FO/RGOTTEN BOOK: RIPTIDE

Riptide by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child  (1998)

Every time you think you've hit rock bottom, you find there's a bottom below.

That could be the basic theme of Riptide, a treasure hunting adventure thriller based on the legend of Oak Island.

Legend had it that notorious English pirate "Red Ned" Ockham had buried his vast hoard of treasure on Ragged Island, off the coast of Maine.  Red Ned was the deadliest, most feared, and most successful pirate of his day; his fleet consisted of nine ship laden down with booty -- gold, silver, jewels, artwork, fine clothes, and much more -- including the legendary St. Michael's Sword, which gave its bearer the power of life and death over his foes.  Red Ned had his treasured buried at the bottom of a huge pit -- the Water Pit (for some reason, I want to call it the Money Pit) -- designed to frustrate anyone other than Red Ned who tried to retrieve the treasure.  But before Red Ned could retrieve his fabulous wealth, his ship was found with all aboard mysteriously dead.

The first attempt to retrieve the treasure was in 1792; it ended in tragedy when a seal was  broken and sea water rushed in to claim the Water Pit's first victim.  Over the years, other unsuccessful attempt to get the treasure failed -- in 1800, in 1831, in 1840, in 1869, in 1883, then three more time between 1900 and 1907, and finally in 1940.  All attempts ended in failure, bankruptcy, and death...

The 1940 attempt was made by Alfred Westgate Hatch, Sr., who had gone so far as to purchase the island from a land speculator, and to move his family to the nearby, isolated village of Stormhaven.  As had happened every time ion the past, the island defeated the treasure hunter and Hatch soon found himself bankrupt.  Hatch turned to drink and soon died, leaving the island to his nineteen-year-old son.  the son, A. W. Hatch, Jr., destroyed all of his father's papers and refused to have anything to do with the island, which remained barren and unoccupied for more than two decades.

In 1971, young Malin Hatch was bored and, because his parents were not at home, convinced his older brother Johnny to go with him to explore the forbidden island as a great adventure.  The two boys rowed out to the island and were not impressed...a few scrawny trees, a lot of rocks, and not much else.  Then they discovered a fissure in the ground, which led to a cave or a tunnel.  Now, this was more like it; this was adventure!  They entered and slowly made their way through the tunnel until they came to a door.  By this time Maline was getting scared and wanted to leave, but Johnny called him a coward.  Johnny opened the door.  A blast pushed him into the darkness, water began to converge, and Johnny was swept away.  Malin had no real memory of what had happened.  The townspeople and the Coast Guard searched for Johnny's body,  but could find nothing.  The curse of the Water Pit had struck again, and Malin grew up with the guilt of his brother's death.

Fast forward some twenty years.  Malin's father drowned soon after, bereft, and possibly a suicide.  Malin and his mother stayed in Stormhaven for a few years, enduring the looks of the townspeople, and finally moved to Boston.  As if to make up for Johnny's death, Malin pushed himself through college and medical school, spent years working the world's most dangerous spots for Doctors Without Borders, and then began a practice and research at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.

Over the years, Malin had been approached by many people -- clairvoyants, dowsers, psychics, oil barons, engineers, and other, all with their own "foolproof" scheme -- seeking to recover the treasure, and had rejected them all; the treasure could be real, or could be a myth, but the search for it had cost many lives over the past three centuries, and Malin, still stricken by the death of his brother, refused to have any part of it.  Then Malin was approached by Captain Gerard Neidelman, an experienced "recovery specialist" and the head of a company called Thalassa Holdings, who also wanted to recover the treasure.  Neidelman -- and Thalassa -- had found and recovered many hidden  treasures in the past, many of them thought impossible to retrieve, using the very latest in scientific methods and equipment.  a group with deep pockets, Thalassa had raised 22 million dollars to fund such an expedition to Ragged Island.  Their researchers had estimated the Water Pit treasure to be worth, conservatively, two billion dollars.  He offered Malin half of the amount -- one billion -- for permission to search the island.   Malin rebuffed Neidelman at first, but then began thinking about the offer.  Here was a chance to put his demons at rest, perhaps find Johnny's body, and use the money to set up a foundation in his brother's name.  He decide to agree, but with several conditions:  first, that he join the team as their medical doctor, and also that he reserved the right to cancel the project at any time if he felt such a decision was neccessary.

Time was of the essence.  Neidelman had about a month before the start of hurricane season, which would halt all work on the project.  But Neidelman had done his preliminary work: he had already assembled a team of experts in everything from engineering and computing to archaeology and history, and had discover a lost dairy of the seventeenth century architect who had designed the Water Pit.  Sir William Macallan was acknowledge to be England's greatest architect next to Christopher Wren.  Macallan had been a passenger on a vessel sailing to America when it was taken by Red Ned, who slew everyone on board except for Macallan, forcing him to design a foolproof place to protect his treasure.  But Macallan had also been a government secret agent, and kept a detailed description of his plan and how to get around all the traps designed in it in his journal, using invisible ink and several highly sophisticated codes.  Neidelman's experts had already broken the code for the first part of the journal using the latest computer technology, and were working on breaking the second part, recorded in another highly complicated code.

So, Malin returned to Stormhaven for the first time since he had left as a teen.  His mother, for some reason, had kept the family home their, unoccupied, all this time, and since her death from cancer, Malin had done the same.  The small village of fishermen and lobstermen had not changed much in the intervening years, except perhaps with the addition of the Reverend Woody Clay, a dour and uncompromising fundamentalist minister who had married Malin's high school sweetheart.  Stormhaven was a poor town and its residents welcome the sudden influx of cash that Thalassa's crew brought, but they also feared the so-called curse of the fog-bound and normally unapproachable island.

Among the experts that Neidelman had brought on board were Isabel Bonterre, archaeologist and dive leader, Christopher St. John, the expedition's historian who was researching Macallan, Kerry Wopner, a rather unusual computer expert, Lyle Streeter, the stoic team foreman, Sandra Magnusen, the team's chief engineer and remote sensing specialist, and Roger Rankin, geologist.  Most appeared friendly, but Malin got bad vibes from Streeter, who had been working with Neidelman throughout the latter's career.  As for Neidelman, Malin soon learned that the competent, highly organized man was also a driven monomaniac determined to achieve his goal at any cost. 

The Water Pit itself was a maze of tunnels, some natural and some engineered, and traps; it descended hundreds of feet below the surface, shored up by buttresses and blocked off at several points.  The first tragedy soon took place: a worker had somehow triggered the collapse of a buttress which had him pinned to the ground, water began seeping into the area and would soon drown him.  Efforts to remove lift the heavy buttress from the victim failed and Malin was forced to amputate the man's legs on the spot in order to possibly save his life.  This helped to increase the talk of a curse among the townspeople.

Other problems kept cropping up.  Macallan's traps kept being sprung.  The computers kept giving conflicting data for no discernable reason.  Workmen began to appear at Malin's onsite clinic with varying complaints.  And Bonterre had discovered a large gravesite which held the skeletons of at least eighty men from Red Ned's crew -- the skeletons showed no sign of violence but had still been hastily placed in the grave; tests on the various bones showed that the men had died of disease, but each of a different disease, eliminating the theory that plague had struck the island.  Talk became frequent of the island's curse and of a possible supernatural explanation.

Injecting dye into the Water Pit revealed that five of the tunnels went directly to the sea, so Neidelman used explosives to block each of the tunnels at its entry point to the Atlantic.  Still the money pit flooded.  Eventually, Neidelman elected to build a wall around the island to keep the sea out, much as Macallan had Red Ned's men do while the Water Pit was being constructed.

Meanwhile, the townspeople were getting restless.  Clay, the minister, had been fomenting opposition to the project and was organizing a large group of fishermen and lobstermen to go to the island to protest.  And then a fierce Northeaster struck...  And Lyle Streeter began hunting Malin and Isabel Bonterre with a high velocity weapon...  All this as Neidelman finally reached the treasure:  wealth and riches beyond imagining, as well as the legendary jewel-encrusted St. Michaels Sword...But the curse of the Water Pit was not finished, because there is always a bottom below...

A highly detailed and richly imagined novel that pulls the reader page by page to its exciting and inexorable ending, Riptide was an early standalone novel from the writing pair best known for their long-running thrillers about Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast.  It was the fourth book from the pair and their second standalone.  Interestingly, it is the only one of the pair's four standalones in which they did not mine some of their characters and later insert them into their Prendergast, Nora Kelly, or Gideon Crew series; this, in itself, gives the novel a unique sense of completeness.

Riptide is a thrill ride that stands well with the best of modern adventure novels, a battle between modern science against an ancient -- and possibly supernatural -- foe.

NOTHING PHASES MARK

 https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1804711890778092&set=a.700461257869833

MR. MOTO: A FORCE CALLED X07 (MAY 20, 1951)

Following the death of Charlie Chan creator Earl Der Biggers in 1933, the Saturday Evening Post was eager another Asiatic detective to replace Chan.  Novelist and short story writer J. P. Marquand, who was a familiar author to readers of SEP, was tasked to coming up with Chan's replacement.  The result was I. A. Moto,  a senior intelligence officer for a pro-Western Japanese government.  Marquand wrote six novels about the character, beginning with Your Turn, Mr. Moto in 1935.  Peter Lorre played the character in eight films from 1937 to 1939.  In 1965 the character returned to the screen in The Return of Mr. Moto, featuring Henry Silva.  Mr. Moto joined the radio airwaves in a 23-episode series beginning in 1951, starring James Monks, who had a 20-year radio career and played supporting roles on stage, before retiring to become a male fashion model.

