RELENTLESS. Columbia, 1948. Robert Young, Marguerite Chapman, Willard Parker, Akim Tamiroff, Barton MacLane, Mike Mazurki, Clem Bevans. Based on the novel Three Were Thoroughbreds by Kenneth Perkins. Director: George Sherman.

   I taped this movie many years ago, but for a time that was just as long, I put off actually sitting down and watching until several days ago. I just couldn’t see Robert Young as a cowboy star, you see. Once you know an actor as a family man (Father Knows Best) or a kindly family doctor (Marcus Welby, M.D.). it’s hard to go back and see him in a western like this one, or even a crime film. He just doesn’t fit the image.

   Looking through his list of credits, though, I see that Young was in Western Union (1941) and another film I don’t recall knowing about before, The Half-Breed (1952). I may have missed another, but even so, while it’s not a long list, he’s hardly a zero in the western category. (His first movie credit may have been The Black Camel, the 1931 Charlie Chan film with Warner Oland.)

   And in Relentless he proved to me that he could shoot, he could ride, and he was good with horses, and that’s a fact, even if he still looks like a dude to me. In the story, he’s a drifter who’s framed for the murder of one of a pair of claim-jumpers.

   Turns out, of course, that it was the other half of the pair who did it, and to clear his name Nick Buckley (that’s Young) has to track down the real killer (that’s Barton MacLane) while the sheriff (Willard Parker — he’s the one on the right in the lobby card above — who later became Ranger Jace Pearson on TV’s Tales of the Texas Rangers) is hard on his heels throughout the movie.

   Where does Marguerite Chapman come in? you ask, and you should. She’s the proprietor and sole operator of a general store in a covered wagon, sort of a traveling saleslady, you might say. When she (Luella Purdy) and Nate Buckley both proclaim their independence and total disinterest in getting hitched up with anyone, you know from that moment on that their fate is sealed — even though when Luella once shows up in a dress rather than in her rather fetching cowgirl garb, Buckley barely takes notice — seemingly far more interested in the colt he’d had hopes of raising into a race horse than in her.

   Marguerite Chapman, a vivacious brunette and a true girl-next-door type, had a decent career in Hollywood, but sadly, I don’t believe that the general public remembers her at all today.

   Interestingly, IMDB says she was asked to appear as “Old Rose” Calver in Titanic, but she was too ill at the time (1997, when she was 89) and the role went to Gloria Stuart. (She’s far too glamorous in the close-up photo I’ve found. She doesn’t look anything like this in this movie, but I thought I’d show it to you anyway.)

   As for the movie itself, filmed in color to good effect, it keeps the players on the move throughout the film, with more than enough story line to fill its full 90 minutes or so. It’s even entertaining enough to watch a second time.

   But getting back to Robert Young, even after all this, I still have to tell you that he’s too soft-spoken and nice to be a western star. As a guy more interested in his horses rather than the girl — for all but the final scene! — he’s dumb enough in that sense to be one, that’s for sure.

G. D. H. & MARGARET COLE – Knife in the Dark.

Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover; Dec 1941. The Macmillan Co., US, hardcover, 1942 (shown).

   More than usual, there are a couple of remarkable aspects to this wartime mystery. The first is the identity of the primary sleuth, and it is definitely not private detective James Warrender, as I carelessly (and rather chauvinistically) assumed when I picked the book up to read. Unh-uh. Not at all. It’s Mrs. Elizabeth Warrender instead. His mother.

   Belatedly checking with Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, I found that this was the only full length novel in which Mrs. Warrender was in. Altogether the Coles wrote more than thirty mysteries, and the detective in most of them was Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Wilson. While James Warrender’s mother appeared in an earlier collection of novelettes and short stories called Mrs. Warrender’s Profession, 1939, this was the only novel.

   Someone else will have to tell me, because I can’t come up with any — what other private eye character ever found himself upstaged in a detective story by his mother?

   The other aspect that I found remarkable — and so, therefore, I’m obliged to remark on it, aren’t I? — was the identity of the murder victim. Up until her death, I thought she had the most vibrant, most interesting personality of anyone else in the book, and it was difficult to see her go.

   Not that she was without faults. Check the date of the novel again. As the wife of a dull academic in a university town, the woman was well known for her intolerance and for speaking out against the aliens being resettled in the city — refugees from a Europe suffering from a war we here in which the United States had not yet become involved. The lady was also a bright flame in the town’s small community of scholars, drawing unattached students to her like the proverbial moths, not to mention the occasional faculty member.

   She, in fact, is at one point described in a word I doubt that Agatha Christie ever used, a nymphomaniac. (Erle Stanley Gardner might have called this book The Case of the Unscrupulous Siren.)

   The murder takes place at a public dance for which she was the hostess, and there are many suspects, many opportunities, a coincidence or two, and — it’s just the kind of mystery the Golden Age of Detective Stories is known for, even if the details of the plot aren’t quite as sharp as they should be. (Fuzzy around the fringes, you might say.)

   Mrs. Warrender, approaching 70 in this book, is perhaps of a little higher class standing than the aforementioned Mrs Christie’s Miss Marple, but she has the right instincts, and I humbly apologize to her for wondering why on earth the private eye’s mother is tagging along with him.

[UPDATE] 02-25-09. Quite remarkably, when I fished this review of out of the “archives,” the only two things that I remembered about the book were the two things that I wrote about it in my commentary. Either I was spot on in writing it up the first time, or in the process of writing it up, it reinforced in my mind the two aspects of it that I would find again remarkable at a later date; that is to say, now.

HERBERT BREAN – The Clock Strikes Thirteen.

William Morrow, hardcover, 1952. Paperback reprint: Dell 758, [1954]. A shorter version first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine, June 1952.

