best reads of 2018

These were my favourite reads of 2018. They’re listed by publication date, not in order of merit.

Here’s the list, with links to my reviews.

H. C. Bailey, Mr Fortune Speaking, 1930

J. J.  Connington, The Sweepstake Murders, 1931

Henry Wade, Constable Guard Thyself! 1934

John Dickson Carr, The Burning Court, 1937

C. S. Forester, The Happy Return, 1937

Donald E. Keyhoe, Complete Adventures of Richard Knight vol 1, 1937

John P. Marquand, Think Fast, Mr Moto, 1937

Rex Stout, Black Orchids, 1942

Christianna Brand, Tour de Force, 1955

Leigh Brackett, The Secret of Sinharat, 1964

Gavin Lyall, Midnight Plus One, 1965

Peter O’Donnell, Modesty Blaise, 1965

Sax Rohmer’s President Fu Manchu

President Fu Manchu was the eighth of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels. It appeared in 1936 and it marks an interesting departure for the series. Dr Fu Manchu has now turned his attention to American politics.

The date of publication is significant. The United States was still in the grip of the Great Depression and political instability seemed like a possibility. There had certainly been waves of political instability throughout the world since the Bolshevik Revolution and the Depression had made things even more dangerously unsettled. There were Hollywood movies like Gabriel Over the White House predicting a fascist takeover. Communism was gaining ground in most western countries. So Rohmer’s idea that Fu Manchu might see an opportunity for power was perhaps not quite so far-fetched as it seems today.

A priest who is a popular broadcaster is suddenly cut off in the middle of a broadcast. He was about to tell the American people something terribly important, warn them of some great danger. And now he cannot for the life of him remember what it was. The manuscript for the broadcast has been stolen as well. Federal agents now have the priest under guard in an old tower. Worse is to come - presidential candidate Dr Orwin Prescott has disappeared. That leaves only one viable candidate, Harvey Bragg. Federal Officer 56 knows that  Harvey Bragg is a mere puppet. If he is elected the real power will be in the hands of a sinister man in the shadows and Federal Officer 56 knows the identity of that man in the shadows.

Federal Officer 56 has been given sweeping powers, slightly surprising given that he is not an American. In the current crisis however he has been recognised as the only man who can save the situation. He is cagey about his identity although he claims that his name is Smith. The alert reader who is a keen fan of the Fu Manchu books will have a pretty shrewd idea of the identity of this Englishman named Smith.

Fu Manchu’s plan is even more devious than initial appearances would suggest. It looks like Fu Manchu intends Harvey Bragg to be his puppet but the real plan is more subtle. Its also not just about the presidential election. It has been suggested that just as the Roman Republic would appoint a dictator in times of crisis then the present crisis should be dealt with by electing an American dictator.

Dr Fu Manchu has managed to gain control of a large part of the American underworld and indirectly he has control of significant business interests and a grassroots political movement. Combined with his undeniable genius he should now be unstoppable but there’s a complicating factor. Fu Manchu’s American operation is on a vast scale and lavishly funded but it’s been put together in a hurry and it doesn’t work as smoothly as his previous operations in more familiar territory. Also he is dealing with people who are not the kinds of people he is used to dealing with. Many of them are not Asian and do not share his dream of Asian dominance over the West. They serve him for money or because they have been blackmailed or hypnotised but their loyalty cannot be entirely relied upon. This is an uncomfortable situation for Fu Manchu.

Of course Sir Denis Nayland Smith is in unfamiliar territory as well but he has adapted and he has been fortunate to find a thoroughly reliable lieutenant in the person of Marine Captain Mark Hepburn.

There is of course a mysterious dangerous glamorous woman with a slightly exotic air. In fact there are two such women, and Captain Hepburn has fallen for one of them.

There are some of the features you always expect in a Fu Manchu story. There’s the elaborate secret headquarters with the concealed river entrance. In this case it has lots of other surprises as well. And there are some more unusual features, such as a secondary secret headquarters concealed in a skyscraper.

Rohmer was obviously determined to make this a fresh entry in the series and tries very hard to make the American atmosphere effective. It’s the kind of American atmosphere you get from an imaginative writer who knows America from movies and pulp fiction but that just makes it more fun. The stuff about American politics is mostly fanciful although the 1930s was a time when it seemed like almost anything could happen in politics. Rohmer (probably sensibly) doesn’t really take an overt political position. Fu Manchu’s objective is the same as it has always been - to achieve the dominance of eastern over western civilisation. Gaining control of the U.S. is simply a means to this end.

As always in these books it is obvious that Rohmer admires his villain, Fu Manchu, just as much as he admires his hero, Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Fu Manchu is the ultimate expression of the genius of the East (as Rohmer saw things) while Nayland Smith represents the finest virtues of the West. Their struggle is not a struggle between civilisations and barbarism but a struggle between civilisations. Fu Manchu is ruthless but he believes that ruthlessness in such a worthy cause is not only justified but necessary. He is ruthless, but never dishonourable. And in this story as in quite a few other Fu Manchu shows himself to be capable of noble gestures that would be worthy of any hero.

President Fu Manchu is an intriguing attempt to do something slightly different within the formula Rohmer had already perfected and it succeeds pretty well. Like everything Rohmer wrote it’s vastly entertaining. Highly recommended.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Rolling Bones

Erle Stanley Gardner’s 1939 Perry Mason mystery The Case of the Rolling Bones adheres closely to the formula Gardner had well and truly established. And it works beautifully.

Mason is hired by a young woman named Phyllis Leeds to protect the interests of her Uncle Alden. 72-year-old Alden Leeds made a fortune in the Alaskan goldfields at the beginning of the century and now he seems to be planning to marry. Alden’s relatives are not pleased as the marriage could spell the end of their expectations for hefty inheritances. They are trying to get the old boy committed to an asylum.

As is fairly usual in the Perry Mason novels there’s no question of murder, or any serious crime, until we’re a very long way into the book. There is however a definite puzzle. Or rather there are a number of puzzles. There are several intriguing questions of identity. There’s more than one marriage that is being obstructed. There’s also more than one missing person. And finally there’s the question of the loaded dice.

Of course all this does eventually lead to murder. Which raises those questions of identity again.

The timing of the murder should be straightforward. The apartment house in which the murder took place was under surveillance by the Paul Drake Detective Agency so the times at which various people arrived and left are known with complete certainty. But the timing still turns out to be problematic.

There are two major courtroom scenes. The first, in which Mason is attempting to block the family’s attempts to have Alden locked up in an asylum, is an absolute joy. Mason sets an exceptionally clever and devious trap for the opposing counsel who proceeds to walk right into it in the most eminently satisfying way. The second courtroom scene is perhaps not as amusing but it’s more dramatic.

In a Perry Mason story you expect Perry Mason to cut a few corners as far as legal ethics are concerned. Which is exactly what he does. You also expect the District Attorney’s office to be even less ethical, which is exactly what happens. The only real differences are that when Mason plays fast and loose with either ethics or the law he does so in order to protect the interests of his clients, and he does so with more skill than the D.A.’s office. As usual in Gardner’s novels the message is that if you’re accused of a crime you can’t trust the police or the D.A. to play fair so you’d better hope your lawyer knows all the legal tricks in the book.

This concern over the way that the legal system is stacked against the little guy is present in all the early Perry Mason novels but it’s especially marked in this case. In this story Mason pushes his ethical flexibility to the limit, but he does so because the D.A.’s office utilises outrageously illegal methods in attempting to entrap both his client and Mason himself. And Mason is prepared this time for a showdown on the matter - he’s prepared to put his career on the line to make his point.

Alibis play a major part in this mystery and if you’re a connoisseur of the art of busting unbreakable alibis you’ll be in bliss. Never use lamb chops as part of an alibi in a murder case - they can be treacherous witnesses.

Doubts about identity are a staple of detective fiction but this novel just keeps on adding more twists to the saga. Even Perry Mason has to admit he’s hopelessly confused about the identity of one key player. And every time the matter seems to be about to be resolved Gardner finds that he can extract one more twist from his plot.