Here, in the first episode of the radio series, Moto is faced with a dangerous new biological weapon and a murdered scientist.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4FH7Bd2GWM

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE PHANTOM DEATH

 "The Phantom Death" by W. Clark Russell (first published in The Idler, October 1893; republished as the title story in Russell's The Phantom Death and Other Stories, 1895; and in Waves of Terror, edited by Michael Parry, 1976)

In April 1840, having finished his business in South America, West booked passage out of Rio de Janiero to Bristol on the Lord of the Isles, a small barque with a company consisting of twelve men; West was happy to be the sole passenger for the Atlantic crossing for he had had a disagreeable crowded crossing earlier while traveling from England to Brazil.  On this voyage, both the crew and the captain were pleasant companions.

On the eighth day out, West shared drinks with the captain in the captain's cabin before retiring for the night.  The next morning he was awakened by the first mate, who was horrified at the state in which he had found the captain:  "Captain Joyce lay in his bunk dressed in a flannel snirt and a pair of white drill rousers.  All his throat and a considerable portion of his chest were exposed, and his feet were naked.  I looked at him scarcely crediting my sight:  I did not know him as the man I had parted with  but a few hours ago.  He was swelled from head to foot as though drowned:  the swelling contorted his countenance out of all resemblance to his familiar face; the flesh of him that was visible was of a pale blue, as if rubbed with a powder of he stuff called 'blue' which the laundresses use in getting up their linen.  His eyes were open, but were rolled out of sight, and the 'whites', as they are called, were covered with red blotches."  His hand was cold, his breathing thin, and he soon began convulsions.  Within a few hours he was dead.

What had killed him?  What could cause such a rapid transformation to death?  The first mate was convinced that only a poison could be the cause.  West, himself, wondered if it could have been some illness that had lingered, latent, within his body from before he had set sail -- but that did not seem likely.  And if it was poison, how had it been administered?  If accidently, certainly not in food, for the captain ate only the same food as the rest of the crew, who remained unaffected.  If it had been self-administered, where was the poison now?  No trace of it could be found in the cabin.  Or could he have been deliberately poisoned by someone on the ship?  But the captain was well-liked by all on board, no one had a reason to harm him.  This might have to remain one of the mysteries of the sea as the crew went about their duties and the first mate took over the captain's quarters.

Then, a few days later, the first mate knocked on West's cabin, saying, "I am in terrible pain -- I am horribly ill -- I am dying."  Indeed he was.  Soon he was evincing the same symptoms the captain had.  As the convulsions grew upon him, he screamed, "Oh, my God!  I have been poisoned -- I am dying!" Within five hours he was dead, his skin an even darker blue than West had noted in the captain.  Was it really poison, and if so, how?  Or could it be some form of the plague?  Was there some human explanation?  Or was the ship in the grip of some supernatural hand?

The second mate took over the running of the ship, moving into the late captain's quarters, where the navigating instruments were.  Sailors can be a superstitious lot, and within another two days, the second mate apologetically locked West into his cabin, saying the the crew suspected west had a hand in the two deaths and were afraid, if West were to remain free, he might then somehow kill him (the second mate) next.  For West's safety, and the ease of the crew's mind, he was to remain locked in his cabin for the rest of the cruise; a young steward would bring him his meals but he would otherwise have no contact with the rest of the ship.

A few days later, West was released by the boatswain with the deepest apologies of himself and the crew.  They knew now that West could have had nothing to do with the mysterious deaths because the second mate had just succumbed to the same horrid fate.

The Lord of the Isles had two problems.  How had three men died such a grisly death and will others meet the same fate?  And, without the captain and his officers, there was no one on board who knew how to navigate the ship, now in the middle of the Atlantic.  Things were starting to look bleak...

W. Clark Russell (1844-1911) although born in New York, was the son of a well-known English composer and his first wife.  Russell went to sea at age thirteen, joining the United Kingdom's Merchant Navy, spending eight years at sea, leaving after his health was permanently damaged.  His experience at sea gave him plenty of fodder for his career as a writer.  No one since Captain Marryat some forty years before had written so convincingly about the sea from actual knowledge.  In Masters of Victorian Literature, 1837-1897, Richard D. Graham wrote that Russell "is the true successor of Marryat, and may even be aid to excel the older writer in the power with which he has described the cruel mystery of the sea, its dangers, and the crimes and superstitions of the men who do business upon it."  The majority of the 57 novels he published were sea stories.  His novels included The Wreck of the Grosvenor, the Frozen Pirate, and The Death Ship.  Among his admirers were Herman Melville, Algernon Swinburne, and Arthur Conan Doyle (in "The Five Orange Pips," Doyle had Dr. Watson "deep within one of Clark Russell's fine sea stories").

Russell's wide popularity allowed him to advocate for merchant seaman, whose hardships had been unchanged since the repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1854.  Ships were being sent out to sea overladen and undermanned, and unscrupulous shipowners were proving deplorable rations for the seamen on their ships.  The naval reforms of 1880, 1883, 1889, and 1892 owed much to Russell's influence, as did the eventual inclusion of seamen and firemen being represented on the shipping commission.  The future King George V said that the great improvements in the conditions of the merchant service owed much to Clark Russell's writings.  His sympathy toward the brutal treatment captive natives of Tasmania faced at the time helped record and reveal the atrocities done by the British.

Many of W. Clark Russell's books are available to be read online.  The Phantom Death and Other Stories can be found on Project Gutenberg.

OVERLOOKED FILM: TEENAGE DEVIL DOLLS (1955)

How bad a movie can you make for $14,000, $4000 of which you borrow from your wife?  The answer is pretty bad, especially if you write, produce, direct, edit, and star in the movie yourself.  For some reason this is the only film that Bamlet Lawrence Price, Jr., a former Army Air Force pilot, ever produced, the only film he ever directed, the only film he ever edited, and the only film he ever starred in.  Perhaps it was because Price made this movie as his Master's thesis while he was a student at UCLA Film School.  Or, perhaps it was because he had no talent.  It was filmed in 1953 and released two years later.

I have no idea what happened to "Bam" (as he was known) after this, other than a string of broken marriages -- four of them, the first was to actress Anne Francis (Forbidden Planet, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Blackboard Jungle, television's Honey West); she was the one who loaned him the four grand.  Bam's marriage toll was as follows: Anne Francis (1952-1956), Diane J. Coldwell (1958-1966), Margaret E. Richardson, (1973-1976), and Diana Joy Dubois (1981-1988).  No, I have never heard of the last three either.  The only other reference I could find about Bam was that famed songwriter Robert Sherman once confused him with Hollywood choreographer Marc Breaux in a photo because they looked somewhat similar.

About the film, also known as One Way Ticket to Hell, here's Steven Puchalski's take, from his book Slimetime:  A Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movies:  "This is an obscure, anti-drug, anti-juvenile delinquent, anti-rebellion morality story, all told in not-so-glamorous Dragnet style narration...it's overwrought, paranoid, fear-mongering, and totally idiotic...basically, this is drug-paranoid propaganda at its bleakest and least entertaining, with grainy black and white photography, static direction...it just drones on for sixty or so minutes, and though the plot tries to be controversial and hard-hitting, the flick is actually so unsleazy that it never gets off the ground."  Compared to this, Reefer Madness comes off as a big-budget, Oscar-worthy film.

Pretty Cassandra Leigh (Barbara Marx, no other credits on IMDb) gets mixed up with the wrong group in high school.  They are delinquent bikers, and soon she is doing drugs, failing classes, and losing out on any chance of college.  She marries Johnny Adams (Robert Norman, one role in an episode of Fireside Theatre in 1951, one episode of I Love Lucy in 1956 as an uncredited trumpet player in a band, and an unnamed character in the 1957 television movie Aladdin), her clueless high school sweetheart, but soon slides back into her old destructive habits.  Bam plays Miguel "Cholo" Matinez, the biker who leads Cassandra astray.  The film is narrated by Kurt Martell as police lieutenant David Jason; Martell was in four episodes of Dragnet (1953-1955), played himself in one episode of You Asked for It, and had uncredited roles in two films in 1952.  Although Martell narrated the film as David Jason, he did not get to play the character on-screen -- that job fell to Robert A. Sherry, whose only other credit was an uncredited role in the previous year's The Bridges at Toko-Ri.  In fact, none of the actors on-screen had any lines, none, nada, zip.  This adds to the phony documentary feel of the film while also cutting down on expenses.

So, is a film this bad worth watching?  You bet your exploitative boots it is!  How can you pass up a gem like this?

Please note that the link brings you to a slightly shortened version of the film, but to make up for it, it includes the movie's trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI7twb_8xVA

FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Well, Isaiah came and went and we survived.

Despite a few branches hitting the roof, no damage was done to the house.  We lost at least six big trees in the backyard, the backyard fence is now toast, and a portion of the back porch was taken out  -- all in all, not a big deal.  Everyone is fine, including animals.  We lost power at 7:05 Friday evening and it just cane back at 8:00 tonight (Sunday), although it is flickering a bit.  We are under a boil water watch.  At least one gas station and a couple of stores are open so we can get food (much of the stuff in the refrigerator may have to be tossed).  Roads are clear; the one tree that fell a cross our street was cleared up by Saturday afternoon.

Jessie lost a couple of trees and part of her back yard fence.  The shingles were blown off the roof of an old she on her property, but her roof is in good condition.  She got power back late on Saturday.

Erin got her power back about three hours ago.

Kaylee and Amy are still without power.  They lost a couple of trees and one window shutter.

Mark, who had to face the storm the the Gulfarium, which is directedly on the Gulf, is doing okay.  Mark is very laidback and nothing bothers him, so the storm could have done absolutely no damage or could have destroyed buildings and exhibits, freeing various alligators and reptiles and sharks and manatees and other wildlife, and Mark would still say it's no big deal and handle it, so who knows?

