The Winds of Dune, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Traditional Mysteries is mostly about mystery fiction and film, but I've added a category for Arthurian legends and one for the Dune books, as created by Frank Herbert.

The Winds of Dune
by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
2009

Much as Paul of Dune set out to fill the gap between the events of Dune and Dune Messiah, so too does The Winds of Dune seek to fill the gaps between that latter volume and Children of Dune, the third book in the original Dune series. Did you get all that? If not, please consult your scorecard.

It's a volume that might just as easily have been called Bronso of Ix, although that probably wouldn't have done much for sales. I don't recall much, if anything, being said about Bronso in the original Frank Herbert books. But in several of the sequels and prequels he is included as Paul Atreide's childhood friend, though they later become estranged. Bronso spends much of this book spreading propaganda aimed at taking the increasingly messianic and tyrannical new emperor down a few notches.

While Paul makes a very brief appearance here, much of the novel plays out in that period after he's disappeared into the desert at the end of Dune Messiah but before the events of Frank Herbert's next book start. There are also flashbacks to some childhood events that are focused mostly on the Bronso/Paul relationship.

One of the more fascinating characters in the Dune world, at least for my money, was Alia, Paul's younger sister, who is born with all of the abilities of a full-blown Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. Unfortunately, in Herbert's Children of Dune, as well as here, she was painted a little too neatly as a maniacal villain type. Which I found a waste of potential, given the directions such an interesting character might have taken.

As with the previous two Dune sequel/prequels that I reviewed here, The Winds of Dune was entertaining enough but hardly knocked me out of my seat. If you can't get enough Dune you'll probably like it well enough, but if you haven't read the original books in the series yet I'd recommend focusing your efforts there.

Sisterhood of Dune, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Traditional Mysteries is mostly about mystery fiction and film, but I've added a category for Arthurian legends and one for the Dune books, as created by Frank Herbert.

Sisterhood of Dune
By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
2012

In hindsight I realize that it might have been best to read the first three books of the Dune series before trying Sisterhood of Dune. That's the first three books chronologically, as they play out in the Dune universe, not the first three to be written. It's a trilogy that chronicles the war between men and intelligent machines that constitutes the Butlerian Jihad, an era only mentioned in passing in the "proper" Dune books, as I recall.

While the title Sisterhood of Dune suggested to me that it would be focused primarily on the Bene Gesserit, who play such an important role in the series, that's not entirely the case. Their formative years are covered here, in a book that commences about a century after the events of the aforementioned jihad, but a number of the other groups, schools or whatever you want to call them are covered as well, including the Suk medical practitioners, an early version of CHOAM and the Spacing Guild, the human computers known as the Mentats, and the Swordmasters school.

If that wasn't enough we see a continuation, more or less, of the man vs. machine theme, as the fanatical anti-technology crusader Manford Torondo wreaks havoc on a number of fronts. We also are presented with a variety of sub-plots that deal with early ancestors of the Atreides, the Harkonnens, and the ruling Corrino family. There's even a short foray to the planet which gave the series its name - Arrakis aka Dune - where we encounter the Fremen, or as they're still known in this day and age - the Freemen.

Which is a pretty full plate and I've probably missed a few stray ingredients here and there. It's a reasonably entertaining look at the formative years of various entities that make up the Dune universe but it's obviously pretty far removed from the world of Frank Herbert's original books. Not surprisingly, what I found the most interesting were those all too brief segments that did actually take place on Dune. The big downsides for me this time around, various characters - including Torondo - who seemed just a bit too villainous and all around blackhatted to be entirely believable.

Ultimately, I found Sisterhood of Dune reasonably diverting, but I don't see myself ever coming back around for a re-reading, something I've done countless times with the first four of the Frank Herbert volumes.

Paul of Dune, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Traditional Mysteries is mostly about mystery fiction and film, but I've added a category for Arthurian legends and one for the Dune books, as created by Frank Herbert.

Paul of Dune
By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
2008

If you read Frank Herbert's first two Dune books, Dune and Dune Messiah, then it probably didn't escape your attention that there was a significant gap between the two. At the end of the first book Paul Atreides and his Fremen forces have defeated the Emperor and claimed the planet Arrakis for their own. As the second book takes up, Atreides is now the Emperor himself and is reluctantly presiding over a bloody jihad that has already killed billions and which he seems powerless to stop.

