Diagnosis Murder: The Past Tense
Paperback TV tie-ins were all the rage in the 1960s and ’70s. It seems that almost every insipid television show had its own insipid series of novelizations using the same characters and situations, but rarely providing any kind of book/TV synergistic magic.
There were exceptions. For every one-hit wonder (like FISH STRIKES OUT by T.J. Hemming) there was a THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. series (23 numbers featuring authors like Michael Avallone and Harry Whittington). And you ran into these books all the time. Used bookstores, flea markets, house auctions – it seemed every single person on this planet had a copy of Avallone’s THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY #2: THE HAUNTED HALL, whose cover naturally featured Susan Dey … Susan Dey … ahhhhhhh … where was I? Oh, yeah. TV tie-ins are still around, of course, though they may not be as ubiquitous or quite as collectible. And that’s a shame, because the quality of writing has certainly improved since the days I remember.
Case in point: Lee Goldberg’s DIAGNOSIS MURDER: THE PAST TENSE, his 5th entry in the series. Now, I’ve never seen the show featuring Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Mark Sloan, and Dick’s son Barry playing his TV character’s son, Steve Sloan. I’m sure it’s charming and safe for the MATLOCK-loving crowd. But I was surprised and pleased at the quality of Goldberg’s writing and the interest level of the two mysteries that are skillfully interwoven in this book.
Dr. Sloan wakes up one morning at his beachfront home, goes out on the sands, and discovers a murdered woman dressed in a mermaid’s costume. Strangely, this murder is tied to the very first murder investigation in which Sloan was involved: the multiple killings of young women conducted during a freak week of rainstorms in 1962 Los Angeles. More bodies pile up as Sloan attempts to unravel the thread that holds these crimes together, crimes that occurred more than 40 years apart and whose sole commonality seems to be Dr. Sloan himself.
Goldberg was a producer on the TV show and has written quite a few mysteries, including the first four (and two more to be released) of the tie-ins to this particular series. He has a very smooth, professional style that quickly gets you through the settings and descriptions and on to plot development. Characterization and dialogue is kept pretty much at a thin television level, but the details of the crimes and the clues come thick and furious. If you like a traditional whodunit, I can see you definitely enjoying this title, and perhaps others in the series.
So what does that mean exactly? It means that you can’t look down at the quality of a TV tie-in, and it might even help if you have no idea what the show is really like. It’s still a good read from a good writer. –Mark Rose
Even back in the heyday of such things there were occasional gems in the TV tie-in business.
Walter Wager did some tie-in for THE MOD SQUAD series under his John Tiger moniker, Ted Sturgeon did A VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA novel and Tom Disch did THE PRISONER.
I also have a warm spot in my heart for some of the Kung Fu novels that were done by Ron Goulart (writing under the house pseudonym of Howard Lee); you could tell that he wasn’t taking the more zen aspects of the show too seriously and a former editor of the series mentioned that they had to excise the words “bullshitting chinaman” on more than one occasion.
Also the Dan Ross (writing as Marilyn Ross) series of DARK SHADOWS novels helped to fuel a highly successful gothic readership way before the current era of supernatural romances.
Lately I’ve caught myself experiencing some tie-in fever, spending part of this weekend blowing some of my PayPal balance by ordering some (both in- and out-of-print) off Amazon.
I’m not so much interested in novelizations as I am original novels set within that universe.
Back when I was a kid, I was crazy about “V” and I read a bunch of those novels. But those books really pissed me off because they contradicted the continuity being established in the television series. And then a bunch of them featured non-TV characters in other parts of the country fighting off the aliens. As a young geek this really bugged me, but I still read them for some reason or another. Some of them were actually decent.
But this reminds me of another embarrassing juvenile reading addiction: EXECUTIONER novels. I imagine they were terrible, but the combination of the tough guy hero, gratuitous violence and lots of sex made them just the ticket for my 5th grade mind.
The Punisher can’t hold a candle to Mack fucking Bolan, bitch!
[...] Based on a character by Andy Breckman, Shalhoub plays Monk perfectly. But there’s a little something missing in an hour-long show devoted to both an intricate mystery and the character’s oddness. There usually isn’t enough time to explore Monk and why he’s doing what he’s doing. So enter Lee Goldberg and another excellent TV tie-in book, the first in the series, entitled MR. MONK GOES TO THE FIREHOUSE. A book-length exploration of Monk is just so much more satisfying because we get to see more of the detective’s odd little world. [...]