CHARLES GOODRUM – Dewey Decimated. Crown, hardcover, 1977.

   For those who love both books and whodunits, this novel by Charles Goodrum should be required reading. It is the story of two murders, both committed and solved within the confines of Werner-Bok. one of the nation’s most famous libraries.

   Things were chaotic enough at Werner-Bok even before the murders — anonymous letters sent to the press had questioned the authenticity of two of the library’s rare manuscripts. But the murder of two staff members on top of this threatens to destroy the library’s reputation.

   Not that we know right away the two deaths are· murders (one is made to seem an accident, the other a suicide). But three people begin to suspect murder: Betty Creighton Jones, the public-relations officer; Ed George, a retired librarian and friend of Werner-Bok’ s director; and Steve Carson, a young researcher.

   These three amateur detectives join forces and go about hunting clues and questioning suspects. So we have a situation in which not only the sleuths and the murder victims, but all the suspects as well, are associated with the library.

   Goodrum, himself an eminent librarian, obviously knows the field as few others do. The library and rare-books information he gives us is interesting, although presented in great quantity for the sake of the information itself rather than advancing the story. But we do get caught up, along with the three amateur sleuths, in trying to puzzle out the murderer’s identity.

   Goodrum’s other novel is Carnage of the Realm (1979), which has a numismatic background.

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   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.
   
   

BAYNARD KENDRICK – The Last Express. Captain Duncan Maclain #1. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1937. Dell #95, mapback edition, 1945. Lancer, paperback, 1970.

   Although not Kendrick’s first book, this is the first adventure of Duncan Maclain. who is probably his most famous detective. and that largely because he is blind. What I’d never realized before is that Maclain is a private detective, not a policeman.

   There is also a germ of a decent story here, what with a dying message and a subterranean tour of New York City’s subway system, but it is so clumsily told it defies belief. What is obvious takes 50 pages to tell; inconsistencies are mostly ignored. Ptooie.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Second Story Law.” Bob Crowder #1. First published in All Detective Magazine, September 1933. Collected in Behind the Mask (Pulpville Press, softcover, 2013).

   The story begins with a masked intruder making his way up a ladder and into the window of a room on the second floor of a large fancy manor house. Asleep in the room is a girl who does not immediately awaken, but soon enough she does – but her reaction is not what the masked intruder had obviously expected. She is cool and collected, asking him quietly what he is doing in her bedroom.

   Frustrated, he puts all but one object back – that being a silver-backed mirror, – and calls the police himself. He is a fellow by the name of Bob Crowder, and he has a plan. In the same house, a couple of nights before, the theft of much more valuable jewelry had taken place. The question is then, what is the connection and what is Crowder’s plan?

   In the early days of his writing career author Erle Stanley Gardner honed his writing craft by creating all kinds of heroes in hundreds of stories. A common theme is the kind of chap who solves a case by reading about it in the newspaper and figures out a way to cut himself in, and always in the most mysterious way possible.

   This is, of course, a prime example. We don’t learn a lot about out hero’s background – nothing, in fact – but then again what have we ever learned about the private life of Perry Mason? Not a lot, that’s for sure.

   No, throughout his writing career, Gardner never took his readers into details of his characters’ lives, even at the start. The story was the thing, and I can only imagine how much better this one probably was, compared to the other tales of the same issue it first appeared in.

   On the other hand, the skill set owned by Bob Crowder was admittedly rather limited, and Mr. Gardner had plenty of other characters to write about. The young adventurous Mr. Crowder appeared in only three other tales. You can find all four in the Behind the Mask collection.

JAMES ANDERSON – The Affair of the Mutilated Mink Coat.Inspector Wilkins #2. Avon, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1981. Poisoned Pen Press, softcover, 1999

   A house party at Alderly, and all of the guests are either uninvited or there under false pretenses, or so it seems, and murder is inevitable. A classical 1930s British mystery with more dovetailed plot than anyone could hope for, all tied up with a witty twist.

   The humor is not forced, but understated, and is all the more obvious for it, Maybe the English do this best, The job done by a top detective called in from Scotland Yard, a great mind and s smug condescending man, is one not easily forgotten. A pure delight.

   If you’re a fan of Richard Matheson’s vast volume of work, you may be interested in a special event being held later this year celebrating his 100th birthday. It’s called the Mathesontennial and will occur at this year’s Monsterama convention, marking its 13th year this August 7-9 at the Atlanta Marriott Northeast/Emory Area.

   Here below a link to regular contributor Matthew Bradley’s blog, where he’ll tell you all aboit it, as well as lots more information about all kinds of related things:

Mathesontennial

DAVID GOODIS – Street of No Return. Gold Medal #428, paperback original; 1st printing, 1954. Cover art: Barye Phillips.

   Street of No Return has strong similarities of plot to Down There (reviewed here), but is a much stronger book.