Which is where Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Paul of Dune fits into the larger picture. I haven't read any Dune books for quite some time and I only read a few of this duo's books back, so I was surprised to see that they've now written about twice as many as Frank Herbert's original six volumes.

Paul of Dune essentially spins two main stories, though each contains the usual myriad of plot threads that readers of the Dune series have come to expect. The main story deals with what happened during that missing decade or so between the first and second books. It's a passably interesting version and worth a look, though given what would come later in the series it seems that the authors laid it on a little thick with the new Emperor's lapses into tyrannical behavior.

The other story, and the one that didn't interest me nearly as much, finds us hearkening back to the days just before Dune takes place, with a variety of incidents that take place in the life of young Paul Atreides. Not bad stuff really, but for my money the authors could have jettisoned all of it and focused primarily on that other plot strand.

Having only read one or two of these ancillary volumes before and not having read any Dune books at all for quite some time I couldn't help wondering if this one would hold my interest. Aside from the aforementioned reservations, I'd say that it did for the most part. It didn't match up to the first four of the "real" Dune books, my favorites of the lot, but for serious fans it's probably worth a look.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Murders in the Rue Morgue
CBS Radio Mystery Theater
1975

I've got to confess that The Murders in the Rue Morgue is one of the Poe stories I've never actually gotten around to reading. So when I listened to this adaptation made for the CBS Radio Mystery Theater I didn't really have a frame of reference for what I was hearing. Given that, I had to take said adaption on its own merits, rather than comparing it to the original.

Supposedly one of the first detective stories, it's also a locked room mystery, a subgenre of a subgenre of mystery fiction that never ceases to amaze, amuse and irritate those of us who go for that sort of thing. The killings that take place inside this locked room are fairly gruesome, even by today's more relaxed standards, and one can't help imagining Poe writing splatter films if he'd lived a century and a half later.

Of course, one C. Auguste Dupin steps in to take over the investigation and proceeds to put together a few clues and sort everything out. If you're wondering where Sherlock Holmes got some of his mannerisms and personality traits it wouldn't be unreasonable to start your search here. Not a bad tale, all in all, at least based on what I heard in this adaptation, though I'm still up in the air about whether Poe's choice of killers was brilliant or just plain goofy.

But it's another worthwhile episode from the vast archive of CBS Radio Mystery Theater productions. Hard to believe that they turned out one of these every weekday for about ten years but they did. Here's the direct link to the episode. Scout around at the site and you'll find the rest of them.

Too Many Clients, by Rex Stout

Too Many Clients
By Rex Stout
1960

One of only a few Nero Wolfe books that I haven't read yet, Too Many Clients is now one of the Wolfe books that I'd rank near the top of the heap - with perhaps one relatively small reservation. But I'll get to that in a moment.

Things kick off in fairly standard fashion for a Wolfe novel. A high-powered business type approaches Archie due to concerns that he's being followed. Archie doubts that Wolfe will take the case and sends the man away and what do you know - it's not long at all before said businessman's body is discovered and there's little doubt that he's been murdered.

But there's a pretty interesting twist in all of this and one that I won't reveal. One of the frequent criticisms of the Wolfe books - and it's one that I've made quite a few times myself - is that he wasn't exactly what you'd call a master of plotting. I'd be willing to call this book one of the exceptions to that rule, although it hardly is in the rank of the likes of Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr.

But it wasn't the plot that stood out for me in Too Many Clients, interesting though it was. What really worked best in this one was Nero Wolfe himself and specifically his interactions with the various players in this particular drama. You could make the argument that Archie Goodwin is the tough guy, hardboiled, private eye counterpoint to Wolfe's cerebral great thinker of a detective, but something that's not so often remarked upon is what a formidable opponent the big guy can be.

No, Nero Wolfe is not likely to come at you with guns blazing or fists flying, though he did show a considerable amount of physical toughness in The Black Mountain and it's been made pretty clear that in his younger days he was hardly a pushover when it came to this sort of thing. But as this book in particular shows, Wolfe is still no pushover even now that he weighs a seventh of a ton, but simply prefers to use words as his weapon, something that he does with great skill.

