Night Cry, by William L. Stuart

 

9798886011531

Stark House Press, 2025

originally published 1948

162 pp

paperback

(read in April)

A few weeks ago I turned on my television and an ad/small clip for the 1950 movie Where the Sidewalk Ends popped up on the home page for Amazon Fire TV (I know, but I really hate cable).   I clicked on the "add to my list" button, thinking it looked like a good noir film to hold on to for a late night insomnia viewing.  So, imagine my surprise when this book arrived the next day with its photo of Dana Andrews on the cover.   I took it as kismet and read the novel right away.    And before I get into this post, my many thanks to the Stark House Press people -- they are just terrific. 

Lieutenant Mark Deglin is still angry over missing out on a promotion he thought he'd had in the bag.   He believes that he's "one of the best detectives on the force," but as his captain notes, "he doesn't do things by the book all the time" while on the job.  He's still carrying that chip on his shoulders the night he is called out to a gambling club to investigate a murder.  The victim had been in a fight earlier that evening with another gambler by the name of Kendall Paine, a war-weary, decorated  vet who had since been thrown out of the club, so he quickly becomes the prime suspect.   Deglin goes to Paine's apartment where he starts asking questions, but the situation changes for the worse when the two men get into a physical fight and Paine falls down dead.   When Deglin calls in, he learns that the murder has been solved and that Paine wasn't the killer.  Instead of copping to the truth of what happened, he goes into cover-up mode, ditching the body while leaving clues that suggest that Paine had left town.  Things might have worked out at this point, but the real complications set in when Deglin is told that  although he's no longer wanted for murder, the DA really needs Paine as a witness in the murder case, and Deglin's captain assigns him the task of finding him. Deglin's web of deceit becomes even more tangled when Paine's girlfriend, Morgan Taylor, refuses to believe that Paine would just up and leave and a reporter named Smith offers to help her find him.  To add yet another twist to the knife, some secrets refuse to stay buried, backing Deglin into a tight  corner while the walls close in. 

first edition, Dial, 1948 (from Abebooks)

Aside from the taut story here, Night Cry is a compelling psychological portrait of a man battling his inner demons as the weight of his actions comes down on him. It also asks the question of what happens when the badge becomes worthless and a cop is left to ponder what's left. It is a truly fine crime novel, with darkness gripping the narrative tightly, and with noir vibes seeping deep into all facets of this book. It is gritty, moody and emotionally charged, and I give the author a lot of credit for building this story in well under two hundred pages.  From the outset, the author crafted an atmosphere that not only doesn't quit, but stays with you long after you've finished reading.    I can most highly recommend this book, especially to readers of vintage noir, and to crime aficionados who don't mind the darkness.

from posteritati

The novel is the latest in Stark House's Film Noir Classics series, so after the book comes the film viewing.  The  1950 film, scripted by Ben Hecht and directed by Otto Preminger, is gripping in its own right and well worth the watch, although I have to admit my preference for the novel.   In the movie Deglin becomes Mark Dixon;  Dana Andrews really throws himself into the role, slipping into Dixon's skin and taking on the moral weight that drags this man down as he finds himself ever so slowly hemmed in by his actions.  Gene Tierney's Morgan Taylor changes in the movie novel from a socialite to the daughter of a cabbie who models designer gowns for a living.  The story goes well during  the first half of the film, pacing and plot on point, but starts to lose its intensity as Dixon and Taylor find themselves falling in love.   And while the novel's ending wasn't exactly the best, the film's ending was just disappointing.   But as I say, it's still well worth watching. 

Bottom line: loved the book, movie was good but not a) great or b) as well done as the novel. 

The Mouthless Dead, by Anthony Quinn

 

"It was a mask -- one that he wore so determinedly it became his other self." 

9780349146928

Abacus/Little, Brown Book Group, 2025

274 pp

hardcover 

(read in April) 

I don't remember how I happened upon this book, but I was hooked from the moment I read the blurb and knew I had to have it.  For one thing, it turns out to be a novel based on the brutal murder of Mrs. Julia Wallace that happened back in 1931, and I love historical crime, both fact and fiction.  The other thing that piqued my interest is that I had never heard of this case before, so while I was waiting for my book to arrive from the UK I spent quite a bit of time doing some research.  It was a case which Raymond Chandler regarded as "unbeatable. It will always be unbeatable" and about which he  also said that it was an "impossible murder because Wallace couldn't have done it and neither could anyone else."   So now I'm hooked and my book isn't even here yet.  By the time it actually arrived I was already primed, ready to dive in, and I was not disappointed.  

