Pulp Gallery: BELARSKI does ARGOSY

1939

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1938

1940

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1940

Pulp Gallery: DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY

1937

1938

1940

1940

1939

Pulp Gallery: CLUES DETECTIVE STORIES (1937)

SECRETS of the STEVE MERTZ LIBRARY (Part 1)

Steve Mertz posted this pic of his bookshelves on Facebook the other day (taken, I suspect by Paul Bishop, who paid him a recent visit). So, in the tradition of my 2015 post "Secret's of Bill Crider's Bookshelf (that's HERE), I did a little literary detective work to give you a closer look at some of Steve's reading matter.

Unlike Bill's photo, in which almost every title was legible, this one required more guesswork and familiarity with Steve's tastes. It also helped that he shelved the books alphabetically by author, making the guesswork easier. Today, we'll be taking a closer look at that first row, marching off to the right of Steve's forehead.

Of the first twenty books, the only author I can decipher is Edward S. Aarons, and I can't make out titles. But the Cleve F. Adams section is easy to spot. The orange hardcover is the second Rex McBride adventure, And Sudden Death, and the tall trade pb with the white & blue spine is the first, the new reprint of Sabotage from Altus Press.

If you haven't read these books, you should. More on Sabotage HERE, and And Sudden Death HERE.

Can't make out the black hardcover next to Sabotage, but next in line are these first two of three novels featuring Bill Rye, who was Adams' take on political operative Ned Beaumont of The Glass Key. I'm jealous of Steve's Dig Me a Grave dust jacket. (More about Dig Me HERE.)

Next up is Murder All Over, a retitling of the Rex McBride novel Up Jumped the Devil, recognizable because of it's distinctive brown spine.

And next to Murder All Over is a spineless paperback I'm pretty dang sure is a Handi-book, meaning it's one of the two above. My money is on Up Jumped the Devil, discussed HERE. 

After several undecipherable titles by William Ard, and at least a couple by Philip Atlee, we come to hefty collection of paperbacks by Michael Avallone. That's no surprise, as Steve is a long time admirer of his.

I could read only two of those Avallone titles, and they're shown above.

But I also see an Ace Double tucked in there. Could this be it?

I don't recognize the first ten books in this section, but the eleventh is Dealing Out Death, an early novel featuring W.T. Ballard's Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox.

Steve's copy has to be one of the editions above (probably the one on the left). More about that book HERE. 

Next to Dealing Out Death is Ballard's last Bill Lennox novel, published for some inane reason as by "John Shepherd. This one appeared in 1960, twenty-seven years after Lennox's debut in Black Mask. Then, after a couple more mystery books, we come to the Robert Leslie Bellem section...

No bookshelf should be without a Dan Turner collection, and Steve has at least two. Roscoes in the Night was published by Adventure House in 2003, and the John Wooley book below (more HERE), came out in 1983. You'll find the title story from the Black Dog's Spicy Western collection Lust of the Lawless HERE.

The most intriguing book on this top row is shelved between Roscoes and another mystery book, followed by Lust of the Lawless. It's sort of salmon colored, and appears to be an old hardcover in dust jacket. Could it be the Bellem mystery Blue Murder? Or maybe the Adams-Bellem collaboration The Vice Czar Murders? I've never seen a dj for either. Again, I'm jealous. I'm also mighty curious about the tall white book between the skinny little Lust and the Hollywood Detective book. What the heck is it?

You'll find scans of Handi and Harlequin Sleeping Nude covers (including Art Scott's Bellem autograph and a link to James Reasoner's erudite review HERE.)

Next to Sleeping Nude are these two sleaze books. I didn't think much of them, and Steve probably didn't either, but since they're by Bellem, I guess we had to have them. You'll find scans of the back covers HERE. 

Next up: What wonders await on row Two? What books will you recognize that I can't? Come back tomorrow and see.

