CARLETON CARPENTER – Deadhead. Curtis, paperback original; 1974. Paperback reprint: Black Walnut, 1985.

   If you were to do a search for Mr. Carpenter on the Internet, you’d find more in the movie and entertainment databases than you will regarding his writing career, which consisted of only a small handful of paperback originals. There’ll be a list of them soon, in case you’re interested.

   Before concentrating on the books, though, perhaps it suffices to say that Carleton Carpenter was a both a composer and an actor, in both the movies, on television and in Broadway musicals. One of the top musical hits of 1951 was “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” sung by Debbie Reynolds and Carleton Carpenter (from the film Two Weeks in Love). His career in the movies and on TV is summed up neatly at imdb.com (with some 42 credits as an actor).

   Here’s a list of Mr. Carpenter’s mystery fiction. As previously mentioned all of these are paperback originals. * = Chester Long mysteries. ** = billed as a Jasper Wild mystery.

   Little is known about Black Walnut Books, but they seem to have been in business only to print Mr. Carpenter’s books.

   Whether Jasper Wild appeared in any of the earlier books or was intended to be another continuing character is also unknown. It would also be interesting to learn whether the AHMM short story has either Chester Long or Jasper Wild as characters, leading or incidental. Someone with access to that issue will have to let us know.

   As you can see from the cover, Pinecastle (aka Stumped) was marketed and sold by Curtis as a gothic romance, but a quick scan through my copy indicates that the people who are in it all have a very strong theatrical background, which is not surprising.

   Chester Long is a hairdresser (straight). Jasper Wild’s occupation is unknown. Someone who has a copy of Sleight of Hand will have to let us know. If by chance he’s a magician as well as a detective, that would be worth knowing.

   As for the book at hand, Deadhead, when Chester is offered a position on the side as the head of the hairdresser crew for a musical bound for Broadway, he jumps at it. For the rest of the book he’s a fascinated observer behind the scenes, giving the reader an equally vicarious (and authentic) look at a world largely foreign to us mere mortals. Even so, as Chester admits on page 81:

   The going is as light and breezy as this for over 100 pages, chatty and gossipy in trunk loads. The murder of the show’s bizarrely flamboyant producer does not occur until page 104, which gives Chester the opportunity to show his flair as a sleuth. (Not that there’s any inkling of a previous criminous adventure. Until I checked out the bibliography, I was working under the impression that this was Chester’s first encounter with detective work.)

   With the entire company on the road and snowed in as a mammoth snowstorm hits Boston, the effect is that of an isolated country house, which means, of course, besides clues and motives, means and opportunities galore.

   And until the end, when things seem to fall apart plotwise, there would be much in the reading to recommend. While Carleton Carpenter is a story teller’s story teller, he unaccountably allows Chester’s previously mentioned flair as a sleuth to fizzle out well before the finale, all of his theories disappearing into smoke. On page 189, after the killer has been nabbed, and the case is being rehashed, Chester says:

   In any case, all I can offer for a recommendation is hemi-semi-demi-positive one. The book is worth reading for the show business element – that part is simply Grade A all the way – but as a mystery, while it has its moments, the answer, if that’s what you’re asking, is, reluctantly, no. The cast and choreography are excellent, but the book itself? Good, but not up to par. It needs some work.

MARLOWE. ABC / Touchstone, TV Movie/pilot, 2007. Jason O’Mara (Philip Marlowe), Adam Goldberg, Clayton Rohner, Jamie Ray Newman, Amanda Righetti, Lisa LoCicero, Marcus A. Ferraz. Teleplay by Greg Pruss & Carol Wolper, based on the character created by Raymond Chandler. Directed by Rob Bowman.

   Slick pilot for a series that never developed, Marlowe features Jason O’Mara (Agents of SHIELD) as Raymond Chandler’s metaphor-and-simile-laden private eye, a good man in the mean streets of 21rst Century Los Angeles, and O’Mara’s tough, human, wounded Marlowe is easily the best thing about this well-intentioned updating of the classic character.

   Marlowe is following a playboy his client suspects is having an affair with his wife when he hears a scream and Traci Faye (Jamie Ray Newman) comes running from the man’s home. Inside Marlowe finds the man he is following dead.

