Following the riches of the 1950s, the anthology series moved into its final period as a stimulating television form. The enormous mass of episodic series featuring regular characters placed the format of the anthology firmly on the back burner.

   Both Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (NBC, 1960) and Boris Karloff’s Thriller (NBC, 1960-62) were essentially, and quite effectively, horror-fantasy series, many with strong elements of mystery.

   Dow Hour used celebrated classics such as Mary Roberts Rinehart’s “The Bat”, John Willard’s “The Cat and the Canary” and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “The Inn of the Flying Dragon”.

   Half of the premier season of Thriller was composed of crime/suspense stories under producer Fletcher Markle, which included tales by Charlotte Armstrong, John D. MacDonald, Cornell Woolrich, Don Tracy and Fredric Brown. Discovering that horror-fantasy worked even better with viewers when they transmitted “The Purple Room” (1960), producers Maxwell Shane and William Frye took over from Markle and concentrated on the macabre. They unleashed scary treats such as Robert Bloch’s “The Cheaters” and “The Hungry Glass”, Robert E. Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell”, and Harold Lawlor’s “The Grim Reaper”. Much to the viewers’ delight.

   The opening season of Kraft Mystery Theatre (NBC, 1961-63; not to be confused with the 1958 series) was made up entirely of British cinema second features (B movies) and it was not until the second season (1962-1963) that the series proper began.

   The first two episodes of the latter (crime thrillers “In Close Pursuit” and “Death of a Dream”) were directed by Robert Altman. It wasn’t until I happened upon the Mike Doran/Steve exchange in Mystery*File (July 2009) that one episode that had previously puzzled me, called “Shadow of a Man” (1963) starring Broderick Crawford as insurance investigator Barton Keyes and his assistant Jack Kelly as Walter Neff (teleplay credited to Frank Fenton from a story by James Patrick with no mention of James M. Cain or Double Indemnity), was finally laid to rest. Thanks to their information, “Shadow of a Man” proved to be a pilot for a proposed Double Indemnity TV series.

   Something of an immediate sister show to the above, Kraft Suspense Theatre (NBC, 1963-65) boasted three interesting contributions: John D. MacDonald’s “The Deep End” (1964) and William P. McGivern’s “A Truce to Terror” (1964) and “Once Upon a Savage Night” (1964) [the latter published as Death on the Turnpike].

   Shamley Productions returned with The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (CBS, 1962-65), but now with its crisp little half-hour story format enlarged to an hour. Among the stretched-out storytelling could be found such gems as Woolrich’s “The Black Curtain” (1962), Richard Matheson’s “Ride the Nightmare” (1962), Henry Kane’s “An Out for Oscar” (1963), the latter with teleplay provided by David Goodis, the superbly spooky “Where the Woodbine Twineth” (1965), from a Davis Grubb story, and the genuinely unsettling “An Unlocked Window” (1965), from a story by Ethel Lina White.

   Although a mix of drama, comedy, musicals and would-be pilots, Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre (NBC, 1963-67) did present an altogether intriguing pilot, or rather a series of pilots, featuring Jack Kelly as private eye/secret agent Fredrick Piper. The first attempt was made with “White Snow, Red Ice” (1964), written by Richard Fielder. It was followed by “Double Jeopardy” (1965), co-starring Lauren Bacall, “One Embezzlement and Two Margaritas” (1966), written by Luther Davis, and, finally, “Time of Flight” (1966), written by Richard Matheson (here Kelly’s name changed to “Al Packer”).

   Oh, there was also “Guilty or Not Guilty” (1966), a legal drama pilot starring Robert Ryan and co-scripted by Evan Hunter & “Guthrie Lamb” (the latter name belonging to a private eye character created by Evan Hunter [writing as Hunt Collins] for Famous Detective Stories magazine in the early 1950s). Unfortunately, all of the above remained unsold.

   During the 1970s, between the TV pleasures of Harry O (ABC, 1974-76) and The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974-80), Joseph Wambaugh’s Police Story (NBC, 1973-78) was the only other series worth keeping an eye on (the author created the anthology for Columbia Pictures Television).

   Arguably, one of the finest genre anthologies to grace the small-screen, even though it was nearly 40 years ago, the earthy stories culled from LAPD interviews were developed into some remarkable episodes, among them “Requiem for an Informer”, where a careful rapport develops between a detective and his street-wise informer, “The Wyatt Earp Syndrome”, focusing on Harry Guardino’s obsessive officer, and the two-hour “Confessions of a Lady Cop”, with Karen Black as a vice detective on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The series Police Woman (NBC, 1974-78) evolved from “The Gamble” (1974) and Joe Forrester (NBC, 1975-76) from “The Return of Joe Forrester” (1975).

   Fallen Angels (Showtime, 1993; 1995) seemed to be created as something of a small-screen tribute to hard-boiled literature. The carefully constructed series unfolded its noir-ish stories at a leisurely pace, underlining a symbiotic relationship between actor and story.

   In this writer’s opinion, all episodes were nothing short of superb. Many remain etched firmly on the memory. For instance, Jonathan Craig’s “The Quiet Room”, in which two corrupt cops receive their just punishment, Jim Thompson’s “The Frightening Frammis”, celebrating flashbacks and femme fatales, and Chandler’s “Red Wind”, featuring an interminably morose Danny Glover as Marlowe.

   The above selected anthologies (including the earlier Part 5.0) had, admittedly, minimum influence on the TV Crime and Mystery genre in general, but their exposure of the work of important crime authors (the Chandlers, the Hammetts, the Christies) acknowledges the form as something of a television pinnacle.

   The sheer range and diversity of these one-off presentations during the latter half of the last century remain as something to marvel. Perhaps this overview may serve to mark its passing.

   The concluding Part of this history of genre anthologies will observe the UK television history.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).
Part 4.0: Themes and Strands (1950s Police Dramas).
Part 4.1: Themes and Strands (Durbridge Cliffhangers)
Part 5.0: Theatre of Crime (US).

   Taking its cue from 1930s and 1940s radio drama, the U.S. television play format (initially a live presentation) gathered strength during the 1950s. Presented in various anthology series, the form evolved from live performances to filmed episodes (as developments in broadcast technology progressed).

   Unlike contemporary British television (BBC), with its roots in theatre (the stage), American television drew on professional elements from Radio and from Hollywood (when the latter saw fit to work for the small-screen). By the 1960s, some of the on-screen results were simply astounding.

   The Crime and Mystery genre was represented not only by some outstanding individual plays presented in general anthology series (such as Studio One) but also by entire anthology collections dedicated to the theme. Unfortunately, most of these genre-based anthologies tended to feature ordinary television suspense yarns (usually concerning devious murderers or remorseful fugitives).

   I have, therefore, omitted many of these anthologies (such as Hands of Destiny, DuMont, 1950-51; The George Sanders Mystery Theatre, NBC, 1957; Panic!, NBC, 1957) from this overview.

   In the beginning, Studio One (aka Westinghouse Studio One; CBS, 1948-58) appeared to have only one thing going for it, a brutally realistic adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s “Glass Key” (May 1949). But then, later in 1949, another Hammett appeared, “Two Sharp Knives”.

   It was the beginning of a Studio One deluge, sweeping in with “The Room Upstairs” (1950), from Mildred Davis, “Shield for Murder” (1951), from William P. McGivern, “Nightfall” (1951), from David Goodis, “Mr. Mummery’s Suspicion” (1951), from Dorothy L. Sayers, and “The King in Yellow” (1951), from Raymond Chandler.

   In 1952 they presented “The Devil in Velvet”, from John Dickson Carr, “They Came to Baghdad”, from Agatha Christie, “Stan, the Killer” and, later, “Black Rain” (1953), from Georges Simenon, “Little Men, Big World”, from W.R. Burnett, and “The Hospital”, from Kenneth Fearing. 1953 saw “Sentence of Death”, from Thomas Walsh. In 1954 came “Let Me Go, Lover”, from Charlotte Armstrong.

   By 1955 this deluge was down to a trickle, with “Donovan’s Brain”, from Curt Siodmak, and, in 1956, “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, from Patricia Highsmith. The final drops (genre-wise) were squeezed out with “First Prize for Murder” (1957), from John D. MacDonald, and “A Dead Ringer” (1958), from James Hadley Chase. Along the way, Studio One’s two-part “The Defender” (1957), by Reginald Rose, became the inspiration for the excellent 1961-65 series The Defenders (CBS).

   Taking its title literally, Suspense (CBS, 1949-54) showcased stories by Cornell Woolrich, John Dickson Carr, Craig Rice, Stanley Ellin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Joel Townsley Rogers, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Collier, Geoffrey Household, Georges Simenon, Wilkie Collins, and many others. But before the mouth-watering begins, it should be noted that these plays were broadcast live and therefore less than a third of them survive.

