JACQUES MESRINE – The Death Instinct. Originally published in French as L’Instinct de Mort.  Filmed as  L’instinct de mort (released in English as Mesrine: Killer Instinct) is the first part of a 2008 French biographical crime film about Jacques Mesrine, a notorious real-life French gangster. Directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Vincent Cassel.

   Autobiography of a French bank robber.

   Mesrine lives for thrills. His favorite is the double bank robbery. You rob one bank, and when the cops are busy responding, you go down a couple blocks and rob another.

   When he’s out of the clink, he’s living high on the hog. Truffles and champagne, whores and heists.

   Ironically, with a sense of justice. He keeps his word.

   When he takes a whore for a wife, she can leave the life. She can trust him. When the pimps show up to reclaim their property, he slaughters them, burying their bodies in the park. He’s no use for pimps.

   He promises the warden he’ll escape by a certain date. He won’t disappoint.

   He tells his buddies, he’ll be back to free them. You can set your watch by it. Odds be damned.

   He only robs the rich and banks and corporations. Don’t be a hero, he’s only there for the money. But he’s only half a Robin Hood. He’ll keep the plunder and have a party.

   On the lam, he never lays low. He stays in Paris, robbing banks maskless.

   He’s clearly a psychopath. There’s no remorse. It’s all society’s fault. Everything he does.

   At the same time, you kinda root for the guy. He’s a manly Man. The ladies love him, and men like a man whose word is gold.

   The title’s wrong. He doesn’t want to die. He loves life. He loves it so much that he cannot bear to lose his soul to the doldrums, to the mind-numbing horseshit of stupid orders by the stupid tyrants of workaday life, school, and institutions.

   He despises arbitrary abuse of power by middle managers. He’s sick of sycophants and hypocrisy. He’d rather die on his feet than live on his hands and knees.

   And he does.

         —

   It’s a good read. He does a thrilling job detailing his exploits: the robberies, the murders, the prison escapes. It makes you a bit ill to keep such close company with a psychopath. But don’t screw him, he won’t screw you. I promise.

GRAHAME GREENE – The Ministry of Fear. Heinemann, UK, 1943. Viking Press, US, 1943. Penguin #530, US, 1946. Reprinted many times.

   Graham Greene has a rigid-and pretentious-habit of classifying his own work into two categories: “entertainments” and “novels.” While all of his work is suspenseful and contains criminous elements, the “entertainments” are more action-oriented and their mystery elements are stronger. The “novels,” on the other hand, tend to be quieter and deal with the religious thematic material that is one of Greene’s preoccupations.

   While the author appears to want to rank his “entertainments” as secondary within his body of work, it is apparent that no less effort goes into them than into the “novels”: all are well written, deeply characterized, rich in background, and highly suspenseful. In Greene’s case, whatever the label, the product is bound to be superior.

   As the hero of The Ministry of Fear states, “It all began … with a cake.” Arthur Rowe is at a neighborhood fete in World War II London, a fair to benefit a charitable group called the Comforts for the Mothers of the Free Nations Fund. One of the attractions is a cake — “made with real eggs” — which people are invited to guess the weight of. Rowe makes a guess, wanders off, and goes into the fortuneteller’s booth. The sorceress, a Mrs. Bellairs, does not tell him his future, but she docs tell him the correct weight of the cake. Rowe changes his bet and wins the cake — and more trouble than he can handle.

   Before he leaves the fete, several people try to get the cake back from him- The next day a mysterious gentleman moves into his rooming house and partakes of the cake with Rowe, making thinly veiled hints that Arthur should tum it over to him — and crumbling each piece offered to him. A bomb from a German plane breaks up their tea party, the cake is destroyed, the stranger seriously injured. When Rowe later inquires after him at the hospital, he finds he was spirited away by friends. And Rowe remembers something odd about the taste of the tea just before the bomb exploded ….

