Gumshoe Blues by Paul D. Brazill

Funny and noir are two words not frequently linked. But Paul D. Brazill, master of the comic crime novel and short story, pulls it off. His writing has you laughing while it leads you down a dark alley and punches you in the gut.

In his new book, Gumshoe Blues: The Peter Ord Yarns, Brazill tells four tales of his unlikely private detective. The stories are: “Gumshoe Blues,” “Mr. Kiss and Tell,” “Who Killed Skippy?” and “The Lady and the Gimp.”

The first, “Gumshoe Blues,” is long enough to qualify as a novella, or at least a novelette. At first it seems to be a rambling, episodic excursion through a “seen better days” English city.

Ord picks up odd jobs – very odd for a PI – then often gets sidetracked, drinks too much and has a tendency to screw things up. Anyone who has ever had a blistering hangover will get a charge out of Ord’s morning afters. The writing puts you in the head of Peter Ord. By the end, the loose threads are all neatly pulled together and tied into a satisfying knot.

The fun of a Brazill story is not only in the plot and the unique situations, but also the kaleidoscope of characters. Everyone of them is vivid and comes with a unique history. Brazill provides all this in a few seemingly simple strokes creating places and lives, while he cracks you up with his observations. He is a magician who diverts your attention with humor while he works his craft.

Gumshoe Blues: The Peter Ord Yarns was published today (August 30). Paul D. Brazill sent me a copy a few weeks ago. Other Brazill books are Last Year’s Man, Guns of Brixton, Too Many Crooks, A Case Of Noir, Kill Me Quick! His short stories have appeared in many anthologies.

“Where'd You Go, Bernadette” is a Movie to See

Catch “Where'd You Go, Bernadette” before it disappears.

Films like this generally don’t last long in theaters. I was going to say, little films like this, but “Where'd You Go, Bernadette” is not so little. There are some amazing scenes filmed in Seattle and the Antarctic.

But the scenery is not what this movie is about.

It is about Cate Blanchett, one of our finest actresses, and the performance she turns in as Bernadette Fox.

Bernadette, a once rising star and award winning architect of modern structures, quit the designing of buildings and has lived in near seclusion in Seattle for two decades with her husband, a wildly successful computer game creator whose company was bought by Microsoft, and her teenage daughter.

Why did Bernadette quit? Why is she so anti-social? Why is she becoming a problem to her family and neighbors? That is the story, and to add any spoilers to this post would be to spoil the joy of watching Bernadette work through it all.

“Where'd You Go, Bernadette” was directed and co-written by Richard Linklater, someone whose films I will always go out of my way to see. The movie is based on a 2012 book of the same title by Maria Semple. Billy Crudup plays Bernadette’s husband, and Emma Nelson plays her daughter. Also in the cast are Laurence Fishburne as a former colleague, and Kristen Wiig as her neighbor.

The beautiful cinematography was by Shane F. Kelly (who also photographed one of my all-time favorite documentaries, “Tim’s Vermeer”).

Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the Beautiful Beggar, a Perry Mason mystery

On a folding table at a book fair sat an old, but never read, hard cover collection of three Perry Mason novels from late in the series.

It didn’t take a Perry Mason to figure out the book had never been read. The pages were too clean and some of them were stuck together at the edges the way they will in some brand new books.

The collection was marked $1 – a deal too good to pass up.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s simple, direct writing style, his twisty plots and his fictional lawyer’s quick thinking and sometimes questionable actions are always a pleasure to read.

The last novel in this Perry Mason collection was The Case of the Beautiful Beggar, from 1965.

In it, a 22-year-old woman returning to Los Angeles after a three-month trip abroad, finds the wealthy and elderly uncle she lived with all her life has been forced into a sanitarium by relatives. The uncle’s greedy half-brother is now the conservator of the uncle’s estate by order of a local court.

The woman turns to Perry Mason for help. She knows her uncle is not senile or violent, as the relatives claim. The relatives are out for his money.

Having a person committed against his will to a prison-like hospital is a plot device I seem to recall Gardner using before, and the Perry Mason television show of the 1950s and ’60s used it several times. In fact, the plot of this story is nearly identical to one of those episodes. Gardner’s original stories were often adapted for the series.

Although all the Perry Mason novels are breezy and light, this one seemed even lighter than usual, and a little thin. There were fewer characters – fewer suspects – involved than in earlier Mason books. The author also padded the page count by repeating himself unnecessarily, going over the same elements of the story several times, when the events were not that complicated or hard to remember.

This story could have been set in one of the previous decades – which is part of the charm of the Mason novels. But the character of a young woman in 1965 was out of step with the times. She did not have to be a hipster from Haight-Ashbury or Carnaby Street, but even the most strait-laced girl of that era would not be as square and old-fashioned as this character.

Still, the Gardner style was on display and the crafty maneuvering of Perry Mason was fun to read and exciting to anticipate, especially in the early chapters – like the lawyer’s moves to have a large check cashed for his client.

All the usual characters appear in the book: Della Street, Mason’s confidential secretary, Paul Drake, the head of a private investigation company, Detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg of the Los Angeles Police Department, and L.A. District Attorney Hamilton Burger, who Gardner (and the TV show) were always careful to refer to by the character’s full name, in order to avoid the comical nick-name, Ham Burger.

(For more posts on books, head over to Todd Mason’s blog.)

(Also, please check out my crime novel, Lyme Depot. Thanks.)

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Don’t read anything about it. Don’t talk to anyone about it. Just go see “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

Let the movie surprise you.

Before catching it this week, I heard it was Quentin Tarantino’s ninth and latest film. I heard it starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. I heard it was about a fading TV star and a stuntman in 1960s Hollywood.

That was enough for me.

I am not a huge Tarantino fan. But the subject and the era of this new one made me want to see it.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” is Tarantino’s best movie and I expect it to be up for Oscars in the next round of Academy Award nominations.

Kitten with a Whip by Wade Miller

The 1959 crime novel, Kitten with a Whip, is a noir set in the sunshine of Southern California.

Average guy, David Patton, a San Diego engineer and family man is on his own while his wife and child visit family in San Francisco.

He wakes one morning to find a slinky teenage girl in a nightgown in his house.

She tells him of her escape from a harsh juvenile detention center and begs him to help her.

Does he toss her out and call the cops? No. Remember, this is noir.

He decides to help her. He buys her clothes. He drives her to the edge of town where she can catch a bus. He gives her money.

After making a few stops before going home, he walks into his house and there she is again.

Now Patton is giving himself acid reflux worrying about what the neighbors will think, and how to get rid of her in broad daylight.

She tries to seduce him. She threatens to tell the police he raped her. She threatens him with violence. And on and on.

At times, Patton’s bad decisions pile up so high that the book almost read like a dark comic novel.

Wade Miller was the pen name of the writing team of Bob Wade (1920-2012) and Bill Miller (1920-1961) who together wrote more than 30 novels, including Badge of Evil, which was the basis for Orson Welles’ film, “Touch of Evil.” There is more about them at Thrilling Detective.

The recent Stark House publication of Kitten with a Whip comes with a second Wade Miller novel, Kiss Her Goodbye from 1956.

And let’s hear it for Stark House, for their work in making these Wade Miller novels and many other hard-to-find books available.

(Also, please check out my crime novel, Lyme Depot. Thanks.)

(For more posts on books, head over to Todd Mason’s blog.)