   When the police arrive, in the person of Marlowe’s cop pal Frank Olmer (Adam Goldberg), they arrest Tracy for the murder, and when they have to let her go, she comes to Marlowe for help, thus the little dialogue above between Marlowe and his sexy mothering secretary Jessica (Amanda Righetti).

   Before long Marlowe has stumbled on a crooked real estate development deal, taken a dive into that famous “black pool” thanks to psychotic Zack Battas (Marcus A. Ferraz), and ended up locked in his car with no way out in the middle of oncoming freeway traffic. He also resists seduction by his client’s wife (Lisa LoCicero) and does not resist Tracy before he uncovers the lies and deceptions leading to the real killer.

   There are some good lines that show the people involved at least know their Chandler:

   I’m divided on this one. On the one hand O’Mara makes for an attractive and human Marlowe — there is one very good scene between he and the actress playing his client where he loses his temper and in doing so sees the frightened little girl under the seductive exterior — and the plot is actually much more complex than usual for television in keeping with Chandler.

   On the other Marlowe is very much a fish out of water in 21st Century LA, and no one but O’Mara seems to be doing much more than going through the motions, though Newman has that one good scene, and Adam Goldberg is good as his world weary cop buddy. At times everything seems too bright and fresh and new to be classic Marlowe (his office is more 77 Sunset Strip than the Bradbury Building and his secretary more Velda from Mike Hammer than anything in Chandler).

   Over all I recommend it with reservations, if only for O’Mara’s humane Marlowe, it is one of those what might have been situations, where you can see it being very good or going very wrong fast.

   That’s not half bad, which is pretty much what you can say for this pilot, and considering, that is more of a recommendation than it may sound.

BRAM STOKER – Dracula’s Guest. Published posthumously in the collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories (George Routledge & Sons, UK, hardcover, 1914). Reprinted many times including: Weird Tales, December 1927; The Ghouls, edited by Peter Haining (W. H. Allen, UK, hardcover, 1971; Pocket, US, paperback, April 1971); Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories, edited by Victor Ghidalia (Xerox, US, paperback, 1972); Werewolf!, edited by Bill Pronzini (Arbor House, US, hardcover, 1979); The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard / Vintage Books, softcover, 2009); The Big Book of Rogues and Villains, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, softcover, October 24 2017). Film: Among others “inspired” by the story, Universal’s film Dracula’s Daughter (1936) was supposedly based on the tale, but nothing of the plot was used.

   It is generally stated and accepted that this story, somewhat complete in itself, was the the first chapter of the original manuscript of Dracula, but deleted for reasons of length. It is told by an unknown narrator, but presumably it was Jonathan Harker who very foolishly ignores the advice of his innkeeper and the coachman of his carriage to get out to investigate on foot a village said to be unholy and abandoned for some 300 years.

   On Walpurgis Night, no less. Needless to say, he soon realizes that he has made a dangerous mistake. Some thoughts. First of all, how modern Stoker’s writing is. This is story that could easily pass as having been written last week, if not yesterday. Secondly, it is wonder how well this story anticipates all those Hammer horror films that came along so many years later.

         BONUS:

   Here are the stories included in the Rogues and Villains anthology:

      THE VICTORIANS

At the Edge of the Crater by L. T. Meade & Robert Eustace
The Episode of the Mexican Seer by Grant Allen
The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker
The Narrative of Mr. James Rigby by Arthur Morrison
The Ides of March by E. W. Hornung

   19TH CENTURY AMERICANS

The Story of a Young Robber by Washington Irving
Moon-Face by Jack London
The Shadow of Quong Lung by C. W. Doyle

      THE EDWARDIANS

The Fire of London by Arnold Bennett
Madame Sara by L. T. Meade & Robert Eustace
The Affair of the Man Who Called Himself Hamilton Cleek by Thomas W. Hanshew
The Mysterious Railway Passenger by Maurice Leblan
An Unposted Letter by Newton MacTavish
The Adventure of “The Brain” by Bertram Atkey
The Kailyard Novel by Clifford Ashdown
The Parole of Gevil-Hay by K. & Hesketh Prichard
The Hammerspond Park Burglary by H. G. Wells
The Zayat Kiss by Sax Rohmer

      EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICANS

The Infallible Godahl by Frederick Irving Anderson
The Caballero’s Way by O. Henry
Conscience in Art by O. Henry
The Unpublishable Memoirs by A. S. W. Rosenbach
The Universal Covered Carpet Tack Company by George Randolph Chester
Boston Blackie’s Code by Jack Boyle
The Gray Seal by Frank L. Packard
The Dignity of Honest Labor by Percival Pollard
The Eyes of the Countess Gerda by May Edginton
The Willow Walk by Sinclair Lewis
A Retrieved Reformation by O. Henry

      BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

The Burglar by John Russell
Portrait of a Murderer by Q. Patrick
Karmesin and the Big Flea by Gerald Kersh
The Very Raffles-Like Episode of Castor and Pollux, Diamonds De Luxe by Harry Stephen Keeler
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Four Square Jane by Edgar Wallace
A Fortune in Tin by Edgar Wallace
The Genuine Old Master by David Durham
The Colonel Gives a Party by Everett Rhodes Castle
Footsteps of Fear by Vincent Starrett
The Signed Masterpieces by Frederick Irving Anderson
The Hands of Mr. Ottermole by Thomas Burke
“His Lady” to the Rescue by Bruce Graeme
On Getting an Introduction by Edgar Wallace
The 15 Murderers by Ben Hecht
The Damsel in Distress by Leslie Charteris

      THE PULP ERA

After-Dinner Story by William Irish
The Mystery of the Golden Skull by Donald E. Keyhoe
We Are All Dead by Bruno Fischer
Horror Insured by Paul Ernst
A Shock for the Countess by C. S. Montanye
A Shabby Millionaire by Christopher B. Booth
Crimson Shackles by Frederick C. Davis
The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon by Eugene Thomas
The Copper Bowl by George Fielding Eliot

      POST-WORLD WAR 2

The Cat-Woman by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Kid Stacks a Deck by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Theft from the Empty Room by Edward D. Hoch
The Shill by Stephen Marlowe
The Dr. Sherrock Commission by Frank McAuliffe
In Round Figures by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Racket Buster by Erle Stanley Gardner
Sweet Music by Robert L. Fish

      THE MODERNS

The Ehrengraf Experience by Lawrence Block
Quarry’s Luck by Max Allan Collins
The Partnership by David Morrell
Blackburn Sins by Bradley Denton
The Black Spot by Loren D. Estleman
Car Trouble by Jas A. Petrin
Keller on the Spot by Lawrence Block
Boudin Noir by R. T. Lawton
Like a Thief in the Night by Lawrence Block
Too Many Crooks by Donald E. Westlake

BOUNTY KILLER. Just Chorizo Productions-Kickstart Productions-ARC Entertainment,2013. Matthew Marsden, Kristanna Loken, Christian Pitre, Barak Hardley, Abraham Benrubi, Gary Busey,Beverly D’Angelo, Eve. Screenwriters: Jason Dodson, Colin Ebeling & Henry Saine. Director: Henry Saine.

   I’ll sum this movie as best I can right here at the beginning by calling it a “post-apocalyptic action comedy,” a phrase which I stole from Wikipedia, but what they hey, the shoe fits.

   And truth be told, I liked this one a heck of a lot more than I expected to. As long as I’m quoting or paraphrasing from Wikipedia, I’ll right ahead and tell you that movie was born as a cartoon, then adapted into a graphic novel and a short film, then after the Enron scandal and the financial crisis of 2007-2008, a full-length feature film.

   The premise: White collar corporations has forced the collapse of the United States, and bounty killers have taken it upon themselves to right the wrongs the people behind these companies have done. Two of the most famous of these killers are Drifter (Matthew Marsden) and Mary Death (Christian Pitre), she of the glamorous jumpsuit, high boots, and very deadly weaponry.

   It turns out — it is gradually revealed that — the two main characters have a past. He was her mentor; they were at one time also lovers. Now they are fierce, competitors, even to the death. The executive class aren’t going away easily, however, and thereby lies the story.

   Nor do you need to know more than that. There is a lot of gunfire in this movie, and a lot of very gory deaths. If either of the above bother you, you’d best stay away. But it’s also a comedy, very well choreographed and photographed, and even better, the people in it act like they’re having a very good time, down to the most menial stunt doubles. I didn’t expect to, but I did, too. Have a good time, that is.

