Before I left for sweatier climes, I promised all you bibliophiles the following:

1. I would make a pilgrimage to the Strand Bookstore (Broadway at 12^th Street) and the Mysterious Bookshop (Warren Street) in downtown NYC; 
2. I would read three books and bring back reviews.

Done and . . . almost done. 

On the hottest Thursday morning in human record, I decided that it would be, ahem, cool to walk from W. 40^th Street and 6^th to the Strand Bookstore at Broadway and 12^th. Seemed a pretty straight line to me, (he thought, not hearing the chorus of snickers from the Manhattanites among you), but by the time I got down to W. 14^th and Broadway, you could hear my toes squishing in my new Hokas. And not only was there no sign of the Strand – there was no sign of 12^th Street! Turns out – and I could kick myself because I knew this – that the simple grid that is Midtown changes drastically when you arrive Downtown. 

I got out my trusty iPhone and checked the map. Turns out I had eighteen more minutes of walking to do. And so, against every instinct, I walked thataway, back to 6^th and then past 5^th Avenue. Did you know there’s another Broadway on the East Side? Anyway, I staggered into the Strand, located a water source for replenishment, and then went to the vast mystery section where I found – nothing to buy. The last time I had been at the Strand, there was a carousel next to the shelves that contained loads of vintage paperbacks – what the employees call “pulps” but which have nothing to do with “THE pulps” – and I would load up. I couldn’t find that carousel anywhere. So I went over to an employee, who looked askance at my dripping form, and I asked her if that carousel of vintage mysteries still existed. 

“You mean, the pulps?” she asked. I sighed and nodded. She pointed to a spot exactly three feet behind me. I hurried away in embarrassment and started to turn the carousel. It was awash in fabulous old treasures . . . . . . if you like Heinlein, Pohl, or Zelazny. Yes, some bookstore employees can’t tell the difference between one genre and another. And that’s how all I got from the Strand Bookstore were instructions to the nearest subway station that would get me near Warren Street. 

The Mysterious Bookshop was another story altogether. Besides the floor to ceiling shelves that line the store, there are cubbies and cabinets to explore, and there are carousels – lots and lots of little carousels full of 1940-60’s paperbacks to delight mystery fans of every stripe. I spent a happy hour wallowing through this paradise, and I ended up with these treasures –

True to form, you can expect my reviews of these books to start coming out within the next 3 – 15 years. 

As for the reviews I promised you . . . well, I did bring three books with me, and I managed to finish two and a quarter of them.  Actually, I think I did pretty well. You can expect my thoughts on Dolores Hitchens’ The Alarm of the Black Cat later this month (it happens to be the July selection of my Book Club). But here you go with the other two.

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The least I could do when selecting books to take on my 4^th of July vacation was to think American. And there’s no more thoroughly exciting small press for American mystery lovers than that run by Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop, who among many other series has been focusing on Golden Age crime writers with the American Mystery Classics imprint since 2018. It’s kind of shocking how major mystery writers, like Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, and Stuart Palmer, have faded into such obscurity that hapless readers have to comb eBay for threadbare but overpriced copies of their work. Penzler has taken steps toward correcting that, but he has also re-introduced more obscure writers (Vincent Starrett, Dolores Hitchens, Baynard Kendrick) and some long out of print rarities (Obelists at Sea being the most recent example) to an eager and (hopefully) larger than expected audience. 

I’m especially excited by the work of Baynard Kendrick. I had never heard of him until Penzler released the 1941 spy thriller The Odor of Violets in 2021, but I remembered the TV series Longstreet that was inspired by Captain Duncan Maclain, Kendrick’s blind detective. If you want an actual copy of all twelve novels and three novelettes featuring him on your shelves, you will, for now at least, need time, patience and lots of money. I lucked out finding an affordable copy (a Dell Map Book, no less) of the fifth book, 1945’s Death Knell, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I also really liked Violets, the third in the series, and now American Mystery Classics has produced its follow-up, Blind Man’s Bluff (1943).

The chief delight of these books is Maclain himself, perhaps the best example of a genre fiction character who has mastered a disability that I have ever encountered. The way he hones his other senses solve crimes and shoot bad guys with remarkable accuracy and live a rich and productive life is explained so well that I find Maclain more believable than Sherlock Holmes, even if the deductions of the former seem just as uncanny as those of the latter. If I suggest that you set aside the book’s introduction, written by Penzler, until after you’ve read the book due to the large amount of plot that it reveals, I urge you to start with the Forward, written by Kendrick himself, which explains the author’s interest in blindness that began after World War I, as well as the genesis of his detective-hero. One of the most intriguing things I learned was the part played by Annie Sullivan, the famous teacher who had educated Helen Keller, in inspiring Kendrick. As he pondered the creation of a blind detective who would improve upon the only other example in the genre, Ernest Bramah’s “overdrawn” and absurd sleuth, Max Carrados, he wrote to Sullivan and she replied:

“You’re a mystery writer . . . so why not draw on the knowledge that you’ve accumulated and create a blind detective of your own – one who would be the antithesis of Max Carrados, who would never perform any feat in his detection or deduction that couldn’t be duplicated by someone totally blind – presuming they have the necessary brains and willpower to train themselves to try it.”

