Casablanca 1943 DVD and a book

 

Simon & Schuster paperback - 1992

This week's jaunt to London included the usual stop at Judd's Books in Marchmont Street. I kept a tight rein on my spending hand but came away with a paperback on the making of the famous movie Casablanca. I read it at two evening sittings in the Caledonian Club. It proved to be a fascinating, well-researched account which included so many things I never knew. The aggressive, explosive, charming, irritating, egomaniacal, emotional Jack Warner, a dictator who ran Warner Bros. took the credit at the Oscars, whilst chagrined Hal Wallis, the producer and second in-command at Warner Bros had to sit and watch. The origin of Casablanca was a three-act play called Everybody Comes to Rick's, which Murray Burnett wrote with Joan Allison in 1940. Late in 1941 the script found its way to the New York office of Warner Bros. The rest is History. 

Reading about the 'obstacles' faced (no comparison with combatants in the War) - casting an all-star production, writing an acceptable version of the script (up until the proverbial 11th hour) - is also very interesting. Early ideas for the parts Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman would finally play, included Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan. For Bogart, following six years of studio build up, the time had come for a breakthrough - and the leap into the top ranks of Hollywood stars. Often playing parts rejected by George Raft, it was ironic that the latter, who had refused assignments such as box-office hits as High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon and The Sea Wolf, for once, tried to get the Rick part. Before Bergman, Wallis toyed with Hedy Lamarr but Bergman was chosen due to her natural beauty and gentle accent...and a warm, elegant presence unlike any other leading actress. For the part of Victor Laszlo, the Czechoslovakian underground leader, Joseph Cotten wasn't available, so the choice was Paul Henreid, an Austrian émigré - who agreed, as long as he got the girl in the end and received equal billing.

Gradually, the co-starring roles were filled: Dooley Wilson as Sam, whose singing voice Wallis wanted to dub; the solid theatre actor, Claude Rains, as Captain Louis Renault; and Conrad Veidt (in real life a violent anti-Nazi!) as Major Heinrich Straser. Veidt at $25,000 a week, was the highest paid performer on the payroll. Two further supporting roles were cast: Peter Lorre as Ugarte, the murderer of the two German couriers; and Sydney Greenstreet as Senor Ferrari, head of Casablanca's black market. 'Character' actors, to me, usually mean actors who can only play themselves. I never thought much of Lorre in any of his films. Madeleine LeBeau, the 19 year-old real-life émigré from France, only briefly appears as Rick's discarded mistress. In the 1990s she explained why: It wasn't that I was cut out, it was because they kept changing the script and each time they changed it, I had less of a part. It was not personal, but I was so disappointed.

Another key signing was Michael Curtiz as director - he had directed costume adventures (Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk), musicals (Yankee Doodle Dandy, White Christmas) and westerns (Dodge City), but his part in Casablanca's success led to an Academy Award. Curtiz was notorious for all-compassing work habits and a temperament that swung from calm to rage and back again within seconds. He was also renowned for his use and abuse of the English language: "Next time I send some fool for something I go myself"; "I'm worried because I'm so optimistic"; and "Bring on the empty horses". He also developed a reputation for an unyielding sexual appetite!

The script kept changing and falling behind schedule; Claude Rains was still on another assignment, as was Paul Henreid - this led to scene juggling; the actors often did not know what words they would be using - we were shooting off the cuff, Bergman recalled, Every day they were handing out dialogue and we were trying to make some sense of it; originally planned to be shot in the back, Strasser would now face Rick's gun; Captain Renault's sexual indiscretions were systematically downplayed to pass the censors; shortages of raw materials meant wall panels, flooring, window frames etc. were scavenged from recent productions

There was also the element of luck or good timing. Two immense coincidences occurred to assist the film's rise to success. Warner Bros. originally intended to release the movie during the 1943 summer season.  Then, in November 1942, the Americans invaded North Africa - one of the landing spots was Casablanca! The city was headlines in every newspaper, magazine and radio programme. The premiere was quickly set for 26th November - Thanksgiving Day - only 19 days after the Allied landing. Then, on 24th January 1943, a conference between the Big Three - Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - was announced - location? Casablanca!

