Murder is Hard Work

Nick, Dale, and Kurt are very good friends with something in common. They all work for absolutely terrible bosses. Nick works for David Harken, a sadistic sociopath who enjoys manipulating his employees and demonstrating the power he yields. Dale works for Dr. Julia Harris, a dentist who sexually harasses him, despite the fact that Dale is happily engaged and planning to get married. Kurt used to have a great boss, but when he died, his cocaine-addicted son Bobby took over the business and is set to ruin it with his paranoid schemes for milking every last cent out of it.

One night, the trio of friends begin to fantasize about killing their employers, and before long, they’ve decided to go through the harebrained scheme. To pull it off, they decide to find a hitman, and thus launch the series of events chronicled in the 2011 comedy Horrible Bosses.

Dead and Buried

Gervase Fen has had quite enough of life as Professor of English at Oxford University. For starters, he’s just produced a definitive edition of Langland, and that’s enough to make anyone go mad, and the only remedy for that is a complete change in occupation. Plus, no matter where Fen goes, it seems that murder follows him and people keep dropping dead. So he decides to go into politics and get himself elected as Member of Parliament in the small village of Sanford Angelorum and the fine county surrounding it. True, he’s never lived there, nor has he even visited the place before, but you can’t let minor details like that derail a promising political career.

But then again, maybe Fate has other plans for Fen. On the evening of his arrival, he spots a large naked lunatic running in the middle of the road, before the man disappears. Before long, a suspicious accident occurs, a man is murdered, a blackmailer seems to be on the loose, Fen meets a real-life poltergeist, and there’s something about a non-doing pig in there as well. Look, it’s an Edmund Crispin novel; the only thing it’s really missing is a judge who bases his verdicts on the advice received from a lunatic in a box. More specifically, all this madness occurs in the novel Buried for Pleasure.

A Comedy of Murders

When Clifford Flush founded the Asterisk Club, he did it out of purely altruistic reasons. It was a service that society desperately needed, and Flush was willing to provide it. You see, the Asterisk Club is the most exclusive club in London, and possibly the world: in order to join, you need to be a wrongly-acquitted murderer. The current Club members include such colourful people as Mrs. Naomi Barratt (a self-made widow) and The Creaker, an enormous man who frightens even the other Club members. Rounding out the cast of murderers is the butler, Beecher – not a murderer himself, but he has been jailed 14 times for housebreaking.

Next door to the Asterisk Club live Peter and Fan Hilford and Bertha and Hugo Berko. They share the lease on the house and
have a bit of a rat problem. The Asterisk Club is full up for rooms right now, and so the Club sends its newest potential recruit, Benji Cann, next door as a paying lodger. What could possibly go wrong? Well, let’s just say that Mr. Cann will not become a member of the Club after all, now that he’s deceased.

Caesar moriturus est

We all, of course, know about the death of Julius Caesar. According to Shakespeare, the doomed dictator was warned by a soothsayer to “beware the Ides of March”. But Caesar did not heed this warning, and on that day he was stabbed 23 times by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus (Et tu, Brute?). Sic semper tyrannis and all that rot.

At least that’s what the historians think, and let’s leave them to worry about facts and historical accuracy. Instead, let us contemplate what really happened on that fateful March in 44 B. C.. Have you heard, by any chance, of Manlius Scribo, the star reporter for the Evening Tiber—an early success in journalism, edited by Q. Bulbous Apex? Perhaps you have heard of the barbaric British slave who served Scribo: Smithicus? But more important than that, do you know that the events leading to Caesar’s death were all started by the murder of the actor J. Romulus Comma? No? Then, my boy, you must run along to your nearest bookstore and acquaint yourself with Wallace Irwin’s The Julius Caesar Murder Case.

Rock and Roll

Bubba Mabry is a Mississippi-born private eye working in Albuquerque, just trying to scrape together a living and trying to avoid the family penchant for infamy. His mother, for instance, became famous as “the Jesus Lady in Nazareth, Mississippi”.  You see, in 1967, Eloise Cutwaller Mabry claimed that Jesus Christ himself would visit her kitchen… only it eventually turned out that Jesus was a crazy hippie living in the woods, although he answered only to the name of Jesus Christ and was confused about which Nazareth he found himself in.

