ELLIS PETERS – City of Gold and Shadows. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1973. William Morrow, US, hardcover, 1974. Pyramid V3590, paperback, February 1975.

   If she is remembered today, and I think she is, Ellis Peters is known almost solely for her series of Brother Cadfael mysteries, of which there were 20. running from 1977 to 1994. But she also had another series before Cadfael came along — he was a monk living in a 12th-century Benedictine monastery — that being a series of contemporary detective novels about the Felse family.

   This earlier series, in which the head of family, George Felse, was a British police detective, ran from 1951 to 1979 and overlapped the Cadfael books by one. (I believe that the first Cadfael novel was meant to be a one-off, but it proved to be so popular that Peters was forced to continue them until her death in 1995 at the age of 82.)

   I was going to start off this review by saying something witty about the fact that when City of Gold and Shadows was reprinted by Pyramid, they amusingly tried to cash in on the then current Gothics craze in paperback publishing and marketing as a Gothic romance. It is in fact so labeled on the spine.

   But the cover of British hardcover, also shown here (below), is even more in the Gothic mode, so there goes that opening.

   It is a fact, however, that the book certainly does start out as the Gothics of the era often did. A girl (in this case a concert oboist named Charlotte Rossignol) is invited to meet with a lawyer who informs her that her great-uncle, a famed archaeologist, has been missing for over a year, and that she is in essence the inheritor of his estate — or that she will be if for some reason he never shows up.

   A standard opening for a Gothic romance. You might think that she would then go to her uncle’s estate, a mouldering mansion filled with servants with inscrutable motives and a young man who …

   But no. Charlotte is the kind of woman with a head on her shoulders, and she decides to do some detective work on her own. She heads for the grounds of Aurae Phiala, where the ruins of an ancient Roman town are buried, somewhere along the border with Wales, and although his travels had taken him to Turkey afterward, it is where her uncle was last seen in England.

   She does meet a young man, but she counters his tentative advances with an even more interrogative set of questions of her own, subtly inquired, of course. There is a murder, that of an inquisitive young lad, and other attempts at murder. Serious business, this, and George Felse is called in.

   His wife remains off scene in this one, though, and his son shows up not at all. At about the one-third point this becomes a matter for the police, not one for amateurs, although even Felse recognizes the usefulness of Charlotte’s continued contributions.

   A major plus is that Ellis Peters was a very good writer, and this book is no exception. Her phrasing, eye for details and incidental authorial observations are nearly pitch perfect, and the chapters in which one of the characters tries to find his way out of the maze of tunnels and underground flues into which he has been tossed are as suspenseful as anything I’ve recently read in a book that has been marketed as a thriller.

FRANCIS BEEDING – Death Walks in Eastrepps. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1931. [Insp. Wilkins]. Mystery League, US, hardcover, 1931. Reprinted several times, including Norton, US, hardcover, 1966; Dover, US, trade paperback, 1980.

   Francis Beeding’s Death Walks in Eastrepps comes well recommended. Vincent Starrett called it one of the ten best mysteries of all time when it came out, and he repeated this as late as 1965 when he did an outrageously bad introduction for a hardcover reprint in Norton’s ill-fated Seagull Library of Mystery and Suspense.

   I had better document my charge. Though he doesn’t actually disclose the killer, Starrett gives away almost every other surprise. This, mind you, is not in a critical work dissecting a classic but in the introduction to a new edition that readers are presumably ready to start.

   Starrett even commits a careless error, claiming that Beeding’s famous numbered series of Colonel Granby novels were published in order, e.g., The One Sane Man, The Two Undertakers, The Three Fishers, et al.

   Actually, the first book in the series was The Six Proud Walkers (1928). It was followed by The Five Flamboys (1929). The One Sane Man did not come along until 1934, by which time Beeding had already used five numbers in his titles.

   Just because Vincent Starrett had an off day is no reason to miss Death Walks in Eastrepps. The edition to buy and read is the brand new paperback by Dover. It has no introduction and needs none. The book speaks for itself, a throwback to a time when authors felt the need to provide mysteries that were long, inventive, and contained many surprises.

   A series of murders takes place in an East Norfolk resort town. The puzzle is a good one, though the identity of the killer is far from impossible to guess. Things move at a fast pace, and a bonus is the excellent description of the effect of these murders on a resort during its summer season.

