MICKEY SPILLANE – Day of the Guns.

E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1964. Signet D2643, paperback, April 1965. [Several later printings.]

   Properly overshadowed by Mike Hammer, espionage agent Tiger Mann is the hero of Mickey Spillane’s only other series of mystery novels. Mann remains a pale shadow of the mighty Mike, a Bond-era reworking of the Hammer formula; but the first of the series has considered merit.

   Tiger Mann is employed by an espionage organization funded by ultraright-wing billionaire Martin Grady, of self-professed altruistic, patriotic purposes. Chatting with a Broadway columnist in a nightclub, Tiger spots a beautiful woman who strikingly resembles a Nazi spy named Rondine who attempted to kill him years before.

   Though he loved Rondine, Tiger has sworn to kill her should he encounter her again. The woman, Edith Caine, professes not to be Rondine, but Tiger refuses to believe her and sets out to learn what she is up to. Soon he is battling a Communist conspiracy, and in a striptease finale that purposely evokes and invokes the classic conclusion of I, the Jury, Tiger must face the naked truth about Rondine.

   Day of the Guns is a fast-moving and fine example of Spillane’s mature craftsmanship; he has great fun doing twists on himself, as the conclusion of the novel shows. But this book – and, particularly, later Tiger Mann entries – lacks the conviction of the Hammer novels.

   Tiger Mann is Mike Hammer in secret-agent drag: His style and world are Hammer’s; despite mentions of faraway places, the action is confined to New York. But while Hammer is an antiorganization man, Tiger, for all his lone-wolf posturing, is a company man. This goes against the Spillane grain.

   The three other Tiger Mann novels are Bloody Sunrise (1965), The Death Dealers (1965), and The By-Pass Control (1966). Each declines in quality.

         ———
   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.

MICKEY SPILLANE – I, the Jury.

E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1947. Signet 699, paperback, 1948. [Many later printings.]

   When Mickey Spillane published I, the Jury in 1947, Hammett’s first novel had been in print nearly twenty years and Carroll John Daly and Raymond Chandler were still writing. Yet there is little doubt that Spillane’s book was a seminal work of tough-guy fiction, inspiring hundreds of imitators in the booming paperback market of the 1950s. No one, however, was quite able to match Spillane’s unique combination of action, sex, and right-wing vengeance.

   The main character of I, the Jury is Spillane’s most famous creation, Mike Hammer — tough, implacable, and prone to violence, with perhaps even a touch of madness. When his war buddy is murdered, Hammer swears to get revenge: “And by Christ, I’m not letting the killer go through the tedious process of the law.”

   Hammer smashes his way through the suspects (“My fist went in up to the wrist in his stomach”) until he determines the guilty party, whom he has sworn to kill in exactly the same way his friend was murdered. Along the way, he meets the nymphomaniac Bellemy sisters, one of whom has a strategically located strawberry birthmark; Charlotte Manning, a beautiful psychiatrist; Hal Kines, the improbable white slaver; and of course he fends off the advances of Velda, his sexy, loyal secretary.

   He finally confronts the killer in a slam-bang ending never to be forgotten by anyone who has read it, concluding with perhaps the best last line in all of Spillane’s books, most of which have memorable, melodramatic climaxes.

   Spillane’s novels have been attacked for their violence and their vigilante spirit, and no doubt these things are present in the books. But Spillane is first and foremost a storyteller, and his stories, no matter how improbable, always work, pulling the reader along willingly or unwillingly into Mike Hammer’s violent world.

   I, the Jury was brought to the screen in 1949, with Biff Elliott in the starring role. Like the novel, it emphasizes violence and has an ending to enrage the sensibilities of any feminist who happens to watch 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.

THE LONG WAIT. United Artists, 1954. Anthony Quinn, Peggie Castle, Gene Evans, Mary Ellen Kay, Shawn Smith, Dolores Donlon, Charles Coburn. Based on the novel by Mickey Spillane. Director: Victor Saville.

