Stefanie Powers Profile (TV Guide, June 21, 1980)

This terrific article, by Sheila Benson, about Stefanie Powers appeared in the June 21, 1980, issue of TV Guide. At the time, Powers was starring, along with Robert Wagner, in Hart to Hart on ABC. A lighthearted mystery, Hart to Hart, found business magnate Jonathon Hart (Wagner) and his lovely wife, Jennifer (Powers)—also a high-flying writer—solving everything from murder and blackmail to jewelry theft and financial frauds. But it’s not the storylines that made Hart to Hart memorable. It was Stefanie Powers and her on-screen sparks with Robert Wagner. I watched Hart to Hart as a kid because my older sisters watched it. But it took adulthood for me to appreciate the coolness of the show and the allure of Stefanie Powers. [click the images for a larger view]

Review: "Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories" by Paul Doiron

 

Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories by Paul Doiron Minotaur Books, 2025   Paul Doiron’s Skin and Bones, is an engaging collection of eight mystery stories. The tales are set in the world of Maine game warden, Mike Bowditch—Doiron has written fifteen Bowditch novels so far—but a few are told from the perspective of Bowditch’s mentor and retired warden, Charley Stevens. Many of the stories are closer to novelette than short story length, which allows Doiron the room to paint his characters with a rich hue and his rural Maine setting with vivid color. Even better, he does all this without an unnecessary word or losing the mystery for the trees. “Bear Trap”—which is one of Charley Stevens’s tales—is a play on the impossible crime. As a young warden Charley is confronted by an almost mythical hermit—nicknamed Sweet Tooth because of his proclivity for stealing candy—with a knack for burgling camps and then disappearing like a ghost. When Sweet Tooth raids the stores of a summer camp for underprivileged boys, Charley decides it’s time to introduce Sweet Tooth to Lady Justice. But first he must discover how the thief comes and goes so easily. In “Rabid,” Charley Stevens is called to the isolated home of John Hussey. Hussey, like Charley, is a Vietnam veteran but unlike Charley, Hussey’s post-war behavior has been erratic. When Charley arrives at the house, Hussey’s Vietnamese wife, Giang, says her husband was bitten by a bat. But Charley is more worried that Hussey is abusing his wife and daughter. Charley’s own wife gets involved in this one, and both she and Giang believe Hussey may have rabies. There is a nice surprise ending with a delicious slice of morality in the recipe. Something of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, “The Caretaker”—which is narrated by Bowditch—stars Charley as a Holmes-like detective and Bowditch in Dr. Watson’s role. Together Charley and Bowditch investigate a harassment complaint by a Boston couple while staying in their backwoods summer home. Charley does a fine job of detection—he seems to notice everything, no matter how small—and Bowditch is duly impressed with Charley’s almost supernatural powers. But it is the solution, while revealing a serious crime, that makes “The Caretaker” downright fun. “Sheep’s Clothing,” which is the backwoods version of an English village murder mystery, finds the recently demoted Bowditch investigating what seems to be a murder-suicide of a couple living in poverty on a large patch of land. But Bowditch isn’t sure the husband killed his wife or himself. There are multiple suspects—the dead husband, an estranged son, his truly awful fiancée, the fiancée’s unempathetic brother are only four of them. There is more than one well-timed twist, which makes for bunches of fun. Skin and Bones is my first experience reading Paul Doiron’s fiction. The high-quality of the writing, the tight plotting, and the subtle humor (especially when Charley Stevens is on the page) impressed me enough that I’m planning to find another title in the Bowditch series to read. And likely another one after that, which is assuming the novels are as good as the tales presented here.

Check out Skin and Bones at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the trade paperback.

