The Return Of The Lone Wolf

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The Lone Wolf

Melvyn Douglas stars as Michael Lanyard in THE RETURN OF THE LONE WOLF(some places known as THE LONE WOLF RETURNS), a 1935 release based on the Louis Joseph Vance novel The Lone Wolf Returns. Lanyard is a world famous jewel thief with a bent for helping the innocent.

Here, he’s in the midst of stealing a pearl necklace when he realizes the police have staked out the house and now have all exits thoroughly covered. By a bit of subterfuge, posing as the butler, he manages to slip by them and to the mansion next door where a masquerade ball is in progress. Immediately he notices he’s not the only jewel thief in residence, the second dancing with the hostess and making a clumsy attempt to slip an emerald necklace from her throat, only to drop it into her cleavage.

Slipping around, he sees her place it into a safe, the clasp broken by the first thief, and manages to steal it, finally borrowing a mask from a passed out drunk and joining the party. There the hostess, the beautiful Marcia Stewart, uses him to avoid a boorish suitor, and they dance, talking. There it begins, Lanyard finding himself falling under her spell. It only strengthens when the police arrive and demand that all guests unmask so that Marcia can see if any strangers are in attendance and she doesn’t rat him out.

Michael decides to go straight at that point and win the hand of the beautiful young woman. Still, it’s not easy. The emerald necklace is returned to the safe and the pearls are mysteriously sent back as well. An old nemesis, Detective Crane, visits and Michael assures him the Lone Wolf is dead.

Trouble comes when the inept thief at the party and his wife, Liane Mallison, who had had past dealings with the Lone Wolf, inveigle him to join their organization. Their boss won’t take no for an answer and when Michael refuses, reveals his identity to Marcia(the husband and wife team had wormed their way into her confidence to steal the entire collection). At first hurt, he convinces her of his good intentions and takes her home. His mistake is to drop a cigarette butt outside her home, his special made blend with his initials embossed on the paper. The thieves steal the collection and leave the butt, with his fingerprints by the opened safe.

Crane comes to arrest him and he escapes, out to catch the real thieves and clear his name, not because he’s worried about the law, but because Marcia believes he used her to get at the jewels.

The novel this was based on is the fifth in the series, one I haven’t read, only having the first four. It is the second Lone Wolf film I’ve seen, the first being one of the silents, which I may report on later.

Reading Forgotten Books: Passage To Samoa – Day Keene

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Day Keene, Forgotten Books

PASSAGE TO SAMOA by Day Keene was a book recommended by James Reasoner on Patti Abbot’s Forgotten Books a couple of Fridays ago. It caught my eye, as I’d read only a small amount of Keene’s work, and I found a copy on the used book sites. Mine is not the Gold Medal edition of James’ post, but a later edition some years later.

It was everything James said it was and you should read his excellent review if you haven’t already did so. It was short and sweet, something that seems out of vogue these days. Door stop books are not always good. I’ve enjoyed some and others seemed obviously padded out to reach a certain length. I agree with theories that a story should run to a necessary length and no more. Gold Medal specialized in that and did quite well.

This story is about a recovery mission in the South Seas and someone is out to stop it. Day Keene built nicely on the suspense, dropping in bits and pieces of the tale along the way, working toward a nice turn or two turns near the end.

All in a compact one hundred twenty-eight pages in my copy published by Macfadden-Bartell in 1967. I’m adding my own recommendation as well.

Boston: Smokin’

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Boston

This cover ranks as one of my favorites of all time.

The band BOSTON was scheduled to be the first concert I ever attended. I’d picked up tickets for a show in the area in support of their first album. There was a problem, illness running through the band and crew(flu I believe), and the show was postponed, stuck on the end of their tour. It turned out to be the last thing they did for about five years before they released a second album, a train wreck compared to the first, one of the great rock albums in history. That they didn’t win a Grammy for best new band, beaten by one of those one hit wonders that nobody remembers today, is still a suspicious win in my mind(back then anything that was metal, or approaching it was disdained pretty much.

Some of my favorites from that classic:

An amusing note on this one. I babysat for my sister one night so that she, along with my brother-in-law, could go see a movie in which they were interested. I had this album, vinyl on a turn table, playing and I happened to notice my two year old niece standing in front of the speakers while this song was playing, her right foot just a-tapping with the beat.