   [Places like The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, Museum of Television and Radio in New York and The Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles may have viewing copies of some surviving episodes. Then, there’s always the Internet Archive – Moving Images – Television to explore: http://www.archive.org/details/television.]

   Recipient of a Special Edgar Award in 1951, The Web (CBS, 1950-54) was a live New York series presenting stories from the works of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Tantalizing in the extreme, especially with so little to go on in terms of detailed episode credits, one can only imagine (fantasize, even) the possible selection of genre stories translated here for television.

   Living up to its name, Danger (CBS, 1950-55) certainly satisfied its viewers with moments like Philip MacDonald’s “The Green and Gold String” (1950), John Dickson Carr’s “Charles Markham, Antique Dealer” (1951), Anthony Boucher’s “Mr. Lupescu” (1951), William L. Stuart’s “Blackmail” (1953) and Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” (1955). At the same time the series also promoted the early careers of directors Sidney Lumet and John Frankenheimer as well as actor James Dean.

   Another live and prestigious series was Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-57) which invested in some noteworthy episodes, particularly during the earlier seasons. Included were presentations based on works by Dorothy B. Hughes, Cornell Woolrich, Raymond Chandler (“The Big Sleep”, 1950), Wilkie Collins, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Hemingway (“The Killers, 1955) and Fredric Brown.

   Inner Sanctum (NBC, 1953-54) featured stories based on the popular 1940s radio series, which included Edgar Wallace as story source for “The Lonely One” (1954) and author John Roeburt as a contributor of various teleplays.

   Based also on a popular radio series was the earlier Lights Out (NBC, 1949-52). Similar in atmosphere and theme to Inner Sanctum, it presented stories by Edgar Allan Poe (“The Fall of the House of Usher”, 1949; “The Masque of the Red Death”, 1951; “The Pit”, 1952), August Derleth (“Rendezvous”, 1950), Dorothy L. Sayers (“The Leopard Lady”, 1950), Ira Levin (“Leda’s Portrait”, 1951), Fredric Brown (“The Pattern”, 1951) and Cornell Woolrich (“Nightmare”, 1952).

   Filmed at Elstree in England for NBC, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents (NBC, 1953-57; ITV/UK from 1955) presented one particular episode which is worth being celebrated by fans of the genre because it represents the only proposal (to my knowledge) for a Bulldog Drummond TV series: the half-hour pilot episode “The Ludlow Affair” (NBC, 1957), with Robert Beatty as our hero and the scene-stealing Michael Ripper as his sidekick.

   Climax! (CBS, 1954-58) got itself off to an enterprising start with Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye”, starring Dick Powell again as Marlowe, and followed it up quickly with Bayard Veiller’s “The Thirteenth Chair”, Fleming’s “Casino Royal” and Lucille Fletcher’s “Sorry, Wrong Number”.

   The rest of its TV treasures consisted of works by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Eric Ambler, A.A. Fair [Erle Stanley Gardner], John D. MacDonald, George Hopley [Cornell Woolrich], Patricia Highsmith, Ursula Curtiss, Charlotte Armstrong, Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], and John Dickson Carr.

Warner Brothers Presents (ABC, 1955-57) was the umbrella title for Conflict (ABC, 1956-57), an anthology presenting compositions by Frederick Brady and Thomas Walsh as well as the first pilot (“Anything for Money”, 1957) for the influential 77 Sunset Strip (ABC, 1958-63).

   Lux Video Theatre (CBS, 1950-54; NBC, 1954-57) ran for some seven years, but the NBC seasons were the ones that were of the most interest. During this period the series began featuring teleplay adaptations based on screenplays from some notable Hollywood movies. For instance, there was “Double Indemnity” (1954), “So Evil My Love” (1955), “Shadow of a Doubt” (1955), “My Name is Julia Ross” (1955), “The Suspect” (1955), “Suspicion” (1955), “Ivy” (1956), “Witness to Murder” (1956), “Mildred Pierce” (1956), “The Guilty” (1956) and “The Black Angel” (1957).

   The first genre anthology to be filmed by a major studio (Universal), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (CBS, 1955-60; NBC, 1960-62) has over the decades acquired something of a mystique of its own.

   Utilizing the art and craft of many screenwriters, big-screen actors and like-minded directors, the series’ producers (Joan Harrison and, later, Norman Lloyd) provided a wonderful insight into the workings of the famed Hitchcock (his Shamley Productions produced the series for which he was executive producer). Hitchcock was also savvy enough to explore the work of a vast range of lesser-known genre authors.

   Story sources for Alfred Hitchcock Presents include Lillian de la Torre, C.B. Gilford, Michael Arlen, Norman Daniels, Richard Deming (1915-1983), Henry Slesar, Lawrence Treat, Roy Vickers, Harold Q. Masur, Brett Halliday [Davis Dresser], Margaret Manners, Helen Neilsen, Anthony Gilbert [Lucy Beatrice Malleson], Dorothy Salisbury Davis, and Ed Lacy.

   It may not come as too much of a surprise to many readers that the highly-praised 1960 film Psycho was made at Universal by Hitchcock’s TV team, conspicuous by the striking monochromatic imagery of Shamley’s cinematographer John L. Russell.

   The series was revived by NBC (1985-86) and featured colorized Hitchcock intros of the now-deceased host from the original 1950s show. Befittingly macabre or merely mindless? Then, USA Cable Network continued the title (1987-88) with some additional episodes.

   Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions turned to NBC for Suspicion (NBC, 1957-58), even while Alfred Hitchcock Presents was still running over on CBS. The series consisted half-and-half of filmed (Shamley) and live presentations, including Woolrich’s “Four O’Clock”, Helen McCloy’s “The Other Side of the Curtain”, and the rarely-seen “Voice in the Night” (1958) by William Hope Hodgson. “Eye for an Eye” (1958) was the pilot episode for Ray Milland’s 1959-60 private eye series Markham (CBS).

   Kraft Television Theatre became Kraft Mystery Theatre (NBC) for the summer of 1958. The series presented many fine and unexpected works, most notably Ed McBain’s [billed as Evan Hunter] “Killer’s Choice”, the Larry Cohen-scripted “The Eighty Seventh Precinct” [from the McBain novels] and “Night Cry” [from the 1948 novel by William L. Stuart; filmed in 1950 as Where the Sidewalk Ends]. Kraft Television Theatre was the last of the live shows when it faded in 1958, everybody else having already turned to filmed recordings.

   There is one particularly interesting episode of the anthology Pursuit (CBS, 1958-59): “Epitaph for a Golden Girl” (1959), adapted by Lorenzo Semple Jr. from a short story by Ross MacDonald. The story originated in EQMM in June 1946 as “Find the Woman,” with MacDonald writing as Kenneth Millar. In the Pursuit adaptation, star Michael Rennie’s private detective is now called Rogers (instead of Lew Archer).

   In April 1959, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (CBS, 1958-60) presented writer Paul Monash’s two-part “The Untouchables” which served as a suitably violent introduction to the popular and controversial series The Untouchables (ABC, 1959-63). The series helped launch the action-filled 1959 to 1962 television gangster phase (to be a later Part in this TV history overview).

   A second Part of this “Theatre of Crime (US)” will follow shortly, concluding the US history of the genre anthology from the 1960s onwards.

Note:   The introduction to this series of columns by Tise Vahimagi on TV mysteries and crime shows may be found here, followed by:

Part 1: Basic Characteristics (A Swift Overview)
Part 2.0: Evolution of the TV Genre (UK)
Part 2.1: Evolution of the TV Genre (US)
Part 3.0: Cold War Adventurers (The First Spy Cycle)
Part 3.1: Adventurers (Sleuths Without Portfolio).
Part 4.0: Themes and Strands (1950s Police Dramas).
Part 4.1: Themes and Strands (Durbridge Cliffhangers)

ROBERT C. S. ADEY & DOUGLAS G. GREENE, Editors – Death Locked In. International Polygonics Ltd, softcover, 1987. Hardcover reprint: Barnes & Noble, 1994.

   Death Locked In is a generous collection of twenty-four stories covering 553 pages. Its editors, Robert C. S. Adey and Douglas G. Greene, are two of the world’s leading experts on the locked room mystery. Lest those who are not devotees of the classical puzzle be put off, I will point out that this book contains great variety, though all stories have one common denominator: a locked room.

   From the pulps are stories by Fredric Brown and Cornell Woolrich. There is a science-fiction mystery by Anthony Boucher. Ngaio Marsh, quite appropriately, uses a theatrical setting. Even Bill Pronzini’s nameless private eye solves one. Early locked-room stories by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, L. Frank Baum of Oz fame, Nick Carter, and Wilkie Collins are included.

   Finally, we have the best practitioners of this wonderful sub-genre: John Dickson Carr, Edward D. Hoch, and Ellery Queen with a reprint of one of his famous radio mysteries. Each story in the book has a learned introduction, telling interesting information about the author and putting the story into historical perspective.