MERLDA MACE – Motto for Murder. Julian Messner, hardcover, 1943. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition, November 1943. Black Cat Detective #17, digest-sized paperback, 1945, abridged.

   The classic situation — isolated old house, blizzard raging outside, nasty old lady hated by most of those in the house, and escalating murders.

   Maria Hammond, the nasty old lady, has complete control of the family fortune and need not turn over any money until she is convinced that her grandchildren can handle the money responsibly. Since one of her children is a drunk who has married a money-hungry shrew and who has stolen $10,000 from the firm for which he works to provide the shrew with a fur coat in the hope that she will treat him kindly — a failed scheme, needless to say — it appears that the old lady is not completely in the wrong in not turning over the money at least to him.

   Anyhow, she invites the three grandchildren to spend Christmas with her, and two of the spouses also show up. Her intention, violating the spirit of the season and maybe even the letter of the law, is to tell the grandchildren she is changing her will so that they will be totally disinherited. Her lawyer is murdered, she disappears, and others start being murdered.

   Tip O’Neil, who works with the ne’er-do-well grandson, goes along for the weekend to make sure that the grandson does not run off to Canada. Since O’Neil is the only one not concerned in the murders, he does the investigating. On page 148, he says to himself: “Maybe it would be healthier for me to play dumb … on this investigation.” Strange. I had the feeling that is what he had been doing from the beginning.

   One among many oddities appears to be a peculiar law of New York State in regard to wills. O’Neil is asked to witness “the will” of Maria Hammond. While watched by her lawyer, O’Neil signs a piece of paper folded back so he can’t see what is written on it. He can’t be sure it’s a will, and he certainly isn’t witnessing her signing it.

   Deeck’s Law No. 1 states: Beware of authors who use exclamation points frequently in narrative! Mace is a big violator!

   (A motto, by the way, is a piece of candy around which is wrapped a fortune, making it somewhat similar to a fortune cookie. It was apparently old-fashioned even in 1945.)

Bibliographic Notes: This was the only novel that Timothy “Tip” O’Neil appeared in. His day job was as a special investigator for a Manhattan-based investment firm. The author’s other two mysteries featured a continuing series character named Christine Anderson. She may have been the blonde in Blondes Don’t Cry, but other than that, no other information is readily available.

MERLDA MACE. Pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy, 1910?-1990?

       Headlong for Murder. Messner, 1943. [Christine Anderson]
       Motto for Murder. Messner, 1943.
       Blondes Don’t Cry. Messner, 1945 [Christine Anderson]

JANICE LAW – Death Under Par. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1981. iUniverse, softcover, 2000.

   With the obvious exception of horse-racing, I think more mysteries have had to do with golf than with any other sport. Unless you can come up with another physical pastime I’m not thinking of, golf is the clear runner-up, which is what leads us to the latest Anna Peters thriller.

   She and long-time boy friend Harry have finally tied the knot, and for their honeymoon they travel to Scotland, for a working vacation during the British Open — he’s an artist on assignment for Sports Illustrated. There have been vandals at work, however, and threats have been made against one of the golfers. In case you haven’t been following Miss Peters’ adventures, she runs her own security business, and it quickly becomes a working honeymoon for her as well.

   She finds a common thread between the golfer and two of her leading suspects: they all attended the same small college in Hartford (Trinity College, recognizably incognito). As a result, there is a good deal of local Connecticut scenery involved as well, including a quickie tour through the offices of the same newspaper [the Hartford Courant] that prints most of my reviews.

   Which, of course, interested me much more than it will most of you. This is a straightforward crime story, making it more realistic than the puzzle artifices of a pure whodunit, perhaps, but in all truth, this case of Anna Peters presents no other challenge than that of sheer endurance.

   A twist was needed. This one comes straight.

Rating: C.

The Anna Peters series —

1. The Big Payoff (1975)
2. Gemini Trip (1977)
3. Under Orion (1978)
4. The Shadow of the Palms (1979)
5. Death Under Par (1981)
6. Time Lapse (1992)
7. A Safe Place to Die (1993)
8. Backfire (1994)
9. Cross-Check (1997)

Radio: 30 minutes. Blue Network: April 10 – December 29, 1943. Mutual Network: July 3, 1945 – April 30, 1950. NBC: May 7, 1950 – September 14, 1952. Mutual Network: January 5, 1953- November 27, 1954. Cast: Michael Waring was played by Barry Kroeger, James Meighan, Les Tremayne, Les Damon and George Petrie. (Source: On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio by John Dunning, Oxford University Press, 1998.)