This post will be shorter than usual, because I don't really want to say too much  about what actually happens in this book  -- to tell too much is to completely ruin things, and I don't want to be responsible for that. 

  The murder of Julia Wallace took place at her Liverpool home one night while her husband William had gone to call on a potential client.  William worked for Prudential Insurance, and one night while at his chess club, he had received a message about a phone call from a Mr. Qualtrough, who had asked Wallace to meet him at his home.  The address was also left on the message, and William made his way from his home to the meeting.  He left his house and caught a tram to the area, but never actually got to the Qualtrough home -- it seems that the address was incorrect, and he spent quite a bit of time asking for help from a policeman and other people in the area, none of whom had heard of a Mr. Qualtrough.   Frustrated, he made his way home, only to find his wife dead.  There was no apparent motive, and yet despite what seems to have been an unshakeable alibi with witnesses and the assurances from neighbors that the Wallaces were quiet people who were not inclined to argue, the lead detective zoomed in on Wallace as the prime suspect.  He was arrested for the murder and sent to trial, where he was found guilty and sentenced to hang.  Not too long after the verdict however, the court of criminal appeals overturned the conviction and Wallace was set free, with the murder left unsolved.   By the way, none of this is spoiler material -- just a very brief outline of the actual case. 

The Mouthless Dead  begins some fifteen years later, and one of the former members of the Wallace investigation team, a now-retired Detective Inspector Key who had served as a Liverpool policeman for "nigh on thirty years,"  is on board an ocean liner sailing from England to New York.  He is in the process of putting together a memoir about his career, which would have been "quite unexceptional," except for the one case "that was, in its time, wildly notorious, and had become in the years since the material of legend."  He makes the acquaintance of two fellow passengers, Lydia Tarrant, "somewhat plain" and traveling with her mother, but interested in his stories, and Teddy Absolom, a younger man in his twenties, for whom "film had been his obsession since boyhood." Teddy hopes to look for work in the industry in New York, or maybe even Hollywood, where he's interested in writing and directing.  Lydia reveals to Teddy that Key is writing about the Wallace case in his memoir,  and Teddy admits to having been "obsessed with it as a schoolboy."  Teddy believes that "the hand of fate" must be at work here, because the case would make a great movie with "the lot" -- "a brutal killing, a police force baffled, a man condemned to hang."  Never mind that  there was "no ending"  -- according to Teddy, it wouldn't be a documentary, but a drama based on a real-life story, much like Hitchcock did with his movie "Rope."  And thus it begins, with Key holding Teddy and Lydia spellbound with his continuing story.   Key is only too happy to oblige helping Teddy, unable to resist showing off his insider knowledge.   

Julia and William Wallace, from The Julia Wallace Murder Foundation

 In the Acknowledgments section of the book, the author notes that he "owes this book to a conversation" he'd had that had "triggered" a childhood memory. He remembered his parents talking about it once,  likely because  his family had lived very close to Menlove Gardens, where Wallace was supposed to go to meet the mysterious Mr. Qualtrough.   As he says, "the story came out like a revenant from the darkness of forgetting, and I knew I had to retell it."   The author's done a great job here, bringing in the historical record of the Wallace case complete with police work and materials from the trials,  solidly landing the reader back in 1930s Liverpool.  However, the real genius at work here is that the retelling is offered to us via the fictional Key's perspective, suffusing the narrative with an unexpected intensity, so much so that I could not put this book down.  

The Mouthless Dead is both a gripping, engrossing tale and a keenly observed study of character, one that I can recommend very highly to readers who enjoy historical crime fiction or well-written, intelligent crime novels.  It's also a book I won't soon forget.  