   I’ll tell you this, I’ve never read a mystery quite like this one. It takes place on a desolate island, off the coast of Maine. There’s no animal life and no vegetation. It’s completely dead and abandoned, all except for a small group of dedicated research biologists, busily working away on more, even more deadly concoctions for the Defense Department.

   But soon after journalist-photographer Reynold Frame arrives, summoned by a soon-to-be announced discovery, the scientist in charge (not quite mad) is clubbed to death, and several trays of germ culture are overturned. With all contact with the mainland cut off, and with the threat of sudden death constantly in the air, the murder investigation perforce goes on.

   In spite of the bizarre, even grotesque setting, Frame does a more than passable job of detection. However, after recently reading any number of newspaper articles of sheep, nerve gas and the like; and considering what we know now about how easily science can be used to kill effectively and indiscriminately, reading Brean today, he’s not half as frightening as he could have been.

   I’m sure he used all the information about bacteriological warfare that he was allowed access to, but looking back, I think that 25 years ago we were all probably quite naive.

PostScript: This was the last of the four mystery novels that Reynold Frame appeared in. He seems to have walked from the rescue boat onto the Maine shoreline, and into oblivion.

[UPDATE] 02-23-09.   I can’t remember reading this book at all, so I can’t expand on what I said back then. Nor do I know very much about Herbert Brean, I’m sorry to say, only the list of seven titles that are listed under his name in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   He was well enough regarded as a mystery writer, though, using Google as a guide, that at one time “he was a director and executive vice president of the Mystery Writers of America, a group for which he also taught a class in mystery writing.” (Wikipedia)

   A series detective named William Deacon (described in several places as a “crack magazine writer”) appears in his last two mysteries, both published in the 1960s. But taken from CFIV, here’s the list of all four in which Reynold Frame did the detecting.

FRAME, REYNOLD     [Herbert Brean]
      Wilders Walk Away (n.) Morrow 1948.   [An impossible crime mystery.]

      The Darker the Night (n.) Morrow 1949.
      Hardly a Man Is Now Alive (n.) Morrow 1950.
      The Clock Strikes Thirteen (n.) Morrow 1952.

   No self-respecting mystery-oriented blog, especially one that also covers crime films, should be in existence very long without a discussion of Noir and “What’s a Noir Film?” breaking out.

   It’s been touched on now and again here on Mystery*File, but while you may not have noticed, a lengthy conversation recently took place here, one that covered the subject more intensely than has ever happened before.

   And, of all place, in the comments section of an old review I posted of Phantom Valley, a Durango Kid movie released by Columbia in 1948.

   Here’s the last paragraph, in which I said of the leading lady:

    “Virginia Hunter is very pretty and attractive, but she seems to have had only a short career in films. Her roles include at least one other Durango movie, several Three Stooges shorts, and a small part in the noir thriller He Walked by Night (1948). Mostly B-movies, looking down through the rest of the list, and often small uncredited parts at that, but she makes the most of this one.”

   Since some interesting things were said, I’ll let those who commented take over from here:

MIKE GROST: “The IMDB says Virginia Hunter has tiny roles in Caught and The Reckless Moment, two films in the genre variously known as melodrama / romantic drama / Women’s films / soap opera. Both were directed by Max Ophuls. Ophuls is one of the most admired directors today, and his works are considered major classics. There are many books on him, including Max Ophuls in the Hollywood Studios (1996) by Lutz Bacher.

    “I don’t remember Virginia Hunter in Caught at all. She must have had a very small part.”

WALKER MARTIN: “Mike, concerning Caught and The Reckless Moment, I agree with your use of the word ‘melodrama’ but I’m not so sure about the words ‘romantic drama/ Women’s films/soap opera.’ I viewed both these films about a year ago during my present habit of watching a film noir movie just about every night on dvd (these two films are on British PAL discs). They are definitely film noir with Caught starring James Mason and Robert Ryan and The Reckless Moment starring James Mason and Joan Bennett.

    “Both films are listed in such basic film noir references as Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward and Film Noir Guide by Keaney. You are right about Max Ophuls being one of the great directors but I guess we have to agree to disagree about these movies being women’s films or soap opera.”

DAVID VINEYARD: “The Reckless Moment is based on a novel by Elizabeth Saxnay Holding, The Blank Wall (1947). The Brooklyn-born Holding was married to an Englishman, and author of several well received novels pioneering the field of psychological suspense. The film is clearly in the noir mode with iconic noir actress Joan Bennett in the lead as a woman being blackmailed by James Mason. Anthony Boucher and Raymond Chandler were both champions of Holding’s work with Boucher crediting her with virtually creating the modern novel of psychological suspense.

    “Caught, while also clearly in the noir mode, is also clearly a modern gothic in it’s plot of a young woman (Barbara Bel Geddes) who discovers her husband (Robert Ryan) isn’t who she thought he was and falls for the doctor(James Mason) who suspects foul play, but her escape is complicated because she is pregnant by her husband. It’s based on the novel Wild Calender by Libbie Block.

    “Both films are generally listed in most noir reference books, though they might fit in a sub-category from the usual crime, spy, and private eye fare we tend to think of as noir. Other films in this more romantic noir mood include Fallen Angel, Leave Her to Heaven, Angel Face, and No Man of Her Own (based on Cornell Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man).

    “Though they are both pre-noir (officially noir begins with 1946’s Murder My Sweet, though plenty of films before that have noirish elements)these more romantic and femme centered noirs were often a mix of elements from Rebecca and Mildred Pierce, though they often featured iconic noir actresses such as Bennett, Bel Geddes, and Barbara Stanwyck.

    “And before everyone piles on to mention the countless films that came out before 1946 that clearly have noir elements, the date is not entirely arbitrary. The term was coined by the French and was not used or recognized as a specific genre before that date. I can think of any number of films before Murder My Sweet I would call noir too, but film historians point out that noir couldn’t technically exist until the term was coined, however many films we think of as noir may seem to fit the pattern.

