Upcoming in film music: Schifrin, Jarre.

Film Score Monthly reports that the score to the spy film The Fourth Protocol (1987, book by Frederick Forsyth) will be out shortly after long unavailability; Lalo Schifrin is the composer (best known for the Mission Impossible theme).

Also interesting is the list of top sellers on the FSM Web site; no. 1 is the not yet released, limited-edition score to The Train (dir. John Frankenheimer and featuring Burt Lancaster, 1964) composed by Maurice Jarre.

David Goodis...To a Pulp (2010).

The documentary David Goodis ... To a Pulp seeks to illuminate the life and work of a major figure in American noir through interviews with relatives and associates and an examination of real-life influences on his fiction. Goodis was the first husband of Elaine Astor, the mother of filmmaker Larry Withers.

Recalling two Army nurses' deaths, 1917.

From left: Helen Burnett Wood, Edith Ayres, and Emma Matzen,
WWI Army nurses. Chicago Examiner 22 May 1917: 3.

As the centenary of the outbreak of World War I approaches, let us remember on this Memorial Day the nearly 200 American women who died in the line of duty during the war. Many of their deaths are attributed to the flu epidemic, but there were deaths such as those of Army nurses Helen Burnett Wood (Evanston, IL) and Edith Ayres (Attica, OH). En route to France, they were hit by a ricocheting shell on May 20, 1917, as the SS Mongolia conducted target practice; their fellow nurse, Emma Matzen (Columbus, NE), was injured. The official Senate inquiry provides graphic details about the incident. Wood and Ayres were buried with military honors; Matzen recovered and went on to duty in France.

Arsenic, the Marsh test, and mystery fiction.

In the May/June 2014 issue of Museum Notes, William B. Jensen (emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Cincinnati) discusses the Marsh test for arsenic (named for British chemist James Marsh), its first use in a trial, and its place in mystery fiction (mentioning its appearances in Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison and R. Austin Freeman's The Cat's Eye).

Hell Is a City (1960).

Stanley Baker in
Hell Is a City

Important in the evolution of the police procedural, Hell Is a City (U.S. book title: Somewhere in This City) was written by ex-police officer Maurice Procter as the first of his Granchester series. Directed by Val Guest (The Quatermass Xperiment), the film features the always interesting Stanley Baker, Billie Whitelaw, and Donald Pleasence. Baker's Inspector Harry Martineau hunts for an prison escapee in gritty Manchester (filmed on location).

Whitman's story of murder.

Walt Whitman. NYPL.

In the "Story of the Week," Library of America features Walt Whitman's "One Wicked Impulse!," which deals with the ironic aftermath of the murder of a unscrupulous lawyer. The introduction to "Impulse" mentions that the story was first published in 1845 and reprinted in the January 1954 EQMM.

Rose Macaulay's Mystery at Geneva (1922).

"They must be found, gentlemen. Alive or (unthinkable thought) dead, they must be found. The Assembly must do nothing else until this sinister mystery is unravelled. We must employ detectives. We must follow every clue."

Miss Longfellow said, "My! Isn't it all quite too terribly sinister!" (Rose Macaulay, Mystery at Geneva 110)

Rose Macaulay by W. W. Seaton
Shadowland Mar-Aug 1923

In catching up with U-Ghent professor Kate Macdonald's podcast Why I Really Like This Book, I was intrigued by the episode on Dame Rose Macaulay's Mystery at Geneva (1922). I was familiar with Macaulay (1881–1958) as a satirical novelist (for example, The Towers of Trebizond) and an inspiration to younger Somervillians Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby, but did not know about this mystery sidelight that features Macaulay's feminist commentary and a journalist investigating disappearing delegates from the League of Nations. "A mystery without distinction," sniffed the Bookman. "[... E]veryone will enjoy Miss Macaulay's running fire of lively and humorous comment upon the human comedy and the fools we mortals are," countered N. P. Dawson in Shadowland. "A fascinating novel," adds Kate (whose specialties include thriller writers John Buchan and Dornford Yates).

No Hands on the Clock (1941).

Adapted from the novel by screenwriter-author Daniel Mainwaring (who wrote as Geoffrey Homes and is best known for Build My Gallows High, aka Out of the Past), No Hands on the Clock features Chester Morris as a fast-talking PI on the trail of a missing person. He learns that the case is connected to a string of bank heists, which interests the G-men. Jean Parker co-stars.

ABA Journal's contest for legal short fiction.