   In a comment that he left following my review of the movie The Guilty, based on the novelette “He Looked Like Murder,” Walker Martin commended me on comparing and contrasting the film version with Cornell Woolrich’s original story.

   I wish I could always do it, but usually it doesn’t work out that way. If I’ve just seen the movie, the book is nowhere to be found. If I’ve just read the book, finding a copy of the film is another question altogether.

   Case in point, and another small confession. If I’ve ever read The Long Wait as a novel, it was so long ago (50 years maybe) that if I did, I’ve forgotten it. And if I did read it, the other voice in my head says, how could I have possibly forgotten it?

   This last statement was prompted by the post that appeared just before this one. If I ever read a book anything like the one Bill Crider talks about, I think it would have stuck in my memory forever.

   Not being able to find my own copy of The Long Wait, I thought that Bill’s review would serve the purpose almost as well. Probably better, but I won’t tell him that.

   But before I being telling you about the movie, you might want to take a look at a short clip of the movie I found on YouTube. It’s the opening few minutes, in which you see Anthony Quinn being picked up as a hitchhiker, the fiery accident that follows, and a brief glimpse of the next scene, with Quinn in a hospital with his hands completely bandaged.

   He also has amnesia and no idea of who he is, where he was going, and more importantly, where he was coming from. A prankster, though, with hardly the best intentions in mind, sends him back to Lyncastle, where he’s known as Johnny McBride – and where also a wanted poster proclaims him wanted for murder.

   If you read Bill’s review again, you’ll get the idea that the book runs generally along the same lines. I don’t see Anthony Quinn as a “Johnny McBride,” however. His face and that name simply don’t match. I don’t say that he’s miscast, exactly, but I also don’t see him as the girl magnet he becomes as soon as he returns back to Lyncastle. (The police, by the way, have a problem matching him up with their fingerprint evidence. Due to the accident he was in, he no longer has fingerprints.)

   In any case, from here on in, I’ll be reviewing the movie, not the book. There is more actual violence in this film than in most noirs – with one early scene standing out in particular, when McBride is trussed up and about to be thrown into a 200-foot-deep quarry, and ends up alive – and the three hoodlums all dead.

   And another one later which has to be seen to be believed – and I’ll get back to that later. There is also an elaborate detective story going on as well, or actually a pair of them. First of all, the question is, who’s the real killer? But the second, and the more interesting, is who of the four woman who McBride becomes involved with is his old girl friend, Vera West?

   McBride’s memory is gone, of course, and since Vera’s had plastic surgery done before she came back, no one else knows who she is either. Well, one man knows, but he’s killed, shot to death early on. Working against McBride all the way is Servo (Gene Evans), the gangster who practically owns the town. (Evans was last seen by me as the leader of the pack of thieves doggedly hounding the trail of Clint Walker and Roger Moore in Gold of the Seven Saints, reviewed here back in July.)

   You do have allow some license to the screenwriter in working all of this into a sensible plot, let alone go down smoothly. (My copy of the film is unfortunately one that originally had color commercials for a California used car dealer in it, and whoever cut them out did not do a very good job of it. Some transitions are jarring, and I am slightly suspicious of them, thinking that maybe some small bits and pieces have been removed.)

   There is one long scene in this movie that makes definitely worth watching, even if all you can find is a crummy copy. That’s the one that comes toward the end, with Quinn as McBride tied in a chair in the middle of an empty warehouse, and Peggy Castle as Venus (one of the possible Vera’s) with her feet bound and her hands tied in front of her as she works herself slowly across the floor to him on her elbows, with Servo laughing and deriding her efforts the entire way.

   Beautifully photographed in glorious black-and-white, with lots of deep shadows and contrasting areas of light, this is a scene that will stick in your mind for a long time. The movie’s hard to find copies of, but it does exist. It has some flaws, but I hope I’ve made you want to see it. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

PostScript: I sent an advance copy of this review to the previously mentioned Mr. Crider, hoping to come full circle, if possible, and let him compare the film (unseen by him) with the book. His reply, short but succinct:  “The quarry scene’s in the novel, and the scene you mention at the end is (probably) much more violent in the novel, a real torture scene.”