R. D. WINGFIELD – Frost at Christmas. PaperJacks, Canada, paperback original, 1984. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1989. Bantam, paperback, 1st US printing, 1995.

   When the eight-year-old daughter of a young woman no better than she should be and who collects money for doing it goes missing ten days before Christmas in one of England’s worst winters, the Denton constabulary is organized splendidly for the search. Then misfortune puts Detective Inspector Jack Frost’s fine example of the Peter Principle, in charge. As Frost reflects: “He wasn’t bloody Gideon of the Yard, he was Detective Inspector Jack Frost, G.C., jumped up from being a lousy sergeant to a lousier inspector. He hadn’t asked for promotion.”

   Not an organizer, Frost, to give him credit beyond his due, but a good detective of the old school. At one point, Frost says: “All I want is a suspect. Forget this ‘innocent until proved guilty’ caper. Find your suspect and then prove he or she did it. Saves sodding about with lots of different people.”

   Those who enjoy Jack S. Scott’s Rosher, or Reginald Hill’s Dalziel, or even Joyce Porter’s Dover, should appreciate Frost, who has Rosher’s doggedness, Dalziel’s cunning, and Dover’s sloppiness. If this novel had been released by a publisher with better distribution, it could well have been a nominee for best original paperback in 1984. It deserves republishing.

Bibliographic Notes:   Five years later, this, the first in the Inspector Frost series, as Bill suggested it should been, was finally published in hardcover in England, then some time after that by Bantam in the US. Bantam also put out the next three in the series, but they seem to have bailed out on the fifth and sixth, which appeared only in the UK.

   After Wingfield’s death in 2007, four more Inspector Frost books were published as by James Henry (James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton), prompted by the popularity of the TV series based on the books, A Touch of Frost (2004-2009), starring David Jason. A full list of the TV episodes may be found here.

B. J. OLIPHANT – Death and the Delinquent. Shirley McClintock #4. Fawcett, paperback original, 1993.

   I like Sheri Tepper whatever name she writes under. At least I think I do; I haven’t read any of her A. J. Orde books, though I’ve got one waiting. I do like the Shirley McClintock series a lot and think they’re good enough for hard covers.

   Shirley and her foreman/companion vacationing in the mountains of New Mexico after the traumatic events in the last book with her daughter Allison and Allison’s schoolmate April. April isn’t working out too well. She’s nosy, neurotic, and thoroughly obnoxious, and Shirley has decided to send her home when a sharpshooter wounds Shirley’s mule and kills April. Accident? Hard to see how it could be.

   Some strange items are found in April’s belongings, and then a newborn is stolen from a hospital nursery. Of course it all fits together but Shirley-on-crutches is damned if she sees how.

   Tepper/Oliphant/Orde’s strength has always been her characters, whether they’re cat-like aliens or independent Colorado ranch ladies. Shirley McClintock is one of the stronger and more realistic, and an altogether appealing heroine. I haven’t found anything to dislike in this series. The writing is good, the characterization excellent, and the plots haven’t strained my credulity. All of the regulars have become real people, and I look forward to seeing more of them.

       The Shirley McClintock series —

Dead in the Scrub. Gold Medal, 1990.

The Unexpected Corpse. Gold Medal, 1990.
Deservedly Dead. Gold Medal, 1992.
Death and the Delinquent. Gold Medal, 1993.
Death Served Up Cold. Gold Medal, 1994.
A Ceremonial Death. Gold Medal, 1996.
Here’s to the Newly Dead. Gold Medal.

   Sheri S. Tepper also wrote six mysteries as A. J. Orde, the leading character in these being Jason Lynx, an antiques dealer based in Denver CO. Under her own name, however, she was far better known as a writer of science fiction and fantasy, as you can see from her bibliography here. She died last month, on October 22, 2016, at the age of 87.

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE. American International Pictures, 1971. Jason Robards, Herbert Lom, Christine Kaufmann, Adolfo Celi, Maria Perschy, Michael Dunn, Lilli Palmer. Screenwriters: Christopher Wicking & Henry Slesar, based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. Director: Gordon Hessler.