With that kind of reputation running in the family, it’s understandable why Bubba would hesitate about relating this adventure to readers. You see, he was hired by a fat man named Buddy to act as a security guard for a famous celebrity, who is apparently being harassed by a fan. “Mr. Aaron” cherishes his privacy, Buddy tells him, and the pay will be excellent: $30 an hour. So Bubba gladly waltzes off to meet this Mr. Aaron… but he does a double-take when he finds out that Mr. Aaron is none other than Elvis Presley!

Death of a Reviewer

John Riddell, book reviewer for Vanity Fair, is dead. The medical examiner has viewed the body and has confirmed everyone’s worst fears: the poor man died of boredom right in his own library, surrounded by the previous year’s bestsellers! How lucky that Philo Vance is on hand, having had some previous experience with this sort of thing. *

* “The Benson Murder Case” (Scribners); “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” (Ibid.); “The Greene Murder Case: (Ibid.); “The Bishop Murder Case” (Ibid.); and “The Scarab Murder Case” (Ibid.)

As you can perhaps guess, today’s book is a parody: The John Riddell Murder Case, written by “John Riddell”. Actually, the author is American humourist Corey Ford. The John Riddell Murder Case is one of the most hilarious books I’ve ever read in any genre, period. This is just one of those books that is full of laugh-out-loud moments, especially if you know what is being parodied. And the targets are varied: not only is S. S. Van Dine a target, so are such various people as Robert Frost, Dashiell Hammett, and ex-President Calvin Coolidge! What could possibly bring such different people together?

God Bless Donald E. Westlake

Fred Fitch has got a problem. Actually, he’s got several – you see, Fred Fitch is a conman’s dream: a born mark. Fred simply is so naïve that any convincing person can come up to him and walk away with Fred’s money, and only after the fact does Fred tumble to the whole trick. Here, let him explain for himself:

“I suppose it all began twenty-five years ago, when I returned home from my first day of kindergarten without my trousers. I did have the rather vague notion they’d been traded to some classmate, but I couldn’t remember what had been given to me in exchange, nor did I seem to have anything in my possession that hadn’t already belonged to me when I’d left for school, a younger and happier child, at nine that morning. Nor was I sure of the identity of the con infant who had done me in, so that neither he nor my trousers were ever found.”

What a Trick!: The Tricksters Return

Back in April, I reviewed the entire first season of the Japanese TV show Trick. I found it a delightful series. Although the plots often came with more holes than Swiss cheese, the comedy was fairly decent and the chemistry between the two leads was absolutely terrific. And so it was just a matter of time before I got around to season two.

Overall, I thought season two was a major improvement over the first season. There are still plot holes, but these aren’t quite as jarring as those from the first season—and to be honest, it forms part of the series’ charm. The subtitles also markedly improved, and so I got to appreciate a lot more of the jokes. The production design also improved—season one at times looked like a low-budget 70s TV show. Season two now feels like an okay-budgeted 80s TV show. (Okay, pardon the bad joke.) Finally, the stories in season two have got even more intriguing premises than those of season one, and in general, the plots are a lot more satisfying. Plot-wise, season one only had a few minor successes. Season two, on the other hand, is mainly composed of successes.

Some things have changed in season two. Professor Ueda is now well-known, with a successful TV show and a bestselling book called “Come Over, Spiritual Phenomena”. Naoko Yamada, meanwhile, is still at the same apartment with the same landlord, and she still performs magic tricks. Only now, she resents how the Professor keeps taking credit for the cases she helps to solve. The two police officers, Yabe Kenzo and his assistant Tatsuya Ishihara, play bigger roles than they did in the first season, and continue to admire Professor Ueda while showing nothing but disdain for Naoko.

Keep in mind that my plot summaries will try to avoid spoilers, and so I won’t describe many of the scams that are exposed on the side. The episodes really like that kind of thing, where a psychic or medium or whatnot will try to prove their authenticity with a bold trick. Describing them all would be a major chore, however, and would probably make this review far too long. So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on season two of Trick.

I am Chief Superintendent Lookout; Lookout of the Yard...

H. H. Crippen was one of the 20^th century’s most infamous murderers—or, at the very least, accused murderers. Over time, much doubt has been cast upon the “guilty” verdict, and some controversial new DNA evidence suggests that the remains found in Crippen’s basement may not have been his wife’s after all. (This evidence cannot be completely trusted, however.) Whatever the truth of the matter, Crippen and his lover, Ethel le Neve, fled to Canada, but thanks to the miracle of wireless communication, were arrested upon arrival by Inspector Walter Dew, who simply took a faster ship to get there first.