Christina, a local police dispatcher, was on twelve-hour shifts for the duration.  During the storm, the police station lost its power, its generator, its water (thus no working toilet, yuck!), and all communication devices and had to resort to using pen and paper, while her partner passed the messages on to the police on duty via text.  Several police cars were in accidents and one firefighter broke his arm when a branch landed on him.  Everything was back to what passes for normal on Saturday, and Christina was able to shower at the police station earlier this evening.

Saturday morning, Walt Senior was in extreme discomfort, so Walt took him to the hospital where he was finally released early Saturday evening; on his way back home Walt Senior bought me a cup of coffee (with the power out, he wasn't able to make his morning two pots of coffee).  Saturday, Erin, Trey, and Jack began clearing some of the mess in the back yard and on the roof; we're now able to walk a good portion of the yard; a professional tree service will have to deal with the rest of it.  It's also heartwarming to see many of our neighbors out helping each other.

So, in short, all is fine.  It could have been much worse.

Being without power and locked out of the internet, I don't know how much damage Isaiah (and, yes, I learned how to pronounce the name) has done since making landfall.  It will be interesting, and most likely saddening, to find out.

ISAIAH

We are battening down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Isaiah to land here tomorrow.  Everything has been moved indoors; I have all the potted plants from the front yard in my bedroom; Christina and Walt have the front porch swing in theirs.  Plywood has been placed over all the windows.  Cars have full tanks of gas.  Gallons and gallons of water have been set aside and we have plenty of pet food.  We are ready, and praying that the storm will be a big nothing burger.

It's at a Cat 2 now and, depending on which news source you go to, may increase to a Cat 3 or shrink to a Cat 1.  [UPDATE:  As of 7:45 Friday morning it is now a Cat 3.]  Thank you, Donald Trump, for slashing the budget of NOAA.  Also, it appears that the center of the storm will be in the middle of out driveway.  A three- to five- to seven- to nine-foot storm surge, again depending on who you listen to.  Winds from 85 to over 110 mph, who knows?  The Three-Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay will be closed once winds hit 35 mph.  [UPDATE:  the bridge was closed early Friday afternoon.]  School has been cancelled for the past two days.  Christina will be working at the police station on 12-hour shifts through the weekend (there appears there will be a problem in getting overtime for the storm); she packed a cot and sleeping bag in her car on the way in today.  Local police shifts are teaming up, but once the storm hits a certain size, they will not be responding immediately to emergencies; anyone kin trouble will have wo wait until it is safe for the police to respond.  The rumors at the police station are that ALL Waffle Houses in the area will be closed, so you know it's going to be bad.  [UPDATE:  1:37 pm Friday:  they have officially closed the local Waffle House.]  Amy, who works in the County traffic department. is expected to work from 7 to 7 over the next three days, doing technician and admin work not in her job description.  Kaylee and Ivory, who work at the County jail are expected to report in early so a shift can leave early; whether they will be able to leave when their shift is over is up in the air.  Okaloosa County has declared a mandatory evacuation, but Mark, who works at the Gulfarium on Okaloosa Island directly on the shore of the Gulf, can't evacuate because he is one of the few guys tagged to remain at the Gulfarium during the hurricane to keep an eye on the animals -- so we are concerned about his safety.  Casey's, a local chain gas station, has had several of its location run out of gasoline.  Walmart is out of both bottled water and Chef Boyardee.

Evacuation orders for many parts of Escambia County (Pensacola) and Santa Rosa County (us) went into effect this noontime.  [UPDATE:  The evacuation order for Santa Rosa County has been expanded to include "Zone C."  Christina checked the map before heading into work three hours early and "Zone C" literally ends JUST ONE HOUSE before ours.]

And Jim Cantore is having a jolly fine time reporting from Pensacola Beach.

It's going to be an interesting time.

See you on the other side.

BBC RADIO 4's SATURDAY NIGHT THEATRE: CHARLIE MUFFIN (JULY 5, 1986)

Brian Freemantle's Charlie Muffin, who appeared in sixteen novels over a forty-year period,  has been called on of the most underrated characters in spy fiction.  That should not stand!  "Most Muffin books follow a 'heist' story pattern.  Muffin has a mission, it appears he doesn't know what's going on, typically with higher ups plotting against him, until at the end it's revealed that he's figured out a way to flip the entire situation on its head while pulling one over on his betters,"  [Jeff @ Spywrite.com]  the books are fast, breezy, and entertaining, with the first in the series, Charlie Muffin (U.S. title Charlie M.), being consider a classic of the genre.  It was filmed in 1979 as Charlie Muffin (U.S. title A Deadly Game) by Jack Gold, with David Hemmings as Muffin, and featuring Ian Richardson, Sam Wanamaker, Clive Revill, and Sir Ralph Richardson.

The book was adapted for radio and appeared on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre on July 5, 1986, with Philip Jackson (perhaps best recognized as Poirot's Inspector Japp) in the title role.  Also featured were Sandor Eles, Peter Howell, David Learner, Andrew Branch, Stephen Rashbrook, Peter Wood thorpe, Marcia King, Manning Wilson, Barrie Cookson, Don Fellows, John Church, Richard Durden, and Jennifer Piercey.  Directed by Matthew Waters.

Charlie's own Department is out to get him, but so is the KGB.  But Charlie Muffin is a survivor and he's determined to come out of it alive and rich.

Enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/brian-freemantle-charlie-muffin

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: ARREST

"Arrest" by Donald E. Westlake (from Manhunt, January 1958; reprinted in Giant Manhunt, 1958; in Opening Shots, edited by Lawrence Block, 2000; and in The Best of Manhunt 2, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer, 2020)

Let's face it, first published stories are not necessarily good stories; they are the ones, usually, that finally made it across and editor's desk and happened to fill a need that may or may not have required good writing.  As a rule, first stories are passable fiction.

Donald E. Westlake's "Arrest" was actually his third published story, but it was his first published crime story; it followed a brief six-page science fiction story published two years earlier and another brief sory in the early men's magazine Rogue in 1957.  At the time Westlake was working for famed (or, perhaps, infamous) literary agent Scott Meredith while at the same time submitting his own stories to Meredith.  One of the stories finally hit and was accepted for Manhunt, the hardboiled crime digest secretly edited by Meredith under another name; Manhunt, it turns out, was a virtual closed shop for Meredith's clients, although it would occasionally range further (and pay a bit  more more money) to get "big-name" writers to promote on its covers.  (Meredith was noted for being penny-pinching, the literary agent equivalent of Hugo Gernsback, perhaps.)

William Winthrop, 24, comes home to his apartment, gets a gun from the bureau drawer and puts it to his head.  He can't pull the trigger.  He throws the gun at a mirror, breaking it, has a few drinks, smokes a few cigarettes, then dresses in a conservative gray suit.  And waits.  Soon the police arrive.  He calls a friend -- a lawyer -- who says he wants nothing to do with him.  He offers the cop a drink, which is refused, and then they head off together to where he will be booked for his mother's murder.

A mood piece, nothing special, but fairly evocative.  Even with this rude beginning, there are hints of Westlake's future talent,

Westlake, of course, would go on to become one of the most honored and respected mystery writers of the last half of the twentieth century, the creator of violent thief Parker and of bumbling thief John Dortmunder -- both highly popular and influential characters.  He was a three-time Edgar winner, one of the few to win in three different categories -- best novel, best short story, and best motion picture screenplay.  He was named a MWA Grand Master in 1993.  All of his books are highly recommended.

OVERLOOKED FILM: THANK YOU, JEEVES! (1936)

If you are a P. G. Wodehouse purist you might not fully appreciate this adaptation of the master's 1934 novel -- actually, the very first full-length novel following a successful series of short stories.

Bertie Wooster is here and Jeeves is here and the book title is here, but that's about it.  The plot and characters have been changed almost unrecognizably.  In the  novel, Sir Roderick Glossip, the famous nerve specialist, hopes to marry the aunt of Bertie's friend Lord "Chuffy" Chuffnell, while Chuffy has fallen in love with one of Bertie's ex-fiances, Pauline Stoker, whose father Chuffy hopes to sell his falling-down manor.  Bertie, eager to please his old pal, plans to make Chuffy so jealous that he will propose to Pauline.  Things get out of hand, everyone displays their stupidity, and Jeeves is left to sort out the mess.

For the film, say goodbye to Chuffy, his aunt, Roderick Glossip, Pauline and her father.

From IMDb:  "Erudite manservant Jeeves hopes to keep his frivolous employer Bertie out of new harrowing adventures, but a damsel in distress, carrying half of some mysterious plans, intrudes on their London flat one rainy night.  Bertie follows her to the country hotel Mooring Manor, prepared to do slapstick battle with crooks posing as Scotland Yard men."  

Featuring David Niven as Bertie, Arthur Treacher as Jeeves, and Virginia Field as the mysterious woman.  Buried down in the cast is Willie Best as Drowsy, a hitchhiking saxophonist who helps them catch the crooks.  

Niven makes a good Bertie and Treacher made his bones playing Hollywood's idea of the perfect butler in the 1930s.  Treacher went on to lend his name to the fast food franchise Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, beginning in 1969; it had 826 stores in the 1970s, but has dwindled down to just four stand-alone stores in northeastern Ohio today.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  Wodehouse, BTW, did not care for Treacher's performance"  "Awful. The supercilious ,manner of his is all wrong for Jeeves."   Complaining about the film adaptation, Wodehouse said, "They didn't use a word of my story, substituting another written by some studio hack."

That studio hack was actually two people, Joseph Hoffman (The Officer and the Lady, Against All Flags, Has Anybody Seen My Gal) and Stephen Gross (his only screenplay).  Directed  by Arthur Greville Collins (Paradise Isle, Seven Little Australians, Strong Is the Seed).  

Despite the butchery to the source material, Thank You, Jeeves! can be a pleasant and amusing way to spend your 57 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yk3lSER9I&t=6s

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS, MRS. MILLER AND BILLY LEE RILEY!

