Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi

Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi was first published in 1942.

Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) was an American writer in the crime and suspense genres and a major figure in the evolution of noir fiction. In the 1920s he had tried to establish himself as a writer in the F. Scott Fitzgerald mould, with very little success. He found immediate success when he switched to crime fiction in 1940.

The novel begins with a publicity stunt. Kiki Walker had been a failed night-club entertainer in the U.S. but thanks to the efforts of her press agent Manning she is now a major star in South America. Manning’s latest stunt is to have Kiki show up at a restaurant with a black jaguar on a leash. This certainly attracts attention. It attracts even more attention when something spooks the jaguar. He creates mayhem in the restaurant and escapes into the night. There’s an intensive search but the animal cannot be found.

Then a young woman is killed. The evidence suggests that the jaguar was responsible. And then another young woman suffers a similar fate. Again it seems clear that she was killed by the jaguar. Inspector Robles has no doubts.

Manning however does have doubts. Maybe he just doesn’t want to accept that the jaguar was responsible since that would make it indirectly his fault - the jaguar got loose as the result of his publicity stunt. But there are a couple of puzzling little things that really bother Manning.

A third woman, a lady of the night, is killed. And then a fourth. In each case there are odd little details that continue to worry Manning. He is developing a theory. Nobody wants to listen to him but he cannot help feeling that his theory makes more sense than the official one.

This novel must have come as something of a shock in 1942. It just doesn’t slot neatly into a genre pigeonhole. It is most definitely not noir fiction. It does contain elements you would expect in the horror genre. There is certainly plenty of suspense. 

The decision as to which genre it should be assigned to is something that depends on how the plot ends up being resolved.

There’s also a degree of grisliness that would have been rather startling in 1942.

Manning is not a conventional hero type. He’s always been a fairly cynical sort of guy, not exactly a crusader or a knight in shining armour. He’s just the sort of guy who cannot let things go. All he’s likely to gain by playing amateur investigator is a lot of aggravation and a lot of embarrassment if his theory turns out to be wrong. He just can’t help himself. These killings really bother him and if he turns out to be right but hasn’t done anything about it he won’t be able to live with himself.

Inspector Robles isn’t quite the dumb cop to be contrasted with the gifted amateur. Robles is competent but he’s under pressure and having conducted his whole investigation on the assumption that a jaguar is responsible he feels he has to keep going on that assumption.

And it has to be said what while Manning is bothered by small details there really does seem to be overwhelming evidence that a jaguar is responsible for the attacks. It’s a case of two men who are both convinced that their respective theories are correct.

I don’t intend to give any hints as to plot details but the plot is rather wild, and the resolution is totally wild.

Black Alibi is a weird fascinating novel and its greatest strength is its weirdness. Highly recommended.

Black Alibi was filmed in 1943 as The Leopard Man, one of the series of superb RKO B-movies produced by Val Lewton. It’s one of countless film and television adaptations of Cornell Woolrich stories most of which are worth checking out. Woolrich’s stories just seemed to work remarkably well on the screen.

Otis Adelbert Kline's The Secret Kingdom

Otis Adelbert Kline and Allen S. Kline’s lost civilisation novel The Secret Kingdom was serialised in Amazing Stories in late 1929.

Chicago-born Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) is often dismissed as an Edgar Rice Burroughs imitator. Which to some extent is true. He was however a pretty good Edgar Rice Burroughs imitator and his stories are quite entertaining.

The lost world/lost civilisation genre was made enormously popular by H. Rider Haggard in the 1880s (his 1886 novel She is still perhaps the finest example of the genre). These tales remained popular until the 1930s. Sadly, in the post-World War 2 period the idea of undiscovered civilisation in remote parts of the globe could no longer be made to seem plausible. The world no longer contained any unexplored corners and much of the romance and mystery of life vanished.

Bell is a young American scientist trekking through an unexplored region in South America. He’s collecting specimens. He has a rival, a German scientist who is out to get him. 