Television: 30 minutes. 1954, syndicated by NBC Films Division: A Bernard L. Schubert Production. Produced by Federal Telefilms Inc. Executive Producer: Buster Collier. Cast: Charles McGraw as Mike Waring.

   I have been unable to find an episode of the series with Barry Kroeger or George Petrie as Michael Waring, The Falcon. I have found a site that offers free episodes from the series and at least one example of James Meighan, Les Tremayne and Les Damon. Click on this link to find the episodes I mention here and more.

“Murder Is a Family Affair.” November 27, 1945; Mutual Network. Cast: James Meighan as Mike Waring, The Falcon *** The format of the series will remain the same for most of the series, from the opening phone call from a woman about their date that night to the epilog at the end explaining loose ends.

   The story has Mike and his girlfriend Nancy trying to protect the younger brother of a friend who had just been executed for murder.

   This is the only sample of Meighan I can find, but it shows the film’s influences on the series. Mike is described as a freelance detective but his dialog and actions are not far from Tom Conway’s Falcon. The relationship between Mike and Nancy sounds more than something that lasts one episode and more like The Falcon and Helen Reed (Wendy Barrie) from the films.

“Murder Is a Bad Bluff.” November 1, 1948; Mutual Network. Cast: Les Tremayne as Mike Waring, The Falcon. Produced by Bernard L. Schubert. Written by Jerome Epstein. Directed by Richard Lewis *** A woman hires Mike to check out the man she hopes to marry.

   As with most of the episodes, the mystery is weaken by a lack of suspects and logic. Nancy is gone and Waring is free to continue his alleged comedic womanizing ways, but now he is more likely than in the past to use his fists as well as his detective skills.

“The Case of Everybody’s Gun.” July 4, 1951; NBC. Cast: Les Damon as Mike Waring, The Falcon. Produced by Bernard L. Schubert. Written by Jerome Epstein. Directed by Richard Lewis. *** The Falcon is hired to check out a new charity. Shortly after Mike discovers it’s a con, his client is murdered.

   Damon’s Falcon would never make one think of George Sanders’ version in the films. He played your typical smart-ass radio PI complete with unfunny banter between him and the cops. The mysteries have not gotten any better. Check out spot 11:47 for a good example of 50s radio and TV product placement. Listen to Waring and the cop for the episode verbally spar as both discuss with announcer Ed Herhily the joys of Miracle Whip.

   The character’s continuity is a confused mess. The radio series credits Drexell Drake (Charles H, Huff) as the character’s creator. It also claims kinship to the films, the same films that give the character a different name (Gay Lawrence) and creator (Michael Arlen). Much has been written about this and I recommend you check out Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website for more.

   The radio version of The Falcon under producer Bernard L. Schubert would make one more major change.

“The Case of the Vanishing Visa.” June 19, 1952; NBC. Cast: Les Damon as The Falcon *** Weary of the PI life, Mike Waring retires. Mike had been a top intelligence agent during WWII and the Army decides he is just the man they need, whether Mike wants to volunteer or not. He is sent to Vienna to smuggle out a woman who had been working for our side.

   Becoming a spy didn’t mean there was not a crime or murder nearly every week for Mike to solve . The show, both on radio and TV, seemed determined to convince the audience there was little difference between the cases of a PI and an Army intelligence agent.

   The radio series producer Bernard L. Schubert would continue with the series as it moved over to TV. Schubert would also produce such TV series as The Amazing Mr. Malone and Topper.

   Broadcasting (June 15, 1953) reported Federal Telefilms Inc was finishing a TV pilot for The Falcon. It would be “presented by Bernard Schubert” and star Charles McGraw with script by Gene Wang and directed by George Waggner.

   Obviously the pilot sold, as Broadcasting (April 19.1954) would report about the new series: “Federal Telefilms Inc, Hollywood, this week (April 12) goes before the cameras at Goldwyn Studios with Adventures of the Falcon, a Bernard L. Schubert Production, which NBC Film Division will distribute under a recently signed contract, reportedly in excess of a million dollars. Buster Collier is executive producer on the 39 half-hour films starring Charles McGraw in the title role. Ralph Murphy is signed to direct the first two films and Paul Landres, the second two.”

