TONY ROME. 20th Century Fox, 1967. Frank Sinatra, Jill St. John, Richard Conte, Sue Lyon, Gena Rowlands, Simon Oakland, Jeffrey Lynn, Lloyd Bochner, Rocky Graziano, Shecky Greene. Title song: “Tony Rome,” written by Lee Hazelwood, performed by Nancy Sinatra. Screenplay by Richard Breen, based on the novel Miami Mayhem by Anthony Rome (Marvin H. Albert). Directed by Gordon Douglas.

   Cop-turned-private detective Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) lives on a powerboat in Miami. In a captain’s hat and a yellow turtle-neck, he is enjoying the sunshine when he gets a call from Ralph Turpin. The pair were partners in the police but now hate each other. Now a “hotel dick,” Turpin has discovered a young, drunk woman lying unconscious in one of the rooms. He and the manager want her out before the police start bothering them and are ready to pay Rome for the service.

   Diana Pines, it turns out, is not just anyone, but the daughter of millionaire construction magnate Rudy Kosterman and her father is grateful when Rome brings her home. She has been acting strangely lately and he wants Rome to find out why. Meanwhile, Diana discovers her diamond pin has gone missing, believes it must have been stolen while she was drunk and wants it back. Now hired by the whole family, Rome investigates and soon finds the first of several dead bodies…

   One of the interesting things about the 1960s is seeing how the more established stars handled it. Pretty much all of culture changed and many had to adapt. In the wake of The Beatles, Sinatra was not considered cool anymore and his film career faltered. He had always been the most credible of singers-actors, but Marriage on the Rocks (1965) and Assault on a Queen (1966) both failed at the box office while The Naked Runner (1967) received poor notices. In response, Sinatra turned to the kind of part which would fill out his remaining filmography.

   Around this time, the film noir genre was making a minor resurgence, with Bulitt, Harper, P.J., Madigan and Marlowe. These films tried to recapture the grim and darkly glamourous world of The Big Sleep (1946) and Out of the Past (1947), which themselves were trying to evoke the hardboiled setting of the novels they were often adapting.

   Sinatra was one of the first to get on board with this. Based   on Miami Mayhem, a now-forgotten paperback original by writer Marvin H. Albert, Tony Rome cast him as a private detective in the wise-cracking Phillip Marlowe mold, a jaded yet honourable man in a disreputable business.

   It’s not surprising that he fits the part. Many of Sinatra’s best songs  –  “One for My Baby,” “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” – conjure the kind of bars in which you would expect to find Sam Spade and Mike Hammer, while his trademark trilby made him look like them.

   The film itself is colourful, both aesthetically and otherwise. The Floridian setting gives it a look which is quite at odds with the shadows and neon found elsewhere in the genre (though both the Travis McGee and Mike Shayne books were based around detectives in the Sunshine State).

   The deliberate way in which director Gordon Douglas focuses on young, bikini-clad women make it seem as though the Bond films were an equal inspiration. Nancy Sinatra – who sang the theme to You Only Live Twice the same year – performs the obligatory cheesy theme here while Diamonds Are Forever’s Jill St. John is Ann Archer, a three-time-divorcee whose main problem is being bored between parties.

   Indeed, there is a seediness which is never less than overt as Rome meets junkies, prostitutes, strippers, blackmailers, gangsters and, of course, a murderer. It is balanced, however, with the usual sardonic humour which, in fairness, is genuinely amusing. There are many great lines here (“You’re not a family, you’re a bunch of people who live at the same address!”).

   The juxtaposition between the grim underworld and the sunny scenes of cheery impudence can be a little jarring, however, most notably in a running gag involving a honeymooning couple.

   The plot is convoluted in the way that is expected from all private eye movies. Like most, it begins with a routine job that quickly gets more complex – something of which even Rome is aware. He is independently hired by each of the Kostermans and finds enough skeletons to fill a cemetery.

   In-between times, he gets into the usual fights and chases, though they are more frequent in the first hour than the second, which drags noticeably. The film could certainly have been cut by as much as half an hour, such is the languid pace and extraneous shots of the scenery, which doesn’t always involve the weather.

   As is the way with these things, the script has more names than a phone book and it is not always easy to match them. The motive, however, is an excellent one and clears up a story that, by the end, gets muddier by the moment.

