STUART PALMER – The Penguin Pool Murder. Hildegarde Withers #1. Brentano’s, hardcover, 1931. Bantam, paperback, March 1986. Intl Polygonics Ltd, paperback, 1990, Rue Morgue Press, trade paperback, 2007. Penzler Books, trade paperback, 2023. Film: RKO Radio Pictures, 1932 (Edna May Oliver, James Gleason).

   Miss Hildegarde Withers’s first meets Inspector Piper in this case, and she helps him solve a murder that takes place in the New York Aquarium, not long after the stock market crash of 1929. They also seem to rush off to be married at the end, but do they?

   Definitely an oldie, but also definitely a goodie. One does wonder, however, how Miss Withers is so readily allowed to tag along with Piper, in so many violations of proper police procedure. In that sense, this is pure fantasy, from another era altogether.

THE TEXAN. “Law of the Gun.” CBS, 29 September 1958 (Episode 1, Season 1). Rory Calhoun, Neville Brand, John Larch, Karl Swenson, Helen Wallace. Story and co-screenwriter: Frank Gruber. Director: Jerry Thorpe. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

   The “Texan” of the title of this Western TV series, which lasted for two seasons on CBS, was a fellow by the name of Bill Longley, played by Rory Calhoun. Even though this is first episode of the first season, they didn’t really go out of their way to explain what this fast gun hero does and why he does it. There is just a general impression that over the course of a season he goes from one small town in Texas to the next, sometimes for a reason, perhaps more often not.

   In the case of “Law of the Gun,” he has a reason. A friend of his, Les Torbit, a small rancher in the area, is in jail, accused of shooting and killing a young teen-aged girl. While the incident was accidental, bad things always seem to happen during range wars, no matter who’s in the right. And he will hang for it, and sooner rather than later if the girl’s brother has anything to say about it.

   And egging the local townsfolk on is what he’s doing when The Texan shows up. The sheriff is an honest man, but he’s only one man, and he isn’t a guy that can hold back an entire mob of roiled up men.

   It’s only a thirty minute show, including time for the sponsor, so the summary above is about all that can said about this episode, but it’s a good one, and Rory Calhoun is off to a flying start from his first day — not only a fast man with a gun, but a fellow with some common sense as well.

   What I also noticed in the production, though, is that there are several stretches of time where there is not only no dialogue but no background music either. Small things, to think about, but they’re noticeable, if and when you do.

TIMOTHY ZAHN “The Dreamsender.” First appeared in Analog SF, July 1980. Collected in Cascade Point and Other Stories (Blue Jay Books, hardcover, 1986).

   One of Timothy Zahn’s earliest stories, its leading character a fellow named Jefferson Morgan who has the rare ability to contact people through their dreams. He has been using this talent in a career he has built for himself as something in the nature of  a private eye. In this tale which falls on the border of science fiction and just a tinge of fantasy, he is hired by a woman trying to find her husband, who has in essence, disappeared.

   The task, as it happens, is easy. The husband is on the moon. That she knows, but in one short phone call (or the equivalent) she has had with him, he was very evasive, and in a followup conversation she has had with his superior officer, she is told that he is on a secret expedition, and that while he is fine, she should not try to contact him again.

   This is not enough information for her, certainly, and Morgan allows himself the opportunity to go to the moon to learn more. (Most of his cases do not lend themselves to his actually leaving his home or office.) What follows from here is a bit of puzzle, one that’s equally clever. straight forward and easily solved, told in an easy to read style that sucks the reader in from page one on.

   You might think that Zahn could have used the character several times over – his ability is actually more interesting than this story itself – but he did not. This makes sense, though. Once he’s cracked the case, he’s set up for life.

MACAO. RKO Radio Pictures, 1952. Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix, Thomas Gomez, Gloria Grahame. Director: Josef von Sternberg.

   The lives of three travelers from Hong King to Macao are intertwined in a tale of Oriental intrigue. One of them (which one?) is a New York City policeman whose quarry is s casino owner who refuses to travel beyond Macao’s three-mile limit.

   You would think that Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum would make quite a screen combination, but such is not the case. Mitchum holds up his half, but while Jane Russell obviously had what it takes to become a movie star, her acting is curiously flat and unappealing.

   
DORTHY GILMAN – Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1984. Fawcett, paperback, 1986.