On a remote plateau Bell saves the life of a man, a very oddly dressed man. He has unwittingly encountered a remnant of Inca civilisation. The man he saved is the Inca himself.

This remnant seems to be thriving and they really are quite civilised. The Inca is a very decent guy and he is anxious to reward Bell. There’s just one problem. Bell now knows of the existence of this Inca civilisation, a closely kept secret. He can never be allowed to leave. He is ennobled, given a fine house, treated with immense respect, given servants. He is even given wives. Six of them. All of them young and pretty and very excited to be married to the handsome foreigner.

Bell has met another outsider. Nona, a half-French half-Spanish girl. She also stumbled upon this lost civilisation by accident, and like Bell she will never be permitted to leave.

Bell and Nona fall hopelessly in love but there’s a problem. Nona is supposed to marry the high priest Tupac. The Inca is a good man and a just man but Nona was promised to Tupac and the Inca never breaks his word. He knows Nona does not want to marry Tupac and he has tried to persuade the high priest to release her from her bond but Tupac is unrelenting. Tupac is treacherous, crafty and cruel.

Naturally Bell encounters many dangers, such as narrowly escaping being served as dinner to an enormous and very hungry boa constrictor. There are various attempts to deprive Bell of his life or his freedom, or both. Tupac hatches sinister conspiracies. Bell’s nemesis, the German scientist von Steinbeig, shows up at an inconvenient moment.

There’s plenty of action.

Bell also has his hands full with his six wives. They’re all madly in love with him. Somehow Bell has to avoid sharing his bed with any of them. Nona is a sweet girl but she is a woman and she has a woman’s natural jealousy. She has no intention of sharing Bell with another woman and she certainly isn’t going to share him with six sex-crazed maidens.

Bell is your basic square-jawed hero but he’s likeable enough. Tupac makes a fine villain. The world-building is not elaborate and certainly doesn’t compare with the kind of world-building you would get in an Edgar Rice Burroughs story.

Kline’s prose style is perfectly serviceable. This is pulp fiction and it’s not trying to be anything more than that.

The Secret Kingdom is not a top-tier lost civilisation novel but if you love this genre it’s quite enjoyable. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed several other Otis Adelbert Kline novels - Jan of the Jungle (a Tarzan imitation combined with lost world stuff), Planet of Peril (a decent sword-and-planet adventure) and Lord of the Lamia (an excellent mix of mystery, action, Egyptology, horror and an offbeat love story).

Modesty Blaise: The Puppet Master

The Puppet Master collects three early 1970s Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures by Peter O’Donnell. By this time Modesty Blaise was also the heroine of a very successful series of novels, also written by Peter O’Donnell. Modesty was a fairly major pop culture icon.

The Puppet Master

Modesty is kidnapped by an old foe seeking a particularly refined and cruel form of vengeance. He has a plan for revenge that will encompass both Modesty and Willie Garvin.

Brainwashing stories of various kinds were a major cultural obsession in the 1960s.

Not a bad story but the plot twists are just a little predictable. It does touch on Modesty’s psychological quirks and on the particular bond that she has with Willie.

With Love From Rufus

A burglar breaks into Modesty’s flat. He must be a very clever burglar to get past the high-tech security system Willie Garvin had installed. He doesn’t take anything but he leaves something behind. Two things in fact. A bunch of flowers and a note signed “With Love From Rufus” and Modesty has never heard of a Rufus. While some women might be alarmed by this Modesty Blaise, being Modesty Blaise, is intrigued.

It turns out that Modesty doesn’t have a stalker but she does have a fan. Just like a pop star. A fan who worships her. She’s flattered but worried. He wants to emulate her criminal career. He’s also landed himself in a very dangerous situation. He might be an aspiring criminal mastermind but he’s basically a good lad and Modesty doesn’t want to see him end up in the slammer, or worse.

Getting him out of the jam he’s in involves Modesty and Willie in plenty of danger.

This is a solid story but the main interest is provided by the fan-worship aspect. Modesty gets to be both motherly and a bit ruthless.