Coming In May: THOR!

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Marvel, Thor

Another of my favorites from Marvels early days(I mean early days for me). Looks good. Will it be? We can only hope.

New In The House

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New In The House

Real slow week.

1: Hangrope Law – Colby Jackson: the second book in the Rancho Diablo series about Sam Blaylock’s efforts to carve a ranch out of a sulfur poisoned land and the people who want him stopped before he succeeds. Colby Jackson is James Reasoner this time around.

2; Passage To Samoa – Day Keene: a fifties crime novel by one of the noted authors of the era. My copy is not the original Gold Medal edition, but a later release.

2010 NFL Week 15

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Jets, Panthers, Redskins

The Panthers surprised me today. They’d only won one game all season, leaving them with a 1-12 record. Quite frankly, I expected them to not win a game the rest of the year. They played well today, though the Cardinals are certainly not the world beaters they were a few years ago. Final score: 19-12.

The ‘Skins seem to have decided to give it up for the year, what with Shanan demoting McNabb to second string this week and third string the last two games. His excuse is he wants to evaluate Rex Grossman and the third QB(I don’t even know his name; that should tell you something). Watching ESPN, they all seem bemused by Shanahan’s reasoning. Grossman has a body of work that will already tell you he’s not a starting QB and the third man seems to be no more accomplished.

With all that, they seem to have made a comeback against the Cowboys, falling just short by a score of 33-30. Don’t know the particulars as the game wasn’t shown in this area.

The Jets were the big surprise today. Playing the Steelers after the pasting they got the last couple of weeks(no offensive TDs in those games), I didn’t expect anything but a loss. Oh was I wrong!

The Jets ran the opening kick-off back for a touchdown. Undaunted, the Steelers roared back to tie it. The Jets moved down and picked up a field goal. The Steelers tied it. The half ended like that and the Jets still hadn’t an offensive TD. Ten straight quarters!

Each team scored a TD in the third. Finally that Jet offense! The Jets managed a field goal in the fourth and stalled after that. The Jets punted one that was downed on the Pittsburgh four yard line. On the first play, Jason Taylor dropped a Stweeler back in the end zone for a safety.

A five point lead!

With a couple of minutes left, I was waiting for that patented Roethlisberger fourth quarter comeback. Thankfully, they got close, but couldn’t put it in. Final score 22-17.

My teams finished 2-1, much better than the 0-3 I figured what happened.

Hellcats And Honeygirls – Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake

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Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block

HELLCATS AND HONEYGIRLS comprises three novels Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake co-wrote early in their careers when they were struggling writers. Marketed as soft core porn, they are actually quite tame compared to even the mildest stuff around today. Sex was the primary subject and not at all graphic. That’s about it.

Within that framework though, we got three novels that showcase two mystery greats learning their craft while earning a living at the same time.

In the introduction, Block talks about his fifty year friendship with Westlake, how they met(with one instance where Westlake saw him before they actually did meet) and how they came to write three novels together and how much fun they had doing it. Living far apart, they never discussed a novel, plot, characters, or anything else. On the first, A GIRL CALLED HONEY, Block simply wrote a chapter and sent the carbon to Westlake. Westlake wrote the second and sent both carbons back to Block. They went back and forth like that until the book came to it’s logical conclusion. On the second title, SO WILLING, they reversed the order with Westlake starting the book.

Block laughingly recalls a time during the process when he’d tired of a Westlake character and killed him off. In the next chapter, Westlake retaliates by having Block’s character arrested for murder. One could tell that the pair were enjoying themselves while learning and making a living. He talks about some of the great lines(and how someone at the publisher changed a name in one that totally screwed up the rhyme in it; restored of course for this edition) that Westlake wrote also.

The first two were published as by Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall according to Block’s introduction. But in looking on the used book sites, it says simply Sheldon Lord for the first. Fantastic Fiction gives that name as a shared pseudonym between the two writers. Who knoes? I’ll go with Block’s remembrance.