   Rowe becomes obsessed with finding out who tried to kill him-and why. His efforts involve him with a private inquiry agent named Rennit and his unfortunate assistant, Jones. A trip lo the offices of the Mothers of the Free Nations Fund brings him into contact with an Austrian brother and sister, refugees who will have a profound effect on the rest of his life. And a seance at the home of Mrs. Bcllairs, the erstwhile fortune-teller, ends in a murder and a narrow escape. A mental hospital where patients are held virtual prisoners, more dangerous episodes, and a touchingly ironic conclusion round out this tale of wartime intrigue.

   This is a gripping novel, although somewhat oddly constructed. The business about the cake makes it fairly obvious what is going on, but there are enough surprises, and Greene makes one care so much about Rowe that you won’t want to put it down. Fritz Lang filmed a highly moody version in 1944 with Ray Milland.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

ALDEN NORTON, Editor – Futures Unlimited. Pyramid T-2048; 1st printing, June 1969. Cover art by Peter Bramley.

An uneven look at the future, mostly through the past and the eyes of followers of Verne and Wells, two names which are inadequate today for the purpose of the cover blurbs, Scrapes the bottom of the barrel of unanthologized works and tosses them together with no sense of cohesion, No introduction to the book nor any comments before the stories. Who is Alden Norton? Overall rating: **½

A. MERRITT “Three Lines of Old French.” Told in the old style of a story related to someone else, and not really SF, except as being about the horrors of war and the power of suggestion, which together can trigger an escape to the past. (4)

ISAAC ASIMOV “The Callistan Menace,” Perhaps reprinted from Planet Stores in the days when a stowaway on an exploratory ship still seemed possible. (2)

LORD DUNSANY “The Hashish Man.” Pointless tale of a “story” produced by eating hashish. (0)

ANDRE MAUROIS “The Watcher of Souls.” The secret of life is sought, using 19th century techniques, in spite of the copyright date (mid-1950s). A scientist seeking to capture souls after death succeeds, but the secret dies with him, in spite of a friend’s rush to the death scene, No moral made. **

A. CONAN DOYLE “The Horror of the Heights.” First told in early days o aviation, so dated. Monsters at 40,000 feet are no longer a dangerous vision, A scientific horror story. (1)

ROSS ROCKLYNNE “Into the Darkness.” A comic being, playing in 47 bands if hyperspace has the urge to create life. Strangely moving, in an intergalactic style. (5)

ROBERT BLOCH “It Happened Tomorrow.” A seriously intended story of the machine takeover. It may happen, but not this way, with some sort of pseudo-life. Inconsistent. (1)

ARTHUR C, CLARKE “Exile of the Eons.” A Hitler-like ruler is banished to the end of time, Characters interesting, but they should have been better, (3)

JOHN W, CAMPBELL “Rebellion.” Mankind, bred for generations for docility by the invading Tharoo, must fight both their masters and themselves. Involves the invention of anti-gravity, which helps. (3)

COMING SOON! August 12!!

   If you look in Hubin, the indispensable Crime Fiction Bibliography, amongst the authors, you will see the name Mary Durham, for eleven murder mysteries she had published in the United Kingdom between 1945 (Hate Is My Livery) and 1952 (The Devil Was Sick). No biographical details are given in Hubin or in any of her books.

   Until now, nothing was known about the author, not even even whether Mary Durham was a pseudonym. Recently however I have discovered details about Mary Durham and her life, but before I reveal what I have unearthed, here is a summary of her books and publishing history.

   She had three different publishers: starting and ending with John Gifford (four books in total), with John Crowther (four books) and Skeffington (three books) issuing her other books. Her first book, Hate Is My Livery was published in June 1945 by John Gifford, with a Thriller Book Club edition as well. It is an excellent wartime mystery concerning the stabbing to death of an M.P. It has echoes of Freeman Wills Crofts and Christopher Bush in its alibi-busting solution — the detective is Inspector Randolph York who appears in three other titles, including the next Why Pick on Pickles?