ELIZABETH FERRARS – Give a Corpse a Bad Name. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1940. Collins Crime Club, UK, hc, 1981. Chivers, UK, large print edn, 2000. No US edition.

    Like Christianna Brand, the prolific, long-lived mystery doyenne Elizabeth Ferrars (1907-1995) slipped into print at the tail end of the Golden Age of British mystery (roughly 1920 to 1940); and, like Brand, upon her appearance in the detection field, she was raved as part of the “literary” school of British women mystery writers following Crime Queen’s Dorothy L. Sayers’ injunction to transmute detective novels into novels of manners with a crime interest.

    Ferrars went so far as to use a Lord Peterish, Campionite series detective in her first five books, one Toby Dyke, who comes complete with a Bunterish, Luggite assistant, one George (no last name — George is wary about giving out personal details). Though Toby is no aristocrat, he is an winning gent; and George seems to have picked up quite a bit of knowledge of crime and criminals at some point in his life.

    I have read three of the later four titles in the series and thought the last, Neck in a Noose, the best, with the other two getting bogged down in messy plots. Give a Corpse a Bad Name, however, struck me as very good, with a particularly ingenious, twisting finish.

    In the English village of Chovey, the charming, youngish widow Anna Milne (formerly of South Africa but now residing at one of Chovey’s most desirable residences, “The Laurels”), reports to the police that she has run down and killed a man. Oddly, the dead man also comes from South Africa and has Anna Milne’s address in his pocket, yet Anna Milne claims not to recognize him.

    Since the man had been drinking heavily before the fatal accident and she herself had not, no legal culpability is attached to Mrs. Milne. But then anonymous letters begin appearing, suggesting that this “accident” was no accident….

    Soon former crime reporter Toby Dyke and his mysterious yet amiable friend George are investigating, with surprising results. And George proves no slouch himself as an “amateur” detective in the end.

    Give a Corpse a Bad Name is an enjoyable book, with sufficient, sometimes strong, characterization, good writing and an interesting puzzle with some coherent cluing. Toby and George remain more nebulous than Peter and Bunter and Campion and Lugg, yet they do have some nice moments, such as George’s lecture to Tony on the merits of barley sugar.

    Definitely worth reading, though the original edition, printed only in Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, is very rare and very expensive. Fortunately it was reprinted in hardcover by Collins in 1981 and also a new press, Langtail, appears to have reprinted it in paperback just this year.

   Some Brief Bio-Bibliographic Bits:

The Toby Dyke mysteries:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

       Give a Corpse a Bad Name (n.) Hodder 1940.
       Remove the Bodies (n.) Hodder 1940. Doubleday, 1941, as Rehearsals for Murder.
       Death in Botanist’s Bay (n.) Hodder 1941. Doubleday, 1941, as Murder of a Suicide.
       Don’t Monkey with Murder (n.) Hodder 1942. Doubleday, 1942, as The Shape of a Stain.

       Your Neck in a Noose (n.) Hodder 1942. Doubleday, 1943, as Neck in a Noose.

Note: Both Elizabeth Ferrars and E. X. Ferrars, her byline in the US, were pen names of Morna Doris Brown, 1907-1995. A long obituary for her by Jack Adrian can be found online.

Editorial Comment: I have found no website for Langtail Press, but there is a list of their forthcoming mysteries, all softcover reprints, on Amazon UK, with almost 50 titles scheduled for release on December 1st. The books are uniformly priced at 12 pounds; other authors include Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Fredric Brown, Gavin Black and John Dickson Carr.

   Steve suggested the title of this one and the theme, so praise — and/or blame — should go to him.

   The chief rule for this is the book in question had to make me laugh: a hearty guffaw, a dry chuckle, a knowing smile — that and that indefinable thing called charm are the chief attributes of the books on this list; and of them, charm is the one that weighed the heaviest.

   Of course being funny is serious business as any comic will tell you, and nothing is harder than being consistently funny at novel length while still producing a discernible plot, actual characters, and a genuine mystery and suspense. All these succeed on that level — or they did for me.

   Taste is always subjective and humor the most subjective of all. For that reason I expect this to promote some argument. That said, some short story and novella collections made the list, and in a few places more than one book by some writers.

   You’ll find some of the usual suspects here, but where I could I went for a less well known title by a less well known writer if it was one I particularly liked. These are favorites and not bests, and I’ve tried for a variety.

    If I have overused the words ‘droll’ and ‘wit’ it is because for me those are far more common qualities in the comic mystery or thriller than belly laughs.

   As always, just because a book is not on the list doesn’t mean I didn’t find it funny or deserving. I’ve avoided books like The Smiling Corpse or The John Riddell Murder Case because they were chiefly satires before they were mysteries.

    Also not on the list many of the soft core series and books like Ted Marks’ “Man From Orgy” or Clyde Allison’s “0008” novels — although many of them were very funny.

   Film novelizations were left off too, though some, like the ones for Gambit, How To Steal a Million, The Notorious Landlady, and On the Double were very well done and funny in their own right. The same for TV-tie-ins. I realize that is arbitrary, but without some arbitrary rules these lists would be so all inclusive as to be meaningless.

   I ended up without a Donald Lam mystery by A. A. Fair, but let it be said the entire series is bright and sprightly, and for my money’s Gardner’s best. Somehow Cleve Adams, Robert Leslie Bellem, Robert Reeves, Kurt Steel, Kelly Roos, Jimmy Starr, Martin Wodehouse, Alice Tilton (though she made it as Phoebe Atwood Taylor), and some other obvious choices didn’t make the list, but that doesn’t mean they did not deserve to. On a different day in a different mood some choices would be different.

   In a few cases time has passed a book by, and what was very funny then is at best mildly humorous now. This included books like The Disentanglers by Andrew Lang.

   Mostly I limited myself to one book by author, but in the case of Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice allowed for a collaborative effort to stand on its own. Many writers such as Palmer, Rice, Fish, Block, and Westlake could easily make up a list of their own.

   I did not forget Thorne Smith’s Did She Fall? I just thought it was poor Smith and a mediocre mystery.

   At the end I have added fifty more without comment.

   As usual an * indicates a film or television adaptation.

   The Light of Day (aka Topkapi) * by Eric Ambler — Any one who knew Ambler’s screen work should have known he had a dry wit, but this took everyone by surprise, although Arthur Abdel Simpson, Ambler’s illegitimate stateless half British half Egyptian pimp and pornographer ‘hero,’ is well within the Ambler tradition. Not as playful as the Jules Dassin film, but in many ways funnier and more suspenseful. Other Ambler’s in a playful mode; Send No More Roses, Dirty Story, A Kind of Anger, and Dr. Frigo. Peter Ustinov, Melina Mercouri (Mrs. Dassin), Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley, and Akim Tamiroff starred.

   Chip Harrison and the Topless Tulip Caper by Lawrence Block — There are too many to choose from by Block, from the exploits of burglar/bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr to sleepless Evan Tanner, to hit man Keller, but I choose this paperback original because it is as good a portrait of an adolescent in the throws of sexual awakening as anything by Roth or Salinger, and because it is a dead on satire/tribute to Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. It is also cheerfully dirty minded without a smirk or a snicker — a rarity in any American fiction.

   Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher — A nun, Sister Ursula, and a harried cop, Terry Marshall, must team up to solve a murder at a convention of science fiction writers. As if that wasn’t enough, the book features savage but affectionate portraits of some of the titans of the science fiction field and a barbed look at early fandom as well as a satisfying mystery plot. Boucher’s Fergus O’Breen mysteries are similar blends of laughs and detection, by a man whose bona fides in the mystery and science fiction field are unquestionable.

   A Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce — Discussed here recently. Sgt. Beef, a solid and seemingly plodding policeman shows up three spoofs of famous Golden Age sleuths (Lord Peter, Poirot, and Father Brown) and solves a fine fair play murder along the way by an under acknowledged master of the form. A surprisingly fresh read.

   Huntingtower * by John Buchan — Dickson McCunn is a canny Glasgow grocer who has just retired and wants a little adventure, so he sets out on a walking holiday in Scotland and gets a bit more than he bargained for including a Bolshie poet, a Russian princess, royal jewels, dastardly villains, and a ragtag Boy Scout troop known as the Gorbals Diehards who could give the Dead End Kids and Bowery Boys a run for their money. First of three delightful books about McCunn and the Diehards, If possible catch the BBC radio adaptation (it was also a silent film and adapted at least twice for television). It may remind you a bit of the great Brit comedy Hue and Cry.

   Surprise Package * by Art Buchwald — A less than honest Union Boss gets deported to the tiny island where he was born, and along with his ‘moll’, who proves to be more than he — or anyone — can handle, finds himself scheming to get home, steal the crown from an exiled playboy king, and outwit corrupt police and ruthless thugs trying to take the crown back to his highness now Communist homeland. There’s also a band of patriotic monks in the mix who want the crown for religious reasons. Broad satire, but very funny, and I admit I liked the film much more than most do. Yul Brynner, Mitzi Gaynor, and Noel Coward starred with a script by Harry (Marco Page) Kurnitz.

