BADMAN’S TERRITORY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1946. Randolph Scott, Ann Richards, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Ray Collins, Chief Thundercloud, Lawrence Tierney, Tom Tyler, Steve Brodie, Isabel Jewell. Director: Tim Whelan.

   Back in the late 1800s, or so, as the narrator of this film tells us, the Oklahoma panhandle was a land of without law, where gangs of gunslingers congregated and ruled the towns they lived in. Enter Randolph Scott, a lawman in search of his brother, facing every outlaw in the West.

   I messed up on this one. I watched a 98-minute movie crammed into a 90-minute time slot, less commercials. The plot is there. Little things like motivations are not. Maybe there weren’t any, but who could tell? A full report some other time, perhaps.

C. P. DONNEL, JR. “The Fourth Degree.” Duc Rennie #2, First appeared in Black Mask, February 1941. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1953.

   I don’t know very much about C, P. Donnel, Jr., the teller of this tale, nor his hero Doc Rennie. I believe in fact that this is my first time reading anything by the author. In a post on his Pulpflakes blog, Sai Shankar tells us that Donnel (1906-1977) was “a crime reporter on the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot for a decade before switching to writing fiction.” He wrote several dozen stories for the better detective pulp magazines in the 40s, of which 14 or 15 were Doc Rennie yarns.

   We don’t learn much about Rennie in “The Fourth Degree,” but elsewhere on the Internet, I discovered a short squib (since lost) describing him as a psychiatrist, perhaps retired or perhaps working for the government. He lives now is a small rural town where he helps he local sheriff solve the cases he comes across. (It is the latter who tells the stories.)

   In this story the two protagonists are convinced they know who one of the culprits in a local kidnapping case is. The problem is that they can’t get him to talk. Not a word out of him, no matter how hard they try, and as always, time has a way of running out. It may have been a new idea in 40s, but the scheme they come up with is that of “continuous catastrophic noise” (my phrasing), and it saves the day.

   The plot is minor, and keeping one of the players off the page for much of story was not the best idea, either. Donnel is a good writer, though, based on this story, but if his name was on the cover of the issue he next appeared in, it wouldn’t induce me to come up with the fifteen cents to obtain it, not even a small notch in the right direction.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION – August 1969. Editor: Edward L. Ferman. Cover art: Bert Tanner. Overall rating: ****

JULIUS FAST “The League of Grey-Eyed Women.” Novel. Published separately later by Lippincott (hardcover, 1970) and Pyramid (paperback, 1971).

   This is science fiction, with a subject of top interest in research today – namely the study of the formation of life, chromosomes, RNA, DNA and so on. Searching for a cure for his cancer, Jack Freeman seeks out a doctor at McGill University, but it is the latter’s female assistant who injects him with an experimental formula.

   The assistant has her own goals in mind, however, namely to change Jack into the only male capable of helping an organized group of telepathic women carry out what should prove to be a new human race, but one with alienation between individuals eliminated. Very well plotted, the tale includes Jack’s experiences as a wolf, then as a shark. It reminded me of Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think.

       Rating: ****½

EDWARD WELLEN “With Ah! Bright Wings.” An uninspired story explaining Earth’s pollution problem. (2)

DEAN R. KOONTZ “Demon in the Land.” Germ warfare has backfired in China, and it is up to the US to save them. New wave (I think) stuff that does not succeed. (3)

LARRY EISENBERG “Project Amnion.” Womb training. Story has no point to make. (1)

ROBERT F. YOUNG “Pithecanthropus Astralis.” Cave man and the stars. Is this a warning to us about priorities? (3)

RUSSELL H. GREENAN – The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton. Random House, hardcover, 1973. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1973, Bantam, paperback, 1988.

   Algernon Pendleton hears voices from unexpected sources — from philodendrons, for example. But his favorite voice source is Eulalia. a Worcester porcelain pitcher, and it is only with Eulalia that he carries on long conversations. In fact, this is pretty much the essence of Algernon’s existence — chatting with his pitcher and leading a quiet, contemplative life in his large old house in Brookline, Massachusetts.

