JOAN HESS – Strangled Prose. Claire Malloy #1. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1986. Ballantine, paperback: 1st printing thus, February 1987.
A reception for an author of romantic novels at Claire Malloy’s bookstore is destroyed when it is discovered that several characters in the lady’s latest epic have very close counterparts in real life. At the end of the gathering, the lady is dead. Lt. Rosen helps investigate.
The book is a lot of fun, perhaps too much so. The witty repartee us all but endless. Everyone is a master of it, and it (eventually) is overwhelming, In spite of the barbs, Claire and Rosen are attracted to each other, Big surprise.
THE MYSTERIOUS RIDER. Paramount Pictures, 1938. Released to TV stations in 1950 as Mark of the Avenger. Douglass Dumbrille, Sidney Toler, Russell Hayden, Monte Blue. Based on characters created by Zane Grey. Produced by Harry Sherman. Directed by Lesley Selander.
The Mysterious Rider is yet another of those dumb-title movies that no one ever heard of and that someone seems to be writing about all the time. It has a mildly interesting mystery angle to it, and there’s a fascinating story behind its making, but if you’re looking for hard-core Mystery and have little patience with B-westerns, you might as well skip the rest of this and move on. I won’t mind a bit.
Still here? Okay, the story centers around one of the hoariest cliches of the Western, the Good Bad Guy, in this case, a notorious Road Agent who, years before, fled his ranch and family and turned to crime after killing his partner under rather dubious circumstances.
As the story picks up, he is returning Ulysses-like, to the old homestead . where he is no longer recognized, only to find his family usurped and his daughter besieged by unworthy suitors.
How he takes a job as a menial on the land he once owned and manages to restore his legacy to his kinfolk, sort out a few ornery cattle rustlers and related owlhoots, and manage to stay out of the local pokey constitutes the basis of this sincere if meager narrative.
By the time they made this, Producer and Director Sherman and Selander were already old hands a the Minimalist Western. Sherman in particular had launched the incredibly durable Hopalong Cassidy series and was in the middle of a string of oaters starring George Bancroft, who ten years earlier had starred in Von Sternberg’s Underworld and the next year could be found high on the credits of John Ford’s Stagecoach.
As I say, Bancroft was all set to star in this Mysterious Riderthing; Sherman had hired a writer with a good eraser to re-fit an old script, he’d cast the film, lined up the stuntmen, rented Gower Gulch for a few days and auditioned the horses when Bancroft struck for more money.
Well, Harry Sherman had a soft spot for has-beens (as witness his resurrection of William Boyd) but e must have decided he’d be damned if he was going to raise George Bancroft’s salary, because he told George to go ahead and walk which left him (Sherman) in the unenviable position of having to find — and damquickly — an actor who looked like George Bancroft’s stuntman.
The actor he settled on was Douglas Dumbrille, the stuffed-shirt foil for comedians from the Marx Brothers to the Bowery Boys, red herring in no less than three of the Charlie Chan films, and oily villain of countless low-budget sagebrush sagas.
Movie fans with good memories ay recall him putting bamboo shoots under Gary Cooper’s fingernails in Lives of a Bengal Lancer.
It proved to be inspired casting. Dumbrille has enough villainy in his demeanor to suggest a career of misdemeanor. Watching him, one gets the feeling that this guy might actually once have been a Road gent. And his type-cast stuffiness translates here to an oddly moving shabby dignity as he tends the kennels or wanders like a taciturn King Lear across his erstwhile kingdom.
To be sure, the script is nowhere ear intelligent enough to support all this, most of the acting could be charitably described as Pedestrian (particularly Sydney “Charlie Chan” Toler as a Comical Side-kick) and the Mysterious Rider himself visibly drops about twenty pounds whenever he pulls on his mask and the stunt-man takes over, but director Lesley Selander had talent enough to capitalize on Dumbrille’s surprisingly off-beat charm and inject his own easy-going economical grace into the proceedings.
The result is distinctly one-of-a-kind and definitely worth a look.
— Reprinted from A Shropshire Sleuth #35.
NOTE: For more, much more from the pen (?) of Dan Stumpf, check out his own blog, filled with great fun and merriment at https://danielboydauthor.com/blog
Following my review of Accused of Murder, Richard Ness left the following question as a comment there:
I have a bit of a mystery regarding Accused of Murder. A few years ago I bought a 16mm scope print of it, but it is in black and white. I believe it was not uncommon to make black and white prints of color films for television broadcast in the days before color TV became the norm, but no TV station would have run a scope print. So what would these prints have been made for and where would they have been shown?