   When adapting what many critics consider to be the original modern detective story to film, there’s a temptation to do so in a manner that adheres too closely to the original text.

   That’s definitely not a problem for Gordon Hessler’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, a film that’s so anarchic in spirit that it ends up little resembling Edgar Allan Poe’s locked door mystery. Borrowing as much from The Phantom of the Opera (1943) as from Poe’s tale, this uneven, but still enjoyable, American International production blends gothic horror, an early 1970s Paella Western aesthetic, and a sly commentary on the demarcations between the profession of acting and living in “real life.” The movie also benefits a rather unique score by the Argentine composer and conductor, Waldo de los Ríos.

   The plot revolves around an early twentieth-century Parisian theater troupe of the Grand Guignol variety. Led by the mercurial Cesar Charron (Jason Robards), the troupe includes a myriad of colorful members. In the midst of their theatrical run of a stage adaptation of Poe’s eponymous story, Charron finds that his cast and crew, both former and present, are being targeted for murder.

   It’s only when the bodies start piling up that Charron begins to suspect that his former friend and rival, Rene Marot (Herbert Lom) is behind the horrific killings. Thing is: Marot is believed to be dead, having taken his own life after murdering Cesar’s wife’s, Madeline’s (Christine Kauffman) mother (Lilli Palmer) with an axe.

   At the end of the day, however, it’s not the convoluted murder mystery plot that makes Murders in the Rue Morgue worth watching. Rather, the film is more an exercise in style and reflective of a certain type of Gothic horror cinema, one in which dreams, flashbacks, and hallucinatory sojourns play important roles in elucidating how the characters’ pasts and presents converge in tragic ways. The movie’s not a horror classic and doesn’t hold up very well when compared with Roger Corman’s Poe films, but it’s the product of a certain type of daring that was a hallmark of 1970s commercial cinema.

TREASURY MEN IN ACTION “The Case of the Deadly Dilemma.” ABC, 24 March 1955. (Season 5, Episode 25.) Series shown in syndication as Federal Men. Walter Greaza (as The Chief), Charles Bronson, Lewis Charles, Lillian Buyeff, Ralph Moody. Director: Leigh Jason.

   Information on this series, which ran for five years on ABC, NBC then back to ABC, is scarce. (Even the information in that first sentence may be wrong.) But it ran for quite a while, so in my opinion, it doesn’t really deserve to have been forgotten for so long, which I think it has been.

   The chief, who introduces and narrates this episode, is this time around the head of the Secret Service. I do not know, but I do not believe that that was always the case. Counterfeiting, in particular, is the crime, and it is Charles Bronson’s character who is assigned to go undercover to get the goods on the big shot who’s the head of the gang.

   To prove himself, though, he’s asked to kill an old man whose wife has gotten tired of him. This is where the dilemma of the title comes in. Bronson is really on the spot, up on the roof with the old man and the head of the gang, the latter with a gun on him. It’s kill, or be killed.

   It’s a tough situation, and to this point, a rather good story. Too bad both the screenwriter’s creative imagination ran out, as did the running time for this episode, no more than 25 minutes long.

JOHN BUCHAN – John Macnab. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1925. Houghton Mifflin, US, hardcover, 1925. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and paperback.

   So speaks Sir Edward (Ned) Leithen, successful solicitor and political figure in the opening chapter of John Buchan’s novel John MacNab. It is a condition not unknown in England following the Great War. He’s suffering from the middle age blahs as well, tired of work, bored with play, sick of hunting and fishing, looking for something to enliven him to breathe life back into existence. Acton Croke (Buchan was superb at the naming of names of fictional creations and places), the surgeon Leithen consults, has a prescription for what ails him too: “If you consult me as a friend, I advise you to steal a horse in some part of the world where a horse-thief is usually hanged.”

   Soon, with his friends Charles, Lord Lamancha, and John Palliser-Yeates, he will take up Sir Archibald Roylance’s offer of his house in Scotland at Crask (“Crask’s the earthenware pot among the brazen vessels–mighty hard to get to and nothing to see when you get there.”) and put Acton Croke’s prescription to the test, with the birth of the poacher, they call John Macnab.

   Only in Buchan would a vacation involve physically and mentally pushing yourself to your very limits.