   Of course he has to earn money occasionally. and this he does by selling, one by one. his late grandfather’s collection of Egyptian artifacts (his grandfather was a famed and eccentric Egyptologist). Still, Algernon is falling farther and farther into debt, and Eulalia fears the day may come when she, too, will be sold.

   Then one summer, outsiders begin to force their way into Algernon’s normally quiet and isolated fife. First comes an old navy friend who has left his wife, has a suitcase full of money, and has seriously considered suicide. Well, anything for a friend. At Eulalia’s urging, Algernon fulfills the suicide wish by blowing his friend’s brains out, helping himself to the money, and burying the body in a graveyard behind the house.

   Alas, two other people discover this secret and attempt to blackmail Algernon. A Turkish antique dealer wants money; and a beautiful, but pushy, female archaeologist wants access to all the treasures and secrets of Algernon’s late grandfather. The antique dealer is killed in a struggle (and also buried in the graveyard). And the beautiful archaeologist? Well, that would be telling. Suffice it to say that her fate fits in perfectly with Algernon’s voices, with her obsession for Egyptian lore, and with the whole ambience of the strange old house in Brookline.

   Like Russell Greenan’s other novels- — the highly acclaimed It Happened in Boston? (1968), Nightmare (1970), The Queen of America (1972), Heart of Gold (1975), The Bric-a-Brac Man (1976), and Keepers (1979) -this is a most unusual book with elements of black humor and underplayed horror. There is nothing else quite like a Greenan novel of suspense, as you’ll sec if you read this one or any of the others.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT “Pit and the Princess.” First appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, December 2014, Not reprinted or collected.

   Peter (Pit) Geller is what;s called a fixer, and he works primarily for a mob boss in Philadelphia. One distinguishing feature is that he has a photographic memory, but while it’s mentioned a couple of times, it really doesn’t come into play in this case, which involves his being sent to Vegas to look for his boss’s niece who has gone missing.

   The case nearly solves itself. When he;s dropped off at a guest house once he arrives, the niece and her boy friend are already camped out there. Case over? Not so fast. So is a dead body. The kids didn’t do it. But who did?

   Being only a short story, there aren’t many suspects, and Pit makes short work of the rest of the case. Betancourt is head honcho at Wildside Press (editor and publisher), but he’s a decent writer as well, although being perhaps better known in SF and fantasy circles. This is no more than a medium-boiled tale hovering around the middle of ranking from 0 to 5, You can do better. Or– very easily — a whole lot worse.

       The Peter “Pit” Geller series –

Pit and the Pendulum, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2005
A Christmas Pit, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January/February 2006
Pit on the Road to Hell, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2006
Horse Pit, (na) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2008
Pit and the Princess, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine December 2014

TED KOSMATKA “The Art of Alchemy.” First appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2008. Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books, 2009) and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, 2010).

   There is a recurring th4eme to a certain number of similar stories, perhaps not as many as there used to be, in which an inventor of an improved means of propelling automobiles goes to a gigantic company which produces and sells gasoline worldwide, and he ends up in all kinds of trouble. You man consider this as one of them, although the invention is rather a material stranger than steel, which someone brings a thread of to research scientists at a steel company.

   Which is all I tell you, as what’s the fun in that, just in case you run across a copy of the story which you can read for yourself. It is of course embellished with several other major factors, and in fact it is also a romance, although it is absolutely not a necessary part of the story.

   This is the first story I’ve ever read by the author, and between you and me, I confess that I had never even noticed his name before. He is, however, the author of three novels and several dozen short stories, starting in 2000, so he’s been around for a while. While this story may not be an award-winner, it is very very good. It is also nice to be confirmed in this statement by being able to point out that it also appeared r in two different “Best SF of Year” collections later on.