By the way, seeing it in black and white gives it a bit more of a noir feeling, but I still would not consider it film noir.
Questions such as this are way beyond what I know about the making and production of movies, which is close to zero. In fact, I suspect the people who could answer this inquiry are no longer with us. If anyone today knows, however, I suspect they could be reading this now. You, perhaps?
LAWRENCE FISHER – Death by the Day. Berkley G520; paperback original; 1st printing, April 1961.
Bellboy Nick Paulson, a punk with big dreams, cuts himself in when he discovers that three new arrivals at the hotel (two men and a woman) have plans to snatch$75,000 in local jewels.
A paperback original, totally obscure. Pure pulp. Very little plot. Sometimes Paulson noses around for pages, doing nothing but feeling sorry for himself. He’s probably got that right. No one else would.
TIM AKERS “A Murder of Knights.” Published in Sword and Planet, edited by Christopher Ruocchio (Baen Books, trade paperback, 2021).
As the story begins, two men are on a quest, one they apparently have been ordered to be upon. We gradually learn what they must do. We never do quite learn who ordered them, but since the thrust of the tale does not depend on that, it does not matter. At some short length, they arrive at an isolated village where the mayor’s daughter has been abducted by a broodmother (think of something comparable to a monstrous spider-like creature, but worse).
The question of the quest, and the tasks they are bound to do are now apparent.
It is never quite clear on what world they are in. It may be Earth, it may not. It most probably isn’t. Technology seems to have previously existed on the planet. It does not now. Life is primitive in the world they are. The weapons they have are little better than swords, but magic also plays a part in their attack on the monster they must kill — or be killed by.
There is, of course, little that is new in this tale. Many of us have read this short adventure many times, and for some of us, for a long time. Tim Akers, the author, tells it well. Here’s a short example:
“… length of the blade, turning the blunt edge sharp, awakening the weapon’s divine power. I stared at it in horror, my mind frozen in place. I barely lifted my sword in time to block the slice that would have cut me in half if it had landed. The force of the blow shoved me off my feet. The sound of godsteel striking godsteel shrieked across the chamber. I hit the ground and slid.”
You might think Mr. Akers is a young fellow, as I did when starting this tale, but he is 53 and has written several novels and short stories, perhaps all in a similar vein, but none of which have I noticed before. From the ending, I thought a sequel could easily have followed, but so far, such an event has not occurred.
THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE – September 1957. Editor: Hans Stefan Santesson. Overall rating: ***
LESLIE CHARTERIS “The Good Medicine.” Simon Templar (The Saint). Novelette. The Saint brings pills to the rescue of a man whose wife has used him to build up a large pharmaceutical business. Pills guaranteed to keep away insects, but not the Saint’s brand of justice. (4)
AARON MARC STEIN “Battle of Wits.” A man patiently builds up a lot to get rid of his wife, but it fails by being smarter than the sheriff it’s supposed to fool. (3)
AUGUST DERLETH “Adventure of the Little Hangman.” Solar Pons. Novelette. Solar Pons discovers the murderer, but provincial solidarity keeps the man from prison, in its own form of absolute justice. (4)
LOUIS GOLDING “The Vandyke Beard.” A man’s return from prison, and his effect on his family and relatives. (3)
RICHARD HARDWICK “He Came Back.” Murder on a shrimp boat, and retribution, pulp-style. (3)
RICHARD SALE “Ghosts Don’t Make Noise.” Daffy Dill. Novelette. Published previously as “Ghosts Don’t Make No Noise” in Detective Fiction Weekly, 07 June 1941. Daffy Dill is almost convinced that a ghost does exist, and this fact helps trap the murdered man’s killer. (3)
FREDRIC BROWN “Mr. Smith Kicks the Bucket.” Henry Smith. Published previously in Detective Story Magazine, August 1944, as “Bucket of Gems Case.” Mr. Smith, insurance investigator, is on the scene when a candy jewel is stolen, and then has the real one, to the surprise of all. (4)
SAX ROHMER “The Headless Mummies.” Morris Klaw. Published previously in The New Magazine (UK) October 1913, as “Case of the Headless Mummies.” Morris Klaw knows the secret of why museum mummies are being decapitated. Oriental poppycock. (1)
CHARLES FRITCH “First Job.” Illuminating story of how a juvenile delinquent is born. (2)
THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS. Warner Brothers, 1944. Peter Lorre, Sydnay Greenstreet, Zachary Scott. Faye Emerson, Steven Geray. Screenplay by Frank Gruber, based on the novel A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler. Director: Jean Negulesco.