DVD - 1999

Having read the book, I found watching the film even more enjoyable. It 'glued' together very well; the actors were naturals in their respective parts; the scenes were atmospheric; the periods of tension well directed. Why Bergman was already thinking of For Whom the Bell Tolls, I don't know. A much inferior film with inferior acting throughout. 

Andy McDermott's 'Rogue Asset' 2021

 

Headline Publishing paperback - 2022

I quote from an Amazon review: Alex Reeve, operative 66 agent of the secret organisation SC9, has been wrongly accused of treason and lives in Italy under a new name, but his opponents manage to track him down. He has material (on a memory stick) which could blow open deep knowledge of the clandestine organisation's trail of assassinations.

Far-fetched. That's the word (or hyphenated two words) I grasped for after finishing this thriller. I noticed on the page opposite the title page it gave a list of Andy McDermott's novels so far. There are 15, plus a digital short story, relating the exploits of Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase. The titles could easily have been from Scott Mariani's Ben Hope series - or the thrillers of Raymond Khoury and Chris Kuzneski. I see this was only the second featuring Alex Reeve and can only assume this is the start of a new series. I think it probably would have helped to have read the first novel, Operative 66, to get more of the 'back story' to Reeve. As it was, the reader had to take as read the hatred that Reeve had for his father, the set up of SC9 (well into the book we find out this refers, mundanely, to the room along the corridor - South wing, floor C, room 9 - in a block run for the Office for Interdepartmental Communications [OfIC] ), headed by its fanatical megalomaniac Sir Simon Scott, and the ambivalent Tony Maxwell, who wants to succeed Scott.

All this fits into the usual thriller style. However, the just-about-possible exploits of Jason Bourne, Ben Hope and others have jumped a further step, to highly unlikely or Mission Impossible. This is most palpable in the final pursuit of Reeve - in a slow-moving red-and-black hatchback Lancia Ypsilon - by a cadre of SC9 operatives, which lasts from page 348 to page 404. They use a silver 4 x 4 Discovery, a black 4 x 4 Discovery, a stolen Arbarth 124 Spider convertible sports car, and a stolen Suzuki SV650 motorbike to create havoc along the Italian autostrada. The writing is taut, tense, detailed - and descriptive of the impossible! Haring up a three-lane motorway, then a two-lane dual carriageway with no hard shoulder, against the flow of heavy traffic, Reeve finally gets to Venice, only to be catapulted off a bridge into the water. He survives to kill one of the most fanatical of operatives, Blake. As Scott exploded: He's just one man. How the hell have you not killed him by now? Three other operatives have lost their lives in the chase and, now, Scott himself is shot dead by Maxwell. Everyone seems to have remarkable powers of recovery - from beatings, fisticuffs, being shot at, car windows shattered - especially Reeve.

There are some believable cameos - Alison (Ally) Marks, one-time freckle-cheeked, curly-haired tomboy, Reeve's (or Dominic's) first girlfriend, still with a torch for him and willing to hide him away; Micky Rowland, his best mate as boys, now turned drug courier and rotten to the core; Deirdre Flynn, one of the operatives, keen and dedicated; and Garald Kazimirovich Morozov, member of the SVR, successor to the feared KGB, who worked for the Directorate S: the Illegal Intelligence department, whose job was simple - eliminate enemies of the Russian state. Both Flynn and Morozov are destined to die for their causes, by the machinations of Reeve.

McDermott is also quite good at delineating the inter-service rivalry between MI5, MI6 and GCSQ; but the dominance of Scott and the fictional SC9 is hard to take. There is a feeling that the ending is being twisted to make way for another book in the series. Maxwell is now head of SC9 - his view of Reeve? - Leave him alone...there was no reason to disturb the status quo. Unless Reeve himself disturbed it. Reeve decides to part with his girlfriend Connie, to save her from SC9 or the Russians. To be linked up with Jason Bourne, or Ben Hope or Alex Reeve (in fact, really Dominic Finch) means trouble or the worst. 

I read the book in two sittings - light relief in a way, but every so often I had to murmur not possible!

