W. R. BURNETT – Romelle. Alfred A. Knopf, US, hardcover, 1946. Wm. Heinemann, UK, hc, 1947. Reprint paperback: Bantam #942, US, 1951. French reprint: Rivages Noir n° 36, 1987.

   In a surprising turn from a hard-boiled writer, W. R. Burnett’s Romelle sits firmly in that sub-genre of Romantic Suspense about a pretty young thing swept into marriage by some guy with a dark secret: there’s the requisite mansion, the obligatory hints of some sinister past, the mandatory mid-night rambles in her nightie and all the other standard features of the Gothic.

   Of course, since this is a book by the author of Little Caesar, the heroine is a nightclub chantoosie on the skids and the Byronic hero hides a dark past that includes robbery, blackmail, and a neat bit of kinkiness you don’t often see in gothics or hard-boiled, all served up very ably, thank you, by a writer who knew how to get it down on paper.

   Romelle will never be anyone’s idea of a classic, but it’s a fun read, and if you’re in the mood for off-beat Had-I-but-known’s, this will do nicely.

ERICA QUEST – The Silver Castle. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978. Reprint hardcover: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, Sept-Oct 1978.

   The discovery that Gail Sherbrooke’s father, who she’d thought dead for over twenty years, had just committed suicide in Switzerland sends the aspiring young artist off on a search to learn the truth about a man she had never known.

   Lying just beyond her reach she finds both mystery and romance — the type of story most readers surely find done far too often, and rather badly, too.

   That’s not at all the case here. With much of the charm and intricacy of a hand-made Swiss clock, this is indeed an uncluttered detective story that’s both haunting and wholly enchanting.

Bibliographic data:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

QUEST, ERICA. Pseudonym of John Sawyer & Nancy Buckingham Sawyer; other pseudonym: Nancy Buckingham

      The Silver Castle (n.) Doubleday 1978
      The October Cabaret (n.) Doubleday 1979
      Design for Murder (n.) Doubleday 1981
      Death Walk (n.) Doubleday 1988 [Kate Maddox]

      Cold Coffin (n.) Doubleday 1990 [Kate Maddox]
      Model Murder (n.) Doubleday 1991 [Kate Maddox]
      Deadly Deceit (n.) Piatkus 1992 [Kate Maddox]

   I believe the Sawyers were British, but their books as Erica Quest were published only in the US. I seem to have avoided the issue somewhat in my review, but if The Silver Dagger were to be assigned to a genre, I don’t believe it could be called a Gothic. “Romantic suspense,” perhaps, but with a solid core of detection involved, if I can rely on the statement made above by my younger self.

   (Bolstering the detective content of the Quest books is a discovery, made only this evening, that the series character who appeared in their last four books is actually Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox.)

   Many of the books the Sawyers wrote as Nancy Buckingham were published only in England; most of the ones that appeared in the US were published in paperback as Gothics by either Ace or Lancer. A typical title might be The Legend of Baverstock Manor (Ace, 1968), which was originally published in the UK as the noticeably less striking Romantic Journey (Hale, 1968).

   The Sawyers also wrote many straight romances, using the additional pen names Christina Abbey, Nancy John, and Hillary London for many of these. A list of these, along with some covers, can be found on the Fantastic Fiction website.

JAN ROFFMAN – One Wreath with Love.   Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1978. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1979. No paperback edition.

   Jan Roffman has written nearly a dozen mystery novels by now, so it’s be exceedingly presumptuous of me to try to generalize anything about her writing from a sample of size only one, but (as I’m often resigned into doing) I will anyway:

   On the basis of this book, she has a tendency to overwrite, even badly, especially in the early chapters, but in the process of doing so, she creates a good many characters whose lives are as ingeniously intertwined as they are in the best of soap opera tragedy.

   I’m pleased to report that the overwriting begins to disappear as the characters become more familiar, or so it seems, and by the end, tears will come close to falling. Murder is involved, but we know who did it in chapter one, in which a particularly repugnant death scene is used to build an almost watertight alibi.

