Best of the West: The Railroaders (1986)

     B. Pronzini & M. Greenberg. Best of the West: The Railroaders (1986) 5th in a series of stories culled from the pulps. Well-done examples of the short story as mass entertainment, with clear plotting, plain but effective styles, and often sentimental themes. The railroading is authentic, insofar as I can judge it, and the Western atmosphere conforms to the rules of the genre. Most of these stories are Westerns with a railroad motif or setting, not railroading stories as such. In the days before TV, pulp fiction helped people while away their free time, and I’m sure did much good, considering their unequivocal support of the mores of melodrama: the right will win out, the evildoers will get their just desserts, and the girl will marry the one who is worthy of her. ** (2007)

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street (1974)

     

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street (1974) A prostitute’s death leads Wycliffe to more or less crooked real estate deals, drug running, and the effects of naivete on an impressionable young man. Family secrets and the desire for respectability as usual interfere and delay the investigation, the solution satisfies, and ambience of the setting and tale keep us believing in this version of Cornish seaside towns. Burley’s talent is atmosphere and character. He’s also very good at sketching the details of police procedure thoroughly enough that we get the illusion of completeness, no mean feat when one considers how much of police work is the deadly dull gathering and sifting of irrelevant details. An early Wycliffe, before Kersy and Lucy Lane. A good read. **½

Louis L’Amour. The Man Called Noon (1970)

Louis L’Amour. The Man Called Noon (1970) Ruble Noon wakes up amnesic, and despite himself becomes re-entangled in a crooked attempt to steal the gold on the Davidge spread. All’s well that ends well: he recovers his self, finds a good woman in Fan Davidge, retrieves the gold, and reduces the number of baddies. A typical L’Amour: well plotted, enough variation on the stereotypes to make the characters interesting, descriptions of setting that display his knack for putting you right there in the scene, straightforward tale-telling that maintains suspense, good dialogue, and so on. I’ve kept this one because some of the action takes place on trains. A very good entertainment of its type. Many people have tried to emulate L’Amour’s Westerns, but few have come close to succeeding. ***

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi (1971)

    W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi (1971) An unpleasant woman’s corpse dragged up by a cable-ferry’s chain, another murder, and a suicide; not a large body count. Wycliffe’s thinking meanders, his vague impressions coalesce as he discovers the family secrets that prompted the deaths.  Like most of Burley’s books, more of a meditation on crime than a strictly police procedural mystery. Character as always counts for more than technical detail. People’s unwillingness to reveal disreputable facts gets in the way, but Wycliffe’s talent for waiting in silence unnerves the suspects (and others) so that they talk just to fill up space. I like this series, partly because the TV shows based on it were so well done. Burley has the knack of hinting at the back stories of the secondary characters, so that the world of these tales seems richer than it is. **½

Will Stanton Once Upon A Time Is Enough (1969)

     Will Stanton Once Upon A Time Is Enough (1969) Stanton takes a literal and realistic view of some familiar fairy tales. E.g., Hansel and Gretel are grilled by a prosecutor who wants to convict them of the maliciously planned murder of a sweet little old lady. Bluebeard occasions a riff on Can This Marriage Be Saved? And so on. Well done, in a manner that, alas, may seem too bland for many readers these days. It’s Stanton’s deadpan assumption of normalcy that carries the satire. Victoria Chess’s drawings, reminiscent of Edward Gorey, help out. If you find this book at a yard sale somewhere, buy it. It’s a keeper. ***

Dicey Deere. The Irish Manor House Murder (2000)

     Dicey Deere. The Irish Manor House Murder (2000) Dr Ashenden, respected surgeon, dies when his horse throws him. The horse dies, too. A few days earlier, his granddaughter tried to ride him down, an event witnessed by Torrey Tunet and the local constable. A piece of knitting needle found in the horse’s rump implies murder. Torrey, the series hero, interferes of course, and the page-turner gallops along until the final double twist reveals the true murderer. Dr Ashenden was a psychopath, so justice of a sort has been done. The book is a well-done product of its kind: short (sometimes very short) chapters, each dealing with one scene, a format that just begs for conversion to the screen. This is the 2nd of a series; I didn’t search online to find out if there were any more. Pleasant enough time waster. **

Marvelous Pilgrims (Play)

     Stewart Lemoine, Marvelous Pilgrims. At the Walterdale Playhouse. Directed by Stewart Lemoine. A low-key fairy tale about magical waters, a witch that tries to undo a curse, a personality swap, and of course a love story. Staged using four areas to represent four locales, supposedly set in 1936, but the costumes were more 1906.
     The play’s a fantasy, and such a play succeeds or fails by moving us along briskly so that we accept its premises. The timing of entries and exits, of the switching between locales, and of course the dialogue, must be sharp and precise, and too often it wasn’t so, especially at the crucial plot points of personality swap (which doesn’t have the desired effect and so must be undone before the play is properly done). The script was good enough to engage my interest, though it could have been stretched to explore questions of personality, and/or of the ethics of interfering in other people’s lives, and such. I think the story would have borne the additional weight. Music propelled the story effectively, unusually so in my experience, for playwrights tend to use it to create a mood when the words fail to do so. Here, it was used operatically, to add depth to character and to point the plot. I wouldn’t have minded more music. The overall tone was light, here and there verging on farce. The love story was what it should be: the right people fell in love.
     But the magic hinted at more serious themes: Swapping personalities has heavy implications, and sticking to the merely humorous ones I think was a mistake. Good theatre (which this was) can take us anywhere. In some ways, the play felt unfinished, as if workshopping had stopped because it was time to produce the play. Nevertheless, overall it was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. **½