October 5th was a monumental day in current culture.  On this day in 1921, the World Series (the New York Giants vs. the New York Yankees, with the Giants taking the series five games to three in a nest of nine contest)was broadcast on radio for the first time; in 1947, President Harry Truman made the first televised Oval Office address; in 1962, the first of the James Bond film series, Dr. No, had its premiere; on the same day in 1962, the Beatles released their first single, "Love Me Do"; and in 1982, Tylenol recalled products in Chicago after seven people who shown to have died from bottles tampered with cyanide, leading to stricter nation-wide safety packaging.

October 5 was also the birthday of both Larry Fine of The Three Stooges and Roy Kroc of McDonald's in 1902; Bil Keane of The Family Circus in 1922; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steve Miller in 1943; and British authors Peter Ackroyd (1949) and Clive Barker (1952).

But a couple of musical Libras may have flown under your radar.  But, fear not, I am here to correct that possible oversight.

I hesitate to call Elva Ruby Miller (1907-1997) musical, but she did have an astonishing career as a novelty singer in the 1960s.  She was a poorly trained mezzo-soprano with a torturous vibrato and a willingness to ignore both standard pitch and tempo.  Think three stray cats, a lovesick peacock, and a dyspeptic screech owl being forced through a meat grinder at the same time.  At age twenty-seven, she began studying music and voice at Pomona College, eventually recording several self-financed projects, while describing singing as a hobby.  In 1960, radio disc jockey Gary Owens featured her on his program, which led to music arranger Fred Bock encouraging her to perform contemporary popular songs.  She was signed to Capitol Records in 1965, which promoted her amateurish style.  During recording sessions, she was often ahead of or behind the beat; she complained that the studio released the worst of her takes.  Her first album, Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits (1966) sold 250,000 copies ion its first three weeks.  She was a frequent guest on talk shows, inclulding The Merv Griffith Show, where I would occasionally watch her.

"Downtown"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw07CDid0JM

"Green Tambourine"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmR1skSQKg

"A Hard Day's Night"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2wheSpxL94

"These Boots Are Made for Walkin' "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgoGq6PTXZ4

"Strangers in the Night"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV0MtVWIN8Y

"A Lover's Concerto"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqlX88H4_Cg

Billy Lee Riley (1933-2009) was signed  by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in 1955, but was unhappy when Phillips kept diverting to promote Jerry Lee Lewis's career instead of his.  As with many other artists on Sun Records, chart success eluded him.  His talent far outshone his recording success, although he was a strong influence on following artists.  One of the great rockabilly artists

"Red Hot"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxt_7sD9znM

"Flyin' Saucer rock and Roll"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxt_7sD9znM

"Speed Lovers" the title song from a bottom of the barrel 1966 stock car racing flick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOP2WqNqD8c

"Rock with Me Baby"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvbHH9ah58

"Baby Please Don't go"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btt6-naL9XU

"Trouble Bound"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv5ZJ8LP5M0

"Open the Door Richard"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-7cmbcRlHk&list=PLAA2DD72376EBE0EC&index=18

"I Hear You Knockin' "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQYo7QWQN0&list=PLAA2DD72376EBE0EC&index=21

"Mountain of Love"  NOT by Billy Lee Riley, but he and Roland James produced this hit on their Rita Records for Harold Dorman; Riley can be heard here on bass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y72SaV8al5k

HYMN TIME

The Carter Family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrIM9U4mfpY

MAXIMO THE AMAZING SUPERMAN (1940)

 "The hero of this story, Maximo Miller, is a new kind of superman.  He is gifted with a superbrain which he learns how to use to do things which no other man can do.  And that is what makes the tale."

Writer Russell R. Winterbotham (1904-1971), who also penned mysteries as "J. Harvey Bond", is perhaps best known for his western and science fiction stories, although for a period in the forties he wrote some sixty Big Little Books -- including three about Maximo.  Big Little Books were a popular juvenile series of cheaply made novels, measuring about 3 5/8 inches wide, 4 1/2 inches high, and were about one  inch thick, and featured text on the left hand page and a line drawing illustration on the right.  Issued by Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, they typically featured popular comic strip, radio, television, or movie heroes, and were sold for dime (later 15 cents) through such retail outlets as Woolworth's.  The first Big Little Book -- The Adventures of Dick Tracy -- went on sale in December 1932; the series. with a later name change to Better Little Books, continued into the 1960s; more than 1300 titles were published. with some 508 core titles issued between 1932 and 1949 by Whitman.  The Big Little Books were quick, easy reading, well-suited to their core audience.  Topday, they are very popular in the collector's market.

As Maximo watches a speeding roadster approach a railroad intersection, he knows the young female driver does not see the approaching train.  A fatal crash seems imminent, but then:

"Some powerful new force surged through his muscles, seeming to leap from his body toward the speeding motor car.

"The young man's nerves tingled as if some unseen magnetic force were whipping energy through the ir around him."

Then, by golly, the car rises through the air and avoids the on-rushing train.  The girl is saved, and Maximo is left wondering exactly what happened.  The girl, Ella Arvid, is the daughter of a professor at Curfman College.  she said, "He'd be greatly interested in what you did just now.  You see he's a physicist and he has always said that science has never been able to plumb the depths of human brain power."

So off they go to plumb the depths of Maximo's brain power.  Along the way they meet danger, a vicious gang, and spies out to do dirt to America.

Not great literature perhaps, but a serviceable story to entertain a young kid in the 1940s -- and perhaps to also entertain you.  Let's see.  All three Maximo books are available online at Comic Book Plus; here's the link to the first:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102552

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE GAMECOCK MURDERS

The Gamecock Murders by Frank Gruber  (originally published as The Scarlet Feather, 1948; reprinted in paperback as The Gamecock Murders, 1949)

Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg, Frank Gruber's hapless detecting heroes, return in their eleventh full-length outing to join the dangerous world of cock-fighting.  The pair are con men -- glib, impetuous Fletcher and stolid mass of muscle Cragg -- whose main source of income is hawking a book on the secrets of Sampson (Sampson being Cragg, who displayed his strength by expanding his chest to break iron chains binding him during a medicine show-like spiel from Fletcher).  Because Johnny is so impetuous, the pair often lose what money they make and are currently scraping for rent and food money; somehow they often come across murders which Fletcher is forced to solve, while during every case they make (and lose) vast amounts of cash.  As a plot device, the formula is well-worn  but extremely workable, making the pair's adventures bright, easy reads.

This time they are in Chicago, broke and about to be kicked out of their rented room and having no money for their last two meals.  It's a cold November day, and the pair are walking despondently along the deserted lake front when a nearby car stops.  A young woman in a mink coat gets out and walks to the edge of the water.  She drops her coat and jumps into the lake, intending to drown herself.  Johnny dives in after her.  She fights him and Johnny has to knock her out to rescue her.  The papers in her care say that she is Lois Tancred and give her address as a tony neighborhood on Lake Shore Drive.  Sam bundles her into the car and Johnny drives them to her home, a large mansion.  They bring her to her door where she is received by her imperious mother, who ushers her in and slams the door in Johnny and Sam's faces.  In the glove compartment of Lois's Cadillac coupe, Johnny finds an envelope containing a cryptic message, Come Tomorrow, and a red feather...

This leads Johnny and Sam to the Midwest Poultry Breeders' Exhibition where prize gamefowl are on display and the body of one of the owners is found underneath his chicken coop.  The dead man is the one who sent the mysterious note to Lois, and she shows up, not realizing that he had been killed.

Suddenly Johnny and Sam are in the midst of a violent world of cockfighting where millionaires indulge in the blood sport, and where they come across a wealthy breeder of Jungle Shawls (a prize breed of fighting cocks), a respected doctor who breeds Whiteshackles (another type of fighting cock), a shady publisher of a cheap journal about game birds, an aw-shucks barber from a small town in Iowa who has great confidence in Big Red, his fighting bird, and has a habit of always winning at cards and dice, a big-time Chicago gambler, blackmail, a second murder, and a number of vicious thugs -- all while trying to avoid an arrogant homicide detective and their landlord who wants his rent.

The pace is fast and furious and ends with Johnny trapped with a pair of violent cocks with three-inches of sharp steel gaffs on their feet and a thirst for Johnny's blood...that's right, our hero has to face off against killer chickens in a harrowing climax.  Johnny survives and manages to wrap things up in the very last pages, nailing the killer and exposing a large money-making plot.

 Over on The Thrilling Detective Website, Kevin Burton Smith quotes one critic who said that Gruber used the plotting of Gardner and the humor of Latimer in his Johnny Fletcher books, especially the humor of Latimer.  A pretty good description.  Smith went on to write, "[E]very one [of the Fletcher books] one I've read has been a fast-paced, entertaining romp.  Not essential, maybe, but fun, fun, fun."

Just a few minor notes.  The dentist from Iowa is named Otto Bender; I can't help but wonder is that is a nod to Chicago-born Otto Binder, a fellow pulpster and a comic book writer (he created Supergirl, among many other accomplishments); just a thought I had with nothing to back it up.

The edition I read was the 1949 Signet paperback.  On chapter nineteen, the book dropped a complete lie, replacing it with one from three paragraphs later.  A  minor and confusing irritation, perhaps, but one that grated on me.  Publisher should do better.

The last page of the book had a three-quarter's page advertisement of Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury, which Signet had published in paperback a year before.  The book, which had modest sales in hardcover, had become a runaway best-seller in the Signet edition.  For some reason, this advertisement made me smile.

All of which has nothing to do with Gruber's book itself, which retains a spot very near the top of my "Books I Like" list.

THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM: FIRST EPISODE (MAY 2, 1932)

Jack Benny was the comedian's comedian with his impeccable timing and his dry self-deprecating humor.  Benny parlayed a minor career as a vaudeville violinist into a low-key comedy act which was featured in nightclubs and in Broadway revues.  A brief, unsuccessful stint in film in 1929 eventually brought him back to Broadway, where he began thinking about the new medium of radio.  He made his radio debut early in 1932 on The Ed Sullivan Show and attracted the attention of the NBC Commercial Program Department, which auditioned him that April and signed him to star in The Canada Dry Program on the NBC Blue Network on Mondays and Wednesdays; after six months the show moved to CBS on Mondays and Thursdays.  Canada Dry dropped its sponsorship in late January 1933, and  by mid-March the show was re-tooled to become The Chevrolet Program on the NBC Red Network, switching to NBC Blue, then NBC Red, the back to NBC Blue before landing on CBS for its final six years; at various times it was called The Jack Benny Program, The Jack Benny Show, The General Tire Review, The Jell-O Program, The Grape Nuts Flakes Program, and The Lucky Strike Program.  Whatever its name, it ran from May 2, 1932 to May 22, 1955.  At the same time, Benny made his television debut on a CBS affiliate in 1949, and made his full network debut on CBS on October 28, 1950.  Benny's television program ran for fifteen years -- fourteen years on CBS and one final year on NBC.   Between his radio and television shows, The Jack Benny Program was on the air for thirty-three years; along the way it defined and influenced comedy on a manner that lasts to this day.

Benny's original radio show was basically a musical program with Benny introducing acts and providing stand-up.  As the show found its footing, sketch comedy was included and Benny's on-stage persona was more firmly defined -- the stinginess, the ego, the Maxwell, the "feud" with Fred Allen, Jack's attempts at the violin, the back and forth between him and Rochester, the drunken orchestra, Benny's basement vault, the perpetual age of 39, the frustration with Mel Blanc...and so much more.  Benny's in-house gang, which included his wife Mary Livingstone, announcer Don Wilson, Phil Harris, and tenor Kenny Bake (later replaced  by Dennis Day), all contributed to the sophisticated madness that defined Benny's program.

Here is where it all started -- Jack Benny's first radio episode.  From small beginnings...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtxj_7bGhBI

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: SANDY THE TINKER

 "Sandy the Tinker" by Charlotte Riddell  (first published anonymously in London Society, Christmas 1880; reprinted in her collection Weird Stories, as by Mrs. J. H. Riddell, 1882, later reprinted as by Charlotte Riddell; included in The Gentle Women of Evil:  An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies, edited by Peter Haining, 1967; included in The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell, included in Night Shivers:  The Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell, edited by David Stuart Davies, 2008, although the front cover and spine give the author as J. H. Liddell; included in The Collected Supernatural Fiction of Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Volume 2, 2012; reprinted in Pseudopod #710, June 2020; reprinted in The Haunted Trail:  Classic Tales of the Rambling Weird, edited by "Weird Walk" [an online "Journal of the Wanderings and Wonderings from the British Isles"], September 19, 2024; also available online at Roy Glashan's Library @ freeread/de/index .html) 

Charlotte Riddell was, at one time, one of the most popular of female Victorian authors.  Extremely prolific, she published between thirty and fifty novels -- the exact count is unknown because of her use of pseudonyms early in her career -- and numerous short stories.  Her novel The Moors and the Fens (1857 or 1858), purported to be her first novel, although it was actually her third published, was noted for her abilility to describe places she had actually never seen.  Her most successful novel was George Geith of Fen Court (1864), a story of business and finance that earned her the title of "Novelist of the City"; lone of many of her novels dealing with business.  A small portion of her work dealt with stories of the supernatural -- four novels and perhaps seventeen stories -- which were often compared favorably to the work of J. /Sheridan Le Fanu (with an occasional influence of Poe).

"Sandy the Tinker" was not her typical supernatural story about ghosts; it was one of perhaps two stories that dealt with Satan.  Edward Cawley was a young  minister in the small village of Dendeldy, Scotland, having taken over a post his late father had held for 25 years.  Cawley, having been raised mainly in London, was an imperious sort who unwittingly looked down at his northern, rural congregation.  As such his main friend was Morrison, another minister from a nearby town.  On a cold and violently stormy night, Morrison related this tale of thirty years pervious to his guests while before a comforting fire.

Morrison received a message from Cawley late one night, urging him to come at once as Cawley was in "the very greatest distress and anxiety"..."Let nothing delay you.  If I cannot speak to you soon I believe I shall go out of my senses."  The messenger said that Cawly "luiked awfu' bad, just awfu'...as if he had seen a ghaist."  Morrison wondered what the problem was; he had seen Cawley several days earlier and the man was in good health and spirits.  Because Cawley was a young man and young men are apt to inadvertently get into trouble, Morrison thought that perhaps a past debt had suddenly arisen and that Cawley had financial problems.  Before he headed out to Dendeldy, Morrison took whatever little cash he had laying about with him.

But money was not Cawley's problem.  He had had a dream.  A most vivid and exacting dream that Cawley had convinced himself was real.  Morrison thought it was silly, but Cawley was truly affected.

In the dream -- the vision, actually-- Cawley was walking in the area.  Everything was beautiful:  a gentle breeze, clear and bright flowing water, the mountains bright and glowing, covered in purple heather.  He found himself in one of the most solitary spots in the area, known as the Witches' Caldron, and was surprised top see another person, a being of power, "with wickedness and hate and sin  that underlay the glorious and terrible beauty of his face," a being who looked upon Cawley with scorn and contempt.  The creature (for that was what it was) told Cawley that he could not pass there because "this place belongs to me."  Cawley made to leave but the man (creature?) would not let him.  Then the stranger told Cawley who he was, and said that Cawley could not leave.  the Evil One (for that is who it was) took Cawley to a  rock face which opened before them and thrust Cawley inside.  Cawley found himself in Hell as his guide happily told him of the tortures that were going on.  Cawley found himself fervently praying to be released.  The supernatural being told Cawley that he could leave but that he must return on Wednesday next, or sent a substitute.

Cawley resisted, knowing that he could not doom a fellow man to such a fate.  Then he thought of one person:  Sandy the Tinker, an old man who appeared not to have long left for this world anyway.  Sandy was the disgrace of the village, a drunkard and godless man who gloried in his infidelity.  Suddenly, he was thrust through the solid rock wall and found himself lying on the floor of his bedchamber.  Cwley knew that this had not been a dream.

Morrison, however, knew that it was, but humored Cawley.  He vowed to stay with the man over the next few days.  Cawley wanted Morrison to preach that Sunday instead of him, but Morrison refused, feeling that Cawley had to face up to his fears.

That Sunday, when Cawley began his unsteady sermon, he looked at his congregation.

And saw Sandy the Tinker sitting there -- Sandy, a man who had never before entered a church in his life, was sitting there, clen, sober, and eager to hear the sermon...

Cawley fainted on the spot and was in a coma for several days.  He roused on Thursday, convinced that he had somehow avoided his fate.  Going outside, he met a group of people carrying a sheeted corpse.  the dead man was Sandy the Tinker, who evidently had wandered too close to the Witches' Caldron and had fallen to his death.

An interesting story of fate and evil that left many unanswered questions, and rightly so.  Riddell once again displayed her remarkable talent for setting and characterization and for creating a sense of disquiet.

OVERLOOKED MONSTER FLICK: MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR (1954)

Not a great movie but it has the distinction of being the first film produced by Roger Corman; it was Corman's experience in making this movie that led him to choose movie making as a career, and it also sowed the seeds for what to become American International Pictures (AIP).

There is some disagreement as to the cost of making the film.  The  budget was $30,000, Corman said it cost $12,000 and was shot in six days; Corman's brother estimated the budget to be $35,000, while Variety pegged the actual cost at $15,000.  Wyott Ordung, who previously had a few television roles, including playing BB-Eyes on Dick Tracy, was cast as the minor character Pablo, but ceded part of his salary in order top direct the film -- a career that did not work out for him, although twelve years later he served as assistant direct in The Navy vs. the Night Monsters.  Ordung later said that he sold his apartment and hocked his life insurance to raise $15,000 to pay for the film; Corman said that Ordung contributed just $4000 of the film's budget.  The box office receipts totaled either $850,000 or $150,000 -- depending on who you ask. 

Anyway, the film was made and the reviews ranged from interesting-for-what-it-is to "slow, dull, and prosaic."

Julie Blair (Anne Kimbell, Girls at Sea, The Bob Mathias Story, and at least thirty uncredited roles from 1945 to 1952) is an artist vacationing in a Mexican seaside town.  There are rumors of a man-eating sea monster lurking in the cove and she decides to investigate.  Marine biologist Steve Dunning (Stuart Wade, Teenage Monster, two episodes of Death Valley Days, and at least eight uncredited roles, including as the father in Tammy Tell Me True as Scobie in the Robert Bloch-scripted The Couch) poo-poos the idea, but plucky Julie comes up with a tissue sample from the monster to convince him.  So off he goes in an electric-powered one-man submarine to confront the monster.  (The submarine used was a recent invention from Aerojet General, and Corman was able to use it in the film in exchange for free publicity and on-screen credit; actually, the submarine may be the coolest part of the film.)

Corman himself had an uncredited role as "Tommy."  The film also featured actor Jonathan Haze, who go on to appear in many of Corman's films, including his starring turn in The Little Shop of Horrors.

Scripted by Bill Danch, who mainly worked in animated television programs, including Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Spider-Man, and The Alvin Show.

Interesting historically?, perhaps; interesting aesthetically?, you decide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPlvIpgCv4c

BITS & PIECES

Incoming:  I attended the final hours of the Pensacola library's three-day Fall Book Sale and walked away with thirty books for a total of seven dollars.  By the time I got there, things were pretty much picked over but I still managed to find some pretty nifty books, along with one turkey (I'll let you guess which one that was as you read through the list).

Oh, and I also picked up a Kate Wolf CD. 

