THREE GIRLS ABOUT TOWN. Columbia Pictures, 1941. Joan Blondell, Binnie Barnes, Janet Blair, John Howard, Eric Blore, Una O’Connor, Hugh O’Connell. Bruce Bennett, Lloyd Bridges. Guest Star: Robert Benchley. Screenplay by Richard Carroll. Directed by Leigh Jason.

   Joan Blondell and Binnie Barnes are sisters who work as Convention Hostesses at the Merchants Hotel where Binnie has a thing for chief clerk, the much harassed Robert Benchley. It’s the busy season and things are more hectic than normal because a convention of magicians is being followed by a staid convention of morticians and because Joan’s boyfriend, reporter John Howard, wrote an article implying the ladies are more than just helpful to convention attendees. This has caught the attention of the head of the undertakers convention and a ladies group who meets weekly at the hotel.

   Add to all that a major union and the bosses are having nationally important talks at the hotel in hopes of avoiding a strike that could leave the country vulnerable, and as yet the mediator from Washington has yet to show.

   Howard just wants Blondell to quit so they can marry, but she and Binnie can’t think of themselves because younger sister Janet Blair is away at an expensive finishing school they are paying for. Which is why Blondell decks Howard for the first of several swings in this lightweight but fast and smartly written screwball comedy well played all around.

   Of course Blondell could do comedy blindfolded and still hit her marks, as could Barnes and of course Benchley and Blore, but Howard does surprisingly well as the fast-talking, fast-thinking reporter whose life is about to get complicated.

   Then there is a very drunk Eric Blore pestering everyone by asking where Charlie is.

   It’s at this point that maid Una O’Connor and her helpers find a body in the bedroom next to the girls’ room.

   Don’t get ahead of me. You are expected to get the connection.

   Joan and Binnie quickly convince Benchley, Binnie’s boyfriend, that the hotel can’t afford a body to be found like that, especially with those staid undertakers and pressure from the Ladies Club who have read Howard’s article and want answers, so they decide to move the body. Which is all well and good until Howard discovers the corpse and recognizes it is the mediator everyone is looking for. It’s the scoop of a lifetime for him and a certain raise at the paper if he can be the one to turn in the story. But Blondell is determined the body won’t be found in the hotel.

   Now, to make things decidedly worse, little sister Janet Blair shows up, and finishing school has about finished her. She sets her sights on sister Joan’s boyfriend John Howard from the get go, showing all about what she learned of the fine art of lip oscillation at that exclusive school for hormonal young women.

   There is also a cop, Hugh O’Connell, whose wife is having a baby that is taking its time getting here, the only thing he can think about until he discovers Howard is hiding a body.

   There is nothing startling or new here. If you have seen a screwball comedy you will recognize the form from the first scene, but here it works with almost perfect timing, an attractive cast of mostly B or minor A stars and supporting actors and some clever bits including Howard caught in a poker game where the corpse can’t lose a hand no matter how hard Howard tries — he throws away three aces and draws three queens to match the one he has — and a bit straight from The 39 Steps where he poses as the mediator and fast talks the settlement of the strike while the police look on.

   Meanwhile Eric Blore still can’t find Charlie.

   Not much more I can say, save that this is not a comedy mystery, though it plays much like one for most of its run. No spoilers to explain why it isn’t, save that the why would have you throwing things at the screen in frustration if you saw it in an actual mystery. Here it just seems to fit the whole screwball format of the film.

   Blondell looks as good as you ever saw her in a film, and Blair makes a satisfactory tempest of a sexpot little sister. Binnie Barnes couldn’t help but be good in this kind of film, and Eric Blore and Robert Benchley … well, do I really have to say it?

   It’s John Howard, who usually played rather stalwart unimaginative leads or decidedly stiff second or third leads (Lost Horizon, The Philadelphia Story), who is a surprise here, though if you watched him in the Bulldog Drummond films or The Invisible Woman, you might not be quite as surprised.