WILLIAM F. NOLAN & GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON: Logan’s Run. The Dial Press, hardcover, 1967. Dell, paperback; 1st printing thus, March 1969. Bantam, paperback, 1976. Film: 1976, wih Michael York, Jenny Agutter. TV series: CBS, September 16, 1977, to February 6, 1978.

   In the year 2116, youth has taken over the Earth. The maximum age allowed in 21, with death mandatory after that date, enforced by the Sandman police force. Logan is a Sandman, and his problems begin just as he is turning 21. There are rumors of a Sanctuary, and while he is tracking it down [on behalf of his job] through the worldwide underground railway, designed to show off Earth’s hellspots, he discovers that he wants it for himself.

   His motivations lose significance in the chase, and we have nothing more than a picturesque adventure story, extremely suitable for a large budget motion picture, while much better science fiction stays confined to its own pages. The plot jumps, the characters are too often emotionless. Why does it seem all too typical of SF with major promotion behind it?

Overall rating: **½

H. C, BAILEY “The Superfluous Clues.” Reggie Fortune. First published (?) in Mr. Fortune’s Practice (Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1923), as “The Young Doctor.” Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1954.

   H. C. Bailey is an author I sampled long ago – perhaps 50 or 60 years long past – and decided at the time that his work was not for me. I no longer remember why, but I held to the vow until I postedan old fanzine review of Call Mr. Fortune, and the short discussion of the merits of Mt. Bailey’s approach to writing detective fiction that followed brought back to mind the prior difficulties I had found in his work.

   So when, by pure coincidence I came across this tale from his followup collection of Mt. Fortune stories, I said to myself, “This can’t be a coincidence. There must be higher hand at work here. I must read this story.” And so I have.

   Some thoughts. A young doctor has been tried, convicted and jailed for robbing another resident of the same building where he resides. Found in his room a small collection of diamonds not belonging to him. Another man has claimed he saw the doctor of leaving the victim’s apartment and entering his own room.

   The superfluous clues referred to in the title are minor, and neither the police nor Mr. Fortune claim otherwise. But by accident, now after the fact, some objects in the room are now seen to be German-made, and the doctor having known to have no interest in German-made items, it is a small puzzle. The doctor, now despondent, refuses to aid in the investigation that follows.

   More important, however, is the fact that both the victim of the robbery and the witness that clinched the case against the doctor have completely disappeared. This is the extent of the case to be solved.

   And it is a sterile one, at least it seems to me, through the telling. Lots of talking and events taking place off screen. It is a judgment based perhaps on how old the story is now, but it was my impression that Mr. Bailey’s world at the time of the story is far different from mine at any time of my life. There is some action in the second half of the tale – a mad chase down the rives Thames to nab the real culprits – that too seemed (unaccountably) slow and uninteresting.

   It does not aid the story that the facts that help name the true culprits are largely not available to the reader when it would have helped the most.

   The detection is light and unsteady on its feet, the pace is slow, and even though I am very much aware that Mr. Bailey and Reggie Fortune, his most well-known detective, still have their fans today, I am forced to admit that I am not convinced, and that I remain to be not one of them.

ANNA KATHARINE GREEN – The Leavenworth Case. Dover, softcover, 1981. (Reprint of the 1878 hardcover edition.)

   This is a cornerstone novel of the mystery genre — the nineteenth-century American best seller that brought the detective novel into the public eye and raised it to hitherto unknown .. “respectable” status. First published in 1878, it is the best known of Green’s more than thirty novels and is thought by many critics to set the pattern for subsequent detective stories. As Alma E. Murch points out in The Development of the Detective Novel (1958), “… Green not only made her detective the leading figure and formulated a plan of construction that later became conventional. She also introduced characters and incidents that were new in her day, though they have since become familiar in novels of this type….”

