Category: Book Review

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Graphic Novel Review: The Golden Game

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The Golden Game collects two separate graphic novel stories featuring the characters of John Steed and Mrs. Peel from the 1960s TV show, the Avengers. The comics are set after Mrs. Peel’s departure from the TV show and were originally published in 1990 as three comic books by Eclipse and then reprinted by Boom Studios in 2012.

The first story, “The Golden Game” was written by famed comics writer Grant Morrison and takes up two thirds of the book. It finds Tara King (Mrs. Peel’s replacement) having disappeared, leading Steed to turn to his old protégé for assistance as they find a tie-in to a mysterious group of game player.

“The Golden Game” does feel like it could have been done on TV if they’d had the budget. The art by Ian Gibson is superb. From the colorful characters to the imaginative solution (complete with a world-threatening danger) to the final pages, everything about the story feels genuine to the era and very imaginative.

“The Deadly Rainbow” was written by Anne Caufield and finds Mrs. Peel reunited with her husband for a second honeymoon in a quaint English village after his return from the Amazon. However, trouble has followed them. There are some interesting character insights with Mrs. Peel trying to reassure herself that she was back with her husband and nothing crazy was going to happen, though of course it did.

The plot is a bit more outlandish, and it isn’t told with the same panache as “The Golden Game.” In addition, while the art was done by the same artist, the visual realization of this story is not quite as good as in the other tale. Still, it’s an okay story with a few interesting features.

Overall, this a nice collection with Grant Morrison’s story making the book a must-read for fans of the 1960s classic.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Audiobook Review: The Frightened Fish

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In the Frightened Fish, a man travels around New York city panicking every time he sees a silver fish. The last time he does, it’s in front of the building containing the office of Doc Savage, which sets the Man of Bronze on the trail of a mystery that leads him to post-War Japan and a plot to take over the Earth.

The timing of the book is different from most Savage books, which are set in the 1920s and 30s. This story is set in the heart of the Atomic Age when a whole new slew problems have risen to test the man of Bronze. The story is shorter than the other Doc Savage novels I’ve reviewed, but I think the brevity helps as it gives the tale a bit more focus and the plot builds at a solid pace.

The set up is a bit artificial when you get down to the explanation which adds up to “supervillain ego” mixed the idea of being so desperate to make sure our hero doesn’t foil his plot that the villain reveals it to him. Still, the plot is clever enough, with plenty of intrigue and adventure along the way.

In this story, Doc Savage is a bit more gruff and occasionally abrupt with aides, but  he is also a bit more human and relatable as he even falls in love, something that shocks his aides.

Despite its difference, the story remains true to Doc Savage, while also managing to explore many interesting dynamics of the time and featuring a solidly memorable villain. This makes a great read for Doc Savage fans.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5.0

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Book Review: The Saint Bids Diamonds

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The Saint is often called, “The Robin Hood of Modern Crime” but rarely has the phrase meant much. In the Saint movies and radio shows, as well as the most of the Saint TV episodes I’ve seen, he is effectively a crime fighter who fights with his own inimitable style. Of course, early in his career in fiction, the Saint was a bit of a thief, but when I read, The Saint vs. Scotland Yard,I found that early Saint robbing from rich ne’er do-wells but pretty much keeping the prize for himself.

Yet, in,The Saint Bids Diamonds, it all fits quite nicely. The Saint arrives in Spain determined to take on “the ungodly” in the form of a gang of jewel thieves. However, he finds some of the gang beating an old man . He and his thug of a sidekick, Happy, rescue the old man and his daughter. The old man is a jewel cutter that had been enticed by the gang leader to a life of crime and then double crossed and forced to continue to work as a jewel cutter. He escaped when he bought a lottery ticket that won the equivalent of $2 million, which the gang is determined to claim for its own, and it appears that they managed to swipe the lottery ticket from the old man.

The Saint goes undercover with the group to discover they officially don’t have the lottery ticket, the group is drowning in a safe full of jewels and plan to rob the American Ambassador’s wife to increase the pot. The Saint calls it a thieve’s Picnic. Yet, there’s trouble. The lottery ticket and its hope of big instant wealth has got the crooks all trying to double cross one another.

The story really does allow the reader to see the Saint as a mischievous angel against the unscrupulous ungodly, as he concocts one story after another to throw them completely off balance.

