms of casts, plotting and production.

   Previously on this blog: How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967).

RUN A CROOKED MILE. Universal/NBC-TV, 18 November 1969. Louis Jourdan, Mary Tyler Moore, Alexander Knox, Wilfred Hyde Whyte, Stanley Holloway, Alexander Knox, Laurence Naismith, Ronald Howard. Teleplay: Trevor Wallace; director: Gene Leavett.

   Richard Stuart (Jourdan) is a tutor who stumbles onto a murder in a remote English mansion. When he comes back with the law, the body is gone and he is ridiculed.

   Certain he isn’t mad, he returns to London and hires a private detective, Stanley Holloway. Shortly after that he discovers a key to a room in the mansion, and is knocked unconscious.

   When he wakes up, he finds he is on the Cote d’Azur, and his name is Tony Sutton, a wealthy playboy who took a blow to the head while playing polo. He’s married to the beautiful American heiress Elizabeth Sutton (Mary Tyler Moore) and he has lost five years of his life.

   Who can he trust? Is his wife part of the conspiracy? Just what nest of snakes did he stumble into five years earlier?

   Obsessed with finding out he returns to London to find Holloway now quite well to do and the Yard’s Inspector Huntington (Howard), not interested. Nevertheless he perseveres follows the clues back to the mansion owned by Sir Howard Nettington (Knox) and with Elizabeth’s help solves the mystery, uncovers a conspiracy, and brings down the high placed villains.

   I suppose you do have to wonder why he would be so anxious to solve the murder of a stranger and risk a very good life with a rich and beautiful wife who loves him despite the fact he hasn’t been any prize as Tony Sutton, but if people behaved normally in these things, nothing would ever happen.

   Run a Crooked Mile is a clever sub-Hitchcock exercise in the Buchan vein with handsome sets, and a fine cast. It moves quickly and relies on the considerable charms of Jourdan and Moore to get through whatever lags in logic that might plague you.

   It’s one of those films where almost no one is quite who they seem to be, but it is done with such style and competence that it plays more like a feature than a made-for-TV film. Of the three films that will be reviewed herem it probably most deserves release on DVD.

   It’s smart, funny, and suspenseful, attractive to look at, and much more literate and intelligent than it has to be. Howard, Knox, Whyte, Holloway, and Naismith all contribute nicely to the fun. In many ways it plays like a good episode of The Avengers, droll. literate, and full of twists.

Coming soon:

   Probe (1969), with Hugh O’Brien and Elke Summer.

SWAMP WATER. 20th Century-Fox, 1941. Walter Brennan, Walter Huston, Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Virginia Gilmore, John Carradine, Mary Howard, Eugene Pallette, Ward Bond, Guinn Williams. Based on the novel by Vereen Bell. Director: Jean Renoir.

   From what I’ve learned recently that I didn’t know about director Jean Renoir before I sat down to write up some thoughts about this movie, his first American film, Orson Welles considered him the greatest director of all time, and he was voted the 12th-greatest director of all time in a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly magazine.

   I think I could easily go along with Orson Welles. Even though the critics don’t seem to have thought too highly of Swamp Water, the general public did, and it was one of Fox’s highest grossing films of 1941. I agree. The general public was right this time.

   There is a lot to like in this film, even though it doesn’t seem to be regarded even now as one of Renoir’s best, and while I haven’t done so yet, I think that it will bear one or more viewings by me, very easily.

   That the atmosphere of a small Georgian community on the edge of the huge Okefenokee Swamp is portrayed in a highly realistic fashion almost goes without saying — or maybe it doesn’t, so I will.

   It’s not clear how someone having come to this country straight from Europe could have visualized and reproduced life in a small Southern town so well that it feels like everyone in the movie had lived there all their life — but that’s the feeling I received, only slightly cliched in (unfortunately) standard Hollywood fashion.

   Of course it helps that a good portion of the movie was filmed on location. The only serious omission, I think, is that I do not remember seeing any blacks in the film, only whites, and yet even so, the idea that not all men were created equal in the US in the 1940s still manages to make itself felt, if even only subtly.

   And it is a crime film, although when it comes to movies, as you will have seen on this blog, I’ve been insisting on that less and less as time has gone on. You could even call it “swamp noir.” The mood is dark enough at times, as life seems to go wrong at every turn for trapper Ben Ragan (Dana Andrews) after he stumbles across fugitive from justice Tom Keefer (Walter Brennan) hiding in the swamp while hunting for his lost dog Trouble.

   Agreeing not to turn Keefer in, Ben returns home and tries to keep Keefer’s secret from everyone but the latter’s daughter, the wild-haired Julie (Anne Baxter), who’s treated as little more than a scullery maid by the family who has taken her in, but with little success, no thanks to his jealous girl friend Mabel MacKenzie (Virginia Gilmore), blonde and far more perfectly coiffed.

   Ben is also on the outs with his father Thursday (Walter Huston), who second marriage to Miss Hannah (Mary Howard) is beginning to falter, thanks to the attention being paid to her when Thursday is gone by the pathetic and largely contemptible Jesse Wick (John Carradine).

   There’s a lot more to the story, with all of the pieces dovetailing nicely, and all of the players fitting their parts to a T, especially (and this came as a surprise to me) Walter Brennan, whom I usually think of as overacting greatly, but not in this role. As a speaker of soliloquies to the stars and to nature in general, his presence on the screen I found to be as mesmerizing as any I can recall in quite a while.

   Not that he was on screen a high percentage of the time. The honor in that regard goes to Dana Andrews, whose Southern accent was the most pronounced, but which started to sound more and more natural as the movie went on. As did the movie itself.

   Flawed by more of a sentimental ending than I expected, perhaps, and also because (and this is another perhaps) Renoir had the movie selected for him rather than the other way around, this is a movie that I enjoyed immensely. If you have a chance to see it, given that you’ve read this review all the way here to the end, I recommend it to you highly.

[UPDATE] 6-20-09. First an email note from Bill Crider, who says, “You know my fondness for this kind of book means that I own a copy.” And here it is, or the cover, at least, thanks to Bill:

      Bantam 97, June 1947. (Originally Little Brown, hardcover, 1941.)

   Then another note, this one from Al Hubin, who agrees that the book belongs in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, not previously incuded. He also points out the existence of the second filmed version, Lure of the Wilderness, 1952, with Jean Peters and Jeffrey Hunter, and directed by Jean Negulesco.