• Paul Auster, Oracle Night.  Novel with possible fantasy elements.  "Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness. thirty-four-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationary shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook.  It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will, live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.  Why does his wife suddenly break down in tears in the backseat of a taxi just hours after Sidney begins writing in the notebook?  Why does M. R. Chang, the owner of the stationary shop, precipitously shut down his  business the next day?  What are the connections between a 1938 Warsaw telephone directory and a lost novel in which the hero can predict the future?  At what point does animosity explode into violence?  To what degree is forgiveness the ultimate expression of love?  Paul Auster's mesmerizing eleventh novel reads like an old-fashioned ghost story.  But there are no ghosts in this book -- only flesh-and-blood human beings, wandering through the haunted realms of everyday life,  At once a meditation the nature of time and a journey through the labyrinth of one man's imagination, Oracle Night is a narrative tour de force that confirms Auster's reputation as one of the boldest, most original writers at work in America today."
• James Warner Bellah, A Thunder of Drums.  Western.  "Captain Maddox was the toughest solder on the frontier.  So to Maddocks, his new lieutenant, McQuade, was just another West Point dude -- a man to be broken, ground down, remade into a fighting machine for killing Indians.  But Lieutenant McQuade was the son and grandson of generals.  Born on a cavalry post, raised on gunpowder, he was proud, stubborn and rebellious.  Maddocks found that the only way to tame McQuade was to kill him?"  This was filmed in 1961 with Richard Boone, George Hamilton, and Charles Bronson.
• Peter Brandvold, two westerns from Mean Pete:  The Devil and Lou Profit and Once  More into the Fire.  Devils:  "As long as the cash was cold and the trail was hot, bounty hunter Lou Profit would run his quarry to ground.  He loved his work -- it kept him in wine and women, and was never, ever dull.  And his latest job sounds particularly attractive.  Her name is Lola Diamond.  she's a showgirl, and a prime witness kin a murder trial that's going on without her.  Profit is supposed to find and 'escort' her to the courthouse, whether she likes it or not.  But some very dangerous men are moving to make sure the pair never reaches the courthouse alive."  Fire:  "Sheriff Ben Stillman finds himself in the unenviable position of having to arrest a young man for murder on suspicious evidence.  The cards are stacked against the young firebrand who calls himself Johnny Nevada:  Johnny has gotten Judge Hoagland's daughter pregnant, and he warned the dead man he was going to kill him because he ordered Johnny to stay away from his daughter.  Now Stillman has Johnny locked up in his jail.  The judge wants to try the boy pronto and won't recuse himself though Stillman knows he should.  Johnny's luck is about to get even worse when unknown men try to kill him.  Knowing that Johnny Nevada will hang at the very least, or get filled full of lead before he can hang, Stillman does the unthinkable -- he busts his prisoner out of his own jail."  This also includes an additional Been Stillman novella, "Rattlesnake Convention."
• Donna Collingwood and Robin Gee, editors, Mystery Writer's Market Place and Sourcebook.  From Writer's Digest and published in 1993, this book is woefully out of date and is useful perhaps only to me, who loves to read this sort of thing.  I'm kinky that way.
• John Douglas & Mark Olshaker, The Anatomy of Motive.  Non-fiction.  Douglas,  now retired, was the FBI's most famous profiler and was head of the agency's Behavioral Science Unit.  He was the author (also with Olshaker) of the bestselling book Mindhunter:  Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (in the CBS television show Criminal Minds, the characters Jason Gideon and David Rossi were based on Douglas).  In Anatomy, the authors explore the key to understanding and catching violent criminals.
• Roger Elwood, Wise One.  Christian fiction.  "A gentle old man comes out of his mountain home to issue a warning to the residents of an ancient village.  'Satan himself intends to destroy this village.  He plans to attack most severely:   The angels of heaven itself can protect you since they will be sent by Almighty God, but this will happen only of you rededicate yourself to the Savior.'  The he is gone and does not reappear for  more than a decade.  But he leaves behind the legacy of...WISE ONE.  None of the villagers retain more than a dim memory of that strange afternoon.  They are more concerned with the sudden reality of immense wealth -- a large oil field has been discovered on village property!  All the villagers are soon swept away from near-poverty to substantial wealth.  But they must now deal with another reality:  the impact of money-mania and the materialism it causes on the aspect of their lives that sets them apart from every other group kin the region.  The one morning Wise One comes into their midst again.  He is now 110 years old.  And his message is more compelling than ever."  Before he found religion, Elwood was a prolific science fiction anthologist flooding the market with titles and almost causing the death of the science fiction anthology.  He entered the Christian market with a vengeance, penning some thirty novels between 1988 and 1998.  I've picked up a couple of his Christian novels as curiosities in the past, but I doubt if I'll ever read one.
• Loren D. Estleman, The Master Executioner.  Western.  "Oscar Stone is a hangman.  Ordinary people do not understand Oscar Stone or his motives.  Everything he does, he does impeccably.  He is more bloodless than bloodthirsty.  He is a profound student of his art, completely versed in its traditions over the centuries.  He is a student of ropes and their properties, a master of the latest scientific knowledge about the human neck, a  careful calculator of weights and drops, and an exacting observer of results.  For more than a quarter of a century he has worked to  create a reputation as a man peerless in his craft:  the master executioner.  He is also utterly alone with his craft.  Suddenly, one day, on a single piece of knowledge, Oscar comes to a moment of devasting truth and for the first time knows himself."  Also, Port Hazard, a Page Murdock western.  "Hired killers are sent, lone by one, to Montana Territory after Page Murdock.  Murdock doesn't know why someone wants him out of the way, but he knows where they're coming from. Thus begins Murdock's descent in to a hell more decadent, corrupt, and dangerous than any he has ever seen -- San Francisco's Barbary Coast,  With an unwilling backup man, Murdock takes up temporary residence among the whores, gamblers, dope addicts, and cutthroats of the continent's foulest district.  No man here is trustworthy.  The enemies he's really worried about, though, are the men who run things, the politicians.  Murdock's quest takes him to Chinatown, into opium dens, and into league with a man of an alien culture who controls vices that make respectable people quail.  but perhaps the men who seem respectable are the most insidious of all"  And, Something Borrowed, Something Black, a Peter Macklin thriller.  Macklin "is a killer -- or was.  He got out.  He quit the mob, left Detroit, and finally met Laurie, a gorgeous, smart, passionate woman who makes him feel that perhaps life holds more for him than the deadly game of his former profession.  Los Angeles.  honeymoon.  Only the memories hurt, and she's so good she knows not to ask him about what he won't discuss.  Then comes the phone call. He's got to travel to Sacramento to take care of a  business matter that he thought was already settled.  It'll just be the day, he tells her, and then they'll continue their honeymoon.  A day passes, and instead of Peter, a man called Abilene shows up, sent, says Peter's note, to take care of her while he's gone.  But when Laurie tires of Abilene's hick, country ways and attempts to break away from him, one hard moment tells her that he's no friend -- and that she knows she's having the Honeymoon from Hell.  Peter loves her, doesn't he?  But if he does, would he leave her with his 'friend'?  Peter has his own problems, taking care of  business, nasty business, in San Antonio, and it isn't pretty.  What has he gotten her into?  Will it ever end?  Or will he always be a killer?  Laurie just wishes she could know...but right now, she's not sure she wants to know.  And Macklin?  He's not sure of anything, anymore."
• "C. S. Forester " (Cecil Louis Troughton Smith), The Sky and the Forest.  Adventure novel.  "In the beginning Loa was all-powerful in his tiny native village, brother of the forest, his friendly brother, and of the sky, the unfriendly one.  Into this idyllic scene came the Arab raiders, burning, killing, and enslaving the village under the hated whip and yoke.  Terror and hardship forced Loa to realize that he was only a man after all, but the change was made bearable by his wife, Musini, who continued to worship him as a god in public and perhaps let him think she did in private, while actually discovering a new tenderness for him as a man.  Furthermore, Loa was not too too slow to learn that where a god may rule a village, empires are man-made.."
• Simon R. Green, Just Another Judgement Day.  Urban fantasy, a novel of the Nightside.  "I'm John Taylor.  I work as a PI out of n office tucked away ion a shadowy street in a corner of the Nightside, that secret centre of London where the clocks always read three A.M., where terrible things happen with predictable regularity, and where the always-dark streets are full of people partying like Judgement Day will never come.  Now it may have arrived -- God's own enforcer, the righteous engine of destruction known as the Walking Man, has come to the Nightside.  The past few months, the Nightside has seen its share of chaos, some of it because of me.  Still, things were getting back to as  normal as they can ever be around here.  But the arrival of the Walking Man has the Authorities seriously worried.  He's a being whose sole purpose in life is the elimination of the wicked and the guilty -- and given the nature of the Nightside, there is a good chance that once he gets started, he'll just keep on until there's no-one left.  So they hired me to stop him.  Legend has it that he can't be killed.  I'm very much hoping that the legend isn't true."
• Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency.  Fantasy.  "Alone in London Herman Orff writes comic books in the afternoon.  Through night into morning he looks for aa third novel in the dancing green phosphors of his computer screen while he listens to sweet shortwave voices from far away singing words he cannot understand.  Hoping for a little help with his brain waves he undergoes and electrical head-zapping treatment and the next morning finds the head of Orpheus in the low-tide mud near Putney Bridge.  Between them they try to work out what went wrong between Orpheus and Eurydice and Herman and his lost love Louise von Himmelbelt.  Life, meanwhile, doesn't stand still:  Herman falls in love with Melanie Falsepercy and explores the nights and days of past and present in a ship across the North Sea, a museum, and a hotel in The Hague, the remembered olive trees of Paxos, and the Orpheus-haunted streets and underground of London."
