FFB: False Witness - Helen Nielsen

Publishing executive Markham Grant has been sent to Norway to secure the rights to the memoir of renowned resistance fighter Tor Holberg.  While riding a funicular up to a well known tourist spot in Bergen he witnesses a woman being strangled in the train that is descending on the opposite side of the tracks. But when he and a fellow tourist, Ruth Atkins, investigate no body is found. The woman seems to have vanished.  This bit of amateur sleuthing makes them late catching their cruise ship and it leaves without them.  Luckily, a local named Sundequist they met on board the cruise ship comes to their rescue and gives them temporary lodging at the nearby home of his friend Dr. Bjornsen. That evening Grant and Ruth meet Sundequist's artist niece and Grant is astonished.  She is the woman he saw strangled on the funicular!

In the new reprint of False Witness (1959) from Stark House Press Curt Evans rightly brings up Agatha Christie's classic Miss Marple detective novel The 4:50 from Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!) with its similar eyewitness account of a strangling in a train on parallel tracks and the subsequent disappearing body. But Nielsen is not so much interested in the mystery of who the woman is and why she looks like Sigrid...or is it the other way around? This story is no real murder mystery.  Rather, it is a clever amalgam of psychological mystery and suspense thriller. False Witness owes less to detective novels of the Golden Age (something Nielsen indeed knows a thing or two about), but more to Alfred Hitchcock and his favorite trope of the pursuit thriller spiced up with espionage. The novel is rife with Hitchcockian details like a Macguffin (Tor Holberg's memoir), doppelgängers, dual identities, and even some questionable supernatural elements with a dash of hypnotism thrown in for good measure.  I would also mention that this novel is a cousin to The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon, coincidentally also published in 1959, while also hearkening back to Sax Rohmer's early Fu Manchu novels of the 1910s.  For what lies at the heart of False Witness is an intriguing idea about mind control that seems decades ahead of itself.

False Witness is also highly unusual for Nielsen, known for her gritty realism, because it dares to address the occult and extrasensory perception.  Clairvoyance and déjà vu permeate this quasi-supernatural thriller.  Grant has more visions while staying at the Bjornsen’s home.  Viewing a painting of a ruined church for the first time oddly brings back a rush of memories.  Wearing the borrowed clothes of Sigrid's dead husband makes Grant feel like someone other than himself.  The more time he spends with Sigrid the more his visions and sense of déjà vu rapidly increase. Nielsen does an effective job of making it seem like Grant is losing control of his mental faculties and that something eerie is happening to him and the people he interacts with.  But you can rest assured that there is something altogether more sinister at work here.  While the motives may appear diabolical, the villains at the heart of the devilry are entirely mortal.

In exploring alternate realities and other worldly dimensions Nielsen seems to have become more self-conscious of her writing. The dialogue is teeming with a kind of Wildean epigrammatic speech with snippets like "Someday is nothing but a delayed now" and "The heart remains loyal; the mind forgets."  An abundance of this kind of talk can ruin the serious mood with unintended hokey humor, but Nielsen shows restraint and manages to make it seem natural.  I particularly admired her prowess in creating an unusually speedy intimacy between the leads. Sigrid makes a fire, takes Markham Grant's wet shoes and clothes from him. While he warms himself she gives him her husband's robe and slippers. They look at her paintings and talk about their lives. Soon Sigrid finds herself divulging her hidden life to Grant almost instantly. It's as if she creates a new Carl, her dead husband, in the person of Grant and uses him as her confessor. The intimacy flows naturally and allows for some nice poetic touches.

The novel does not turn into a sentimental romance thankfully.  Cary Bryan, the “freeloading American” as Ruth calls him, intrudes.  Bryan has been making a living as a cheap guide for English speaking tourists ignorant of Norwegian language and customs.  And he keeps appearing in the most unlikely settings leading Grant to believe he is being followed. Bryan is often wearing a dirty raincoat that reminds Grant of the raincoat the strangler was wearing.  And wasn't the man on the train a redhead too?  Or is Grant misremembering that?  Bryan takes on a sinister aspect and Grant suspects that what he saw was a vision of an event yet to take place, that he was somehow in touch with the future. He is determined to prove Bryan to be the strangler and prevent him from killing Sigrid.  If only he could get everyone else to believe him.