   I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to have to find a copy of the book, and soon.

MICKEY SPILLANE – The Long Wait.

E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1951. Paperback reprint: Signet 932, May 1952 [plus many subsequent printings].

   The Long Wait, Mickey Spillane’s first non-series novel, is the author’s variation on the one-man- against-municipal-corruption theme as found in such novels as Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. The Mike Hammer-like narrator/hero, whose name is either Johnny McBride or George Wilson (even he isn’t sure), returns to the town of Lyncastle to clear up a robbery-and-murder charge against McBride.

   His motive, as usual in Spillane’s work, is revenge: One man is to get his arms broken, and one man is to die. Actually, a lot of people die before the narrator accomplishes his lofty goal, but not before he absorbs more physical abuse than seems even remotely possible.

   And speaking frankly of credibility, it must be admitted that The Long Wait contains enough coincidence and enough improbable, even downright incredible, plot devices for four or five books. There is violence galore, too, and a lot of voyeuristic sex (the final scene is a rewrite of the striptease that concludes I, the Jury).

   None of this affects the story adversely, however. Typically, Spillane pulls it off. The pacing and the fierce conviction of the narrative voice grab the reader and carry him relentlessly along. Spillane seems to have had a high old time writing The Long Wait, and the reader who is willing to grin, plant his tongue in his cheek, and go along with him is in for a hell of a ride.

   Other nonseries books by Spillane with more or less Hammer-like heroes are The Deep (1961) and The Delta Factor (1967). The Erection Set (1972) and The Last Cop Out (1973) are Spillane’s only books with third-person narration.

         ———
   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.

M. K. LORENS – Ropedancer’s Fall. Bantam; paperback original; 1st printing, August 1990.

   I’ll begin with a confession of sorts. Back when M. K. Lorens’ first book, Sweet Narcissus, came out, it looked particularly appetizing and I gave it a try, but I didn’t get very far.

   Whether I wrote a review of the book, based on what I had managed to read, I have no idea. I suspect not, but I might have. Isn’t giving up on a book worth pointing out, as long as you say so very clearly and carefully?

   And point out just why it was that you came to a dead end with it, without loudly and vociferously saying how greatly the author’s fault it was? (Even though in large part it may have been?)

   In any case I haven’t come across it recently, “it” referring to the review which I may or may not have written, so the point is moot.

   But the second book in the series recently surfaced, and remembering my earlier experience, I said to myself, here’s my opportunity to give the author another chance.

   Lorens’ detective is the key attraction, a gent by the name of Winston Marlowe Sheridan who writes a “Gilded Age” series of mystery fiction himself, but under the well-disguised pseudonym of Henrietta Slocum. Slocum’s character in turn is named G. Winchester Hyde. How can one resist?

   A portly fellow, Sheridan himself is a professor of literature at a New England college, and on occasion he finds himself involved in cases of murder, for which he places his sense of deduction on the line to solve.

   In this case the dead man in Ropedancer’s Fall is John Falkner, whose one novel won a Pulitzer, but who was never able to write another one and who had been recently been reduced to being to PBS talk-show host, albeit a very good one. And as he was a long-time on-and-off friend of Sheridan’s, as well as a hopeless reclamation project, Sheridan takes his death very personally.

   All well and good, but — and you knew this was coming, perhaps? — the telling is dense and nearly impenetrable — over 260 pages of small print — filled with Sheridan’s enormous entourage of friends and acquaintances, some closer than others, and their multitude of spouses and ex-spouses and intermingled offspring and foster children. And as the book goes on, the list of the above gets longer and longer — a snowballing effect figuratively if not literally.

   But given some time to get to know them, the list of characters does becomes manageable, and the writing, while dense, is also delightfully incisive and witty. Eventually, though, it begins to dawn on the reader (or at least this one) that the investigation is going absolutely nowhere. Wheels within wheels, but all of them are spinning and spinning, and spurting up little but slush.