Of course any Perry Mason story is going to be neatly plotted but this one is exceptionally strong in that area. There are colourful characters and some fascinating glimpses into the brutal life on the Klondike goldfields. It all adds up to a very entertaining novel indeed. Highly recommended.

The long-running Perry Mason TV series included some remarkably successful adaptations of Perry Mason novels sadly the adaptation of The Case of the Rolling Bones manages to eliminate all the really interesting elements of the book.

The Finding of Lot's Wife by Alfred Clark

The Finding of Lot's Wife is a lost world adventure tale. The author was a certain Alfred Clark, of whom I know nothing whatsoever. I am more than a little addicted to lost world stories and this is a rather obscure example of the genre.

While the book was apparently published in 1896 there is some evidence that the events it purports to describe happened somewhat earlier. There is what appears to be a reference to the Crimean War as a contemporary event.

Hal Aylward is wealthy young Englishman who takes it into his head to go off travelling in the Middle East. He persuades his friend Noel Yorke, an artist, to accompany him. They eventually end up in Palestine where they hear a story that intrigues them. There is supposedly a Greek Orthodox monastery built on an inaccessible site in a hidden valley, a monastery that has not been visited by, or even seen by, any outsiders for centuries. The monks are reputed to live to an incredibly advanced age and to have lost the power of speech. They are fed, so the story goes, by ravens. There’s a suggestion that there is some connection between the monastery and the Biblical tale of Lot and his wife fleeing from God’s destruction of the Cities of the Plain.

It’s obviously a tall story but Noel is captivated by it and insists that they set out at once to find the lost monastery of St Lot.

They are deserted by their Arab guides but, suffering considerably from thirst and hunger,  are taken in by a wandering Bedouin tribe, the Beni Azaleh. The tribe has suffered misfortunes of its own. Some rather strange circumstances lead Aylward and Yorke to a remote valley and there, sure enough, is a monastery perched atop a pillar of rock.

This is indeed the monastery of St Lot but the monks are not unusually old nor have they lost the power of speech, nor are they dependent upon ravens for their food. It seems like a fairly ordinary monastery, except for its extreme isolation. The big surprise is that there are two guests already staying at the monastery, an American professor and his daughter (the daughter being disguised as a young boy).

There are however odd things happening at the monastery.Some odd things had also happened among the Beni Azaleh. The sheikh’s son had disappeared, and the sheikh had gone off to search for him, down a narrow defile in the rocks from which no traveler had ever been known to return. The sheikh did return, but at the cost of the loss of his reason. These various strange happenings are connected to the legend mentioned earlier. The two young English travellers will make the same descent that the sheikh had made, with frightening and horrible results.

I’m not sure if I’d call this an explicitly Christian adventure tale but obviously Christianity does play an important rôle. Of course in 1896 a writer would presume that most of his readers would be at least nominal Christians and would be reasonably familiar with Biblical tales, such as the fate of Lot’s wife. I don’t think a reader would actually need to be a Christian to appreciate this story.

There is some action, there’s a minor battle and there’s plenty of danger. The country itself is a bigger danger than any human foes, especially in the Valley of Madness.

The Arabs are treated in an even-handed manner. El Jezzar is certainly a true villain but the young Englishmen will owe their lives to the mullah of the Beni Azaleh who refuses to countenance cold-blooded murder. The story has two heroines, one an American girl and the other a Bedouin girl.

There’s some effective atmosphere in this story. The horrors of thirst, hunger, isolation and madness are palpable.

The Finding of Lot's Wife is perhaps a lost world story for lost world completists like myself but it’s a fairly entertaining book. If you are a lost world fanatic you’ll certainly want to add it to your reading list. Recommended.

Ethel Lina White’s Some Must Watch (The Spiral Staircase)

Ethel Lina White’s suspense novel Some Must Watch was published in 1933. In the 40s it was filmed as The Spiral Staircase and subsequent editions of the novel bore that title.

I was quite unimpressed with White’s The Wheel Spins (filmed as The Lady Vanishes) but since I own the Wordsworth edition which includes both novels in a single volume it seemed sensible to give this author another chance.

The heroine, Helen Capel, is employed by an odd family in a very remote house called The Summit. The house, located near the border between England and Wales, has an unfortunate reputation having apparently been the scene of several murders. And now there’s a homicidal maniac roaming the district, strangling young women.

There are things that are even more frightening than stranglers, such as old Lady Warren (who may or may not have shot her first husband). Her middle-aged son Professor Warren seems harmless enough. His unmarried sister seems decidedly strange. And then there’s the Professor’s son and his wife. This is not a marriage made in heaven and the young Mrs Warren has consoled herself with a series of young men. Now she has her eyes on the Professor’s pupil Stephen Rice, currently staying at The Summit. When the young Mrs Warren decides to pursue a young man she does not expect to be rejected but Stephen has made his lack of interest all too obvious.

The other inhabitants of the house are Lady Warren’s new nurse, the formidable and rather unpleasant Nurse Barker, and the two servants, Mr and Mrs Oates. The only regular visitor is the young Welsh doctor, Dr Parry.

The events of the novel take place on a dark and stormy night. As if that’s not enough to isolate the inhabitants of The Summit, on Dr Parry’s advice strict orders have been issued that no-one is to enter or leave the house until morning. This applies especially to the men, who have a duty to protect the women from the strangler. The strangler seems to be moving closer and closer to The Summit with each murder and everyone assumes that his next victim is likely to be one of the women in the house.

This book is very much in the Had I But Known mould. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of foreshadowing, in fact in a suspense story it can be quite a desirable thing, but it’s a technique that  needs to be handled with care and subtlety. White uses it in a particularly clumsy and obvious way and all it really does it to draw attention to her inability to build suspense effectively.

The basic structure is similar to the classic English country house murder mystery, with a small circle of suspects cut off from the outside world, but played for suspense rather than as a fair-play puzzle-plot mystery. While there are clues, and there are red herrings, nobody does any actual detecting and the solution is stumbled upon by accident.

Being a Had I But Known novel there is of course a romance sub-plot.

I’m not surprised that White’s novels were filmed, and filmed very successfully. She was quite good at assembling the ingredients for a fine mystery suspense story. It was her execution that was lacking. Her prose style is clunky, she has no ear for dialogue, she tells us directly what the characters are thinking rather than letting their words and actions tell us, and there’s that heavy-handed foreshadowing. These are all flaws that a good screenwriter could easily correct and the basic stories had plenty of potential in the hands of a really good director. And Alfred Hitchcock (who directed The Lady Vanishes) and Robert Siodmak (who directed The Spiral Staircase) were very very good directors indeed. In fact it’s a peculiarity of the thriller that some of the best movies in that genre have been based on mediocre source novels.

And Some Must Watch definitely qualifies as a mediocre source novel. Hard to recommend this one.

Rex Stout's Under the Andes

Rex Stout (1886-1975) wrote the first of his Nero Wolfe mysteries, Fer-de-Lance, in 1934. He would go on to wrote another 32 Nero Wolfe novels and a good number of other detective stories and would become one of the most celebrated mystery writers in America. But Stout’s literary career did not begin with Nero Wolfe. Between 1910 to 1916 he had written a considerable quantity of pulp fiction including a now almost forgotten lost world adventure story, Under the Andes. This tale was first published in All-Story Weekly in 1914.

Paul Lamar is a very rich young American, in his early thirties, fairly cultured and somewhat prone to fashionable ennui. His younger brother Harry seems to suffer from the same complaint but is more inclined to seek reckless solutions. Most recently he has been gambling heavily and foolishly. Paul is not worried by the money that Harry might lose. What concerns Paul more than anything else is the family name. It seems that Harry has learnt his lesson in regards to gambling but now a much more serious temptation has appeared. That temptation is Desiree La Mire. La Mire is a dancer. Her origins are shrouded in mystery. Her respectability is open to debate. Her beauty and the fascination she exercises over men are beyond dispute.

Paul decides that the most sensible thing to do is to indulge Harry’s obsession. La Mire will soon tire of the boy. Paul hires a luxury steam yacht and the three of them set out on a pleasure cruise. In Peru they take a detour. On a whim they set off into the Andes and there they discover a mysterious cave. Their guide assures them that the cave is well-known, it is connected to a legend of the disappearance of a large party of Incas transporting an immense quantity of gold, and he tells them that they must on no account the cave. Many have entered that cave in search of gold. None have returned. But of course they do go into the cave.