The Lizard, by Domenic Stansberry

 

9781948596053

Molotov Editions, 2025

255 pp

paperback 

I may not have been present here for a while, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been reading. On the contrary, sitting on one end of desk there is a stackus giganticus of books I've finished in the last few weeks waiting for me to share my thoughts about them.  On the top is this one, The Lizard by Domenic Stansberry, whose writing talents have earned him the North America Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Fiction (2017),  a nomination for the Edgar in 1999 which was followed by a win in 2005 for The Confession, which was evidently the target of some controversy.  It seems, according to the author's website, that a "dissenting judge ... broke with tradition to condemn the selection of this 'amoral' novel for Best Paperback Original."   Stansberry has also been nominated for the Shamus Award as well as the Barry Award, so bottom line: his work is no stranger to the crime fiction-writing/reading world.  

The Lizard is no ordinary crime story, nor is it anywhere close to average or run of the mill, which is so refreshing for modern crime novels.  The narrator of this story goes by S. E. Reynolds, which is not his real name but rather one he uses when "working as a ghost."  He'd started his career as a reporter, first covering crime, but after a series of setbacks ended up "ghosting a weekly column for a state representative."  This job, evidently, was something he could do well, moving on to work for "celebrities, politicians, war heroes, people with stories to tell, ambitions, visions to share."  He had hoped to score the job of ghostwriting a memoir for a particular gubernatorial candidate, but, as he notes, the candidate had "suddenly demurred."  Now his literary agent offers him a project "that he thought he might be good for," one where he'd be on familiar ground.   It seems that an old friend and fellow investigative journalist, Max Seeghurs, is working on a book about the Sundial House in Santa Fe, a sort of shady resort once frequented by the rich, as well as the occasional politician, founded by a philanthropist with a vision whose death was the end of Sundial's popularity among the beautiful people.    Max's book is "in trouble," and the agent is worried about seeing the project through.  Getting a copy of the manuscript is not in the cards; Max wants to meet in person.  Reynolds has his own reasons for getting together with Max, so off to New York he goes, but things go horribly bad, leading Reynolds into more than one dangerous situation and to the place where the book opens --  having been involved in some "shootings,"  wandering about in the desert "in cave country," feeling "feverish and on the brink of hallucination" and eventually landing in a coastal town where he not only feels that he can't go home, but also paranoid that he's being watched.  

The story chases those events that have pinned him down in the midst of a conspiracy as he tries to get to the truth behind what is happening to and all around him, while at the same time it has Reynolds engaging in his own measure of self examination, focusing in on past relationships and the ramifications of decisions he's made.  As the back cover blurb notes, Reynolds finds himself "trapped," and there  may be no escape.   

The Lizard is not a book for those who are looking for formulaic crime with all the standard elements,  nor is it a book for readers looking for a quick, light read that will make you smile and move right on to the next book.  No way.   Stansberry writes with depth and intensity, and his prose in some places moves into the realm of the hallucinatory and the metaphorical, with the effect of leaving the reader looking beyond this world deep into another more broken one.  It is dark, bleak and has a strong noir vibe, in which we follow a man straight into his own personal sort of hell, and I loved every second of it.  

My thanks to the author both for the ask and for my copy of this book.  I won't forget this story for a long, long time. 

The Sister of Cain, by Mary Collins

 

97988866011296

Stark House Press, 2025

originally published 1943, Charles Scribner's Sons

196 pp

paperback

One of my greatest mystery-reading pleasures is discovering authors whose work has been around for a long time but who are new to me, especially women writers I've never heard of before.   I've found that joy here with The Sister of Cain, published by Stark House last month, by Mary Collins (1908 - 1979).

About this author I can find very little online, except for the brief blurb at the Stark House website, which tells me that she was born in St. Louis, MO, then moved along with her family to Berkeley at age three where later she would attend the University of California. She wrote "a few fiction stories" for a magazine called The Passing Show, eventually turning to mystery writing, with six novels written between 1941 and 1949: The Fog Comes, Dead Center, Only the Good (also reprinted by Stark House 2022),  The Sister of Cain, Death Warmed Over, and Dog Eat Dog.  It seems that she then "retired from writing" to give her time to her family.  There is also an archive of materials covering her mystery-writing years and a few years beyond, containing "correspondence, contracts, manuscripts, notes and scrapbooks, 1941-1953," for a scholarly someone who might want to delve further into her life.  