The Bluebeard Affair

The Bluebeard Affair really does concern a modern Bluebeard, Baron Rath. The Baron (whose noble lineage is non-existent) has married a series of rich but timid women. They seems to have unfortunate, and fatal, accidents. Modesty’s friend Raul (a big wheel in the French Sûreté) is worried that his niece will be the next victim. She has become Baron Rath’s fourth wife.

Modesty decides that she needs to present herself as a candidate to be the Baron’s fifth wife. She’s not used to being meek and submissive but she’s a natural actress and has no trouble getting his attention.

The basic story might not be startlingly original but it’s executed with style. We get diabolical female evilness in the persons of the baron’s frightening daughters. We get Modesty sword-fighting. And we get Chloe the elephant who lends Willie a hand (sometimes owning a circus comes in handy).

We also have Willie dealing with something much more terrifying than super-villains - a girl determined to marry him. And she has three very tough very mean brothers to make sure he does the right thing.

There’s plenty of stylish action. A fine story and the highlight of this particular collection.

Final Thoughts

A good solid collection with at least one major standout. Modesty Blaise is always worth reading, in comic-strip or in novel form. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first three novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer.

Arthur J. Burks, The Wizard of Weird Tales

The Wizard of Weird Tales is a collection of short stories by Arthur J. Burks that were originally published in the Weird Tales pulp magazine.

Arthur J. Burks (1898-1974) wrote for pulp magazines in various genres and later began writing on paranormal subjects.

These stories really are wildly original and very very weird. They’re weird in totally unexpected ways. Even the weaker stories are interesting because they’re so bizarre.

Bells of Oceana appeared in Weird Tales in 1927. A young officer on a troopship has an uncanny feeling that something is wrong. Perhaps it’s the bells he hears. There cannot be any bells but he still hears them. He thinks for a moment he sees a face at a porthole but that’s impossible as well. And then one of the sentries cannot be found. Things get stranger. The woman he sees cannot be real. It must be a dream. Or perhaps not. A nicely odd tale of terror at sea.

Room of Shadows appeared in Weird Tales in 1936. A well-to-do man checks into a hotel in New York. There’s something odd about the room. There’s that scent, and the light seems strange. And later the bellhop denies have taken him to the room. The dogs are disturbing. Very very small dogs. The woman disturbs him as well. She went into the bathroom and then seemed to vanish. A very unusual creepy tale that gives a new twist to an old legend. Excellent story.

Black Harvest of Moraine (published in 1950) is truly bizarre. A wheat harvest turns into disaster. The wheat is infected with smut (a fungal crop disease). Only it turns out not to be smut but something much stranger. It is something ancient and evil, and terrifying and remorseless.

The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee (1926) is obviously going to involve ghosts of some sort, but but this is an unconventional ghost story. A returned soldier dying from the effects of being gassed in the war is offered refuge in a remote log cabin. He hears an infant wailing. It is impossible, but he has to check. Then he sees something horrifying. He sees it again and again. Very good story.

Luisma’s Return (1925) takes place on Haiti. Luisma is the general of the emperor of Haiti, Christophe. The emperor has stolen Luisma’s woman. Luisma wants revenge. It is impossible. Christophe’s power is absolute. But Luisma is determined. An OK story.

Rhythmic Formula (1952) is a neat little story about Russ Creavey, a famous explorer who becomes very rich by marrying rich wives. They don’t live too long thanks to some tricks Russ picked up in the Amazon rainforest. Russ is now set for life. Nothing can go wrong. Good story.

Orbit of Souls (1926) concerns a rich man whose wealth was built on lies and deception facing the ire of one of his victims. He never thought he might one day pay for his misdeeds. He still doesn’t think he’ll have to but a series of strange events might change his mind. An OK story.

Morpho on the Screen (1954) is about a young boy who has vivid dreams about riding butterflies in the Amazon rainforest. The dreams continue as he gets older. A very very strange tale but fascinating.

In Asphodel (1926) the narrator meets an old hermit. He then finds himself in a meadow of asphodels, the flowers of death. What follows might be merely a dream, or perhaps not. Very weird but rather disturbing.