   Many of the characters in this book are afflicted with various stages of senility or insanity, and maybe that’s what I mistook for overwriting. Roffman is clearly adept in creating people out of touch with reality. The contrast is at its most effective when an under-disciplined seven-year-old named Tilly makes a friend of the dottering old lady who may have caught sight of the killer.

   There’s also the rapidly failing mind of the ex-wife with a not-so-reliable ghost haunting her, and so in turn Chief Superintendent Deacon is annoyed.

   This is not a detective story, but all the same, I think it can easily get under your skin.

      Bio-bibliographic data –

   Jan Roffman was a pen name of Margaret Summerton, who died in 1979, according to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, but that’s about all the personal information I have about her. Even though the US edition of One Wreath with Love was published before the one in the UK, I’m sure she was British.

   Under her own name, Summerton wrote 14 novels, with 10 of them also appearing in the US in hardcover. When they were reprinted here in paperback, usually by Ace, they were invariably marketed as gothic romances. The Sea House, the cover of which is shown below, is a prime example.

   She also wrote at least 10 books as by Jan Roffman. I can’t give you an exact count, because two books published under that byline in the US have as yet not been matched up with their UK counterparts — and it’s possible there aren’t any.

   One Wreath with Love was not published in paperback, but other Roffman books were, and once again, the marketing division at Ace assumed that they would sell best as gothics. They were probably right. Shown is the cover of The Reflection of Evil, aka Death of a Fox (US) and Winter of the Fox (UK).

JESSICA FLETCHER & DONALD BAIN – Murder She Wrote: A Palette for Murder.

Signet, paperback original. First printing, October 1996.

   The first question that occurs to me as I sit down to write this review, and it hadn’t occurred to me before now, except in a nebulous sort of way, is just how many of these “Jessica Fletcher” books are there? They’ve seemed sort of generic and ubiquitous at the same time, and I never stopped to get them listed and enumerated. Until now. Take a look at the other end of this review…

   … and now that your eyes are back,some historical perspective may be in order. The TV show itself, the one starring Angela Lansbury, was on the air for twelve seasons, from 1984 to 1996, with four made-for-TV movies appearing after that, the last one in 2003.

   The first Murder, She Wrote novel came out in 1985, and there’s at least one that’s scheduled for 2009, a span of years that’s even longer than when the TV program was on the air. It’s quite a track record, and it certainly goes a long way in explaining the ubiquitousness I mentioned above.

   Which of course got me to thinking. What other series of TV tie-ins has consisted of more books than this one with Mrs. Fletcher has?

   To set some parameters, let’s restrict this question to detective novels. Otherwise in the field of science fiction, there is Star Trek, and we do not want to even begin to go there.

   In the field of gothics, and books that are actually included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, there are the Dark Shadows books, of which there 32 (at a quick, rough count). Good, but not good enough. There are 35 Murder, She Wrote books, or there will be soon.

   If anyone can come up with a series I’m simply not thinking of – and, no, I don’t consider the Perry Mason paperbacks with photos of Raymond Burr on the back cover true TV tie-ins, or should I? – let me know.

   As for the author, Donald Bain, he has his own website (and photo), and by following the link, you can find a complete list of all of the books he admits that he has written, and not all of them have been crime fiction, by any means. His bibliography also pointedly omits 24 books he wrote under another’s name but which he can not contractually reveal. Most of these books are (in all likelihood) the Margaret Truman books, of which Al Hubin says, again in the Revised Crime Fiction IV:

   Back up when I starting this review, which seems a long time ago already – you don’t know it, but it is now several days later, real time – I also called the books “generic” as well as ubiquitous, and perhaps I should apologize for that, even though I said “they’ve seemed,” since of course and/or as usual, this is the first one that I’ve read.

    “Ubiquitous” I think I may have proven, but the case is far less solid when it comes to generic, unless of course you think that the TV show was generic, and maybe it was, but what TV show today exerts as much effort into actual deduction in terms of its detective work than Murder, She Wrote? Numb3rs, perhaps? Any others?

   I’ll get back to this. To tell you something about the book I have just read, in it Jessica Fletcher is visiting the Hamptons (on Long Island), trying to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city and secretly to try her hand at oil painting.