    “I lean to including the pre-noirs in the general accepted genre, but don’t stretch quite as far as some so called noir collections on DVD that frankly seem to be pushing the boundaries to any film that deals with a crime and makes use of shadows in their cinematography.

    “A perfectly good example would be Scotland Yard Inspector with Cesar Romero, which is available in one of the Film Noir sets. The film is an entertaining British B mystery in the Peter Cheyney mode, but it isn’t noir by any means.

    “Noir is more attitude than subject matter, and as the old line goes, you know it when you see it. Some of these definitions would include any film that was in black and white and wasn’t a comedy, musical, or western.”

WALKER MARTIN: “Yes, we can argue all day about what is film noir and what period constitutes the film noir years, etc. I often see critics saying 1941-1959 is the basic film noir era. However, I have seen movies prior to 1941 that I would call film noir and I’ve seen alot of movies after 1959 that are certainly film noir or neo-noir. To try and pin down the exact definition or period will drive us crazy.

    “For instance one of my favorite reference books is Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference by Silver and Ward. Since 1979, I have been checking off the films as I view them, listing the date viewed and my grade concerning quality. Sometimes I scribble a comment such as ‘This is not film noir.’

    “A couple nights ago was the most recent time that I wrote this comment. I finally found a poor print of Thunderbolt, a 1929 early sound movie starring George Bancroft and Fay Wray. Despite Silver and Ward listing it in the book, there is no evidence that this film is anything more than a crime/prison drama. Yet they see some type of pre-noir element that justifies inclusion in the encyclopedia.

    “I’m pretty liberal in what I include as film noir and I have to be, otherwise I would drive myself mad. The main thing is I enjoy this type of movie.”

MIKE GROST: “I’ve never seen The Reckless Moment. It’s good news that it is at last out on DVD!

    “It’s certainly true that Caught is widely viewed as a noir. But I’ve always been a bit skeptical. Films like Fallen Angel or Mildred Pierce have murder mysteries in them. Everyone agrees they are noir.

    “But there is no crime or even violence in Caught. It’s about a woman and her romantic affairs.

    “Caught does have some character types we associate with noir. Robert Ryan’s nasty millionaire shows the ‘alienation and obsession’ Alain Silver rightly associates with noir. And the film is often dark in mood.

    Still, I think ‘noir’ is best restricted to films with actual crime elements. Maybe we can all agree that Caught is ‘noir-like’…

    “I last saw Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg, 1929) in 1972. Thought then it was a masterpiece! This is another film that badly needs to get back in circulation. Sternberg was a giant of the cinema.

    “Have no opinions about whether is is pre-noir. Was astonished back then by its rich use of sound. It seems like one of the most creative and emotionally laden of the early talkies.

    “Hardly anyone in Hollywood used the term noir, even after the French coined it circa 1946. Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir Reader 2 presents strong evidence that Hollywood called such films ‘crime movies,’ and thought of them as a distinct genre. IMHO ‘film noir’ is a great catchy name for this genre, and better than simple ‘crime movies.’ But the genre pre-existed its name. Films like The Stranger on the Third Floor and This Gun for Hire, made long before 1946, sure seem like film noir to me.”

DAVID VINEYARD: “I agree about stretching the limits of noir to include films made before and after the general cut off points. Certainly some of the pre code films have noir elements, as do films like Lang’s You Only Live Once and Fury (though I think in all honestly both are really crime drama and social drama respectively).

    “Even strict constructionists who insist on the 1946 date will admit (reluctantly) that if The Big Sleep had been released in 1945 before Murder My Sweet instead of delayed a year (the 1945 cut has been restored) it would be the first true noir, but then the French invented the term to refer to a type of film that clearly goes back at least to the thirties and which they imitated in films like Jour le Seve and La Bete Humane (which Lang remade as a noir with Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Broderick Crawford).

    Anthony Mann’s westerns since under that definition a western couldn’t be noir, though there are certainly noirish elements in many of them (and directed by notable noir directors).

    “And in relation to the article, if it’s based on Cornell Woolrich isn’t it film noir by definition? The Falcon Takes Over and Time to Kill from the Michael Shayne series based on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely and The High Window both have noir elements just by the nature of the stories, but though they are superior B series entries I don’t think either one is really noir. What is and isn’t noir is likely to be argued for a long time.

    “I would likely agree to limiting noir to crime films, though in the case of Caught the combination of the actors involved — especially Robert Ryan — the look of the film, and director Max Ophuls there is certainly a case to be made for calling it noir.

    “Even within the strictest definition of the genre there are films as diverse as the nihilistic Detour, the docudrama style of He Walked By Night or Lineup, and the moody romance of Out of the Past that are noir icons, but have little in common other than crime and being filmed in black and white. I suspect in the case of noir the answer lies in the eye of the beholder within some general guidelines.”

LUTZ BACHER: “In Caught, Virginia Hunter plays ‘Lushola,’ the inebriated woman who keeps interrupting Lee and Quinada at the bar in the Nightclub scene. In Reckless Moment, she’s seen more briefly at the juke box in the hotel bar (the second bar scene, near the end), repeatedly saying ‘same song again.’”

    Me, Steve, again. Thanks to all who commented, with a special tip of the cap to Lutz Bacher for the definitive answer to who Virginia Hunter played, and when, the question which began this entire conversation!

JOHN BRETT – Who’d Hire Brett?   Detective Book Club [3-in-1 edition]; hardcover reprint,. Sept-Oct 1981. First edition: St. Martin’s Press, 1981. Paperback reprint: Bantam, July 1989. No UK edition.

    My copy is the DBC edition, one of the so-called “Inner Circle” volumes in that set of books, and the only one that I could find a cover for — although I suspect I have the Bantam paperback, somewhere.