   According to a full-page ad in Broadcasting (May 10,1954), Harry Joe Brown was another producer involved in the TV series. Brown is best remembered for his partnership with Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher in the “Ranown Westerns” films.

   The TV series continued The Falcon as an ex-PI turned Army intelligence agent. The casting of Charles McGraw turned Mike Waring into a more serious tough guy. As Army intelligence agent Mike took on cases all over the world from Western Europe to Macao to behind the Iron Curtain. One episode took place on the Atlantic Ocean. Mike would also take on cases all over the United States from Honolulu to New Jersey, from Chicago to New Orleans.

   Currently there are over 25 episodes of the TV series available to watch on YouTube. Here are three examples.

“Double Identity.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzqJHAFcRto

Teleplay by William Leicester. Directed by Ralph Murphy. Guest Cast: Maralou Gray and Dan Seymour. *** Location: London. When the bad guys try to silence a freedom fighter by kidnapping his daughter, Mike poses as one of the bad guys in effort to rescue her.

   Predictable, but can be forgiven since the episode was filmed sixty years ago. The episode is a good example of TV’s Falcon’s womanizing side.

“Rare Editions.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp5nX6mKuiM

Teleplay by J. Benton Cheney. Directed by (name missing from video). Guest Cast: Nana Bryant, Charles Halton and Louis Jean Hexdt. *** Location: New York. A self-proclaimed helpless little old lady owns a bookstore that deals with rare books and illegal drugs.

   Entertaining episode with a nice ending.

“A Drug on the Market.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cohk8gwm5lo

Teleplay by Gene Wang. Directed by Paul Landres. Guest Cast: Suzanne TaFel, Kurt Katch and Fred Essler. *** Location: Vienna. Due to several hijackings, the black market is the only source for a drug that could save a little boy’s life and many others. Mike’s job is to find the drug and break the black market ring.

   Some unexpected twists highlight this episode.

   NBC Films promotions for the series compared McGraw and The Falcon to Jack Webb’s Dragnet that NBC Films was syndicating as Badge 714. In Broadcasting (October 4, 1954) NBC Films announced Badge 714 had sold to 172 stations, Dangerous Assignment was sold to 174, and Adventures of the Falcon was sold to only 34 stations.

MICHAEL COX – The Glass of Time. W. W. Norton & Company, hardcover, October 2008; softcover, October 2009.

        “Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait.”

   That was Wilkie Collins’ formula for the nineteenth century thriller of the triple-decker variety, and here and in his previous Victorian thriller, The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox more than follows Collins’ advice. There are perhaps fewer laughs, though, in this dark tale of revenge across time and one young woman’s mysterious “Great Task.”

   Her name is Esperanza Alice Gorst, and she has recently arrived at Evenhood where she will enter service as maid to the rather liberal Miss Emily Carteret 26th Baroness of Transor and her sons, Perseus and Randolph Duport.

   Esperanza is no ladies maid, though. She was raised by her guardian Madame in Mansion de l’Orme in France, and only two months earlier she had learned it was her role in something called the Great Task to befriend and grow close to Lady Transor. She does not know why, only that her past is leading her here and her future turns on her success.

   And Lady Transor is something in herself:

   Esperanza’s work would seem cut out for her, for how could a mere maid seduce such a woman of beauty and wealth. Unknown to Esperanza, it will be much easier than she knows, because she has special gifts and advantages she is ignorant of as yet. She cannot know all the intricacies of the Great Task yet, lest she fail.

   Esperanza will rise from maid to companion to daughter in-law to something far higher through the twists and turns, dangers, insanity, and mysteries of this modern triple-decker, with allies and enemies both known and unknown, sympathies, confusion, passion, and cool intellect all spun masterfully out by Cox in an effectively Victorian voice that never-the-less is an easy and pleasant read. There is little to forgive in this novel or his previous book The Meaning of Night, and much to applaud.

   The literary thriller, of which this is a good example, follows two chief tracks, the contemporary version with ties to the past, usually in the form of a valuable object or artifact, The Book of Four; and the historical version, The Name of the Rose.