   The latter effort fails – well, in fact both objectives fail – if getting away from the big city means staying away from murder cases – when the young model posing nude for Jessica’s class is found dead while taking a short break. (With careful camera angles, most of the activity immediately preceding could have been shown on television.)

   But in any case it is thus that Mrs. Fletcher is introduced to world of modern art, including thefts (her own sketch of the dead girl included), forgeries and high finance, Long Island style.

   She also tells the story in her own words, and what is quite remarkable is that Donald Bain as the author has her voice down cold. Perfect. To a T. From page 58:

   And then a second death occurs, suggesting that the first one was not a simple accident of some kind, as if we (the reader) did not know that already. Perhaps innate in the world of “cozy” detective novels, the death may have affected me more than it did anyone in the story, including Mrs. Fletcher, who had begun to know the second victim well. (Shouldn’t she have at least been angry about it?)

   What I said about Donald Bain’s having his “co-author’s” voice down pat, he – at this relatively early point in the series – it does not seem to me that he has the mystery-telling (and solving) pattern of television series very well in mind at all.

   Instead of calling the suspects together and recreating the crime scene (in flashbacks) and naming the killer as a result, we have Jessica going here and there on her own and in exceedingly dangerous places, not realizing as she should that a two-time killer is on the loose.

   The ending is rather muddled altogether, in fact, and that I ending up skimming through it, rather than being transfixed with the unraveling, may tell you more about the mystery than anything else, I regret to say. I may read another, but without a push from some other direction, all things considered, it’s not as likely as it should be.

By JAMES ANDERSON –

   The Murder of Sherlock Holmes (n.) Avon, pb, 1985.

   Hooray for Homicide (n.) Avon, pb, 1985.
   Lovers and Other Killers (n.) Avon, pb, 1986.

By DAVID GEORGE DEUTSCH —

By JESSICA FLETCHER & DONALD BAIN —

   Gin and Daggers. McGraw-Hill, hc, June 1989; Avon, pb, October 1990; Signet, pb, April 2000.

   Manhattans and Murder. Signet, pb, December 1994.
   Brandy and Bullets. Signet, pb, August 1995.
   Martinis and Mayhem. Signet, pb, December 1995.
   Rum and Razors. Signet, pb, April 1995.
   A Deadly Judgment. Signet, pb, April 1996.
   A Palette for Murder. Signet, pb, October 1996.
   The Highland Fling Murders. Signet, pb, April 1997.
   Murder on the QE2. Signet, pb, October 1997.
   Murder in Moscow. Signet, pb, May 1998.
   A Little Yuletide Murder. Signet, pb, October 1998.
   Murder at the Powderhorn Ranch. Signet, pb, May 1999.
   Knock ’Em Dead. Signet, pb, October 1999.
   Trick or Treachery. Signet, pb, October 2000.
   Blood on the Vine. Signet, pb, April 2001.
   Murder in a Minor Key. Signet, pb, October 2001.
   Provence to Die For. Signet, pb, April 2002.
   You Bet Your Life. Signet, pb, October 2002.
   Majoring in Murder. Signet, pb, April 2003.
   Destination Murder. New American Library (NAL), hc, October 2003; Signet, pb, September 2004.

   Dying to Retire By. Signet, pb, April 2004.
   A Vote for Murder. NAL, hc, October 2004; Signet, pb, September 2005.
   The Maine Mutiny. Signet, pb, April 2005.
   Margaritas and Murder. NAL, hc, October 2005; Signet, pb, September 2006.
   A Question of Murder. Signet, pb, April 2006.
   Three Strikes and You’re Dead. NAL, hc, October 2006; Signet, pb, September 2007.
   Coffee, Tea, or Murder. Signet, pb, April 2007.
   Panning For Murder. NAL, September 2007; Signet, pb, September 2008.
   Murder on Parade. NAL, hc, April 2008. Signet, pb, March 2009.
   A Slaying In Savannah. NAL, hc, September 2008. Signet, pb, September 2009.
   Madison Avenue Shoot. NAL, hc, April 2009

[UPDATE] 01-30-09. Any updating has already been done, either in the course of the review, or in the subsequent bibliography. This post is long enough now without my needing to say more!