   Whitey, an alky once known as Edward Linden, the best singer of his generation, got involved with the wrong woman. The woman’s hoodlum friends try to persuade Whitey to forget her by smashing his vocal cords, and Whitey winds up with the rest of the winos on the street of no return.

   One day, with a race riot in progress in the Hellhole a few blocks away from skid row, Whitey sees some familiar faces and follows them into the Hellhole, where he tries to help a dying cop. As a result, he is accused of murder, and much of the first part of the book deals with his attempts to evade the police. just as much of the first part of Down There deals with Eddie’s attempts to evade the gangsters.

   Eventually the book comes to a predictable end: Whitey finds the killer and brings the riots to a stop. But as one would expect in a Goodis book, Whitey does not find the girl and live with her happily ever after. Instead, he goes back to his bottle and his friends on the street.

   What sets this book apart from Down There, as well as a number of other Goodis novels, is the writing. The writing is not slowed down. as it often is in Goodis’s works, by lengthy passages of introspection; thus the story moves along with the reader being shown. not told. and the narration is more effective than usual. One wonders why this book has never been filmed in place of other, lesser Goodis novels.

   Those with a taste for Goodis’s philosophy should try Street of the Lost (1953) and The Moon in the Gutter (1954). The titles tell the story. A recent movie version of the latter was a conspicuous flop.

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   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.

FRANK KANE – Ring-a-Ding-Ding. PI Johnny Lindell. Dell 7451, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1963. Cover art: Ron Lesser.

Private eye Johnny Lindell, loosely cooperating with the police, helps them solve the murder of a hatcheck girl who threatened to expose a blackmail racket. Life in the underworld is taken for granted, and its nastiness is revealed without excessive finger pointing.

But author Frank Kane’s prose is often cheap and uninspired. For example, the line: “The bodice of her gown seemed inadequate to contain the fullness of her breasts.” (page 10)

Characters act at the whim of the author, who is omniscient in relating past histories and present thoughts, The credibility of the plot is stretched when, for another example, Liddell tells the police who his client is on page 114 and later groans when he learns that they know on page 153.

Easy surface reading.

Rating: **

THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD. 20th Century Fox, 1943. Jack Benny, Priscilla Lane, Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson, Edmund Gwenn. Director: Sidney Lanfield.

   A small town lawyer is persuaded by his girl friend’s father to go to New York City and make his reputation, but unless he sheds his nice guy image he finds he won’t make a nickel. Once he starts evicting little old ladies into the street, business comes flooding in.

   And of course he loses his girl. There is not much else to say about this film (less than an hour running time), except to say that Jack Benny plays himself very well, and although not called Rochester in the movie, Eddie Anderson may be even better in his part.

DICK LOCHTE – Sleeping Dog. Leo Bloodworth and Serendipity Dahlquist #1.Arbor House, hardcover, 1985. Warner, paperback, December 1986.

   In which a young worldly-wise girl (Serendity, 14) meets a world-weary private eye (mid-40s?) named Leo Bloodworth. Her dog is missing, and she needs him to help find him. The trail (for her mother, as well) leads them up and down the state of California today.

   I loved the first two chapters, and the wrap-up of the detective story was nearly as nice, but I have to confess I found the middle section of this long book just a little too long, And if this is the state of California today, I’m glad to be here in New England.

      The Leo Bloodworth & Serendity Dahlquist series:

Sleeping Dog (1985)
Laughing Dog (1988)
Rappin’ Dog (2014)
Diamond Dog (2014)
Devil Dog (2017)
Mad Dog (2017)

DAVID GOODIS – Down There. Gold Medal #623, paperback original; 1st printing, 1956. Caver art by Mitchell Hooks. Grove Press, softcover, 1962, as Shoot the Piano Player.

   David Goodis is probably best known for the film versions of two of his books: the Bogart/Bacall Dark Passage and the French version of Down There (Shoot the Piano Player, directed by Francois Truffaut). Both movies are better than their sources. Goodis was a writer without real verve or flair, and he did far too much telling and too little showing in his books. He remains popular in France, however, perhaps because of the “existential” nature of his stories.

   In Down There, Eddie Lynn is a piano player in a cheap joint called Harriett’s Hut. He had once been a prominent musician, but he discovered that he owed his big break to his wife’s sleeping with an impresario. She eventually confessed to Eddie and then killed herself. Eddie began his long slide to the bottom.

   One night Eddie’s brother shows up at the Hut, being pursued by gangsters. Eddie helps him out and gets in trouble himself. Lena. a kindhearted waitress at the Hut, tries to help Eddie out, but his relationship with her leads to his killing a man. He runs to the old family home, where his brother is holed up. Lena follows him to warn him that the hoods are on his trail, and there is a final shoot-out.

   The ending, like most endings in Goodis novels, is bleak and without hope, showing men at the mercy of outside forces, yet still responsible for their acts. This theme runs throughout Goodis’s works and is never more evident than in Down There.

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   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.