So about that small reservation. That would be the ending. Not the whole thing, but just a portion of it, which seemed to be a bit clichéd and just didn't quite ring true. It's the sort of thing that Stout used on at least one other occasion, if I recall right, and while it didn't really detract from the story that much overall, I would give it one minor demerit.

Sword of the Rightful King, by Jane Yolen

Traditional Mysteries is mostly about mystery fiction and film, but I've added a category to chronicle some of the Arthurian legends I explore from time to time. This is one of them.

Sword of the Rightful King:
A Novel of King Arthur
By Jane Yolen
2004

Jane Yolen is one of those writers who probably gives a lot of other writers fits - even those who feel that they are relatively hard workers. The well-known author of books for young adults and children has turned out about 300 works in all in the course of her career and a few of these have tackled the Arthurian legend she's so fond of.

Most notable of these are probably the Young Merlin Trilogy and this volume, which the author says began life as a short story. I'm well past the target age for this type of book but I thought I'd give it a whirl anyway. I found that though I had some reservations about the whole affair, it was actually quite a page-turner overall.

As things get rolling, Morgause (Morgan Le Fay, in many versions of the legend) is plotting to take power from Arthur, who is already king. Four of her five sons are dispatched to Arthur's court and the story is told mostly from the perspective of Gawaine, the oldest. As for Merlinnus, he's no spring chicken in this version of the yarn, but he's still pretty sharp and decides to come up with a PR gimmick (essentially) involving a sword and a stone that he hopes will cement Arthur's position as the big cheese.

What follows is mostly a straightforward yarn that presents these parties working toward their respective goals and that's that. Yolen does throw in a pretty great twist along the way that totally blindsided me but then again I'm probably not as clever as the average young adult reader.

The biggest drawbacks for me as I read this one is that it was just one small segment clipped from the greater whole of this story and didn't really seem all that substantial. One might have expected a few books to precede it and several more to follow, but in a brief Q&A at the end of the book Yolen says she has no interest in continuing into the darker areas of the legend. My other minor quibble was with Morgause, who is presented as a rather cartoonish villain and an incarnation of pure evil who has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Here's an interview with Yolen, in which she talks about her Arthurian writings.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, by Agatha Christie

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
By Agatha Christie
1940

You're talking like a thriller by a lady novelist. (Inspector Japp to Hercule Poirot)

In my relatively limited experience with Agatha Christie's Poirot books, it has almost always seemed that the great Belgian detective was a supremely confident and rather unflappable sort. So it came as something of a surprise as this volume opened to find that confidence shaken by something as mundane as a visit to the dentist.

Of course, this being Christie, it stands to reason that we're not seeing Poirot go to the dentist just for purposes of character development. As coincidence would have it, not long after Poirot's appointment concludes he finds out that his dentist has apparently done himself in. Or has he? Well, yeah.

And the plot thickens, as they so often do. The interesting thing about this one is that it's not long before it takes an abrupt turn from being a garden variety whodunit - for lack of a better term - into being something rather different. It would be a mild spoiler to get into this, in my opinion, and it's the type of thing I don't usually care much for in crime and mystery fiction but Christie handles the whole affair so skillfully that I quite liked it.

At one point in the proceedings Poirot remarks that one of the other characters has "the brain of a hen." Which is about how I felt when Christie finally began to work her way around to the solution. This came from way out in left field, if you ask me, but I thought it was nicely done and there was nothing in it that made me want to cry foul.

Then there's the mystery of why this book needed at least three different titles. The 1964 Dell paperback edition that I read was titled An Overdose of Death, with a cover note that the original title was (the quite dreadful) The Patriotic Murders. But apparently the book started life as One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, which makes a great deal more sense, given the content of the book itself. Perhaps the ways of publishers are one of the truly great mysteries.

In any event, whatever you want to call this one, I'd call it an entertaining piece of work that's likely to befuddle the average reader - or maybe it was just me.

Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood, by Ron Backer

Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood
By Ron Backer
2012

When I started this site, way back in 1927 (or something like that), I did so because I thought it would be fun to have a record of my thoughts on the mystery fiction I was reading. I wish I'd done it a bit sooner, like before I read the majority of the Nero Wolfe books, but so be it. At the time mystery cinema wasn't really on my radar but it wasn't all that long before I started to discover some of the great mystery films that came out in the Thirties and Forties.

