Here’s the surprise I promised. Rejoice! —JLW

THE GOOD-BYE TOUR ENDS; Melodie Returns

by Melodie Johnson Howe

When I wrote my last column I was leaving CB. In order to mark my departure I listed some wonderful, “Good-bye” book titles such as The Long Goodbye. So I thought I would like to begin my returning column with mystery titles that have the words Hello or Return in them. After all, doesn’t the killer always return to the scene of the crime? Surely if there is a Good-bye, Mr. Moto there must be a Hello, Mr. Moto. I rummaged through my brain for welcome-back titles and then my reference books. Nothing! Not The Long Return or even The Big Nap instead of The Big Sleep.

I was forced to go to my other favorite—the movies. Everything returns in the movies. Where do you think the phrase “return on your money” came from? Now of course they are called sequels and they are even numbered. Spider Man 3142 The Sequel. Hollywood even loves prequels. Spiderman The Fetus.

Now movies have a long history and I was rewarded with a plethora of titles: Mr. Motto Returns. Sherlock Holmes Returns. The Return of The Jackal. The Thin Man Returns. Wait. How can the thin man return? The thin man dies in the first movie (and Hammet’s novel ). But old Hollywood understood that most people thought the thin man was the detective Nick Charles, and therefore the actor who played him, William Powell. Another example of “return on your money.”

Where was I? Oh, yes. Titles. The Return of the Killer Tomatoes. Now this might’ve worked for me if the title had been The Return of the Killer Tomato. That’s me, baby. There is always Hello, Dolly, but the image of goofy hammy Carol Channing, or the diva of all divas, Barbra Streisand, is too much for me. (Besides, Babs is the one and only who curtly told my husband1 how to pronounce her last name correctly. “It’s not StreiSND. It’s StreiSAAAAND.”)

The only title that came close to my heart is Out of The Past. A great film noir starring Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer and an actress on her way up, Rhonda Fleming. It was taken from a novel by Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring) called Build My Gallows High. Hollywood has made some awful title changes but on this one they got it right. OUT OF THE PAST. How beautiful and eerily lyrical is that?

Comebacks are big in Hollywood. They are usually reserved for women unless you’re Conan O’Brien. I think it’s because Hollywood is so age conscious that it is a ritualistic triumph for older women to come back and strut their stuff, usually across a stage in Las Vegas. I am reminded of Debbie Reynolds and Cher. (I never thought that would I use those two names in the same sentence.)

There was an article on Brigitte Bardot in the Los Angeles Times today. She, too, is making a comeback, but the plump 75-year-old animal rights activist (it seems she’s become some people’s worst nightmare: an old woman who gratingly and politically incorrectly speaks her mind) is still the iconic Bardot of the sixties. Famous fashion designers are using her sexy pouty young image, which is really an old one, as a new look for today’s modern women. My head is spinning like the girl in The Exorcist trying to figure this out. Wasn’t there a RETURN OF THE EXORCIST?

I distinctly remember a fleeting moment I had with Brigitte Bardot in London. We bumped into each other in front of the Burlington Court, our shoulders colliding. We stared into each other’s faces, assessing and admiring. She was older then, with deep lines etching her face. I was just beginning to age, to see my looks changing. Then she turned on her way, as did I. The writer in me is always trying to recapture that moment. Two women—one who had lost the power of her youthful beauty and the other who was just beginning that journey, and the sense of loss that flowed between us, all in a moment.

I am glad to be back writing for CB. I missed it.

Finally, I would like to recommend two books, not because I’m in them, but because each is worthy in its own right, and one is for a good cause. Hook, Line & Sinister, a collection of short stories, is edited by T. Jefferson Parker. The connecting theme is fly-fishing and it is a delight to read how various authors from Michael Connelly to Dana Stabenow and moi darkly turn the art of angling upside down and sideways.

All the royalties from this anthology will go to help support two charitable groups, Casting for Recovery, which helps women cancer survivors heal the body and soul through fly-fishing, and Project Healing Waters, which offers the same service for our returning vets.

Thriller: 100 Must Reads edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner is a great source of information on classic thriller and suspense novels. The essays are written by some of our favorite authors on such diverse books as Theseus and the Minotaur, Rebecca, The Manchurian Candidate, and 97 more. I wrote about Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, or the British Agent. An illuminating and entertaining resource book to have on your library shelf.

1. The Gentle Reader may recall that Melodie’s husband is the legendary record producer Bones Howe. —JLW [↩]