   The Great Affair by Victor Canning — The title is from a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson ( “The great affair is to travel.”) and Canning, in a rare funny mood, provides an entertaining romp for a somewhat straight laced missionary in Africa who discovers his real talent lies in decidedly less legal and moral pursuits.

   The Arabian Nights Murder by John Dickson Carr — Dr. Fell takes on a case that owes as much to the Marx Brothers as Edgar Allan Poe, and Carr proceeds on a romp of epic proportions that is both very funny and still a fine example of the form. Carr indulges his penchant for the bizarre, the gargantuan Fell’s eccentricities, and Eighteenth Century drolleries, wit, and rambunctiousness so effortlessly you likely won’t care how contrived and unreal it all is. In fact, that is half the fun. We even get Carr’s idea of a sexpot.

   The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton — Nothing dates faster than yesterday’s whimsey, but this bright and allegorical phantasmagorical tale still shines. Poet Gabriel Syme (The Poet and the Lunatics) stumbles on a secret society of anarchists, is recruited by Scotland Yard to infiltrate them, and moves up the organizations ladder through members named for the days of the week until he encounters the leader of the group — Sunday. Just read it, no explanation or description could do it justice. The reading of this on BBC 7 by Geoffrey Palmer (As Time Goes By) was particularly good.

   Arigato by Richard Condon — Captain Huntington is a former RAF hero married to a beautiful American heiress. He also has a few gambling debts his wife is refusing to pay for, so Captain Huntington needs to raise a little money — quick — and has few scruples about doing it. Condon was one of the masters of the sharp observation and the pen as scalpel, and this little book and its companion simply ooze charm and invention. If your prefer him a bit more savage try Whisper of the Axe or closer to home, Prizzi’s Honor — or any of the Prizzi books. Also check out his caper novel The Oldest Confession and his savage Hollywood satire, The Ecstasy Business, about a madman trying to kill a Liz Taylor/Richard Burton pair of movie idols. If you only know him from The Manchurian Candidate, Prizzi’s Honor, or Winter Kills, you have some wonderful reading ahead of you.

   Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund Crispin — Oxford don Gervase Fen gets involved with a missing Shakespearian play, murder, the kidnapping of a little girl, an aged an demented bloodhound, and the usual patented Crispin chasing around in a fine example of what Crispin did best. Crispin, who was composer Robert Bruce Montgomery, wrote the scores for the “Carry On” films among others, and knew his way around comedy and the detective novel. This one wins out over the others for me only for that magnificent senile bloodhound. Almost any of the Crispin books would have made a perfect Ealing comedy.

   Sally in the Alley by Norbert Davis — Carstairs and Doan are a mismatched team of private eyes. Carstairs is a highly bred aristocrat and Doan is a bit of a mutt. Carstairs is also a prize winning Great Dane, who thinks his private eye owner Doan is a bit beneath him. Together they featured in three books and a long short story that show Davis skills at plotting, orchestrating, and amusing. It I choose this one over the others it is mostly because I was married to a Sally.

   The Incredible Schlock Homes by Robert L. Fish — Finding a new Schlock Homes story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine was always a delight. Overrun with puns, absurdity, and sheer manic energy they are to Holmesian satire what the original was to detective stories. Read them and weep with laughter.

   The Liquidator * by John Gardner — Boysie Oakes is a genial but attractive idiot recruited as chief executioner for the British Secret Service by the loathsome Colonel Mostyn, and forced to hire a Cockney hit man, Charlie Griffin to do his job for him. Boysie’s adventures manage to both thrill, amuse, and postillion the whole James Bond thing — ironic when you recall Gardner ended up replacing Ian Fleming writing the Bond saga. The film starred Rod Taylor, Jill St. John, and Trevor Howard as Mostyn, with Eric Sykes as Griffin.

   The Megstone Plot * by Andrew Garve — A decorated submariner stuck in a desk job at the Admiralty would like to marry a beautiful but mercenary lady, but lacks the money so he sets out to frame himself for treason and then collect big by suing the tabloid press for libel when he is cleared. What could possibly go wrong … A droll book that was an even droller film with James Mason, Vera Miles, and George Sanders as A Touch of Larceny.

   The Devil in Amber by Mark Gatiss — The second outing for bisexual Edwardian artist and spy Lucifer Box, who works for the real British Secret Service, the Royal Academy. Here he is sent to America in the twenties to look into a proto-Fascist group known as the Amber Shirts founded by one Olympus Mons, runs into his hated sister, Pandora, is framed for a shocking murder, and must save a young woman (Agnes Daye) and the world from a plot to literally raise the devil. Gattis is an actor (the BBC sitcom The League of Gentleman) and writer (Doctor Who) who can keep the pages turning and you chuckling, with the most likeable scoundrel since Harry Flashman. Gattiss own five part reading and adaptation of this was recently featured on BBC7.

   The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax * by Dorothy Gilman — Mrs. Pollifax is a well to do widow with grown children who just wants to serve her country — so she volunteers for the CIA. Of course the CIA isn’t interested, but then they have this little problem in Yugoslavia, and Mrs. P. might just prove useful — nothing too dangerous of course — like breaking out of a Yugoslav prison with a wounded American spy and being pursued by the entire army and secret police … First of a long and delightful series of well plotted and ably told adventures all preceding from the simple premise of the entire world underestimating Emily Pollifax. You shouldn’t. Rosalind Russell and Angela Lansbury both essayed the role of Mrs. Pollifax in the film and television versions of this.

   A Thrill A Minute With Jack Albany * by John Godey — Jack Albany is a character actor with the kind of face that keeps him on screen — as a long procession of cheap hoods, tough gangsters, and assorted thugs. So when a criminal mastermind mistakes him for a deadly hitman… Entertaining tale from a writer better known for the suspense novel The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three. This was a Disney film, Never a Dull Moment, with Dick Van Dyke, Dorothy Provine, Edward G. Robinson, Henry Silva, and Joanna Moore.

   No Way to Treat A Lady * by William Goldman — A charming New York homicide cop with a Jewish mother and a shiksa girlfriend, a serial killer with mother issues and a penchant for theatrical disguises — these are the elements of a fine mix of laughs and thrills that was also a memorable film with George Segal, Lee Remick, and Rod Steiger.

   Our Man in Havana * by Graham Greene — Mr. Wormwold is a widower with a teenage daughter, and sells vacuum cleaners in Havana on the eve of the Castro Revolution. What he mostly wants is to make a little money and go home because his teen daughter is a ripe young thing and in Havana her age is even less protection than in the rest of the world, so when a persistent British spy recruits him Mr. Wormwold doesn’t see what harm it could do to have a little extra income — and he doesn’t have to actually spy on anyone — he can just make if all up while padding his expenses. Which is how he becomes the most important agent in the western hemisphere and up to his neck in spies, killers, secret police, and betrayal. Also a notable Carol Reed film with Alec Guiness, Ernie Kovacs, Maureen O’Hara, Noel Coward, and Burl Ives. Sharp satire on politics, spies, sex, and life in general by one of the masters of the form, and you will never look a vacuum cleaner or play chess quite the same again.. For Greene in a humorous vein also try Travels With My Aunt, Lovers Take All, Monsignor Quixote, and Dr Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party.

   It Happened In Boston by Russell Greenhan — For more detail see my review. A forger who complains because the old masters keep copying his work gets involved in a deadly plot and goes happily off the cliff taking us with him. To say the least, this book is unique.

   The Thin Man * by Dashiell Hammett — Nick and Nora Charles are the templates for all the bright brittle husband and wife sleuths to come, bantering, detecting, and destroying their livers, all with equal glee. Hammett succeeded at making marriage sexy, and then William Powell and Myrna Loy succeeded at making it effortless. While it is the least of Hammett’s novels it is still a damn good detective story and a refreshingly good read today with the sharp dialogue and Nick’s dry wit both intact. Though in all fairness Hammett himself hit on one of the minor problems when he lamented no one ever invented a more smug pair.

   Just Desserts by Tim Heald — Simon Bognor, that overweight and less than brilliant agent of the Inland Revenue, customs and taxes, has a love of good food, so he doesn’t mind too much when he is asked to look into the murder of a famous chef he knew, even if he is still not sure how he ended up working for the Inland Revenue in the first place. Pretty soon he is overseas on the expense account, attracted to a young lady his fiancee would not approve of, and up to his neck in murder and fraudulent champagne. Yet another fast moving, clever, and funny entry in the entertaining series which began back in Unbecoming Habits with Simon looking into a little truth in labeling problem involving a mysterious group of monks. If you don’t know these discover them.

   Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer — A bit of entertaining froth from the mistress of the Regency romance and the creator of sleuths Hannayside and Hemingway, this sprightly comedy mystery reads the way a good British comedy mystery of the era plays on screen. There is a handsome likable hero, an attractive heroine in trouble, a mystery to be solved, a satisfying amount of shooting around in the dark on narrow foggy country roads in low slung roadsters, and a better crime, plot, and solution than is really needed to make it fun. Why shoot a butler? Why not, if the result is this much fun?

   A Fairly Dangerous Thing by Reginald Hill —Joe Askern, who teaches English in a small English village, has a passion for the local stately hall, Averingrett, and comely ladies with well developed bosoms. When he is recruited by a ring of professional thieves, who plan to systematically loot the stately hall, thanks to a call girl named Cynthia who is more than amply endowed in his other area of interest there are bound to be complications. Just how it all ends for the best is a delightful trip that reads like a slightly risque Ealing comedy.

   Fellow Passenger by Geoffrey Household — Household indulges both his skill at chase and pursuit and his penchant for the picaresque in this tale narrated from the Tower of London, by one Claudio Howard-Wolverston, who finds himself trying to extricate himself from a series of increasingly dangerous coincidences that leave him at sea in a dangerous storm and working as an elephant trainer in a circus while trying to maintain his freedom and clear his name. Household’s best mix of the classic elements of his Rogue Male type novel in a lighter vein. Also check out Olura and The Life and Times of Bernardo Brown for more in this mood.

   One Man Show by Michael Innes — Sir John Appleby takes on art crime in this high handed caper that proceeds like The Lavender Hill Mob or The Ladykillers with chuckles, smiles of recognition, and some expertly orchestrated belly laughs. For my money, this may well be Innes’s masterpiece in terms of all the elements of mystery, movement, and humor. The heist and chase is beautifully choreographed. Almost all the Innes novels are droll; try also his non-series novel Candleshoe.

   Lady in the Morgue * by Jonathan Latimer — Bill Crane takes a nap in the morgue (and if you drank like he did you could sleep anywhere too) and wakes up to murder. Meanwhile he’s hunting a missing heiress and two gangsters are fighting over one’s missing wife. Crane, who is the top detective for Colonel Black’s agency teams with his pal Doc Williams and manages to stay one step ahead of the cops while drinking like a fish and indulging in some still fairly racy patter and situations. On top of all the other virtues of this unvirtuous book it is wonderfully written and a damn good detective story with actual clues and deductions. Preston Foster was good as Crane in three cheap but effective Crime Club films with Frank Jenks as Doc. Latimer was likely the raciest writer of the screwball school, with Crane having a penchant for naked ladies unsurpassed until Mike Hammer. If anything The Dead Don’t Care and Red Gardenias are even more screwball and racier, as is his ultra-tough Solomon’s Vineyard.

   The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie — Television’s House, and Bertie Wooster, not to mention Blackadder’s benighted buddy, penned this top notch and laugh out loud funny thriller, about an ex-Special Forces type who tries to do a good turn and ends up battling terrorists and a plot to sell tactical missiles by staging a terrorist atrocity. If that doesn’t sound funny, imagine it narrated in Laurie’s dry acerbic style with just enough sense of the ridiculous to leaven the very real suspense and violent action. I have seldom been as thrilled by a book I laughed out loud out at.

   Out of Sight * by Elmore Leonard — He’s a charming crook escaped from prison and she’s a U.S. Marshall assigned to catch him, of course falling for each other while he tries to elude capture and she tries to bring him in is out of the question. Made into an entertaining film with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez by Stephen Soderbergh. And yes, I Iike this much better than Get Shorty or Maximum Bob, but both are also very funny.

   The Norths Meet Murder * by Richard and Frances Lockridge — After Nick and Nora Charles Jerry and Pam North are the epitome of the married with murder set. Originating in a series of sketches in The New Yorker, Lockridge combined the Norths with murder and his career was set (by all accounts Frances only contributed her name and Pam’s character). This first one is as good a place as any to dip in. Despite being played by Gracie Allen in their only film, Pam, in the Nora Charles tradition, is one of the sexiest wives in fiction. The cats never bothered me, but you may not be so tolerant. This one as recently commented is also a fine snapshot of the period it was written in. Barbara Britton, from the television series with Richard Denning, was much closer to my idea of Pam North.

   Venus With Pistol by Gavin Lyall — Humor isn’t the first thing you think of in relation to Lyall’s brilliant thrillers, but this one about a dealer in rare and sometimes spurious antique guns who finds himself drawn into a scam of international proportions with a mercenary and amorous princess and some very bad men is both very funny and very exciting. The book was delayed for several months while Lyall experimented to see the trick with the antique gun could actually work.

   Who Is Killing the Great Chef’s of Europe? * by Nan and Ivan Lyons — a beautiful chef and her ex-husband, a gauche American fast food entrepreneur, find themselves as suspects, targets, and sleuths in this sophisticated romp through the best kitchens in Europe as someone is targeting and murdering Europe’s finest chef’s with their own specialties. Could it be the food critic and gourmand who is dying because of all their rich foods he can’t resist? This was made into a charming film with Jacqueline Bissett, George Segal, Robert Morley as the food critic, and various guest stars as the chef’s and a script by Peter Stone (1776, Charade). Re-read and re-viewed recently both are as good as remembered.

   Please Write For Details by John D. MacDonald — Yes, I know most of you would have chosen The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything, but this clever con artist scheme has always seemed to me under appreciated as an art colony fraud involves the usual collection of MacDonald characters and who is double crossing whom gets lost in the complications.

   Whiskey Galore * by Compton Mackenzie — A crisis strikes a small Scottish island when the war interferes with their ration of whiskey. Things are getting pretty desperate until a ship laden with the precious stuff is run aground on the nearby rocks. A desperate plan is then unfolded to salvage the cargo, but that is only the start of their problems as the Royal Navy and the excise man both want to know where the whiskey went precipitating a heroic effort by the entire island population to hide the precious cargo. Charming comic novel by a leading literary light who dabbled in spy novels too. Made into one of the funniest British films ever as Whiskey Galore, aka Tight Little Island by the legendary Ealing Studios. No, it isn’t in Hubin, but technically I consider smuggling and evading the police at the least a crime novel. Mackenzie himself has a small role in the film.

   Let’s Kill Uncle * by Rohan O’Grady — a pair of orphans stand to inherit their parents fortune, if they can survive being sent to live with their ex commando uncle in Canada, who in turn stands to inherit if something should happen to them. What are the poor dears to do? Murder comes to mind — more-or-less in self defense. Black comedy made into a decent William Castle film with Nigel Green the homicidal uncle.

   The Penguin Pool Murders * by Stuart Palmer — Spinster schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers is one of the great contributions from the American school of the detective novel, a woman with steel in her backbone as well as her whalebone in her stays, and a fine appreciation for spotting skullduggery after years of teaching children. That her foil Oscar Piper is one of the most likable policemen in the genre just makes it all the better. Then take all those ingredients and add perfection in the horsey face of Dame Edna May Oliver and the Irish weariness of James Gleason, throw in a small penguin named Oscar, who himself became a star, and the result was magic in print and on screen. Some solid detective work too.

   Hugger Mugger in the Louvre by Elliot Paul — Best remembered today for his non-fiction The Last Time I Saw Paris and Life and Death in a Small Spanish Town, Paul was an original humorist whose books about expatriate professor Homer Evans and his gun-toting Montana born girlfriend in a surreal Paris out of a Marx Brothers’ film have to be experienced to be believed. This is the second, after The Murder of Mickey Finn, and finds Paul in even deeper waters. The books started out to be a satire of S. S. Van Dine and Philo Vance, but that went by the wayside before chapter one was over and they took off on their own madcap way. Just fasten your seatbelt and bind up your ribs.

   The People vs. Withers and Malone * by Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer — It’s still not clear who had the idea to team bibulous Chicago lawyer John J. Malone with spinster teacher Hildegarde Withers, but the result was six of the most entertaining novellas in the genre as the two unlikely partners team and make life miserable for murderers and the police, mostly Malone’s foil Captain von Flannagan. One of the novellas came to the screen with decidedly mixed results as Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone. Marjorie Main was miscast and painful as the substitute for Withers, but James Whitmore was Malone in the flesh. The writing is mostly by Palmer, but the two worked so often together as screenwriters it is almost impossible to tell.

   Trial By Fury by Craig Rice — Jake and Helene Justus got out of Chicago during the hot summer for a little trip and of course first thing off the bat they witness a murder and Jake is arrested as a material witness. Enter the cavalry in the person of John J. Malone, who finds himself not only defending Jake, but the local prosecutor. There is a serial killer who never kills the same way twice, bodies buried in cellars, dollar gin, a lynch mob, an exploding bank, a burning madhouse, and Hercules, a dog whose love for Malone and dollar gin are equally pure, and I’m not sure what more you would want in a mystery. The detective work is solid, the characters are American Gothic eccentric, but not too broadly drawn, the motive and murderer are believable, and the final clinch will leave you with a tear in your eye. Hercules gets my vote for the best dog in the genre — sorry, Asta.