   An entertaining time-waster, Tony Rome makes up for its inconsistent tone and puzzling plot with Sinatra’s familiar, nonchalant charm and an unapologetic persistence in reminding you of the year it was made. A moderate hit at the box office, a sequel Lady in Cement) and Sinatra’s only, followed a year later.

GOODBYE PARADISE. Australia, 1982. Ray Barrett, Robyn Nevin, Guy Doleman, Lex Marinos, Paul Chubb, Janet Scrivener, and Carole Skinner. Written by Bob Ellis and Denny Lawrence. Directed by Carl Schultz. Released on DVD in Australia (Region 0.)

   Okay, drop what you’re doing, put down your book, stop watching whatever’s on TV and go out and find this. Watch it. Then watch it again. It’s that good.

   Ray Barrett (Australia’s Pat O’Brien) stars as a boozy ex-cop-turned-writer, on the verge of a major exposé when his book contract is pulled out from under him under pressure from above. Minutes later he’s summoned to the estate of an old friend, now a senator, who wants him to chase after his runaway daughter.

   What follows is a gaudy Technicolor echo of THE BIG SLEEP, THE GLASS KEY, FAREWELL MY LOVELY and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, with touches of BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN tossed in. And it works. Beautifully. Schultz’s graceful camera work is backed up by Ellis’ and Lawrence’s Chandleresque voice-over narration, read by Barrett with a wry shrug in his voice:

   Even better is the sense of feeling Schultz and his actors evoke. When Barrett meets up with an old friend or an ex-lover (as he does about every ten minutes) one gets the impression that they really care for each other, and the effect is to draw us even closer to the character and his goofball style.

   Schultz & co even extend this to the bad guys. Barrett finds an old buddy getting rich as a Hefner-style guru, bullshitting teenagers for a living, and the look he gives his old friend speaks a mega-series. Third-billed Guy Doleman turns up about two-thirds of the way through as a punctilious military type, and when his ramrod spine bends for a moment in reminiscence, the character achieves dimensions that make his later misdeeds somehow even more depraved.

   Throw in an icy doctor-for-hire, a few greedy politicians and brutal cops, some young space-cadets and a tour-guide pornographer and you have a cast as diverse and exotic as a Russian novel.

   And let me spoil one big surprise here. No, I’m not going to throw in a (SPOILER ALERT!) because this is too good not to share. There’s a moment here where a helpful suspect tells Barrett to come back tomorrow for a vital piece of evidence. And when Barrett does come back tomorrow, the helpful suspect is STILL ALIVE!

   This is ground-breaking!

EDWARD S. AARONS – The Art Studio Murders. Macfadden 50-198, paperback, 1964; Manor, paperback, 1975. Originally published by Handi-Book, #122, as Dark Memory by Edward Ronns; Avon 688, paperback, 1950, also as by Edward Ronns but under the new title.

   First let me assure everyone out there that I don’t feel the least bit suicidal. But if I ever do, I know the perfect, fool-proof method: I shall simply call the Police, tell them I know who the Killer is, but I can’t name him over the phone — I must meet a Detective and tell him in person. Meeting arranged, I can simply sit back and relax, secure in the knowledge that when the cops get here, they will find me dead, bludgeoned from behind. Or fatally stabbed. Or perhaps shot. Maybe poisoned, a la The Big Sleep, but that’s rare. In any case, I shall be well & truly Dead.

   Works all the time in fiction. With metronomic regularity. So much so that when I came across it here, I had a flashback to High School and Julius Caesar:

   Well I couldn’t say off-hand, but I myself just couldn’t take any more. I closed Art Studio and picked up something else.

   Up to that point, it had been a perfectly serviceable mystery. Aspiring artist and babe-magnet Henry Dana gets pushed off a subway platform two days before his big show at a prestigious gallery. No one sees him get pushed, the police are inclined to disbelieve him, and he himself begins to have doubts, but a second attack… well you can write the rest yourself. Or read my copy, which has a rather nice cover.

   I just couldn’t get past that familiar phone call that always, invariably, repeatedly, inexorably, eternally, persistently, habitually, unceasingly, perpetually, unchangingly, endlessly, unfailingly, inalterably, everlastingly, and without exception, leads to the same end.

THE VAMPIRE’S GHOST. Republic Pictures, 1945. John Abbott, Charles Gordon, Peggy Stewart, Grant Withers, Emmett Vogan, Adele Mara, Roy Barcroft. Loosely based on the 1819 short story “The Vampyre” by John Polidori. Director: Lesley Selander.