   Most writers at the time did not tie their created worlds together, so that there is no mention of the Scarlet Pimpernel in Baroness Orzcy’s tales of the Old Man in the Corner or Lady Molly and the Old Man, or his Watson Polly Burton never meets Lady M, and Manly Wade Wellman aside, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger might as well exist on different planets, moreso Brigadier Gerard.

   True, Ayesha runs into Allan Quatermain, but then it was almost impossible for anyone to not run into Quatermain in Haggard’s fiction, even if it was only in a vivid dream. Edgar Rice Burroughs does have Tarzan visit Pellucidar, but he never meets David Innes, and all his fiction is only loosely tied by Jason Gridley and his Gridley wave by which they communicate their tales to Burroughs.

   The Count of Monte Cristo never casually thinks about the Three Musketeers; Jane Austen’s heroines don’t seem to be overly neighborly, Pride never meets Senibility; David Copperfield never stumbles across Fagin or Little Nell; Rochester never discusses brutish behavior and romantic lassitude with Heathcliffe.

   But John Buchan’s creations inhabit the same world and class system. They literally belong to the same club (The Rungates Club, also the title of a collection of short stories where they share adventure tales). Richard Hannay knows Lamancha and Leithen and Palliser-Yeates, Ned Leithen knows Archie Roylance from Mr. Standfast and The Courts of Morning, Archie Roylance knows Dickson McCunn from Huntingtower.

   It may be the most extensive shared fictional world of its time in that sense. Even in Sapper and Yates only one character connects the different worlds (Ronald Standish in Sapper, Jonah Mansel in Yates). Buchan’s world is unexpectedly cozy, if a bit tweedy and closed. It’s as if Lamont Cranston and Richard Wentworth both knew Doc Savage and belonged to the same club.

   Crask is small, remote, and ideal for the game the three gentleman decided to play to treat what ails them, but not without complications. Archie has three chief neighbors in the region, Claypool, the Radens (cursed with daughters), and the American’s the Bandicoots. The three friends will write a letter to each of the landowners declaring their intention to poach on a specific night and time and sign it John Macnab and then set the game in motion.

   In other hands, this would play out obviously. The canny old highlander would prove the most difficult, one of the trio would fall for one of the Raden’s daughters, and the American would show off a bad sport and have to be dealt with, but Buchan is too a good a writer for that, and while I won’t give too much away readers of Buchan know what a force of nature Janet Raden is when she becomes Archie Roylance’s wife.

   In fact what sets this apart is how it plays with your expectations. Characters show depth and unexpected growth. Nobility sprouts in ignoble ground, and at the moment that John Macnab threatens to blow up in everyone’s face, a slip of a girl and a man of lesser class with an unexpected sense of honor and humor saves them all.

   You might not think a novel about poaching would amount to much in terms of suspense, but you would be wrong. Buchan’s splendid feel for the outdoors, and especially the highlands, his characters almost spiritual connection with both nature and nature’s darker side, all make this as suspenseful and meaningful as any thriller.

   I’ve always thought of this in cinematic terms, an Ealing comedy though with a more extensive cast and across time. Basil Rathbone or Ronald Colman for Leithen, Patric Knowles for Lamancha, and Kenneth More for Palliser-Yeates, David Tomlinson for Archie, Jean Simmons or Glynis Johns as Janet, Edmund Gwenn as the gillie Wattie Lithgow, Margaret Rutherford for Lady Claypool with her yappy dog, and so on.

   John Macnab proved popular and interesting enough that a sequel, and a good one, The Return of John Macnab by Scottish novelist Andrew Greig came out in 1996, a critically acclaimed work in which a group of friends set out to recreate the legendary John Macnab’s exploits in a modern setting. It’s a different and more serious work than the original but every inch its equal with its own splendid feel for the Scottish landscape.

   This is a different Buchan perhaps than what you may know from the Richard Hannay series, different still from the more obvious humor of the tales of grocer Dickson McCunn and the Gorbals Diehards. The books featuring Ned Leithen, the most autobiographical of Buchan’s creations, are unique among his output: The Power House, the first modern spy novel from 1910 predating the more famous Thirty Nine Steps; The Dancing Floor a near supernatural novel about middle age romance and adventure; and Sick Heart River Buchan’s own rough country version of Hilton’s Shangri-La and an elegaic farewell to his readers, full of duty and sacrifice and the hard won rewards and cost of honor. Leithen is a far more complex character than Hannay as Buchan himself was.