When the Graves Were Opened (1925) is a very weak story of time travel, of a sort. A man is transported back to the time of Crucifixion.

Voodoo (1924) is one of his earliest stories and one of several with a Haitian setting. It’s a straightforward not very interesting story of a soldier seeking revenge on a voodoo priest.

Vale of the Corbies (1925) is another reasonably effective tale of frightening dreams.

The Invading Horde (1927) is oddly enough a science fiction story set in the future, in the vast City of the East which covers the whole of the eastern half of the United States. The city is a miracle of technology. People move about the city in monopters which are like wearable flying suits. Now the City of the East faces a deadly threat from the sea.

Something Toothsome (1926) begins with two Army officers, one of them an army dental surgeon, discussing writing. They both have ambitions in that direction. They concoct crazy story about a murder involving dentistry. But of course it could never happen in real life, or could it?

Some of these stories will definitely shock the delicate sensibilities of some modern readers.

Overall a good collection with the strong stories outnumbering the weaker ones. And Burks can certainly get very weird indeed. Recommended.

Milton K. Ozaki’s The Scented Flesh

Milton K. Ozaki’s The Scented Flesh was published in 1951.

Milton K. Ozaki (1913-1989) was an American writer born in Wisconsin. His father was Japanese. He wrote a couple of dozen crime novels between 1946 and 1960.

The Scented Flesh opens in classic hardboiled style. Private eye Carl Good wakes up next to a beautiful blonde. This dame has real class, and a look around her apartment indicates she has real money as well. That puzzles Carl. If she has class why would she have gone to bed with him? Dames like her don’t sleep with two-bit private eyes. There’s a used flash bulb on the floor, which worries Carl a little. Another thing that bothers Carl is that the blonde is dead. He doesn’t like the implications of that. He certainly didn’t kill her but it looks like someone is trying to make it look that way.

It would help if he could remember how he ended up in the dame’s apartment but the previous night is a complete blank. Carl is no drunk. He figures someone slipped him a mickey.

Eventually he remembers that he’d been in a dive called The Shamrock. Maybe one of the girls there remembers seeing him. Flo remembers him. She thought he was a pretty nice guy.

Another thing that Carl figures out is that he’s making somebody nervous. Nervous enough to try to blow him up with a hand grenade. There are whispers of a shake-up in the world of organised crime but Carl can’t see how that could connect with a routine missing persons case. Which is all that this started out to be. An old guy from Iowa hired him to find a girl, Sylvia Shepherd. Maybe she’s his daughter. Carl doesn’t care. He was offered two hundred bucks to find her so he took the case.

Now everyone is telling him that the smart thing to do is to drop the case. Carl thinks that would be the smart thing to do as well. He has no personal stake in this and it sounds like some very dangerous people are mixed up in it, the kinds of people a smart private eye steers well clear of. But Carl is stubborn.

The sleaze level gradually increases. It’s a crooked town. But Carl has been around long enough to take that for granted. He’s a big boy.

There are a lot of women in this case. Lots of naked women. Some dead, some alive. Some of them are strippers. Some seem respectable. Carl thinks the strippers are more trustworthy than the respectable dames. Maybe he’s right.

Maybe he should talk to the organised crime boss? A crazy idea but it might give him a clue. And it’s not like Carl has any crusading ideas about clearing up crime and corruption. He just wants to solve the case and collect his two hundred bucks and go back to his normal routine. A routine that doesn’t involve waking up in bed with dead blondes.

It’s a fairly routine plot but it’s serviceable enough. Carl gets himself deeper and deeper into something he still doesn’t understand and that offers plenty of potential for action and narrow escapes from danger.

There’s plenty of hardboiled atmosphere but this is definitely not noir fiction.

The Scented Flesh is a fairly average but very competent hardboiled PI thriller. As long as you don’t approach it with unrealistically high expectations it’s enjoyable. Recommended.