   He shows considerable charm and comic timing in this one, and the ending when he referees while Janet Blair receives a much deserved public spanking from sisters Joan and Binnie, and soon to be brother-in-law Robert Benchley actually rises to that kind of giddy high usually only achieved in major screwball comedies with people like Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing up Baby or James Stewart and Claudette Colbert in It’s a Wonderful World.

   I’m not comparing this to those classics, only pointing out it achieves one genuine lighter than air moment of sheer exuberance mindful of those found in those films. That’s quite an accomplishment for a film with these credentials.

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  LEONARD LUPTON – Murder Without Tears. Graphic #149, paperback original; 1st printing, 1957. Cover art by Roy Lance.

   I don’t know why I should be the one to bring this up, but some of you who’ve been following this blog for a while now just might remember a pledge I made toward the beginning of the year,something along the lines of my reading more Gold Medal paperbacks in 2015, and reporting back on them here.

   I didn’t get to far with that idea, did I? I’m sorry, and I apologize. Here it is the end of September, though, and I think there’s still time to redeem myself. Or in other words, I’m aware of the problem, and I’m working on it.

   That I’m reviewing this book by Leonard Lupton means I’m getting close, but I’m not there yet. Graphic Books published a lot of hard-boiled crime and detective material in the short period of time they were around, but I’ve always gotten the sense that in terms of their paperback originals, they and Ace got what Gold Medal turned down.

   There isn’t a lot of new ground that ends up being covered in Murder Without Tears, but after an opening that’s slow to get started, the rest of the early going has its moments. After the War (Korea) Jason Broome came back to his home town, determined to make good. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, figuratively speaking, he now owns a home on the heights above the river that once belonged to the man who owned the plant where Broome’s father worked for most of his life.

   Problem is, it’s been turned into a gin mill. A high-toned gin mill, but still a dive, at least in some people’s minds. Enter the girl. Anne Cramer grew up playing with the daughter of the man who used to own the house, but once they’ve met, she and Jason seem to get along fine. A friend of her father’s comes to Jason and tells him to leave it off with Anne.

   And he ends up dead. Coming to Jason’s rescue is Anne. They spent the night together, she says. Jason is relieved, but he soon realizes that Anne has provided herself a nice alibi as well.

   So far, so good, but while the story doesn’t go downhill, exactly, it sort of stagnates from here. It’s told by someone who knows his way around words, though, making me wonder why this is the only story like this Leonard Lupton wrote under his own name. (He wrote a half an Ace Double as by Chester Warwick, and eight romantic suspense novels in the 80s as by Mary Lupton.)

CHAMBER OF HORRORS. Warners, 1966. Cesare Danova, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Laura Devon, Jeanette Nolan, Marie Windsor, Jose Rene Ruiz, Wayne Rogers, Patrick O’Neal. Written by Stephen Kandel and Ray Russell. Directed by Hy Averback.

   If you only watch one movie in your lifetime, it should be Chamber of Horrors.

   This gaudy comic-book of a film was originally conceived as the pilot for a projected TV series to be called House of Wax, with Cesare Danova and Wilfrid Hyde-White as co-owners of a Baltimore wax museum, circa 1900, who solve the grisly crimes on display in their emporium. When the result was judged a bit too intense for network TV, a few scenes were added and it was released as a feature film. Something similar happened in 1964 over at Universal with their updated version of The Killers, as the once-rigid line between big and small screen began to blur.

   The result in this case is hokey but fun, with an able cast and some dandy bits of business to delight the adolescent boy in all of us. Chamber offers splendid sets, lurid color and tricky camerawork to highlight the efforts of several perfectly-cast players: Cesare Danova fills his shirt neatly as the strapping hero, Wilfrid Hyde-White is his lovable old self as his partner-in-detection, Laura Devon (who would cap her brief career the next year in Blake Edwards’ Gunn) looks awfully good in a part with a bit of range, and Jose Rene Ruiz (billed here as Tun-Tun, his persona in several Mexican films) adds diversion as a diminutive helper. But the film really and truly belongs to Patrick O’Neal as a mad killer named Jason — think about it.