Getting into the cave was easy. Getting out again seems quite impossible.

What they find in the cave is a lost world, but it’s not exactly a lost civilisation. Or rather it was a civilisation but it isn’t one now. The idea of cultures regressing or degenerating was something that was a minor obsession in late Victorian times. This culture has certainly degenerated.

It’s also a world of darkness. Much of the terror in fact stems from the almost complete darkness. Mind you there are other things, real things, to be afraid of as well. There are people, or what used to be people, and they are not friendly. And there may be monsters as well.

The action is pretty near non-stop. No sooner have our adventurers escaped from one deadly danger than they are plunged into some new and ever more harrowing peril. The fact, in this world of darkness, the dangers are mostly unseen adds to the horror (and Stout uses the darkness as a source of terror and mystery with consummate skill).

There are some other interesting features to this novel. Paul Lamar is a man who believes he has exhausted all of life’s sources of joy and interest. He is bored and perhaps more than half in love with death. This novel was written in 1914 and it has a certain fin de siècle flavour to it. Paul Lamar could be the hero of a decadent novel of the 1890s. When faced with any new danger Paul’s first instinct is to give up and welcome oblivion. The problem he has is that he feels some responsibility to his younger brother so he has to keep fighting even though his heart is not in the struggle. Paul Lamar is a very unusual hero for a tale of adventure.

Desiree La Mire is also an unusual adventure story heroine. Like Paul she seems as if she would be more at home in a decadent novel.

So Under the Andes is a strange collision between the world of literary decadence and the world of pulp fiction. As an adventure story it works extremely well and its odd literary flavour makes it rather intriguing. Highly recommended.

Murder by the Dozen

In the mid-1930s Hugh Wiley (1884-1968) wrote twelve short stories featuring Chinese-American detective James Lee Wong. The stories were later collected as Murder by the Dozen. From 1938 to 1940 Monogram Pictures made six very popular Mr Wong B-movies, the first five starring Boris Karloff as Mr Wong.

To be honest there’s not a huge amount in common between Wiley’s Mr Wong and the character featured in the movies. Both are western-educated but Wiley’s Mr Wong was educated at Yale while the movie version was English-educated. Wiley’s version works for the U.S. Treasury Department and has a slightly hardboiled air while the movie version is a rather genteel and cultured private detective.

In the movies the detective is always referred to as Mr Wong. In the short stories James Lee Wong is more often referred to simply as James Lee or Mr Lee.

Long Chance concerns an attempt to buy American bombing planes for the Chinese government, in a manner that is perhaps not entirely open and legal.

Ten Bells deals with murder in the movies. This particular movie includes a duelling scene but one of the pistols is loaded with live ammunition rather than blanks, with fatal consequences. The property man is a very obvious suspect, with a strong motive and ample opportunity. A fairly entertaining story.

A Ray of Light involves diamonds, which may or may not be real. There’s some interesting stuff about methods of telling real diamonds from fake. A reasonably good story.

The Bell from China is a bell from the Chou dynasty which has been donated to the Art League. Mr James Lee Wong is asked to translate the inscription on the bell, which proves to be a challenging task. The results are not those that were anticipated. And there’s more going on here than antiquarianism. A very good story.

In The Feast of Kali wealthy landowner Denman Hale decides it is time to deal with Sang Hop, who runs a floating brothel, gambling hell and opium den. Hale is tired of seeing his Indian and Chinese workers corrupted by Sang Hop. Sang Hop gets wind of Denman Hale’s plans and strikes first. Fortunately his loyal servant Chew Lim realises that there is only way to save his master - he must contact Mr James Lee.

Lee knows he has to move fast. He also knows he’s dealing with all manner of exotic evil - such as worshippers of Kali who practise various bloodthirsty rites. This is not by an means a fair-play detective story but Lee does do some actual detecting by means of some unusual clues. A very entertaining story.

Jaybird’s Chance takes Lee to the Payboy gold mine where there’s been a robbery. An elderly Chinese is the chief suspect. The sheriff has been giving him the third degree but so far has failed to get a confession. James Lee is not surprised by his failure. Lee manages to get in some good trout fishing and some good poker with the guys at the mine. Both poker and trout will prove to be helpful in solving the case. This is slightly more hardboiled than most of the James Lee stories but it’s still quite clever. It turns out that if you’re a detective it helps if you understand bluejays.  A very good story.

No Witnesses takes James Lee into the mountains for a well-earned vacation. But he discovers that crime will follow a detective wherever he goes. It all starts when a wealthy businessman decides he’d like to settle down in the picturesque little Sky Ridge community. What he’d really like to do is to buy a house there. A fine idea, but carrying round two thousand dollars in cash to make the purchase is perhaps less of a good idea.

James Lee gets the vital clue in this case from a Chinese cook at the local hotel. In fact Lee solves many of his cases with help from members of the Chinese community. Another fairly decent story.

Three Words is the story of the murder of a scholar. He may have been murdered for the sake of a treasure, but there are many different kinds of treasures. Things might have been simpler if only doctors took more care with their handwriting and their Latin. A fairly clever story, especially if you like solutions that hinge on literary scholarship.

Scorned Woman is one of several stories that explore the seedy but glamorous side of Chinatown including the various rackets - gambling, narcotics, white slavery etc. This sort of thing was extremely popular with American consumers of popular culture at this time. In this tale money is being raised for the Chinese government in Nanking by the sale of opium. James Lee Wong has to sort this out whilst also rescuing an American girl who has shown an excessive curiosity in the exotic Chinatown underworld and he also has a funeral to attend, a funeral in which the widow’s behaviour proves to be interesting and enlightening. One of the best stories in the collection.

Seven of Spades is pure pulp fun. A G-Man has been killed in Arizona. He had picked up the trail of notorious gunman Dutch Flint. The local sheriff has arrested the wrong man but James Lee is used to having to deal with less-than-efficient local lawmen. He really needs lots of backup on this case but there isn’t time so he’s going to have to rely on his luck, his nerve and his skill with a gun. Not exactly high art but very enjoyable.

The Thirty Thousand Dollar Bomb is a case that could plunge the world into war. A U.S. senator has bought some documents and they’re dynamite and they’re going to be published nation-wide and then nothing will be able to stop the inevitable slide to war. Nothing can stop this from happening, except for Treasury Agent James Lee Wong. Lots of breathless excitement in this story and it works pretty well.

Medium Well Done is the highlight of the collection. It’s the old spook racket. Young Helen King is a very rich woman after her father’s death but she’s easy prey to a phoney medium. Luckily she has a devoted Chinese servant in Wong Sung and even more fortunately Wong Sung is acquainted with Mr James Lee of the Treasury Department. This is a classic pulp tale done with style and Wong Sung gives the story a truly delightful finish.

James Lee Wong is in the Charlie Chan mould, a dedicated professional and a man of high moral qualities. He’s Charlie Chan with more of a pulp edge, although he’s a less complex and less well-developed character. Since he’s a Treasury agent he gets to deal with crimes that often go beyond the straightforward cases that a policeman would deal with.

These are somewhat pulpy and semi-hardboiled tales rather than puzzle-plot mysteries but if you accept them for what they are they’re quite good fun.

There is some gentle humour, much of it in the form of the staggering number of cryptic  old Chinese proverbs which Lee and every other Chinese character in the stories are able to quote.

Murder by the Dozen is highly recommended.

My review of the Mr Wong movie Mr Wong in Chinatown might also be of interest.

Monkey Planet (Planet of the Apes)

Pierre Boulle was a successful French author whose novel The Bridge over the River Kwai was turned into a blockbuster movie during the 50s. His 1963 novel La Planète des Singes (Monkey Planet) became a major pop culture phenomenon when it was filmed in 1968 as Planet of the Apes.