   Skipping to the end, after about 160 pages, and sure enough, nothing happened in Chapter Twenty that couldn’t have been predicted after reading Chapter Two.

   Recommended if you’re a fan of clever, witty repartee between clever, witty people. (Do NOT read any sense of sarcasm into this statement.) Not recommended if you like a hands-on mystery to solve in your detective fiction.

      BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA. [Expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

LORENS, M(ARGARET) K(EILSTRUP). 1945- . Pseudonym: Margaret Lawrence. Series Character: Winston Marlowe Sherman, in all. [The distinctive artwork for the covers you see is by Merritt Dekle.]

      Sweet Narcissus. Bantam, pbo, August 1989. [corrected year !]
      Ropedancer’s Fall. Bantam, pbo, August 1990.
      Deception Island. Bantam, pbo, November 1990.

      Dreamland. Doubleday, hardcover, April 1992; Bantam, pb, March 1993.
      Sorrowheart. Doubleday, hc, April 1993; Bantam, pb, April 1994.

LAWRENCE, MARGARET. Pseudonym of Margaret Keilstrup Lorens. SC: Midwife Hannah Trevor, in the first three; her daughter Jennet, who is deaf, appears in the fourth. Setting: Maine, 1780s.

      Hearts and Bones, Avon, pbo, October 1997. [Nominated for Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards]

      Blood Red Roses, Avon, pbo, October 1998.
      The Burning Bride, Avon, pbo, September 1999.
      The Iceweaver, Morrow, hc, July 2000. Trade paperback: Harper, July 2001.

P. C. DOHERTY – The Assassins of Isis. St. Martin’s, hardcover, November 2006. Originally published in the UK by Headline: hardcover, August 2004; trade paperback, August 2005.

   In this fifth novel in the Egyptian series featuring Lord Amerotke, Chief Judge of Pharaoh Queen Hatusu, tombs of the Pharaohs are being looted in the Valley of the Kings, a retired military hero, General Suten, is improbably murdered by a horde of vipers that attack him on his rooftop sanctuary, and four virgin handmaids have disappeared from the Temple of Isis.

   Not improbably, Amerotke finds that the events are linked and that they pose a threat to the Pharaoh herself.

   I read this at a single sitting, propelled through it by the dazzling pyrotechnics of Doherty’s intricate plotting, and by the richly embroidered splendor of the court setting in which much of the novel is set.

JANE JAKEMAN – In the City of Dark Waters. Berkley Prime Crime, hardcover, May 2006.

   In this sequel to In the Kingdom of Mists, French Impressionist artist Claude Monet’s role is considerably reduced although there are a few passages describing him at his easel in Venice that have some of the magic of the earlier novel.

   There’s a new protagonist, British lawyer Revel Callendar, who’s doing a reduced version of the once obligatory European Tour in Venice when he’s drafted by the British consul to do some paperwork for the once powerful Casimiri family after the death of the principessa, a British citizen by birth and a Casimiri by marriage.

   The relationships in the crumbling, gloomy Casimiri palazio are as murky as the Venetian canals, and even more dangerous to outsiders. As if that situation weren’t enough to occupy him, Callendar, who’s introduced to Monet by the consul, accepts a commission from Monet to go to Paris to look in on the situation in the family of Monet’s wife, Alice, whose first husband has been murdered.

   There’s some similarity between the murders in the two families, but Jakeman’s handling of the interlocking story lines doesn’t quite come together, and the introduction of Monet and the Parisian episode, while interesting (and based on an actual event), seems too calculated to be entirely convincing. All in all, something of a disappointment.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:

   The Lord Amerotke Novels by P. C. Doherty. [Dates are those for the UK editions, all published by Headline.]

The Mask of Ra, 1998.

The Horus Killings, 1999.
The Anubis Slayings, 2000.
The Slayers of Seth, 2001.
The Assassins of Isis, 2004.
The Poisoner of Ptah, 2007.

   The Claude Monet novels by Jane Jakeman.