Eventually Grant meets up with his publishing colleague, Nate Talmadge, who secured the rights to Holberg's memoir and wants Grant to get the contract signed. Talmdage seems to be Grant's only ally and friend. When a real murder takes place the two men will discover the reason for Grant's visions and the truth of what took place in the train.

QUOTES:  

"Very few people ever find love -- genuine love. Perhaps that's because they expect too much from something or someone outside themselves.  They feel lonely and unfinished and go looking for someone else who is lonely and unfinished, and you know what happens if they succeed, don't you?  Two miserable people go stumbling though life, lonely and unfinished together."

"Marriage is very much like the funicular. In order to fulfill its purpose, both trains must be perfectly balanced on the same cable. One can't pull more weight than the other; one can't run ahead of the other; one can't dominate the other." 

"[The portrait] was supposed to be [of Carl]; but I can't seem to get the face right. I can't  -- this is ridiculous, but I can't remember."

Discretion moves more rapidly than a police car with a screaming siren. 

"A man in your profession must have the gift of imagery. [...] A gift of imagery. With this -- with thought alone -- we can reshape the world."

"It's guided thought that conquers; not the guided missile."

"Murders are done every day. A man goes mad and slaughters his children; a nation goes mad and invades a neighboring nation. What's the difference? It's all weird; it's all madness. Someone has just found a new approach to murder..."

NEW EDITION:  Stark House Press has reprinted False Witness in tandem with Sing Me a Murder also by Helen Nielsen.  This twofer volume goes on sale in mid-November 2021.  Sing Me a Murder, a superior crime novel equally worthy of its new edition, was reviewed on this blog several years ago. Those interested in knowing what that other Helen Nielsen book is about can read the post here

Cherry Harvest – E. H. Clements

In the intriguing opening of Cherry Harvest (1944) set on a train filled with soldiers Duncan Carey in a fit of nostalgia is headed to Burbury Manor. He remembers visiting the place as a child and has fond memories, especially of its cherry orchard. He had been ordered to take a leave of absence from his job for what is vaguely hinted as some sort of nervous breakdown. A surprise is in store for him when he learns from Anthony Lord, one of his fellow train passengers, that Burbury has been transformed into Cleeve School, a boarding school for girls, and that most of the students have been evacuated. Lord is on his way to visit his music teacher girlfriend at the school and to help her with the few girls remaining behind waiting for relatives to claim them. Also in this opening chapter we learn that two sets of parents, the Passmores and the Willows, are headed to Burbury to pick up their daughters. Rounding out the varied cast of characters are Miss Hartland travelling with her Skye terrier to visit little Jill Mannister, who is the daughter of her friend Captain Mannister and Alan Brent, who also is a friend of Mannister’s. And of course there are the members of the school staff led primarily by headmistress Adela Knowles and music teacher Celia Staire. Ultimately, the mystery at the heart of Cherry Harvest is to ascertain Carey’s true reason for visiting Burbury, what his real job is and why he had the breakdown.

Languorous and nostalgia filled this protracted exposition introduces many characters and sets up myriad relationships. But literally nothing happens for the first 80 or so pages amid all the introductions. There is, however, plenty of dialogue: chit chat and gossip about the parent’s children, commentary on the war, tidbits about how railway cars are set up during wartime (no restaurant car, by the way, due to food rationing), on and on.

Where was Alister Woodhead, Clements’ series character, in all of this? I was beginning to be haunted by Carolyn Wells and her habit of waiting until the last third of the book before she inserts the real protagonist detective into the story. Woodhead does not appear until the middle of the third section titled “Sunday” in this four-sectioned book that takes place over a long weekend. The real action of the book does not pick up until after the characters arrive at the school and the students and teachers are introduced all of which lasts well into the “Sunday” section. Then suddenly poor Thomas, the dim-witted but friendly groundskeeper at Cleeve, is found shot. His body is at nearby a lever that controls a contraption called the bird-scarer – a conglomeration of tin cans and scrap metal fitted into the branches of the cherry trees in order to frighten away marauding jays and other birds who eat the cherries. How he was killed is a slight mystery and is rather important to the underlying mysteries related to Carey’s arrival. But none of that is fully explained until Woodhead shows up.