Booked (and Printed): April 2025

Booked (and Printed) April, 2025     April in Vermont is a marvelous potpourri of good and bad weather. It snowed, the sun glimmered, trees began leafing, and a handful of 70-degree days popped here and there. And of course, it wouldn’t be Vermont without mud. Tax Day came and went, my daughter received a couple school awards for being respectful—we could all learn something from her. When I wasn’t fretting, doing chores, and trying to make a living, I read. There were seven books, all novels, and two short stories. April saw my first DNF, did not finish, of the year, too, which I’ll get back to later because I really wanted to like it, but I really didn’t. The month started with David Housewright’s sixth Rushmore McKenzie novel, JELLY’S GOLD (2009). I read it out of order—I’m up to the fourteenth title overall—because it’s not in the library’s stacks. This visit with an earlier version of St. Paul’s favorite unlicensed private eye felt a little like time traveling since McKenzie’s circumstances have changed in the intervening years. In Jelly’s Gold, he still lives in Falcon Heights (rather than in Minneapolis with Nina) and drives an Audi (rather than a Mustang). It also marks the first appearance of one of my favorite supporting characters: Heavenly Petryk. Heavenly is movie star gorgeous, a self-described salvage expert specializing in brokering deals for stolen artifacts, and she is unscrupulous as hell. McKenzie is giddy when an old friend, Ivy Flynn, approaches him for help finding a couple million dollars of stolen gold bullion hidden somewhere in St. Paul in the 1930s by the notorious gangster, Frank “Jelly” Nash. The hunt is rooted in academic research, but only after McKenzie agrees to help does he discover there is more going on than he had been told. Another team of researchers are snapping at their heels—including the lovely Heavenly—and an unknown man begins tailing McKenzie around town. There is a good deal of St. Paul’s history as a sanctuary city for gangsters in the 1920s and 1930s included in the narrative—it was all new to me and super interesting, too—while never slowing the story or the fun. And Jelly’s Gold is bunches and bunches of fun with McKenzie’s smart-alecky narration, its bushelful of action, and sharp plotting. My first (of only two) short stories for the month was Henning Mankell’s nifty “THE MAN ON THE BEACH” (1999). This early Kurt Wallender novelette is a treasure for fans of Mankell and Wallander or anyone with a bent towards traditional mysteries with a dark edge. Read more about it in my review here. Next up was Domenic Stansberry’s excellent noirish crime novel, MANIFESTO FOR THE DEAD (2000), featuring real-life paperback writer Jim Thompson as the luckless hero. A marvelously entertaining novel with a few surprises and a vivid 1970s Hollywood setting. It’s a book I liked enough to read twice: the first time was all the way back in 2005. You can read my thoughts about this second reading here. Speaking of books starting with M. I received an advanced copy of Mary Dixie Carter’s excellent gothic psychological thriller, MARGUERITE BY THE LAKE (2025). I read it in just a few sittings and loved every word. My review is scheduled for May 19, and Marguerite by the Lake is set for release on May 20, 2025. Do me a favor and come back when my official review drops.
April also saw me dip my toes back into Stephen King’s literary world. Man, I love this guy’s work! His 1984 thriller, THINNER, was released as the fourth book with King’s then-secret nom de plume, Richard Bachman. The NAL hardcover edition even included an author photograph of a sketchy looking dude that is most definitely not Stephen King. At least not the Stephen King I’ve come to recognize over the decades. King was identified as Bachman when an enterprising bookstore clerk found a copyright filing that identified Stephen King as Richard Bachman. And presto—the maestro of horror was outed.