Armchair Fiction have paired this title with Owen Dudley’s rather good Run If You Can in a two-novel edition.

John Norman’s Nomads of Gor

Nomads of Gor, published in 1969, is the fourth book in John Norman’s Gor series.

This series has aroused lots of controversy due to the fact that it depicts a society in which female slavery is practised. In fact there’s nothing controversial in the first three books. They’re imaginative and intelligent science fiction/fantasy novels with some fine world-building. This fourth book does start to get into more controversial territory. It’s worth reading in order to find out what the fuss was all about.

The premise of the series is that there is, within our solar system, a hitherto undiscovered planet. It is the Counter-Earth and is known as Gor. It is inhabited by humans, but the animal life is decidedly non-terrestrial. Gor is ruled by the mysterious priest-kings. Gor is technologically primitive, roughly equal to mediæval Europe. There is no electricity. There are no cars or locomotives. There are no firearms. As you find out as you make your way through the series the actual situation is much more complicated. Things are not as they seem to be.

Tarl Cabot is an ordinary American, from Earth. He has been transported to Gor by means that seem magical but are not. He has a destiny on Gor.

I’m not going to spoil things by revealing anything about the true situation. And I’m going to avoid spoilers for the earlier books.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the Gor books have to be read in publication order. If you don’t read them this way you’ll be very confused. At least in the early books there are ongoing story arcs.

While the Gor novels can be enjoyed as exciting sword-and-planet style adventures (there’s plenty of action) John Norman is a philosopher and he used the Gor novels to explore various philosophical, political, social and cultural speculations. And speculations about sexual mores. He created a complex fictional alternative world with beliefs and values that may seem strange but of course the beliefs and values of every human society at various stages of those societies’ histories always seem strange to those brought up in other societies and at other times.

You don’t have to approve of the Gorean society that Norman describes. He is clearly trying to be provocative and to challenge our assumptions. I like that in a writer.

In Nomads of Gor Tarl Cabot finds himself among the People of the Wagons, fierce nomadic tribesmen from the southern part of Gor. Their society is similar to mainstream Gorean society in some ways, and very different in others. There are four main nomad tribes. Relations between these tribes are often uneasy. If the omens are favourable an overall leader can be appointed, but the omens never are favourable.

Tarl is carrying out a mission on behalf of the priest-kings. His first step has to be to persuade these nomads not to kill him out of hand. He does that. They take a liking to him.

What he didn’t expect to find among the nomads was an American girl named Elizabeth Cardwell, a girl from 1960s New York City. Her presence just doesn’t make sense.

Tarl and Kamchak, one of the subordinate nomad leaders. His tribe is laying siege to the city of Turia. Tarl thinks the solution to his quest may be in Turia.

There’s another woman who plays a key role in this story. Aphris is Turian. Kamchak is determined to own her. The emotional and sexual dynamics involving Tarl, Kamchak, Aphris and Elizabeth are complex but crucial. The relationship between Tarl and Elizabeth is central to the story.

Tarl has conflicted views about Gorean sexual mores. He accepts that Gorean society is based on different values. He isn’t sure that he can fully accept those values, but he can see that they make a kind of sense. A major theme of Nomads of Gor is Tarl’s struggle with his conflicted views. Does he want Elizabeth as his slave? He doesn’t think so, but maybe he does. Does she want to be his slave? She doesn’t think so, but maybe she does. Norman is challenging us to think about social organisation and sexual mores and the extent to which they are built on a proper understanding of human motivations and the extent to which they are built on our own social prejudices. The reader will either enjoy being challenged in this way, or will be shocked and offended. But Norman does have serious intentions.

Nomads of Gor is a fine entry in the Gor saga and I highly recommend it but read the first three books first.

I’ve reviewed those first three Gor novels here - Tarnsman of Gor, Outlaw of Gor and Priest-Kings of Gor.

Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Voyeur

The Voyeur, published in 1955, was Alain Robbe-Grillet’s third novel.

