Mystery*File

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini WILLIAM H. HALLAHAN – The Ross Forgery. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1973. Avon, paperback, 1975. The Ross Forgery, Hallahan’s second novel, is an unusual bibliomystery with a compelling and ingenious premise. New York typographer Edgar Ross, one of those brilliant but unsuccessful types, is approached by tycoon Emmett O’ Kane, who wants him to create a forgery of a nineteen thcentury folio by Thomas Wise. O’Kane’s stated reason: to show up a fellow…

ROBERT WALLACE – The Corpse Parade. The Phantom Detective. First published in magazine form, December 1937. Reprinted as a paperback by Regency / Corinth in 1966. A series of evil murders stalks the streets of New York City. The victims are all connected with the automotive and trucking industries, the bodies found with amputated arms, being dragged behind ambulances, fire trucks and buses. Richard Van Loon, alias the Phantom Detective, answers a summons from publisher Frank Havens to find the…

My Top 10 PI Novels, by Tony Baer. — One per author; private = no police detectives: The Maltese Falcon Long Goodbye Galton Case 8th Circle (Ellin) No Good from a Corpse (Brackett) Solomon’s Vineyard (Latimer) Death in a Bowl (Whitfield) Last Good Kiss (Crumley) Taste of Ashes (Browne) I, the Jury

WARREN MURPHY “Another Day, Another Dollar.” First published in Murder on the Run: Stories from the Adams Round Table (Berkeley, hardcover, February 1998). Reprinted in The Shamus Winners: America’s Best Private Eye Stories, Volume II: 1992-2009, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime Books, 2010). To start with, if the guys who run the Private Eye Writers of America want to call this a PI story, I’m not going to argue with them. It’s close enough, even though the leading protagonist is a…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini WILLIAM H. HALLAHAN – Catch Me, Kill Me. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1977. Avon, paperback, 1978. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel from the MWA in 1978. A former creative director for a large New York ad agency. William Hallahan published his first novel, The Dead of Winter, in 1972. This chilling (in more ways than one) tale of vengeance and sudden death earned considerable praise and prompted Publishers Weekly to extol Hallahan as being…

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – February 1968. Overall rating: *** STANLEY ELLIN “The Last Bottle in the World.” Novelet, A story that wine lovers will really enjoy the most. Ending a bit weak, but Ellin stands high above every other writer of the suspense story, (5) DOROTHY L. SAYERS “A Matter of Taste.” First appeared in Lord Peter Views the Body (Gollancz, UK, 1928, as “The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste”.) A test by wine tasting, but it is obvious who the real Lord Wimsey is. (2)…

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. RKO Radio Pictures, 1944. Edward 6. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Dan Duryea. Based on a novel by J. H. Wallis. Director: Fritz Lang What could possibly happen to a middle-aged professor left alone for the summer when his wife and family go on vacation without him? Would you believe a chance meeting with a beautiful woman, a few drinks, an enraged lover, then murder — strictly self-defense? Moving the body is not a great idea. As the noose slowly tightens,…

I won’t bore you with more tales of woe, but I’m raring to get back in the saddle again. And it’s about time!

CERI JORDAN “Rough Justice.” First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2001. Reprinted in The Shamus Winners: America’s Best Private Eye Stories, Volume II: 1992-2009, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime Books, 2010). Here’s am award winning PI story which I’m willing to wager (but not too much) which you’ve never heard of, neither the author nor the story itself. I’m also will to shake your hand if you have. I came across it Robert Randisi’s collection of PWA…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by George Kelley & Marcia Muller ADAM HALL – The Quiller Memorandum. Simon & Schuster, US, hardcover, 1965. Reprinted many times. Originally titled The Berlin Memorandum in the British first edition, The Quiller Memorandum [Collins, 1965] introduces “shadow executive” Quiller, who works for an agency known only as “the Bureau,” an organization which handles such super-sensitive espionage tasks that officially it does not exist and takes action only when authorized by the…

BLACK MASK – June 1940. Editor: K. S. White. Cover artist: Rafael DeSoto. Overall rating: **½. ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Tong Trouble” Ed Jenkins. Novelette. Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, applies his talents on behalf of Chinese friends, and a tong war, threatened by an unsolved murder, is averted, Told in the obvious Gardner style, as we learn as a bonus how to panhandle on the street and some information about the Chinese people. (3) ROGER TORREY “Too Many Angles.” Donovan. Novelette. A private…