The story has some very funny moments. The only time the Saint gets in real trouble is when his self-confidence gets the better of him at the end of the book’s second act.

The Saint also shows his gallantry and sense of honor as he responds to the affections of the jewel cutter’s inexperienced daughter, Christina. Their final scene together is touching and nicely done.

Overall, the plot and characters are both enjoyable. The only weak spot is that much of the story relies on stereotypes about Spain and uses them frequently, as well as a term that has become a charged racial slur, though Charteres didn’t mean it that way at the time.

Despite this is a flaw, this is a fun read and a nice look at the Saint just before he became more like the hero we know him as today.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: Some Buried Caesar

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Nero Wolfe has one of the most extensive recurring supporting casts of any detective in literature: the crook Fritz, Inspector Cramer, and the three teers (Saul, Fred, and Orrie.)

Some Buried Caesar (1939) is surprising in that it’s completely devoid of all of that, with Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin being the only recognizable features. Indeed, Wolfe and Archie only appear in his famous Brownstone in the final post-mystery scene.

In Some Buried Caesar, while driving to an exposition to enter Wolfe’s prized orchids in it, Archie and Wolfe are involved in a car accident. In their efforts to help, Wolfe is trapped on a stump by a prized bull. They’re rescued and offered hospitality by the bull’s owner, Thomas Pratt, who plans (to the horror of local stockmen) to barbecue the prized bull for publicity for his automat. Clyde Osgood, the son of Pratt’s rival, makes Pratt a bet that he will not barbecue Caesar that week.

Subsequently, Clyde Osgood is found dead in Caesar’s pasture. Wolfe doesn’t say anything until asked to investigate by Fredrick Osgood, the dead man’s father. Wolfe believes he has the evidence of who the murderer is but he has to come up with another plan when that evidence goes up in smoke.

This book is a showcase of Stout’s genius for creating entire communities of characters with complex relationships between them. Among the characters introduced was Archie’s longtime girlfriend Lily Rowan. Wolfe is at his most wily and sagacious, showing that he can operate out of his element if he has to. Archie is probably at his most amusing at this book. My favorite part is when Archie is arrested and attempts to organize a union among the prisoners. This is one of the finest books in the Wolfe canon and the best of the pre-War Nero Wolfe novels.

Rating: Very Satisfactory.

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Hercule Poirot

Book Review: Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories

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This  book collects every Hercule Poirot short story. Most of these are under twenty pages, and could be read in a few spare moments but there are four or five that could be considered novellas.

Polirot’s career in short fiction was far shorter than in novel-length works, with most of the short stories completed in a stretch from 1923-1940. The stories show progress the evolution of Poirot as a character and Christie as a writer.  As far as I’m concerned, there’s not a bad story in this collection. However, the earliest stories are fun, diverting and very well-done puzzle mysteries reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes with Captain Hastings filling the role of Poirot’s Watson. Twelve of the final thirteen stories comprise The Labours of Hercules which manages to mix some delightful comedy, social commentary, and some warmth (such as the delightful “The Arcardian Deer”) as Poirot tries to perform his own twelve labors just as the original Hercules did.

In addition, I adored “The Theft of the Royal Ruby,” a wonderful Poirot mystery set at Christmastime. It has superb atmosphere throughout.  The final tale in the boook, “Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” is a brilliantly crafted mystery with a very surprising conclusion.

The only criticism I have is that this only includes the published short stories. Two unpublished Christie shorts were found in 2004 and given an audiobook release a few years back and it would have been nice to see them in this book.

Still, even with just the published stories, this book is an absolute treasure, collecting fifty adventures of one of fiction’s greatest detectives in a single volume.

Rating: 4.75 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: The Moonstone

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Published more than a decade before A Study in Scarlet, The Moonstone was the first detective novel, although two decades after Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin stories. In it, a young woman receives a fabulous Indian diamond (believed to be cursed and hunted by fanatical Hindu priests travelling incognito.) at her birthday party at her family’s country house. The diamond is stolen and the reactions of its owner and many other people are quite bizarre and mysterious.