And that is what Kendrick did, hanging out Maclain’s shingle in 1937 and involving him in over a dozen adventures until 1961. Since the bulk of these cases appeared in the 40’s and 50’s, the books balance ratiocination with strong character development and a special focus on, and fascination with, its extraordinary sleuth.  Maclain’s personal life and those of his circle of associates develop as the series progresses. Fortunately, readers can now track this by reading the books in order – but only, alas, on Kindle. My own personal jumping around, forged by necessity, has had the unfortunate effect of muddling the detective’s romantic life, but I have it all figured out now and it hasn’t distracted from the mysteries themselves.

Like Death Knell, Blind Man’s Bluff is very much a New York mystery, although it eschews the brownstones of Van Dine for the penthouse apartments, swanky hotels, and office buildings one would also come to associate with Kendrick’s contemporary, Patrick Quentin. Both novels are also impossible crime mysteries, although that aspect sneaks up on you a bit differently here. In Death Knell, a woman is shot on an empty balcony several stories above the street, and the only other person present is clearly innocent. Here, a man and his son are the only people at the top of an office building when the man plunges over the inside railing and dies on the lobby floor, right in front of his estranged wife and the security guard.

There seem to be only two possibilities: either Blake Hadfield fell or jumped of his own accord, or his son Seth pushed him. However, Inspector Davis of Homicide, who has been summoned by an anonymous call to the office, doesn’t believe either possibility. He thinks Hadfield was murdered all right, but by somebody other than Seth. Meanwhile, Maclain is brought into the picture when two associates of Hadfield’s, including the lovely and provocative Sybella Ford, ask him to clear Seth and solve the matter.

Sparks fly immediately between the lady and the detective, partly because Blake Hadfield had also been blind, which gives Sybella an ease of manner that Maclain hasn’t found in the other women he has dated. Hadfield’s blindness was the result of an incident that occurred as the result of his Trust Company crashing in 1932 and involved an angry investor,who it appears shot Hadfield and then turned the gun on himself. But as the shadow of this double tragedy looms over present events, the circumstances surrounding it become more and more mysterious. And as Maclain investigates, more people die by falling from a great height with nobody present to be held responsible. Which brings us to the intriguing question: are we dealing with a bizarre epidemic of suicide, or has someone come up with an ingenious method of committing murder while remaining invisible?

That solution is ingenious and far more effective to me than the one that rolled out in Death Knell; it’s also a terrifying one when you think about what it entails for the victim. I did correctly guess the killer, but it was a guess based on behavior rather than on any of the clues – so no points to me.

It may be partly due to the fact that I was reading while on vacation, but Blind Man’s Bluff dragged  a bit more for me than the other two reads. The main characters tended to blend together, especially the men, but the minor characters fared better because Kendrick has a way with a one-liner. I’m particularly fond of the sexy assistant to a blackmailer, who is described as having “a reputation that even Lux won’t clean.” And the murder scenes were gripping. Perhaps my problem this time lay with Captain Maclain himself: while he still gets to show off his courage, physical prowess, and deductive skills, along with his two brilliant support dogs, Schnucke and Drieste, here he spends an inordinate amount of time sitting around the house and brooding about both the case and the woman who has gotten under his skin. 

Still, a few slow spots do nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for Duncan Maclain or Beynard Kendrick. At The Mysterious Bookshop, I went up to the clerk and asked if Mr. Penzler planned on publishing more of Kendrick. He smiled mysteriously and said that signs point to maybe/possibly/could-be-yes. Meanwhile, my library app Hoopla, has the whole series in stock, so I might have to cheat and read the books on Kindle while I slooooowly continue to collect them. It’ll be a relief to get chronological for a change!

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Taking a Perry Mason mystery on vacation is a no-brainer: his dialogue-heavy books are swift, twisty reads that also provide comfort, especially to those of us who were weaned on the TV show from infancy. And the bonus is that he wrote over 120 novels – that covers a lot of vacations, provided you are also fond of D.A. Jim Selby and P.I. Lam and Cool, as I am. I’ve had this copy of The Case of the Bated Hook biding its time on my shelf for well over a year, and as this 16^thadventure appeared in 1940, and the first half of Mason’s literary career is generally thought to be stronger than the latter half, I was excited to dig in.

Someone has gotten hold of Mason’s private number and phones his home late at night as he’s reading in bed. The caller offers Mason a $2,000 retainer and the promise of a $10,000 fee if he will brave the rainy night and come down to his office to meet this mysterious potential client. When Mason arrives, he is informed by the security guard that a man and a woman have let themselves into the building with their own key and gone upstairs to wait for the attorney. The man is a wealthy businessman named Robert Peltham, and the woman . . . well, she’s another proposition altogether:

“She was garbed in a dark rain coat, buttoned up around the throat, which stretched almost to the ground and concealed all of her figure. It was a voluminous coat, either cut for a person several sizes larger or else it had originally been a part of a man’s wardrobe. She wore a small, close-fitting hat which nestled well down on her head. The upper part of her face was concealed by a mask, through which sparkling, dark eyes held a twinkle that was almost a glitter.”