   John Macnab is not the best place to start reading Buchan, but it is a perfect place to end up. It’s a rare thing, an adventure novel full of physical action but little violence, a thriller where no one dies and nothing more important than a man’s honor and reputation is at stake, and a novel of ideas and heart about something as ignoble as poaching. It is a book well loved and appreciated by his readers, and one I wholeheartedly recommend you get around to, but only after some of the other better known works so you fully appreciate its charms.

   
MARLOWE. “Choices.” TV pilot, ABC / Touchstone Pictires, 2007. Cast: Jason O’Mara as Philip Marlowe, Adam Goldberg as Detective Frank Olmeier, Amanda Righetti as Jessica Reeder, Sherman Augustus as John Welan* (this is the onscreen credit but the character was called Thomas in episode). Guest Cast: Jamie Ray Newman as Tracy Faye, Clayton Rohner as Matthew Denzler, Lisa LoCicero as Stephanie Church, Jose Yenque as Ernesto, Aja Evans as Shauna, Marcos A. Ferraez as Zack Battas, Michael B. Silver as Charles Difrisco and Lisa Pelikan as Laura Devin. Directed by Rob Bowman. Crew credits not on this apparent work print but listed in ABC’s press release (source: Futoncritic.com). Creators and executive producers: Carol Wolper and Greg Pruss. Executive Producer: Daniel H. Blatt, Daniel Pipski, Phil Clymer and Sean Bailey. Producer: Jason O’Mara.

   â€œChoices” was a TV pilot and possible first episode for a proposed weekly TV series featuring Raymond Chandler’s character Philip Marlowe. Luckily for all Chandler and Marlowe fans it did not sell.

   Set in present day (2007) Los Angeles, former cop Marlowe has been a PI for eight years, has a young beautiful secretary who went to the Effie Perrine Secretarial School, exchanges banter with his pal L.A. Detective Frank Olmeier and has a friend Thomas who is a club owner with all the right connections. Unfortunately, the show’s attempt to modernize Marlowe left the character with more in common with standard TV PIs than Chandlers’ Marlowe.

   â€œChoices” has its positives. The mystery was better than the average TV drama. The plot was a Chandler favorite: Marlowe is hired by a rich man to solve a family problem and is forced to dig deep inside the sad sleazy lives of the L.A. rich and powerful to find the truth.

   But there is little else for those looking for Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. The cast performs well but Jason O’Mara’s upbeat Marlowe will not replace George Montgomery let alone Robert Montgomery in the hearts of Marlowe fans. The soundtrack is too modern and light. Rob Bowman’s direction never really gave the story the feel of the city. The script is overburdened with TV PI tropes.

   It is currently showing at YouTube:

   The story opens as Marlowe is following a man. Funky music plays on the soundtrack as Marlowe drives down the busy L.A. streets. Not surprisingly Marlowe does exposition with standard voiceover narration. Harry Orwell did it better.

   A rich man is convinced his wife is having an affair with womanizing millionaire Adam Denzler. He hires Marlowe to prove it. Rather than follow the wife, Marlowe is following Adam. But poor Marlowe gets interrupted when a car pulls out and hits the front fender of his car.

   Marlowe knows where Adam lives so he parks outside Adam’s home and waits. A young beautiful woman, Tracy Fay enters Adam’s home. Moments later Marlowe hears a woman’s screams. He runs into the home finding Tracy covered in blood and Adam dead by the pool.

   The cops arrive lead by Detective Frank Olmeier. Marlowe and Frank exchange allegedly clever banter. Faster than you can say James Rockford, Marlowe decide to quit the now open police case and rushes off to get paid. So, he did not discover if his client’s wife had cheated on her husband or even if she had been involved with the womanizing Adam. Marlowe does not care. He just wants paid and to get back to his office for a drink.

   While waiting for his client to join him Marlowe exchanges sexual innuendos with the client’s wife. There is no doubt the wife is unfaithful, but Marlowe doesn’t care as long as he gets his money.