The third novel, SIN HELLCAT(not their title but Block didn’t remember the original), is a bit different. It’s my favorite of the three and seems to be Block’s as well. Told in the first person, it chronicles the rise of a young man in the world of advertising when he reconnects with a college girl friend he hadn’t seen in ten years and the ensuing mess they fall into. Each chapter contains a flashback recounting his various relationships through the years from Jodi, the college sweetheart, to Helen, the harridan he married in the mistaken “American Dream.” Sold to a different publisher from the first two, the same byline was put on the manuscript but ended up as by Andrew Shaw.

Over the last few years, I’d become aware of the writers’ early novels, both together and separately, with more on those early efforts coming out all the time, but prices are fairly substantial on the used book sites I understand. So when this Subterranean Press edition became available, I jumped on it.

Worth the price. The book was a lot of fun.

Masters of Science Fiction

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Masters, Science Fiction

MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION was an ABC television series back in 2007. Apparently it was a summer replacement as it debuted on August 4th. Six episodes were filmed, but two were pulled for undisclosed reasons and didn’t make their televison debut until Space in Canada ran the show in December.

Each episode was based on a short story by a prominent writer and were hosted by Professor Stephen Hawking in a similar vein as Serling on The Twilight Zone, albeit he was off camera. A fine collection of actors starred in them and I quite enjoyed watching the two disc set.

1: A CLEAN ESCAPE – (short story:John Kessel, screenplay: Sam Egan). Psychiatrist Deanna Evans(Judy Davis), dying of cancer, is obsessed with her patient, Robert Havelman(Sam Waterson), who can’t remember the last twenty-four years of his life, believing he’s only forty-one. It’s so bad, his memory recycles every half hour or so to place him back at that same point.

2: THE AWAKENING: (short story: Howard Fast, screenplay: Michael Petroni). During a firefight in Bagdad, soldiers discover a strange body in a cocoon, one that is humanoid, but seems to have no sex. More start appearing around the world, communicating finally with a strange message that forces the world to confront themselves. Terry O’Quinn(Lost) is a retired Major, an expert in ETs, brought back into service and William B. Davis(Smoking Man from the X-Files) is the President of the United States.

3: JERRY WAS A MAN: (short story: Robert A. Heinlein, screenplay: Michael Tolkin, who also directed). Anne Heche is the seventh richest person in the world. Pleasure is the only work she and her boy toy husband do. They visit a factory run by scientist Malcolm McDowell which will build a gentically tailored pet for you. The boy toy wants a miniature full grown elephant with intelligence, buy Heche becomes enamored with Jerry, a Joe, a few strands of human DNA grown into a baby and fused with plastics, programmed for certain jobs. When no longer useful, they are discarded and turned into dog food. She forces a one year lease, McDowell refusing to sell Jerry, and then it becomes a court case to prove that Jerry is human.

4: THE DISCARDED: (short story: Harlan Ellison, screenplay: Harlan Ellison & Josh Olson). Brian Dennehy and John Hurt star in the story of a despised minority, victims of a blood born pathogen that causes mutations, set adrift in space on spaceships. They’ve been turned away from every station and outpost in the solar system, moving for thirty-seven years looking for a place to live. All lonely for home, they take a desperate gamble when opportunity comes. Mr. Ellison has a few lines as one of the inhabitants of the ship.

5: LITTLE BROTHER: (short story: Walter Mosley, screenplay: Walter Mosley). In a future where courtrooms are run by computer, a man, Frendon(Clifton Collins, Jr.), faces off against his judge, jury, and executioner. He has to find a way to convince a machine of his innocence, or find a way to survive, and do it all in fifteen minutes. Kimberly Elise is a sympathetic cop, new on the job and not as cynical as her partner.

6: WATCHBIRD: (short story, Robert Sheckley, screenplay: J. Michael Straczynski). Sean Astin(Lord of The Rings) is a scientist who invents a device for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, a small flying machine programmed to recognize certain kill impulses. American soldiers have a chip implanted that makes them immune. The war quickly ends and Homeland Security wants a domestic version. James Cromwell(Babe, The Green Mile) is the business half of the partnership who’s pushing for domestic use. He sees big dollar signs. The A.I. program(the voice of Sally Kellerman) just needs a little tweaking. Pilot programs in the larger cities. What could possibly go wrong?