On to the novel now, which according to Curtis Evans in his introduction to this book, received a "rave review" from Dorothy B. Hughes and was also broadcast on radio in 1944 as part of  the Molle Mystery Theater Program  from NBC (I've just spent a couple of hours scanning that page and being completely awed at all the titles I know).   Hilda Moreau has arrived in San Francisco at the home of her husband David's family; more specifically, his six sisters Pauline, Sophie, Anne, Elise,  Marthe and Rose, varying in age from 51 to 20, Pauline being the eldest.  There was another sister, Berthe, but she had died fifteen years earlier.  David and Hilda had met while he was teaching and she, a teacher, had been attending a summer session where he worked.  They married just shortly after Pearl Harbor, and because of his Navy reserve commission, he had been called up for active duty, and the last time she'd seen him was a month earlier, in New York.   She has come to his family home while he was serving in the Atlantic because she had no family to speak of; the plan was that Hilda would find an apartment but still enjoy the security of being looked after by his sisters.  The Moreaus lived in "the oldest house still standing in San Francisco ... built in 1852," which Curtis Evans notes is based on a "real city mansion, built in 1852 and known locally as Humphrey's Circle." 

The Humphrey House, from Library of Congress

 Oh. And Hilda is pregnant, but neither she nor David have told anyone yet. 

 Original hardcover edition, from Abebooks

Instead of a warm and loving family, Hilda discovers the opposite.  Pauline, it seems, has complete control over the sisters, financially and otherwise, to the point where she will not allow any of the sisters to marry.  Hilda realizes early on how this woman has created an atmosphere of "fear and bitterness and hatred."  There is also a maid, Nanette, who has been with Pauline since she was born, who is as surly toward the sisters as can be.    Hilda quickly gets down to brass tacks with Pauline regarding her husband's portion of the family trust, but Pauline has other ideas.  It seems that the trust can only be broken by marriage, and since David is now married, all of the siblings should legally be able to come into their share.  Pauline refuses to speak to her about it, so Hilda tells her that she has no other choice but to use her power of attorney and to speak to a lawyer.  This situation doesn't sit well with Pauline, who has control over the trust.  Unfortunately, Hilda is pretty much stuck at the house for the time being, since housing is nearly impossible while the city was filled with "service people, shipyard workers, and government employees."  It isn't too long, however, until murder also finds its way into the house when Pauline is found dead, killed with a knife from the kitchen.  As one of the sisters says, "there's no grief in this house" over her death, since they'd all "wished her dead a thousand times."  But, as the detective says to Pauline, 

"The other people in this house have had their motives for a good many years, Mrs. Moreau. The fun didn't start until after you got here, did it?" 

While the police focus on Hilda as the possible murderer, and as long-buried secrets come cascading out that provide definite reasons for wanting Pauline dead,  Hilda does all that she can to find the real culprit in the house, but it won't be too long before there are more deaths and she finds herself in serious danger.

What a fun ride this novel is, and how incredibly hard it was to have to put this book down when I had to!  The gothic vibe is pretty strong here with Collins doing a great job establishing a dark, tension-filled atmosphere almost immediately.  While Pauline is a great villain for reasons I won't go into, it's really all eyes on Hilda here, who is an extremely strong woman, more than capable of taking care of herself and not averse to personal risk in her quest to clear her name and to bring the real murderer to justice.  I will say that it was rather cringeworthy to see her light up while pregnant, but ah, the things no one really knew back then.  The historian in me was also interested in her descriptions of wartime San Francisco which after all, she knew very well.  

I tried so hard to guess the killer's identity and absolutely couldn't, even as the number of people started dwindling, because there were just too many great suspects.    I consider that a true plus -- Collins really didn't make it easy.  I can certainly and highly recommend The Sister of Cain for vintage crime readers and for mystery lovers like myself who enjoy finding new and somewhat obscure writers from the past.  

As always, my many thanks to Stark House for my copy (these guys are so great), and I'm sure I'll be moseying over there to pick up a copy of another Mary Collins novel.  