   What happens when you cross a sweet little old lady sleuth who has a “penchant for odd hats and growing geraniums” with a Bondian-style amazon spy? You get one of the most popular female mystery characters of the last twenty years, Mrs. Emily Pollifax.

   Dorothy Gilman had already made a name for herself as a children’s author (under her married surname of Butters) when she produced her first adult novel. and Mrs. Pollifax adventure, in 1966.

   Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station is the sixth novel to feature the grandmotherly CIA agent, and it is a good example of the series. There is the exotic locale, this time the Silk Route in the People’s Republic of China. There is a dangerous mission to perform, this time the smuggling of a man from a labor reform camp and out of the country.

   There is an evil, and unknown, enemy agent set to destroy the mission — and possibly our heroine. And there is, of course, the amazing Mrs. Pollifax, that gentle soul who can prove, when necessary, that her brown belt in karate is a deadly weapon.

   Having researched her novel in China, Gilman provides some marvelous impressions of that mysterious land. This descriptive prose lends a level of realism to the comic book quality of the spy story.

   Readers know when they pick up a Mrs. Pollifax story that evil will fail, good will prevail, and Mrs. P. will happily return to her geraniums. Gilman’s gentle spy stories (with a minimum of violence) will appeal more to fans of Miss Marple than to Smiley fans.

   In The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1966), the heroine is kidnapped in Mexico and ends up in an Albanian prison. This story was filmed in 1970 as Mrs. Pollifax, Spy, starring Rosalind Russell. Other titles in this entertaining series include The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (1970), The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax (1971), and A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax (l973).

   Besides Mrs. Pollifax, Gilman has created several other intriguing women: Sister John of A Nun in the Closet (1975), the psychic Madame Karitska of The Clairvoyant Countess (1975), and the troubled yet courageous Amelia Jones in the author’s most realistic mystery, The Tightrope Walker (1979). All of whom are well worth meeting.

         ———
   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.

GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD “And Pray Nobody Sees You.” PI Aaron Gunner. First published in Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes, edited by Paula L. Woods (Doubleday, hardcover, 1995). Reprinted in Shamus Winners, Volume II: 1996-2009, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime Books, softcover, 2010). Winner of PWA Shamus Award for Best Short Story, 1996.

   Private eye Aaron Gunner, whose cases may take him elsewhere, has an office of sorts in a back room of a barber shop in one of the less savory sections of Los Angeles. Most of his cases have been told in print in the form of full length novels, the first of which was Fear of the Dark, which won the 1988 SMP/PWA Best First P.I. Novel Contest. In terms of shorter work, he’s appeared appeared in three short stories, two of which have won PWA Shamus Awards.

   Gunner, for those unfamiliar which him, is also black. He’s hired in this case he find a car that’s been hijacked, a classic 1965 Ford Mustang. Gunner makes short work of the job, for a hefty fee, but when he finds the car, it starts him thinking. And this is the crux of the affair: what he finds and what he does about it.

   Haywood has a smooth enjoyable style of writing, but it’s also the kind of case that’s deceptively subtle when it comes to the ending. It’s a kind of conclusion that can make the reader suddenly sit up straighter and say to himself, What was that? What just happened?

   Not to worry, though. The story’s solidly constructed, and if you go back and follow along maybe a littler more carefully, you’ll find the ending is perfectly well set up. I’m happy with it, in any case, very much so, and I think you will be, too, should a copy ever land in your hands.

FANTASTIC UNIVERSE SF – February 1956. Editor: Leo Margulies. Cover art: Kelly Freas. Overall rating: **½.

EDMUND COOPER “The End of the Journey.” The captain is the only survivor of a voyage testing a new experimental space drive. (3)

ROBERT ABERNATHY “Grandpa’s Lie Soap.” One man is capable of telling lies is a world he made incapable of interpreting falsehoods. (3)

THEODORE PRATT “Shades of Davy Crockett.” Davy comes back to dicover the commercial success of his name and fame. (2)

ROGER DEE “The Man Who Had Spiders.” Extraterrestrial spiders have advantages, but wants spiders around all the time? (4)

SAM MERWIN, JR. “Passage to Anywhere.” Novelette. Matter transmitter fails on Earth, but does make space travel feasible. An argument for world government. (2)

ETHEL G. LEWIS “The Vapor Horn.” An international healing device contains other worlds. (0)

ROBERT SILVERBERG “A Woman’s Right.” A psychometrist, hired by a man to help his wife and save their marriage cures the man;s psychosis instead, (3)

F. B. BRYNING “For Man Must Work.” The marital problems of an engineer of a space station: his wife wants to return to Earth. (3)

FRANK BELKNAP LONG “Young Man with a Trumpet.”How animals carried on after the departure of man. (3)

JOHN JAKES “The Cybernetic Kid.” A boy genius competes against the latest electronic marvels (3)

GEORGE BAGBY – Dirty Pool. Inspector Schmidt #34. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1966. Curtis, paperback, date?