There’s a lot to commend the story. The character of Gabriel Betteredge, the family is delightful, a character who is fiercely loyal to the family serves, old fashioned, is quirky, and opinionated, while also being very kind and decent. The two fifths of the book where he serves as narrator had me fully engaged with his love of Robinson Crusoe and his homespun philosophy. Sergeant Cuff, the independent detective called in to consult the case, really is a well-drawn early picture of that sort of consulting detective who’d taken the world by storm by the end of the 19th.

The mystery itself was interesting and had some fairly good twists.  It’d be easy for many modern readers to view the novel as cliched, but it was all original back in 1868. The book is worth reading for its historic value as it provides key insights into the development of one the most popular forms of fiction ever devised.

In terms of how the book held up after nearly 150 years, I have mixed feelings. Collins was a good writer and most of the chapters were quite interesting, but he lacks that timeless quality of the best writers in that great era of British literature. The Moonstone uses multiple first-person narrators, each offering their own account of various events in the story. Some are there for scores of pages, some only one or two.  The problem I had is  I didn’t find many of these narrators compelling, and many I didn’t care about at all.

The Miss Clack chapters were the most tedious reading I had in a long time as Mr. Collins seemed to have gone off on a very long tangent about religious hypocrisy that seemed really unrelated to the story. The book really does seem to lose focus in the middle, and there’s way too much melodrama. The book could have easily been 100 pages shorter and been better for it.

Still, there’s no denying that the book was a groundbreaking work and that every fan of  detective fiction owes a debt to Collins. As a mystery itself, there’s so much to commend the story even if it’s hurt by a few (by modern standards) questionable narrative decisions. Still, I found it more interesting as a historical artifact than as leisure reading.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Nero Wolfe

Book Review: Black Orchids

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Note: This week, with a lot on my plate in terms and upcoming releases, we revisit a book review from 2012. 

Nero Wolfe had twice as many novels published as Sherlock Holmes before he ever broke into short fiction. However, author Rex Stout would create some of his most memorable stories in the Wolfe novellas. The first two of these are collected in Black Orchids. 

Black Orchids

The titular story for the collection was originally published as “Death Wears an Orchid.” Archie has found himself assigned to flower show duty to watch a new black orchid bred by Lewis Hewitt to see whether it wilts or not. Wolfe finally makes a trip down in person to see it. But then fate takes a hand. Archie picks up a stick, setting in motion a Rube Goldberg style murder, which is the least practical part of the story.

The stick that served as the trigger belonged to Hewitt. Wolfe offers to solve the case and protect Hewitt in exchange for all three of the black orchid plants, insisting on them in advance.

To hold on to his plants, Wolfe has to not only sift through blackmail and jealousies of orchid growers, but he has to endure not one, but two women living under his roof, all while keeping his client’s name out of the press. Wolfe has a clever and somewhat shocking way of doing this that makes for a great twist ending.

Rating: Satisfactory

Cordially Invited to Meet Death

New York’s Premier party planner, Beth Huddleston, engages Wolfe to stop malicious letters that are threatening to ruin her business.  Wolfe has her entire household under suspicion and sends Archie out to investigate. Archie finds a virtual madhouse with a chimp that blocks his way unless he plays tag with him as well as bears roaming around. Their investigation is cut short when Huddleston dies of a tetanus infection with Wolfe only having learned one key thing: the secret to preparing great corn beef hash.

However, Huddleston’s brother is convinced she was murdered. Archie finds proof that the death was no accident, however Wolfe has little reason to be investigate as he has no client. But when Cramer insults Wolfe by taking a dinner guest downtown for questioning, Wolfe resolves to solve the case and he plans to rub Cramer’s face in it.

Within the story, Archie offers a mystery as to why Wolfe sent some of the rare black orchids to Huddleston’s funeral. The question is left open though Archie offers readers their choice of potential theories. Archie confesses there may even have been some past association between Wolfe and Beth Huddleston, but that much of Wolfe’s past remains a mystery to him.  And the puzzle of the black orchids only adds to Wolfe’s mystery.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

Collection Rating: Very Satisfactory

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Book Review: Doc Savage: The Wristling Wraith

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In The Whistling Wraith, a visiting king disappears en route from Blair House to the White House and Doc Savage is called in to investigate in broad daylight with cameras watching. Doc Savage is sent to Washington to investigate and things only get more mysterious as there’s a mysterious woman, kidnapping, a plot involving currency, and most mysteriously the appearance of the whistling specter of a long-dead king.