When a mystery writer named Leyden (Peter Lorre) is shown the body of a man identified as Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott) in a morgue in Istanbul, he becomes obsessed in learning more about the man’s career as an international spy and criminal agent.
Much of the film that follows comes in the form of a series of flashbacks taking place across Europe and finally to Paris, where a man who calls himself Peters (Sydney Greenstreet) makes him an offer that moneywise is hard to refuse.
While the movie follows the book extremely well (as I recall), the stories that have taken place in the life of Dimitiros are, while interesting in themselves, tend to meander a little. Until, that is, the setting changes to that of a small apartment in Paris, when the pairing of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet and the plans they make together (and how those plans work out) make for an insidiously sinister plot in true film noir fashion.
Those two actors, when playing in the same film, are more, somehow, than their individual roles, a fact that is difficult to explain, but together they were the best in the crime and espionage business, filmwise at least.
___
PLEASE NOTE: While I have done my best to avoid telling you too many details of the story, the clip provided above comes toward thee end of the film. As such, if you have not seen the movie, and you think you might care to, please watch the clip judiciously.
MICHAEL GILBERT – The Black Seraphim. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1983. Harper & Row, US, hardcover. 1984. Penguin, US, paperback, 1985.
Michael Gilbert is one of the most versatile and prolific practitioners of the British mystery since the Golden Age. He has published over 300 short stories and over twenty mystery novels, of which The Black Seraphim is but the latest. He has published thrillers, novels of intrigue, police procedurals, and classic detective puzzles-and has shown himself to be competent or better at all of them.
The Black Seraphim qualifies as a classic mystery puzzle with modern flourishes. The amateur sleuth is no amateur but a professional pathologist, James Scotland, on an R-and-R visit to a British cathedral town. When the archdeacon is killed, Scotland’s rest turns into a stress-filled busman’s holiday.
The detection is handled along traditional lines. Gilbert, however, is interested in more than a puzzle. He enjoys examining the conflicts within the cathedral close, as well as the tensions between the secular community and their religious neighbors. With young Dr. Scotland as sleuth, there is an additional opportunity for an occasional debate over faith versus scientific inquiry.
The puzzle is worked out nicely, the characterization is excellent, and there is even a love story for them that likes ’em. Not one of Gilbert’s finest novels, The Black Seraphim is nonetheless very fine indeed.
Outstanding among Gilbert’s other non-series books are The Family Tomb (1969). The Body of a Girl (1972; Inspector Mercer’s only appearance in a novel, although he is featured in a number of short stories), and The Night of the Twelfth(1976).
Superintendent Vachell of the Chania Police [in Kenya] is brought in when Lady Baradale’s jewels turn up missing, then finds murder on his hands when the lady is found dead, near a pond full of hippos but shot between the eyes.
[A replica of a] small isolated English village taken to an extreme – one hundred miles from the nearest civilization. Most satisfying. The only whodunit (outside of Carr?) with footnotes to [point out] the clues – all fairly stated and still not much more.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.3, February 1988.
The Inspector Vachell series —
Murder at Government House, 1937.
Murder on Safari, 1938.
The African Poison Murders, 1939.
FRANK GRUBER – The Laughing Fox. Johnny Fletcher & Sam Cragg #5. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1940. Serialized earlier (?) in Short Stories magazine, July 10 through August 25, 1940. Penguin, paperback, May 1944. Belmont-Tower, paperback, 1972.
Book salesmen Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg, on the scene at a midwestern cattle convention, are forced to act as detectives when a man is found murdered in their hotel room. The man was a fox breeder, with enemies among the other exhibitors, but he was killed as the consequence of a mystery involving a missing heir who disappeared twenty years before.
With a story meant primarily as fun, Gruber has too casual an attitude toward his plot, Fletcher and Cragg are happy scoundrels who mostly enjoy the scrapes they get into. But on page 49 [of the Penguin edition], Fletcher tells the police the whole story of how they found the body in their room, then on page 99, he is confronted with the story as if the previous episode had never happened.
Devoted to mystery and detective fiction — the books, the films, the authors, and those who read, watch, collect and make annotated lists of them. All uncredited posts are by me, Steve Lewis.