If you’ve been alive for any part of the last thirty years, it’s likely you know what happens in Thinner: an obese lawyer, Billy Halleck, is cursed by a 106-year-old Romani man after Billy hits and kills the man’s daughter with his, Halleck’s car. The curse? Halleck, who has been unsuccessfully dieting for years, will get thinner and thinner until he is no more. While Thinner is a second- or third-tier novel in King’s canon, it is a little sparser than his usual, it is still damn fun. And that ending? Pitch perfect! Check out the author photo of Richard Bachman on the right.  Another of my sneak peeks for the month was Stark House’s reprint of MAKE WITH THE BRAINS, PIERRE, by Dana Wilson. Its scheduled release date is June 6. Originally published in 1946, this psychological thriller is a brutal examination of Hollywood with a Cornell Woolrich-type bleakness. Which is saying, the story doesn’t match its farcical title at all. Come back on June 5 to read all my thoughts about Make with the Brains, Pierre.
Last year I read my first novel by J. D. Rhoades, Breaking Cover (2009), and loved it. So when I stumbled across his first book and the first in his Jack Keller series, THE DEVIL’S RIGHT HAND (2005), I jumped on it. Keller is a bail enforcement officer (aka bounty hunter) with a loner mentality and a tendency towards violence. Or maybe violence has tendency towards Keller. While apprehending a bail-jumper, DeWayne, on the hook for a B&E, Keller crashes into a killing scene—three men with guns beat Keller to the house where DeWayne is hiding out intending to kill him. But with a little luck, and Keller’s willingness to get his hands dirty, DeWayne escapes with his life. And Keller is chasing him like nobody’s business. The Devil’s Right Hand is brisk and violent. Keller gets beat up, he beats others up, and the body count is impressively high. Written with a hardboiled kick—a style I really liked—and bunches of action. Heck, there’s a shoot-out just outside a North Carolina courthouse. And Keller is a kick ass, over-the-top hero with a rich backstory and enough swagger to get out of most of the trouble he wades into. My final short story, “SNOOKERED,” by the unfamiliar (to me at least) Gerald Tomlinson, is on the other side of the mystery genre from The Devil’s Right Hand since it depends on misdirection and irony rather than pedal-to-the-metal action. Published in the Sept. 1983 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, this smile-inducing caper tale mixes fraud and college football with the best of intentions. A nice climactic twist gives it enough punch to make it worth seeking out. I read Denis Johnson’s fantastic literary western, TRAIN DREAMS (2002), as part my 2025 goal to explore new literary worlds outside my usual haunts. And I’m glad I did because it is a damn fine tale. Advertised as a novella, which is accurate, Train Dreams has enough story and meaning for a full novel. Do yourself a favor and read this book, but first read my detailed review of it here. I started and failed to finish Kate Flora’s DEATH AT THE WHEEL (1996). This third Thea Kozak mystery disappointed on almost every element. The characters were cartoonish. The plot and subplots were lifeless. Thea was unlikable. And the mystery? It never really started; at least it hadn’t when I quit reading at the halfway mark. Better critics than I rated Death at the Wheel as the weakest of Flora’s Thea Kozak novels, which is something, but I doubt I’ll try Kozak or Flora again. Oh yeah. Now for something positive. My favorite book of the month? Train Dreams, with Marguerite by the Lake as my favorite mystery. Fin— Now on to next month…