One more thing: there is an amazing blogger by the name of Tim Welsh who has not only read this book, but has posted photos of the various locations described by the author.  Don't go there until you've read The Sister of Cain, but his blog, San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now: A Then and now Tour and History of San Francisco Through Films and Photography is well worth the visit when you've finished.  I bookmarked it so I'm sure I'll be spending time going through that rabbithole in the near future. 

The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place, by Kate Summerscale

 

... "everything in life is but a peep-show"

9781526660480

Bloomsbury Circus, 2024

300 pp

hardcover

Before I get started here, let me just say that the entire month of February was just horrible.  My very sweet spouse had three  surgeries during that time, one of which was unexpected and directly on the back of the second after his blood pressure dropped so low during recovery that I actually thought that this was it.  The good news is that it wasn't his time, apparently, and little by little as he's been regaining his physical strength, I've been working on getting back to some semblance of mental normalcy, not always an easy feat.   But here I am again after this sort of forced hiatus, ready to get on. 

Most of my reading was done via audiobooks for passing long, quiet hours, but I did manage to get my hands on a physical copy of Kate Summerscale's newest book, The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place.  I bought mine at Blackwell's (postage to US included in price!) because the US release isn't until May 6th and I didn't want to wait.  I've read several of this author's books, including The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (which I loved), The Wicked Boy (which I didn't love) and The Haunting of Alma Fielding, and I think with The Peepshow she brings much less of the extraneous detail she usually brings to her books for the reader to wade through, and more of an opportunity to draw connections between that time and our own.  It is both a true crime sort of read and a social history and really, I believe it is her best work yet. 

You can look up 10 Rillington Place online if you've not heard of the crimes that occurred there, but in a nutshell, it was the address in the Notting Hill section of North London that was the home of John Christie, who lived there with his wife Ethel in the ground-floor flat.  In 1948, Timothy Evans and his wife Beryl arrived at this place and lived upstairs from the Christies, and in 1949, Beryl and their baby Geraldine were killed, with Timothy being charged with and tried for the baby's death.  John Christie served as a witness against Evans at his 1950 trial, and Evans was found guilty of and hanged for the crime.   Later, after Ethel had supposedly gone off without him, Christie eventually left the flat, another tenant who had permission from the landlord to use the Christie kitchen started cleaning and found a space to hang a shelf for his radio.  He discovered that the wall where he wanted to put his shelf was hollow, and there he discovered a hidden cupboard. When he used a light to look inside, he made the horrific discovery of what seemed to be the body of a naked woman. Eventually the police would find the bodies of several other women both inside and outside the Christie flat, along with evidence that would point to Christie as their killer.  Christie by this time was on the run, and would eventually be found, charged and tried for his crimes.  

In putting her book together, Summerscale tells of events through the eyes of  two reporters: Harry Procter, a successful and highly-driven tabloid journalist,  and author Fryn Tennyson Jesse, who approached events from a much different perspective, and whose analysis of the case would eventually appear in the volume of the Notable British Trials series featuring the trials of both Timothy Evans and John Christie in 1957.  

contemporary headlines, from Murderpedia

Procter, as she quotes another journalist here,  

"did not just report a story; 'he infiltrated it, embedded himself, then owned it, then manipulated its protagonists as puppeteer-in-chief so that everything fell into place, as, and when, and exactly how, he wished.' " 

In the book that had inspired him to become a reporter, The Street of Adventure, author Philip Gibbs wrote  that "everything in life is but a peep-show," and that reporters felt like "the only real people in the world."  When he got wind of the story at 10 Rillington Place after the first bodies had been discovered and Christie had gone on the run, Procter went to the scene only to realize, "with a shock," that he had been there before when he worked for The Daily Mail.  It was during the time when Tim Evans had been charged with murder, and Procter had interviewed Christie about his neighbor.  Christie had been polite and soft spoken, and at the time, Procter saw no reason at all to suspect that Christie might have had anything to do with the deaths.  Now though, he not only "cursed himself for not having questioned him more closely" at the time, since it was obvious that Christie must be behind the current murders, but as Summerscale writes, Procter considered it possible that Christie just might have framed Evans for something Christie himself had done, and may have helped to send an innocent man to the gallows.  His personal stakes were high in getting Christie's story, both in terms of somehow making Christie feel the need to confess to the murders of Beryl and her baby and of course, reporting the story that would completely make his career.   Fryn Tennyson Jesse, who had been "gripped" by the coverage of the murders, was, as the author notes, "part of a golden generation of female crime writers. One of her books, Murder and Its Motives focused on (as noted here) "Six spectacular murders of the past century," and she had also written a novel called A Pin to See the Peepshow, which author Sarah Waters described in a Guardian article as "an achingly human portrait;" a  "thinly fictionalised account of the life of ... Edith Thompson, one of the three main players in the 'Ilford murder' case of 1922. "  She had also written essays in the Notable British Trials series.  Summerscale states that Jesse, now sixty-five, was going blind, was "frail" and a morphine addict, and was "afraid that she was being forgotten," so she "hungered for a story that would restore her."  If she could do the write up of the Christie case for Notable British Trials, it would be just what she needed.    Neither Procter nor Jesse could fathom Christie's lack of moral responsibility for his deeds, another factor bringing the two strands of reporting together.  