The ARGOSY LIBRARY rolls on

It's great to see Adams' first Rex McBride novel back in print. The cover art is from my copy of Detective Fiction Weekly, featuring part 1 of the serialization.

Encore FFB: DECOY by Cleve F. Adams (1941)

NOTE: I was tempted to blame this rerun post (from 2010) on last weekend's Willamette Writers Conference. It's true I'm still tired in body and brain and didn't read much this week, but the real truth is that I was planning on reviewing another book and chickened out. Not for my own sake, but for the author's. That other novel presented an unflattering portrait of a certain Middle Eastern Icon, and with all the crazy shit going on right now, it occurred to me that calling attention to it could be bad for the author's health. Ain't that a sorry state of affairs?

Decoy, published in 1941, is the third book in the Rex McBride series, and also Cleve F. Adams’ third novel. It first appeared earlier that same year as a 6-part serial in Detective Fiction Weekly. I reviewed the first two McBrides, Sabotage and And Sudden Death in earlier Forgotten Books posts, and invite you to take a look.

Decoy picks up shortly after the events in And Sudden Death, in which McBride foiled a pre-war plot by Japanese agents. Rex is throwing an extravagant party at a fancy hotel to spend some of dough he made on the previous job. That’s when his usual employers, the execs of an insurance company, come begging him to take on a new case.

Three commercial airliners have crashed (one burning with all passengers) and the insurance companies are taking it in the shorts. When a fourth plane vanishes completely, they come begging McBride to save them. McBride tells them to go to hell until he learns that another insurance investigator - a man he likes - has also gone missing. His takes the case to find out what happened to his friend.

Rex McBride is never quite comfortable in his skin. He wear expensive clothes and drinks good liquor (or any other kind), but never forgets his roots. He came from the gutter, and is more at home with cab drivers, bellhops, barflies and petty grifters than with folks in his own income bracket. He has nothing but contempt for the insurance execs and captains of industry who employ him. They're phonies who pretend to have clean hands, but hire McBride to do their dirty work for them.

A stock element of Adams’ books is a temporary sidekick/drinking partner for the hero. In this one, that role goes to a down-on-his-luck pilot who’s lost his license to fly. He helps McBride in some tasks, but more often just helps him get into trouble. Every Adams novel also features at least one deadly dame who tries to cozy up to the detective, usually for nefarious purposes. Somehow, the hero’s inamorata (in McBride’s case that’s Miss Kay Ford, secretary to an insurance exec) always manages to walk in on one of the cozier moments and get her nose out of joint.

This evil babe factor was all the excuse a British publisher needed to issue a 1956 reprint under the title Decoy Doll. In the U.S., the 1944 Books Inc hardcover reprint isn't too hard to come by, but as far as I know the only paperback edition was an early Handi-books abridgment. Too bad. This is a good read. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe a youngster named James M. Reasoner, from a 1982 issue of The Not So Private Eye:

Adams' distinct prose style is tough to describe, but I find it infectious. It's what keeps me coming back for more. If you haven't tried him, click HERE for a complete 1938 novelette from Detective Fiction Weekly called "Jigsaw."

And after that, be sure to check out the latest slew of Forgotten Books at pattinase.

Forgotten Books: THE EVIL STAR by John Spain (Cleve F. Adams)

 

I've featured a lot of Cleve F. Adams novels here, and this won't be the last. As I've said before, there's something very appealing about his slightly wacky wit and the distinctive rhythm of his prose. And The Evil Star, first published in 1944, is even wackier than usual.

Though this book was published under Adams' pseudonym of John Spain, "author of Dig Me a Grave and Death is Like That," it has no connection to the other Spain books. Those two feature political fixit man Bill Rye, a character inspired by Ned Beaumont of The Glass Key.

 

Our protagonist here is police Lieutenant Stephen McCord, a typical Adams hero and virtual twin of police Lieutenant Stephen McCloud, star of The Private Eye. But unlike McCloud, and Rex McBride, and their Adams brethren, he does not have a too-good-for-him girlfriend with a rich father. Instead, he has three beautiful triplets to contend with, and finds himself falling for whichever he's in closest proximity to.