   Lazarus #7 by Richard Sale — One critic labeled it a ‘gay Hollywoodian gambol,’ but as James Sandoe pointed out, you should read it anyway. The screwball school as done by a master, as a doctor who specializes in tropical diseases has to figure out why someone is trying to kill him when he arrives in Hollywood. The answer is a stunner saved practically for the last page.

   Red Diamond by Mark Schorr — Red Diamond is a rough tough private eye out of the pulps by way of Mickey Spillane — at least in his day dreams. The rest of the time he is a henpecked cab driver. At least until his wife throws out his precious pulp collection and he suffers a schizophrenic break and thinks he is Red Diamond, private eye. Havoc and hilarity follow as the police, underworld, and medical establishment all try to survive Red’s war on crime. First of a handful of fast paced funny reads.

   The Game of X * by Robert Sheckley — William Martin is an American graduate student in Europe, asked by a friend in intelligence to pose as Agent X. X is a legendary secret agent created by the CIA to act as a general bogeyman to the Russians and since he doesn’t exist he can be anywhere, do anything, and take credit for every coup. Alas for William his one meeting as X goes awry and he finds himself in the middle of the most dangerous mission of X’s career — and sadly William is a complete goof ball. Or is he? Maybe he was really X all along … The Disney film Condorman turns X into a comic book hero and is best forgotten, save that it reunites Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed from Michael Winner’s The Jokers.

   The Trouble With Harry * by Jack Trevor Story — The trouble with Harry is that he is dead and his body keeps turning up. This novel by Story, who also wrote for the Sexton Blake Library among other things, is a bit racier, and a shade darker than Alfred Hitchock’s black comedy, which moves the whole affair to New England, but the essentials are there and on the whole, a delight.

   Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout — a prize bull is murdered. Nero Wolfe must leave the brownstone for the country, and ends up stranded in an open field on a rock with a very angry bull. Do I really have to say anymore? Damn fine bit of detective work too.

   Chinaman’s Chance by Ross Thomas — Artie Wu is the heir to the throne of Imperial China and the partner of Quincy Durant, and they, along with the divinely named Otherguy Overby get drawn into a caper of complexities so intricate only Ross Thomas could have brought it off. If The Maltese Falcon had been a comedy it would have been this book. And it almost brought Thomas the fame and fortune he deserved.

   Texas by the Tail by Jim Thompson — A strain of black humor runs in many of Thompson’s darkest novels, but here he takes on some charming con artists and shows a skill for a light touch that belies his reputation. Perhaps not his best book, but certainly his most surprising, and evidence there was more than met the eye or our expectations if fate had been a bit kinder.

   The Gracie Allen Murder Case (aka Scent of Murder) * by S. S. Van Dine — A stunt, pure and simple, and one that should not have worked, but somehow the comedienne seemed to revitalize Van Dine and Philo Vance, and the result, if not a great mystery, is charming and funny, and Van Dine, who hadn’t shown a great deal in the way of humor before, nails Gracie Allen’s voice and manner of thinking with perfect pitch. Everyone in the movie, including Warren William’s Vance, seemed to enjoy themselves too.

   Winter’s Madness by David Walker — Scottish lord Duncatto had planned a quiet little Christmas holiday with friends and family — complicated by a possible Nazi war criminal, a nymphomaniac with a child prodigy, the mafia, Duncatto’s ripe daughter and even riper wife, some eccentric scientists, a charming android, attempted murder, a shoot out on a private ski run, and James Bond’s idiot fellow agent Tiger Clyde. Snappy satirical farce by the author of the whimsical Wee Geordie and Harry Black and the Tiger. One of my favorite books of all time.

   The Busy Body * by Donald Westlake — – My favorite Westlake comic novel isn’t a Dortmunder caper, but a gangster comedy about a nebbish mobster who dreams of being an accountant, a body that won’t stay buried, and the most incompetent assortment of gangsters in history. The William Castle film with Sid Caesar, Richard Pryor, and Robert Ryan was funny too. I am willing to grant though this my be my favorite because it was my first Westlake.

       — Fifty Without Comment (mostly)

Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham
She Shall Have Murder* by Delano Ames
Tales of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov
High Noon at Midnight by Michael Avallone
Homicide For Hannah by Dwight Babcock
The Dorothy Parker Murder Case by George Baxt
The Revenge of Kali Ra by K. K. Beck
Sail a Crooked Ship* by Nathaniel Benchley
A Bullet in the Ballet by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon
Green For Danger* by Christianna Brand
Tomorrow is Murder by Carter Brown
Madball by Fredric Brown
Partners in Crime* by Agatha Christie
Penelope* by E.V. Cunningham (Howard Fast)
In the Fog by Richard Harding Davis
The Hog Murders by William De Andrea
Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector by Lillian de la Torre
Dolly and the Bird of Paradise by Dorothy Dunnett
The Man With Bogart’s Face* by Andrew J. Fenady
Blood and Honey by G. G. Fickling
A Graveyard of My Own by Ron Goulart
The Judas Pair by Jonathan Gash
The Limping Goose by Frank Gruber
Cotton Comes to Harlem* by Chester Himes
The Man Who Murdered Goliath by Geoffrey Homes
Siskiyou by Richard Hoyt
Every Little Crook and Nanny* by Evan Hunter
Johnny Havoc Meets Zelda by John Jakes
The Lady in The Car With Glasses and a Gun* by Sebastian Japrisot
Murder on the Yellowbrick Road by Stuart Kaminsky
The Murder of the Marahrajah by H. R. F. Keating
Murder by Latitude by Rufus King
Keystone by Peter Lovesey
Sci Fi by William Marshall
Fletch* by Gregory McDonald
Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Charlotte McLeod
The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne
The Mummy Murder Case by Dermot Morrah
Hard Knocker’s Luck by William Murray
Murder at Horsethief by James O’Hanlon
Puzzle for Wantons by Q. Patrick
The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters
Dover Two by Joyce Porter
The Kubla Khan Caper by Richard Prather
Silky by Leo Rosten
Something’s Down There by Mickey Spillane (Spillane still Spillane, but in a much lighter hearted mood than normal)
Caroline Miniscule by Andrew Taylor
The Corpse Came C.O.D. by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
Bony and the Kelly Gang by Arthur W. Upfield
The Choirboys* by Joseph Waumbaugh

   If at least one of these doesn’t get a chuckle out of you, you may want to consider a funnybone transplant.

   Steve suggested we might try our hands at a 100 best list, so here with some reservations is mine. Reservation number 1:   I have limited myself to mystery and suspense novels, so no thrillers, adventure, or spy novels.

   Number 2:   I have no short story collections on the list — I couldn’t top the Queen’s Quorum anyway.

   Number 3:   I am skipping the early classics from The Moonstone to The Hound of the Baskervilles. For all practical purposes this list begins with the birth of the Golden Age which most would place with E. C. Bentley’s Trent’s Last Case. The books before that are deserving of a list of their own.

   Also, I have limited myself to one title per writer though obviously some writers should have multiple entries.

   The final reservation is that this is no “best” list. More a favorites list, and of course at different times there would be some variation. Some favorite writers don’t make the list because another, sometimes lesser, writer wrote one very good book. And though they wrote well after the cut off date I’m leaving R. Austin Freeman to the earlier period along with Conan Doyle and Chesterton.

   And warning, this list is extremely eclectic.

   It struck me too how many of these had been filmed so a * marks a film version.

   With those caveats, herewith:

About the Murder of The Circus Queen by A. Abbott *
The Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin
Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham *
Terror on Broadway by David Alexander
Perish By the Sword by Poul Anderson
Hell Is a City by William Ard
The Unsuspected by Charlotte Armstrong *
Murder in Las Vegas by W. T. Ballard
Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding
Charlie Chan Carries On by Earl Derr Biggers *
The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake *
Bombay Mail by Lawrence G. Blochman *
No Good From a Corpse by Leigh Brackett
Green For Danger by Christianna Brand *
The Clock Strikes Thirteen by Herbert Brean
A Case for Three Detectives by Leo Bruce
The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown *
Asphalt Jungle by W. R. Burnett *
The Secret of High Eldersham by Miles Burton
Fast One by Paul Cain *
Circus Couronne by R. Wright Campbell
The Man Who Could Not Shudder by John Dickson Carr
Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler *
Elsinore by Jerome Charyn
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie *
First Prize by Edward Cline
Stolen Away by Max Allan Collins
Brass Rainbow by Michael Collins
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin
The Wrong Case by James Crumley
Snarl of the Beast by Carroll John Daly
Sally in the Alley by Norbert Davis
The Poisoned Oracle by Peter Dickinson
To Catch A Thief by David Dodge *
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier *
End of the Game (aka The Judge and His Hangman) by Friedrich Duerrenmatt *
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco *
The Naked Spur by Charles Einstein *
The Eighth Circle by Stanley Ellin
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy *
Mirage by Walter Ericson (Howard Fast) *
Double Or Quits by A. A. Fair
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing *
Death Comes to Perigord by John Ferguson
Isle of Snakes by Robert L. Fish
High Art by Rubem Fonseca *
King of the Rainy Country by Nicholas Freeling
Operation Terror by the Gordons *
Take My Life by Winston Graham *
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene *
It Happened In Boston by Russell Greenhan
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett *
Violent Saturday by W. L. Heath *
Why Shoot a Butler by Georgette Heyer
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith *
Night Has 1000 Eyes by George Hopley (Cornell Woolrich) *
Flush as May by P. M. Hubbard
Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes *
One Man Show by Michael Innes
An Unsuitable Job For a Woman by P. D. James *
The 10:30 From Marseilles by Sebastian Japrisot *
The Last Express by Baynard Kendrick
Night and the City by Gerald Kersh *
Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle
Murder of a Wife by Henry Kuttner
Headed for a Hearse by Jonathan Latimer *
Curtain for a Jester by Richard and Francis Lockridge
Let’s Hear it For the Deaf Man by Ed McBain *
Through a Glass Darkly by Helen McCloy
The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald
The List of Adrian Messenger by Philip MacDonald *
Black Money by Ross Macdonald
Gideon’s Day by J. J. Marric (John Creasey) *
Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh
Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller *
A Neat Little Corpse by Max Murray *
Sleeper’s East by Frederic Nebel *
Let’s Kill Uncle by Rohan O’Grady *
Puzzle for Fools by Q. Patrick
Fracas in the Foothills by Eliot Paul
To Live and Die in L.A. by Gerald Petivich *
Shackles by Bill Pronzini
Cat of Many Tails by Ellery Queen *
Footprints on the Ceiling by Clayton Rawson
Trial by Fury by Craig Rice
The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillett *
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers *
So Evil My Love by Joseph Shearing *
Stain on the Snow (aka The Snow is Black) by Georges Simenon *
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall & Per Waloo *
Death Under Sail by C. P. Snow
Blues for the Prince by Bart Spicer
One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane
Judas Inc. by Kurt Steel
Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout
Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot
The Bishop Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine *
Above the Dark Circus by Hugh Walpole
Death Takes the Bus by Lionel White
Death in a Bowl by Raoul Whitfield

Editorial Comment:   Previously on this blog have been top 100 lists from Barry Gardner and Jeff Meyerson. Coming tomorrow is another such list from Geoff Bradley, editor and publisher of CADS (Crime and Detective Stories) . Thanks to all!

   Barry Gardner’s recent list has inspired me to do one of my own. I’ve tried to give a good variety by limiting myself to no more than two titles per author (or pseudonym). I’ve also tried to include books that impressed me greatly when read, even if it was twenty years ago and I’d probably not read that book today. On some heavily read authors (McBain, Simenon) titles were chosen nearly at random. Still, it’s a list that I can live with, and one you might find worth checking for titles to try.

Neil Albert, THE JANUARY CORPSE
Eric Ambler, A CORPSE FOR DIMITRIOS
Delano Ames, SHE SHALL HAVE MURDER
Linda Barnes, A TROUBLE OF FOOLS
Lawrence Block, WHEN THE SACRED GINMILL CLOSES
Christianna Brand, GREEN FOR DANGER
Jay Brandon, FADE THE HEAT
Herbert Brean, WILDERS WALK AWAY
Fredric Brown, THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT
          NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK
Paul Cain, FAST ONE
John Dickson Carr, THE THREE COFFINS
Raymond Chandler, FAREWELL, MY LOVELY
         THE LADY IN THE LAKE
George C. Chesbro, BONE
Agatha Christie, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
          PARTNERS IN CRIME
Liza Cody, BUCKET NUT
Max Allan Collins, TRUE DETECTIVE
K. C. Constantine, THE MAN WHO LIKED SLOW TOMATOES
William J. Coughlin, DEATH PENALTY
Bill Crider, SHOTGUN SATURDAY NIGHT
James Crumley, THE LAST GOOD KISS
Peter Dickinson, KING & JOKER
Jerome Doolittle, BODY SCISSORS
Arthur Conan Doyle, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
John Dunning, BOOKED TO DIE
Aaron Elkins, OLD BONES
James Ellroy, THE BLACK DAHLIA
Loren D. Estleman, SUGARTOWN
          PEEPER
Michael Gilbert, DEATH IN CAPTIVITY
Joe Goes, HAMMETT
James W. Hall, UNDER COVER OF DAYLIGHT
Parnell Hall, DETECTIVE
Donald Hamilton, DEATH OF A CITIZEN
Dashiell Hammett, RED HARVEST
          THE MALTESE FALCON
Joseph Hansen, A COUNTRY OF OLD MEN .
Thomas Harris, RED DRAGON
Carl Hiaasen, TOURIST SEASON
Tony Hillerman, DANCE HALL OF THE DEAD
          A THIEF OF TIME
William Hjortsberg, FALLING ANGEL
P. D. James, SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE
Faye Kellerman, DAY OF ATONEMENT
Jonathan Kellerman, WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS
Joseph Koenig, FLOATER
Jonathan Latimer, MURDER IN THE MADHOUSE
Elmore Leonard, CITY PRIMEVIL
Ira Levin, A KISS BEFORE DYING
Michael Z. Lewin, NIGHT COVER
Dick Lochte, SLEEPING DOG
Peter Lovesey, WOBBLE TO DEATH
          THE FALSE INSPECTOR DEW
Arthur Lyons, CASTLES BURNING
Frank McAuliffe, OF ALL THE BLOODY CHEEK
Ed McBain, LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF MAN
Gregory Mcdonald, FLETCH
John D. MacDonald, THE END OF THE NIGHT
          THE DREADFUL LEMON SKY
Ross Macdonald, THE GALTON CASE
          THE CHILL
Dan J. Marlowe, THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH
Margaret Maron, BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER
Ngaio Marsh, ARTISTS IN CRIME
W. Somerset Maugham, ASHENDEN
Archer Mayor, OPEN SEASON
L. A. Morse, THE OLD DICK
Robert B. Parker, GOD SAVE THE CHILD
Marcia Muller, PENNIES ON A DEAD WOMAN’S EYES
Ridley Pearson, UNDERCURRENTS
Anthony Price, OTHER PATHS TO GLORY
Bill Pronzini, BONES
Ellery Queen, CALAMITY TOWN
          CAT OF MANY TAILS
Barnaby Ross (Queen), THE TRAGEDY OF Y
Dorothy L. Sayers, MURDER MUST ADVERTISE
Laurence Shames, FLORIDA STRAITS
Richard Shattuck, THE WEDDING GUEST SAT ON A STONE
Georges Simenon, MAIGRET GOES HOME
Roger L. Simon, THE BIG FIX
Gerald Sinstadt, THE FIDELIO SCORE
Maj Sjowall/Per Wahloo, THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN
Julie Smith, NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
Richard Stark (Westlake), BUTCHER’S MOON
Rex Stout, TOO MANY COOKS
Grif Stockley, PROBABLE CAUSE
Josephine Tey, THE DAUGHTER OF TIME
Ross Thomas, THE FOOLS IN TOWN ARE ON OUR SIDE
          CHINAMAN’S CHANCE
Jim Thompson, THE KILLER INSIDE ME
          A HELL OF A WOMAN
Arthur W. Upfield, DEATH OF A LAKE
Donald E. Westlake, DANCING AZTECS
Teri White, FAULT LINES
Kate Wilhelm, O, SUSANNAH!
Charles Willeford, MIAMI BLUES
Stuart Woods, CHIEFS
Eric Wright, FINAL CUT

Editorial Comment:   I have one more list like this one to post, and perhaps two. Yours would be welcome, if you’d like to do one. The ground rules are pretty much up to you; any restrictions or boundaries you’d like to place on it are yours to make and to abide by. If you’d care to come up with only a top 10, 15, or 50, that’s fine, too.

    When he agreed to let me reprint this list, Jeff promised to give his reactions when he saw it again. He came up with this list of books and authors 17 years ago, and he hasn’t seen or thought about it since.

   Of all the authors who in the years after World War II moved mystery fiction “from the detective story to the crime novel,” perhaps the most influential American woman was Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995).

   Certainly she’s the only one to have received so much critical attention after her death: first Andrew Wilson’s biography in 2003, more recently Joan Schenkar’s The Talented Miss Highsmith, which isn’t a conventional biography but more an exploration of Highsmith’s obsession-torn mind and emotions and how they spilled over into novels like Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

   If you think Cornell Woolrich was something of a psychopath and a creep, you don’t know the meaning of those words till you’ve encountered Highsmith.

   Both, of course, were homosexual. I gather from Schenkar’s book that Highsmith, who was born in Texas and came of age in the feverish New York of the World War II years and went through lovers with the fury of a Texas twister, was never terribly comfortable with being a lesbian.