    There’s not much information about John Brett, the author. This was his only detective novel, and in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, he’s described only as “born in England, the son of an earl; living near Hollywood,” a statement possibly obtained from the blurb on the hardcover edition. Now since this describes the character John Brett, except for the “earl” part, awfully well, I have a feeling that “John Brett” is not the author’s real name.

    And since he’s relatively skilled as an author, it’s also possible that we might know him as a mystery writer under another name altogether. Not that I have any suggestions.

    Getting back to the “earl” part, that might be true for the character in the book, too. He’s a glib sort of fellow who tells the story himself, but in doing so, he only hints at his background. He, we soon gather, is what’s called a remittance man — an exile living on money sent from home — in this case England. Something shady and quite possibly illegal back went on back there, but as I say, hints are all he’s going to give.

    He’s not exactly hired in this book, in spite of the title, but he is asked by a female friend to steal a valuable artifact from his upstairs neighbor, the upstairs neighbor having stolen the artifact from the female friend and her husband, they having it in their possession illegally, which is why they can’t call the police in on the theft.

    With me so far? I’ll let Brett take over to tell you what happens next. He’s just turned the icon (a Mud Dancer) over to the husband, Harry:

    The police, naturally, suspect Harry’s wife, and since John Brett is close friends with the wife, they suspect him, too, for a while. To clear their names in the eyes of Sgt. Steinberg — apparently the only cop in the Beverly Hills Police Department, for he’s the only one who ever appears in person anywhere in the book — John and Edie and Edie’s enterprising and eavesdropping maid Marie decide to do a little sleuthing on their own. Make that a lot of sleuthing, although John has to be prodded by Marie, who’s another story, and being John’s age (Edie is older), sparks begin to fly, and more.

    I’ve been doing some hinting myself, but right now I’ll come out and say it. This is a comic caper in the same sense as many of Donald Westlake’s books under his own name were comic capers, not that I’m saying that Donald Westlake was the author of this book, though it’s kind of fun to imagine that he was.

    From page 60, just to give you a good idea. John and Marie are on the case together:

    “I pointed the Sunbeam in a direction that seemed likely to get us somewhere near the Beverly Hills Police Department. It didn’t. Instead, we wound up in a rather dismal place called Culver City that has a lot of strange-looking streets meeting at even stranger intersections. In Culver City, I discovered; nothing goes anywhere. Everything is coming from somewhere and seems to dissipate into nothingness. It’s what astronomers are lately calling, with a remarkable lack of cheeriness, a Black Hole. Everything collapses into it, and damned little gets out again. I began to flounder, and I’m afraid that the sight of a half-crocked Englishman floundering in a Sunbeam with a rather dazzling redhead at his side was enough to make the day for the locals. Not that they lined the streets to cheer, mind you, but I noticed a certain mocking quality in the eye of the policeman who stopped us.

    “‘Going somewhere?’ he asked.

    “It struck me as a rather stupid question, as it must have been obvious to him that we were not. After all, he had just succeeded in following us in five complete circles.

    “‘Beverly Hills Police Department?’ said I, giving him the bright smile.

    “‘Wrong town. Try again.’

    “Well, I knew it was the wrong town, for God’s sake. All I was trying to do was get it across to him that directions were needed. He was obviously dense. I tried again.

    “‘We want to go to the Beverly Hills Police Department.’ I tried to wither him with a look this time. Take my word for it: don’t ever try to wither a Culver City cop. They take it personally.”

    To get back to the case, however, this really is a detective story, although with all of the wackiness going on, you might begin to wonder. There is one line in the book which John Brett, for all of his semi-doltishness, which is obviously a front, picks up on and knows (he says later) who the killer is, right then and there. He’s right. If you read it correctly, you will, too.

    What I don’t know is whether or not his knowing then fits in with the rest of the book, as he tells it. That is to say, if he (or you or I) knew then what he says he knew — well, I’d have to read the book again.

    While in a one sense it’s completely out of character, it could very well be that John Brett is an even deeper character than he otherwise ever lets on.

    Since this was his only recorded outing as a detective, we may never know.

[UPDATE] 04-23-09.   As you see, I have found my copy of the Bantam edition.

    “There’s an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)

    I spent a good deal of yesterday and most of this morning trying to read my email. I probably shouldn’t still be using Eudora, but I’m comfortable with it. Yesterday it was a bad certificate, whatever that it is. Cox.net, of course, had no idea, but after I finally spoke to a sympathetic tech support fellow for a lengthy time — though he claimed the problem was not at all at their end — five minutes after I hung up, the problem quietly disappeared.

    This morning I couldn’t log in. Needed a password. First time in six years. Was there a way to find out what it was? No. To change it? No. The online east cox mail server was down, at least for me — was yesterday, too — and the west server really didn’t want to know me either. A little finesse, which took a couple of hours, did the trick. I’d done something I really shouldn’t have the day before, but who knew? The two passwords match now, and I wrote it down someplace safe, believe you me.

    Thanks to my daughter Sarah and her husband Mark for keeping me cool. Otherwise the computer would have been out the window, as per Steve Wozniak.

    What a waste of time.

    But me, bitter? Nah. Not a chance in the world.

    “It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.” (Alan Cooper)

JOE R. LANSDALE – A Fine Dark Line.

Mysterious Press, hardcover; January 2003; trade paperback: October 2003.

    On page 7, when thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchel learns that there is no Santa Claus, he doesn’t like it. He feels “like a big donkey’s ass.” He doesn’t know it, but his small comfortable corner of the world is starting to crumble. Nor does he know what else is in store for him during that summer of 1958, but in the hands of Edgar-winning author Joe Lansdale, it’s pure magic, at least to the reader, and this one in particular.

    What happens to Stanley and his family in this one brief summer is more than what occurs to most people in twice their lifetime. Finding a metal box filled with letters and pages from a diary buried in the ground, seems to trigger a seismographic sequence of events that takes the East Texas town of Dewmont across some unknown and never before seen line separating dark mystery from reality.