• Richard Jessup, Threat.  Thriller.  "Looming one hundred stories above Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the deluxe St. Cyr Tower, with its elaborate security system designed to protect the rich and powerful, suddenly receives a shock.  A message -- signed simply and ominously, 'Threat' -- is found inside an empty beer can planted behind an off-limits computer bank.  Chris Murdoch, the Tower's vice-president and general manager, has been warned.  The hidden attacker is Tonio Vega, a Viet Nam veteran expert in demolition and guerilla tactics.  For an urgent and compelling reason of his own, he needs four million dollars; and Vega knows that in the city, if you ae shrewd and skilled enough, you can get away with anything.  Methodically and obsessively, he reveals his devasting power, planting dummy charge and sending threatening notes -- and then, at last, he presents his simple yet fiendishly challenging demand.  Murdoch knows that his unseen enemy can low the building sky-high, and he stands helpless."
• Antonio  Jimenez-Landi, The Treasure of the Muleteer and other Spanish Tales.  Collection of ten popular Spanish legends retold by the  noted poet and author.  Translated from the Spanish by Paul Blackburn.
• "M. E. Kerr" (Marijane Meaker), Linger.  Young adult novel.  "How would you feel about having a Gulf soldier for a pen pal? my brother wrote Lynn Dunlinger.  If the answer is no, don't write back.  but she did write back, of course, for it happened in the days of yellow ribbons and CNN report from the gulf.  No one would refuse to write to one of our boys, not even if it was Bobby Peel.  All Gary Peel could think about was what his brother had once said about Lynn, the town's one world-class beauty.  Bobby'd said, 'Why line up with the sheep and drool over her?  that's not for the cool, cool Peel brothers.'  Bobby changes his mind once he's in Saudi Arabia.  Down the way someone's playing that song again on Desert Shield Radio, the 91st Psalm.  YOU WILL NOT FEAR THE TERROR OF THE NIGHT.  I wonder if I'll die without ever knowing what someone like Lynn Dunlinger says when you kiss her.  And back home, Lynn is asking Gary not to tell anyone what he saw, and what he heard, one night at Linger, her father's restaurant.  Perhaps the only thing that stays the same. as the Desert Storm builds, is that big white restaurant at the top of the hill, where everyone likes to hang out.  Ned Dunlinger is its imperious owner.  People call him Mr. D.  Gary remembers the time Bobby used to work at Linger, as Gary does now.  He never knew the reason Bobby fought with Mr. D., never knew why Bobby swore he'd never set foot in Linger again.  The piano player wrote a song about that place:  So linger a while, let's see that smile, Secrets are mysteries still...  But the secrets of Linger don't stay mysterious, and that piano man doesn't stay at Linger.  By the time Private Robert Peel is back from the Gulf, it's the Fourth of July...and the fireworks begin,"
• John Lutz, The Honorable Traitors.  A Thomas Laker thriller.  "Officially, Thomns Laker is an employee of the NSA.  His real employer, known as the Gray Outfit, is not listed -- anywhere,  When a Washington, D,C,, insider is killed in a bomb explosion.  Laker teams up with cryptographer Ava North on a desperate search for clues.  The only thing certain is that another act of terrorism is imminent.  Delving into the dangerous past when America was drawn into global conflict, they discover one of history's greatest -- and deadliest -- secrets.  In the wrong hands it can unleash unimaginable destruction.  Now, to keep his homeland from plunging into its darkest hour, Laker will have to defend everything he believes in..."
• A. Lee Martinez, Divine Misfortune.  Humorous fantasy  novel.  "Teri and Phil had never needed their own personal god.  But when Phil is passed up for a promotion -- again -- its time to take matter into their own hands.  And look online.  Choosing a god isn't as simple as you would think.  There are too many choices; and they often have very hefty prices for their eternal devotion:  blood, money, sacrifices, and vows of chastity.  But then they found Luka, raccoon god of prosperity.  All he wants is a small cut of their good fortune,  Oh -- and to crash on their couch for a few days."
• Peter May, Blowback.  The fifth Enzo Files novel.  "A long-ago promise made to a dying man leads forensic ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who's been been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man's heir has preserved sine the man's unsolved murder.  The dead man left several clues in the study designed to reveal his killer's identity to his son, but ironically the son died soon after the father and never set eyes on the father's legacy.  So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin that Enzo brashly boasted he could solve.  The case takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines.  And attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder (but still the viable suspect), a crime scene frozen in time, a dangerous hell hole by the cliffs, and a collection of inpeneterable messages, make this one of Enzo's most difficult cases."  UPDATE:  Janet Randolph just posted on her blog that Peter May died on Saturday.  An amazing and talented writer, his final book will be published in January.  He will be missed.
• Archer Mayor, Tag Man.  A Joe Gunther novel.  "Across Brattleboro, Vermont, rich [people (some with dark secrets) are waking up in their high-security, alarm-equipped homes to find a Post-it note stuck to their bedside table reding, 'You're it.'  There is little sign of disturbance anywhere, nothing stolen (that anyone admits), and only a bit of expensive food eaten as a signature.  The local press love the story and have collectively dubbed the burglar the Tag Man.  But who is he?  And what is he doing?  In fact, there's more to this than a strange, if benign, game, for what the Tag Man discovers in one of these houses appears to be proof of a heinous string of murders -- a discovery that quickly has him running for his life.  Joe Gunther, struggling to recover from a devastating personal loss, heads his VBI team to untangle the many conflicting pieces of evidence, while the burglar himself fights for survival in the no-man's-land between the police and  the villains.  No one knows what to believe, or whom to trust, or even who may be watching as they sleep..."
• Patricia McKillip, Solstice Wood.  Fantasy.  "When bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn hears her grandmother's voice on the phone she knows she must finally return to her childhood home in upstate New York.  Her beloved grandmother has died, and though she has put a country between her and the past, the time has come for Sylvia to face the grandmother who raised her and the woods which so beguiled -- and frightened -- her.  Though Lynn Hall is nearly ramshackle, Sylvia's grandmother is just as spry as ever.  there is no escaping her scrutiny -- and Sylvia has something to hide.  But it's not until she meets the Fiber Guild -- a group of local women who meet to knit, embroider, and sew -- that Sylvia learns why her grandmother watches her.  A primitive power exists in the forest, a force the Fiber Guild seeks to bind in its stiches and weavings.  And Sylvia is not stranger to the woods..."
• Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Riptide.  Adventure thriller, an early standalone.  "In 1695, a notorious English pirate buried his bounty in a maze of booby-trapped tunnels on an island off the coast of Maine.  In three hundred years, no one has breached this cursed and rocky fortress.   Now a treasure hunter and his high-tech, million-dollar recovery team embark on the perfect operation to unlock the labyrinth's mysteries.  First the computers fail.  Then crewmen begin to die.  The island has guarded its secrets for centuries, and it isn't letting them go -- without a fight."
• Robert J. Randisi, Blood on the Arch.  A Joe Keough mystery.  "Joe Keough, St. Louis's top homicide cop, knows what it's like to stare into the face of death, to sift through the handiwork of killers.  And now he'll have to do it again.  A body has been found near the famous St. Louis Arch, its blood staining the monument a deep crimson.  Keough hopes this will prove to be jut another routine murder -- but in his heart he knows it's not."  (An aside that has nothing to do with the book:  did you know that the lights on the Arch are turned off during the evenings for one month a year so as not to confuse migrating birds?  I think that's a great idea.  Kudos to St. Louis!)
• "Kenneth Robson" (Lester Dent), Meteor Menace.  A Doc Savage adventure originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, March 1934; Doc's 13th adventure and #3 in the Bantam reprints.  "Doc Savage and his fabulous new journey to Tibet in pursuit of their most dangerous adversary, the evil genius Mo-Gwei.  Battling against overwhelming odds, they try to stop him from conquering the world with a diabolical machine known as the Blue Meteor, a screaming blue visitor from space that turns men into raving animals!"
• Jessica Amanda Salmonson, The Swordswoman.  Sword and Sorcery.  "Kendo is a thing of the spirit...or so Erin /Wylie thought of the ancient art of Japanese sword fighting -- until that day in the fencing hall when her bamboo sword was transformed into whetted steel of supernatural sharpness, and her smiling sparring partner became a loathsome demon thirsting for her soul,  Suddenly Kendo had become a thing of madness..."
• Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians.  Juvenile fantasy, the first in the Alcatraz Smedry series.  "Alcatraz Smedry has an incredible talent for breaking things; he's hardly a hero.  But he receives a bag of sand on his thirteenth birthday, and his life takes a bizarre form,  This is nor ordinary bag of sand, and it is quickly stolen by the cult of evil Librarians who are taking over the world by spreading misinformation and suppressing truth.  Alcatraz must stop them!...by infiltrating their library, armed with nothing but eyeglasses and a talent for klutziness."  One of the conceits of this book is that Sanderson is a pseudonym for Alcatraz Smedry.
• Harold M. Sherman, Interference and Other Football Stories.  Collection of five YA sports stories, two apparently original, with two stories from Top-Notch Magazine and one from Boys' Life.  Sherman was a prolific writer of juvenile sports and adventure stories, with nearly one hundred short stories (most of them for Boys' Life) and twenty-eight books to his credit.  He was also a noted psychical researcher, publishing two dozen books on that and related subjects, including How to Make ESP Work for You.  Much of his science fiction appeared in Amazing Stories during the heyday of Raymond A. Palmer, and thus is best forgotten.
• Les Savage, Jr., Arizona Showdown.  Collection of four western stories originally published in Indian Stories, Star Western, Mammoth Western, and Zane Grey's Western Magazine.  Savage published over ninety swell-regarded western stories (mostly novellas) and more than two dozen books in his short lifetime; he died at age thirty-five from complications from hereditary diabetes and elevated cholesterol.
• Andrew Vachss, Pain Management.  A Burke novel,  "Burke is back, but still lurking in the shadows, unable to return home.  He is prowling the unfamiliar streets of Portland, Oregon, in search of a runaway teen.  By all accounts, Rosebud Carlin is a happy, well-adjusted girl.  She doesn't fit the profile of the runaway kids Burke knows so well...and once was.  But there's something about her father...  Burke knows the street script, but the actors are all strangers.  cut off from his family and his network of criminal contacts, Burke is forced into a dangerous alliance with a renegade group dedicated to providing relief by any means necessary to those  in intractable pain.  A bargain is struck, and the fuse is lit."
• Donald E. Westlake, Thieves' Dozen.  Collection of eleven stories about everybody's favorite thief, John Dortmunder.