Robbe-Grillet was a leading light in the Nouveau Roman ( 'new novel') movement which emerged in France in the 1950s. Whether this can be considered a modernist or a postmodernist movement depends on how you define postmodernism, and nobody has ever been able to define postmodernism satisfactorily.

The Nouveau Roman writers were uninterested in conventional narratives. The Voyeur has a narrative, but it’s almost accidental. It’s as if the protagonist, Matthias, collects bits and pieces of evidence drawn from his observations and memories and it is possible from these elements to construct a narrative but there is no way to be sure that is is the correct one. In fact there is no way to be sure that there is any story at all. The story told by these items of evidence might be illusory, merely a result of the innate human desire to see events as forming patterns. Sometimes the patterns are real. Sometimes they’re just random observations.

Matthias is a watch salesman. He arrives on a small island, hoping for a successful sales trip. He was born on this island and has various memories connected with it, although we have to consider the possibility that he has never been there before.

Memories are triggered but Matthias knows that memories can be misleading or false. He meets an old school friend but he has no actual recollection of having ever set eyes on this fellow before.

While Matthias is on the island a terrible event occurs. It may be a shocking crime. A young girl is found dead. It may have been murder but for various reasons the evidence pointing to murder has to be regarded by the reader as very ambiguous. It is entirely possible that the girl fell from the cliff accidentally.

Matthias tries to reconstruct the events, and his own actions, from his memories of that fateful day. These memories may be mixed up with memories from his past, of things that may have happened to him years earlier. It is possible that those things really happened to him, but it is also possible that they never happened. Some of his memories seem to be constructed from stories he has heard about other people. Matthias seems to have difficulty separating other people’s experiences from his own. We might well suspect that Matthias is the sort of guy who reads detective stories and true crime stories. The newspaper cutting he carries around with him might be about a crime he committed, or it might simply be a story of a crime committed by someone else.

You could argue that in this novel Matthias may be playing the role of the detective, or the role of the perpetrator of a crime. If there was a crime.

Matthias’s memories are disturbing but at the same time he regards them with detachment. There are perhaps some existentialist elements to this novel. Matthias is an observer (hence the title). Is he a participant as well, or just an observer?

Matthias obsesses about time (it’s probably no coincidence that he makes his living selling wristwatches). Everything he does have to fit a timetable. He has only six hours on the island before he has to catch the steamer back to the mainland. He has to sell 89 wristwatches in that time. He needs to know how long each sale will take. If sales are slow early on he has to recalculate his timetable.

He has to know exactly how long it will take him to get back to the pier. That timetable has to be constantly revised as well.

Matthias is obsessed by numbers. He needs to know exactly how many wristwatches he needs to sell, and the wristwatches come in different styles with different prices. He does the calculations in his head again and again.

Matthias is constantly trying to piece together the story of his day on the island. Possibly not the story, but a story. A narrative. Memories and observations can be pieced together in different ways to make stories that are not necessarily the same story or the real story. He is doing what a novelist does - piecing together various plot elements in order to construct a narrative but the plot elements do not necessarily have to be put together in just one way. They can make different narratives. A novelist’s narrative does not have to be true. A novelist deals with stories but perhaps not with truth or reality. Perhaps there is no true narrative. A novelist’s narrative does however have to make sense on its own terms and it has to suit the novelist’s purpose.

Matthias is trying to construct a narrative that will suit his purpose. He is having a lot of difficulty doing this. He has to make a lot of revisions. A lot of recalculations.

It all sounds very dry and intellectual and very arty but in fact it’s very entertaining. There was always a playfulness about Robbe-Grillet’s work. And he hoped the reader (or the viewer in the case of his film) would enjoy the games as well. The Voyeur is highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Robbe-Grillet’s delightfully playful 1965 novel La Maison de rendez-vous. He was also a brilliant film director. I’ve reviewed many of his movies - the hypnotic L’immortelle (1963), his superb exercise in surrealism La Belle Captive (1983), the wildly strange and erotic Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) and the enticingly puzzling Playing with Fire (1975).

Happily the English translation of The Voyeur is easy to find.