A short word about the set and music. It showed a lot of promise. A better time slot and a little more promotion and it might have lasted. I barely heard of it and saw no episodes until I picked up this set. LITTLE BROTHER and WATCHBIRD were the episodes originally cut from the first run. And the music. Superb in a word. I particularly like that with THE DISCARDED. It was a bit of jazz and the muted trumpet was especially effective.

Amazon has it reasonably priced at $9.99.

Below are the show trailer and the ones for the four broadcast episodes on ABC.

MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION

A CLEAN ESCAPE

THE AWAKENING

JERRY WAS A MAN

THE DISCARDED

FFB: Jake Strait, Bogeyman – Frank Rich

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Forgotten Books, Science Fiction

1: Avenging Angel

2: The Devil Knocks

3: Day of Judgment

4: Twist of Cain

It’s 2031 and the world is in a terrible mess. The Party controls everything and have for to many years. All military forces in the world have been disbanded and instead a Security and Protection Force guard all the nicer areas, i. e. the suburbs, the few still fertile farmlands, and the rich! The City is a hell where anything goes, no law, no protection. A Reclamation Service keeps the bodies cleaned up(one can get a small fee finding a body and reporting it) and sent to be used as protein fertilizer or other things if one believed the rumors. The milk didn’t come from a cow, the meat didn’t come from an animal(the real thing in both cases was very expensive). Soy is king.

Jake Strait is an enforcer, a bounty hunter, a “Bogeyman” in common parlance, who makes his living picking up criminals. He really functions as a private eye, preferring the criminal element to political warrants. One could make a good living picking up the “political” criminals which, while they didn’t pay a lot, were plentiful(a lot of people offended the Party). But Jake didn’t agree with Party principles. He’s also well skilled in weapons and self defense(an ex- Ranger from when there were still such groups).

That line he wouldn’t cross kept him poor.

He was sitting in his office one day wondering where the rent was going to come from, how he was going to pay his answering service(they weren’t taking any more calls until he did), where he was going to get his next meal, when the rich couple walked in. They were officious, sneering, not at all nice.

But they did have an execution-without-trial warrant that paid 5,000 credits.

Not willing to pay a retainer, Jake forced them to let him scan their hands to make sure they were who they said(everyone has a chip in their that has IDs and banking information). Jake had an illegal scanner that furnished more than ID information. They were legit, so he took their warrant.

The subject was not a nice fellow. He pushed whack, crack, and squeeze, did a little pimping and gunrunning on the side, not to mention a little rape and murder on the odd occasion.

Tracking his target down, Jake takes him out and gets his proof(the way you proved your kills was taking the hand with the chip). Heading home, and nearly out of alcohol fuel for his car, he decides to let his victim pay. Stopping at an auto station, he fills up and scans the hand for payment.

That’s when things started to get weird.

His victim had 46 credits left after payment. He also had a second account at a much higher scale bank. Hitting the nearest bank, he transferred the 46 credits to his account and then went looking for a higher scale bank to see what was there. A quarter of a million credits! Quickly moving them to his account, Jake is feeling smug.

When he goes to the local SPF headquarters to collect his reward bounty, the second weird hits. The execution warrant is a fake. The kill was simply a small time poet with a minor arrest warrant out on him.

Jake’s been set up and the possibility of a murder charge hangs over his head. After one long drinking binge, he gets mad and decides to find out what’s going on. The clients are among the super rich and their home is among a well guarded enclave. It won’t be easy to get into, surrounded by minefields as it was, not to mention the extra security at each home within the development.

Throw in the beautiful, homicidal young woman and the death squad sent after Jake, it made for a fun novel. It’s told in the first person, like most PI tales, and reads like one. Four books in the series, from the early nineties, although there was a reissue in 2007, I have only read the first one so far. It interested me enough that the others move up in the TBR pile.

A commentator clued me in to which Frank Rich is up to these days. Go HERE.

For more great books, check Patti Abbott\'s Forgotten Books

Today’s Humor: A Christmas Video

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Belfast Giants

A Christmas video brought to you by the Irish hockey team, the Belfast Giants, channeling Mariah Carey.

Click the watch on Youtube line.