In the Kingdom of the Mists, 2004.

In the City of Dark Waters, 2006.

S. S. VAN DINE – The Scarab Murder Case.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1930. Cassell, UK, hardcover, 1930. Paperback reprints include: Bantam #96, 1947; Graphic #89, 1954, abridged; Scribner’s, 1984. British film: 1936, with Wilfrid Hyde-White as Vance, Graham Cheswright as Markham, and Henri De Vries as Dr Bliss. (No prints are known to exist.)

   Philanthropist Benjamin H. Kyle is found murdered in a private museum run by Egyptologist Dr Mindrum Bliss. Philo Vance becomes involved when Donald Scarlett, a British college friend now working for Dr Bliss, arrives in a terrible haste. Scarlett had gone to the museum, discovered Kyle’s body, and then left rapidly because he did not want to get involved. He has come to Vance for help.

   DA John Markham and his police department cohorts are soon on the job, assisted by Vance. It transpires Kyle was funding Bliss’s Egyptian expeditions and when found is clutching a financial document drawn up by Bliss, whose scarab cravat pin is on the floor nearby.

   It looks bad, especially given the only fingerprints on the statuette that crushed Kyle’s head belong to Bliss, and so does a shoe with a bloody sole. Is it an all too obvious attempt to pin the murder on him? If so, why?

   Suspects include half-Egyptian Mrs Meryt-Amen Bliss, who is a lot younger than her husband, and her Egyptian servant Anupu Hani, who insists Dr Bliss’s excavations are sacrilegious tomb plunderings.

   Assistant curator Robert Salveter, Kyle’s nephew, not only seems overly interested in Mrs Bliss but will receive a large inheritance under Kyle’s will. The servants seem a shifty pair as well — Dingle, the cook, who hints she may know more than she lets on, and butler Brush, who goes about looking terrified.

My verdict:  The Scarab Murder Case is a book or two into the Vance series and his verbal embroidery has toned down considerably although still retaining his distinctive “voice”, while the narrator’s footnotes proliferate as usual.

   Markham is now a personal friend of Vance’s, remaining rather a Doubting Thomas when it comes to the psychology of criminals, Vance’s preferred method of solving crimes.

   Fortunately Vance is extremely knowledgeable in matters ancient Egyptian, which also comes in very handy in this instance. Those keen on Egyptology will enjoy certain nuggets of interest strewn here and there, although overall the pace of the novel is slow.

   I guessed the identity of the culprit and suspect many readers will too, but as for proving it, ah, that is a task only Philo Vance could accomplish, and accomplish it he does despite the clouds of ever-present cigarette smoke and various devilish machinations.

      E-text: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200361.txt

[BONUS.]   For those of you who love maps in their mystery reading material, this is for you. From inside the front cover of the Bantam edition comes this two-page layout of the murder scene, thanks to Bruce Black and the bookscans website:

BRETT HALLIDAY – Shoot the Works.

Dell 7844; paperback reprint, December 1965; cover: Robert McGinnis. Earlier paperback edition: Dell 988, September 1958; cover: Robert Stanley. Hardcover edition: Torquil / Dodd Mead, 1957.

   According to the blurb on the hardcover edition, this was the 30th Mike Shayne novel that Brett Halliday wrote, which is to say Davis Dresser, who was still actively writing them in 1957. It takes place in Miami, with all of the usual players in place: Lucy Hamilton, Shayne’s secretary and close lady friend; Chief Will Gentry, of Homicide; and Timothy Rourke, ace reporter of the Daily News.

   I may be wrong, but while I can’t tell you in which book the four of them all appeared in together for the first time, I think they were in all of them from at least this point on – the point of time being this book, Shoot the Works, of course.

   It’s Lucy who gets Mike involved in this one. The mother of one of her closest friends comes home early from a trip to New York City only to find her husband shot to death in their apartment. Worse, he has a bag packed on the bed – and two airplane tickets to South America in his pocket.