   Make no mistake about it. This one is a cheapie. From the very first scene, you can see that it’s filmed primarily on a sound stage. And the running time – a total of 59 minutes – also solidifies the fact that this one was a quickie. Get it made, get it released, make some money, move on to the next film.

   Despite its low-budget origins, The Vampire’s Ghost remains a rather fun little horror film. A large part of that has to do with the somewhat unusual script. Not unusual in terms of its structure – this one fits well within the confines of the traditional Hollywood screenwriting formula – but because of myriad aspects, both big and small, that make this somewhat obscure vampire film more memorable than it could have been.

   Look no further than the original story writer and co-screenwriter. It’s none other than science fiction pulp writer Leigh Brackett. Her first credited work in cinema, The Vampire’s Ghost is hardly The Big Sleep (1946), let alone Rio Bravo (1959). But the devil, as they say, is in the details.

   Here, the vampire in question isn’t an Eastern European nobleman ensconced in his castle. No. Instead, he’s an urbane expatriate Englishman living somewhere in southern Africa. What’s his profession, you ask? He runs a bar/nightclub/gambling place where sailors come to drink and try their luck at the card table. Already unusual, right? There’s definitely a noir aspect to this vampire film, as well as a western one. Who would think that what motivated a vampire to murder would be his finding out that he was cheated at cards by both a sailor and a saloon waitress?

   Unfortunately, despite the better than average plot details, The Vampire’s Ghost remains an overall talky affair with a lot of mediocre acting. There’s just not that much action, let alone special effects. But the atmospheric moments are good – if stagey – and the final sequence is definitely memorable. In a fun way. There isn’t all that much to analyze in the film. It is what it is. If you like tropical settings and have the ability to immerse yourself in a fantastic world of vampires and voodoo drums pulsing through the steamy jungle night, then you might enjoy this one. There are far worse ways of spending an hour.

RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Simple Art of Murder. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1950. Pocket #916, paperback, 1953. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and paperback.

   Eleven of the twelve stories in is collection are those that Chandler considered the best of his output for the pulps; the other story, “I’ll Be Waiting” was first published in the Saturday Evening Post (although Chandler admittedly felt uncomfortable and restricted writing for the slick-magazine medium). Also included here is Chandler’s famous and controversial essay on detective fiction, first published in the Atlantic Monthly, in which he lauds Hammett and the realistic school of crime writing, and takes a number of shots (some fair, some cheap) at such Golden Age luminaries as Christie, Sayers, and A. A. Milne.

   The stories here, as the dust jacket blurb says with typical publishers’ overstatement bur accurately nonetheless “hit you as hard as if [Chandler] were driving the last spike on the first continental railroad.” “Red Wind,” for instance, begins with one of the finest opening paragraphs in the history of the genre:

   In the original appearance of that story, the private-eye narrator was Johnny Dalmas; here he becomes Philip Marlowe. Similarly, the unnamed narrator in “Finger Man,“ Carmady in “Goldfish,” and Dalmas again in “Trouble 1s My Business” are also changed to Marlowe. Johnny Dalmas does get to keep his own name in “Smart-Aleck Kill,” no doubt because that novelette is told third-person.

   And the same is true of Carmady in “Guns at Cyrano’s.” The only other first person story in the collection, the lighter-toned and somewhat wacky “Pearls Are a Nuisance,” features a much more refined dick named Walter Gage whose antics in search of a string of forty-nine matched pink pearls provide chuckles as well as thrills. Also included arc the tough Black Mask novelettes “Nevada Gas” and “Spanish Blood,” “The King in Yellow” from Dime Detective and “‘Pick-Up on Noon Street” from Detective Fiction Weekly.

   All of these stories appear in several other collections, such the paperback originals Five Murderers (1944) and Finger Man and Other Stories (1946) and the Tower Books hardcover originals Red Wind (1946) and Spanish Blood (1946). Next to The Simple Art of Murder, the most interesting and important Chandler collection is Killer in the Rain (1964), which gathers the eight “cannibalized” stories that were used as the bases for The Big Sleep, Farewell. My Lovely, and The Lady in the Lake.

———
   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.

RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Lady in the Lake. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1943. Pocket #389, paperback; 1st printing, September 1946.  Film: MGM, 1946, as Lady in the Lake (with Robert Montgomery as Philip Marlowe).