   This falls in the latter category and manages to evoke not only Wilkie Collins, J. Sheridan LeFanu, and Mary Elizabeth Brandon, but also a touch of Alexandre Dumas and The Count of Monte Cristo, since at heart The Glass of Time is about old injustices, mysterious figures with new identities, lost fortunes, young love, and implacable revenge. Don’t think this will be too dated though. Cox is a masterful story teller and a gifted writer.

   Esperanza is no delicate fainting flower. Despite her innocence she is smart, tough, and ruthless when need be. This is not Little Nell. She proves not only Lady Transor’s equal, but her nemesis, though no one is simply good or evil, nothing simply black and white. This isn’t Rebecca unless there had been two Rebecca’s battling for Manderlay; if it resembles any works from the past it would perhaps be one of the Joseph Shearing novels like Moss Rose, So Evil My Love, or Blanche Fury.

   The Meaning of Night was a hard act to follow, being a variation on Kind Hearts and Coronets, but Cox succeeds admirably with a book that manages to be similar enough to reward those who loved the earlier novel and totally different in its protagonist and her plight.

   I’m deliberately not giving too much away because there are twists and turns and surprises enough to come. If I’ve made it sound stately or dull it is not. It moves, it’s a compulsive page turner, it breathes and lives, the characters are genuine people from heroine to the slightest character, and the setting is splendidly evoked even down to a final revelation on virtually the last page that will likely come as a complete surprise to most readers.

   You won’t find the best of the mystery genre in the mystery section of bookstores today, but among the mainstream novels by talented and canny writers such as Michael Cox. No one does the literary pastiche better or more artfully. This and his first book would be completely at home beside The Woman in White, Uncle Silas, or The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

WILSON TUCKER – To Keep or Kill. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1947. Lion #21, paperback, 1950; Lion Library LL84, 1956.

   Tucker, who is probably better known today for his science fiction, wrote a total of five Charles Horne mysteries for Rinehart back between 1946 and 1951. After that he apparently decided he was better off not trying to write detective fiction, even as a sideline.

   Not that he left the field completely, but I think he probably made the right decision.

   Horne is a private eye. Most of his work is done for insurance companies. He quite vehemently does not do divorce work. The small metropolis of Boone, Illinois, where he has his office, is a figment of Tucker’s imagination, although there is a Boone County (up near Rockford).

   This is the second Horne book. As it begins, he is witness to an explosion. He thinks it’s a practical joke at first, but when it goes off it takes part of a city block and a couple of victims with it. Later, Horne is kidnapped and kept a prisoner in the home of the girl who planted the bomb. She’s a redhead, tall, beautiful, and as loopy as a loon.

   She is in love with Horne, she has been stalking him for months, and now that she “owns” him, so to speak, she expects — well, this was written before such explicit intentions could be stated, but those are the kinds of intentions she has. Viewed from today’s more permissive perspective, Horne’s brave resistance to temptation seems both admirable and refreshingly naive.

   Tucker’s style in this book is a burbling, slap-happy one, somewhat reminiscent of Fredric Brown in nature. In all, however, it hardly manages to disguise a total apparent lick of respect for logical thought processes. Or let me put it another way: the sort of logic that is used by all concerned would make sense only to the well-confined inmates of a lunatic asylum.

   It wouldn’t be hard to enjoy this quirky excuse for a detective story immensely. There is a thin line, it is said, between genius and lunacy. If I’d been able to follow the plot at all, I’d have said this was the work of the former.

   As for a letter grade, I’m not too sure of this one at all, but if it means anything to you, what I’m going to do, if I don’t change my mind tomorrow, is give this book a definite (C plus?).

The Charles Horne series —

The Chinese Doll. Rinehart, 1946. Dell Mapback #343, 1949.

To Keep or Kill. Rinehart, 1947. Lion #21, 1950.
The Dove. Rinehart, 1948.
The Stalking Man. Rinehart, 1949. Mercury Mystery #150, no date.
Red Herring. Rinehart, 1951.

WILLIAM DAVID SPENCER – Mysterium and Mystery: The Clerical Crime Novel. UMI Research Press, hardcover, 1989, 344 pp., $49.95. Southern Illinois Press, softcover, 1992.

