Beneath the Stains of Time: Murder in Reverse (1945) by Anthony Webb

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Beneath the Stains of Time: The Whistling Legs (1945) by Roman McDougald

Beneath the Stains of Time: The Whistling Legs (1945) by Roman McDougald: Roman McDougald was a little-known, now long-forgotten, American detective novelist, who's usually grouped with the hardboiled write...

Beneath the Stains of Time: Death of a Swagman (1945) by Arthur W. Upfield

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Beneath the Stains of Time: Death Out of Nowhere (1945) by Alexis Gensoul and ...

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Beneath the Stains of Time: Unholy Dying (1945) by R.T. Campbell

Beneath the Stains of Time: Unholy Dying (1945) by R.T. Campbell: Ruthven Campbell Todd was a Scottish artist, novelist, poet and " leading authority on the printing techniques of William Blake ,&q...

Guest Reviewer Larry W. Chavis: "I Have Nothing to Say.' (The Reckoning by John Grisham)

Well, it has been quite awhile, but Larry W. Chavis is finally back on the blog today with another review. After you read the below regarding the new one by John Grisham, make sure you go check out his review of the 2016 Bouchercon Anthology, Blood on the Bayou. I keep telling Larry he is good at this reviewing thing and ought to keep at it. I hope he does.

"I Have Nothing to Say.'

The Reckoning by John Grisham

New York, Doubleday

October 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-385-54415-3 (hardcover)

           978-0-385-54416-0 (ebook)

Reviewed by Larry W. Chavis

At the end of 1945, Pete Banning returned home to the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi, a bona fide war hero. Captured by the Japanese forces who had forced the American and Filipino defenders, starving and with no hope of reinforcement, to surrender, Pete survived the horrors of the Bataan Death March, and the even-more-unspeakable nightmares of prison camp, to escape and fight for three years as a guerilla in the mountains of Luzon. His family, notified after the fall of the Philippines of his missing-and-presumed-dead status, ecstatically welcomed him home to his ancestral farmlands. A happy ending for everyone.

Until the chilly morning of October 9, 1946, when Pete Banning rose early, walked to his sister's neighboring acreage to have breakfast with her, then calmly drove into Clanton, strode into the Methodist preacher's office, that of his friend, the Reverend Dexter Bell, and shot him three times, twice in the chest and once in the head. Exiting the pastor's study, Banning told the church caretaker to fetch the sheriff, and then drove home to await his arrest. To the sheriff, to his attorney, to his family, Banning made one statement: "I have nothing to say."

The first chapter of John Grisham's latest book sets the stage for what may be his most perplexing novel yet. Not that the underlying motive is so perplexing—in fact, when it is revealed in the final pages, it may be a bit of a let-down—but that Pete Banning is not only willing to commit murder and set loose an avalanche of uncertain and possibly dire consequences on his family, the victim's family, his farm hands and their families, even all of Ford County, without uttering so much as a syllable of the reason for it. Pete's obstinate refusal to speak could, perhaps, be viewed as the actions of principled character acting on his principles. It could also be taken as the narcissistic action of a man who will unleash, at the very least, waves of anxiety and fear on those closest to him with never a care for what he is doing to them. The reader is left to determine which, and it is not so easy to do.

Being a John Grisham book, race and the legal system play prominent roles, the legal system's corruptible and very flawed processes on display, the racial inequities present in 1946 Mississippi differing in degree, if not so much in kind, from those that still plague society. There are two trials in the book, criminal and civil, written with Grisham's ability to highlight a system that, like Diogenes, seeks for truth and honesty. One is left to wonder whether and how often these things are found. The Reckoning is worth reading and is a book to make one think. It is not a book to make one happy.

Larry W. Chavis ©2018

FFB Review: DEATH KNELL (1945) by Baynard Kendrick (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

It has been awhile, but Barry Ergang is back today with another all new FFB review. For the rest of the list make sure you check out Patti Abbott’s blog.

DEATH KNELL (1945) by Baynard Kendrick

Successful novelist and gun collector Larmar Jordan lives in a lavish fourteenth floor Arday Apartments suite with his wife Lucia, his live-in secretary Paul Hirst, a cocker spaniel named Winnie, and domestic servants. In attendance at a cocktail party in the suite are Larmar’s literary agent Sarah Hanley, newspaper reporter Bob Morse, and Sybella Ford, accompanied by her fiancée Captain Duncan Maclain.

Having attained his rank twenty years earlier during World War I while an intelligence officer, and blinded during that conflict, Maclain overcame his handicap—and benefited from it by heightening his other senses—to take on the unlikely profession, along with partner Spud Savage, of private investigator.

When Troy Singleton, a woman with whom Jordan has been intimately involved, is shot to death in the author’s study with one of the firearms from his esoteric collection, Jordan is the immediate and arrested suspect. Although New York Homicide detectives Inspector Davis and Sergeant Archer, with whom Maclain has contended before, consider it an open-and-shut case, not least because of a neighboring witness, Mrs. Oliver, Maclain agrees to undertake Lucia’s investigation of her husband’s predicament. What he unearths reveals a great deal more than the police have suspected. 

In addition to some of the aforementioned people, Maclain has to deal with as sources of information and/or as suspects Ellis Brown Mitchell, firearms expert who is cataloguing Jordan’s collection; Jess Ferguson, Jordan’s attorney; a menacing and motivated individual named Martin Gallagher; and very successful aircraft manufacturer Daniel Pine.

A generally well-written detective story with a good sense of character, Death Knell has occasional arguable stylistic lapses wherein descriptions of Maclain’s abilities are reminiscent of descriptions of pulp “super” heroes like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and others of that ilk. The novel combines the qualities of the traditional whodunit with some of the action and suspense of the hardboiled school.

Those old enough to remember the short-lived TV series Longstreet might recall its blind insurance investigator portrayed by James Franciscus. Mike Longstreet wasn’t Duncan Maclain, but the program—and thus his character—was credited to Kendrick as creator. In 1938 and the early1940s, there were several movies starring the miscast Edward Arnold (miscast physically, that is, based upon descriptions in the books) as Maclain, among them “Eyes in the Night” which, as of this writing, is available at YouTube.

Although my teenage reading about mystery series informed me of the Duncan Maclain novels, it wasn’t until paperback editions were reissued following the advent of the Longstreet program in 1971 that I actually got to read several of them. It is a worthwhile series of detective novels which merits resurrection for 21st Century readers.

© 2018 Barry Ergang

While his website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/  some of Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work is available at Amazon and Smashwords.com