BILL PRONZINI “Hooch,” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 2014. Quite possibly collected but the whereabouts at present are not known. Time: Prohibition Era in the US. Place: Somewhere along the Northern California coastline. Players: Three hoodlums in one truck are helping bring in a shipment of fine liquor from Canada. Two are old pros at the job. The third, by the name of Bennie. is a young fellow whose first job this is. He doesn’t seem nervous. Antsy, maybe. There is…

DESTINATION BIG HOUSE. Republic Pictures, 1950. Dorothy Patrick, Robert Rockwell, Jimmy Lydon, Robert Armstrong. Director: George Blair. A schoolteacher alone in a mountain cottage helps a wounded man, not knowing he’s a racketeer on the run from the gang he’s double-crossed. When he dies, he leaves her his fortune of $80,000, much to her bewilderment and dismay. There is a bit of cynicism involved here, concerning the way small towns can turn on people, with just a hint of gossip. Other than…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Ellen Nehr ADAM HALL – Knight Sinister. Pyramid, US, paperback, 1971. Harper, US, paperback, 1990. First published in the UK in 1951, written by Elleston Trevor under the pseudonym Simon Rattray. Before he became famous as Adam Hall with the publication of The Quiller Memorandum, Elleston Trevor produced five chess-oriented mystery/suspense novels; these were published in England under the pseudonym Simon Rattray, and reprinted here under the Hall name after the…

JOHN T. SLADEK – Mechasm. Ace SF Special 71435, paperback, July 1969. Cover art: Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon. Pocket, paperback, July 1980. Published originally in the UK as The Reproductive System (Gollancz, hardcover, May 1968). A satirical review of Life in the US in the guise of a standard SF story, and the humor is much too obvious to be mistaken about it. This, plus an uncanny use of coincidence, as characters and their relatives appear and reappear continually, helps to keep enjoyment from…

MELODIE JOHNSON HOWE – The Mother Shadow. Claire Conrad & Maggie Hill #1. Viking, hardcover 1878. Penguin, paperback, 1990. I was looking forward to reading this one, mostly because of the Nero Wolfe-Archie Goodwin connection made on the back cover. I can see the connection, but sorry to say this is a book I’m going to have to think about twice before I can even tell you if I’n going to keep it or not. Maggie Hill plays Archie. She’s a secretary whose employer makes out a new will, gives her…

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, Editor – A Quintet of Sixes. Ace 70000; paperback original, 1st printing, 1969. Wollheim, in his introduction to the collection of pulp western stories, seems much too defensive in speaking of the violence inherent in the “Wild West” story. Westerns, to have lasted this long, must must had some other qualities to recommend them. And yet, it does not seem quite necessary to speak unwell of the very quality that has made them so popular all of these years. Readers know what…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini A. B. GUTHRIE, JR. – No Second Wind. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1980. Bison Books, softcover, 2010. Best known for his skillful novels of the westward expansion — among them the Pulitzer Prize-winning Big Sky (1948), A. B. Guthrie, Jr., is also an accomplished crime novelist. His first book, Murders at Moon Dance (1943), is a western mystery: so are four others written in the l970s and 1980s, all featuring the likable detective team of Sheriff Chick…

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION – February 1968. Editor: Frederik Pohl, Cover artist: Vaughn Bodé. Overall rating: *** POUL ANDERSON “A Tragedy of Errors.” Novelette. What initially strikes the reader as another tale of derring-do in the Dark Ages of a space empire gradually becomes the description of the effects at rcommunication as it is rebuilt. Perhaps because of Anderson’s style, which is beginning to grate, the SFnal puzzle surrounding the planet of castaways’ landing is boring, but their problem…

THE BRASHER DOUBLOON. 1947. George Montgomery as PI Philip Marlowe, Nancy Guild, Conrad Janis, Florence Bates, Roy Roberts, Marvin Miller. Based on the novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler. Director: John Brahm. The novel, of course, that author Raymond Chandler originally told was The High Window, in which private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by a crabby old woman who wants him to find a coin missing from her late husband’s collection. Her secretary convinces Marlowe into accepting the…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini FRANK GRUBER – The Buffalo Box. PI Simon Lash #2, Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1941. Bantam #50, paperback, 1946. Gruber created three other major series characters (four. actually): book salesman Johnny Fletcher and his pal Sam Cragg, heroes of The French Key and The Hungry Dog (1941), The Mighty Blockhead (1942), The Scarlet Feather (1948), and ten other adventures; private eye Otis Beagle, who stars in a trio of undistinguished mysteries: and Pl…