 What stands out about Christie here is that he was a man who outwardly resembled any number of men his age of the time, looking respectably average in his suit and his spectacles, while speaking softly and serving in a number of respectable positions.  When he was being sought by the police, it seemed that people saw him everywhere because he seemed so ordinary.  Summerscale gets behind that veil of respectability to reveal  a virulent racist who couldn't stand the fact that West Indian people were living in his building, even blaming the horrific odors of decomposition on his upstairs neighbors, an idea that was readily accepted by people who came into his apartment.  He was also a complete misogynist who viewed himself as passive while the women he victimized were the aggressors, and even to the last he  refused to show any sort of remorse for what he'd done.   If this book were only about John Christie and his crimes it would still be very good, but the author goes deeper into the lives of the many victims (doing so with the great care that these women truly deserve) as well as the social, political and economic landscapes of the time, while also diving into the power/machinations of the press  and the readers who lapped up every word. The dustjacket blurb says that her mining of the archives "sheds fascinating light on the origins our fixation with true crime," and although there is no definitive answer behind the biggest question of them all (i.e. who really killed Beryl and Geraldine Evans),  the blurb  also notes that Summerscale does "suggest" a possibility. 

I can only begin to imagine how much research went into writing this book and it shows.  I absolutely did not want to put this book down while reading and when I had to do so, I couldn't get back to it fast enough.  I found it to be an enlightening piece of social history,  a book that I can highly recommend.  

The LIttle Sparrow Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo

 

9781782278870

Pushkin Vertigo, 2024

originally published as Akuma no temari uta (悪魔の手毬唄, serialized 1957-1959; published in book form in 1971, Kadakowa Shoten)

translated by Bryan Karetnyk

311 pp

paperback

read in December

It is no secret how much I have come to love these books. I'd had this one preordered for months once I learned it was going to be published; I already have the next Pushkin Vertigo translation, Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, due out in the fall of this year, on my radar and in my sights.   The Little Sparrow Murders is number 49 of 77  in  Yokomizo's Kosuke Kindaichi detective series and is the sixth of this author's books to have been published in translation by Pushkin Vertigo.  I was also lucky enough to have latched on to a dvd of the film made in 1977, which was not quite as good as the novel, but then again, I expected that.  

It's July, 1955 and Kindaichi Kosuke is taking a much-needed rest and decides that he should go Okayama Prefecture where he'd "developed a fondness for the local people and their ways" after spending time there during a few of his crime-solving adventures.  First he stops in to visit with an old friend, Inspector Isokawa in Okayama, who gives him the address of an inn in Onikobe Village, owned by a woman who Isokawa once knew. Evidently, she's had "her fair share of sorrow," since her husband had been murdered some twenty years earlier, and the crime had never been solved.   While Kindaichi insists he only wants to rest for a while, he agrees to listen to the inspector about this case, which seems to mean so very much to him.   Once in the village, Kindaichi holes up at the Turtle Spring Inn, where he "could quite happily give himself over to idleness without being disturbed by anybody." As he notes, he didn't "feel any particular sense of obligation" to the inspector, but at the same time, he kept his eyes and ears open while "lazing around idly like a cat."   Kindaichi's plans for R&R are interrupted, however, with the disappearance (and perhaps murder?) of the elderly Hoan Tatara,  a self-described "recluse" and local historian.  Not long before Tatara disappeared, Kindaichi  had gone to his home and had written a letter to a former ex-wife for him, asking her to come live with him now that they're both old, a proposal that had been accepted.  In fact,  Kindaichi had run into an elderly woman with a large furoshiki on her back who had introduced herself as O-Rin, this particular ex-wife of Tatara's, who was on her way to his place.   Now, however, there is no sign of either of them, and Isokawa, who has come to Onikobe, wonders if perhaps Tatara's disappearance might have something to do with the unsolved crime of twenty years earlier.  It seems though that Tatara's disappearance is not the only strange happening in the village; it isn't long until a young woman is discovered murdered, her body and the scene staged in a bizarre fashion.  She isn't the only one to die, however -- the guests at her wake will soon be attending another one.   Kindaichi must figure out what connects all of these occurrences in order to stop these murders, and  discovers a slender thread of a clue that just might tie them all together. 