    The boom-times spawned by the end of World War II took their time reaching rural America, forcing Stanley’s father to uproot the family and head to the big city, where they make their new home inside the huge screen of the drive-in theater that’s the source of his new livelihood.

    The year 1958 was an innocent age of Dairy Queen’s and rock-and-roll, back when the black population knew their place, and the white population kept them there, not always maliciously, but simply because that’s the way it was and always would be. And yet aiding young Stanley with his investigation of the letters, and the two young girls who died (were murdered?) on the same night some 25 years before, is Buster, his father’s aged black projectionist — and Stanley’s ad hoc mentor leading him on this passage to adulthood.

    It’s an education, all right. Lynching of black men had ended not very much earlier, and minstrel shows were still common, but in 1958, to Stanley and his family, the entertainment value seems to diminish before their eyes. Stanley’s sixteen-year-old sister is growing up as well, and her explanation of certain aspects of life begins to open brand new horizons for him.

    It’s a remarkable trip, told by a master of words and nostalgic journeys, and it’s never a smooth one. Life never is smooth, in case you hadn’t noticed, and this is art, imitating life.

GEORGE BAXT – The Dorothy Parker Murder Case.

International Polygonics; reprint paperback; 1st printing, April 1986. Hardcover edition: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. Trade paperback reprint: IPL, November 1989.

   I’ve been struggling to remember, but I think this is the first book by George Baxt that I’ve ever read. The Dorothy Parker Murder Case is the first of three series of detective novels he wrote, along with five stand-alone works of crime fiction. His series charcaters were:

      1. Pharaoh Love: New York City homicide detective in New York, both black and gay.
      2. Sylvia Plotkin and Max van Larsen: New York City author and police detective.
      3. Jacob Singer: New York City homicide detective, later a 1940s LA private eye, or so I’ve been told.

   While I was reading it, I didn’t realize that Dorothy Parker was Singer’s first recorded case. He and the celebrated Mrs. Parker had met previously when this case begins – that of the mysterious deaths of several Manhattan-based show girls — but when, how, and on what basis it happened they met was never the subject of a mystery novel of its own.

   When Baxt, who died in 2003, was writing the Jacob Singer books, I was going through a phase in which I paid no attention to mystery fiction that had “real people” in them. I had no idea until yesterday that Baxt had written so many of them. (See the complete list at the end of this review.)

   I can’t tell you why I had that particular prejudice. If I had a bad experience with a novel with a real person in it, it’s possible, but I simply don’t remember. Sometimes otherwise normal people do silly things.

   I also have never done any reading about Dorothy Parker and the famed Algonquin Round Table, nor read any but the briefest poems among her huge accumulation of literary work. I suppose there’s enough time left in my life to make up for various deficiencies like this, and instead of writing reviews, I sometimes think maybe I really ought to be doing something about it.

   In this book, which takes place immediately following the tragic death of Rudolph Valentino in 1926, the following real people appear, and I know I’m omitting some: Dorothy Parker, of course; her sleuthing partner, Alexander Woolcott; George S. Kauffman, in whose apartment the first dead girl is found; Robert Benchley; Marc Connelly; Judge Crater; Polly Adler; Edna Ferber; George Raft; Harold Ross; Flo Ziegfeld; Neysa McMein; Horace Liveright; Marie Dressler; Elsa Maxwell; Jeanne Eagels; and more.

   Not that all of these have big parts, but if what George Baxt says about them and their whoring and drinking, it’s remarkable that any of them grew up to be famous. There are puns, zingers and witticisms in this book galore, nearly one on every page.

   Picking a page at random, here’s a long passage that begins by describing Jacob Singer as he walks into Kauffman’s apartment to see the dead girl there in the bed:

    Here’s another:

    The less said about the mystery the better, and you will have noticed that I’ve already done so. That’s not what you’re paying your money for this time around. For what it’s worth, of the real people above, George Raft fares the worst at the hands of Mr. Baxt’s typewriter. Of the people who weren’t real until Mr. Baxt came along, though, you may be sure that many of them fare much worse.

    In summary, then, in case you’re wondering, do I intend to track down and read the rest of Jacob Singer’s adventures? Yes, indeed I do, and here’s a complete list of them, based on his entry on the Thrilling Detective website. (Not all of these are listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. I will pass the information along to Al Hubin.)

* The Dorothy Parker Murder Case (1984)
* The Alfred Hitchcock Murder Case (1986)

* The Tallulah Bankhead Murder Case (1987)

* The Talking Pictures Murder Case (1990)
* The Greta Garbo Murder Case (1992)

* The Noel Coward Murder Case (1992)
* The Marlene Dietrich Murder Case (1993)

* The Mae West Murder Case (1993)

* The Bette Davis Murder Case (1994)
* The Humphrey Bogart Murder Case (1995)
* The William Powell & Myrna Loy Murder Case (1996)
* The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Murder (1997)
* The Clark Gable & Carole Lombard Murder (1997)

   If you’re interested in Cornell Woolrich and get Turner Classic Movies on satellite, I strongly suggest that, the next time it’s scheduled, you check out Blind Date (Columbia, 1934). It’s not based on anything Woolrich wrote and isn’t even a film noir, but this obscure little gem breathes the spirit of Woolrich’s early non-crime fiction like no other movie I’ve seen.

   Ann Sothern stars as a young woman of Manhattan, supporting her parents and a kid brother and sister in the pit of the Depression. As in the country-western song she is torn between two lovers: her steady boyfriend (Paul Kelly), who is “shanty Irish” like herself, and the wealthy young playboy (Neil Hamilton) whom she met on the blind date of the title.

   Anyone who’s familiar with the early Woolrich stories, and their recurrent theme that relationships and anguish are inseparable, is sure to feel that this movie must have been based on one of them.