It is this infamous real-life murder case that inspires The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey. In it, a dentist named Walter Baranov decides to murder his shrew of a wife Lydia on board the ocean liner Mauretania. The plan is a perfect one— he will be free to live with his lover Alma, a girl absolutely devoted to him. And in a touch of irony, to get away with the scheme he registers under a false name as Walter Dew, after the famous inspector who caught Crippen. There’s no way the scheme could possibly fail. But, irony of ironies, when a body is found bobbing in the ocean, the captain of the ship quite innocently asks the eminent Inspector Dew to investigate!

Never fight a Scotsman!

It was supposed to be an easy score. After all, Dortmunder had an inside man: the owner of the painting wanted him to steal it. The client, a rich guy named Arnold Chauncey, needed the insurance money badly… but he had already pulled off such a trick once before, so this time the burglary needed to be authentic. But at the same time he wanted to keep the painting. And so when Dortmunder is caught stealing televisions, a high-profile attorney, J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, suddenly shows up to save the day, reinterpreting the case completely and getting the judge to clear Dortmunder’s name. Turns out Stonewiler wasn’t sent by God but by Chauncey, and the price of this favour is Dortmunder’s compliance on the art theft.

And for once the theft goes well! That is, until Dortmunder gets trapped by the elevator… and the security guards turn out to be patrolling areas that were supposed to be left unguarded… and a large mass of Scotsmen are next door at the theatre… Oh, and just to be on the safe side, Chauncey has hired an assassin to kill Dortmunder should he fail to deliver the painting on time. So it’s no wonder that Dortmunder spends some very uncomfortable time when the painting gets lost following a scuffle with the Scotsmen!

What a Trick!

A while ago I started watching the Japanese TV series Trick, which dealt with impossible crimes being investigated and solved by an unlikely duo: a physics professor and a magician. The magician, Naoko Yamada, constantly gets fired and is hounded by her landlady for rent. The professor, Jiro Ueda, is a sceptic of all things supernatural, but manages to get easily puzzled over apparently-impossible feats such as mind-reading and locked-room murders. There are several other recurring characters, such as the bumbling Detective Yabe and his incompetent assistant.

While the series is interesting as a whole is interesting, it does tend to focus quite a bit on comedy, which leaves me at a disadvantage. I’m not Japanese, nor do I know much about the Japanese culture and mystery tradition. I was left at the mercy of at-times-terrible subtitles, and thus missed out quite a bit on things like wordplay—in one case, wordplay is at the heart of the solution. In addition, the style of the series was completely new to me, with all sorts of bizarre angles and jump cuts that to my mind often made little sense. That might just be the typical way Japanese TV works, but it was new to me. In addition, the production values were extremely low; the series at times looked like a low-budget TV series from the 1970s. Fortunately, the show’s true value was elsewhere, so although it was distracting at first, I got more and more accustomed over time. (I’ve already started on Season 2 and I can already say the production values are miles above those from this season.)

Yet with that being said, there was still enough merit in the series that it caught my attention and I ended up watching the entire first season with no regrets. (Besides, how could I regret watching a show with such an awesome, yet extremely brief, theme song?) Anyhow, here is an analysis of the first season of Trick:

Jiminy Cricket!

It was supposed to be a regular, run-of-the-mill burglary. All John Dortmunder had to do was pry his way into the place and walk out with a bunch of furs. And then… Andy Kelp shows up. After the events of The Hot Rock and Bank Shot, Dortmunder is somewhat understandably horrified. He doesn’t want to subscribe his way into another Andy Kelp special. So instead he starts shouting at Kelp to get away. Before he knows it, he’s woken up the entire neighbourhood and everyone is yelling at each other, with the police on their way to deal with the outburst.

Andy Kelp is hurt that Dormunder would react in such a way, but he immediately sets about proposing a brand-new plan—one that’ll definitely work this time! See, Kelp was recently in jail for a few days before being released due to an illegal search. But behind bars, he came across some books by a some guy named Richard Stark. He discovered Stark’s novels about master thief Parker (“He'll remind you of Dortmunder,” he tells Stan Murch) and he particularly loves the book Child Heist—particularly how the crooks get away with it in the end!