Surprisingly perhaps the film was fairly faithful to the novel. While the details have been subject to numerous changes the general plot outline is still more or less the same and the themes and even the tone remain substantially very similar. All of the really clever ideas that are to be found in the film were in the novel. The film-makers deserve praise for recognising the essential elements in Boulle’s story and hanging on to them, and for not trying to dumb down the ideas. They also deserve praise for realising that the movie would work best if played fairly straight. The novel is not always played straight and is clearly intended as satire but any attempt to copy the novel’s slightly jokey tone would have been disastrous in the film.

The novel has a framing story (which is utilised for a purpose which will be obvious to an alert reader and very obvious indeed to anyone who has seen the movie). A couple of space tourists find a message in a bottle in space. It’s an account of a voyage of exploration from Earth to the star Betelgeuse three hundred light-years away. It is a scientific expedition and on one of the planets orbiting Betelgeuse they find a society run by highly intelligent apes in which humans are mere animals, incapable of intelligent thought.

The narrator, who believes he is the only survivor, is captured and taken to a scientific institute where ape scientists carry out experiments on the lower animals, such as men.

He is able to convince some chimpanzee scientists that he is not an animal but is as intelligent as an ape. This causes problems since this ape society is likely to react rather negatively to the idea of intelligent humans. He is likely to be perceived as a threat, and the chimpanzee scientists Zira and Cornelius may be in danger as well.


Cornelius is at this very moment involves in an archaeological project which may also be very disturbing to the ape establishment.

Of course at some stage the book is going to have to explain exactly how the apes became intelligent while humans became dumb animals. There’s a great deal of dodgy pseudoscience and technobabble and it has to be said this aspect of the story is handled much more skilfully in the 1968 movie. The big shock revelations are also done much more effectively in the movie. As I said earlier, all the really good ideas in the movie are Boulle’s and are in the novel but they‘re all executed much more effectively in the movie. Overall the novel seems a bit clunky and a bit contrived compared to the film.

One of the more interesting ideas in the book is the difference between originality and imitation, and between civilisations that are original and those that are just imitative. This also touches on the nature of intelligence. There’s also interesting speculation on the rise and fall of civilisations and on the question of societal evolution versus societal degeneration. Boulle certainly tackles plenty of intriguing topics.

One element in the novel that is merely touched on in the movie is that there are three species of intelligent ape, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-outangs, and the three species are by no means equal. This is something that the film-makers obviously decided, no doubt wisely, to approach with extreme caution. In the novel it is quite a big deal.

Monkey Planet is interesting since it’s clearly intended as a satire but exactly what is it satirising? It would be tempting to see it as a satire on race but it is perhaps more a class satire than a race satire. Boulle also has a lot of fun at the expense of scientists. Monkey Planet is odd but interesting science fiction and is worth a read, but the 1968 Planet of the Apes movie improves on the novel quite a bit.

Sydney Fowler's Rex v. Anne Bickerton

English poet and novelist Sydney Fowler Wright (1874-1965) worked as an accountant in Birmingham before devoting himself full-time to writing. He wrote in various genres including science fiction. As Sydney Fowler he wrote quite a number of crime novels.

Rex v. Anne Bickerton, published in 1930, is not so much a police procedural as a legal procedural. We start off knowing nothing whatsoever of the curious events in the Hackett household. We are then treated to an exhaustively detailed account of the coroner’s enquiry into Belle Hackett’s death and we start to see the beginnings of a plot.

Mrs Hackett’s husband James had been away from home on a business trip. She had gone to great lengths to persuade him that she far too ill to be left alone. This was apparently something she did quite often. She was also prone to making vague threats of suicide. James takes no notice of her suicide threats and he takes no notice of her protestations of illness. He’s seen it all before. It always amounts to nothing.

This time Mrs Hackett really does die. She does not, however, die as the result of the almost-certainly imaginary illness she had been complaining of. She dies of arsenic poisoning.

There are three main suspects. All have what appear to be strong motives. James Hackett’s life has beeb made miserable by his wife and she is the one who has the money. Belle Hackett’s sister Anne Bickerton stands to inherit Belle’s fortune. Rose Dorling, employed as a species of governess to the two children, is in love with James Hackett and might well want Belle out of the way. James has an alibi but no reader who is widely read in golden age detective fiction is going to be overly impressed by an alibi. Of the three suspects it is Anne Bickerton against whom it seems easiest to make a case and it is clear that the police see her as the most promising suspect. Given the book’s title it’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that it is Anne who ends up  being charged with murder.

We see the case entirely through the lens of the legal proceedings. Everything we learn about the case we learn from the evidence given at the coroner’s inquest and at the trial.

This is effectively a detective story without a detective. Inspector Taverton plays a very minor rôle. Any actual investigating that he does happens off-stage so to speak. He makes brief appearances in the courtroom scenes and even briefer appearances when he discusses the the very broad outlines of the case with his chief. We know his view of the case but we don’t really know how he has come to take that view.

This is a crime novel that is entirely focused on lawyers and legal proceedings. The lawyers, solicitor Mr Duff-Preedy and barrister Mr Rickard Salmon, seem to be cast as the heroes although they are not the slightest bit heroic in any conventional sense. They are motivated purely by self-interest. If they are not the heroes then they are certainly the protagonists.

This is also a book that takes a rather jaundiced view of the much-vaunted system of British justice. The police are not sure which of the three suspects actually committed the murder and they don’t particularly care, as long as someone gets convicted and hanged. Their main concern is that they should not end up looking foolish. Mr Duff-Preedy thinks Anne Bickerton is probably guilty. He doesn’t care. It promises to be a very high-profile case and the publicity will do wonders for his legal practice. The young barrister whom he briefs, Rickard Salmon, sees the case as a wonderful opportunity to make his reputation.

At one point Mr Duff-Preedy is vastly amused when he is reminded of the sacredness of the principle of the assumption of innocence. He regards this as a pathetically naïve notion. In practice once you’ve been charged with a crime you have to prove your innocence.

The coroner’s jury is a prize collection of fools and knaves. Juries in general are portrayed as being capricious, emotional and generally foolish.

And then there’s the judge. If anyone in this story deserves to be hanged it’s Mr Justice Ackling. There are plenty of unscrupulous characters in this tale, but he is a self-satisfied vicious sadist.

The plot has some nice twists and some neat misdirection. It’s reasonably fairly clued. The solution is plausible and the author certainly cannot be accused of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. There’s also an odd touch at the end which I can’t say anything about but it’s yet another slightly offbeat element to an already quite offbeat novel.

There’s some sardonic humour and there’s a generally very sceptical if not outright cynical tone. The characters are a collection of very imperfect human beings. They all have serious character flaws but apart from Mr Justice Ackling none could be described as evil. And they all have at least some strengths to balance their weaknesses.

Putting so much emphasis on legal proceedings can be risky. You end up with very dialogue-heavy writing and there is the danger that the reader will grow weary of very very long courtroom scenes. If you want to utilise this kind of technique successfully you have to throw in some surprises and you need great skill to maintain an atmosphere of suspense and expectancy. The reader has to feel that something startling is likely to happen at any moment. Erle Stanley Gardner could get away with it but even Gardner did not dare to set almost the whole action of a novel in a courtroom. Surprisingly Fowler pulls it off pretty well.

Rex v. Anne Bickerton is a fine example of the diversity of crime fiction during the interwar years. Structurally it’s slightly out of the ordinary and it’s definitely unusually cynical in tone. I think it works and I’m going to highly recommend it.

Francis Durbridge's The World of Tim Frazer

Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was a prolific English writer of novel, plays, radio plays and television screenplays. He worked mostly in the crime genre although occasionally with a few spy thriller elements as well. The World of Tim Frazer was a very successful 1960-61 television serial which, sadly, has not survived. We do however have his 1962 novel based on that serial.

The World of Tim Frazer is a spy thriller. It belongs to the Reluctant Spy sub-genre, in which purely by accident a very ordinary man gets mixed up in the murky world of espionage. This is a sub-genre that was perfected by Eric Ambler back in the 1930s. By 1962 it was falling out of favour, with professional spies like James Bond and Matt Helm ruling the literary roost.

The Reluctant Spy format suits Durbridge’s style and in fact his straightforward detective stories more often than not feature heroes who have stumbled unwittingly into a world of crime.