   Jason makes his entrance here forcing a preacher at gunpoint to marry him to a corpse, and from there on, things just get fruitier. Apprehended through the efforts of the Police (Wayne Rogers) and our team of amateur sleuths, he escapes from the train taking him to his execution by cutting off his own manacled hand and leaping from a bridge into a river where he is presumed drowned.

   But we know better, don’t we?

   We next see Jason with a leather apparatus attached to his arm in place of the missing extremity, being fitted by a sinister Oriental (Barry Kroeger, one of the slimiest bad guys of Hollywood’s noir days) with a variety of attachments to suit his sinister needs: hook, scalpel, cleaver, etc. and preparing to enact a baroque revenge on his erstwhile nemeses.

   Given a part like this, many actors would have been tempted to ham it up in the campy Batman style of the times, and O’Neal does give it a full-blooded (sorry) rendering in the classic Lugosi style, but he stops short of self-parody. When Jason has a victim in his clutches, O’Neal really seems to enjoy it:

         JUDGE: (Surprised) “But-but you’re dead!”

         JASON: “Yes. Won’t you join me?”

   … and when he celebrates his triumphs with a cigar, you can almost feel the nicotine rush. This is a movie villain in the classic style, one who enjoys evil for its own sake, and he approaches a fitting climax in a running battle through the wax museum as good-guy and bad-guy fight with prop spears, torches and battle axes, set against a background panoply of gruesome wax murders.

   In all, a film to savor, and I hope you do, but I should add that what they tacked on to turn this into a feature film is sort of absurd: the “Horror Horn” and the “Fear Flasher.”

   When Jason is just about to butcher another victim, a horn sounds and the screen flashes “So that the faint-hearted can look away or close your eyes” an announcer tells us in a prologue.

   Fine, except that there’s no gore and very little blood to be seen, and when the lights and noises come, it’s generally to presage a moment of almost tasteful metaphor: Jason swings his ax, the camera pans decorously away… and what was all the fuss about?

   Still and all it’s a harmless bit of fun in a film you shouldn’t miss.

ANTHONY HOROWITZ – Trigger Mortis: A James Bond Thriller, with Original Material by Ian Fleming. Harper, US, hardcover, September 2015. Orion, UK, hardcover/softcover, 2015.

               The rain swept into London like an angry bride.

   That may not be the authentic voice of Ian Fleming, but it is close, and not surprising the source is polymath Anthony Horowitz, whose accomplishments include many episodes of Poirot, the highly praised Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders series, the bestselling adventures of juvenile secret agent Alex Rider, several other juvenile series in horror, fantasy, and mystery genres, and more recently, the highly praised Sherlock Holmes pastiche, the bestselling Moriarity and House of Silk. Horowitz is the latest writer to tackle the Bond series and with more than a bit of success.

   Since Kingsley Amis’s Colonel Sun, written as Robert Markham, one writer or another has attempted to keep the Bond series going. (An earlier attempt by Geoffrey Jenkins, Per Fine Ounce, was never published and is a sort of minor grail for Bond collectors, and an original un-canonical novel, Jim Hatfield’s The Killing Joke is a mixed bag that does away with Bond decisively at the end.)

   Christopher Wood wrote two novelizations of the screenplays for The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker,which had nothing to do with Fleming’s novels, and about which nothing much needs to be said. John Gardner had great success in terms of sales, though popular as they were, his Bond was never quite Fleming’s (not surprising as he created Boysie Oakes as a reaction against Bond and was himself the anti-Fleming, a radical leftist ex commando/vicar).

   Raymond Benson was a bit more popular with Fleming fans as opposed to the movie fans, but again the authentic voice was not quite there, though certainly closer than anyone could hope from an American writer.

   All those books have and deserve their own fans, but they are none of them quite Ian Fleming’s James Bond. They kept Bond alive in print, and I personally enjoyed many of them, but they were never Ian Fleming nor did they really try too hard to be. They were instead what the publishers and the public seemed to want, a hybrid of the literary Bond and the cinematic one. In regard to that the Bond series has been lucky to be helmed by so many conscientious writers.