   Even though The Lady in the Lake is not Chandler’s best novel. it is this reviewer’s favorite. It too was “cannibalized” from three pulp novelettes: “Bay City Blues·” (Dime Detective, November 1937), “The Lady in the Lake” (Dime Detective, January 1939), “No Crime in the Mountains” (Detective Story, September 1941), but it is not as seamless as The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely, nor as wholly credible. Nevertheless. there is an intangible quality about it, a kind of terrible and perfect inevitability that combines with such tangibles as Chandler’s usual fascinating assortment of characters and some unforgettable moments to make it extra satisfying.

   The novel opens with Marlowe hired by Derace Kjngsley, a foppish perfume company executive, to find his missing wife. Crystal (who he admits he hates and who may or may not have run off with one of his “friends,” Chris Lavery). Marlowe follows a tortuous and deadly trail that leads him from L.A. to the beach community of Bay City, to Little Fawn Lake high in the San Bernardino Mountains, to the towns of Puma Point and San Bernardino, and back to to L.A. and Bay City. And it involves him with a doctor named Almore, a tough cop named Degarmo, a half-crippled mountain caretaker, Bill Chess, whose wife is also missing, Kingsley’s secretary, Miss Adrienne Fromsett and the lady in the lake, among other victims.

   As the dust jacket or the original edition puts it, it is “a most extraordinary case, because … Marlowe understands that what is important is not a clue – not the neatly stacked dishes, not the strange telegram … but rather the character of [Crystal Kingsley]. When he began to find out what she was like, he took his initial steps into a world of evil, and only then did the idea of what she might have done and what might have been done to her take shape. So it was that not one crime but several were revealed, and a whole series of doors that hid cruel things were suddenly opened.

   “Again Chandler proves that he is one of the most brilliant craftsmen in the field, and that his Marlowe is one of the great detectives in fiction.”

   Amen.

   The Lady in the Lake was filmed in 1946. with Robert Montgomery (who also directed) as Marlowe. For its time, it was a radical experiment in film-making, in that it is entirely photographed as if through the eyes of Marlowe — a sort of cinematic version of the first-person narrator, with Montgomery himself never seen except in an occasional mirror reflection. The technique doesn’t quite work – it, not the story, becomes the focus of attention – but the film is an oddity worth seeing.

         ———
   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.

RAYMOND CHANDLER – Farewell My Lovely. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1940. Pocket Book #212, paperback, 1943. Reprinted many times.

   Many critics consider The Long Goodbye to be Chandler’s finest novel. This one disagrees. That distinction should probably go to Farewell, My Lovely – a more tightly plotted, less self-indulgent and overblown book, with characters, scenes, and prose of such artistry that it ranks as not only a cornerstone private-eye novel but a cornerstone work in the genre. Its near-flawless construction is all the more awesome when you consider that like The Big Sleep, it is a product of “canniballzation”: It makes extensive use of “The Man Who Liked Dogs” (Black Mask, March 1936); “Try the Girl” (Black Mask, January 1937); and “Mandarin’s Jade” (Dime Detective, November 1937).

   Marlowe’s client in this case is Moose Malloy, a giant ex-con with a one-track mind: All that matters to him is finding his former girlfriend, Velma, a redhead “cute as lace pants,” who disappeared after he was sent to prison. Marlowe is a reluctant detective, his first encounter with Malloy having ended in the wreckage of a bar, Florian’s, where Velma once worked and a black bouncer suffering a broken neck; but Malloy won’t take no for an answer.

   As Marlowe’s search for Velma develops, “the atmosphere becomes increasingly malevolent and charged with evil.” Among the characters he meets are a foppish blackmailer named Lindsay Marriott; a gin-drinking old lady with secrets and a fine new radio; a beautiful blonde with no morals and a rich husband who doesn’t give a damn; a Hollywood Indian named Second Planting who has “the shoulders of a blacksmith and the … legs of a chimpanzee”; a phony psychic, Jules Amthor: Dr. Sonderborg, who runs a private psychiatric clinic staffed with thugs; Laird Brunelle, the tough operator of a gambling ship called the Royal Crown; and L.A. and Bay City cops, some of whom are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

   The climax, in which Marlowe and Moose Malloy both come face-to-face with the elusive Velma, is a stunner. Like a number of other scenes — especially Marlowe’s drugged imprisonment in Sonderberg’s clinic, in a room “full of smoke [that] hung straight up in the air, in thin lines, straight up and down like a curtain of small clear beads”-it remains sharp in one’s memory long after reading.