Tim Frazer is a partner in an engineering film, or at least he was before the firm went belly up. The company’s failure can be attributed mostly to the recklessness and dishonest of Frazer’s partner Harry Denston. Frazer and Denston have however been friends for a long time and Frazer was well aware of Harry’s character flaws and he probably should have had enough sense not to go into business with him.

Now Harry has disappeared. That’s not unusual. Harry often has reason to make himself scarce for a while. What is unusual is that Tim Frazer has been asked to find Harry. He has been asked by a man named Ross who works for a government department. He cannot give any details about this department apart from the fact that it was access to large amounts of money about which the British taxpayer knows nothing and it has rather sweeping powers. In fact it seems to have more or less unlimited powers. It’s not MI5 but it’s obviously some shadowy counter-intelligence agency. And they’ve offered Tim Frazer a very generous salary. Tim Frazer is now a spy, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he is now a spy-catcher. He has absolutely no training or expertise but he does know Harry Denston’s habits extremely well and this mysterious department has certain reasons for not wanting to use one of their own people on this case.

Frazer does have a few leads that might lead him to Harry. He knows that for some reason Harry’s car is terribly important. He knows that the seaside town of Henton, a drowned Russian sailor and a little girl named Anya are important. And the frigate North Star, which foundered in 1794, is extremely important.

Tim Frazer may be a rank amateur but he shows a certain flair for the game of espionage. He’s intelligent and he’s naturally suspicious of people and their motives. He’s good at spotting lies and he’s also quite good at bluffing people. There are a lot of lies to untangle but Frazer is patient and determined. He is just a little shocked when he has to confront the fact that this is a game in which people can get badly hurt or even killed but he recovers his equilibrium quickly enough. And he discovers that killing people isn’t all that difficult. He doesn’t like it but he can do it if he has to.

This is a low-key spy thriller. The world of Tim Frazer is a long way from the world of James Bond. There are no gadgets. There are no glamorous lady spies throwing themselves at him. There’s not a great deal of action. There is some violence. It’s not graphic violence but when it occurs it occurs suddenly and with a certain casual brutality.

Durbridge throws in enough plot twists to keep things interesting. Tim Frazer is, initially at least, working completely in the dark. He hasn’t been told why it is so vital that Harry should be found. He has been given no indication whatsoever as to exactly what Harry may have done. He doesn’t know who the bad guys are. He doesn’t know who he can trust. He doesn’t have any idea where Harry might have gone to. The reader knows as much as Frazer knows, which is virtually nothing. There’s a mystery to be unravelled but the mystery is not just the identity of the criminal but also the nature of the crime.

While The World of Tim Frazer has none of the glamour of Bond it also lacks the nihilism and pessimism that became increasingly prevalent in spy fiction during the 60s. Even in 1962 it must have had a slightly old-fashioned feel but on the whole it works and it’s enjoyable. Recommended.

Rex Stout's Cordially Invited to Meet Death

Cordially Invited to Meet Death is a 1942 Nero Wolfe novella by Rex Stout, published as a double-header with Black Orchids.

Bess Huddleston organises parties. She organises parties for very very rich people and she gets paid an enormous amount of money for offering this service. Now someone is sending letters that could ruin her business. Nero Wolfe isn’t particularly interested in the case but the fee being offered is very substantial, and Nero Wolfe is always very interested in substantial fees.

Nobody really expected that it would end in murder. The circumstances limit the possible suspects to five. There’s Miss Huddleston’s brother Daniel (whose bizarre chemical experiments she finances), her virtually unemployable nephew Larry, her secretary Maryella Timms, her party-organising chief assistant Janet Nicholls and a certain Dr Brady. The chimpanzee is almost certainly innocent and the bears have an alibi.

The centrepiece of this novella is the unusual murder method. Whether it would actually work in practice is perhaps open to debate but it certainly sounds chillingly plausible. And very difficult indeed to prove.

Cordially Invited to Meet Death is also notable as an example of Wolfe’s stubbornness. Inspector Cramer should know by know that trying to bully Wolfe just irritates him without achieving anything. It can irritate Wolfe so much that it inspires him to solve a case that he would otherwise not trouble himself over.

On balance it’s probably just as well Archie didn’t take his gun with him on his first visit to the Huddleston estate. There was no reason to shoot the chimpanzee. He was just playing. And the alligators were just being alligators.

Incidentally, those famous black orchids make an appearance in this story.

This story has a pretty decent plot. It’s very fairly clued but there’s enough misdirection to keep us guessing (well it managed to keep me guessing anyway). Wolfe’s solution is satisfying. Wolfe is in pretty good form. There’s a fairly colourful cast of suspects. There are some eccentric and even bizarre elements. And had he not taken the case Wolfe would never have discovered the secret of a really successful corned beef hash. A case that has a genuine gastronomic payoff is always a satisfactory case.

Cordially Invited to Meet Death is a most enjoyable tale. Highly recommended. And the edition that includes both this novella and the also excellent Black Orchids is a must-buy for Wolfe fans.

Space 1999: Android Planet

Gerry Anderson’s 1975-77 science fiction television series Space: 1999 spawned quite a lot of spin-off merchandising. This included a whole series of novelisations, but more interestingly it also included five original novels.

One of these original novels was John Rankine’s Android Planet, which was originally published  in 1976 and it's a pretty decent science fiction tale.

Here’s the link to my full review of Android Planet at Cult TV Lounge.

Harold Lamb's Swords from the East

Harold Lamb (1892-1962) was an historian and screenwriter as well as a prolific writer of adventure novels and short stories. He wrote for various magazines but his best known stories appeared in Adventure magazine which was a pulp magazine, but a rather up-market one. Being also a successful popular historian gave Lamb a slightly higher degree of literary respectability than most pulp writers.

Bison Books have issued virtually all of Lamb’s stories in a series of paperback editions. The paperbacks are rather generous - most include one or two short novels as well as a dozen or so short stories and novellas so they’re pretty solid value.

Swords from the East includes his tales of Mongols, Tatars and other Asiatic peoples. Lamb had a considerable amount of sympathy for both European and non-European cultures. This collection even includes a very favourable view of Genghis Khan.

The Gate in the Sky is a simple little tale of a gentle reindeer herder. He loves his reindeer so much that when he needs meat he hunts other game but will not harm his reindeer. Now someone has stolen his herd. He is outnumbered and has only a bow and is up against men with guns but he must get his herd back. Perhaps the gate in the sky will open for him.

The Wolf-Chaser is the tale of a Christian knight a long long way from home. In 1660 Hugo of Hainault finds himself in the wilds of Tartary, in search of his brother Paul. Paul is a priest. Hugo is really not much of a Christian and he didn’t get on all that well with his brother but a brother is still a brother and Hugo has a stubborn streak. Having set himself to find Paul that’s what he is going to do. He finds himself in the middle of a war. It is not his quarrel, he is not a man who would normally concern himself with conflicts not involving gentlemen, and he regards the Tatars as savages. But he does have that stubborn streak and he does get involved.

The Three Palladins is a short novel. A young Chinese prince discovers that he has an enemy at court. A very deadly enemy. It is only by the merest chance that Mingan escapes with his life. Beyond the Great Wall he encounters a young Mongol prince named Temujin (destined to become rather better known as Genghis Khan). This is a complex story of friendships and loyalties. It’s also a story about heroes but these are heroes who are more than just mighty warriors. It’s an epic tale but the focus is on the men who drive great events rather than on the events themselves. An excellent tale.

The House of the Strongest is an odd little tale of a Mongol whose immense strength wins him wealth and a beautiful wife, but not his wife’s respect. At least not at first.

Sleeping Lion is a story that unfortunately has not survived in a complete form. It’s a pity since it’s an interesting tale of Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan, and of a fabulous ruby and of a young concubine. Not to mention an unscrupulous drunken astrologer.

The Road of the Giants is another short novel. In 1771 Scottish cartographer Captain Minard Billings  is employed to make a map of the Tatar steppe. He is caught up in a revolt of the Tatars. Not an ordinary revolt though - rather than taking up arms against their Russian overlords the tribes have decided simply to leave, to return to their ancestral homelands far to the east. This will not please the Russian empress, now deprived of the taxes paid by the tribes and of their services in war against the Turks. It will also cause difficulties for the tribes since those ancestral homelands are now occupied by others. It could become a death march. Captain Billings is an unwilling participant in the march, there is a major complication in the form of the clever but dangerous girl Nadesha and there’s also the fact the son of the khan and the tribe’s Tibetan guide and advisor both very much want him dead.