Raymond Burr as lawyer Craig Carlson
in Please Murder Me (1956)

The ABA Journal is having a writing contest for legal short fiction; the submission deadline is June 30.

Eight Witnesses (1954).

In Eight Witnesses, a scientist is murdered, and the only witnesses are eight blind people. Peggy Ann Garner stars in a story by screenwriter Halsted Welles (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mannix, 3:10 to Yuma, Rod Serling's Night Gallery).

Guardian review, Ellroy companion.

In the Guardian, P. D. Smith has reviewed the James Ellroy companion (written by Jim Mancall and edited by me): "this A-Z guide is an essential key to unlock the complexities of one of America's most distinctive and powerful writers."

James Madison and zombies.

Many of you probably have been worrying about this, but William Baude of University of Chicago's law school finally has addressed the question of whether zombies have rights under the US Constitution. There's also Adam Chodorow's "Death and Taxes and Zombies," for those wondering if tax law applies to brain-eaters. (thanks, Law and Humanities blog)

Dishonored Lady (1947).

Troubled former magazine editor Hedy Lamarr faces a murder charge in Dishonored Lady (1947, dir. Robert Stevenson), based on the play by Pulitzer Prize winner Margaret Ayer Barnes and her longtime friend, Edward Sheldon, that starred American theater legend Katharine Cornell. Its subject matter is the Madeleine Smith poisoning case of 1857 (featured also in David Lean's Madeleine, 1949). Barnes and Sheldon successfully sued MGM for plagiarism of their play in the studio's film of Letty Lynton (1932)—Marie Belloc Lowndes's version of the Smith case.

Jackson receives Dove Award.

The latest recipient of the George N. Dove Award of the PCA's Detective/ Mystery Caucus is Christine Jackson (Nova Southeastern University, FL). The award is presented for contributions to the serious study of mystery and crime fiction. Jackson's publications include The Tell-Tale Art: Poe in Modern Popular Culture; she also has an article in the latest issue of Clues on Tana French.

The underappreciated Msgr. Ronald Knox.

Bust of Ronald A. Knox
by Arthur Pollen

Benjamin Welton pens an appreciation of Monsignor Ronald A. Knox (1888–1957), famed for his Detective Story Decalogue, his creation of sleuth Miles Bredon (I like his Footsteps at the Lock), and his launch of serious studies of Sherlock Holmes with this lecture. Welton calls Knox's Bredon works "charming, almost whimsical novels."

Trapped (1949).

More from the Bridges family: In Trapped (directed by Soylent Green's Richard Fleischer), the Treasury enlists counterfeiter Lloyd Bridges in its efforts to smash a counterfeiting ring.

New in thriller music.

Some items re mystery film music, thanks to Scott Bettencourt at Film Score Monthly:

• The new The Man in Half Moon Street showcases the compositions of Miklos Rozsa, providing music from this 1945 thriller as well as some of his work for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946).

• A two-CD set has been released of Bruce Broughton's soundtrack for Young Sherlock Holmes (1985).

• Also released is the original soundtrack by Michael Small for Child's Play (a 1972 thriller directed by Sidney Lumet that features James Mason, Robert Preston, and Beau Bridges)

The return of J. B. Priestley's doctor-sleuth.

Valancourt Books follows up its reprinting of playwright-novelist-BBC broadcaster J. B. Priestley's Benighted with his sole novel featuring an amateur sleuth, Salt Is Leaving (1966). A retiring doctor suspects foul play when a patient who requires regular treatment suddenly goes incommunicado. (A review appears here from the Victoria [TX] Advocate.)

Cottage to Let (aka Bombsight Stolen, 1941).

In Cottage to Let (dir. Anthony Asquith—son of the prime minister), a new bombsight proves irresistible to Nazis, the RAF, and Scotland Yard. The film features Alastair Sim, John Mills, and Michael Wilding and is adapted from a play by Geoffrey Kerr (father of actor-lawyer John Kerr, who is probably best known for his role in South Pacific). Also see Yvette Banek's earlier take on the film.

"Le Sherlock Holmes Américain."

L'Affaire Bardouillet, one of the
adventures of Harry Dickson by Jean Ray
repr. Belgian publisher Le Cri

Harvard's Houghton Library blog features its copies of Harry Dickson—"le Sherlock Holmes Américain"—a pulp series penned by Belgian author Jean Ray (aka Raymundus Joannes de Kremer, John Flanders, and "the Belgian Poe") that had its beginnings in dime novels published from 1907 to 1911.