For those  not familiar with Doc Savage,  the”Man of Bronze” is a pulp hero created by Lester Dent in 1933. He was raised by a group of scientists and experts in various disciplines to the peak of human mental and physical perfection.  He’s extremely wealthy and famous with a wide variety of adventures. He was created in 1933, so he pre-dated the superhero genre. To put him in a modern context, it’d be fair to say Doc was part Batman, part Sherlock Holmes, and part Indiana Jones. He’s surrounded himself with assistants, accomplished  men in their own fields, all with their own eccentricities such as the “homely chemist” Monk Mayfair and the “dapper lawyer” Ham Brooks.

This book was written by Will Murray in the 1993 based on an idea by Lester Dent and is one of the best Doc Savage stories I’ve encountered. This book does several things right.

First, it has an interesting way of treating Savage’s assistants. Usually novels either limit Savage to two or three of his five assistants or include all five but have them keep getting lost. This book took a different tact with the assistants split into two groups for most of the book, with two in one and three in another. As they rarely shared the same scene, everyone got a chance to shine.

Second, this novel gave Savage some challenges he usually doesn’t have. Savage is wealthy, brilliant,  physically near superhuman, and holds an honorary rank of Police Inspector in London and in New York as well as an honorary Federal Agent and can obtain the cooperation of any civilized police department on Earth, a favor Doc usually returns by telling the police nothing about his investigations.

However in The Whistling Wraith, Doc and friends find the NYPD has revoked Doc’s honorary commission. When the police are called by Doc’s foes (who have conveniently planted a body on the premises), Inspector “Push ’em Down” Samson of the NYPD shows up trying to collect, its up to Doc to put him off until he can solve the case. While in other stories, having a police foil is clichéd. Here it provides Doc some needed tension and it’s a nice change of pace.

Also, Doc and his assistants have to dodge the press and public, who are far more aware of him than he’d like after a story appeared in a true crime magazine. Their being hounded by photographers and autograph seekers on the street is an interesting element and something you’d expect given how these characters are and it was brilliant of Murray to put that in.

Third, this is a really complicated mystery that borders on being convoluted, but I don’t think crosses that line. At first glance, it appears to be a simple mystery disappearance with a bit of a ghost mystery thrown in. However, the Whistling Wraith is a story of not just strange disappearances and murders but currency manipulation, political intrigue, and science fiction shenanigans. I guessed part of the solution before the end, but there was a lot I didn’t know and the reveal was really good.

As to negatives, two things stand out. First is the portrayal of political stuff in Congress. It was completely unrealistic as described, even for the 1930s era the story was set in.  While this story was in the style of pulps, it wouldn’t have hurt the story to tell the political stuff realistically rather than making processes up.  As it was, the unbelievable political scenes took me out of the story.

I also have to admit I didn’t like Doc’s treatment of Patricia “Pat” Savage in this story. Pat is Doc’s only living relative and wants to take part in his adventures. Sometimes he lets her, often he insists she stays out of it and she persists anyway. In this story, his efforts to keep her out are  rude, abrupt, and way too pushy, even as she shows herself more competent than ever, rescuing three of Doc’s men after overcoming a kidnapper. I felt sorry for Pat and infuriated with Doc for the way he kept treating her.

Still, despite these flaws, this is a solid pulp story. Yeah, it has the normal flaws you associate with a Doc Savage novel (and accept if you’re a fan of the Man of Bronze), but it’s also got a great plot and some really fascinating turns.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Philip Marlowe

Book Review: Black Eyed Blonde

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In Black-Eyed Blonde, mystery writer John Banville writing under the pen name of Benjamin Black takes on the task of writing a new Philip Marlowe novel more than a half century after the passing of Marlowe’s legendary creator Raymond Chandler.

The plot is a well-done but typical hard-boiled story line. A strikingly beautiful woman walks into Marlowe’s office and hires him to find her boyfriend.  Marlowe finds out the boyfriend was killed, but the woman claims to have seen him in San Francisco after that.

Banville doesn’t come close to matching Chandler’s powerful prose and snappy dialogue. In many ways, while this Marlowe isn’t a pushover, he’s far more polite and measured than Chandler’s Marlowe ever was, certainly far softer than he was in The Long Goodbye which this book is set after. To be fair, I don’t think that’s entirely a bad point, given Marlowe was almost over the top in that.