   Marlowe is at his Hollywood office with secretary Jessica taking care of him and office business. They are interrupted by – surprise – Tracy, the bimbo Marlowe met at Adam’s murder. Like the typical femme fatale, Tracy begs for Marlowe’s help.

   Marlowe returns to the scene. The cops are still there. Marlowe easily cons a neighbor for the tape from her security cameras that got the license plate number of another car at the scene of the murder.

   He teases Frank about the cops not getting the vital tape. But whiny Frank reminds his PI friend how unfair the cop life is. Cops have to deal with hassles like warrants and due process that PI Marlowe doesn’t have to deal with. (One of my top pet peeves about screenwriting is the lazy idea that PIs are above the law and don’t face the same rules cops do.) Buried in paperwork, Frank convinces Marlowe to go question the suspects starting with Adam’s brother Matt who is the sole beneficiary of the family millions.

   Matt is a likable beach bum who was happy with his allowance and letting his brother run the business. Conveniently (a word that can not be used too often in describing Marlowe’s detective work) visiting Matt’s beach house are a few of the suspects we will meet later including Charles, a shady club owner and a local politician enjoying the company of one of Tracy’s female friends.

   Marlowe visits his friend Thomas. We learn Tracy is a club girl, a woman who goes from nightclub to nightclub in search of rich and powerful men.

   Tracy had told Marlowe that she and Adam were in love. Marlowe’s doubts about Tracy increase when he finds her partying at Elements, a nightclub owned by Charles who had been at Matt’s beach house.

   Marlowe takes the drunk Tracy home where she tries to seduce him. He resists. When he returns to his car he finds someone had tossed a brick through his car window warning him to stop seeing Tracy.

   Marlowe and Frank hang out at Marlowe’s office sharing information between wisecracks. Marlowe gives his warning brick to Frank. Frank shares the news that the other car that had been seen leaving the murder scene belonged to … Sandra Bullock, the famous actress. Sandra had parked her car at the nightclub while she ate at a nearby restaurant that had no parking available.

   It is at this point the required twists and TV mysteries clues begin to introduce themselves to Marlowe. Marlowe discusses the future with the nightclub valet who knows who had borrowed Sandra Bullock’s car but is not telling. Once Marlowe apparently leaves he watches the valet run to a payphone and call someone. Marlowe calls Frank and tells him to trace the phone call.

   Frank had traced the valet’s call. The person who had taken Bullock’s car and was at the murder scene was Zack Battas who was also the man who delivered the brick to Marlowe. Zack is in love with Tracy who had dumped him. Marlowe meets with Zack and his friends in a back alley for the mandatory smart ass PI gets beat up scene. Marlowe wakes up in a creative but totally unbelievable death trap set by Zack and friends.

   Back at his office so secretary Jessica can take care of him, she also reports on the legwork she did about Adam’s companies. The plot continued to grow more interestingly complex.

   Finally after some scenes that deal with the murder mystery, Tracy arrives at Marlowe’s office so they can have sex. After Tracy leaves Frank calls with news that Tracy had been arrested in the past for assaulting an old boyfriend.

   Marlowe confronts Tracy who claims her attack on the old boyfriend was self defense and that the boyfriend beat her. Angry, Marlowe hits the wall knocking some pictures off the wall, including one with a major clue.

   Marlowe starts facing down suspects, eliminating each but finding more and more evil that breeds among the rich and privilege. Marlowe beats a confession out of one suspect but gets shot (whew, I was worried “Choices” might have missed a TV PI cliché).

   The twists keep you guessing about the mystery until the end. But if only that had been enough, instead we are forced to endure the pretentious moralizing voiceover trying to convince us that the city had a role in this ordinary murder caused by typical human greed.

   While this pleasant TV PI mystery has its moments, it was a failure in its attempt to update Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Where was the lone knight walking down the mean streets? The major reason for the character to use voiceover narration is to reveal exposition without the need of other characters. It keeps the PI a loner and an outsider. The real Marlowe would not have had the standard TV support group — close friend cop and the secretary with a crush. Only Thomas the friend that has all the right connections fit Chandler’s Marlowe’s world.

   This clueless adaptation never understood that even a modern version of Marlowe would have a strong moral center. Modern times would not have corrupted Marlowe.