John le Carré's 'Silverview' 2021

 

Penguin paperback edition - 2022

I think this is the first John le Carré novel I have read; ironically it was his last and published posthumously by his youngest son, Nick Cornwell, who writes as Nick Harkaway. I was looking for a single word to summarise my feeling about the book and I think I found it in Dan Stewart's review of last October - muted. ...frustratingly, Silverview also feels unfinished - not in its narrative, but in the bits in between major plot points. Le Carré's  keen observational style and grasp of psychological depth seems muted here. Characters and locations feel only sketched out; the central character of Julian, the bookseller, is especially thinly drawn. The motive for the act of betrayal at the book's centre is never explained by the character responsible for it and only guessed at by others. Once you've completed the puzzle, it somehow feels as if some pieces are still missing. I couldn't put it better myself. Even though it is the only book of the author's I have read, I, too, felt it was almost going through formulaic motions - a serviceable but unambitious thriller. I particularly liked Stewart's summing up: Silverview, then, is more a drinkable blended whisky than the vintage malt.

Silverview gained generally favourable reviews from literary critics. However, The New York Times noted that it finished abruptly and felt incomplete; whilst Time also commented on its feeling unfinished. It also suggested that le Carré's 2017 novel, A Legacy of Spies, was a more fitting swansong for his career.

Oliver Ransford's 'The Slave Trade' 1971

Readers Union first edition - 1972

Somewhere between 14 and 20 million Africans were forcibly transported to America during the course of the Atlantic slave trade; at least a similar number of black men, women and children perished during the wars initiated by the slavers or died from hardship while being driven from the African interior to the coast. From 1444, when six Portuguese caravels, dropped anchor in the Bay of Arguin, on the Guinea coast, until well into the 19th century this infamous trade went on. Ransford does not spare us the grisly details, but I came away feeling that the author had shown a sense of balance when it (however rarely) was due. The Slavers' coast of Africa stretched from the Bay of Arguin and the mouth of the Senegal River, past Cape Verde and Cape Palmas, taking in the Grain, Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, before turning south at the Gulf of Benin, to end up on the Angolan coast 2,000 miles or so onward.

Domestic slavery flourished long before the arrival of the white men although, generally speaking, the slaves were well treated. Urged on by Henry the Navigator from his base at Sagres, the Portuguese caravels travelled further and further in pursuit of gold, ivory and spices. The other valuable commodity was black slaves. Consciences were assuaged by the Bull of Pope Nicholas V which authorised them to attack, subject, and reduce to perpetual slavery the Saracens, Pagans, and other enemies of Christ...including all the coast of Guinea. Now, there's a surprise.

The Atlantic slave trade relied heavily for its prosecution on the co-operation of African middlemen. The slave trade was a partnership between African sellers and European buyers of slaves. Chapter 5, The Middle Passage, is particularly gruesome. Rounded up on slave hunting expeditions, the captives were held in barracoons until the next slave ship appeared. If not selected, the 'useless' ones were taken away and killed behind the palm trees.

The horrific 'packing' on a slave-ship

Packed like the proverbial sardines, the Africans experienced hell-like conditions on the voyage. Those who died in transit were simply thrown overboard. A 12% loss was accepted with equanimity by the slavers. Once they reached the West Indies, it was pot luck whether they were bought by tyrants or considerate owners. Islands like Barbados depended directly on slave labour. Meanwhile the West Indian sugar magnates became famous in Britain for their affluence. They dazzled society (similar to the Indian nabobs?) The author is good at describing the conditions on the islands, where most planters were both racists and racialists, often using professional floggers to maintain discipline.

Further chapters on the slave plantations in America and Brazil lead on to an account of the attempts by English abolitionists to end, at least, the trade in slaves. Three figures loom large in the story - Granville Sharp, the father of the abolition movement; Thomas Clarkson, who took over the 'torch'; and William Wilberforce, who brought the movement to Parliament.  A three-pronged attack developed: press propaganda, pamphlets and sermons; an attempt to embargo products derived from slave labour; and parliamentary reform. One chapter deals with the maelstrom that was Haiti (and Santo Domingo).  Toussaint L'Ouverture (b. 1746), Jean Jaques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe (b.1767) play the major roles in the tragic story of this benighted island. This chapter alone makes the reader recoil in horror at the goings-on.