   Indeed the contemporary reader will find nothing new or surprising about The Leavenworth Case. Mr. Leavenworth, a “retired merchant of great wealth and fine social position,” is found shot to death in the library of his New York City home. The murder weapon and the key to the library door are missing; a servant girl has mysteriously disappeared; the murder could not have been perpetrated by an intruder. The cast of characters present at the scene includes Mr. Leavenworth’s wards — Mary, who is his sole heir, and Eleanore, who stands to inherit nothing; Trueman Harwell, the dead man’s private secretary; assorted servants, including a butler; policeman Ebenezer Gryce, “a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you”; and Everett Raymond, a young lawyer from the firm that represented Leavenworth and who is the narrator of the story.

   An inquest is held and suspicion falls on Eleanore Leavenworth, whose behavior is odd at best. Clues tum up in unexpected places; entranced by Eleanore, Everett Raymond allows himself to become involved in the investigation; a dark secret surfaces; and Ebenezer Gryce, proving that his eyes are more piercing than they appear, sets a clever trap for the killer.

   Told in what now seems a turgid style, this predictable (by current standards) tale is nonetheless interesting for the way Green integrates the various elements into a logical, . believable story. The Leavenworth Case is “must” reading for any serious student of the field, as well as a good choice for an evening when one is in the mood for the bloodless mayhem of a gentler age.

   Green also created two other detectives, both women. Mrs. Amelia Butterworth (whom Michele Slung, in her excellent introduction to the Dover edition of The Leavenworth Case, claims is “the prototype for such elderly female amateur detectives as Mary Roberts Rinehart’s Miss Rachel Innes, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver, and Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers”) appears with Ebenezer Grycc in such novels as The Affair Next Door (1897) and The Circular Study (1900). Violet Strange, a society-girl detective (whom Slung claims is a forerunner of Nancy Drew), appears in the 1915 short-story collection The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

H. C. BAILEY – Call Mr. Fortune.  Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1920; Dutton, US, hardcover, 1921. Remploy, UK, hardcover reprint, 1979. Many other reprint editions currently exist.

   This is the first collection of Reginald Fortune short stories and, if the problems I had getting a copy are any indication, the scarcest one. Six stories are in this volume, and they range in quality from very good to excellent. There are, I might add, no bad or even poor Fortune short stories in any of the collections.

   “The Criminal Investigation Department, solicitors, and others dealing with those experiments in social reform which are called crimes, by continually appealing to his multifarious knowledge and his all-observant eye, turned Dr. Reginald Fortune, general practitioner at Westhampton, into Mr. Fortune of Wimpole Street, specialist in- — what shall we say?- — the surgery of crime. And Reggie Fortune, though richer for the change, was not grateful. He liked ordinary things, and any day would have gladly bartered a murder for a case of chicken-pox. This accounts for his unequalled sanity of judgment.”

   Fortune investigates usually with great reluctance and frequent complaints In one case he says, “I believe the beggars get murdered just to bother me” and “They only do it to annoy because they know it teases.” Indeed, at one point he is “elaborating a scheme by which the murder and the cricket seasons should be conterminous.” In those cases where he willingly joins in the chase, children or friends are usually involved.

   Fortune is not to everyone’s tastes. He, like most males, hasn’t really matured, only he never pretends that he has. While he is something of a gourmet, he has a penchant for sweets and muffins. He likes to play with puppets and write his own scenarios. Cold and discomfort he complains about bitterly, as would a small boy, particularly when he is taken away from his toys or his lei sure and when he drives an automobile it is with the complete abandon of youth.

   Certainly even less mature, however, are Stanley Lomas of the Criminal Investigation Department and the various policemen that Fortune works with. Despite the unfailing accuracy of the Fortune eye and intellect, they continue to scout his ideas and ignore his warnings.

   Read this collection, if you can find it, or any of the Fortune short story collections. Each puzzle in all of the books ranges from good to superb And if Reggie irritates you in the beginning, as he did me when I first read him 30 years ago, you may find, as I did, that he grows upon you if he is given a chance.