Review: "Buffalo Wagons" by Elmer Kelton

 

Buffalo Wagons by Elmer Kelton Ballantine Books, 1956   Reviewed by Mike Baker   Buffalo hunter Gage Jameson is watching the end of the Kansas buffalo and decides to partner with King Ransom, another buffalo hunter, and head down into Texas and the Llano Estacado—Comanchería—with an oversized crew of skinners. Half are there for skinning the plentiful buff, and half to avoid slaughter should the Comanche decide they ought to leave. Regardless, they’re mostly King’s men—and predictably, this will matter a lot later on. Meanwhile, they discover a Comanche camp and a pretty white girl the Comanche have taken as a slave. This book was written in 1956 by a white male Texan, so Kelton goes on a bit about how you might not want to stir that hornet’s nest—except she’s a white woman, which, in 1956 Texas, is pretty much… well, let me just say, during the discussion of whether or not to save her, they refer to her as a white woman seven times. Anyhoo, we’ll step over the giant elephant in the room and keep reading, because they save her from the filthy, depredating red savagesI and the peaceful skinning camps slowly descend into the bad-news party Kelton has been planning all along. Back-shooting shenanigans ensue. Buffalo Wagons wasn’t groundbreaking. It isn’t top-tier. It is, blessedly, solid. Look—traditional westerns are bodice rippers with horses and six-guns. We can crowd the analysis with American archetypes and the heroic loner. Blah fucking blah. They’re formulaic and generally predictable. Every now and then, Lewis Patten would kill the hero, or someone would go really dark like .44 or Hano’s Last Notch, but on balance, it’s the bad guy who turns out to be a good guy, gets the girl and plugs the bad guy—or plugs the girl, and the bad guy takes care of his own needs. I’m not saying pleasant twists and surprises don’t happen, but the basic formula never really falters. You might offer up Blood Meridian, or The Revenant, or Little Big Man—but that’s capital-L Literature, and those cranky bastards play by their own rules. Cormac McCarthy wouldn’t have known a good time if she dropped her drawers right in front of him. Traditional westerns exist—maybe just for me—to affirm my misguided belief that there is any justice in this life. Blood Meridian is for the young, who can afford to have their king-sized hope pie snuffled to shit. Traditional westerns go best with a beer and a cigar, a dusty porch, and a steak dinner. I saw a gaggle of Black ladies shuffle, exhausted and beaten, into a Primitive Baptist church one Sunday in 1994—only to leave, after a hellfire sermon full of God’s blessings to the steadfast and righteous, backs up and ready to eat giants for breakfast and nut-punch the Devil himself. That’s what a traditional western brings to my table. Your boss is a bully and a moron, traffic ate your lunch, your wife wants to say—fucking anything—to you first thing when you get home from the above-mentioned shitty job? No problem, son. Crack open Buffalo Wagons and ease into one man making his way across the merciless Llano Estacado like a motherfucking boss. You’ll see the end coming like a buffalo stampede—and thank God for that. It’s at least one goddamn thing that’ll work out today. *                *                * I A brief note to the self-righteous: the Indian Wars were a 200-year genocidal campaign against the First Nations by the American government, and a war of survival for settlers trying to make something better than what they had. The history is complicated and, generally, awful. My comment was meant ironically—except for the “depredating” part. See Josiah Wilbarger’s  Indians Depredations in Texas if you doubt me.

Check out Buffalo Wagons at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Vintage Review of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E" (TV Guide, Jan. 1965)

 

This scorchingly bad review of the cult-classic television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., written by Cleveland Amory, appeared in the January 16, 1965, issue of TV Guide. I’ll admit I haven’t watched much U.N.C.L.E., but this review, as bad as it is, made me want to watch an episode to see for myself.  [click the image for a larger view]

Review: "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson

 

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson Picador, 2012   Johnson’s novella, which was published originally in The Paris Review in 2002, captures the transformative years of the early-20th Century in the Northwest United States. A time when industrialization and technology—telephones, automobiles, electricity, and then television—overran the isolation of the American West. It is told in the form of one Robert Grainier. Grainier, born in 1883, was orphaned as a boy and raised by his aunt and uncle in Idaho’s panhandle. His cousins have differing stories about how his parents died, and even how (or if) he is related to their own family. Robert failed to ask his aunt and uncle his genesis story while they were living and so Grainier, without ever really knowing who he is, makes his way in a changing world. The tale begins in 1917 with Robert caught up in a group of railway workers attempting to kill a Chinese laborer for stealing from the company—an act he regrets all his life. Robert, as his way, then moves on to lumberjacking before acquiring his own rig, a wagon and two horses, for his own freight hauling service. Along the way Robert marries, has a child, but never really stops being alone. Train Dreams is an astonishingly vivid tale about the American West. It is lonely and melancholy, lyrical and realistic. Grainier’s murky ancestral roots, or his lack of predestined identity, is a perfect metaphor for the 18th and early-19th Century West where a man could, at least mythically, disappear and reinvent themselves. Robert’s solitary lifestyle allows him to act as an observer of a changing culture and landscape while giving him an almost immutable place in this world. There is a sad tenderness to Train Dreams, but Robert Grainier’s lonely passage across the pages provides a rich and realistic drama and even brings a little meaning to our own lives. *                *                * One of my goals for 2025 is to expand my leisure reading beyond the genres where I usually spend time. Train Dreams fits nicely in contemporary literature, with an exquisite western flair that will appeal to most male readers. It is the kind of book that reads easily (and that’s a compliment), but can also be read deeply.