   Woolrich was perhaps the most deeply closeted, self-hating homosexual male author that ever lived. Both wound up worth several million but often acted as if they were penniless. Both lived mainly on booze, cigarettes and coffee, with peanut butter added to the diet in Highsmith’s case.

   Both bequeathed their copyrights and other property to institutions, not human beings. Woolrich left an autobiographical manuscript (Blues of a Lifetime) which is full of obvious fiction; Highsmith left 8000 pages of notebooks which, as Shenkar demonstrates, are also pockmarked with falsifications.

   But there were notable differences too. Just to mention one, Highsmith was fixated on possessions, keeping everything (except any paper trail leading back to the seven years she had spent in her twenties writing scripts for comic books like Spy Smasher and Jap Buster Johnson), while Woolrich kept nothing, not even copies of his novels and stories.

   It’s most unlikely that the two ever met. Woolrich read very little crime fiction but appeared regularly in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties and may have read Highsmith’s EQMM stories.

   We know she read the magazine steadily and, in her book Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, devoted almost a full page to Woolrich’s “Murder After Death” (EQMM, December 1964).

   Why did she single out this rarely reprinted and never collected tale? Perhaps she saw something akin to her own evil protagonists in Georg Mohler, a loser at the game of love who turns to crime for emotional revenge.

   When the wealthy and lovely Delphine rejects him for law student Reed Holcomb and then dies a sudden but natural death, Mohler concocts a laughably dumb plot to sneak into the funeral parlor, inject poison into her body and frame Holcomb for murder.

   Woolrich’s detail work is sloppy and implausible and his climactic twist, like those in several of his earlier stories, comes straight out of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. But the scene where Mohler hides in the funeral home and posthumously poisons his lover’s corpse is a gem of poetic horror.

   If any single element in the tale deserved Highsmith’s attention it was this one. In fact she spent most of the page summarizing the plot, calling it a “quite well-done gimmick story” with “an elaborate but quite entertaining and believable scaffolding….” Go figure.

   It was a gimmick—the two men in Strangers on a Train (1950) agreeing (or did they?) to exchange murders — that first made crime fiction readers (not to mention Alfred Hitchcock) take notice of the not yet 30-year-old Highsmith.

   Later authors including Nicholas Blake and Fredric Brown worked their own variations on the theme. But who remembers its first appearance in the genre?

   Mum’s the Word for Murder (1938) uses very much the same gimmick, although here it involves three murders, not two, and is saved till the solution rather than employed as a springboard.

   The byline on this long-forgotten book was Asa Baker but the author’s real name was Davis Dresser and his best-known pseudonym was Brett Halliday, which he used for the all but endless adventures of Miami PI Michael Shayne, beginning in 1939, a year after Mum’s the Word came out.

   As chance would have it, much of both novels is set in Texas, where both Dresser and Highsmith spent several of their formative years.

RICHARD MATHESON – Someone Is Bleeding. Lion #137, paperback original, 1953. Reprinted in Noir – Three Novels of Suspense: Someone Is Bleeding; Fury on Sunday; Ride the Nightmare: Forge, hardcover & trade ppbk, 2005. (Previous limited edition: G & G Books, hc, 1997.)   Film: Fox-Lira, France, 1974, as Les Seins de Glace (Icy Breasts).

   While Richard Matheson would go on to become a major figure in the fields of fantasy and science fiction with such distinguished works as I Am Legend and his Shock! series of short-story collections, his first novel was solidly criminous — a book whose influences ran heavily to James M. Cain and Hemingway.

   Someone Is Bleeding is the somewhat overwrought tale of writer David Newton who meets a lovely but deeply disturbed young woman named Peggy Lister and falls into tormented love with her.

   Peggy, icon that she is, is surrounded by men whose overwhelming desire in life is to possess her. Because of her psychological problems, possession means keeping her physically around them — since it is unlikely that anyone will ever have her heart or mind, given her pathological distrust of men, which seems to stem from having been raped by her father.

   For its era, Bleeding was a surprisingly complex psychosexual tale. Peggy, a dark goddess who literally rules the fives of her men, is all the more chilling a woman for the sympathetic way in which David sees her for most of the book. She is the helpless, beautiful woman-child that many men fantasize about and long to protect as proof of their own masculinity.

   As the novel rushes to its truly terrifying climax (it is an ending that must rank, for pure horror, with the best of Fredric Brown and Cornell Woolrich), we see how much Peggy comes to represent the pawn in a quest. Her men are willing to scheme, lie, and die to have her.

   Despite its foreshortened structure, which gives it the singular tone of a short story, and despite the fact that the prose occasionally becomes overheated — one wishes for a flash of humor once in a while — Someone Is Bleeding is a satisfyingly complex, evocative study of loneliness, dream and pathology.

   Matheson also gives us an exceptionally good look at the Fifties and its snake-pit moral code, its demeaning view of women, its defeated view of men. He packs an icy poetry, a bittersweet love song, and moments of real terror into this debut.

         ———
   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:   This novel by Richard Matheson was previously reviewed on this blog by Dan Stumpf.

WALTER C. MASTERMAN – The Yellow Mistletoe. Jarrolds, UK, hardcover, 1930. E. P. Dutton, US, 1930. Reprint edition: Ramble House, 2009.

   I think KEW enjoyed this one for its sense of adventure.

   It begins with a murder in the London subway in 1930. The Rev. George Shepherd was on his way to deliver important documents to Scotland Yard when he’s found dead at the foot of a stairway. The official cause is an accidental fall.

   Sir Arthur Sinclair, a retired police investigator soon takes an interest in the case. He discovers the Rev. Shepherd was serving in a small town in Derbyshire, where he’d relocated to after his second marriage. The Reverend was survived by a son (Ronald) from the first marriage and daughter (Diana) from the second. Both of his wives had died, the second was found frightened to death in a wooded area near his church.

   Rev. Shepherd’s son and daughter soon make an appearance. We don’t get much of a description of either of them (descriptions of the characters is one of the few weak points of the novel), but we are told his daughter possesses golden hair and is the very image of her late mother (also named Diana).

   At this point the novel bogs down a bit as the step-siblings busy themselves dealing with the death of their father. Sir Arthur pops in and out and more characters are introduced. There’s an Italian restaurateur named Ganzani who tries to “buy” Diana for parties unknown. Carstairs, a chum of Ronald from his college days, makes an appearance. He has interests of his own in Diana.

   There’s a rich uncle R. Reginald Shepherd, who seems to know more about the reverend’s dead wife than he will admit, but he soon dies also. And we are introduced to Dr. Smart, a research physician. Lastly, there’s a smart set, Ralph and Doris Gorringe, ready to play tennis at the drop of a straw hat. Masterman has an irritating tendency to introduce a lot of characters quickly with similar names.

   It’s the half-point where the book turns from a conventional 1930’s mystery novel to a tale of high adventure. Diana suddenly disappears with Carstairs. It’s not clear if she was kidnapped or went willingly.

   Her step-brother Ronald decides to pursue her across Europe with the Gorringe kids in tow. The trail first leads to an ancient Italian town near Lake Nemi, then across the mountains of Bulgaria. Along the way they discover Carstairs is the leader of a lost tribe of a Greek fertility cultists, which survive in a hidden valley near the Black Sea. They practice unspeakable rites at spring. And the cult has designs on Diana, whose mother fled from the valley.

   It’s up to the mysterious Sir Arthur to save the day.

   Obviously Masterman studied George Frazer’s The Golden Bough for the ancient Greek survivalists in the lost valley. There’s plenty of references to the “priest-king” and Diana of the Woods. It wasn’t George Lucas alone who found Frazer useful for a work of fiction.

   I give credit to Masterman for a brief but well thought out depiction of an isolated lost race. Instead of portraying them as pure representatives of the noble past, he points out all the problems caused by in-breeding. Even the crops are having trouble .

   As for the title, it refers to a particular plant the initiates of the Greek cult use to identify each other. Sprigs of yellow mistletoe pop-up all over the place in the first 100 pages.

   Ramble House has done of a fine job of getting this book and other novels by Walter Masterman back into print.

Editorial Comments: This review first appeared on Tim’s Z7HQ blog. He’s graciously allowed me to reprint it here as a way for me to introduce him to you, if you haven’t stopped by there already.

   Besides reviewing books from Karl Edward Wagner’s three lists of Best Horror Novels (13 each in the three following categories: Supernatural Horror, Science-Fictional Horror, Non-Supernatural Horror), Tim covers pulp fiction (Operator 5, Doc Savage, etc.), mystery fiction (Fredric Brown, John Dickson Carr and so on), and numerous titles of a similar nature. Drop by and say hello.

   And, if you think you’ll find a copy of this book in either of its original UK or US editions, you’ll have another think coming. There’s not one offered for sale on the Internet. It’s the Ramble House edition or nothing.