   This second novel is set in the autumn of 1939, during the early days of the Second World War, when Chamberlain assured everybody that it was better to be bored than bombed. All who knew Frederick Ponsonby Pickles asked why such a harmless little man should have been the victim of a brutal murder; found throttled to death in the entrance lobby of his country cottage. It presents a puzzle for Inspector York to solve, which he eventually does with the help of his young assistant, Detective-Sergeant Noel Hammond.  The book was published by the small firm of John Crowther as were the next three titles.

   Her third book is a stand-alone title, Cornish Mystery. The body of a woman artist is found deep in a stagnant pool, there are many suspects, but all have alibis. The murderer is cleverly hidden, a feature that reoccurs in her next book, Keeps Death His Court.

   Sir Philip Linwood, an English Baronet with a fearsome reputation, is found murdered during Christmas Eve in the grounds of his country estate in Yorkshire; another case for Inspector York to solve. It was reprinted in Italian in 2020 as a Christmas Mystery under the title Morte a Linwood Court.

   York investigates again in her fifth book, Crime Insoluble. It starts with an intriguing premise: two unnamed characters are discussing the vengeance murder of another person, the toss of a coin to decide which of them will commit the crime. I thought I had worked out ‘whodunnit’, but there’s a clever twist at the end and I was wrong.

   Then come three books published by Skeffington. I suspect they may have been her first written books: Murder by Multiplication and Murder Hath Charms are both set in the 1930s. In Murder by Multiplication a collection of ill-assorted guests is assembled at a country house for a weekend party and the house becomes the scene of a diabolically ingenious murder.

   The book has a clever plot but has a very dull section in the middle where the narrator and one of the characters discuss where various people were at the time of the murder, the author uses lots of A’s & B’s X”s etc making it hard going to read. But it is redeemed by having a surprise murderer, found by the ‘suave but shrewd personality’ Inspector York.

   In Murder Hath Charms it takes Inspector Hilton exactly six days to lay his hands upon the murderer of Henry Phillips, who is found strangled on an afternoon in August 1935 after an attack of sunstroke. It appears impossible for any of the suspects to have committed the murder, but the author pulls a rabbit out of a hat with at the last minute the detective working out who did it and how.

   Her third and last book for Skeffington Corpse Errant is her hardest book to find and I have never seen a copy. A contemporary newspaper review helpfully outlines the plot. It concerns a young woman who upon arrival at a new job as a secretary at Grover Court finds a dead body when it falls out of her bedroom cupboard. The body disappears and a series of amazing episodes ensue. Eventually Scotland Yard is called in, and Inspector Charles solves the mystery.

   Her original publisher, John Gifford, published her final three books. Castle Mandragora is set in the early 1930s and is a first-person narrative. It is a crime thriller, with elements of the supernatural throughout, set in the Suffolk Brecklands and complete with a diagram of the castle layout. The police appear only briefly, and the explanation of the crime comes in an epilogue written by a friend and former colleague of the narrator.

   Forked Lightning introduces a new detective, Inspector Christopher March who also appears in her final book. The blurb starts: ‘When the attractive young novelist, Jessica Munro, sets out from her cottage one night in a heavy thunderstorm to post an urgent letter, she plunges straight into the heart of a nightmare. A flash of forked lightning reveals a terrifying scene, and Jessica cannot escape the consequences of what she witnesses’.

   It seems there can be only one person who could have committed the murder that Jessica has seen but once again the author cleverly misdirects the reader and the actual culprit is not someone obvious.

   Her last book, published in April 1952, was The Devil Was Sick; in a review in the author’s local newspaper, it says that the book ‘presents the Sorrell family of writers whose oscillating passions cause a sequence of events ending in catastrophe’. There are too many with a motive for committing the crime and the change in character of the person who is murdered seems a little farfetched. The ending is disappointing as well.