   (Homework assignment: read Woolrich’s 1930 tale “Cinderella Magic,” collected in my Love and Night, just before or after watching the movie.)

   Even more amazing is the number of links between this film and Woolrich’s future. There’s a short and brutal scene at a dance marathon prefiguring the suspense master’s powerful 1935 tale “Dead on Her Feet.”

   Second male lead Paul Kelly was to play the second male lead a dozen years later in the Woolrich-based “Fear in the Night” (1947).

   The director, Roy William Neill, would later, and just before his death, helm Black Angel (1946), arguably the finest movie ever based on a Woolrich novel.

   Even the title Blind Date figures in the Woolrich canon: first in his pulp story “Blind Date with Death” (1937), later as the new title for the 1935 story better known as “The Corpse and the Kid” and “Boy with Body” when, in 1949, Fred Dannay reprinted it in EQMM.

   All these links are coincidences, of course, but what an eye-popping network of them!

   Speaking of Fred Dannay, a Japanese film crew will soon be coming to America to make a documentary on Ellery Queen. Since this is the first segment of a projected series to be called The Great Mystery Writers, I assume (and hope) that the emphasis will be on Fred and his first cousin Manny Lee, not on the detective character whose name they chose as their joint byline.

   I’m going to be involved in this project but exactly to what extent and in what capacity isn’t clear yet. For updates, stay tuned to this column.

   Soon to be published by the ABA Press (that’s ABA as in American Bar Association) is an anthology entitled Lawyers in Your Living Room! which deals, as you must already have guessed, with the countless series about the legal profession that have graced or disgraced our TV screens for more than half a century.

   As you also must already have guessed, I wrote the chapter on Perry Mason. There’s also a chapter on The Defenders, but most of the series discussed in the book are much more recent than Mason. For more details you needn’t wait for my next column, just google the title.

   During much of the next week my eyes are going to be glued to the PDF of the second volume of The Dark Page, which I am checking over for author Kevin Johnson.

   The first volume was a lavish coffee-table book dealing with those films noirs of the 1940s that were based on novels or short stories and with their literary sources.

   The sequel covers the noirs of the Fifties and early Sixties and their literary sources, ranging from Dreiser and Hemingway and Graham Greene, through a slew of specialists in noir fiction — Horace McCoy, Steve Fisher, Dorothy B. Hughes, Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, David Goodis and (need I mention?) Woolrich — to such long-forgotten pen wielders as Ferguson Findley and Willard Wiener.

   Mickey Spillane, of course, gets full coverage. The choices of what films count as noir are at times quite unusual: The Bad Seed and the first version of Death of a Salesman are in, as is Hitchcock’s Stage Fright, but Psycho is out.

   The illustrations aren’t part of my PDF but, if the first Dark Page volume is any indication, they’ll be stunning.

   If you groove on Harry Stephen Keeler, the greatest nut who ever wrote a book, you’ll be pleased to hear that Strands of the Web, a collection that brings together the vast majority of his early short stories — not all because two or three remain lost — is about to be published by Ramble House.

   Most of these tales were written between 1913 and 1916, when Keeler was in his early and middle twenties and just beginning to develop the webwork patterns of wild coincidence that were to become his trademark but the earliest story dates back to 1910 and the latest to 1962, a few years before his death.

   You’ll find a few foreshadowings of his wacky webs now and then in this collection, but the prose is much more ordinary than the labyrinth sentences he eventually came to favor. The most noticeable influence on these stories is O. Henry, perhaps the most popular American short-fiction writer of all time, who died the same year Keeler first set pen to paper.

   For more details, go to www.ramblehouse.com.

   Afforded only a footling footnote in the history of British cinema, the Merton Park Edgar Wallace films remain consistently enjoyable as a series of hectic penny dreadfuls, at times complication piles upon complication bewilderingly, but more often moving at a cracking pace. While not quite film noir, in true observation of the term, there is a grimy pleasure to be derived from these modest little dramas.

   Though never entirely convincing, they do unfold with a quiet slickness, arousing curiosity, delivering a few plot-twist surprises, and displaying some competent performances. A pre-Bond Bernard Lee, for instance, shows up a few times as various Detective Superintendent types; and Hazel Court amuses herself as a very well-bred private eye in The Man Who Was Nobody (1960).

   Merton Park Studios (1937 to 1967) was the prolific producer of the Edgar Wallace series of supporting features (released between 1960 and 1964), along with the similar Scotland Yard (1953-1961) and Scales of Justice (1962-1967) films.

   This was the low-budget production world of a film-per-week schedule (up to 14 camera set-ups a day); the first Edgar Wallace film was released in November 1960 (in the UK); the 25th Wallace film went into production at the end of September 1962.

   In 1960, Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy, managing directors of distributor Anglo Amalgamated (UK), acquired the film rights for world-wide distribution of the entire Wallace library. They gave the go-ahead to Merton producer Jack Greenwood (1919-2004) to make a �series’ of supporting features for their distribution circuit.

   In his professional capacity, Greenwood may have been Britain’s Sam Katzman, keeping a firm hand on the purse strings and pushing cast and crew to the last penny’s worth. He was, thankfully, also producer of the realistic 1960 prison drama The Criminal (US: The Concrete Jungle), starring Stanley Baker, and, in 1967, became production controller on The Avengers series at ABPC Elstree Studios.

   Merton Park Studios was based in a modest-size house in suburban south west London, employing a roll-call of British character actors, hired by-the-day (as well as some affordable European players), and utilizing the neighbouring streets and sites as economic locations.

   Some 40 titles make up the run of Edgar Wallace films. Less than half were based on actual Wallace material, the rest consisting of original screenplays to supplement a saleable package under the Wallace introductory logo (a revolving bust of Wallace, sometimes tinted a bilious green, accompanied by twangy electric guitar music performed by The Shadows).

   A list of the Edgar Wallace/Merton Park titles will follow this overview.