Check out Train Dreams at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Book Ads from The Armchair Detective (Fall 1993)

I love book advertising in all its forms—especially the printed variety. The ads below appeared in the Fall 1993 issue of the marvelous Armchair Detective. The Worldwide Books ad was on the inside front cover and Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Dead Time was on the facing page. I’ve seen the Barbara Paul and Gwendoline Butler titles in used bookstores dozens of times over the years, but it took this ad to convince me I’m going to buy them next time. Click the image for a better view.

Review: "Chain of Evidence" by Garry Disher

 

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher Soho Crime, 2007   Chain of Evidence—which won the Crime Writers Association of Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel in 2007—is Aussie crime writer Garry Disher’s fourth novel featuring Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry. A police procedural set in the rural, but booming Mornington Peninsula area south of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. A place where poverty and wealth live side-by-side and crime is as deadly and ugly as it is in any large city. While visiting his dying father in his childhood home in the dusty, hardscrabble South Australia town of Mawson’s Bluff, Challis unofficially investigates the mysterious disappearance of his sister’s husband, Gavin Hurst, from eight years earlier. Hurst is a man not readily missed by many of Mawson’s Bluff’s residents and his disappearance is truly a mystery. His truck abandoned at the desert’s edge, his body never found. Back home at the Waterloo Station, Ellen Destry is filling in for Challis during his absence, a girl is kidnapped on her way home from school. She is found imprisoned in an uninhabited house. Abused by what Destry believes is a pedophile ring operating in the Peninsula. Her investigation hits roadblocks from within the police service and the only person she can trust is Hal Challis, more than 1,000 kilometers away. Chain of Evidence is a powerful and disturbing procedural. The two major mysteries are intriguing and executed with the sure hand of an absolute professional. It is Ellen Destry’s coming out as an equal partner with Challis. The setting, both the Peninsula and Mawson’s Bluff, is rendered with a muted artistry and adds immeasurably to the novel’s power. There is nothing gory or exploitative about either storyline and Disher has a way of mixing character stereotypes to develop tension between the characters, the plot, and the reader. It may be the best book in the series. If you are new to Garry Disher, Chain of Evidence is a very good place to get acquainted. *              *              * This review was originally published in August 2017 at my Gravetapping blog. With a distance of years from this reading to   now, I’m more certain Chain of Evidence is Disher’s best Challis / Destry book, and it very well may be his best book overall.

Check out Chain of Evidence at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Review: "Manifesto for the Dead" by Domenic Stansberry

 