      Mary Durham Bibliography (from Hubin)

         All the following books are set in England:

Hate Is My Livery -– John Gifford 1945 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Randolph York
Why Pick on Pickles? — John Crowther 1945 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Randolph York
Cornish Mystery — John Crowther 1946
Keeps Death His Court — John Crowther 1946 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Randolph York
Crime Insoluble — John Crowther 1947 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Randolph York
Murder by Multiplication — Skeffington 1948 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Randolph York
Murder Hath Charms — Skeffington 1948
Corpse Errant — Skeffington 1949
Castle Mandragora — John Gifford 1950
Forked Lightning — John Gifford 1951 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Christopher March
The Devil Was Sick — John Gifford 1952 – Insp. (Chief Insp.) Christopher March

   So, who was Mary Durham? A few months ago, Mauro Boncompagni, a keen and very knowledgeable collector of crime fiction, told me he’d found for sale on eBay a letter from the author to a fan of her books, that gave her full address, which happened to be in Felixstowe, an East of England coastal town in the county of Suffolk. From this, it was a short step using the genealogical website Ancestry and the British Newspaper Archive to find details about her and her life.

   Born Mary Edith Emily Hervey on the 24 February 1891 in Shotley, a village near Ipswich in Suffolk. She was the second daughter of the Reverend John Frederick Arthur Hervey, a rector of Shotley for 56 years, and had three siblings. Her grandfather was Lord Arthur Charles Hervey, a Bishop of Bath & Wells. Her great grandfather was the 1st Marquess of Bristol, Frederick Hervey.

   Mary married Reverend John Francis Langton Durham in Felixstowe in September 1929. At the time he was an assistant priest at a church in London. He was an army chaplain from May 1939. She obtained a First Class Honours Degree (Bsc) in Economics from the London School of Economics in the same year. In the 1939 Register which was taken on 29 September, Mary Durham is listed as married and residing in Felixstowe with her mother and unmarried sister, but there is no mention of her husband John. There were no children from their marriage, and the couple separated, probably before the end of the Second World War.

   Of her three siblings only her sister Patience Gertrude Hervey produced an offspring, a daughter Josephine Griffin, born in December 1928. Josephine was an actress; her films included the Francis Durbridge thriller Portrait of Alison, The Man Who Never Was, and The Purple Plain. Under her married name Josephine Filmer-Sankey she co-wrote a history of the Bayeux Tapestry, published in 1966.

   A few months after Mary Durham’s second book was published, The Felixstowe Times newspaper reported in May 1946 in a brief piece entitled ‘Thriller With Local Setting’, that as well as writing thrillers she was a teacher of economics and had taken a flat in that town. It also reported that she had spent four years in Cornwall during the Second World War.

   Mary Edith Emily Durham died in hospital in Felixstowe on December 28, 1972, aged 81.

   If you want to try a new author who wrote in the Golden Age of Detection tradition Mary Durham is well worth seeking out. While some of her books are difficult to find, the Thriller Book Club editions of the last three John Gifford titles are easier, and cheaper! All her books will repay investment in them.

GRAHAM GREENE – The Third Man. Viking, US, hardcover, 1950.  Reprinted many times.

   Rollo Martins, a somewhat drunken writer of westerns, has come to Vienna at the request of his old school friend, Harry Lime. Lime has suggested he might write a piece on the postwar international refugee problem and pay his way to the divided city. But when Martins arrives, Lime is dead, having been run over by a car in front of his building, and Martins is barely in time for his funeral. There he meets Colonel Calloway of the British occupational police force; Calloway is interested in Lime, and in Martins’ association with him.

   Although he has little money, Martins manages to stay on in Vienna by cadging funds from a variety of people who seem extraordinarily concerned with his welfare. And soon questions about Harry Lime begin to plague him: Who was his friend, really? A harmless adult version of the boy Martins knew at school — a young rogue who played all the angles? Or a vicious racketeer, the worst Vienna has ever seen? Why did Lime really want Martins to come to Vienna? Was Lime’s death merely an accident. or was it very deliberately staged? And who was the third man at the scene when he died-the third man who disappeared shortly after?