EDWINA NOONE – Dark Cypress.

Ace K-213, paperback original; 1st printing, 1965. Reprinted at least once.

   Edwina Noone was, as you might have guessed, if you didn’t already know, one of the pseudonyms of Michael Avallone, one of more prolific writers of the 60s and 70s. As the author of a long armful of detective novels, his primary private eye character — and probably his favorite — was the inimitable Ed Noon, the books in which he appeared I should really unpack and read again soon.

   Avallone as Noone stays totally within the restrictions of the gothic romance novel, however, as practiced in the 60s and 70s, and except for sheer readability, perhaps, there’s nothing in this tale’s style of writing to suggest that it was Avallone who was really at the wheel.

   We move from Cornwall (see my earlier review of The Shadow of Polperro, by Frances Cowen) to Connecticut. From the present day when the previous book took place, we shift in time to some unidentified period in the past. Rather than a desolate castle on a rocky coastline, the focus is instead a grove of cypress trees surrounding a bathing pool behind a huge manor house.

   A young girl comes to be the tutor of a young motherless boy, his aloof father and two servants the only other occupants of a house that’s full of secrets. Many another gothic novel has started in very much the same way. The boy’s older brother is dead, drowned in the pool behind the house, a magnificent lad; a prodigy, the housekeeper says. The mother had died at childbirth. The younger boy never knew her.

   Very atmospheric, and although you can read pages at a single glance, the tension builds so that you can all but feel it. Built to a formula, but in the hands of a man (in this case) born to write, formulas can also have substance.

[UPDATE] 01-12-09. Another reason you should go back to the review I posted of The Shadow of Polperro is that in the comments afterward Xavier Lechard and I had a brief exchange about the formula that most gothics were structured on, plus a display of a few of their covers in their French incarnations.

   The following list does not include all of the gothic romances written by the late Michael Avallone, only the ones for which his Edwina Noone byline was used. (He also wrote gothics as by Priscilla Dalton, Jean-Anne de Pre, Dora Highland and Dorothea Nile.) Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

NOONE, EDWINA. Pseudonym of Michael Avallone.

      Corridor of Whispers (n.) Ace 1965
      Dark Cypress (n.) Ace 1965
      Heirloom of Tragedy (n.) Lancer 1965
      Daughter of Darkness (n.) Signet 1966
      The Second Secret (n.) Belmont 1966
      The Victorian Crown (n.) Belmont 1966

      Seacliffe (n.) Signet 1968

      The Craghold Legacy (n.) Beagle 1971
      The Cloisonne Vase (n.) Curtis 1972
      The Craghold Creatures (n.) Beagle 1972
      The Craghold Curse (n.) Beagle 1972
      The Craghold Crypt (n.) Curtis 1973

   Of the two covers shown, note that the first is a stylized version containing all of the traditional ingredients, while the second features photographed models, rarely used for gothics, with a close-up shot of only their faces.

   The book itself was marketed as “a novel of high romance,” so it was an obvious attempt to move away from the typical gothic novel. Nonetheless the blurb on the front cover gives it away: “… dark tale of foreboding love between the daughter of a Yankee captain and a mysterious seafaring stranger, on the windswept coast of Maine.”

NORA ROBERTS - Midnight Bayou.

Jove; paperback reprint; first printing, December 2002. Hardcover edition: Putnam, October 2001.

   I may or may not have mentioned this recently, but among other things, I collect gothic paperback romances. In the decade from roughly 1965 to 1975, they were immensely popular, with a thousand or more different titles published. Every publisher did several a month, or so it seemed, and readers must have gobbled them down like candy.

   Eventually historical romances took over, “bodice-rippers” as they were called for a long time, and the gothics died away, never quite completely, but never again to make a sustained comeback. (Novels of romantic suspense — heroines in jeopardy — are still with us, and seem to be rising in popularity, but without the overtones of the weird and occult, most of them cannot be properly called gothics.)