Manifesto for the Dead by Domenic Stansberry Permanent Press, 2000     Manifesto for the Dead hit bookstores the same day Y2K had been forecasted to cripple the modern technological society. The whole world was going to crumble into ruin and this Stansberry guy had a hardboiled and noirish crime novel with a velvety, stark prose scheduled for release that same very damn day. A positive attitude from the writer and the publisher of a bleak as hell tale about the grimmest and perhaps the most luckless of the paperback writers, Jim Thompson. It was January 1, 2000, and the world didn’t end on that first day of the last year of the 20th Century. That wouldn’t happen until 25 years later when too many American voters— Well, okay. We won’t go there… Instead, we’ll go to 1971. When a 64-year-old Jim Thompson is living at the bottom of a bottle and sleeping in the penthouse of the Hollywood Ardmore. He hasn’t been able to write a word in months and his wife, Alberta, is to blame—or so Thompson thinks. The couple’s money is almost gone and with no reasonable way of getting more, Alberta finds a dumpy apartment in the Hillcrest Arms where they can fade away. But Thompson’s luck changes—from shitty to shittier but Thompson’s sure it’s the break he’s been waiting for—when he’s approached by a producer with a bad reputation, Billy Mircale, at the “fashionable gutter joint” of Musso & Frank’s. Miracle is working on a deal with one of Hollywood’s heaviest producers and he thinks a book, especially one written by a guy with Thompson’s reputation, could push the movie into production. Thompson agrees to write the book, without much negotiation about pay—and he’s getting ripped-off, like he always gets ripped-off. But as he writes, Thompson’s real-life begins mixing with his fiction: An Okie hired killer with a dead bombshell in his trunk comes off the page, followed by a fading starlet with her own secrets, and of course Miracle is mixed in everywhere, too. Manifesto for the Dead was a brave novel to write. It was released at the height of Jim Thompson’s popular revival—he had died in 1977 without much fanfare, but by the late-1980s his work was in fashion in a big way with literary critics and academics, readers, and writers. Which meant no matter how good Stansberry’s novel was, there would be criticism from those looking to criticize for no other reason than it was a fiction with Jim Thompson at its center. The poor reviews tended towards snide comments about Stansberry’s inability to capture Thompson’s voice, which from my vantage is unfair at best. I mean, check out the opening paragraph: “This was the end. The final trap. The last flimflam. And for Jim Thompson, this ending—this long plunge into the sweet nothing—was set in motion on the day he first met Billy Miracle, at the Musso & Frank Grill, down on Hollywood Boulevard.” How’s that for a doomed Thompson protagonist? A protagonist that, this time is the tough-luck writer himself. The plot is simple: Murder, betrayal, and blackmail, all fueled by an ill-fated fear and Thompson’s underlying self-destructive behavior. This simplicity gives it a kinship to the best of those 1950s hardboiled novellas published every month in the pulps. The 1970s setting is littered with hippies and druggies, conmen, and z-list celebrities. The Hollywood players are cast with a shadowing of the ludicrous and the starlets, even the fading ladies, are painted as tough and ambitious as everyone else in the City of Angeles. And then there’s Thompson. Unlucky, something of a mark for every unethical bastard in Hollywood, and running for his life. Manifesto for the Dead is my kind of book.

Manifesto for the Dead is out-of-print, but you can find used copies in every corner of the internet. Click here for the hard cover at Amazon

Review: "The Cleveland John Doe Case" by Thibault Raisse

 

The Cleveland John Doe Case by Thibault Raisse Crime Ink, 2025     On the afternoon of July 30, 2002, the body of Joseph Chandler was discovered in the bathroom of his spartan studio apartment in Eastlake, Ohio. It had been an unusually hot summer in Northern Ohio—where Eastlake is a suburb of Cleveland sitting on the shoreline of Lake Erie—and Chandler had been dead for almost a week when a maintenance man discovered his body. The air conditioning in his room had been turned off and the fetid odor of rotting flesh filled the apartment. It was obvious to the investigating detective that Chandler had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but what he didn’t realize at the time was that Joseph Newton Chandler III had died in Texas as a young boy and the dead man was someone else entirely. The Cleveland John Doe Case adeptly introduces Chandler—he had lived in the Dover Apartments for 17 years and worked at a nearby chemical factory for just as long, but he was like a ghost because no one knew anything about him—and the investigators working the case from when the body was discovered in 2002 until the early-2020s when DNA helped identify Chandler’s birth name. And there were five separate investigators, including a couple private eyes and the U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio.   The investigative question changing over the years from How did Chandler die?, to Who was Chandler?, to Why did Chandler live under an assumed identity? It is an intriguing case from beginning to end and Raisse wrings the facts out with precise and fluid writing and an obvious high dosage of research gleaned from interviews with the investigators, Chandler’s family, police records, and other documents. The only disappointment, and this is hardly anything at all because it only adds to the mysterious nature of the case, is that the final investigative question, Why did Chandler live under an assumed identity for so long? is yet to be solved. But I tell you, as Raisse details in The Cleveland John Doe Case, there are a bevy of high-profile theories about what made Chandler take a new name. And each, as well The Cleveland John Doe Case in its entirety, are worth your reading time. The Cleveland John Doe Case was translated into English from its original French by Laurie Bennett. It is part of Crime Ink’s 50 States of Crime series where French journalists reevaluate major American crimes; one for each of the 50 states of the U.S.

Check out The Cleveland John Doe Case at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.