Mystery*File

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…

DOUG ALLYN “The Iron Maiden.” Michelle “Mitch” Mitchell, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November-December 2923. The online Crime Fiction Index lists only two stories featuring deep sea diver Mitch Mitchell, but there are others yet to be found and so designated. This I know because this is one and it is not (yet) so noted. There is an interesting story about this as well, told as a short introduction to “The Iron Maiden.” When the series began, with “Icewater Mansions,” a novelette in the…

K. H. SCHEER & WALTER ERNSTING – Enterprise Stardust. Perry Rhodan #1, Ace, paperback original;1st printing, 1969. The first of a long German series, in two parts, probably first punished separately. Comments of each follow. Tolerably good writing and translation. Interesting enough to read more. [I never did.] Overall rating **½ “Enterprse Stardust.” Rhodan and his crew make the first landing on the moon, to find the disabled Arkonides’ spaceship. Perry agrees to help the dying Khrest in…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Marcia Muller STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Death Bed. John Marshall Tanner #2. Dial Press, hardcover, 1980. Ballantine,paperback, May 1982; Bantam, paperback December 1991. Stephen Greenleaf has received a great deal of critical acclaim for his novels featuring John Marshall Tanner. former lawyer turned private eye. Tanner’s territory is the San Francisco Bay Area, where his cases take him into the homes of the rich and powerful, as well as into the lowest dives in the city;…

REVIEWED BY WILLIAM F. DEECK: JAMES CORBETT – Vampire of the Skies. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1932. Ramble House, US, softcover, 2014. Reviewing a James Corbett novel is a challenging task, the reviewer says modestly. The temptation is to quote the entire novel, getting the ordeal over with by causing no pain at least to the reviewer, since no one is likely to believe what is to be said about the novel. As Corbett himself put it in another and even worse — or better, depending on your…

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE November 1948. Cover by George Salter. Overall rating: **½ ROY VICKERS “The Death Position Enigma.” Department of Dead Ends story, Coincidence and a mistake combine to help solve an old murder case, Inverted detection. (2) GEORGES SIMENON “L Chateau de L’Arsenic.” A curious doctor takes it upon himself to investigate a chateau about which rumors are flying. (3) LESLIE CHARTERIS “Salt on His Tail,” The Saint salts a mine twice. Unbelievably obvious. (1) JOSEPH…

STEFANIE MATTESON – Murder at Teatime. Charlotte Graham #2. Diamond, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1991. This second installment of the adventures of actress and movie star Charlotte Graham takes place in Maine, where a world-famous professor and expert on herbal remedies is poisoned by one of the products found growing in his own garden. The motive may have been his stout opposition to the proposed economic development of the island where he’s living (golf course, hotel and condos),…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Bill Pronzini JOSIAH E. GREENE – Madmen Die Alone. Morrow, hardcover, 1938. Joseph Parisi, a homicidal inmate at the Exeter Hospital insane asylum, turns up missing one night. Circumstances are such that it is unlikely he managed to escape on his own; and it appears the only person who could have freed him is brilliant research psychiatrist Dr. Hubert Sylvester. But then Sylvester is found on the premises, brutally stabbed to death. Captain Louis Prescott of the local…

KENNETH ROBESON – Red Snow. Doc Savage #24. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1969. Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, February 1935. A strange red snow that disintegrates everything in it path threatens America’s defenses and it is up to Doc Savage and his crew of assistants to find ist source, He actually gets onto the trail of Ark, the villain of the tale, because of the fear the latter’s gang has of the reputation of Doc Savage, Ark, the “scholar of evil,” is working…

Reviewed by Tony Baer: 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…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Marcia Muller 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…

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…

COMING SOON! August 12!!

MARY DURHAM, Mystery Writer: A Bio-Bibliographical Essay by Jamie Sturgeon. 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.…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Marcia Muller 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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

EARL W. EMERSON – Nervous Laughter. PI Thomas Black #3. Avon, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1986. PI Thomas Black is in danger of falling in love with his client in this case, a woman whose husband is accused of killing a young girl he was sleeping with, then shooting himself. The nervous laughter in the title is hers (see page 86). Emerson has s smooth, readable writing style that starts the book off well, but the story is all on the surface. Black takes a lot of physical abuse in…

ARTHUR C. CLARKE “Out of the Sun.” First published in If, February 1958. Collected in The Other Side of the Sky (Harcourt, Brace & Co., hardcover, 1958). Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, edited by Mike Ashley (among several other anthologies). This is the lead story in the latter book, and it’s a good one (both the story and the anthology). It’s told by a research scientist studying the sun from the ideal vantage point of the planet Mercury. Although he is not the only person on…

Reviewed by Tony Baer: VICTOR HEADLEY – Yardie. The X Press, UK, hardcover, 1992. Pan Books, UK. paperback, 1993, 2018. Atlantic Monthly Press, US, hardcover, 1992. D. is a mid-level coke dealer in Kingston, Jamaica. His outfit sends him to London with a British passport and a couple bags of coke. He’s met by the London contacts at the airport and they head for a house to complete the deal. D.’s job is to hand over the coke, get the money, hang out for a bit, and fly home with the dough. But…

Codes and Ciphers by Robert C. S. Adey. Originally published in The Mystery Lover’s Newsletter, 1969. Vol II No. 6, pp. 10/11: Like so many other things, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe started it all, though this time the illustrious forerunner was not the much-cited “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, but instead that equally fine quintessence of its form, “The Gold-Bug.” Published in 1843 and yet, today, still as readable as ever, it is the first detective story where the major detection was not that of a…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Marcia Muller EDITH PIÑERO GREEN – Rotten Apples. Dearborn V. Pinch #1. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1977. Berkley, paperback, 1982. Dearborn V. Pinch is described by one of Ms. Green’s publishers as “the world’s oldest and cleverest detective.” At well over seventy, the former at least may be true. Pinch, a charming and enterprising old gentleman who still has a sharp eye for the ladies, receives a visit from old flame Antoinette Ormach, who reveals her long-standing…

Back to the Wells, Part 6: The Food of the Gods by Matthew R. Bradley Paul Lehr’s vivid 1967 painting to illustrate H.G. Wells’s The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth (1904) is the least representational of his quintet for my beloved Berkley Highland editions. In muted earth tones, it depicts rocky hills and a plain occupied by tiny crowds of people and several giant eggs, plus a huge, newly hatched chick; the largest is in the foreground, with a crack through which what appears to be a…