    Farewell. My Lovely was filmed twice, once in 1944 as Murder, My Sweet, With Dick Powell as Marlowe, and once in 1975 under its original title, with Robert Mitchum in the starring role. The Powell version is the better of the two, even though Mitchum, aging and slightly seedy, better captures the essence of Marlowe. (Powell isn’t bad, though-a surprisingly gritty performance for an actor who began his career as a crooner in Busby Berkley musicals.) Mike Mazurki’s portrayal of Moose Malloy in Murder My Sweet is more memorable (and credible) than Jack O’Halloran’ s in Farewell. And the noir style of the earlier film better captures the flavor of Chandler’s work than the arty, full-color remake.

         ———
   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.

(Give Me That) OLD-TIME DETECTION. Autumn 2019/Winter 2020. Issue #52. Editor: Arthur Vidro. Old-Time Detection Special Interest Group of American Mensa, Ltd. 36 pages (including covers). Cover image: The 12.30 from Croydon.

   With many Golden Age (GAD) writers nowadays seeing reprints for the first time after years of neglect, Arthur Vidro’s Old-Time Detection (OTD) is more timely than ever, an invaluable resource for neophyte and experienced readers alike. The insights and information contained in any given issue of OTD make it a worthwhile reservoir from which Golden Age enthusiasts may drink with pleasure.

         

~ “From the Editor” by Arthur Vidro:

   Vidro echoes the sentiments of many devotees of classic detective fiction: “. . . every time a publisher [such as Penzler Publishers] reprints a novel of an old-time author, or (as Crippen & Landru does) collects into a book for the first time the short stories of an old-time author, it is cause to rejoice.”

~ “Looking Backward” by Charles Shibuk and “A Sidebar by Arthur Vidro” (2 pages):

   Shibuk discusses the comments supplied by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor for A Book of Prefaces to Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction, 1900-1950: “The collaborators have endowed these highly literate prefaces with all the wisdom of their many years of reading experience. Their pithy remarks are always interesting, enlightening, and a good example of their critical expertise and mandarin tastes.” Arthur Vidro helpfully appends a complete list of those “Fifty Classics.”

~ “Christie Corner” by Dr. John Curran (2 pages):

   The world’s foremost expert on Dame Agatha summarizes recent developments in Old Blighty, with comments of the newest collection of Christie stories, The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural, many of them coming from The Hound of Death (1933); TV adaptations of Christie’s works, some more successful (i.e., being true to the originals) than others; and two festivals honoring She Who Had a Talent to Deceive.

~ “Give Me That Old-Time Detection Film Music” by Marvin Lachman (3 pages):

   Lachman highlights the musical scores of classic detective/mystery/crime movies from the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, and a little beyond, many of which are very memorable, even haunting, such as the ones in The Letter and Double Indemnity (both by Max Steiner); Laura (David Raksin); The Big Sleep (Steiner again); Spellbound, The Naked City, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Miklos Rozsa in all three cases); Sunset Boulevard (Franz Waxman); and Murder on the Orient Express from 1974 (Richard Rodney Bennett).

~ Mega-Review: Mycroft and Sherlock (2018) by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Anna Waterhouse; reviewed by Michael Dirda (2 pages):

   A former basketball superstar (with an acknowledged writing partner) has another go at modifying the Sherlockian mythos in this sequel to Mycroft Holmes (2015). The story introduces a character many readers may have heard of, an “intense young man” who is “arrogant, stubborn, argumentative, and almost bloodthirsty in his taste for newspaper accounts of the latest crimes and atrocities.” Dirda concedes that “it moves along briskly, and the reader’s interest never flags,” but it does have its flaws.

~ “Spotlight on Freeman Wills Crofts” by Charles Shibuk (4 pages):

   For mystery fans Crofts needs no introduction, being a pioneer of the police procedural subgenre starting with The Cask (1920, published the same year as Agatha Christie’s first book), a novel which received high praise from Anthony Boucher: “Possibly the most completely competent first novel in the history of crime, it is the definitive novel of alibis, timetables — and all the absorbing hairsplitting of detection . . .” With some exceptions, Crofts’s later works adhered pretty much to the same pattern, especially after he introduced his most famous detective, Inspector French.