This book is also unusual in that the first character we meet, a funny, likeable cop (and friend of McCord's) gets himself murdered in Chapter 3. Adams books always have a murder or three, but the victims are rarely likeable, and often dead before we know the story begins.

I'm pleased to report that Mr. Chad Calkins, through some astute detective work of his own, has discovered that The Evil Star was based on the story "Triple Threat," published under Adams own name in the April 1940 issue of Detective Story Magazine. Though much shorter, that tale follows the same basic plot. The main difference is that the story triplets are named Constance, Hope and Valour, while in the novel they're rechristened Faith, Hope and Charity.

 

This week's FFB links are at IN REFERENCE TO MURDER.

Next week, they'll be right here on the Almanack.

Black Friday's Forgotten Books: DIG ME A GRAVE by John (Cleve F. Adams) Spain

If you've been here before, you may have noticed I'm a big admirer of work of Mr. Cleve Franklin Adams. I've read and enjoyed all of his novels, but my favorites (as of this moment) are Sabotage, The Private Eye and this one, Dig Me a Grave.

Adams' many heroes, Rex McBride, Steve McCloud, John J. Flagg and their brethren, were all cut from the same cloth, the main difference being that some were slightly more amoral than others. Bill Rye, the protagonist of Dig Me a Grave is the most amoral of them all, and the most unusual, because he's sort of a hybrid. He's about 50% typical Adams Black Knight, and 50% Ned Beaumont.

Adams made no secret of his admiration for Dashiell Hammett. At least two of his novels, Sabotage and Decoy, paid homage to the plot of Red Harvest, and this book's lead characters were inspired by Ned Beaumont and Paul Madvig of The Glass Key.

Like Madvig, this book's Edward Callahan is a behind-the-scenes political boss, and like Beaumont, Bill Rye is his right-hand man. Adams captured Madvig's character perfectly, and the relationship between the two characters is spot on. He also made a valiant effort to reincarnate Beaumont in the body of Rye, but the characteristics of his own standard hero were too deeply ingrained to be suppressed. The result is that hybrid character, more mysterious and opaque than Rex McBride, but more emotional, and more amused with life, than Ned Beaumont.

Hammett's style in The Glass Key is much like that of The Maltese Falcon - ultra-objective, so that we're never told what the hero is thinking or feelings. We have to discern that from his words and actions. Adams makes a stab at that sort of objectivity here and there, but in other scenes we are privy to what's going on in Rye's head, making him more likable and more relatable than Beaumont.

The result is a novel that's more fun and (to me) more satisfying that The Glass Key. The prose of Hammett's novel is better crafted, of course, and the story more literate, but Dig Me a Grave delivers more smiles - especially if you've read The Glass Key, and know where it's coming from.

Commercial: For a closer look at Adams and  his characters, you might take a squint at my article, "Cleve F. Adams: Black Knight, Cannibal and Forgotten Man" in Windy City Pulp Tales #14, available right HERE from Black Dog Books.

Forgotten Femme Fatales: Cleve F. Adams' VIOLET McDADE in "The Voice" (Read it Here!)

Circus fat-lady turned private detective Violet McDade is not your typical femme fatale, but she's a definitely a femme, and there are few more fatal. With her partner (and narrator), the slim, trim Nevada Alvarado, she starred in at least a dozen novelettes in Clues Detective Stories. Violet packs a pair of .45s at all times, and welcomes any excuse to start slinging lead. In one tale, after gunning down a lady murderer, she deliberately steps on her rather than walk around.

"The Voice," from the Sept. 1936 issue, actually delivers three femme fatales for the price of one. Along with Violet, we get Nevada and her high-society pal Kay, a suspected dope smuggler. Cleve Adams obviously had a lot of fun writing this story, and I had fun reading it. I think you will too.

Your FFB Femme Fatale Headquarters is pattinase.