However, what Banville does get right are the Chandleresque characters, these sort of quirky and engaging side characters that hold not only Marlowe’s attention but ours. The plot is a  solid and engaging piece of classic hard-boiled detective fiction until the last couple chapters,  which isn’t common in pastiches. I’ve read some of Robert Goldsborough’s Nero Wolfe novels and spent most of the books unable to get into the unsubstantial plots and have stewed over how unlike Nero Wolfe the story is.  In Black-Eyed Blonde, there were a couple minutes where I thought, “This isn’t really Philip Marlowe but whatever it is, it’s very good.”

However, the ending was a bit of a letdown. Without going into details, the book becomes, in many ways, a sequel to The Long Goodbye.  There’s no need for a sequel to The Long  Goodbye, and the ending of this book doesn’t add luster to that classic tale.  Too often pastiche writers assume we want sequels and follow ups to previous stories. With Marlowe, what I want are new standalone mysteries that measure up to what’s come before.  Unlike Nero Wolfe, Marlowe was never a character whose existence depended on a regular cast or continuity.  And to be fair, this element  only looms in the end of the book. Still, I would have preferred a conclusion that made the book standalone rather than on the shoulder’s of a predecessor.

Overall, if you like classic hard-boiled novels, you’ll enjoy this book provided you’re not turned off by it’s attempt to make itself a sequel to one of the most beloved hard-boiled novels.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Morality for Beautiful Girls

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In the third No. 1 Ladies Detective novel, Mma Ramotswe is planning to consoldiate the office space for her Detective agency with her fiance Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s garage. However, he’s ill and his sluggishness turns out to be depression. So quickly Mma. Ramotswe finds she has to manage the affairs of both the garage and detective agency. This is all complicated when a high-ranking government official hires her to take a case out in the country.

This third book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective series retains all the charm of the prior installments. Author Alexander McCall Smith seemlessly takes his readers to this place and captures the thoughts and feelings of a culture foreign to most of his readers.

Having Mr. Matekoni get depressed is a definite loss to the book as his presence and point of view were so great in the first two novels. However, this clears this way for Mma Makutsi to establsih herself as a main character. In the original book, she was really a side character. Smith tried to increase her role by making her Assistant Detective but the case she worked wasn’t all that compelling and the change felt forced.

Here, Smith does succeed in making Mma Makutsi a compelling character. At the start of the book, before he took ill, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni suggested getting rid of her as Mma Ramotswe’s agency wasn’t making a profit. However, she proves her worth by taking over and successfully managing the garage in Maktekoni’s absence and when Mma Ramotswe’s out of town she has to investigate a case that can bring money to the agency when a beauty pagent director hires the agency to investigate the contestants to make sure a morally strong woman wins the pageant. We also find out that Mma Makutsi has an ill brother who is staying with her and this adds to the character.

There are two mysteries in the book. Overall, they’re not bad cases as far as they go. Mma Ramotswe investigates a case of government bureaucrat who fears his brother’s wife is poisoning his brother while Mma Makutsi investigates the beauty contestants. The first case has a solid enough solution but her explanation to the government man is laden with a bit too much pop psychology. And Mma Makutsi’s looking into the beauty contestants’ character is fascinating and offers social commentary on these pagents everywhere, not just in Botswana, but in the end I thought the solution was a tad too pat.

I also thought there were some dropped threads from the previous book, but overall I enjoyed the story even if it wasn’t quite as good as the first two.

Rating: 3.25 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Philip Marlowe

Book Review: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration

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Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration was published in 1988 on the 100th Anniversary of Chandler’s birth. The book collects more than twenty Marlowe short stories. While most of them are by newer authors, the book includes “The Pencil,” (1959) Raymond Chandler’s last completed Philip Marlowe story which (heretofore) has only been published in this collection.

To begin with, I’ll take a look at “The Pencil.” In it, a former mob figure asks Marlowe’s help in disappearing when threatened with being penciled out by mob hitmen. The story is good, astonishingly so. It was published in 1959 a year after Chandler wrote the awful Playback and it’s stunning to think the same author wrote both. The story isn’t quite the equal of, “Red Wind,” but stands up with the other Philip Marlowe stories published in Trouble is My Business.