   The latest round of pastiche began with Sebastian Faulks’ The Devil May Care, which was interesting and certainly literate, but didn’t quite fit the bill. Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche recreated 007 and updated everything, but while it was a good thriller it wasn’t Bond or Fleming — just a thriller calling its main character James Bond, 007.

   But with William Boyd’s Solo this latest series found its legs. Boyd, author of A Good Man in Africa and Brazzaville Beach, not only found an authentic voice that echoed Fleming, he actually wrote a damn good James Bond novel, more serious perhaps than any by Fleming, but an adventure that took Bond to Africa in the sixties to good effect. If anything Solo is actually better than some of Fleming’s novels while still clearly Bond.

   Trigger Mortis is the new Bond pastiche by Anthony Horowitz, and it takes a bit of original material by Fleming from an incomplete story from the For Your Eyes Only shorts he never finished that took Bond into the world of Grand Prix. From that Horowitz has extrapolated an adventure that begins just after the end of Goldfinger.

   Bond is in London living with Pussy Galore who he has successfully kept out of prison, but things are deteriorating between them and domesticity doesn’t really suit either of them very well. There is a nice observation by Horowitz when Bond recalls introducing her to a friend in London and recognizing just how puerile her name was outside of one of his exotic adventures.

   Bond’s discomfort and self-recognition are something sadly missing from many Bond pastiche, but part of the authentic Fleming Bond. Both Boyd and Horowitz recognize that the Bond books are not individual adventure or suspense novels, but a saga, part of a very personal evolving fantasy auto biography by Fleming much the same way John D. MacDonald used the Travis McGee novels or Raymond Chandler used Philip Marlowe as more than simply a series about a continuing character.

   Bond will be saved from the ‘soft arms of the good life’ by a mission that puts him on the Grand Prix circuit, pits him against SMERSH and the mad bad and dangerous Korean Sin Jai Seong, aka Jason Sin, and he finds himself in the arms of the intriguing and all too self-aware Jeopardy Lane. It seems Smersh has been enlisted to help along the Russian entry in the Grand Prix stakes, and Bond is sent to foil their plans, but not before he saves Pussy Galore from the same gold plated fate of Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. Eventually the trail takes him from the Tyrol to a bomb laden train racing beneath New York with the intent of laying waste to most of Manhattan.

   Best of all is a nice little snipe at the film Dr. No (the book properly is Doctor No) when Bond discovers plans for an American rocket in Sin’s office and is told about any Smersh plans to sabotage American rockets: “… suppose he did manage to blow up a couple of rockets. Would it really make all that much of a difference? The Americans are managing perfectly well without him. Last January they fired off a Thor rocket. It managed all of nine inches before it fell in two and blew up.”

   A well-stated reminder of our space program late in the Eisenhower administration when this takes place — in terms of the timeline of the books: Doctor No takes place in about 1958 and Goldfinger in 1959.

   What is surprising here, and in Boyd’s Solo, is that the books read like an undiscovered Fleming and not a pastiche. Boyd and Horowitz capture the feel and the authentic Fleming effect in a way none of the previous writers have, and it is the Bond of the books and not the films, a mistake made by all of the previous pastichers, who tried too hard to split the difference between the two.

   Either book could have been written at the height of Fleming’s powers the way the best Holmes pastiche sometimes rises to echo Doyle or Robert B. Parker’s authentic sounding continuations of Raymond Chandler sounded so much like Marlowe.

    Trigger Mortis is not only good Bond, it is good Fleming, not surprising since Horowitz’s Alex Rider books are canny takes on the Bond novels themselves. Solo and Trigger Mortis are not Ian Fleming, but they have the feel and at times the voice of Ian Fleming without ever simply imitating his work, and far and away mark the first time fans of the books have reason to truly celebrate Bond pastiche.

   I’m not sure if fans of the films or of the Gardner or Benson Bond’s will be entirely happy with these, but they are the closest thing to finding a pair of lost Fleming novels available and that is as high a praise as admirers of the original Bond novels and Ian Fleming can deliver. This is not the Connery, Moore, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan, or Craig Bond, but the Fleming Bond.