   Perhaps I should start with a disclaimer: my theology, such as it is — or, sadly more accurately, was — was gained from nuns at a parochial school. Now that I can look back on it with detachment, they were dear ladies but woefully inadequate in their understanding of religion. Any questions not covered in the catechism were met with “Never mind” or disappointed looks or mitigated horror.

   Thus, my understanding of Spencer’s chapter on “Modus Operandi: Mysterium into Mystery” is at best suspect, at worst completely befuddled. But I didn’t get the book so that I could learn theology; I got it to read about clerical detectives and their theology.

   Spencer says — and I have no disagreement with him — that the clerical crime novel may be divided into three classifications. The most general, he says, is any tale that involves the clergy and crime. This type of novel involves “saintly side-kicks” — “as in Jack Webb’s or Thurmin [sic] Warriner’s tales or in a lesser sense in Christopher Leach’s Blood Games or Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s Where the Dark Streets Go.”

   The second division is the novel in which a crime is committed by a cleric. Spencer provides several examples, though not the most unusual one, which I can’t name since to do so would be to give away whodunit.

   Finally, and the focus of this book, are the mysteries solved by the cleric. Part One of Spencer’s treatise is “Rabbis and Robbers,” dealing with two tales from the Apocrypha and with the novels of Harry Kemelman. Although Spencer lists Joseph Telushkin in his “Graph of the Clerical Crime Novel in English,” Rabbi David Winter is not dealt with in this study.

   Part Two is “Priests and Psychopaths,” the Roman Catholic clergy, both ordained and nonordained — in the latter case the various nuns and brothers.

   Part Three is “Ministers and Murders” — yes, as you may have gathered, Spencer does have a thing for alliteration, even when it can be somewhat misleading- representing the various Protestant clergy.

   How well does Spencer sum up the clergy characters and their theology? Quite well, I believe, in those cases in which I have read at least one of the books by an author. The only authors I haven’t read are Barbara Ninde Byfield, whom I hope to get around to shortly, and James L. Johnson, who wrote the Code Name Sebastian Series, a series, after reading Spencer’s descriptions of the novels, I feel I can skip without any loss. (Oh, all right, I merely started The Name of the Rose. Some people, I am informed, have read, enjoyed, and understood it, though I am dubious whether any one person did all three.)

   Keep in mind, of course, that Spencer is not rating the clergy characters as detectives or the novels as detective tales; he is dealing with the books as to how they reflect the characters’ theology or, in one case, the near absence of it.

   Errors? If you get as upset as I do over the misuse of “flaunt” for “flout,” you’d join me in considering that a mistake. Otherwise, except for his curious notion that Eco’s William of Baskerville chewed tobacco in fourteenth-century Europe, Spencer is, as far as I could tell, quite accurate in depicting plot and character.

   Oversights? The only clergy detective not dealt with that I know of is the Reverend Peter Eversleigh, sometimes called the Padre, featured in several of Richard Goyne’s novels. This Protestant clergyman detective seems to have been overlooked by all who have published lists of religious sleuths. Since in the one novel I have read in which the Padre appears there is nothing about theology, perhaps no great loss has been suffered from lack of knowledge about him. The Lipstick Clue (Paul, 1954) is, however, a rather decent novel of detection.

   Is Mysterium and Mysteries a fair value at $49.95? I paid that price, and I feel it was worth it. After all, there is a fair amount of information about clerical detectives as detectives but very little about their theology. Dedicated fans of the Divine Mystery, or Holy Terror, or the clerical crime novel, or whatever you want to call it, probably should own this study. Others should suggest that their public library acquire it.

WOMAN WANTED. MGM, 1935. Maureen O’Sullivan, Joel McCrea, Lewis Stone, Louis Calhern, Adrienne Ames, Edgar Kennedy, Robert Grieg Screenplay Leonard Fields, David Silverstein. Story by Wilson Collinson. Director: George B. Seitz.

   This one is a rapid paced comedy mystery with a much more attractive and accomplished cast than you might expect from this sort of light fare. It’s a good example of bright entertainment from the era enhanced by talent that far exceeds the material.

   Ann Grey (Maureen O’Sullivan) is a convicted criminal who finds herself freed when she escapes an accident in a car. As luck, and Hollywood screenplays, would have it the first person she runs into is Perry Mason-like fast-thinking and slick-defense attorney Tony Baxter (Joel McCrea).