“The Pencil” recaptures the feel of mean streets, fascinating characters, hard boiled dialogue, and a battle with the underworld that made Marlowe stories so good in the beginning. The story also brings back Anne Riordan from, Farewell, My Lovely who is a far more interesting character than Chandler’s insipid and vapid “love interests” of his 1950s novels. It even has Marlowe getting money out of the deal, so it’s a wonderful story and it’d be great if this story were added to future editions of Trouble is My Business so  a wider world of Marlowe fans could enjoy this story.

So that’s the last 30 pages of the book. What about the twenty plus stories and 339 pages that proceeded it? The writers were all admirers of Chandler and all competent as modern mystery writers. Many of them made a good try. For the most part, their stories weren’t on par with the originals but they were fairly enjoyable.

However, some stand out, both for good and ill.

  • “Saving Grace” by Joyce Harrington is one of the closest stories to Chandler stylistically. However, I  don’t like the end. It brings in the idea of sex crimes against children and a Jerry Springeresque final confrontation that leaves a bad taste.
  • “Malibu Tag Team” by Jonathan Valin captures a lot of the spirit of Farewell, My Lovely.
  • “Sad Eyed Blonde” by Dick Lochte  is a great take on Marlowe and the only pastiche that’s a sequel to a previous Chandler story. This story reintroduces characters from, “The Gold Fish” in a different sort of mystery. The end is pure hard boiled detective and is a great set-up.
  • “Dealer’s Choice” by Sara Paretsky, creator of V I Warshawski, takes a superb turn that really captures Chandler’s cadences in a tale that deals with the Japanese internment.
  • “Consultation in the Dark” by Frances Nevins, Jr. may not capture all of Chandler’s feel but it’s probably the second best story in the book behind, “The Pencil.” It’s a suspenseful tale when Marlowe is out of town, and a man comes to Marlowe asking for help. Marlowe’s reluctant but the man’s got a bomb tied to his chest.
  • “In the Jungle of the Cities,” by Roger Simon is a dull tale that rejects private eye tales to talk about the House Un-American Activities Committee. This was written back when Simon was on the left, and he’s since moved right. Whether he’d write something more interesting and less political now that his politics have changed or write something that’s as dull only with a right wing slant is an interesting question, and indeed far more interesting than this story.
  • “Star Bright” by John Lutz sees Marlowe involved in a search for and protection of a potential Hollywood starlet. It’s a compelling story that captures the essence of the character, and post-war Hollywood is a superb location for a Marlowe story.
  • “Locker 246” by Robert Randisi is an interesting tale where Marlowe is manipulated into a trip to New York. Marlowe’s sense of honor is reliable, in fact it’s predictable which works to someone’s advantage in a tale of Marlowe’s brief but action-packed trip to the Big Apple.
  • “Bitter Lemons” by Stuart Kaminsky creates a great Chandleresque character in Warren Hluska, a man who swore he’d never win a beauty contest but he actually did.
  • “The Man Who Knew Dick Bong” by Robert Crais is one of those stories that left me with mixed feelings. It works fine as a private eye tale, just not as a Marlowe tale. It’s also the story in the book that uses the most swearing. To be fair, Chandler did include a dash of swearing in the rich, sweet language of his novels. Emphasis on “a dash.” Crais uses more in his twenty-two page short story than Chandler used in some novels and generally more severe. Given how creative Chandler was with language, Crais’s story was jarring for its repetitiveness. Still, the plot was interesting.
  • “In the Line of Duty” by Jeremiah Healey is a story where I don’t think the author quite gets Marlowe’s sense of justice. Marlowe might go against established rules, but there’s always a reason. This story doesn’t capture how Marlowe thinks.
  • “The Alibi” by Ed Gorman captures the tone of Marlowe from The Long Goodbye. The dour, world-weary shamus gets a request for help from one of his few friends on the force. Anyone expecting a happy ending hasn’t been paying attention.
  • “Asia” finds Marlowe at a personal low in his life in 1958. However, an Asian woman gives him a chance to be a hero again. This is a great look at the Knight in Tarnished Armor. The actual case Marlowe gets into isn’t solved this story. In fact, it barely begins, but it’s a great character journey.