   Of all the Bond pastiche written since Fleming’s sudden death at the hands of the ‘iron crab’ on that golf course, these are the first two I would happily include as authentic Bond novels since Amis’s imperfect Colonel Sun.

   They are, as advertised, James Bond Thrillers, and for some of us that is exactly what we have been missing for far too many seasons in the past, not books about a character called James Bond, but books about James Bond. There is a subtle difference there, but fans of the authentic Ian Fleming James Bond will know exactly what I mean.

LOUIS L’AMOUR – Reilly’s Luck. Bantam, paperback original, 1971. Reprinted many times.

   I have a theory that the reason so few of Louis L’Amour’s novels have done well on screen is that his quality as a writer doesn’t lie in story and character alone, but in his voice and small details that are almost impossible to translate to the screen. The same, by my estimation, is true of John D. MacDonald. Both men have had successful screen translations, but most often their work seems to lose something when it moves to film.

   Reilly’s Luck is a good example of the qualities that illustrate my point: it is a strong well written western on classical lines with a story worthy of Greek myth, and yet as cinematic as it would seem I can’t really see it working on screen.

   Valentine Darrant’s mother Myra abandons him in a snowstorm to the mercies of Will Reilly, a young gambler who like most L’Amour heroes is a little too good with a gun. Reilly is angered at first, but soon warms to the child and takes him under his wing as father and mentor.

   With Reilly, Val kicks around the West from one trail town to another, from San Francisco to the capitals of Europe, gambling, working, and adventuring, but always haunted by why he was abandoned, and an unvoiced threat from his past. It is not until Val reaches maturity that things come to a head and he finds cold blooded gunman Henry Sonnenberg paid to kill him — by his own mother with a Russian nobleman from his European adventures involved.

   L’Amour liked his themes from classical literature and he certainly works them here. Will Reilly is a sort of Charon ushering Val to manhood, and you can certainly see Myra as Medea murdering her own children when one interferes with her ambition. Val himself could be Jason or Theseus easily. Myra Fossett, Val’s mother, is certainly the most unusual woman in a L’Amour novel that I have encountered.

   Obviously this sounds as if it would be a natural on screen. But the fact is the qualities that make a good L’Amour novel, the complexities and the details, just don’t transfer to the screen anymore than the savage commentary on the world of a MacDonald novel do. Like MacDonald, who he does not otherwise resemble, L’Amour’s plots aren’t really the point. You read them to be in their world, to experience them and not merely the story they tell.

   The experience of reading L’Amour doesn’t translate to the screen as well as an Elmore Leonard or Luke Short western for instance. Here, and in many L’Amour works, the plot meanders a bit, a quality that is admirable in a novel but less so in a movie. Most of Reilly’s Luck would have ended up on the cutting room floor to the detriment of the novel and disappointment of L’Amour’s readers.

   This one is one of my favorite L’Amour novels, penned later in his career and more ambitious than earlier titles. It’s a fairly big book, close to 300 pages, with a great many characters and a fairly busy plot. I’m sure many L’Amour fans dislike it for that reason, but for whatever reason I found Val Darrant’s quest an entertaining read, and Will Reilly a memorable companion for Val and for myself.

INTRUDERS. BBC2 / BBC-America, 2014. John Simm, Mira Sorvino, James Frain, Millie Bobby Brown, Tory Kittles, Robert Forster, Alex Diakun. Series developed by Glen Morgan and written by Morgan, Kristin Cloke, and Darin Morgan, based on the novel by Michael Marshall Smith. Episodes directed by Daniel Stamm and Eduardo Sanchez.

         â€œIn the beginning there was death.”

   Intruders is an eight episode television series from BBCA based on the works of novelist Michael Marshall Smith who also writes as Michael Marshall (The Straw Man). Smith pens horror as well as crime fiction, and his “Straw Man” series is perhaps the most innovative and best serial killer trilogy penned, far exceeding Thomas Harris post-Silence of the Lambs output in the genre.

   Intruders is horror, but it is also a puzzling mystery, fantasy, and an atmospheric and often disconcerting series mindful of something that might have run in John Campbell Jr.s classic pulp Unknown. This one owes as much to Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think or Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife as Stephen King.