HYMN TIME

 Naomi Raine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHQtr8LZKj8

EXCITING COMICS #1 (APRIL 1940)

 There is a bit of confusion about Major Mars, the futuristic hero depicted on the cover of this issue.  In fact, Major Mars (who evidently made his only appearance in this issue of Exciting Comics) is in reality, a watered down version of Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future.  The Major Mars story "The  Beast Men of Jupiter" was adapted from Hamilton's first Captain Future story, Captain Future and the Space Emperor, which had been published two months prior in the first issue of Captain Future (Winter 1940).   The artwork in the Major Mars comic book story is credited to Max Plaisted; no author is credited.  Since Exciting Comics and Captain Future was published by Better Publications;  both were among the titles edited by Mort Weisinger, a science fiction fan who had previously started, with Julius Schwartz, the first literary agency to concentrate on science fiction; their first client was Edmond Hamilton.  When Weisinger left the agency to begin working for what would become Better publications, he brought Hamilton and many other clients with him to fill the many pages the pulp and comics industry demanded.

From Major Mars' first panel:  "Major Mars, wizard of science and inventor of Grag, the robot, endowed, with a synthetic brain.  Grag can think and talk!  Born on the  moon of Earthly parents, Major Mars is a one-man vigilance committee dedicated to the maintenance of peace among the planets!"

In the pulps, Captain Future is aided by the robot Grag, a shape-shifting android named Ortho, and the encased brain of an aged scientist, Simon Wright; Grag had been created by Simon Wright and Captain future's father Roger Newton.  For the Major Mars adventure, only Grag assists our hero; Ortho and Simon Wright are not mentioned.  Also, instead of Captain Future's semi-love interest Planetary Agent Joan Randall, we have Joan Jilson, the scantily-clad daughter of the governor of the Earth colony on Jupiter.

A mysterious villain dubbed the Space Emperor is turning the Earthmen on Jupiter into ape-like beasts, intending to take over the planet and rule it himself.  He gets his powers from an ancient belt because there's no better way to explain how he is doing what he is doing.  Major Mars wears a long-sleeved form-fitting shirt with astronomical symbols on the front, tight yellow Speedos (they are blue on the cover) that look like diapers, and calf-high red boots; Captain future, on the other hand, is often portrayed on the magazine covers wearing a full space suit -- either red or blue -- with a fish-dome helmet; no Speedos or diapers for him!

But wait, there's more!

Norman Daniels contributes a story about The Mask, which is a riff on Daniels' first Black Bat story from Black Book Detective magazine (July 1939).

And "The Black Inferno" gives us a tale of Jim Hatfield, Texas Ranger, the long-running pulp western hero created by A. Leslie Scott for Texas Rangers magazine, which ran from October 1936 to February 1958.

In addition, Sergeant Bill King takes on the Nazis in "In No-Man's-Land"; champion pistol shot "Gunner Thompsn" takes on two -- count 'em, two -- gangs of racketeers preying on the city in "Payoff in Lead"; Hy Hardy, the ace newsreel cameraman, makes his only comic book appearance in "Deep Sea Drama on Parade"; Dan Williams, Private Investigator, solve "The Forbes Case"; Klaus Nordling's Make-Believe Micky's flights of fancy keep getting interrupted; and Sam Brant (a house name used by Frank Gruber, Louis L'Amour, Syl MacDowell, and others) contributes a one-page text story of the Old West, "A Real Waddy."

A pretty good bargain for your dime, I'd say.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102492

FORGOTTEN BOOK: STAR SURGEON

Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse  (1959)

One interesting sub-group of science fiction is medical science fiction, from the early days of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the plethora of today's medical technofiction.  Stories from the days of the 40s, 50s, and 60s -- L. Ron Hubbard's Old DocMethuselah, Murray Leinster's Med Service, James White's Hospital Station, and even Piers Anthony's dentist-to the stars Doctor Dillingham -- remain popular to this day.

Alan E. Nourse, who was a medical doctor by training, spent much of his science fiction career writing medical SF, including his brief Hospital Earth series.  When humanity finally invented a faster-than-light star drive and began to explore the galaxy, they encountered many thousands of alien races that formed the Galactic confederation of Worlds.  Earth was admitted to the Confederation on a probationary basis, eventually -- it was hoped -- to be given full status.  Because each of these races had their own unique talents in aggregate, it was decided that humanity would concentrate on its latent ability for medicine.  Thus Earth became Hospital Earth and humans became doctors to the many worlds of the Confederation, sending ship of medical professionals into space to respond to whatever medical emergencies might arise, usually to the planets who had signed a highly valued medical contract with Hospital Earth.  These space doctors consisted of small trams of probationary medics, hoping tearn the coveted "Star" that would indicate a full-fledged doctor after their one-year mission., of course, would help any race, contract or not, but it was hoped that a planet would agree to sign a contract once medical service was successfully given.

The hierarchy of Hospital Earth was rigid and divided as to medical specialties.  At the top were the Black Doctors of Pathology, who were also the administrative arm of the organization.  Among other groups were the White Doctors of Radiology, The Red Doctors of Surgery, The Green Doctors of Medicine, and the Blue Doctors of Diagnosis.  Each persons ranking in the hierarchy as based on the number of Stars they earned, from One to Four.  Because humanity was on a probationary basis with the Confederation, Hospital earth felt it was incumbent to allow only humans in their membership.  Until...

Dal Timgar was a native to the planet Garv (the full name of the planet was too long and too unpronouncible to be of any use to humans).  He was short, covered with fur, and four-fingered, and since childhood has wanted to be a doctor, despite the fact that his family and his entire planet were highly successful merchants.  Somehow he was accepted for medical training on Hospital Earth -- it was generally felt that once he flamed out and failed that no other non-human would bother to attempt to become a doctor.  Despite extreme prejudice and antagonism from his fellow students, the faculty, and the administration, he managed to graduate.  Now he must on on a year-long flight as a Red Doctor with two fellow probationers to provide medical services on demand to a variety of planets and alien races.  Should Dal make even the slightest mistake, his enemies would not hesitate to kick him out.  His companions on the flight were Blue Doctor Jack Alvarez, who resented Dal for daring to take a position that should rightfully (and only) belong to a human, and Green Doctor Frank "Tiger" Martin, who was Dal's only friend during training.

So off we go into the galaxy, meeting strange races and stranger illnesses, most of which were easy to handle for the trio.  On one planet, an injury required a complicated surgery that Dal was unsure that he could perform so he asked for a Hospital Earth team to come to the planet to take over, nearly risking the patient's life; the surgery turned out to be fairly simple and Dal's hesitancy was a black mark against him and almost had him relieved of duty.

Then came a strange request from a little known and out-of-the way planet, 31 Brucker, whose people are being destroyed by a mysterious, unidentifiable plague.  Among the strange aspects of this case, 31 Brucker had been casually surveyed 80 years earlier and had been found to contain no intelligent races.  the inhabitants of 31 Brucker are now highly intelligent and evolved with an advanced technological science, although the population appear to avoid any technological advances whenever possible.  the simian-like people themselves where shy and withdraw appeared to accept the horrible fate that the plague has in store for them.  Two-thirds of the planet's population was already dying or dead, the remainder soon to join them.  Despite their best efforts, Dal, Tiger, and Jack could not find a cure for the plague; the virus causing it having completely baffled them.  Then Dal had a strange idea...what if their patients were not the inhabitants of 31 Brucker, but instead was the plague itself?

An intellectual puzzle wrapped in a protest against racism and prejudice, Star Surgeon is a competent story of people (of all races and types) facing near-impossible odds.  It reads well, although I wish  more time was spent going into the many alien races and their individual illnesses, even tough I realize that that would have slowed the book's pacing considerable.  All in all, a stellar --dare I say "Star"? -- achievement.

Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, helping to pay for his medical education by writing science fiction stories.  He wrote a bestselling nonfiction book, Intern, under the pseudonym "Dr. X," a pen name he also used, a name he also used for a few medical articles; he had a regular medical column in Good Housekeeping, which earned him the nickname "Family Doctor."  He published science fiction books for both juveniles and adults, often focusing on medicine and/or psionics.  Nourse also wrote a number of nonfiction books, many of them geared to a juvenile audience, including the So You Want to Be... series, The Teen Guide to Safe Sex, "Impact Books on various medical issues (viruses, hormones, herpes, AIDS, etc.), and books on astronomy (Venus and Mercury, the giant planet, the asteroid belts, etc.).  He also wrote The Body for Time-Life Books.  Critic John Clute has remarked on Nourse's "sharp and shapely virtues as a storyteller," concluding that "A sense of fundamental decency permeates Nourse's fiction; and, though sometimes too easily achieved, the victories of decency over bigotry cannot, either for the market upon which Nourse concentrated or the adult market in general, can be seriously faulted."

I find Nourse's fiction to be extremely addictive.

I also feel it is incumbent on me to mention one other thing.  Evidently the author's last name is pronounced "Nurse," which leads me to imagine hospitals loudspeakers to blare out, "Paging Doctor Nurse. Paging Doctor Nurse" to the confusion of all around.

Star Surgeon is available to be read on the internet:   http://durendal.org/anss/