This is another story of unlikely friendships and surprising and complicated loyalties. And it’s another story about the complex nature of heroism. These are the things that Lamb writes about exceptionally well.

Azadi’s Jest concerns a woman of the sultan’s harem and a cossack prisoner who is being put to the torture. The woman thinks the cossack has cast a spell on her. Perhaps they have in fact cast spells on each other, love being a kind of spell. But both will face extreme danger as a result. A good little story.

The Net is a bit like The Gate in the Sky, a story of vengeance coming from an unexpected quarter. A young girl, the niece of a blind fisherman, is carried off by traders. They think they are safe from retribution but they are wrong. A good simple little story.

The Book of the Tiger, in two parts (The Warrior and The Emperor) is the fascinating true story of Babur, the first of the Moghul emperors of India, and is based on Babur’s own autobiography. At times ruthless, at times extraordinarily reckless, Babur comes across as a rather attractive character, a leader with genuine substance. And a leader to whom loyalty was important (loyalty and friendship being key themes in Lamb’s fiction).

Swords from the East provides plenty of rousing adventure combined with a surprising degree of psychological insight and subtlety. Highly recommended.

Swords from the West and Swords from the Desert, also from Bison Books, are also highly recommended.

Mr Fortune Explains

Mr Fortune Explains is a 1930 short story collection from the pen of H.C. Bailey and featuring Reginald Fortune, a kind of scientific and medical advisor to Scotland Yard.

The Reggie Fortune stories were immensely popular in their day and have since fallen into almost total obscurity.

These stories are very entertaining and Reggie Fortune is an amusing and rather likeable eccentric genius detective.

The weakness of these stories is that they’re not remotely fair play. Most of Mr Fortune’s cases seem trivial and routine at first and the authorities are usually all that interested. Reggie Fortune however knows that the cases are not straightforward at all. Terrible crimes are being committed (or at least planned) and no-one would care or even suspect were it not for the fact that Mr Fortune has seized on some vital piece of evidence that leads to the uncovering of a frightful conspiracy.

It’s not a bad formula but the problem is that it relies entirely on some extraordinary leap of intuition on the part of Mr Fortune. Even when the solution is explained the chain of reasoning that led Reggie Fortune to the explanation of the puzzle is just not there. We’re left to believe that he must have relied on divine inspiration or that he has some supernatural or paranormal powers of perception that are denied to mere mortals, such as the readers of these tales.

The first story in this collection, The Picnic, is a good example. The brother of a nobleman is the victim of a violent assault. From this Mr Fortune is not only able to deduce the existence of a conspiracy to kidnap a young heir but can fill in just about all the details of the elaborate plot.

The second story, The Little Milliner, involves a missing shop girl. She has most likely run off with a gentleman. What little evidence there is points in that direction. Mr Fortune however knows that the young shop girl has been the victim of a terrible conspiracy. The shop girl’s story is clever enough but again Mr Fortune appears to solve the puzzle by means of lucky guesswork or pure intuition.

The Wedding Ring is delightfully convoluted. There’s a doctor who needs to consult Mr Fortune urgently but the doctor disappears. Later his wife disappears. Someone tries to murder Reggie Fortune. It may have something to do with industrial espionage. There are all sorts of people who aren’t what they seem to be. It’s all thoroughly enjoyable.

In The Football Photograph Reggie is involved in investigating a smash-and-grab raid on a jewellery store. This is nicely complicated police procedural sort of stuff with some obscure but amusing clues. This is also Reggie Fortune at his most devious, laying an elaborate and clever trap for a murderer. An excellent story.

The Rock Garden takes Mr Fortune into the countryside. He’s been invited to see the rock garden belonging to a Mr Briggs and he’s fairly confident that Briggs does not possess a rock garden. This interests Mr Fortune enough to convince him to accept the invitation. It turns out there are other mysteries besides the rick garden, like the missing window in the library, and those rapping sounds that only Briggs seems to hear. This is a nice little mystery with its roots in the distant past.

The Silver Cross is a clue in what seems like a fairly trivial robbery. The chief suspect is a man of the cloth but the silver cross is not a Christian cross even though it implicates the clergyman. The problem with the cross as Reggie Fortune sees it is that it makes the police case both too easy and too difficult. He’s very unhappy about it. The clergyman meanwhile is causing all sorts of difficulties - he is obviously hiding something but he is a remarkably stubborn man. There’s also the question of the local squire’s extraordinary hostility to the Reverend Neath, and the squire’s daughter’s odd behaviour. Not to mention some worrying medical evidence. This tale is a fine example of Reggie Fortune’s ability to turn a very minor case into a very major case by continually worrying about a problem. Another good story.

In The Bicycle Lamp a village policeman is knocked down by a car and killed. A tragic accident but the police doctor is perfectly satisfied as is the Chief Constable. And that’s where the matter would have rested had it not been for the fact that Mr Fortune and his friend Mr Justice Platt not been the first on the scene. To Reggie the evidence is quite satisfactory except that it’s obvious that no such accident occurred at the spot where the body was found. Reggie is accused of theorising and he is most indignant, insisting that he is merely following where the evidence leads. The trouble is that sometimes the evidence leads to unpleasant conclusions. In this case Mr Fortune has to deal with the official mind and the official mind in this case seems to be either notably lacking in zeal or infected with disturbingly excessive zeal. It’s a case that just gets out of control.

Bailey often seems like an author with more interest in the moral side of crime than in the simple solving of puzzles. Mr Fortune is by and large a loyal servant of the inexorable forces of law and order but it’s something that on occasions causes him a good deal of distress. The law can be a distressingly blunt instrument.

The Face in the Picture takes Bailey’s method to an extreme. Reggie Fortune is in Paris and sees two paintings at the Salon, both by the same artist. There’s something very wrong with one of the paintings. Or perhaps it’s the other painting that’s wrong. Or perhaps they’re both wrong. One thing Mr Fortune is sure of - there’s definite wrongness here. It is fortunate that his friend M. Dubois of the Sûreté is used to Reggie’s instincts. And of course once it becomes obvious that there’s a lady involved, then M. Dubois is most anxious to help. A crime has been committed, although the nature of the crime is by no means obvious. The extraordinary thinness of the clue (if you could even go so far as to call it a clue) that puts Reggie on the trail of a desperate criminal should be a fatal weakness but Bailey, like Reggie Fortune, has such boundless confidence in his instincts that he just about makes this story work. Not quite, but one still has to admire the daring of the attempt.

Some readers will be entranced by both Mr Fortune himself and the stories in this collection. Others will be exasperated. Personally I find both the stories and Reggie both entrancing and exasperating in equal measure but at least they’re never dull. Mr Fortune is an acquired taste but be warned - he can be addictive. Mr Fortune Explains is recommended.

Dusty Ayres And His Battle Birds #1 Black Lightning

American pulp writer Robert Sidney Bowen (1900-1977) had served with the British Royal Air Force in the First World War. He worked as an aviation journalist and in the 30s he turned to pulp fiction. His first successful creation was Dusty Ayres who featured in the short-lived Popular Publications pulp magazine Dusty Ayres And His Battle Birds.

Black Lightning is the first novel length instalment in the Dusty Ayres saga. Captain Dusty Ayres in a U.S. Air Force pilot in a crack High Speed squadron. He flies the Silver Flash, a highly advanced high speed pursuit fighter which is the only one of its kind.

And now war has finally arrived. The fearsome barbarian hordes, the so-called Black Invaders, have overrun Asia and are now completing their conquest of Europe. Only the United States now remains to defy their power! The Black Invaders are led by the self-styled Emperor of the World, the mysterious man known only as Fire-Eyes.

Dusty Ayres is given a vital mission by X34, the Intelligence chief in Washington. The only safe and secure way to get urgent mobilisation orders to the various area commanders of U.S. forces is by delivering the orders by hand. That’s Dusty’s job. It proves to be far more difficult than expected.