   The transit strike New York City recently suffered through brings forth a mystery, initially so tense that it isn’t even noticed that the victim has no name!

   Trapped in in the rain in the midst of ignoring traffic, a girl is placed in a commandeered automobile by a sympathetic policeman. To say it was against the wishes of the driver is an understatement – a fourth man in the car has just been fatally stabbed, and now the killers have both a corpse and a witness to worry about.

   Her escape brings her in contact with bumbling Bagby, and nothing can convince her that he is not one of the gang. Even Inspector Schmidt loses her confidence with his friendship with Bagby, adding to her problems.

   The tale as told is a bit contradictory with respect to the girl’s cool behavior in the car and her later hysterical fears – but can it be justified as being “just like a woman”? Accept the basic premise, and you will have a lot lively reading ahead of you.

Rating: ****½

ROBERT DUNDEE – Pandora’s Box. PI Johnny Lamb. Signet S1980, paperback original. 1st printing, January 1962.

   PI Johnny Lamb’s client, a former call girl, has a box containing something valuable, and something also very dangerous, both to her and to anyone in her vicinity. (This is Lamb’s only recorded case.)

   This is one roller coaster of a ride. The action never stops, and if you don’t ask questions, most of it even makes sense. There is even a semi-surprise or two at the end, one of which I am convinced I saw coming.

MICHAEL GILBERT – Game Without Rules. Calder & Behrens. Hodder and Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1968. Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1967. Carroll & Graf, US, paperback, 1988.

   “The Road to Damascus,” the first of the eleven stories in this collection. begins: “Everyone in Lamperdown knew that Mr. Behrens, who lived with his aunt at the Old Rectory and kept bees, and Mr. Calder, who lived in a cottage on the hilltop outside the viJlage and was the owner of a deerhound called Rasselas, were the closest of close friends.

   They knew, too, that there was something out of the ordinary about both of them. Both had a habit of “disappearing.” What the villagers don’t know is that Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens are professional counterintelligence agents attached to the External Branch of the Joint Services Standing Intelligence Committee — a pair of very quiet and very deadly spies working at a job in which, as Mr. Calder has said, “there is neither right nor wrong. Only expediency.”

   No one is better at expedient action than Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens. In “The Road to Damascus,” they utilize the twin discoveries of a World War IT hidey-hole containing the skeleton of a murdered man and the fact that a former army colonel has been selling secrets to the Russians to fashion a trap that at once explains the mystery and eliminates the spy. In “The Headmaster,” it is guile and keen observation that allows them to unmask and dispose of a senior Russian agent.

   Most of these cleverly plotted stories are set in England; “Heilige Nacht,” however, takes place in Germany, and “Cross-Over” the most exciting of the entries-features a lengthy trek through both Germany and France.

   Gilbert’s style is wry, restrained, penetrating, and ironic. Reading one of these stories is like sipping a very dry martini, and the cumulative effect of two or three is also much the same — you begin to feel highly stimulated. However, there is a good deal of casual killing here, much of it done very coolly and professionally by Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens (Rasselas, too, on occasion).

   The atmosphere is amoral, to say the least. (In “On Slay Down,” for instance, a soldier who thinks he has accidentally killed a woman — who, in truth, was a turncoat shot down by Mr. Calder, buries the body to cover up the killing, and is rewarded by recruitment into the External Branch because he is just the sort of quick-witted fellow they want.)

   The result of this is also cumulative and also like guzzling dry martinis: two or three may stimulate you, but eleven in a row tend to leave you rather ossified. There is a hangover effect, too. You don’t mind having hoisted (buried) a few with Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens, but you’re not so sure you’d like to go spy-killing with them on a regular basis.

   Those of you who have stronger constitutions will want to consult the second collection featuring these two dignified liquidators, Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (1982).

         ———
   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.