   By the time the Wallace films started, Greenwood/Merton Park had already been producing a similar series of supporting programmers. Introduced by grim-faced journalist/criminologist Edgar Lustgarten (1907-1978) since 1953, the Scotland Yard series (produced until 1961) were sufficiently suspenseful police investigation dramas based on real-life cases (apparently).

   The early films directed by Ken Hughes are interesting for their imaginative application of catchpenny production values. Since all the Wallace stories were updated to the 1960s, there is little to distinguish between the series; except perhaps that the Scotland Yard films often featured deadpan Russell Napier as the coldly businesslike detective.

   Following on, the Scales of Justice series (released 1962 to 1967) added to Anglo’s distribution titles between Wallace productions. Lustgarten, again, introduced dark and dire case-file stories of crime-and-comeuppance with his customary solemnity.

   The basic form and content of the three series was pretty much interchangeable, leading the later TV packages to often confuse the films’ origins. The UK experience remains that these films were originally produced for the cinema screen.

   The US viewing experience, via TV presentations, has led many to believe that they were made for television. The Wallace films went to US TV as The Edgar Wallace Mystery Hour (or Theatre), usually trimmed to accommodate an hour slot (syndicated from c.1963).

   Scotland Yard (39 x 26-34 min. films) was syndicated from 1955, and later shown via ABC from 1957 to 1958 in half-hour form. Scales of Justice (originally 13 x 26-33 min. films) probably supplemented the above TV packages.

      Edgar Wallace films:

(The following are presented in order of production date, by year). I have also tried to give story source, where known.)

      1960:

1. The Clue of the Twisted Candle. Bernard Lee, David Knight, Frances De Wolff. Screenplay: Philip Mackie; from the 1916 novel. Director: Allan Davis.

2. Marriage of Convenience. John Cairney, Harry H. Corbett, Jennifer Daniel. Scr: Robert Stewart; based on The Three Oak Mystery (1924). Dir: Clive Donner. [Follow the link for the first eight minutes on YouTube.]

3. The Man Who Was Nobody. Hazel Court, John Crawford, Lisa Daniely. Scr: James Eastwood; from the 1927 novel. Dir: Montgomery Tully.

4. The Malpas Mystery. Maureen Swanson, Allan Cuthbertson, Geoffrey Keene. Scr: Paul Tabori, Gordon Wellesley; based on The Face in the Night (1924). Dir: Sidney Hayers. [See NOTES below.]

5. The Clue of the New Pin. Paul Daneman, Bernard Archard, James Villiers. Scr: Philip Mackie; from the 1923 novel. Dir: Allan Davis.

      1961:

6. The Fourth Square. Conrad Phillips, Natasha Parry, Delphi Lawrence. Scr: James Eastwood; based on Four Square Jane (1929). Dir: Allan Davis.

7. Partners in Crime. Bernard Lee, John Van Eyssen, Moira Redmond. Scr: Robert Stewart; based on The Man Who Knew (1918). Dir: Peter Duffell.

8. The Clue of the Silver Key. Bernard Lee, Lyndon Brook, Finlay Currie. Scr: Philip Mackie; from the 1930 novel (aka The Silver Key). Dir: Gerard Glaister.

9. Attempt To Kill. Derek Farr, Tony Wright, Richard Pearson. Scr: Richard Harris; based on the short story The Lone House Mystery (1929). Dir: Royston Morley.

10. The Man at the Carlton Tower. Maxine Audley, Lee Montague, Allan Cuthbertson. Scr: Philip Mackie; based on The Man at the Carlton (1931). Dir: Robert Tronson.

11. Never Back Losers. Jack Hedley, Jacqueline Ellis, Patrick Magee. Scr: Lukas Heller; based on The Green Ribbon (1929). Dir: Robert Tronson.

12. The Sinister Man. John Bentley, Patrick Allen, Jacqueline Ellis. Scr: Robert Stewart; from the 1924 novel. Dir: Clive Donner.

13. Man Detained. Bernard Archard, Elvi Hale, Paul Stassino. Scr: Richard Harris; based on A Debt Discharged (1916). Dir: Robert Tronson.

14. Backfire. Alfred Burke, Zena Marshall, Oliver Johnston. Scr: Robert Stewart. Dir: Paul Almond.

      1962:

15. Candidate for Murder. Michael Gough, Erika Remberg, Hans Borsody. Scr: Lukas Heller; based on “The Best Laid Plans of a Man in Love” [publication date?]. Dir: David Villiers.

16. Flat Two. John Le Mesurier, Jack Watling, Barry Keegan. Scr: Lindsay Galloway; based Flat 2 (1924). Dir: Alan Cooke.

17. The Share Out. Bernard Lee, Alexander Knox, Moira Redmond. Scr: Philip Mackie; based on Jack o’ Judgment (1920). Dir: Gerard Glaister.

18. Time to Remember. Harry H. Corbett, Yvonne Monlaur, Robert Rietty. Scr: Arthur La Bern; based on The Man Who Bought London (1915). Dir: Charles Jarrott.

19. Number Six. Nadja Regin, Ivan Desny, Brian Bedford. Scr: Philip Mackie; from the 1922 novel. Dir: Robert Tronson.

20. Solo for Sparrow. Anthony Newlands, Glyn Houston, Nadja Regin. Scr: Roger Marshall; based on The Gunner (1928; aka Gunman’s Bluff). Dir: Gordon Flemyng.

