Never A Dull Moment by Peter Cheyney (Fontana, 1955)

 

In NEVER A DULL MOMENT, our tough, wise-cracking hero, Lemmy Caution of the F.B.I., finds himself in England caught up in a tangled web of intrigue and international espionage.  As usual, Lemmy finds it hard to keep his mind on business when two such lovelies such as Tamara and Julia are on the scene--or maybe they are his business!  Here indeed is vintage Cheyney of the kind that prompted one reviewer to write: "Heavens, what a craftsman!  How adroitly he keeps a story in and briskly shakes together all the right ingredients--sex, violence, mystery."

Now this is an odd one: an English author whose main character (and narrator) is a hard-boiled, tough-talking American FBI agent.  The result is... well, it reads like bastardised Damon Runyon:

"An' I reckon that the dame is gonna talk without a lot of pressin'.  I reckon she was plenty scared when Nikolls took her outa the cottage an' she thought she was goin' to get herself nicely creased out an' chucked in the river.  An' she has plenty of time since then to think over what's gonna be good for her."

 (Page 93) 

Still, there's nothing like stealing from the best!

Neutron Star by Larry Niven (Sphere, 1972)

 

Larry Niven is one of the brightest new talents in s.f. and the title story of this collection won him the 1966 Hugo Award.  The seven other stories are thronged with superbly original characters and whole races of creatures such as grog, thrint and bandersnatchi, inhabiting worlds like LookItThat, Down, Jinx--indeed an entire galaxy of planets with their own histories, ecologies and epochs.

A collection of short stories written in Larry Niven's award-winning prime.  What a pity they're contained in a book with an ugly cover that conveys nothing.   Would it have been too much to ask for the cover artist to have depicted some of those "grog, thrint and bandersnatchi" instead of this naked muscleman floating in space? 

The Case of the Cautious Coquette by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pan, 1958)

 

Perry Mason Suspected!

LAWYER-DETECTIVE Perry Mason begins a search for a hit-and-run motorist.  A police advertisement brings an anonymous letter, and the letter brings him to a blue-eyed blonde.

Mason is delighted--and finds a damaged black sedan that fits the case perfectly.

Next thing on his hands is another damaged car and two equally convincing candidates for the role of guilty party!

Then a corpse crops up--and the man the police start building their case against is Mason!

I've been trying and trying to work out who the man on the cover reminds me of, and my best guess is Richard Attenborough as he appeared in Brighton Rock.  If anyone has any better guesses, please let me know.

As for the book itself--I get the impression that Erle Stanley Gardner had reached the stage where he no longer cared--at least about his Perry Mason stories.  After a nice start, the plot isn't terribly coherent, and when Perry solves the mystery it comes out of left field.   It's almost as if the author suddenly realised he needed to finish the book, so he closed his eyes and stuck a pin into a list of his characters in order to decide which one was the murderer...

At Some Forgotten Door by Doris Miles Disney (MacFadden-Bartell, 1967)

Bought at the closing down sale of one of my favourite bookshops:

 

STARK TERROR NAILED HER TO THE SPOT

They stood facing each other, her enormous eyes reflecting the fear for her life--the greatest fear she had ever known.

Neither of them moved or spoke, testing the unique bond between them, the bond of murderer and intended victim.

He broke the deadly silence. "If you'd listened to reason..."

She saw his hands clench and unclench.  She could almost feel them at her throat.  She saw him stiffen with the resolve to get it over with.

Hetty hurled the lamp into his face.

... And I don't blame the heroine for being scared of the house - look, there's a giant head growing out of it!

Seriously.  This was sold as crime fiction, but it's much closer to being a gothic romance.  There's a sinister house - check - an orphaned heroine - check - and vague intimations of something being wrong before anything actually happens.  There's a charming young man whom the heroine insists on marrying even though everyone warns her against him.  And it's not until the very last chapter of the book that the heroine goes exploring and discovers a secret room filled with dead bodies.