Mason is asked to take their case on faith. Trouble is brewing, and Peltham wants Mason on call to help the woman should it break; furthermore, he wants to call the shots for the foreseeable future as to which cases Mason will accept. He cuts a $10,000 bill (they had those?!?) in pieces, hands one piece to the attorney and the other to the woman so that she will be able to identify herself and redeem Mason’s services when it’s necessary. Somewhat surprisingly, the lawyer accepts these conditions. Maybe that’s because in 1940 a $10,000 bill was worth over $217,000! 

The following morning, a different potential client barges in on Perry. Mrs. Abigail E. Tump is another society figure who wants the lawyer to protect another young woman, this one named Byrl Gailord (how I love Gardner’s names), from her trustee, a man named Albert Tidings. Mason hires Paul Drake to look into Tidings and discovers that, among his other interests, he is a trustee for a hospital founded by the late grandfather of yet another young woman named Adelle Hastings, who has accused Tidings of embezzling money from the hospital. Also suspected is Tidings’ fellow trustee – none other than Robert Peltham!

If this sounds at all complicated – well, this plot is just winding up! In their search for the crooked trustee, Mason and Paul Drake find themselves at the bungalow of Tidings’ estranged wife Nadine, where the door is, of course, ajar, and a dead body is lying on the bed. Who killed Tidings? Where did Peltham disappear to? And which of the ladies we’ve met is Perry’s masked client?

If you’re looking for some good courtroom action, you’re out of luck: Perry never sets foot before a judge here. This time, he’s in pure detective mode – and he’s angry! I can’t remember Perry Mason being so pissed off at the cockamamie clients he has taken on. It sends him, with the loyal Paul Drake by his side, in pursuit of some shady characters with more great names, like Emery B. Bolus and Arthmont A. Freel, who are involved up to their crooked necks in shady stock deals, a “baby farm”-style adoption, blackmail and, of course, murder. 

By the climax, Mason’s career and very freedom is threatened by none other than District Attorney Hamilton Burger, and while I wish he could have resolved his problems in court, he solves this complex mess of multiple cases – and reveals a surprise killer – with such finesse that he even earns the grudging respect of his nemesis, Police Sergeant Holcomb. He also goes to incredible lengths to get information or draw people out of hiding, including a nifty trick with some borrowed blood. It’s always fun to watch Mason tread the boundaries of ethics in pursuit of justice, and it’s reassuring to learn (just in case I’m ever in need of his services) that Perry knows what where the limits of his own actions lie:

“Lots of lawyers go into court with a case founded on false testimony. Sometimes they make it stick. Sometimes they don’t. Personally, I’ve never dared to take the risk. Truth is the most powerful weapon a man can use, and if you practice law the way we do, it’s the only weapon powerful enough to use. A lawyer doing the things that I have done and relying on anything less powerful than truth would be disbarred in a month.”

In pursuit of a complete review here, I managed to access the adaptation of Baited Hook from Season One of the classic Perry Mason series. SPOILERS FOLLOW, so don’t read this until you have read the book. 

For the most part, the TV series was as formulaic as Law and Order: we are introduced to the victim, the eventual defendant, and the circle of suspects; someone hires Mason, either before or after the murder (if it’s after, the defendant usually discovers the body, but if it’s before, it’s often Mason himself who walks in on the corpse); Perry sends Paul Drake out to investigate; we have a trial, and more often than not, courtroom fireworks ensue at the end as Perry exposes the real killer. 

There was no way that Baited Hook could adhere to the formula without making major changes. This is all too often the way in the show, and “adaptations” often take little more than the book’s title and a few bizarre details. And at first, this seems to be the way we’re going here: the first character we meet is future victim Tidings, and we watch him incur the wrath of his partner Peltham (nearly all the names have been changed from the book), a secretary he is sleeping with (who was male in the novel and had a wholly different part to play in the plot), his bookkeeper (who isn’t in the novel at all) and a girl named Carol, who is basically Byrl from the novel. 

It’s Carol who discovers Tidings’ body, and then she and Peltham set up Mason with the whole masked client bit to discover Tidings’ body. Then Abigail Tump shows up and hires Mason to protect Carol. By now, six characters and their corresponding plotlines have been cut – but you knew this was going to happen. 

To its credit, the episode honors the book and keeps Mason out of the courtroom. (We meet Lieutenant Tragg a lot but never cross paths with D.A. Burger.) And it retains the surprise killer, who turns out to be – Mason’s actual client, Mrs. Tump. However, her motivations are so different here that she comes across as something of a protective saint. It’s the reversal of character expectations in the novel that gives it a wonderful noirish tone. We also lose the mystery of which woman is the masked client, which is nearly as compelling in the book as the question of whodunnit. 

And so, once again and as expected, literature completely trumps TV. But as this was first season Perry Mason, Raymond Burr looks very handsome and could almost pass for the Mason of the books – if you squint a little.