Life of the Party

One of the best things about the e-book format is that it is so very versatile. For instance, thanks to e-publishing, an author can release an individual novella inexpensively. Perhaps this author will succeed in luring some readers in with the price—and if the reader likes what he sees, he (or she) may be persuaded to check out some of the author’s novels. (And thus addicts are born…)

Steve Brewer’s Party Doll is a perfect example. It’s far too long to be considered a short story, but it’s far too short to be considered a novel. So it’s given a “novella” label, priced at $1.99 for the Kindle, and offers readers a glimpse into the world of private investigator Bubba Mabry. This was my first time reading a story with this character, and I was rather looking forward to it.

Capitalism: A Crime Story

John Dortmunder is a serious crook—he doesn’t go after small fry. No purse-snatching or anything of the sort for him. But times are tough and he’s forced to run the encyclopaedia racket, going door to door pretending to represent an encyclopaedia company and getting people to pay a $10 down-payment on the whole set. So it’s understandably humiliating when his newest target turns out to be wise to the whole game and calls the cops on him. He runs out of the place while she’s on the phone and manages to run smack into Andy Kelp, who sits in the car blabbering at him, nearly allowing the duo to get caught by the police car headed their way, siren wailing…

But if the duo was caught in the opening chapters, we’d have no book, right? So they do manage to get away in one piece, but Dortmunder might just wish he’d gone back to brave the fuzz. Because Andy Kelp has got another brilliant scheme—to be more precise, it’s his nephew Victor who came up with this one. See, the Capitalists’ & Immigrants’ Trust is a bank undergoing renovations, and so for the construction period, their temporary location is in a trailer—a mobile home, to be more exact. On Thursday nights, there’s little time between closing time and opening time the next morning, so the bank leaves the money in the vault and seven security guards keep watch over the place. The idea is to rob the bank. And the robbers really mean it—when they set out to rob the bank, they intend to take the whole thing, trailer and all!

Mr. Dortmunder Goes to Washington

At the start of Donald E. Westlake’s What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, professional burglar John Dortmunder answers the door for a FedEx person, having no idea what he’s about to launch himself into. As a result of his opening the door and signing for a package, his lady friend May Bellamy gets her late Uncle Gid’s lucky ring. She wisely decides that John had better take the ring, because he could use a little luck. So, wearing the ring, off goes John on his next job.

See, a multimillionaire named Max Fairbanks has filed for bankruptcy—though he isn’t really bankrupt. It’s just a fancy way for him to get away with robbing people blind. But in any case, he has a house in the town of Carrport which is supposed to be vacated as part of the legal agreement. Which means the house ought to be empty. That means it’s a perfect target for Dortmunder!

"Welcome back to the world, Mr. Dortmunder."

Patti Abbott is the mastermind responsible for the Friday’s Forgotten Books meme, and this past Friday was devoted to Donald E. Westlake. I was first tipped off about it by Barry Ergang, who wrote a fabulous review of God Save the Mark, and then others turned in reviews, including John at Pretty Sinister Books and Sergio from Tipping My Fedora. I had no idea about the event beforehand or I might have tried to participate myself—but after seeing so many fantastic reviews, I knew I had to join in the fun and discover Donald E. Westlake for myself. I initially planned to read and review God Save the Mark, but in a mix-up worthy of a Westlake novel itself, iTunes decided it wasn’t going to make things so simple. To make a long story short, I ended up getting a copy of Westlake’s The Hot Rock, and I had plenty of time to read it today. I ended up having so much time, in fact, that I finished the book!

The Hot Rock (1970) is the first book in the John Dortmunder series and was also turned into a movie in 1972. The main character is John Dortmunder, a criminal mastermind whose specialty is planning heists. He gets out of prison to start the book off, and due to a mishap he couldn’t possibly have foreseen, he misses out on a chance to make an easy $300. Perhaps this was an omen he chose to ignore; perhaps it was coincidence. Whatever it was, John’s friend Kelp nearly runs him over in a Cadillac and then asks him to help out on a job. And that’s just the first four pages.

Blast from the Past

What on earth was I thinking when I wrote an all-too-brief overview of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career and then proceeded to a review of Timecop (1994)? All will be explained today, and the idea behind this (very atypical) review can be summed up in two words: Hot Fuzz.

I remember seeing commercials for Hot Fuzz (2007) when it first came out, but I never went to see it in theatres. I eventually did see it and loved every moment of it. It is an unusual film in that it manages to successfully mesh two genres and parody them both. One genre is the mindless action romp, such as Bad Boys II or Point Break. (In this regard, Timecop may not have been the best movie to review. However, it fit the theme of the blog far better than, say, Hard Target.) What is the other genre, you may ask? Why, none other than the traditional country-village mystery!