Which is why I did something I rarely do anymore and that's to request a review copy of a book - Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood. Though the name might suggest otherwise it's actually the second volume author Ron Backer wrote on this topic, after Mystery Movie Series of 1940s Hollywood.

And it's great stuff, mind you. I have yet to see the 1940s volume and I hope that I do so one day but this volume is packed to the rafters with more mystery movie series than I had ever imagined could exist. I found the book interesting on two levels. As for as sitting down and reading it, I discovered that I didn't have much use for most of the chapters that covered movies I've never seen. But I found those chapters worthwhile in that they pointed me in the direction of many movies I hadn't previously known about.

Backer has done a thorough job with this volume, looking at 22 series and 167 films in all. He essentially does a fairly in-depth review of each of the films, along with plenty of background on the series itself and major figures such as actors, directors, writers and the like. In the case of those films that got their start as novels or stories, he also provides a section on how the film compared to the source material.

Which is a pretty impressive piece of work and one that I'd highly recommend to anyone who has an interest in these movies. If you don't have an interest in mystery movies from this era check out a few.

From the table of contents, here are the series that Backer covers.

1. Philo Vance: The Upper Class Detective
2. Bulldog Drummond: The English Adventurer
3. Charlie Chan: The Chinese Detective
4. Arsene Lupin: The Gentleman Thief
5. Hildegarde Withers: The Teacher Detective
6. Thatcher Colt: The Police Commissioner
7. Inspector Trent: The Police Detective
8. Nick and Nora Charles: The Thin Man Series
9. Perry Mason: The Defense Attorney
10. Sophie Lang: The Lady Thief
11. Sarah Keate: The Nurse Detective
12. Torchy Blane: The Investigative Reporter
13. Alan O’Connor and Bobbie Reynolds: The Federal Agents
14. Mr. Moto: The Japanese Detective
15. Bill Crane: The Private Detective
16. Joel and Garda Sloane: The Husband and Wife Team
17. Nancy Drew: The Teenage Detective
18. Mr. Wong: The Other Chinese Detective
19. Barney Callahan: The Roving Reporter
20. Brass Bancroft: The Secret Service Agent
21. Tailspin Tommy: The Young Aviator
22. Persons in Hiding: The FBI Story

Many Deadly Returns, by Patricia Moyes

Many Deadly Returns
by Patricia Moyes
1970

I read a book by Patricia Moyes some time back, before starting this site. If memory serves, it was Twice in a Blue Moon and it was okay but it didn't knock me out of my socks. Many Deadly Returns, which was published almost a quarter of a century earlier, came close to doing just that.

There's nothing in this book that brings anything new or revolutionary to the whodunit - which would have been quite a feat for anyone writing such a work in 1970. But for my money Moyes succeeded in taking some of the time-honored conventions of the form and shaping them into an eminently satisfying whole.

As the story is getting underway, the children of Lady Crystal Balaclava - Primrose, Violet, and Daffodil - and their spouses are preparing to make their annual pilgrimage from various locations around Europe to her English country house to celebrate her birthday. As per custom, one daughter will bring a fancy custom-made cake, another a case of fine champagne and another a bouquet of exquisite roses.

As the celebration is going strong Lady Balaclava proceeds to keel over. Detective Inspector Henry Tibbet (Moyes' regular series character) happens to be on hand because of Lady Balaclava's (well-founded) fear that she was about to be snuffed out and he is rather distraught that the victim was taken out - apparently by poison - right under his own nose.

It's hard to give much more in the way of specifics from here on without spoiling things so I'll just reiterate that Moyes went on to weave a skillfully told tale that kept me riffling through the pages. The fact that I was able to identify the killer - something that I don't often do - may be a commentary on the author's skills with plot, but I'd like to fool myself into thinking that I'm getting better at this sort of thing.

Mysterious Press - Ellery Queen Profile

Open Road Media and MysteriousPress.com are pleased to announce the release of twelve of these important titles, including The Chinese Orange Mystery (1934), The American Gun Mystery (1933), and The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1940). Here's a brief profile they've cooked up to commemorate the relase.