One of my primary problems with the way Clements chooses to tell her story is her insistence on having her characters talk nonstop in relating incidents that occurred offstage without the reader’s knowledge. This is the “Greek tragedy syndrome” of writing crime fiction that I loathe. I would prefer that the reader actually see the events occur rather than have two or three people talk about it to one another after the fact. When Clements does decide to give us action as it happens (about three times over the course of the novel's length) she is in high suspense mode. It is disappointing that she opts for more talk and less action for Clements has a true talent for action and creating an eerie atmosphere at Cleeve School. The story could have been that much more suspenseful and less satirical given the gravitas of her story. A man has suffered from nervous exhaustion while devoting himself to military secrets and inventions and has lost his memory. Another man has been gruesomely killed and is practically forgotten the moment he dies. But Clements would rather focus on the antics of the girls, their cutesy talk and competition in making friends with Duncan Carey, and the satiric humor embodied in Stella Passmore who represents a kind of ridiculous bourgeoisie British woman obsessed with propriety, status and materialism.

Cherry Harvest is a wartime novel given to fine detail about the intrusion of the military into British mundane routine, but it barely touches on detective fiction novel structure and conventions. True the story includes a smidgen of espionage, but it is so wispy and nebulous in that department that it barely exists. Alister Woodhead after his late entrance does step in as if he owns the place and sorts out the confusing mess of why Carey is there, why he is being hounded by mysterious and shadowy figures, as well as finding out why Thomas was shot and how the murder happened. The bird-scarer machine figures prominently and may hold the key to all the various puzzles and mysteries. But the crime and various mysteries serve almost as background while it is relationships and character that dominate the narrative.

Having only sampled this one book of the three I own I’m hesitant to try the others. I hope the languorous storytelling is a signature of only this particular title in the series. Clements has a flair for creating suspense and building atmosphere when she puts her mind to it. She seems to understand the concept of the MacGuffin fairly well and uses it very much the way Hitchcock does in his movies as that special something that the characters must go after and try to possess but which matters little to the viewer or, in this case, the reader. We know very little about this invention of Carey’s other than two words. Not why it is important to the war effort nor what it does nor anything really.

When not focusing on the main plot the writing, especially the first two thirds, is overloaded with lighthearted satire and archness reminiscent of Christianna Brand, Georgette Heyer and Gladys Mitchell. The more I read the more I found in common with Mitchell. Is it a coincidence that the headmistress’ first name is Adela? That the murder is not really a murder? That hidden motives are explained by 1940s style pop psychology? Perhaps I read too much into these things creating links where none really exist.

There is next to nothing about Eileen Helen Clements (1905 – 1993) on the internet. She has no interesting biographical tidbits found on any of the dust jackets of the few books I own. I can find no obituary online and the sparse coverage of her books came from Kirkus Reviews, as is usual with that journal the articles are ultra terse. Virginia Kirkus seemed to like the books giving favorable comments to the four Clements novels she reviewed over a five year period. She particularly liked the characterization of the children in Cherry Harvest.

Like Gladys Mitchell, the writer E. H. Clements most resembles in style and approach to crime fiction, only a handful of her books were published in the US and none of them received paperback reprint editions. This may be due to the thoroughly British flavor to the characters and events in her books that can sometimes be off-putting to American readers. They just may not have sold well at all during the war years. After Cherry Harvest was published none of the remaining eleven titles in the Alister Woodhead series appeared in the US.

I first learned about Clements and Alister Woodhead from the fan fiction website Spy Guys and Gals devoted to a wide range of US and UK spy thrillers and novels of espionage. This first book I sampled seemed a blend of detective novel – albeit rather obliquely structured – and some traces of espionage in the pursuit of a MacGuffin. I’m curious how Clements treated the other plots in the books that followed Cherry Harvest which is only the second appearance of Woodhead. He appears in two other novels previous to this, one of which has no crime plot (Bright Intervals, 1941) and tells the story of his first year of marriage to Elizabeth. It will be interesting to see if Clements turns out to be the Gladys Mitchell of WW2 era espionage fiction. Stay tuned.