~ “35 Years Ago: Mystery Reviews” by Jon L. Breen (3 pages):

Deadly Reunion (1975; 1982 in the U.S.) by Jan Ekström:

   Unlike other Scandinavian writers who have achieved fame in the Anglophonic world, Ekström takes a less common approach to crime fiction, being “solidly in the tradition of the Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s, with an enthusiasm for locked room and impossible crime situations that has marked him as the Swedish John Dickson Carr”—high praise indeed.

Ice by Ed McBain:

   Starting in the mid-fifties, Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels chronicled the ups and downs of a “family” of police officers, focusing on the group’s various adventures and misadventures in crime solving, and Ice is no different: “Police procedurals come in two types: the single-case type and the modular type. In the latter, truer to life but harder for a writer to bring off successfully, several unconnected cases are involved. McBain has experimented with both types but usually concentrates on one investigation, as he does in Ice.”

~ Fiction: “Murder in the Hills” by T. S. Stribling (The Saint Detective Magazine, February 1956), a Henry Poggioli short story (12 pages):

   Poggioli and his “Watson” walk straight into an old-fashioned Southern feud when they’re persuaded to investigate a possible murder; mercurial Mercutio could bitterly wish Romeo “A plague a’ both your houses,” but Poggioli takes a different approach.

~ Book Reviews:

That Day the Rabbi Left Town (1996) by Harry Kemelman; reviewed by Ruth Ordivar:

   Kemelman’s last book about Rabbi Small seems more noteworthy for its depiction of the inner world of education than its central mystery.

Murder Fantastical (1967) by Patricia Moyes; reviewed by Kathleen Riley:

   It’s hard to go wrong with a writer who “gives you warm and fuzzy British in a skillfully written package — and an engaging series character to boot,” namely Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett.

Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective (1934) by Agatha Christie; reviewed by Rita Hurvord:

   Unlike Christie’s better-known professional heavesdropper Hercule Poirot, Parker Pyne, whose specialty is being a professional helper-outer, “does not proclaim himself a sleuth, because he isn’t one. But he does some sleuthing nonetheless.”

~ The Non-Fiction World of Ed Hoch — Biography: John D. MacDonald by Edward D. Hoch:

   Hoch didn’t just write detective fiction, he wrote about it and the authors who produce it, in this case John D. MacDonald, most remembered for his Travis McGee series.

~ Royal Archives: “Dannay-Stribling, Part Five” by Arthur Vidro:

   Examining the correspondence between Fred Dannay, editor of EQMM, and other authors, in this case, T. S. Stribling, best known as the creator of the Poggioli series.

~ “Random Thoughts on Writing the Paperback Revolution” by Charles Shibuk:

   “In conclusion I think that about one-fourth of the review copies I receive are absolute junk, half of them are—shall we say—uninteresting, and the remainder are of some interest even if they don’t qualify for review.”

~ The Readers Write:

   “Issue #51 was top-notch, with illuminating contributions by the veteran mavens of detective literature . . .”

~ Puzzle Page:

   If you know your Poirot backwards and forwards, then this issue’s puzzle will be a snap.

       Subscription information:

– Published three times a year: spring, summer, and autumn.

– Sample copy: $6.00 in U.S.; $10.00 anywhere else.

– One-year U.S.: $18.00 ($15.00 for Mensans).

– One-year overseas: $40.00 (or 25 pounds sterling or 30 euros).

– Payment: Checks payable to Arthur Vidro, or cash from any nation, or U.S. postage stamps or PayPal.

       Mailing address:

Arthur Vidro, editor
Old-Time Detection
2 Ellery Street
Claremont, New Hampshire 03743

       Web address:

vidro@myfairpoint.net.

RAYMOND CHANDLER “Guns at Cyrano’s.” Ted Carmady #1. Novelette. First published in Black Mask January 1936 (with the leading character named Ted Malvern). Collected in: Five Murderers, Avon, paperback, 1944; Red Wind, World, hardcover, 1946; The Simple Art of Murder, Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1950; Pick-Up on Noon Street, Pocket, paperback, 1952; Stories and Early Novels, Library of America, hardcover, 1995. TV episode: Season 2 Episode 4 of Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, 18 May 1986 (with Powers Boothe as Philip Marlowe).

   â€œGuns at Cyrano’s” is one of the many short works written by Raymond Chandler for the pulps between 1929 and the publication of his first story “Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot” and 1938 and the publication of The Big Sleep, the first Philip Marlowe novel. It is neither the best nor the worst of the lot (certainly not as good as the John Dalmas stories, particularly “Red Wind”), not even the best of the stories written in the third person (“Spanish Blood” and “Nevada Gas” are both better).