Movie - The Corpse Came COD

The Corpse Came COD
Based on a story by Jimmy Starr
1947

I'm no scholar when it comes to this sort of thing but I'd say that by 1947, when The Corpse Came COD was released, the best days of the comic screwball mystery movie were already in the rear view mirror. It was the same year that saw the release of Song of the Thin Man - the last (and some would say the least) of the Thin Man movies.

But Corpse showed that there was still a little life left in this old sub-genre. The story for this one was based on a 1944 book by one Jimmy Starr, who was a Hollywood reporter and whose protagonist Joe Medford just happened to be in the same line of work. Other Medford books include Three Short Biers (1945) and Heads You Lose (1950). More on this offbeat trilogy here.

Let's start with that title, while we're at it. No symbolism there, but a rather literal interpretation of the events that open the movie, when a Hollywood starlet is asked to cough up 400-some odd dollars to take delivery of a rather large crate that contains some fabric samples and, well...you know. Turns out that said starlet knew the stiff, who was a costume designer who worked with her at the movie studio.

Not knowing who to turn to starlet Mona Harrison decides on Medford, a sort of friend and would-be paramour. He honors her trust by turning the incident into a scoop and before long another reporter - Rosemary Durant - begins to sniff around. And of course it's right about here where that whole screwball battle of the sexes thing begins to kick in, though perhaps not to such good effect as in other films of this breed.

The plot thickens quite a bit from here, with more than a few twists and turns until winding its way to what, at least for me, was a decidedly offbeat and unexpected finish. Maybe a more attentive viewer would have seen this one coming but not me.

I found this one entertaining enough and quite a bit more so than this contemporary reviewer from the New York Times.

Murder She Wrote: The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, by James Anderson

Murder She Wrote:
The Murder of Sherlock Holmes
By James Anderson
1985

If you hang around this site at all you might know that James Anderson is one of the authors I go out of my way to praise. That's the late James Anderson, by the way, who wrote a bunch of mystery fiction but most notably a trilogy of country house mysteries that were published between 1975 and 2003. Read my reviews of these books and an overview I wrote about the trilogy, here.

What I didn't realize until recently is that among the other books Anderson wrote were three novelizations of episodes of the Murder She Wrote series. They are The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, Hooray for Homicide, and Lovers and Other Killers and were apparently issued in a convenient omnibus edition for anyone who absolutely has to have them all.

Just for the fun of it, I decided to try out the first one - The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, which is based on the two-part series opener that was in turn based on a story by series creators Richard Levinson, William Link, and Peter S. Fischer. I've watched a few episodes of Murder She Wrote but not this one, although after reading the book I'll probably seek it out just for curiosity's sake.

Given the constraints inherent in writing a novelization I had no illusions that much of Anderson's style was going to shine through here and for the most part it didn't. Although it seemed that perhaps a few flashes of his dry wit managed to reveal themselves. As for the mystery, it's not a bad one, given that it first saw the light of day as an extended TV episode.

The gist of the thing is that aspiring mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher hits it big with her first book as the story opens and is whisked off (reluctantly) to New York City for a whirlwind publicity tour. At a costume party hosted by her publisher someone in the guise of Sherlock Holmes gets bumped off. Fletcher soon finds that she has a stake in determining who did the killing and works along with local law enforcement - who are actually pretty amicable about this - to crack the case.

I don't know that I'd go quite so far as to recommend this one and I probably won't read the other two by Anderson but there are certainly worse ways to pass the time.

Dark of the Moon, by John Dickson Carr

Dark of the Moon
By John Dickson Carr
1968

Gather round while I relate to you the epic saga of how I attempted to make my way to the end of John Dickson Carr's Dark of the Moon. I picked up a cheap paperback copy quite some time ago at a used bookstore and I was rather keen to read it. After doing so for a short time I put it aside. Then I came back to it. Then I put it aside. Then I came back to it. Then I put it aside. You get the point.

Finally I put it aside for good, on a stack of books that I intended to trade in at the aforementioned store. Or so I thought. Many months later, more or less on a whim, I dug the book out of the stack and started it again. And found, to my surprise, that it was relatively smooth going. For a while, anyway, until about the two-thirds mark, when I put it aside again. Finally, not so long ago, I came back to it and finished it off.