   This being a movie, McCrea almost immediately decides Ann is innocent, and sets out to prove it with the help of his butler Peedy (Robert Grieg who played butlers as often as Arthur Treacher or Eric Blore), and as you might expect he has more problems than just the police: he also has to keep Ann hidden from his jealous finacee Betty (Adrienne Ames).

   Meanwhile the crooks led by Smiley (Louis Calhern), who actually did the murder Ann was convicted of, are waiting for her too, believing she knows where the $250,000 in war bonds the murder was committed for are hidden.

   This is Golden Age Hollywood and you don’t need much more than this to turn out a fast paced and entertaining little film. Woman Wanted is full of bright lines, O’Sullivan and McCrea are well matched, her innocence but underlying sensuality and his all American boy charm creating genuine chemistry on screen.

   Add to Tony’s other problems, his competitive old friend the District Attorney (Lewis Stone) suspects he has Ann and would like nothing better than to trim Tony’s sails for his habit of sailing blithely on the thin edge of the law.

   This one is in almost constant movement, and McCrea’s Tony Baxter actually proves to be as smart and quick on his feet as he is supposed to be. There are fewer really stupid acts by the hero than most film heroes display.

   Based on a story by Wilson Collinson (creator of Maisie), this little film delivers its full measure of entertainment painlessly and with a great deal of charm. McCrea and O’Sullivan are good as I said, Grieg has the priceless unshaken look of all great film butlers and valets (it seems every man in the thirties had his own butler or valet — you have to wonder why there was a depression and job shortage), and the scenes with Stone and McCrea have some of the feel of the best of Hamilton Burger and Perry Mason’s maneuvering.

   If you like bright comedy mysteries from this era, enjoy seeing stars like McCrea and O’Sullivan — attractive and young early in their career — or just want to kill an hour or so pleasantly this is the one for you.

This wouldn’t make anyone’s list of the ten best comedy mysteries of the period, but it would certainly make the list of those that were entertaining and accomplished every goal set for the form.

   This woman and this movie will be wanted by any lover of the comedy mystery form.

ISAAC ASIMOV – Tales of the Black Widowers. Doubleday, hardcover, June 1974. Fawcett Crest, paperback, August 1976.

   Until the early 1970s, Isaac Asimov was best known to whodunit devotees as the writer who virtually invented the science-fiction mystery. In his novels The Caves of Steel (1954) and The Naked Sun (1957) and in the short stories collected as Asimov’s Mysteries (1968), he masterfully bridged the gap between the two genres and proved that genuine detective fiction could be set in the future as well as In the present or past.

   Although he had previously written one contemporary mystery novel, The Death Dealers (1958), Asimov’s best-known crime fiction of the non-futuristic sort is the long series of Black Widowers tales that debuted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1972 and is still going strong today after four hardcover collections’ worth of stories.

   The Black Widowers are five middle-aged professional men — Avalon the patent lawyer, Trumbull the cryptographer, Rubin the writer, Drake the chemist, and Gonzalo the artist — who meet once a month for dinner at an exclusive New York club. Each month one member brings a guest and that guest brings a problem, sometimes but by no means always criminal in nature.

   The narration of the dilemma is interrupted frequently by cross-examination and highbrow cross-talk among the Widowers, who like Asimov himself are inordinately fond of puns. After each of the five club members has tried to solve the conundrum and failed, a solution — invariably on target — is proposed by Henry, the ancient and unobtrusive waiter who has been serving dinner and drinks throughout the dialogue. Everyone then goes home both intellectually and gastronomically satisfied.

   The Black Widowers stories stand or fall on the quality of the puzzles and their resolutions. Characterization and setting are minimal, and too many of the tales are either unfair to the reader or wildly incredible, but the occasional gems are clever indeed, and those who share Asimov’s fondness for oddball facts, logical probing, and the spectacle of cultivated men scoring intellectual points off one another will delight in even the weaker links in the chain.

   The four collections published to date are Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), and Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984). Asimovians might also look into the author’s book-fair whodunit, Murder at the ABA (1976), and his short-story collection The Union Club Mysteries (1983).

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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.

Note:   Since this review first appeared, there have been two additional collections of Black Widowers stories: Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1989) and The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), the latter posthumously.