   I’ll go further, it isn’t even the best of the stories featuring Carmady (here known as Ted Carmady).

   I am not damning with faint praise though, because it is my personal favorite of the early stories, a pulpy B-movie of a boozy rainy noir tale replete with women no better than they have to be, a hero who isn’t so noble he’s boring or hard to believe in, a few innocents, and of course that famous man who walks into the room with a gun just as the lull starts to set in.

   Carmady, at least as presented here — and you will be forgiven if you question if this is the same Carmady of “Killer in the Rain” — has money and lives well, unlike anyone else in Chandler’s oveure he is not a private detective (he used to be, and even identifies himself as one at one point, but a rich private eye goes against almost everything Chandler ever wrote elsewhere) nor a good cop or house dick, but instead the son of a father who got his money in a clearly stated illegal way, meaning his son knows a lot of shady people and has a romantic notion that maybe he ought to make up for his father’s sins by helping people in trouble:

   Here he is headed for the hotel room he lives in when he spots a victim lying in an open doorway.

   Frankly at this point you wouldn’t be too shocked if Carmady turned out to have a sobriquet like the Saint or the Toff. Only the language is different, and maybe the attitude, the milieu is pretty much the same.

   The Dame, all women in these stories are some shade of Dames, good, bad, classy, murderous, or saintly, is a chanteuse named Jean Adrian (“I do a number at Cyrano’s.”), no better and no worse than life and men have made her, who likes his whiskey and is loathe to admit she was sapped or explain the.22 he finds beside her.

   Seems Miss Adrian has a boy friend who is a fighter, Duke Targo, and the Boys would like him to drop a fight, and they are trying to get to her through him. Naturally no Chandler hero can let that knightly quest go unmet.

   Of course that knightly quest is far from simple this being Chandler, involving a State Senator being blackmailed, a fixer named Doll Conant (His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in.), an innocent victim to be avenged, and that gunfight at Benny Cyrano’s club from the title.

   Before it is over there is more gunplay (more in this single story than all the Marlowe novels put together), a few beatings, plenty of the kind of tough poetic dialogue Chandler was famous for, and a moral of sorts. It all makes for a satisfying pulp tale with the air of a good B movie and with those little touches that make even early Chandler such a pleasure to read.

   As I said, I like this story much more than it deserves for what it is. I’ve even seen it suggested it is the weakest of the Chandler stories, but it just happens to fit me for some reason, which is all any of us can ask of any story.

   If, like me you are a sucker for that particular brand of music, “Guns at Cyrano’s” hits all the notes on key, sonata for Thompson Machine Gun in B-Flat.

GUMSHOE. Columbia, 1971. Albert Finney, Billie Whitelaw, Frank Finlay, Janice Rule, Fulton Mackay, and Bill Dean. Written by Neville Smith. Directed by Stephen Frears.

   A quirky little mystery/comedy/drama that deserves to be better remembered.

   In the early 1970s, Cinephiles and Cineasts knew all about film noir, and looked back on it with affection. But to ordinary Cinners in the movie-going public, it all seemed a bit passé, and so this clever pastiche went largely unseen and unsung. Too bad, because it’s a dandy little film.

   The story, as far as I can make out, centers on Eddie Ginley (Finney) a failure at 31 who ekes out a living as a Bingo Caller and dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian. His long-time girlfriend (Whitelaw) left him to marry his brother, and he’s seeing a Psychiatrist:

   For a birthday present to himself, he puts an ad in the paper:

   To his surprise, a mysterious phone call summons him to meet with a shady fat man, who gives him an envelope with a picture of a girl, a thousand pounds, and a gun. So the chase is on: to find the girl, learn who wants to kill her, and why—a chase complicated by his ex-girlfriend-now-sister-in-law; a femme fatale (Rule) who wants him off the case; and the real hit man who was supposed to pick up the package Eddie got by mistake.

   If it all sounds complicated, well that ain’t the half of it, and it’s further obfuscated by sudden shifts in tone from action to drama to comedy. This was the first feature film of Stephen Frears (and of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, come to think of it) and he opts for speed, with lines bouncing around like something from a Howard Hawks movie:

   The Big Sleep comes to mind, doesn’t it? And like that classic, Gumshoe leaves no time to wonder if it makes sense –which it doesn’t. What it does is provide 86 minutes of laughs, surprises, suspense and drama. And what more could you ask, anyway?