   Some books hover right on the borderline, and this latest romantic novel from Nora Roberts is one of them. The prologue certainly has all of the right elements, beginning with the rape and murder of a young woman by her husband’s twin brother in Louisiana’s turn-of-last century’s bayou country. Her young daughter is left alive, but abandoned to her mother’s backwoods family, she’s forcibly separated from her father’s heritage, rightfully hers.

   It’s a strong, intense start, and the ghosts of the past that still haunt Manet Hall in the year 2002 are what keeps the book loosely in the gothic genre. But it’s largely the story of two modern-day lovers, Boston raised-and-born Declan Fitzgerald, Manet Hall’s new owner, determined to refurbish it, and Angelina Simone, Cajun descendant of the young murdered woman and her infant daughter.

   Nora Roberts writes romance (if not sublimated lust) that simply oozes with electric tension on the printed page, with dialogue that continually crackles with chemistry and wit. It’s hard to imagine more perfect people than Declan and Angelina; even their flaws are perfect. This is the stuff of fantasy.

   As for the ghost story, it’s chilling at first, but it fades in significance in comparison with Declan’s efforts to persuade Angelina that he’s the man for her, then it collapses altogether with no logic behind which spirit is doing what and for what reason.

   Well, most of the old-fashioned gothics ended in much the same way, the hints of mysticism waved away, and wedding bells in the offing. Nora Roberts just may have you believing it all, however, especially during the telling. It’s no wonder she’s one of the most popular authors writing today.

[UPDATE] 12-11-08.  And of course she still is today, and if possible, even more so. Quoting from her Wikipedia entry:

    “Nora Roberts was the first author to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. As of 2006, her novels had spent a combined 660 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List, including 100 weeks in the number-one spot. Over 280 million copies of her books are in print, including 12 million copies sold in 2005 alone. Her novels have been published in 35 countries.”

   The best bibliography, with the most covers, is as usual at the UK FantasticFiction website. Go and prepare to be amazed. (But not if the numbers in the previous paragraph have sunk in.)

   Also, from HollywoodReporter.com: “October 27, 2008. Lifetime has lined up big-name talent for the first two of its four upcoming movie adaptations of Nora Roberts novels. [...] Jerry O’Connell, Lauren Stamile and Faye Dunaway lead the cast of Midnight Bayou.”

   It looks like perfect casting to me.

DOROTHY DANIELS – Affair in Marrakesh.

Pyramid X-1786; paperback original, 1968. Pyramid N3342, 2nd printing, 1974 (shown).

   Whether Dorothy Daniels actually wrote the gothics attributed to her, or if they were all written by her husband, long-time pulp writer Norman Daniels, has been the subject of some recent email discussion between long-time mystery bibliographer, Al Hubin, and myself. In the end, as I understand it, he decided to say something to the effect that some of her books (in particular, those copyright in Norman’s name) were likely to have been written by him.   [See UPDATE below.]

   This one’s billed as “a novel of gothic intrigue.” No castles shrouded in fog, in other words, but a Helen MacInnes sort of romantic adventure, with a naive young woman finding herself in the midst of an affair of international importance.

   More important to Margo Addison, however, are matters that are all personal: (1) on an around-the-world trip she has been followed everywhere she goes; (2) her father, who has been travelling with her since her mother’s strange death, suddenly disappears; (3) she seems to be falling in love with Gil Morley, a young American handicraft importer; and (4) no surprise, the possibility that her mother did not die after all.

   It is difficult to lose track of all of these plot-lines, as Margo seems to go over them in her mind often enough to keep even the most drowsy reader well on the right direction — sometimes, as indicated above, well before her.

   For those looking for entertainment, an evening’s enjoyment, no more, no less. For the more analytically minded, two rather obvious plot contrivances — “coincidences” as they’re called in the real world — make the taste not quite as savory as it might have been otherwise.

[UPDATE] 11-04-08.   All of the entries for Dorothy Daniels in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV now state that they were ghost-written by Norman Daniels. Whether she had any input into the stories, and if so, how much, has not been established.