   Martins becomes more and more convinced that Lime’s death was no accident, and he crosses the various zones of the war-tom city searching for the mysterious third man. Set against the backdrop of postwar Vienna, and told alternately from Colonel Calloway’s and Martins’ viewpoints, this is an intriguing and suspenseful novel that contains a number of surprises.

   The Third Man was the basis for a gem of a film of the same title, made in 1949, directed by Carol Reed, and featuring Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard.

   Other equally absorbing thrillers by Greene include Orient Express (1933); This Gun for Hire (1936), made into a tense 1942 film starring Alan Ladd in his first major role; Brighton Rock (1956); The Quiet American (1956); Our Man in Havana (1958), the screen version of which showcases Alec Guinness in one of his best roles; and The Honorary Consul (1973).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

FORTY NAUGHTY GIRLS. RKO Radio Pictures, 1937. James Gleason (Inspector Oscar Piper), Zasu Pitts (Hildegarde Withers), Marjorie Lord, Joan Woodbury, Tom Kennedy. Based on story and/or characters created by Stuart Palmer. Director: Edward Cline.

   Nothing naughty about this movie at all. What this is instead is the last of the Hildegarde Withers movies, as she and Inspector Piper solve the murders committed backstage while a musical is going on. We see a lot of legs but nothing more.

   Zasu Pitts, the last of three actresses to play Miss Withers, cuts down on her usual flutter and settles for mere clumsiness instead, while Gleason acts like he’s auditioning for the Three Stooges, This does mark the first use of the nitrate test in the movies, though.

CORNELL WOOLRICH – Death Is My Dancing Partner. Pyramid G374, paperback original; 1st printing, 1959. Savage Bride / Death is My Dancing Partner / Doom Stone, Centipede Press, hardcover, 2025.

   Bandleader Maxwell Jones helps a dancer from an Oriental temple, then uses her erotic Dance of Death for fame and fortune, with coincidence and promotion adding to the legend as it builds. Her love for him is not returned; he does not even treat her as a person, a fact that does not seem believable, nor is her success in making him jealous.

   After 100 pages, their strange love affair has been established, but by this time, his fear of her dance causes their common fortunes to decline: they are now living in the depths of a poor Panamanian café. The terror and suspense that has been promised thus far are confined to the last chapter only, as the dancer tests the curse of the dance, as they find themselves locked together in their hotel room…

   To me, the story would have been better told as a shorter story, with the lengthy “love affair” eliminated. My rating below is almost only for the ending.

Rating: ***½

BOB McKNIGHT – Secret Sinners. Merit 355, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1960.

   Or, perhaps as an alternate title, The Case of Cocky Robin. No kidding. Attorney Arch Behan is hired by Cocky’s sister, to locate him after he turns up missing. Just as in The Bikini Bombshell (reviewed here), the story takes place in Florida, and involves gun-running to Castro’s rebels.

   And lots of naked, willing women. This is a story for red-blooded males, that is for sure. The swamp girl who wants Arch to help her make a baby is tops. One question: a Miami deputy think Cocky might have been “gator et.” What could he have meant?

PostScript: If you follow the link above to my review of The Bikini Bombshell , be sure to read on to the comments that follow.

AVRAM DAVIDSON – The Island Under the Earth. Ace SF Special; paperback original. 1st printing, 1969. Cover art: Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon.

   Although published as an ACE SF Special, this is pure fantasy, living legend stuff, with centaurs, gnomes, harpies, and humans, all inhabiting some kind of counter-Earth, which may somehow justify the SF part of the label.

   I didn’t finish the book, I have to confess, quitting after page 120, at which point new characters were being introduced and with no detectable story having occurred so far. It’s a book I found to be very difficult for quick reading, at least for me. The style is quite strange but it’s also one that’s very much suitable. The world it takes place is one I don’t know and difficult to recognize, in spite of its familiarity.

Rating: *½