Lastly, At Some Forgotten Door is set in the 1880s.  This came as quite a shock to me when I opened the book, because there is nothing on the cover to indicate that it is a historical novel!

Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1957)

WHO DID IT?

Four people are playing bridge when their host, who is sitting out, is murdered.

Only one of them could have done it--while he was dummy.  Each player has committed at least one murder before.

There are no clues; nothing but the people themselves.

Hercule Poirot was to later call this one of his most interesting cases.

We think you will agree!

Classic Christie--four suspects in a locked room with the victim!

As a bonus, this book introduces Agatha Christie's alter-ego: crime-writer Mrs Ariadne Oliver.  She has a lot of fun with the character:

"I say, I'm terribly sorry.  Am I interrupting anything?" she asked breathlessly.

"Well, you are and you aren't," said Mrs Oliver.  "I am working, as you see, but that dreadful Finn of mine has got himself terribly tangled up.  He did some awfully clever deduction with a dish of French beans, and now he's just discovered deadly poison in the sage-and-onion stuffing of the Michaelmas goose, and I've just remembered that French beans are over by Michaelmas."

(Page 112)

Finn--Belgian.  One wonders if Christie felt the same way about her detective!

Double for the Toff by John Creasey (Coronet, 1973)

 

The Toff certainly didn't want to take on two problems at once, but these were entreaties he couldn't ignore.

He was needed by Robert Benning--accused of murdering the beautiful and promiscuous Marjorie Fryer--and his mother and girlfriend, both desolate and desperate for help.

He was needed by young Cendric Dwight--with his so-called delusions and his genuine fears, especially when he was taken away by men, who might not kill, but certainly aimed to terrify him.

And then quite suddenly there was Bill Ebbutt--owner of an East End boxing gymnasium and a staunch friend to the Toff--to avenge as well.

I bought this for the sheer ugliness of the cover.  It's hard to imagine that this was ever considered appealing--even in "the decade taste forgot"!

John Creasey was another prolific crime writer, active under a number of pseudonyms from the 1930s to the early 1970s.   The "Toff" (aka The Honourable Richard Rollinson) is a freelance crime fighter and righter of wrongs not unlike The Saint.

The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt (Fontana, 1972)

 

Voyage into mystery...

When Anna Brett sets sail for a Pacific island, she is already in love with Redvers Stretton, captain of the Serene Lady.  Stretton has lost an earlier ship in mysterious circumstances, and with it some priceless diamonds.

On the primitive island of Coralle, with its beliefs in witchcraft and the powers of darkness, the truth about Captain Stretton comes to light.  And the haunting riddle of the Secret Woman is finally revealed...

Here we have a variation on the Women Running From Houses theme--Woman Standing in Front of a Palm Tree.

This book actually got me thinking: namely that Gothic Romances share a lot of the ingredients of crime fiction, but they're mixed in different proportions.  Here we have a story filled with crime--murders, attempted murder, sabotage (the hero's ship is blown up), theft (the priceless diamonds mentioned above), blackmail and identity theft (the plot's resolution turns on the swapping of two babies many years before).  Yet none of these seem really important--instead the story focuses on the emotions of our rather passive heroine.

Again, unlike in crime fiction, no one actively seeks to solve the crimes or bring the perpetrators to justice in this book .  The heroine, as I said, is rather passive and very naive.  She lets things happen to her rather than directing events.  The hero is absent through most of the book and if anything, is even less interested in investigating mysteries than the heroine.  There's an anti-heroine (in another kind of story she'd be a femme fatale!) who is responsible for the murders and attempted murders.  However her misdeeds take place offstage--and her downfall is recorded in a short chapter and is brought about by accident.  None of her co-conspirators are caught or face any kind of punishment for their crimes.

So I'm left imagining the story as written by a different author: a story where hard-boiled Captain Stretton searches for the men who blew up his ship and stole the diamonds, and tangles with the shady dame who tries to poison him....