FFB: I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury - Elizaberth Hely

THE STORY: Newlyweds Mark and Laura Needham are just starting their honeymoon when tragedy strikes. Laura is attacked and killed. Suspicion falls on a unsavory grocer who showed an interest in Mark's wife. Commissaire Antoine Cirret enlists Mark's help in hunting down the grocer and gathering some evidence via subterfuge. Initially reluctant to take part in what he feels is clearly a police duty Mark grudgingly gives in and discovers he has a knack for spying and underhanded interrogation. But when he cannot separate personal feelings from police business the undercover work transforms to vigilante style retribution as the US title I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury (1959) suggests. And is usual with the case of unrestrained vengeance there are horrible consequences for everyone involved.

THE CHARACTERS: Elizabeth Hely spares no punches in this bravura debut performance. Mark Needham is a husband haunted, longing for love yet finding himself bereft of emotion and impotent in the bedroom. He has only two people to turn to for comfort and solace -- Alex Trevor and Andrée de Montdoux.  Alex is Laura's gay best friend, and Andrée is a former flame of Mark's. Alex notices troubling changes in Mark's usual no-nonsense behavior: he is guarded, less than forthright, and has started drinking heavily. Alex suspects his lawyer friend is too interested in Theo Bondet, the grocer, that he has turned sleuth and that his rash behavior may lead to a dangerous confrontation. He and Andrée try their best to distract Mark from the undercover work by taking advantage of Andrée's past history with Mark and her still lingering affection for him. The plan backfires when Mark is physically incapable of carrying through with their passionate affair and his frustration and embarrassment unleash an anger he has held at bay since his wife's death.

The supporting cast is just as complex and fascinating as Mark. At first Alex is presented as a typical gay character of 50s genre fiction. He's an artist, of course -- a classical pianist whose specialty is Chopin. He's self-effacing, a bit of a fop. A past love affair with a man who abandoned him to get married left Alex so heartbroken he become an avowed bachelor. He is introduced to us in a park where he is seen chasing after a Pekingese named Lillith, calling her a naughty bitch and generally acting like a cartoon of an effeminate man, though he's a hulking giant. You think he's going to be a comic character, an object of ridicule. Nothing could be further from the truth. Alex turns out to have a coldhearted thirst for revenge just as Mark does and he's no wimp or limp-wristed queen in the final terrifying scenes.

Andrée too undergoes a startling transformation over the course of the novel -- from spurned old flame, to teasing tart, to Nemesis personified. She proves she's tougher than all the men when she's willing to sacrifice her safety, nearly her life, and sustain scarring injuries for the cause. After all, she was a member of the French Resistance just like Cirret. She has to prove she still has what it takes to face off with a brutal criminal.

Every single character is a force to be reckoned with. Hely spares no mercy for her characters as she sets them loose on one another in the quest for their personal form of justice.

INNOVATIONS: Hely has set her novel in France to take advantage of that country's unusual legal system. Police have less authority than judges and in this case it is the Juge d'Instruciton who seems to be in charge of the case. It is only because he has issued a Commission Rogatoire that Cirret, a commissaire of the Sureté in Paris, has been placed in charge of the case in Beaune, in the heart of French wine country. "We don't like foreigners to get murdered," he tells Mark reassuring him with his customary sarcasm that the case is being treated with urgency. Still, Antoine Cirret is one of the most unorthodox of policemen in crime fiction of this era. By trusting Mark to use his skills as a lawyer to entrap Theo Bondet and to find out things that the grocer might otherwise hide if questioned by police Cirret unwittingly sets in motion the stratagems that fuel this very Hitchcockian story.

THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Hely is the pen name chosen by Nancy Elizabeth Brassey Younger for her crime fiction. Hely was the wife of William Younger and part of a long line of writers all related in one way or another to bestselling thriller writer Dennis Wheatley. William Younger, who also wrote crime novels under the pseudonym William Mole, was Wheatley's beloved stepson. In fact, this book -- originally published in Hely's home country as Dominant Third -- has an endearing dedication page marked "For Mole, with love". Hely's biographical sketch on the rear DJ flap mentions her love of wine, a book about wine and a travel memoir of Portugal she and her husband wrote, her fondness for Pekingese dogs and that Hely included "an engaging one in the cast of characters." The scenes with Alex and Lilith, the dog, are one of the very welcome examples of Hely's wry sense of humor in an otherwise stark story of relentless tension and angry retribution.

QUOTES: "Hate is nearly always destructive. It's only rarely that hate can be used constructively. In your experience, you've never had to hate; not until now. Your country has never been occupied. Occupied. An odd word for cataclysm. Our children learnt to hate while they were young. They learnt to hate with discretion; to use their hatred as a stimulus to their intelligence. Do you imagine that a resistance movement could have existed if every Frenchman had spat in the eyes of Germans? No. We hated with smiles, those of use who had to, and we did it because, when the time came to stop smiling, we knew them."

"To live close to your enemy. Smile at him, talk to him, listen to him; admire and flatter him; gain his confidence. Learn him by heart. Then you can break him."

"Young people are belligerent animals, my dear Andrée, and we were no different from the rest."

"This is not a dog. This is my psychoneurosis. I wrap it in mink to keep it in a good temper."

TV ADAPTATION: Four years after the book was published I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury was adapted for "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour." The script was by Lukas Heller with direction by James Sheldon. For unknown reasons Heller decided to transplant the entire story from France to Mexico and most of the supporting players were re-written to suit his needs. The cast included Peter Graves as Mark; Albert Salmi as the rapist/killer renamed Theodore Bond; Rodolfo Hoyos played a Mexican version of Cirret named Inspector Ortiz; and Ed Nelson appeared as Alex Trevor who, of course, was not gay but was married to Sarah Marshall playing Louise Trevor, the substitute for Andrée. The basic plot of a backfired revenge scheme remained the same with a different twist in the finale due to the change in locale.

EASY TO FIND? I'm happy to report that this is one book that is in ample supply. Both hardcover and paperback editions of the US edition which goes by the title reviewed here are numerous. Hardcovers first editions are scarce in the UK under its original title Dominant Third, but copies of the Panther paperback seem plentiful. No contemporary reprints have been published, but I have suggested the book for reissue to a well known reprint house. Cross your fingers that they agree with my assessment.

The Antoine Cirret Crime Novel Trilogy
Dominant Third (1959) - US title: I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury
A Mark of Displeasure (1961)
The Package Deal (1965)

The last book was also adapted for a TV movie retitled The Smugglers starring Shirley Booth and Donnelly Rhodes as Antoine Cirret. I think he's on vacation on a cruise in the book and the story follows the "busman's holiday" type of crime plot. In the TV movie adaptation Booth is a woman traveller who unwittingly becomes a pawn in a smuggling operation. Unsure of whether or not this sticks to the original plot. I have yet to find a copy of that last book, but I'm on the hunt!

FFB: The Doors of Sleep - Thurman Warriner

"Once again, " Mr. Ambo said, "we seem to be exploring those uncomfortable fringes of the mind..."

My Penguin paperback edition of The Doors of Sleep (1955) has a list of characters labeled "Present Company" preceding the table of contents. In addition to Thurman Warriner's trio of series characters comprised of Charles Ambo, an elderly gentleman; the Venerable Grantius Fauxlihough Toft, Archdeacon of Tonchester; and John Franklin Cornelius Scotter, private enquiry agent, we will meet The Rev. Howard Smeaton, Inspector Lavender, Charlesworth Vinery and family, Mary Gentle (the proprietor of a pub called "Repent at Leisure"), Amen Sleep and his improbably named granddaughter Starry Sleep. The list of characters alone is inviting enough, but then a look at the chapter titles -- all of which deal with the many metaphoric incarnations of sleep ("Into Dreadful Slumber Lulled" and "Sleep, Thou Ape of Death" are two) -- might lead one to expect a mystery novel along the lines of the sophisticated whimsy of Michael Innes or Edmund Crispin. What we get includes more than a fair share of arcane literary allusions and ample whimsy but the book also tends to veer into a metaphysical realm with a surprisingly medieval presentation of the nature of good and evil.