A further chapter deals with the USA. Until 1860, eleven of the sixteen Presidents were slave owners. In the South it was the norm. Then came little Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe, with her Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851). She provided a mirror in which America could examine itself...for the first time had caused them to realise that a passive abstention from humanity was a vote to uphold these evils. The Vatican decided to include the book in its Index, since it was subversive of established authority. You couldn't make it up. It wasn't ignored in America and Civil War erupted (not  mainly due to the slavery question, but to save the Union). As Lincoln said, If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it.

This book was published in 1972, exactly 50 years ago. Yet its final paragraph could be written today:

The slave trade was the largest factor in producing the multiracial societies of the world in which we now live. Many of us may not very much like these societies, and even in a sophisticated country like England racial tension is increasing. But they are a fact of life today, and we have to live with multi-racialism. To find a peaceful way of doing so is presently mankind's most important task. So true.

I'm All Right Jack 1959 film

 

1959 film poster

After the disappointment of For Whom the Bell Tolls, this was a relief, albeit a light one. I'm Alright Jack is dated (but really remarkably up to date); it's silly, some of the acting barely passes, as well-known British character actors trundle through their character acts, BUT it's good fun.  Poking fun at both sleazy management and Neanderthal  union members is bound to get laughs. The main actors feel as if the parts were written just for them: Ian Carmichael as the incompetent, well-meaning Stanley Windrush; Peter Sellers as the trade-union leader Fred Kite; Terry-Thomas as the lazy personnel manager Major Hitchcock; Dennis Price as Stanley's uncle, Bertram Tracepurcel, and Richard Attenborough as Bertram's old army comrade, Sydney DeVere Cox - both trying to swindle government and everyone else; the three main women - Margaret Rutherford as Aunt Dolly, Irene Handl as Mrs Kite and Liz Fraser as Cynthia Kite, all mucking in with abandon. Then there are the bit parts, made up of the afore-mentioned character actors - John Le Mesurier, Raymond Huntley, Miles Malleson, Kenneth Griffiths, John Comer, Sam Kydd, Cardew Robinson, Ronnie Stevens and Terry Scott (I never found him funny). All are incompetent, corrupt, smug and amazingly selfish, with Stanley trying to plough a lone and lonely furrow between them.

There are some amusing scenes, such as Stanley's early forays at "Detto" making washing detergent, at "Num-Yum" making processed cakes - in all adding up to 11 interviews in 10 days. Finally he is taken on at his uncle's Missiles Ltd factory - unbeknown to him, to cause chaos. His over-keenness at his job leads to a strike, led by the humourless Fred Kite. It doesn't help that Stanley is lodging at Kite's home and making progress with his sexy daughter, Cynthia. Further ructions occur - only when on a TV programme, hosted by the real Malcolm Muggeridge, Stanley reveals to the viewers the underhanded motivations of all concerned (he throws DeVere Cox's bribe money into the air) does everything come into the open. The film ends, like the opening, at the Sunnyglades Nudist Camp, where his father resides, fleeing from naked women; the difference is that, this time, he is naked. All very jolly.

2018 DVD

For Whom the Bell Tolls 1943 film

 

1943 film poster

Mmnn. I was very disappointed with this movie as I had been quite looking forward to watching it. It was produced and directed by Sam Wood and starred Garry Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff, Katina Paxinou and Joseph Calleia. The script was based on Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel. It details the story of an American International Brigades volunteer, Robert Jordan (Cooper), who is fighting in the Spanish Civil War against the Franco led fascists. During his mission to blow up a strategically important bridge to protect the Republican forces, Jordan falls in love with a young woman guerilla fighter (Bergman). It was the second-highest grossing film of 1943 (earning $6.3 million in the USA and Canada) and, on a reissue in 1957, accumulated an additional $800,000. After adjustments for inflation and the size of the population when released, it ranks among the top 100 popular movies of all time at the domestic box office.