   Jack Whelan (John Simm) is a former cop turned writer married to beautiful Amy (Mira Sorvino), an angel of sorts who saved him from the bottle. When an old friend from high school, Gary Fischer (Tory Kittles) shows up asking for help to solve the disappearance of a man called Bill Anderson whose family was murdered, Jack has little incentive to help, but his life begins to spin out of control shortly after when Amy disappears after curious behavior.

   Meanwhile nine year old Madison O’Donnell (Millie Bobby Brown) is a strange child living on the Washington coast with her mother in a summer home and is behaving strangely herself, especially after Richard Shepherd (James Frain) turns up and shows Madison a sand dollar, giving her his black business card bearing the number 9, then threatening to kill her. Like Amy, Madison runs away, and, like Amy, she shows surprising skill at doing it.

   Jack’s world spirals out of control as he begins to unravel his wife’s lies, leading him back to Gary Fischer and Bill Anderson who are tied to Amy in ways he could not suspect, and draws him into conflict with Richard Shepherd and his mentor Frank Shepherd (Robert Forster) and the people they work for, the mysterious Rose Gilchrist, and something called Qui Reverte, a mysterious group who hands people strange business cards with a 9 on them, and an even stranger manual to surviving death.

   I won’t be giving too much away to reveal the Qui Reverte claim that no one in their group dies They believe they have lived multiple lives over the centuries. Richard Shepherd is a just that, a shepherd, a figure who helps members cross over for their various rebirths — even killing them when they resist — or rather when the other soul in the body they are reborn in does.

   Amy is somehow tied to all this, as is Madison, who is apparently possessed by Marcus Fox (wonderfully creepy Alex Diakun: “What goes around comes around.”), a long lived monster the Qui Reverte condemned but who was saved by Richard whom he bribed to shepherd him back. Under his power Madison is a deadly killer in unsuspected form, and some to the most disturbing scenes in the series involve this nine year old killer (usually shown off camera, but still disturbing) under his influence.

   Jack is a reasonable and rational man who believes his wife has been taken over by a cult following her miscarriage, but it becomes increasingly hard to remain skeptical as he delves deeper into the Qui Reverte, and finds himself sometimes allied with the murderous Richard Shepherd who for some reason twice refuses to kill him.

   I watched this first when it was serialized on BBCA, but recently binge watched all eight episodes in two days where I appreciated even more the novelistic approach of the series and how well it adapts Smith’s novel (not without some changes).

   There is little gore here, it is much more about mystery and atmosphere and the almost Woolrichian fate of Jack Whelan as his world falls apart and everything he believed proves a lie or a half truth at best. At times you may be as confused as he is, but stick to the end and all, or at least most, will be revealed.

   The plot is resolved, but left open for more, as new doors open for Jack even as old ones shut, and his journey into Qui Reverte and its secrets just begins. Intruders will draw you in deeper as the mysteries are solved and deeper ones revealed. You may never look at anyone you know the same again after watching it, though.

   Like the best of this kind of horror fiction, it is the frisson and not the gore or the monster leaping out at you that you will recall. If you wonder where intelligent horror went, after all the big screen splatter fests, gimmicky hand-held cameras, and gore, this is one place to find it.

   In its own quiet way this tough smart little horror outing is ultimately more frightening than all the Jason’s, Freddie’s and vampires creeping about and it is presented as a genuine mystery, though, like Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, the solution may be more frightening than the mystery. This hits all too close to home for anyone who has ever wondered about the stranger they share their life with, or how well you know anyone, even yourself.

“Joaquin Murietta.” An episode of Stories of the Century.   Syndicated / Republic Pictures, 16 April 1954 (Season 1, Episode 13). Jim Davis, Mary Castle, with Rick Jason as Joaquin Murietta. Screenplay: Milton Raison. Director: William Witney.