ryokan in Onikobe Village, from Trip Advisor

While my favorite of the Kindaichi mysteries so far continues to be The Inugami Clan (it's bizarre beyond belief and firmly in my strange-reading wheelhouse), The Little Sparrow Murders follows closely in second place.    The novel is also much more reader friendly than the previous ones, and Bryan Karetnyk's translation made the story flow.  I will say that I flipped back and forth between the text and the map that is provided at the beginning of the book any number of times before I finally took a photo and kept it up on my iPad screen to refer to.    The provided list of characters soon becames vital as well,  because the family relationships are beyond critical to the story. 

The Little Sparrow Murders delivers a super murder mystery, while also examining how the past has a powerful impact on the present and delving into social divisions, ritual, customs and the importance of history in this village.  It is also  a solid puzzle that armchair detectives will appreciate, making for a particularly good whodunit, and I am most happy to admit that  I did not guess or even come close to guessing the who here.   High marks to this one, and definitely recommended to readers of Japanese crime fiction or to fans of Yokomizo's detective Kindaichi Kosuke.  Now I'm not so patiently waiting for the next book.  

film poster for 1977 film, Akuma no temari-uta. From IMDB

Akuma no temari-uta was directed by Kon Ichikawa, as were thirteen other films featuring our erstwhile and somewhat scruffy detective Kindaichi.   There are other films with different directors, but the Ichikawa films are by and large my favorites, and Kindaichi's adventures were also revisited on Japanese television and in manga.   The story changes just a bit in the movie based on this novel but the main thrust of the book carries through the film.   In the book you have the list of characters complete with family relationships to draw on, but here the introduction to these people happens within the first half hour or so, making it a big on the draggy side.  But after that, I was completely engaged in what was happening on screen, especially the murders, which were portrayed in a way that even horror-film watchers would have appreciated, yet still kept close to the descriptions in the novel.  One trademark of Ichikawa's work is that he is experimental in style -- in Akuma no temari-uta there are quick cuts, flashbacks that often are revealed in grainy black-and-white and other moves that definitely kept me on my movie-watching toes.   One of these involves a scene from the 1930 movie Morocco that is so eerie in the watching, yet necessary to the overall character study.   There's also a sprinkling of Kindaichi's dandruff I could have done without, but that same thing happens in all of the Ichikawa movies in some form.   The end comes with some pretty over-the-top dramatics, but then again, I'm a long-time watcher of Japanese films where emotional scenes tend to bring this sort of thing out in the actor.  I am lucky enough to understand the language but I'm sure there must be copies of this movie on dvd with English subtitles. As usual, the bottom line is this: film good, book much better.  

The Bus Station Murders/No Pockets in Shrouds, by Louisa Revell

 

"...murder isn't a very nice ladylike hobby, I know ..."

9798886011265

Stark House Press, 2025

originally published 1947/1948 respectively

292 pp

paperback

Coming to Stark House in January 2025 is another set of two novels in one volume, written by a woman whose work, I thought, had been all but forgotten, Louisa Revell.  It is so nice that Stark House has chosen to bring at least these two back into print, The Bus Station Murders and No Pockets in Shrouds, both set during World War II in 1945.    As I started reading the first of the two  it wasn't too long before I realized that I'd read it before. I mean, seriously, there just aren't all that many mystery novels that begin with someone being stabbed by a knitting needle while on a bus so it was easily recognizable.  I'd also posted about it some time ago here  when I was first exploring forgotten and neglected women authors from the past, which has now become one of my crime/mystery-reading passions.  The very awesome people at Stark House have not only helped to support my indulgence with their wonderful reprint editions, and but have also introduced me to women writers I've never heard of.  My thanks to them for this copy.  