The invaders have been so successful in sweeping through Europe because they undermine their enemies before attacking them, with huge numbers of spies and saboteurs and secret agents preparing the way. These secret agents have already been infiltrated into the United States. In fact the subversive activities on American soil have been on a vast scale, with entire secret underground bases established. High-powered transmitters have been emplaced which will be used to jam all radio communications and paralyse the American defences.

And trying to prevent Ayres from carrying out his mission is the most deadly pilot in the Black Invaders aerial forces, the dreaded Black Hawk.

This first novel in the series is rather vague about the origins of the Black Invaders. Given that they have come out of Central Asia they are presumably a kind of modern version of Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes, but with very high-tech weaponry. So this is essentially a Yellow Peril tale. It also belongs to the Future War genre, a genre that first emerged at the end of the 19th century. And of course it also belongs to yet another pulp genre, the aviation adventure genre, and it qualifies as science fiction as well. It has pretty much every pulp base covered.

Dusty Ayres is your typical square-jawed Yankee action hero, insanely brave and with unquenchable determination. In this first adventure there are perhaps some slight doubts about his judgment although in his defence it has to be said that he’s put in situations where he has to make split-second decisions based on very incomplete information.

Fire-Eyes is obviously the chief villain, a cross between Genghis Khan and Dr Fu Manchu, but he’s a shadowy figure. Black Hawk is the villain we see most of and he’s more than just a crack pilot - he’s the commander of the air forces of the Black Invaders and clearly is very high up in the Black Invaders hierarchy. It’s interesting that despite the central Asian origins of his barbarian horde the author is not very interested in the race issue. In fact it’s hardly mentioned. The villainy of the Black Invaders seems to be mainly due to the fact that they’re not American and they don’t believe in democracy. In fact the author may have been more intent on telling a Red Peril tale (the evils of Bolshevism) rather than a Yellow Peril tale.

Having said all that you’ll be relieved to know that the book still manages to be fairly politically incorrect.

Dusty Ayres is initially a solitary hero but Black Lightning introduces a figure who will apparently be a crucial ally to him in subsequent instalments.

The style is exactly what you expect from the pulps, full of breathless excitement and generously laced with action and thrills.

If air combat adventure combined with weird fiction and/or science fiction elements is a cocktail that appeals to you then the pulp writer you need to seek out is Donald E. Keyhoe (Strange War, the Richard Knight stories, etc). He did that sort of thing better than anyone. But Black Lightning is still a good deal of fun and the Dusty Ayres series seems to have definite promise. Recommended.

Vernon Loder's The Mystery at Stowe

John George Hazlette Vahey (1881-1938) was a prolific Belfast-born writer who penned twenty-two mystery novels under his own name between 1928 and his untimely death in 1938. He also wrote many titles under a variety of pseudonyms. He has languished in obscurity since his death although in the past few years he has started to attract some favourable critical attention.

The Mystery at Stowe was the first of the detective novels published under the Vernon Loder pseudonym. It was re-issued by Collins Crime Club a couple of years ago and is, sadly, the only Vernon Loder novel that is readily obtainable (although I believe at least one other title is forthcoming from Collins Crime Club).

The Mystery at Stowe is on the surface very much a stock-standard country house murder mystery. Mr Barley is a reasonably wealthy and quite respectable sort of fellow who owns the old manor house at Stowe. He has a full complement of house guests. There is some tension. Elaine Gurdon is a beautiful and rather glamorous explorer who is currently planning yet another expedition to the depths of the Amazon rainforest or something similar. Her expedition is being partly financed by Ned Tollard. Ned and his wife Margery are also among the house guests. Ned Tollard’s lavish financial backing of Elaine’s explorations has raised some eyebrows and Margery Tollard has taken on the air of a tragic wronged wife. The real problem seems to be that Margery likes artistic things and artistic people while her husband is more from the huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ school. It’s not hard to imagine that he might prefer the adventurous Elaine Gurdon to his languid and overly arty wife.

Of course there is a murder. And the murder weapon is a blow-gun from Patagonia or some outlandish place like that. In fact the murder weapon would appear to be a blow-gun that was sold by Elaine Gurdon to Mr Barley. And of course, in the finest murder mystery  tradition the poison is suspected to be curare, as used by Amazonian tribesmen and occasionally be English murderers. Except that, as Elaine points out, it can’t be curare. There’s a problem with the freshness of the poison.

While there were a dozen or so people at Stowe House at the time of the murder it soon becomes clear that suspicions are going to be focused on just two people, these being the only ones with any kind of motive.

It takes a while for the hero detective to arrive on the scene but when Jim Carton does put in an appearance he proves to be reasonably interesting. He’a a young man who has spent several years in Africa as an Assistant District Commissioner, a job which involves quite a bit of detective work, albeit in very different surroundings compared to the quiet English countryside. He’s an amateur detective but with semi-professional qualifications. Superintendent Fisher is not inclined to take him seriously until the young man spots a very vital clue that the superintendent had missed entirely. After that the superintendent is much more tolerant of Jim’s detective activities.

Jim is not your cool dispassionate detective who is able to treat crime as an amusing parlour game. He happens to be head-over-heels in love with one of the chief suspects. He’s not even remotely unbiased. In an official police detective his approach would be disgracefully unprofessional but of course he’s doing his sleuthing purely on a private basis. And while his emotional involvement may well be leading him badly astray he’s also in his own way a very astute detective so he may well solve the case anyway. I believe this was Jim Carton’s only appearance in Loder’s books. It’s a pity but then the emotionally very involved detective is probably not a trick you’re going to be able to pull off twice with the same character.

This is also a story with a suspect who is remarkably difficult to help. A suspect who seems quite incapable of realising the extreme danger of their position. The rather fraught and complicated relationship between detective and suspect (complicated by the fact that she may or my not be romantically involved with another man) is as much the focus of the story as the actual puzzle, but the puzzle is still there and it’s fairly effective.

On the whole this is a thoroughly entertaining novel which takes itself just seriously enough to keep it interesting. Loder treats the whole poison dart thing exhaustively as Jim Carton comes up with an extraordinary array of theories as to how it could have been done. There are three things that might turn some readers off. Firstly there’s the emphasis on Jim Carton’s desperate love for Elaine Gurdon. Secondly there’s the fact that his entire investigation is based on his central theory that Elaine must be innocent because he loves her. Thirdly there’s the solution which involves one of those plot elements that tends to enrage certain vintage detective story fans. Personally I thought there was enough energy and enthusiasm to compensate for any minor defects. And as for that controversial plot element, if you’re going to use such a device at least use it skilfully, and Loder uses it very skilfully indeed.

This is a book that seems to produce sharply divided opinions among the golden age detective fiction cognoscenti. John Norris’s glowing review persuaded me to buy this book, but Tomcat’s review of it was considerably less favourable. 

With some minor caveats I’m prepared to highly recommended The Mystery at Stowe.

Mysterious Wu Fang #1 The Case of the Six Coffins

The Case of the Six Coffins was the first of the seven pulp novels written by Robert J. Hogan in 1935 and 1936 and published in the pulp magazine Mysterious Wu Fang.

Robert J. Hogan (1897-1963) was an American pulp writer who specialised in aviation adventure tales (such as the Smoke Wade stories). Mysterious Wu Fang seems to have been his only foray into the Yellow Peril genre.

The story opens with mass murder on a modest scale, and with hints that this is just the beginning. Wu Fang is responsible but it is obviously just a part of a much larger plan. It has something to do with a small bottle of colourless liquid and a torn note.

Ace reporter Jerry Hazard is aboard the SS Bergenland en route for New York when he strikes up a friendship with Val Kildare. Kildare is a Federal agent and for several years now he has been devoting himself to the pursuit of the world’s most dangerous man, Wu Fang.

Also aboard the ship is a stunningly beautiful girl. Jerry Hazard has lost his head over her already.

It soon becomes apparent that while Val Kildare thought he was hunting Wu Fang at the moment it’s very much the situation that Wu Fang is hunting Kildare. And he’s hunting Jerry Hazard as well. There’s also a Scotland Yard man on board but he’s just another hunted animal in this game.