21. Death Trap. Albert Lieven, Barbara Shelley, John Meillon. Scr: John Roddick. Dir: John Moxey.

22. Playback. Margit Saad, Barry Foster, Victor Platt. Scr: Robert Stewart. Dir: Quentin Lawrence.

23. Locker Sixty-Nine. Eddie Byrne, Paul Daneman, Walter Brown. Scr: Richard Harris. Dir: Norman Harrison.

24. The Set Up. Maurice Denham, John Carson, Maria Corvin. Scr: Roger Marshall. Dir: Gerard Glaister.

25. On the Run. Emrys Jones, Sarah Lawson, Patrick Barr. Scr: Richard Harris. Dir: Robert Tronson.

      1963:

26. Incident at Midnight. Anton Diffring, William Sylvester, Justine Lord. Scr: Arthur La Bern. Dir: Norman Harrison.

27. Return to Sender. Nigel Davenport, Yvonne Romain, Geoffrey Keen. Scr: John Roddick. Dir: Gordon Hales.

28. Ricochet. Maxine Audley, Richard Leech, Alex Scott. Scr: Roger Marshall, based on The Angel of Terror (1922, aka The Destroying Angel). Dir: John Moxey.

29. The �20,000 Kiss. Dawn Addams, Michael Goodliffe, Richard Thorp. Scr: Philip Mackie. Dir: John Moxey.

30. The Double. Jeannette Sterke, Alan MacNaughtan, Robert Brown. Scr: Lindsay Galloway; from the 1928 novel. Dir: Lionel Harris.

31. The Partner. Yoko Tani, Guy Doleman, Ewan Roberts. Scr: John Roddick; based on A Million Dollar Story (1926). Dir: Gerard Glaister.

32. To Have and To Hold. Ray Barrett, Katharine Blake, Nigel Stock. Scr: John Sansom; from the short story “The Breaking Point” (1927) collected in Lieutenant Bones (1918). Dir: Herbert Wise.

33. The Rivals. Jack Gwillim, Erica Rogers, Brian Smith. Scr: John Roddick; based on the short story collection Elegant Edward (1928). Dir: Max Varnel.

34. Five To One. Lee Montague, Ingrid Hafner, John Thaw. Scr: Roger Marshall; based on The Thief in the Night (1928). Dir: Gordon Flemyng.

35. Accidental Death. John Carson, Jacqueline Ellis, Derrick Sherwin. Scr: Arthur La Bern; based on the novel Jack O’Judgment (1920). Dir: Geoffrey Nethercott.

36. Downfall. Maurice Denham, Nadja Regin, T.P. McKenna. Scr: Robert Stewart. Dir: John Moxey.

      1964:

37. The Verdict. Cec Linder, Zena Marshall, Nigel Davenport. Scr: Arthur La Bern; based on The Big Four (1929). Dir: David Eady.

38. We Shall See. Maurice Kaufmann, Faith Brook, Alec Mango. Scr: Donal Giltinan; based on We Shall See! (1926; aka The Gaol Breaker). Dir: Quentin Lawrence.

39. Who Was Maddox?. Bernard Lee, Jack Watling, Suzanne Lloyd. Scr: Roger Marshall; based on the short story “The Undisclosed Client” (1926) collected in Forty-Eight Short Stories (1929). Dir: Geoffrey Nethercott.

40. Face of a Stranger. Jeremy Kemp, Bernard Archard, Rosemary Leach. Scr: John Sansom. Dir: John Moxey.

NOTES: Many sources say that there are 47 films in the series, including the Classic TV Archive. I have looked at the latter’s file and decided not to follow their lead because they combined two companies (Merton and Independent Artists). My list includes only those produced by Merton Park.

   When the films in the British Edgar Wallace series were shown as part of a syndicated televised series in the US, the package was very likely boosted to 47 (or even more) with other, non-related titles. The EW title logo can be edited on to the opening of anything that looks similar (or fits the programme slot).

   A good example is NBC’s Kraft Mystery Theatre (1961-63), where the first season (June-Sept, 1961) consisted of even more British B-movies re-edited for a one-hour TV slot. See this page for more details. One film I can remember (shown as a part of this group) is the non-mystery House of Mystery, which is actually a very effective, rather spooky supernatural/ghost story.

   In the instance of the Merton Park-Edgar Wallace series, since 47 is often given as the number of films, I’ll use the Classic TV Archive list to describe the differences.

   Independent Artists, set up by producer Julian Wintle, started in 1948; he was joined by Leslie Parkyn in 1958, locating the company at Beaconsfield Studios, England. Their only connection with Merton, apparently, was the distributor Anglo Amalgamated, who handled films for both companies. (Perhaps it was Anglo who made the sale of packages to US television?)

   The Man in the Back Seat (1961), which was the subject of the original enquiry, was an IA film, distributed by Anglo (released in the UK in August 1961). British trade journal reviews (Kine Weekly, 15 June 1961; Daily Cinema, 21 June 1961), as well as Anglo�s original publicity releases, reveal nothing to suggest that this film had a Wallace connection/origin. Neither TV Archive nor I include it in the Merton EW series.

   The Malpas Mystery (1960), listed by TV Archive in its list of IA films, was a Merton Park Studios-Langton production, according to the reviews in Monthly Film Bulletin [UK] (February 1961) and Variety (21 May 1969 for the US release). Kine Weekly (15 December 1960), however, confirms that it was indeed produced by Wintle & Parkyn at Beaconsfield Studios. It is, nevertheless, an EW entry.

   Urge to Kill (1960) is included as an early Merton film by TV Archive, but, it seems, it was not produced as a part of their Edgar Wallace or Scotland Yard series, and I have excluded it.

   There are seven other films cited by TV Archive which are all Merton productions (1963-1965) but, to all appearances, these are not related to any of their �series,’ including Scotland Yard and Scales of Justice.

   Thus of the 47 films in the Classic TV Archive count, I add one (Malpas) and delete eight others. This takes the “Edgar Wallace” count to the 40 titles I have listed above.

   Incidentally, Game for Three Losers (1965) — part of the TV Archive “seven” — was based on a novel by Edgar Lustgarten (screenplay by Roger Marshall; directed by Gerry O’Hara), but does not appear to be part of the Scales of Justice or any other series.