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS “Palm Strike’s Last Case.” Novelet. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2014. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera, edited by David Afsharirad (Baen Books, June 1915). I don’t read much of what’s offered by current publishers in the way of science fiction or fantasy, practically none all. But Charlie Jane Anders is a new author, or least she counts as such to me. She’s been writing SF and (I think) fantasy for 20 years…

GEORGE BAGBY – Murder Calling “50”. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1942. History books are fine, but they don’t tell the whole story. The same pieces of personal history may occur for millions of people everyday, events that affect their lives many times over, but if they make the history books (and almost none of them do), they’re squeezed into a short footnote (at best a small paragraph or two), so children a generation or so later hardly have a chance to know anything about it. Personal…

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – January 1968. Overall rating: ***½. JOE GORES “File #2: Stakeout on Page Street.” (Dan Kearney Associates) Involving a delinquent car,, narcotics, and racial prejudice in Hashbury. (4) EDGAR WALLACE “The Father Christmas Job.” (Felix Jenks) First published in The Grand Magazine, January 1923, as “The Buoy That Did Not Light.” Ship’s steward sees behind on-board activities. (1) STUART CLOATE “The Second Nail.” First published in 1966. An African witch doctor’s…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini FRANK GRUBER – Brass Knuckles. Sherbourne, gardcover, 1966. Frank Gruber’s first novel, The French Key (1940), so moved critic William Lyon Phelps that he rhapsodized: “[It] is the best of 8,000 murder stories I have read.” One wonders (a) what sort of godawful mysteries Phelps had been reading all his life; and (b) if he was senile at the time he made this statement. The fact is, while The French Key may be an entertaining novel. it falls woefully short…

IF SCIENCE FICTION. January 1968. Editor: Frederik Pohl. Cover art: John Pederson, Jr. Overall rating: **½. JOHN RANKINE “The Peacemakers.” Novelette. [Rankine is a pen name of Douglas R. Mason.} The responsibilities of peace entail sabotage and violence to help an IGO agent escape from the planet Garamss. With all the subsequent rationalizations, and a beginning that doesn’t mean anything. Uninteresting and confusing. (1) BASIL WELLS “From Distant Earth.” True love, unreturned, on an invisible…

It started out normally, in perfectly innocent fashion, but after I’d packed up the I’d books sold on eBay since the day before and was heading to the post office, I noticed that a warning light on my car’s dashboard was on. Something wrong with a tire? That hadn’t happened in a while. I jumped out and looked at all four tires. Sure enough, one was not just soft, but flat. I went in to call AAA, and having done so – they told me that it would be an hour before help came along – I went back out…

MAXWELL GRANT – The Eyes of the Shadow. Bantam H4056, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1969. Reprint of the original novel that appeared in The Shadow Detective Magazine, April/June 1931. #2 in series. Harry Vincent and Claude Fellows are back on the scene again, helping Bruce Duncan fulfill the conditions in his uncle’s will, rewarding friends of a Russian nobleman. These friends are being methodically eliminated, however, and the Shadow’s assistance is needed to nab the criminals…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Ellen Nehr MARTHA GRIMES – The Man with a Load of Mischief. Richard Jury #1. Little, Brown, hardcover, 1981. Dell, paperback, 1990. Many other later reprint editions. An English village called Long Piddleton, an earl who prefers to be called Mr. Plant, his slightly dolly aunt (an American by birth who hasn’t assimilated the British point of view even after thirty years), assorted villagers, pubs with ancient names and modem nicknames, and Inspector Richard Jury of…

D. C. BROD – Error in Judgment. PI Quint McCauley #2. Walker, hardcover, 1990. Diamond, paperback; 1st printing thus, September 1991. [The asking price for the later edition as posted above is $4.50.] As you’ve probably noticed, paperbacks are making quantum jumps in terms of prices. I’m not sure where the upper limit is, in terms of public resistance to bigger and bigger chunks of available spending money, but so far nothing seems to be keeping the cost of reading material from jumping onward…