When the victim of the piece is introduced as a loathsome man who finds joy in all things unpleasant and whose life's goal seems to be inflicting cruelty you just know that the he will get his comeuppance. Charlesworth Vinery is literally a hellion on wheels. Confined to a wheelchair for a mysterious crippling ailment that has no biological cause he nevertheless manages to commandeer and intimidate all who meet him. His favorite target for his very special brand of spiteful mindgame play is his young wife Alyson who in the recent past was in love with his younger brother Amos, a professional musician and composer. Alyson seems immune to her husband's odious behavior  suffering in silence, actually laughing and smiling it all away. Deep down she is tortured as Warriner lets us know all too frequently.  Toft and Ambo fear the worst among this trio. As Charlesworth continues his lifelong campaign of nastiness and knowing that Amos has a very short fuse Mr. Ambo predicts an explosion of violence that may lead to someone's death.

Vinery disappears one night. His body is found in two different locations by two different groups of characters at two different times. Revealing any further details of either location or the circumstances of Vinery's death will truly spoil the reading of the book. Suffice to say, the crime is macabre and the displaying of the corpse is one of the most unique aspects of the detective novel. Simultaneously the most puzzling and intriguing plot point the explanation of the scenes of the crime will uncover both the why and the how. Typical of Scotter, a detective in name only who provides the common sense angle, he makes a sweeping generalization based on what he sees: "What you've got, without any frills, is the old collusion and conspiracy story." And it certainly seems that way for much of the book. The truth will be anything but glib.

Beginning with the setting, a group of Sussex villages known collectively as "the Slumbers", extending to the Sleep family and to the haunting orchestral work by Amos Vinery that gives the book its title The Doors of Sleep is literate to the point of distraction. Indulging in an Ellery Queen-like fascination with the word "sleep" the book contains an intoxicatingly rich use of all the metaphoric possibilities of the word, its meanings, connotations and opposites. Sleep and wakefulness, hypnosis, unconscious thought, and of course death -- all can be found within the pages of this detective novel that meanders its way inexorably down a path of Old Testament inspired morality. Charlesworth Vinery is indeed a nasty piece of work. Malicious, passive-aggressive and cruel -- none of these traits can be denied. But wholly evil? A Satanic incarnation? Evidence of superstitious practices and folkloric spell casting turn up. Our trio of detectives are just as easily swayed by their discovery of a waxen image as they were by Vinery's "evil eye" and his skillful manipulation of language.

Are there any photos of Warriner
without him holding a pipe?

Mr. Ambo even confesses half jokingly, "Yes, it smacks of the lusty Middle Ages" at one point. And any modern reader would agree. The use of the word evil crops up more frequently towards the close of the book. It seems too simplistic at first, rather off putting, a bit laughable, like the kind of ominous language spouted by crucifix wielding vampire hunters in Hammer horror movies. Better to weakly and awkwardly describe the pervading menace throughout the story as 'ungoodness'. Sometimes evil as such is better left unnamed.

Archedeacon Toft best articulates this concept when during the course of the murder investigation the three men infiltrate Vinery's forbidden sanctuary, a room no one was ever allowed to enter. It's an oppressive space, heavily curtained to block out all light. Ambo and Toft feel the presence of something ineffable. Even Scotter gets the willies. They all need to leave almost immediately. Toft conveys the importance of what they experienced in the room:

Perhaps we all saw the evil in our own minds or the things that we fear the most. Go into any dark room sometime, Scotter. Block up your ears and nostrils and lie so comfortably that the sense of touch is scarcely stimulated. What is left is the real you. [...] No, we're not wasting time, considering these things. They've a very real bearing on all these troubles.

