DARKNESS AT PEMBERLEY (1932) by TH White

Mike Ripley in his unmissable Getting Away with Murder column recently pointed to the reprint of this early campus mystery and it is through his auspices that I have very kindly been sent a review copy by those nice people at Ostara Publishing – a first for this blog. Ostara specialise in reprinting classic crime fiction and thrillers – and even have a whole strand devoted to books set in Cambridge, of which this is a prime example. Although there are a few jokey references to Jane Austen, this is a highly distinctive mystery thriller from the Golden Age that at the time of its original publication was greatly praised by no less an author than JB Priestley. It begins early one evening in the Old Court of a Cambridge College …

Crescendo (1970) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film

Hammer made a return to the thriller genre after a break of several years by dusting off an old script by Alfred Shaughnessy that originally had been intended as a possible vehicle for Joan Crawford with Michael Reeves to direct. But she declined the offer and by the time the film was put into production several years later, the company was not what it once was. Indeed there is a strong sense in the finished film that this was a conscious attempt to recapture past glories, with the final script by Hammer stalwart Jimmy Sangster once again set in the south of France with a young American tourist plunged into a complex family conspiracy.

The following review is offered as part of the Tuesday’s Overlooked Film meme hosted by Todd Mason over at his Sweet Freedom blog and you should head over there to see the many other fascinating titles that have been selected.

THE EMPTY HOURS (1962) by Ed McBain

Today we return to the world of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct mysteries. Published originally between 1956 and 2005, I have been reading them in chronological sequence (click here to see my reviews of the books in the series). McBain once again rings the changes and proves his versatility with a volume made up of three ‘novelettes’.

“If America is a melting pot, then the 87th Precinct is a crucible.”

The Empty Hours (87th Precinct series #15)
First Published: 1962
Leading players: Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, Cotton Hawes, Bert Kling, Sam Grossman, Teddy Carella

KINDS OF LOVE, KINDS OF DEATH (1966) by Donald Westlake

Donald Edwin Edward Westlake (1933-2008) was a prolific writer and over the decades published all kinds of crime and mystery books – and other types of fiction too – under a great many pseudonyms. Of the dozen or so names he adopted the best-known, other than his own, is probably ‘Richard Stark’, which he used for his series of tough thrillers starring the merciless Parker, the first of which I reviewed here. But I have always had a real soft spot for the lesser-known quintet of novels he wrote as “Tucker Coe’ featuring disgraced former New York cop, Mitchell Tobin.

The following review is offered as part of Patti Abbott’s Friday’s Forgotten Books meme, which this week is devoted to Westlake’s work. For more of the tributes to the late, great man’s work, visit her blog at: http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

The Nanny (1965) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film

Bette Davis gives a subtle and nuanced performance as the title character in this small-scale suspense movie that deserves to be much better known. It is easy to succumb to the temptation to lump it together with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and the other  excursions into grand guignol that helped revive the flagging careers of such Hollywood grand dames as Davis, Crawford and Stanwyck (amongst others) around that time, but it does the film a real disservice. Although the last movie shot by Hammer Studios in black and white, this is a  restrained study of family grief and emotional dependence painted in shades of grey. It’s a classy film, tackling a challenging theme with intelligence and style, largely eschewing histrionics in its search for the truth …

The following review is offered as part of the Tuesday’s Overlooked Film meme hosted by Todd Mason over at his Sweet Freedom blog and you should head over there to see the many other fascinating titles that have been selected.

THE TERROR (1930) by Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace was still a big name when I was growing up in Italy in the 1970s, his iconic signature and profile emblazoned on dozens of yellow paperbacks and linked to a long list of rather lurid movies usually set in London but often made in Germany to create a curious cultural mishmash that is as distinctive as it is dislocating. Since those heady days of my youth I don’t think I’ve read any of his books, with the possible exception of The Four Just Men, his ingenious debut.  I decided however to get re-aquainted (so to speak) following a comment by Curtis, the host of the magnificent and well-informed The Passing Tramp blog, about my review of the Hammer film Paranoiac, a loose adaptation of Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar, which he thought might have more than a passing similarity to Wallace’s The Terror. As luck would have it, I came across a slightly battered copy only a few days later, so …

Touch of Evil (1958) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film

For many, Orson Welles’ 1958 film Touch of Evil marks the end of classic Film Noir. It certainly marked the end of Welles’ Hollywood directing career, though it had to wait some forty years before it could finally be seen in a version that was close to his original intentions, especially with regards to the film’s opening sequence. Referenced in films as different as Brian De Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Mike Nichols’ Postcards from the Edge (1991) and In Burges (2008), Welles’ opening long take is one of cinema’s best known sequences and is frequently cited as a model of its kind, though the film to which it belongs seems to have been slightly forgotten .

The following review is offered as part of the Tuesday’s Overlooked Film meme hosted by Todd Mason over at Sweet Freedom and you should head over there to see the many other selections.