As I noted in my original post about The Bus Station Murders, which is the first in a series featuring Miss Julia Tyler, crime just seems to follow her whenever she's away from home.  In this story, she has gone to visit her great-niece Anne and her husband in Annapolis, and she hasn't even gotten off the bus there when a few of the passengers notice a "gray-haired woman" who seems to be deep in slumber  even though the noise should have been enough to wake her.  In fact, Miss Julia's seatmate wonders aloud how anyone could remain asleep through all of the hubbub but it turns out that "the woman was dead," having been stabbed by a silver knitting needle.  Needless to say, although she's a bit reluctant to take part in any sort of investigation, she is eventually talked into it by the lead detective on the case who, as she discovers, is one of her former students.  He changes her mind by saying that he's hoping she'll become "another Miss Marple or Miss Silver" and that he can definitely use her help. 

These are not just idle words; Julia has a great fondness for crime novels, especially those written by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie, Mignon Eberhart and other famous female crime writers; in No Pockets in Shrouds she also references E. Phillips Oppenheim , a hugely-prolific writer (whose book Ghosts of Society has also recently been reprinted by Stark House and which I've commented on here). 

from PS Publishing (the nerve of the designer of this book cover, for reasons which will go unsaid!) 

No Pockets in Shrouds is book number two in this series.  Miss Julia's visit with her niece has come to a close after four months, and after a suggestion by Anne that she go somewhere nice while her house is being rented out, sixty-eight year old Julia decides that perhaps Louisville, Kentucky is the place to be.  She has an old friend named Charlotte Buckner who had read about her bus-station adventures and had invited Julia to "make her a visit" at her home there.   Three or so months later, Julia had seen Charlotte's photo in a newspaper article describing the murder of the Helm family butler, along with a young member of the Helm family who had been suspected of that death.  Charlotte had long been connected with the Helms, and Julia, even though she finds Charlotte "tiresome," she decides that Louisville is where she should go next.  As she said about her choice of vacation venue, "I went where murder was."  The butler's murder is still  unsolved, while she doesn't believe Charlotte's notion that the murderer must have been a tramp, Julia hopes that she will be able to do some  sleuthing to see if she can make any headway in discovering the identity of the killer.  What she doesn't count on is another murder which takes place during her time with Charlotte; the sad thing is that the killer is most likely someone she knows.    

It may well be wartime, but prominent Louisville society ("all the nice families") continues with its rituals -- the telephone is silent after ten a.m. when calls become those of the in-person sort; there are afternoon receptions and the social niceties continue to observed. The biggest interruption, it seems, is that the Kentucky Derby would not be keeping its regular May schedule.  It is because of being in this milieu that  Julia has to tread carefully, but despite everything, she will not stop until she gets to the truth.  

I will just say that there are a few cringeworthy reading moments when it comes to race, but I do appreciate that Stark House didn't go down the route taken by a few publishers to clean it all up to reflect modern sensibilities.  I once read a modern redo of No Orchids for Miss Blandish that was completely sanitized and it really pissed me off.  I remember saying at the time that Shakespeare would likely be next.   Back to the business at hand though,  even though she understands that "murder isn't a very nice ladylike hobby," Miss Julia Tyler and her adventures in sleuthing make for a truly fun read -- while the solutions to these mysteries may take their time, it is  totally worth it for readers of vintage crime, especially American vintage crime.  While you shouldn't expect carbon copies of Miss Marple or any of her British fictional counterparts here, Miss Julia certainly shares with them the ability to quietly soak up the scene on the sidelines before she makes her move.  I hope that in the future Stark House will be so kind as to continue to reprint Revell's work.  Definitely different, and definitely recommended.  As always, do not miss the intro by Curtis Evans but save it until after you've finished reading both books.