   Against his better judgment, at the urging of the dead man’s wife, who wishes to avoid a scandal and the notoriety that might end her daughter’s precarious pregnancy, Mike takes the tickets and withholds the evidence from Gentry.

   This has two serious repercussions. Gentry knows Shayne is holding something back, but he doesn’t know what; and secondly, Shayne finds himself in a serious bind: when his client is suspected, there’s no way he can get on Gentry’s good side, as the tickets will make the case against her even stronger.

   This is a murder case (and investigation) from beginning to end, with very little room left for anything that passes for more than surface characterizations. Shayne seriously flirts with a couple of ladies who seem completely willing to let him have their way with them – his relationship with Lucy seems to allow him the possibility, as far as he’s concerned, that is.

   There are a couple of finely devised twists and turns of the plot, mostly based on statements and actions misinterpreted and misunderstood – nicely done – and one piece of evidence that Shayne obtains under unusual conditions, and I caught the significance of that, even though it isn’t brought up again until much later.

   The only drawback to this detective puzzle of a novel – other than the incessant smoking and sipping down cognacs – if that’s a drawback, that is – is the paucity of murder suspects involved. One might simply guess at the killer’s identity, and by the laws of probability one might actually be right.

   Without the pleasure of putting the facts together as they should be put. Otherwise where’s the satisfaction?

MARY FITT – Mizmaze.

Penguin, UK, reprint paperback: 1961. Hardcover editions: Michael Joseph, UK, 1959; British Book Centre, US, 1959.

   Perhaps it’s wrong-end-to in doing so, but I think I’ll begin this time by listing all of mysteries that Mary Fitt wrote, either under that name or her own, plus one other pen name. (I think you may be as surprised as I was at how long a list it turns out to be.)

   Courtesy, then, of Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

FITT, MARY. Pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman, 1897-1959; other pseudonym: Stuart Mary Wick.

Murder Mars the Tour (n.) Nicholson 1936 [Austria]
Three Sisters Flew Home (n.) Nicholson 1936 [England]

Bulls Like Death (n.) Nicholson 1937 [Berlin]
The Three Hunting Horns (n.) Nicholson 1937 [France]
Expected Death (n.) Nicholson 1938 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Sky-Rocket (n.) Nicholson 1938 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Death at Dancing Stones (n.) Nicholson 1939 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Murder of a Mouse (n.) Nicholson 1939 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Death Starts a Rumor (n.) Nicholson 1940 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Death and Mary Dazill (n.) Joseph 1941 [Supt. Mallett; England] US title: Aftermath of Murder.
Death on Herons’ Mere (n.) Joseph 1941 [Supt. Mallett; England] US title: Death Finds a Target.
Requiem for Robert (n.) Joseph 1942 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Clues to Christabel (n.) Joseph 1944 [Supt. Mallett; England]

Death and the Pleasant Voices (n.) Joseph 1946 [Supt. Mallett; England]

A Fine and Private Place (n.) Macdonald 1947 [Supt. Mallett; England]

Death and the Bright Day (n.) Macdonald 1948 [Supt. Mallett; England]
The Banquet Ceases (n.) Macdonald 1949 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Pity for Pamela (n.) Macdonald 1950 [England]
An Ill Wind (n.) Macdonald 1951 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Death and the Shortest Day (n.) Macdonald 1952 [Supt. Mallett; England]
The Night-Watchman’s Friend (n.) Macdonald 1953 [England]
Love from Elizabeth (n.) Macdonald 1954 [Supt. Mallett; England]
The Man Who Shot Birds and other tales of mystery and detection (co) Macdonald 1954 [Supt. Mallett; England]
Sweet Poison (n.) Macdonald 1956 [Supt. Mallett; England]
The Late Uncle Max (n.) Macdonald 1957 [Mediterranean Island]
Case for the Defence (n.) Macdonald 1958 [England]
Mizmaze (n.) Joseph 1959 [Supt. Mallett; England]
There Are More Ways of Killing… (n.) Joseph 1960 [England]

FREEMAN, KATHLEEN. 1897-1959. Pseudonyms: Mary Fitt & Stuart Mary Wick.