Each story is prefaced by a stylistic illustration and many of them are quite evocative of the era.

While this book is out of print, it is available cheaply (1 cent plus shipping on Amazon at the time of this writing.) That makes it a no-brainer for any fan of Marlowe or hard boiled detectives in general to pick up. “The Pencil” is a superb Chandler story and at least some of the rest of the stories in the book should catch the reader’s eye.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Sam Spade

Book Review: The Maltese Falcon

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The Maltese Falcon is rightly considered one of the landmark books in detective fiction. The tale was also immortalized on the screen in one of the greatest films of all time.

The book works so well because of its characters. Joel Cairo, Wilmer, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy are incredibly rich and fascinating characters who would be copied and recreated by lesser writers. Spade himself is perhaps the most fascinating character of them all.

As a person, he has many detestable qualities. At times, he’s coldly sociopathic, he uses people, and his own moral code is far more questionable than Philip Marlowe’s is. Yet, this allows the reader to wonder where exactly Spade stands. That question is probably the most intriguing mystery in the book.

The language of the book is fascinating. Hammett uses so many rich, active words. For example, Spade doesn’t light a cigarette. He ignites it or he sets it on fire.

Probably one of the big differences (although relatively minor) between the movie and the novel is the movie doesn’t include Guttman’s daughter. It’s understandable why the film didn’t include her as there would have been issues with the production code and it also would have overcrowded the film. However, she does serve two purposes in the book. We do get a clearer picture of Spade’s humane side, as well as an idea of how ruthless Guttman could be.

The book does deal with some adult themes, but in a tasteful way, as was required by the times.

Overall, the book is a classic and worth reading as an example of great writing and characterization, even if you don’t care for the type of protagonist Spade represents or the type of protagonists that the book has inspired.

Rating: 5.0 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: The Case of the Courteous Killer

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In 1958, Dragnet had been with America for nearly a decade, with 318 Radio performances coupled with more than 200 TV episodes, and a movie. It’s in this atmosphere that Richard Deming wrote his tie-in Dragnet novel, the Case of the Courteous Killer.

It begins with an unassuming man holding up couples in lover’s lane, eventually killing a man who thought the unassuming robber would be easy to handle in the first of a series of murders. Joe Friday and Frank Smith are called in to locate and apprehend the suspect.

Adapting television shows to novels is tricky business, but the late Mr. Deming does a superb job capturing the spirit of the 1950s TV show while producing a story that was more gripping and involved than half hour television would allow.

Deming nails the voices of Joe Friday and Frank Smith. Friday was particularly important as the story is told in typical Dragnet first person. There were a couple moments I didn’t quite buy, though. For example, I found the idea Joe Friday watched the Boston Blackie TV show to be a little unbelievable. There are also funny moments with Frank Smith providing comic relief as he talks about his brother-in-law and various goings on. Truly, I could imagine this on TV as I read it.

The mystery was far beyond typical Dragnet cases, which were resolved in half an hour, but it was in that same matter of fact style. There are many twists as this criminal changes methods, the police stumble upon an almost unbelievable coincidence that’s too strange for Dragnet’s genre, and the courteous killer twice attempts to exact some not-so-courteous revenge on Joe Friday.

The story lost a bit of momentum and dragged in the last little bit with some repetitive moments before finishing up strong at the end.

Still, if you love 1950s Dragnet, or are a fan of clean early police procedural, this is a really good and engaging read.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Tears of the Giraffe

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Tears of the Giraffe is the second installment of the No. 1 Ladies Detective series in which Mma Precious Ramotswe runs her No. 1 Detective Agency in Bostwana.

At the end of the first book,  mechanic Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni proposed to Ma Ramotswe, and the story dwells quite a bit on their engagement and giving us a slightly broader view of J.L.B. Matekoni. While at the detective agency, she takes the seemingly impossible task of solving the nine year old mystery of the disappearance of a young American man for his distraught and now widowed mother.

There’s really so much to love about this book  “Tears of the Giraffe” really is a relaxing cozy mystery and in Ma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, writer Alexander McCall Smith creates two wonderful characters. Maketoni really comes into focus as a kind and compassionate man who helps out at the local orphan farm and even takes in two foster children (without telling Ma Ramotswe.)