   In this Stories of the Century episode, Matt Clark, Railroad Detective (Jim Davis) and his female partner, Frankie Adams (Mary Castle) take on legendary/quasi-fictional bandit Joaquin Murietta. Directed by William Witney, this episode plays like an extended serial or a very short B-Western. Unlike many other television Westerns from this era, the hero not only has a female partner, but a strong willed and independent one more than willing to speak her mind.

   The plot is adequate, but some details don’t make a whole lot of logical sense. The characters, such as they are, aren’t all that developed, although it should be noted that Murietta is portrayed as both as a ladies man and as a cruel bandit. Still, there’s action, gun-fighting, allusions to gold treasure a plenty. Most importantly, there’s a Whitneyesque drawn out, bare-knuckles fistfight at the very end. How could there not be?

   You can watch the entire episode on the YouTube videobelow:

MR. & MRS. MURDER. FremantleMedia Australia/Bravado Productions; Network Ten, Australia. 13 episodes (20 February to 15 May 2013). Shaun Micallef (Charlie Buchanan), Kat Stewart (Nicola Buchanan), Jonny Pasvolsky (Peter Vinetti), Lucy Honigman (Jess Chalmers), Ben Geurens (Alan), Georgina Naidu (Janine). Creators: Shaun Micallef, Tim Pye, Jason Stephens. Available on Acorn TV via Roku.

            “We’re the cleaners.”

   Like the Nick and Nora Charles films of the ’30s and ’40s and the Mr. & Mrs. North TV series of the ’50s, Mr. & Mrs. Murder is a comedy series with occasional detectival interruptions, falling into the lightweight —you could say featherweight — category. Very cozy, this one, with virtually no on-screen violence.

   Series creator and star Shaun Micallef seems to be Australia’s answer to Stephen Fry as he alternately dazzles and annoys everyone with his wit and breadth of knowledge. He plays Charlie, who runs an industrial cleaning service with his more down-to-earth wife Nicola. They seem to have an exclusive contract with the Melbourne police to clean up messy crime scenes, but they simply can’t suppress their natural inclinations to investigate unsolved murders.

   The police are embodied in the person of Detective Vinetti, who (as befits plot requirements) tolerates the Buchanans’ meddling in the investigations principally because they get quick results. (Of course, it’s just barely possible that Nicola’s strong resemblance to Vinetti’s ex-wife might have something to do with it.)

   Nicola’s long-suffering live-in niece Jess is often unwillingly shanghaied into helping Charlie and Nicola with their “investigations,” and when they’re stuck for technical help they go to Alan, a wheelchair-bound boffin.

   When we say “featherweight,” we’re not kidding. Most of the mystery plots in this series are paper thin and not really all that interesting. The only episode that comes close to being first-rate is the next-to-last one, “Zootopia,” which the IMDb describes this way: “The zoo’s big-cat keeper dies by human hand, and the hippo keeper has gone missing. From clues and conversations, coworkers emerge as suspects. The break comes when Charlie gets a chance for some inside investigation during a sleepover safari.”

   While there are several scenes in this short-lived series that are truly hilarious, if you’re looking for another Nick and Nora you might be disappointed; we feel, however, that it’s just enough fun to make it worthwhile.

JIM WEIKART – Harry’s Last Tax Cut. Jay Jasen #2. Walker, hardcover, June 1992.

       WARNING: Killer Review – Temper Tantrum – Plot Elements Revealed.

   This unkindest cut of all triggered an explosion that has been building in me for some time. Be aware of that, and that I did not finish the book, and that I’m not going to be kind at all.

   This book is representative of a type that I have been encountering with infuriating frequency of late, to wit: a plot based on people acting in ways that are irrational, foolish, or completely unjustified according to circumstance and characterization (assuming that characterization goes beyond the cardboard two idiosyncrasies and a shtick, which is rare), and prose ranging anywhere from marginally competent to good.

   There is evidently a good market for such, because I see them more and more, and I’m sick to death of them. Plotting? Not necessary. Believably motivated actions by the characters? Not necessary. Suspension of disbelief required? Infinite, simply infinite.