WICK, STUART MARY. Pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman, 1897-1959; other pseudonym: Mary Fitt.

   Kathleen Freeman herself was a British classical scholar who attended the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, where she was appointed Lecturer in Greek in 1919, but resigning from the University in 1946.

   As a writer of detective fiction, the author’s primary series character, Supt. Mallett, began his career in 1938, when the Golden Age of Detection was in full sway, and did not end until this book, Mizmaze, in 1959. Quite a career, 18 books in all, for a fictional character whom I’m sure none but the most devout aficionados remember. (The latter is a category which I unhappily confess does not include me, as this is the first book by Mary Fitt that I’ve ever read.)

   And in spite of some serious problems I found with the book, it will not be my last. Some of her mysteries were published in the US by Doubleday’s Crime Club imprint, for example, and while I have not read them, I do have them.

   But get to the book itself, shall I? It’s one of those old-fashioned detective stories in which the murder takes pace (or already has taken place) in Chapter One, and there’s nothing else in the book but the solving of the crime.

   Well, that and sorting through all of the relationships between the characters, some of which is relevant to the case and some of it not, but it’s all part and parcel of solving the crime, is it not?

   Dead is the patriarch of the Hatley family, found with fatal head injury in the center of the maze at his home, both called Mizmaze. The murder weapon: a croquet mallet. Surviving family: two daughters, one Alethea (Lethy), who never can be relied on to tell the truth, her father’s pride and joy, the other Angela, a devilish girl who her father seems to have intensely disliked. A dysfunctional family: yes, no doubts about it.

   Alethea’s former husband is also visiting upon the fatal weekend, along with his new wife, a former actress more than 30 years older than he. (The victim had much to do with the breakup of his daughter’s marriage.) Two others are possible suspects: a 6 foot 8 giant with pituitary problems, in love with Althea but Angela in love with him, plus his mother.

   More than you wanted to know, I suppose. Solving the case are Superintendent Mallet and his close friend, Dr. Fitzbrown, but truth be told, it is the latter who does the bulk of the questioning of the suspects.

   From the summary so far, I imagine that you already have a good grasp of the story line (and more importantly, whether or not this is a book for you.) And by the way, that the deadly blunt instrument was a mallet did not escape Fitzbrown’s attention, either. He comments on it immediately.

   Problems, as previously alluded to: lapses in continuity in the telling. On page 23, Fitzbrown says that Hatley was followed by the killer into the maze. On page 24, he clearly states that someone with deadly intent was waiting for Hartley at or near the center of the maze.

   More. On page 132 Horick (the giant) comes downstairs from his sickbed to confront the rest of the entourage. On page 143 he comes down again as if for the first time, surprised to see them all there.

   There is also a previously never-mentioned spouse of one of the participants who shows up without notice at nearly the last moment, and a killer who suddenly turns into a madman (or woman) at the end, claiming responsibility and threatening to kill all of the others, the pair of sleuths included, only to fall victim himself (or herself) to a deus ex machina which is as amusing as it is fortuitous.

   And there’s the key right there, only I didn’t realize it until I was done, and indeed I did finish it, flaws and all, staying up 30 minutes past my planned bedtime to do so. I’m sure it wasn’t meant to be so, but if I were to be asked about an unintentional spoof of Golden Age detective stories, right now Mizmaze would be an example that I’d point to first.

   I suppose that may sound unkind. I don’t mean it to be, and so far I can’t explain my attraction to this book any better than I am. The characters are more than eccentric — you might even call them just plain looney — but they’re nonetheless real enough: devious, worried, clever, burdened down by life and love — or entirely human, in other words.

   Even Dr. Fitzbrown finds one of the women attractive enough to spend a short minute with her in a kiss, even though she’s still very much a suspect — and I wonder how that turns out. The book ends abruptly with the killer’s downfall, and this is the last appearance in print of either sleuth.