The book’s greatest success is in making readers who come from different cultures understand how these characters think and relate to them. It’s done so beautifully and naturally and in a way that doesn’t feel like the writer’s wagging a finger and saying, “This is how everyone should think!” but rather you feel like you’re seeing how they think.  They’re interesting characters with a very different spin on the world than readers in the U.K. or in America, but it doesn’t feel forced. One thing I found fascinating was when Ma Ramostwe thought poorly of a college professor who didn’t hire  servants. While in America, we might think hiring servants is lazy or putting on airs, she thought that by hiring others to work for you, you weer helping to support the community.

The mystery itself has a great emotional core.  Ma Ramotswe’s goal is to bring some peace and closure to this woman.  The mystery doesn’t require any sort of great deduction, but it does require Ma Ramotswe’s intuition and craftiness to solve the case.

While talking about positives, I should also praise audiobook narrator Lisette Lecat who does fantastic job reading the books. Her typical reading voice is a somewhat posh British voice but she manages to give each of the characters a life of their own. Her reading of the American widow was superb. I was blown by how natural her American accent sounded.

This entry was more focused than the first book.  In the original, Smith had Ma Ramotswe stop and have flashbacks that were almost essays and there were multiple cases running throughout the book. Here the book manages to focus mostly on Ma Ramostwe’s and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s engagement and the related plots of the adoption of the children and Maketoni’s jealous maid who wants to be rid of Ma Ramotswe for her own reasons.

The story does suffer a little when a second case is added to the mix. A butcher shows up asking for the Agency to investigate his wayward wife. While it leads to some interesting discussions, the case isn’t all that interesting and slows down the book’s momentum. The resolution occurs off-page and we’re only told about it later. The story served as a first case for Mma Makutsi, Ma Ramotswe’s secretary who is promoted to “assistant detective” in this book. While I didn’t like the case, I concede it does open the door for more plot twists and stories in the future.

Overall, this is a delightful read and also an excellent audiobook. Smith masters what books can do at their best: transport you to another place and even into other minds.  This book is fun and thoughtful and a great read for fans of cozier mysteries.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article, Philip Marlowe

Book Review: Playback

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While the second to last Philip Marlowe novel was the longest, the last was the shortest, coming in at about 170 pages in its most recent reprint.

In it, Marlowe is hired by an attorney to follow a woman with very little explantion. He follows her to Esmerelda, a fictionalized version of LaJolla.

There Marlowe encounters blackmail and a corpse that disappears from the balcony of the woman he was hired to follow.

All things considered, this is a book that I wish Raymond Chandler hadn’t bothered to right. The beginning is promising, but 2/3 through the story begins to collapse.

Chandler, at his finest wrote involved and complex tales of mystery. There was always more than meets the eye to a Chandler mystery. Here, there is far less. I literally said out loud, “That’s it!” and tossed the book aside until my determination to finish books I start compelled me to read on.

Chandler’s characters are also far flatter than in previous works. You won’t find any characters who approach the level of those in other novels. There’s no one like General Sternwood, Moose Malloy, Bill Chess, or Terry Lennox in this entire novel.

While the dialogue isn’t as good as in other books, there’s still a few decent lines in this one and that’s one saving grace.

And then there are the other issues of Marlowe’s encounters with two different women. Thankfully, there’s nothing shown, which is the most artful thing about this portion of the book. The writing by Chandler is just embarrassing.  The dialogue is awful, and the set up is clumsy.   The relationship with Linda Loring in The Long Goodbye is elevated to some high exalted status of her being an old flame, when she just came over for an evening before leaving town.

Worse than that, Marlowe admits that sleeping with one of the women was unethical as an Investigator and then it does it anyway and it’s not like there’s some psychological reason for it or an internal struggle that Marlowe’s better nature loses, there’s no reason at all given.  At the end of the book, it appears that all that remains of the ethical core of Marlowe from The Big Sleep is an eccentric aversion to taking money for getting himself beaten up and inconvenienced.

The book is sad because it shows how much of a toll alcoholism and depression took on a great author. It’s one of the worst books written about a classic detective by his actual creator. It’s the one Marlowe book that’s never been made into a movie and hopefully never will be. It’s a forgettable or at least I hope it is as I’ll certainly be doing my best to forget it.

Rating: 1.75 out of 5.00

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