I feel compelled to make one tantalizing allusion of my own. The book ends in a climax that seems directly lifted from a famous Hitchcock movie. Among Thurman Warriner's many odd jobs prior to his career as a novelist was "cinema technician". Could this be a fancy way of saying he was a movie projectionist? Knowing he must have spent hours watching movies I find it hard to dismiss the influence of this very well known movie which was in theaters several years prior Warriner's book being published. The similarities of the movie's finale and the thrilling last pages of The Doors of Sleep are hard to overlook. I won't mention the name of the movie or once again I will ruin the completely unexpected action sequence.

There were only eight novels in this series featuring Ambo, Toft and Scotter. Of these books only the first was published in both the US and Warriner's native England making it difficult for us on this side of the Atlantic to find any of the other books. However, The Doors of Sleep primarily because of its Penguin reprint edition is the title easiest to find. This is one of the most unusual mystery novels I've read this year. Apart from its overarching morality it was also the most satisfying read as a mystery novel for it encompasses so many connotations of that word, just as it explores all facets of the word "sleep."

Warriner is better known under his pseudonym Simon Troy his identity reserved for exploring crime in a variety of "psychological suspense" novels that sound reminiscent of the best of Highsmith, Rendell and Robert Bloch. He was praised by Francis Iles who said of one book that sent his spine "into cold storage":  "...goes to the top of the Horror Class." I've already purchased a small pile of Troy books (much easier to find in multiple US editions) and will be reporting back on those in the coming months. What I've sampled of Warriner has whetted my appetite for ample second helpings.

Mr. Ambo, Archdeacon Toft and
John Scotter Detective Novels
Method in His Murder (1950)
Ducats in Her Coffin (1951)
Death's Dateless Night (1952)
The Doors of Sleep (1955)
Death's Bright Angel (1956)
She Died, Of Course (1958)
Heavenly Bodies (1960)

* * *

Reading Challenge update: Golden Age card, space D5 - "Book involves the Clergy or Religion."
And this makes BINGO #2 in the fifth row.

VIDEO: Water's Edge - Robert Bloch

One of the few examples of true noir that show up on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour "Water's Edge" (season 3, episode 3 - 1964) is adapted from the short story by Robert Bloch. The story originally appeared in Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine in 1956. Interestingly, the story was rejected by Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and ironically appeared in an anthology of short stories called Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV published in 1957.  Apparently several of those prohibited stories did eventually make their way to the anthology series.

Rusty Connors (John Cassavetes) is about to be released from prison. For months he has listened to the stories of his cellmate Mike Krause, bank robber and killer, who has been obsessed with his bombshell of a wife Helen. Now as Mike is dying of pneumonia he makes a deathbed confession. The money he stole years ago is still with his partner Pete. As soon as Rusty is out he plans to find the sexy Helen who he hopes to charm and seduce and that she will lead him to Pete and the money. When Helen turns out to be played by Ann Sothern Rusty immediately sees she has not kept her ravishing figure over time. He nearly scraps his plan. After an exchange of less than flattering remarks she agrees to meet Rusty.  Later, the two team up to locate Pete and the stolen money. You can be sure things do not work out as planned.

The script almost exclusively is a two character piece with a fascinating reversal on the noir trope of the sexy femme fatale and her gullible mark. This time we get an overweight frump and a slick and greedy Romeo. Cassavetes does a fine job, but it is Ann Sothern's interpretation of a character so completely against her usual type that makes this episode one of the highlights of the series. When Rusty first meets Helen in the diner she eats scraps off a customer's plate and licks her fingers; a perfect touch. Rusty is disgusted that he may have to seduce this slobby, porcine ex-sexpot. As the story progresses Sothern's subtle facial expressions hinting at her hidden motives are a nice contrast to Cassavetes' more overt emotional displays. You just know that this Mutt and Jeff team are out for themselves and not each other. The violent finale set in a rat infested, waterfront shack is one of the most gruesome and brilliantly filmed among the Hitchcock TV shows.

Albert Hayes wrote the teleplay adaptation that sizzles with sarcasm and irony. Bernard Girard, who began his career as a screenwriter back in 1948 and later became a prolific director for TV, brings top notch cinematic techniques to this above average entry in the series.

Highly recommended. The entire episode can be watched below.