[COMMENT] 08-21-08. I have discovered that I am not the only mystery fan who has struggled with Mary Fitt and her detective fiction. On the John Dickson Carr forum, I have found a long post by Xavier Lechard in which he tries to come to grips with her books. The following except should demonstrate, and still be within the bounds of fair usage:

    “But did Fitt write Golden Age mysteries? As far as chronology is concerned, there isn’t a doubt about it. Stylistically, however, the matter is much more debatable. If we admit that Golden Age mysteries are about a crime and its resolution through logical reasoning by an amateur or professional detective, then we have a problem with Death and Mary Dazill which is almost devoid of any detection, as well as with Clues to Christabel which has no detective in the proper sense….”

   And may I recommend Xavier’s own blog to you? Entitled At the Villa Rose, it’s jam-packed full of serious commentary and replies on the state, status and structure of the Golden Age detective story.

M. C. BEATON – The Skeleton in the Closet.

St. Martin’s; 1st paperback edition, March 2002. Hardcover edition: St. Martin’s, March 2001.

   Have you ever picked up a book just as you’re climbing into bed, intending to give it a good five minutes before turning out the light, going perhaps a chapter or two, just to see how interesting it is? And then, forty or fifty pages later, discovering that thirty minutes have gone by, and you haven’t even noticed?

   I have, and I just did. This is not one of Beaton’s series novels — she actually has two going, as I suppose everybody knows: the Agatha Raisin mysteries, and separately, the cases of Scottish constable Hamish Macbeth. This one’s a stand-alone, a cozy little tale of murder and amateur detection, English village style.

   And the very first line is a keeper: “In the way that illiterate people become very cunning at covering up their disability, Mr. Fellworth Dolphin, known as Fell, approaching forty, was still a virgin and kept it a dark secret.”

   Living with his mother, working as a hotel waiter, and at his age still under her thumb, Fell is one of those people that life seems to have passed by. Until, that is, his mother, unloved, dies, and he discovers that he is the heir to a small fortune. “But that’s impossible!” Fell exclaims to the lawyer. “We never even had a television set.”

   In his deceased father’s old desk he also discovers a hidden metal box containing 50,000 pounds in currency, stacked in neat bundles. Caught by surprise by an aunt who offers to move in with him, Fell invents a fiancee, Maggie Partlett, a waitress at the same hotel. Maggie is agreeable, moves in (platonically) and — no gold-digger she, don’t get the wrong idea — together they become pair of reluctant sleuths, digging deeply into Fell’s past. (Where did the money come from?)

   While the first forty or fifty pages are the best, there are many more twists and turns in the plot to come — I haven’t given it all away, by any means. Fell and Maggie are hardly professionals at work, mind you, and eventually there’s a huge coincidence that’s a bit of a problem, one so large that even the author (through Maggie) is forced to comment on it — “Do you believe in God, Fell?”

   But other than that, unless you’re such a devout fan of hard-boiled mysteries that you never read anything else, this neat little mystery will go down awfully smooth.

[UPDATE] 08-19-008.   According to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, M. C. Beaton is the primary mystery-writing pen name of Marion C. Gibbons, 1936- . (Gibbons is her married name, with the “C.” likely to be Chesney, her maiden name.)

   Before turning to mystery fiction, and writing as Marion Chesney, she was well-known and very popular as an author of regency romances. She’s also written books as by Sarah Chester (one romantic suspense novel in CFIV) and Jennie Tremaine (one additional romantic suspense novel).

   Other books under these last two names, or those she’s written as Helen Crampton, Ann Fairfax and Charlotte Ward, are likely to be pure romances, and almost always historical fiction.

   Written as by Marion Chesney, but published too late to appear in CFIV, is a new series of Edwardian mysteries featuring Lady Rose Summer, the daughter of the Earl of Hadshire, and her companion in solving crimes, Captain Harry Cathcart, the son of a baron and an invalid from the Boer War who’s set up a private detective agency for the well-to-do:

      Snobbery with Violence (2003)
      Hasty Death (2004)
      Sick of Shadows (2005)
      Our Lady of Pain (2006)