Wu Fang is aboard the ship and he has a plentiful supply of his killers on hand. Some of his killers are human. Most are not. Most are animals but they’re not animals that exist in the natural world. They are fiendish freakish creatures that have been bred not just to kill, but to kill in as terrifying a manner as possible. This is partly to gratify Wu Fang’s taste for cruelty but it’s also a matter of policy. Terror is a very useful weapon to Wu Fang.

I’m exceptionally fond of mysteries and thriller with shipboard settings. And The Case of the Six Coffins makes extremely good use of this setting.

Wu Fang certainly does have a plan and he has a deadly super-weapon. The lives of millions are at stake. Wu Fang has no scruples about killing a few million innocent bystanders. The events on board the ocean liner seem to be moving towards a thrilling action climax and that’s what we get but the story is far from over. And there is plenty of action still to come.

Val Kildare is a straightforward square-jawed hero. As a hero he certainly gets the job done. Jerry Hazard is a shrewd and gutsy reporter and he makes a useful sidekick.

Wu Fang is of course yet another Dr Fu Manchu clone. He lacks the complexity of Fu Manchu, and the surprising touches of honour and even sportsmanship. Wu Fang is just a straightforward monster. He’s your standard diabolical criminal mastermind. It has to be said though that he is an effectively frightening villain and for much of the story it’s Wu Fang who seems to hold all the high cards.

Compared to Sax Rohmer’s Dr Fu Manchu stories this is just a lurid pulp thriller. Rohmer’s stories involve a fascinating clash between civilisations with the West having the edge in some areas and the East being ahead in other ways. This gives the stories something of an epic quality. Wu Fang just wants power. He’s a lot less interesting. On the other hand, as lurid pulp thrillers go, this one has plenty of high-octane excitement and it has pleasingly breakneck pacing and it has some genuine scares. Being aimed at the pulp market it’s a lot more gruesome than Sax Rohmer’s tales and it has much more pronounced horror elements.

Hogan’s prose is basic but it works.

You might be wondering - is it politically correct? The answer to that is simple. No, it ain’t.

Some pulp writers transcended their pulp backgrounds and created woks of surprising power and subtlety. Robert J. Hogan was not one of those writers, and he probably didn’t care (and there’s no reason why he should have cared). The Case of the Six Coffins is just pure unsophisticated pulp fiction fun. Highly recommended.

All seven Mysterious Wu Fang novels have been issued in paperback by Altus Press and they’re readily available.

three television Ellery Queens

The 1975-76 Ellery Queen series, which starred Jim Hutton as Ellery and David Wayne as his father Inspector Richard Queen, was for my money one of the best ever television series based on the works of the masters of the golden age of detective fiction.

I’ve recently rewatched a few episodes and my thoughts on these can be found on my Cult TV Lounge blog. Here’s the link to my reviews of three classic episodes.

Rex Stout’s Black Orchids

Black Orchids is one of Rex Stout’s early Nero Wolfe novellas. The novellas came about when Stout discovered a lucrative slick magazine market for short format mysteries. He could churn them out quickly and they could later be collected two, three or four to a volume in book form. The book publication versions were usually slightly longer than the magazine versions. Between 1940 and 1963 Stout wrote forty-one Wolfe novellas. Black Orchids was the longest of them. It appeared in The American Magazine in 1941 and in book form (paired with Cordially Invited to Meet Death) in 1942.

Archie Goodwin is not an overly happy man at the beginning of the story. He knew that Wolfe would expect him to go to the flower show but he hadn’t anticipated having to spend four consecutive days there. There is some consolation though - one of the exhibits features a rustic tableau that includes a rather pretty female. An actual human female. Archie has nothing against flowers but his interest in human females is considerably more keen. The reason he has to be there for four days is a simple one. A rival orchid fancier has three black orchids on display. Nero Wolfe is consumed by curiosity and by envy. In fact it gets so bad that Wolfe breaks his number one rule. He leaves the house. He has to see those black orchids.

He and Archie see more than orchids. They see murder. In fact everyone at the flower show sees the murder but seeing a murder and actually seeing a murder are two different things (which becomes obvious when you read the story).

Finding out who killed Harry is easy but that doesn’t solve the murder (which also becomes obvious when you read the story).

Obviously a novella is going to have plotting on the same complex scale as a novel. And there are those (including some of his biggest fans) who maintain that you don’t read Rex Stout for his plotting anyway. There may be something in that although personally I’ve generally found Stout’s plots to be quite satisfactory. Black Orchids in fact has a pretty nifty little plot.

What no-one will deny is that the biggest attraction of the Nero Wolfe stories is that they feature two of the most engaging and fascinating characters in all of detective fiction. Nero Wolfe is not just an eccentric. He is a bizarre exotic. Everything about him is on the grand scale - his waistline, his passion for orchids, his deductive genius, his greed and his childishness. In spite of all this the reader never feels tempted to despise him or to dislike him. Nero Wolfe is Nero Wolfe and if you accept him as such you grow to love him. Archie Goodwin is his chief assistant and his Dr Watson. Wolfe is aristocratic in temperament and tastes, highly educated and fastidious. Archie’s education was gained on the streets but he’s shrewd and perceptive. The interplay between these two is always a delight.

They’re both in good form in Black Orchids. We get to see the best and the worst of Wolfe’s character, with a breathtaking example of Wolfe’s avarice, and his petulant childish envy.

One thing that really struck me was the interesting similarities to the Perry Mason stories of Erle Stanley Gardner. Both Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe are suspicious of authority, and for very similar reasons. It’s not that the police or the D.A. are necessarily crooks. On the whole in the Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe stories the police are essentially honest. But the balance of power lies too strongly in favour of the police and the D.A. and they rely to a large extent on intimidating or misleading witnesses and suspects into saying things that legally they don’t have to. The danger is not corrupt cops - it’s over-zealous cops and District Attorneys.

Both Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe know that it’s very often wise to keep witnesses away from the police. For Perry Mason this is not all that difficult. Being a lawyer has its advantages. For Nero Wolfe it’s more risky, private investigators have some legal privileges but not many, but Wolfe knows the law pretty well and he has money and contacts and the police know that he is prepared to get lawyered up if he needs to.

It’s not that Mason or Wolfe are lacking in respect for law and order, they’re both quite happy to see the guilty punished, it’s just that they have a lot more respect for the rights of witnesses and suspects. And of course in both cases the motivation is partly idealistic and partly self-serving. They put their own clients’ interests first, although they would argue that it is an essential part of a healthy criminal justice system that lawyers and private investigators should do this. Wolfe gives the impression of being motivated entirely by money but it’s fairly clear that he genuinely dislikes official bullying. It’s interesting that both Mason and Wolfe are quite openly avaricious. In both cases it acts as a useful safeguard against self-righteousness.

Black Orchids serves as a pretty good illustration of Wolfe’s approach to the duties of a private investigator. The key is to tell the police as little as possible. He ends up with several key witnesses stashed away in his own house so that the cops can’t find them. A private investigator acts in his client’s interests which does not necessarily involve solving crimes and delivering the guilty to punishment. That’s the job of the police. If acting in the client’s interests means identifying the guilty than that’s fine (and almost invariably Wolfe’s cases do require him to do this because otherwise there wouldn’t really be a mystery story). Wolfe doesn’t lie to the police (that would be foolish) but he tells them only what suits him for them to know, and he doesn’t actively obstruct police investigations (although he may do so passively).

Black Orchids is also a good example of Wolfe’s methods of dealing with witnesses. Information has to be extracted from witnesses. He can’t use all the methods available to the police but he can use all kinds of psychological manipulation, he can threaten to turn them over to the cops if they don’t tell him what he wants to know, he can mislead them and tempt them and cajole them. Maybe its not much more honourable that the methods used but the cops but we get the impression that Stout sees these methods as being more dangerous when used by the police with the powers of the state behind them.

It’s mostly the complete absence of self-righteousness on the part of Nero Wolfe (and Archie Goodwin too) that makes the Wolfe stories so appealing. He’s not an anti-hero but he is an unheroic hero. It’s his unheroic nature that, oddly enough, makes him a hero.

Black Orchids is splendid entertainment. Highly recommended.