So, why was I not impressed? Apart from a powerful section where a small group of Republican guerillas, having taken up a position behind a outcrop of rocks on a small hill, were bombed to bits by aeroplanes, I found much of the film rather boring. Too much time was spent on the relationship between Cooper and Bergman. Was it a war film with a built-in love story, or a love-story with a war background?  Although this was Bergman's first Technicolour movie, she had already starred in the successful Intermezzo (1939) and Casablanca (1942). Here, in my opinion, she was miscast - I thought her acting was not believable, particular when, from the first, she had moon-eyes for Cooper*. A pity, as she is one of my favourite actresses (see Notorious). Cooper, I have always found rather wooden and lacking in charisma - most women would probably disagree with me! The various Spanish actors seemed to border on caricatures. The action round the bridge, and the bridge itself, were also disappointing - was everything done on the cheap? The enemy's tanks were patently not made of metal and even the rocks often appeared 'fake'. 

Jordan, of course, has the bell 'tolling' for him at the end; but I didn't not feel any great sympathy. I wonder if I should try Hemingway's book? It would be a first and I feel I have so many more interesting authors to read first.

* I have just read she had an affair with Cooper during the filming!

2016 DVD

Gordon Stables' 'The Cruise of the Rover Caravan' 1896

James Nesbit first edition - 1896

What a fascinating man Gordon Stables must have been. A born raconteur, he wrote over 130 books, mainly for boys - adventure fiction often with a nautical or historical setting. He was born in Aberchirder, Banffshire in 1837, and as a child loved to wander free in the countryside and developed a deep love of nature. He described himself as a born wanderer and, whilst still a student, travelled twice to the Arctic. He joined the Navy as an Assistant Ship Surgeon in February 1863 to the 39-gun frigate Narcissus. His naval experiences led him to write his first book Medical Life in the Navy. He saw service in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and off the West African coast. He later served in the Merchant Service, gaining first-hand experience of South America and Australia. In 1874, he married and settled down at Twyford in Berkshire. To supplement his income he turned to his writing, which often appeared in serial form before publication as novels. He contributed to Chambers Journal, Cassell's Magazine and, for more than 30 years, to the Boy's Own Paper.  What a life!

William Gordon Stables (1837-1910)

I first came across his work when I was given a copy of The Gentleman Gipsy, published by The Kylin Press in 1984. This had been originally printed in the Leisure Hour in 1885 and 1886 and then, in book form, as The Cruise of the Land Yacht Wanderer: Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan. With his coachman John and Foley, the 20-year-old valet, cum cook, who rode ahead on a Ranelagh club tricycle to warn other road users and seek out the least hilly routes, he passed through Ashby de la Zouch - hence my particular interest. They were accompanied by Hurricane Bob, a Newfoundland dog, and Polly, a snowy white parrot who could play the guitar with her beak. No wonder, they regularly attracted locals as they passed through the towns and villages.

The Cruise of the Rover Caravan was a fictionalised version of the author's travels round Britain. Young Carleton Radcliffe, a thorough English boy, with a face that gave promise of healthful and robust manhood yet to come (but confined to his chair or a wheel-bed for some months, due to a weak spine), and his muscular Christian Canadian cousin, Douglas Stuart, very handsome...square-shouldered,...nearly six feet high are persuaded by their Uncle Ben, with a life-time at sea behind him, to have a caravan built and go off to explore England and Scotland. They are accompanied by Lady Bute the St. Bernard, Kammy the chameleon and Linten Lowerin, the cat, who get into all sorts of scrapes on the journey. 

Gordon Stables and his caravan The Wanderer

It's a good yarn. The boys meet up with adventures, involving gipsies (one of whom, a young girl Neeta, who had masses of jetty hair, ends up marrying Carleton) and some diabolical weather - particularly in Scotland. They appear to do exactly as they want, staying for days in the New Forest, the Norfolk Broads and the Scottish highlands. Like good Victorian boys, they say their prayers at night, go to church on a Sunday and are honest (Douglas thrashes a deceitful ostler at one inn), thoughtful and brave. No wonder the author came top in a poll of readers of The Boy's Own Paper in the issue of 25th March 1899, ahead of competition that included Jules Verne.