   The lead character is Jay Jasen, an Enrolled Agent; I don’t know precisely what this is, but it’s some kind of tax expert certified by the IRS. You are in rapid succession asked to believe: ol’ Jay would agree to a partnership deal verbally in a bar conversation with Harry,whom he doesn’t like, just to keep from having to talk to him; that he’d forget all about it until the agreement arrives in his office for signature a few days later, which completely pisses off the partner he already has (the only believable thing so far); that during a phone call at 1:30 in the morning he’d agree to meet a panic-stricken Harry at his office immediately because Harry says there’s 30 grand in it for him; he’d get himself involved in Harry’s murder through a series of panicky actions that are insane,stupid, and unbelievable; that having miraculously escaped discovery for no rational reason decide to investigate the murder rather than tell his policeman friend (oh yes, there’s one of those; doesn’t everybody have at least one?)what he knows; that his partner (either fanatic feminist, or lesbian, or both; we’re nothing if not relevant) who has even less reason will jump right in and help him; that they will illegally sign and backdate the partnership with Harry to aid in this foolishness; and a few other things before I finally quit in complete and profound disgust Bah. Just bah.

   I know it’s easier to write than to plot, but this wouldn’t even make a good farce. Which isn’t to say it’s not farcical, mind you, just inadvertently so. The prose is competent tho unexceptional, but the opening plot hooks are absolutely asinine, and I simply can’t believe that anyone could find anything in Jay Jasen to admire, sympathize with, or be interested in.

   The above was done for another zine, but they indicated that they wasn’t going to use it, and I can understand why. I hate to trash a book like this, but it fair got my dander up, this turkey did. I don’t know the author, but I’m reasonably sure that he didn’t set out to write a book that would provoke this kind of response, and I imagine that he’d be truly wounded by it. Why did I do it, then? Well, somebody’s got to.

Bibliographic Note:   The first recorded adventure of Jay Jasen was Casualty Loss (Walker, 1991). This was the second. There was no third.

OUT OF THE BLUE. Eagle-Lion Films, 1947. George Brent, Virginia Mayo, Turhan Bey, Ann Dvorak, Carole Landis, Elizabeth Patterson, Julia Dean. Based on a story by Vera Caspary, serialized in Today’s Woman, September 1947. Director: Leigh Jason.

   The nominal stars of this semi-sprightly comedy romance are George Brent and Virginia Mayo, but it is Ann Dvorak as the more-than-slightly tipsy (and and always tippling) Olive Jensen who steals the show. I don’t believe I’ve seen her in a straight comedy role before, but on the other hand, there are a lot of her movies I haven’t seen. On the basis of her performance here, I’m tempted to search out more.

   Nor, strangely enough, are Brent and Mayo romantically paired off in this film. He’s the meek, mild-mannered and henpecked husband of Carole Landis who uncharacteristically picks up Dvorak when his wife goes out of town for a weekend, while next door in the same apartment building Virginia Mayo and Turhan Bey find themselves falling for each other. The latter is a bohemian type artist, and she’s a wealthy dog-owner whom he persuades to pose for him, while two elderly biddies watch all of the comedic goings-on from their seats in the balcony and their apartment one floor above.

   Looking at the paragraph above, I will concede that there’s nothing there to suggest what kind of funny goings-on are going on. It’s difficult to put into words, but to go back to the first paragraph of this review, it’s the reaction of milquetoast Brent (if you can picture that) when he finds that the lady he meets in a bar and invites up for a brandy just won’t go home, and dramatically (and as I said above, tipsily) so. In fact, she stays overnight, unbeknownst to him, since they are in two separate bedrooms.

   Worse, she has a bad heart, or so she claims, and after one argument between the two a little more strenuous than usual, she collapses on the floor, and George Brent, faced with his wife’s imminent return and thinking her dead, dumps her body on his neighbor’s terrace (the one owned by the bohemian artist, with whom he and his wife have been feuding).

   I guess you have to watch this yourself, as mere words may not be enough, but in all honesty, at nearly 90 minutes long, it is at least 20 minutes longer than it needed to be, and alas and alack, neither Virginia Mayo nor Carole Landis make much of an impression, especially the latter in a part truly not made for her.