Which might lead one to believe that I didn't like this book very much. But that's not quite true. Right here, I'll note that I'm not real well versed in Carr, having read perhaps ten of his books in all. But from reading the opinions of others I gather that his later books are not nearly as well regarded as the earlier ones. If Dark of the Moon is any indicator I think I can see why. This was the fourth to the last of the books to be published before his death in 1977 and the last to feature his series character Gideon Fell.

Who is called to the house of an acquaintance on a coastal island in South Carolina, a state where Carr apparently spent his later years. After rather a lot of slow-paced preamble and working around to the point someone is bumped off in a manner that anyone who knows Carr will find familiar. This time around the master of the impossible crime trots out another of those sandy beach type gems, in which the victim is found in an expanse of sand with no footprints around but his own.

The pace hardly picks up from here, if I do say so myself, but eventually the whole meandering conglomeration of a contraption of a story works its way around to one of those lengthy reveal scenes. As for the explanation of the crime, I wouldn't go quite so far as to cry foul, but I would say that the author really stretched my credibility to the limit. Of course, if the killer had merely clocked the victim with a blunt object and been done with it it would hardly have been a proper John Dickson Carr book, now would it?

I guess what I found trickiest about this book, as I've noted, was that languid pace and meandering nature of the plot. Perhaps it was because he was getting up in years and living in and writing about a place where things move at a slower pace that things played out this way. On the plus side, however, Carr does what I've always felt he does best - perhaps as much or even more than all that impossible crime stuff - and that's to create a truly memorable atmosphere and sense of place.

Amendment of Life, by Catherine Aird

Amendment of Life
By Catherine Aird
2003

I haven't read a lot of Catherine Aird's books but I've been impressed with those titles I've taken for a spin so far. I actually read Amendment of Life some time back, before starting this site, but I thought I'd give it another go, something I rarely do regardless of who the author is.

I'll say at the outset that while I liked this one I didn't think it quite measured up to some of the other Aird books I've read, especially The Stately Home Murder, which is at the top of my heap thus far. Like all of Aird's books (with perhaps one exception?) this one focuses on Inspector C.D. Sloan, who solves crimes with the help of - or perhaps in spite of - his dimwitted sidekick, Constable Crosby, and his clueless boss.

This time around Sloan is called to Aumerle Court, another one of those grand estates that turn up in so much British mystery fiction. The nifty twist this time around is that the estate boasts a hedge maze (think The Shining) of the sort that people pay to wander into and get lost.

Well, as the discerning mystery fiction fan could easily deduce, this would be a pretty blitheringly obvious place for a stiff to turn up and what do you know? Of course, it's only a matter of time before Sloan and Crosby run the culprit to the ground and it's here where I felt that Aird faltered perhaps just a bit.

I'm not all that fanatical about the need for fair play in this type of mystery novel and I didn't think Aird really did play completely fair, mind you. But what I had the most problem with was that the solution ultimately seemed just a bit too farfetched to swallow. There were also a few too suspects to really make things sporting for the reader.

So I probably wouldn't recommend this as the first Aird book someone would want to read but even Aird on an off day is worlds ahead of a lot of other writers.

Movie - The Phantom of Crestwood

The Phantom of Crestwood
from a story by Bartlett Cormack and J. Walter Ruben
1932

Most of the movies from the Thirties and Forties that I review here contain rather strong elements of comedy and many would probably qualify as comedies first and mysteries second. Not so for The Phantom of Crestwood, which elicited barely a snicker. I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to but it was a nifty piece of work all the same.

This one falls firmly into the old dark house sub-genre but with a stronger element of whodunit than many of the others I've seen. The gist of things is that Jenny Wren, a young and not at all unattractive woman, has summoned a quartet of wealthy and powerful men whom she's had dealings with in the past to a gloomy old estate called Crestwood. Once they've all gathered she puts the squeeze on them for a rather sizable amount of money.

Given all that, is it so hard to believe that Ms. Wren is soon bumped off? I'd say not. At which point Gary Curtis (Ricardo Cortez), a fellow with a shady past and a gang of thugs on hand, turns up to sort it all out. I think I missed a key plot point in all this but apparently Curtis believes for some reason that he'll be fingered for the crime if he can't prove who really did it.

All of which is rather nicely executed, if you ask me, and there's plenty of that old dark house atmosphere to add spice to the proceedings. This one's definitely worth a look, if you go for that sort of thing.