What is Love?

"Now, did you hear anything unusual during the evening?"

"Well," said Mrs Love, after pausing, unprecedently, for reflection, "there was a weird play on the wireless, very intelligent I expect, but not the sort of thing I like, they do broadcast such extraordinary things sometimes, I dare say Andrew would have made something of it, I always felt with him that I had so much to live up to in a way it was a strain."

—An interrogation from Love Lies Bleeding

Mystery scholar extraordinaire Curt Evans has recently joined the blogosphere, creating a highly promising blog titled The Passing Tramp, which is certainly worth a look! Some attention has been paid early on to the work of Robert Bruce Montgomery, alias Edmund Crispin. Crispin authored a splendid series of comic detective stories in the Golden Age vein that starred English professor Gervase Fen. Crispin was inspired by John Dickson Carr’s The Crooked Hinge, and Fen is intended as an homage to Dr. Gideon Fell, sharing his initials and even referring to Fell as a real person in The Case of the Gilded Fly.

Earlier this year, I read Swan Song, which was an excellent book, but the publisher, Four Square Press, absolutely ruined it for me by spoiling the twist ending on the front cover and again on the back cover. (The plot summary also makes some stupid mistakes in summarising the plot.) I’ve slowly been reading the entire Gervase Fen series in order, and so, thanks to Curt’s recent posts, I decided to read Love Lies Bleeding (most of it I read on audiobook while at work—but I left off at such a tantalizing point that I read the final 30 pages myself). After my experience with Swan Song, I decided not to look at the back of my copy of the book…

Viewer Discretion is Advised

You can tell right from the beginning that Richard S. Prather’s Strip for Murder is going to be something special. This is a mystery novel in the hardboiled vein, starring wisecracking private eye Shell Scott. (“Shell” being short for Sheldon.) Scott starts the narrative off with a bang, when he’s out of place at a fancy party-- "and," Shell Scot declares, "if this was the Smart Set, then I was glad I belonged to the Stupid Set".

Naturally, as a private eye, he isn’t getting paid to party—he’s been summoned there by a potential client, the rich heiress Mrs. Redstone, who has two young daughters who will inherit the estate one day. Naturally, the lady doesn’t plan on dying any day soon, but she’s worried about daughter Vera, who’s gotten herself involved with a scumbag, Andon Poupelle, who seems to be after her money. (Which is of course a real shock, since the term “sex bomb” may have been coined to describe Vera herself.) She’s already hired one detective, Paul Yates, to look into Poupelle’s background, but Yates has just turned up with a hole in his chest where his heart used to be. Yates had already delivered his report, where he gave Poupelle a clean bill of health, but he’s been known to be not-quite-honest when the money’s right.

The 43% (Alcohol) Solution: An Appreciation of Craig Rice

Mayor: Drebin, I don't want any more trouble like you had last year on the South Side. Understand? That's my policy.
Frank: Yes. Well, when I see 5 weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in the middle of the park in full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards. That's my policy.
Mayor: That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of Julius Caesar, you moron!!! You killed 5 actors!!!

-The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

Welcome, readers, to another special edition of At the Scene of the Crime! I’ve really been spoiling you all with these articles of late, where I (somehow) manage to persuade a fellow partner in crime to collaborate on an article, be it a book review, a general discussion, or a fusion of the two. I didn’t have to resort to blackmail or Mike Hammer techniques this time, but I did manage to persuade Jeffrey Marks to join me today. In case you didn’t know, Jeff is the author of an excellent biography of Anthony Boucher, a personal hero of mine. I reviewed the book earlier in this blog—in fact, it was the first non-fiction book I reviewed. Also, Jeff is the author of Who Was That Lady?, the official biography of mystery author Craig Rice. And that is why we’re here today, to have a discussion about Rice.

I’m not up-to-date with biographical details (yet), so I can’t tell you where Craig Rice was born, who her parents were, and what her favourite colour was. But I can tell you this much: she was the author of some of the funniest mysteries I’ve ever read, and managed to be the first female mystery author to appear on the cover of Time magazine— which is quite an accomplishment, n’est-ce pas? Unfortunately, her life was far too short, dying before her 50^th birthday in 1957.

Jeff, thanks a lot for agreeing to join me today!