After an eventful journey of many hundreds of miles - through Merrie England and Bonnie Scotland, the boys return home, the caravan pulled by the ever-faithful Dick Swiveller and a light canvas-covered cart, pulled by Hans a Shetland Pony, controlled by fourteen-year-old 'Major' Buffles, page and kitchen-boy at Carelton's home for over a year, who had become the general factotum to the two boys. Stables rounds off his  tale with an 'epilogue' six long years later. Carelton is now master of his home, Pine Lodge, living there with Neeta, his mother and bluff old sailor Uncle Ben. Douglas is a wealthy farmer in Canada; Dick is still alive; so is Hans the daft wee Shetland pony; dear Lady Bute is eight and is good-looking as ever; Linten Lowerin means to live until he is nineteen; Polly Gordon is as saucy as ever - she may live till she is ninety; Major Buffles is not quite so fat now; poor Kammy died in reality one cold frosty night. So all's well that ends well (apart from Kammy) for two upright Victorian young men, their family and animals, and the little gipsy girl, whose father actually turned out to be an Italian count!

Two Walter S. Masterman crime stories

 

                         Hutchinson Crime Book No. 30             Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' No. 22

I now have two more Walter S. Masterman mystery/crime stories under my belt. The Blood-Hounds Bay is the first paperback I have purchased in Hutchinson's Crime-Book Society Series. The latter are quite hard to find in decent condition.  I must not get drawn in to another pursuit of 'sets', as I see there were 33 Published by 1938, with Further titles in preparation. Masterman's novel is quite well knit together, with a horrific murder as early as page 11 and a quite intricate pursuit of clues, which include secret passages and a vault in a gloomy mansion's private chapel. The setting is the ancient 'Abbey' of Severinge, where the elderly Sir Henry Severinge has been somewhat of a recluse. An interesting angle is that the young 'hero' not only is a foundling but has engaged in petty crime for much of his life: He mixed with men - good and evil - and learnt much... He had known the underworld - had been taught to thieve or keep watch while others did; honesty and dishonesty came alike to him, as long as he could fill his stomach and have small sums to spend. So, he is the curate's egg - good in parts. The development of the plot draws him in to the quest for the murderer, mainly because he not only witnessed the murder (he was about to burgle the abbey at the time) but he glimpses a girl from a first floor window as he escapes: women did not interest him. Here was a vision that would remain with him to his last day. The end of the novel comes before his Day of Judgement. In fact, dear reader, he marries Sylvia, the girl, and, presumably, lives happily ever after. 

There are the usual cast members - a long-serving and rather mysterious butler, James; Bert Hucks, an ex-pugilist innkeeper; Mrs Thornton, a nasty busybody who works for Sir Henry; Colonel Graham, a retired officer of the old school, who exercised the self-assurance that comes from generations of ruling and kept the ferocious blood-hounds of the book's title; and young Richard Selden, sent by Scotland Yard and who's been trained in the very latest methods, and has passed through the school with distinction; a local Plod, Hutchins, whose nose is put out of joint by the presence of Selden. There are also the naughty Lady Severinge who is engaged in a not very clandestine affair with Eric Colindale, the land agent. Essentially it's a tale of cold revenge - but by whom? Selden and 'Jack Reid', the aforementioned hero of the story, eventually track down the culprits, after one or two red herrings and grisly descriptions.

The Baddington Horror is in the 'Jackdaw Library' and is last of the general series, before Jarrolds started the Jackdaw 'Crime' books. It is in the same vein as The Blood-Hounds Bay and cleverer readers than me could immediately tell it was another Masterman tale. There is once again a mysterious house - Baddington Court; an old owner, the deeply unpleasant and hated Sir Ernest Faber, judge of the High Court; another young hero with a mysterious past, Henry Forster, who falls in love with Doreen Glynne (he rescues her from a London Underground track), the step-daughter of Sir Ernest; an allegedly deaf old gardener, Giles; a half-witted young village boy, named Peters; a Scotland Yard detective - but an elderly one who has retired, Sir Arthur Sinclair; a seeming villain, an ex-prisoner named Banks; and, inevitably, a butler - long-serving William. 

This time the murder is announced on the very first page. The quest is to work out how the murdered man ghost-like reappears; what is the secret of the enclosed garden, where the murder took place; who is not telling all they know; and which are the red herrings. There is again a local pub, no bloodhounds, but something 'nasty in the woodshed' - the problem is, where is the secret door? Did the butler do it, or was it the family lawyer? Masterman weaves his undoubtedly skilful spell again. The characters stand up and the scenes are well laid out. I'm sure it won't be the last story I read of his - as long as they are in 1930s paperback format!