Marty Holland’s Fallen Angel

Marty Holland’s Fallen Angel is a 1945 hardboiled murder mystery. It has definite noir overtones but as is always the case whether or not a novel is true noir depends a great deal on the ending.

Marty Holland was a pseudonym used by Mary Hauenstein (1919-1971). This was her first novel. She enjoyed some modest success and had two of her stories filmed but her career soon seemed to run out of steam.

The protagonist of Fallen Angel, Eric Stanton, had been an insurance investigator but not an honest one, which was why he had to leave L.A. in a hurry. He’s headed for Frisco but his money has run out. He’s sitting in a diner in a nondescript small town named Walton. There’s where he notices the waitress, Stella. She’s really something. She gives him the brush-off but he’s persistent. She goes out with him. Things are going well between them but they need money.

Stella drags him along to a spook show where a very incompetent phoney medium is fleecing the punters. That’s when Eric gets his bright idea. A woman in the audience, by the name of Emmie, wants advice from her dead father on investing the very large inheritance he left her. Eric has figured a fool-proof angle which will allow him to get his hands on Emmie’s money. Then he and Stella will be set. They can get married.

The murder throws a spanner into the works. At first Eric is not a serious suspect. There are two other much more obvious suspects, but when it becomes clear that those other two guys could not have committed the murder the cops start to figure Eric as the prime suspect.

Eric’s instinct all through his life has been to cut and run whenever the going gets tough and that’s what he does now. He has now acquired a wife and she insists on running with him.

Eric knows the cops have a net spread for him and he’s getting increasingly panicky.

The worst thing is that he knows he is innocent but he can’t prove it. Of course if he could prove the guilt of the actual killer he’d be off the hook but he genuinely does not have the slightest idea of the killer’s identity, or why the murder took place.

Eric is a bit of a louse but he’s not really evil. He would never kill anyone. He’s just a chronic loser without the discipline to succeed in an honest line of business. He’s not short of self-pity. He lies because his instinct is always to lie. But he’s not beyond hope. Whether he can learn to accept responsibility and make a proper life for himself remains to be seen. And while he’s committed various criminal acts in the past he really is innocent of this murder. It’s just that he can’t see a way out.

For all his faults he’s a reasonably sympathetic protagonist.

This is a pretty decent murder mystery which looks like it might turn out to be full-blown noir, or it might not. It’s still quite entertaining and it’s recommended.

Stark House have issued Marty Holland’s second novel The Glass Heart and her novella The Sleeping City in a double-header paperback edition. The Glass Heart is flawed but interesting. The Sleeping City on the other hand is absolutely superb erotic noir.

Otto Preminger’s film adaptation Fallen Angel (1945) is top-notch film noir.

Charles Burgess's The Other Woman

The Other Woman is a 1960 crime novel by Charles Burgess. He’s a seriously obscure writer who seems to have written only one other novel. He also wrote some true crime stuff in the late 40s.


The Other Woman was originally published by Beacon so you might be expecting this to be crime with a healthy dash of sleaze. It isn’t really, but there is some moderately steamy sex. This is not a particularly hardboiled story but it does have some noir flavouring.

Early on the set-up seems to be suggesting that we’re in for yet another riff on Double Indemnity but that’s not how it plays out. In Double Indemnity we know the identity of the murderers right from the start. The Other Woman is more of an old-fashioned murder mystery. There is a murder but we don’t know the killer’s identity. The murder method is not as straightforward as it appears to be and alibis are important. There is a puzzle to be unravelled.

It begins in a small town in Florida. John Royal wants real estate agent Neil Cowen to arrange the purchase of a property which will be the site of a major housing development. Royal is an old man and very very rich. Royal’s wife Emmaline is thirty years his junior, blonde and gorgeous. And almost certainly dangerous. The kind of gal who is likely to turn out to be a femme fatale.

Neil has a successful business. He’s a respected member of the community. He’s happily married with a kid. He would be crazy even to think of getting mixed up with Emmaline Royal. But by the next day he and Emmaline are getting it on in the back seat of Neil’s car.

Neil can’t stop himself. He has never met a woman as hot and as gorgeous as Emmaline.

Then something happens that causes Neil to have second thoughts although by now it may be way too late.

Of course there is a murder. There is one odd detail at the murder scene that worries Lieutenant Gainey just a little. It seems somehow wrong but he can’t figure out how it could possibly be significant.

There’s one obvious suspect but Lieutenant Gainey is well aware that there is no real evidence.

A regular guy led astray by an uncontrollable lust for a woman is certainly classic noir stuff. Neil really is a totally decent guy and he never does figure out how he succumbed to temptation. The fact that Emmaline might be the kind of gal who knows exactly how to persuade the most reluctant man to fall for her charms, and that he might just be the latest in a string of men who have danced to her siren song, doesn’t occur to him. He thinks that a smokin’ hot classy rich dame is just waiting for the chance to jump into bed with a second-rate small town real estate agent.

Of course while we know that Emmaline is a temptress that doesn’t mean she’s a murderess. There are other suspects. There are quite a few suspicious characters lurking about. There’s a mystery woman.

As a noir novel it works reasonably well.

As a straightforward murder mystery it’s also reasonably successful.

The Other Woman is routine stuff but it’s enjoyable. A harmless time killer.

John Flagg's Murder in Monaco

Murder in Monaco is a 1957 John Flagg thriller. American writer John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime thrillers between 1950 and 1961 mostly using the pseudonym John Flagg. All were published as Fawcett Gold Medal editions.

Murder in Monaco is one of several that feature ex-CIA agent Hart Muldoon. The somewhat cynical and slightly embittered Muldoon now works as a freelancer and private detective, mostly in Europe, mostly in glamorous locales. The locales may be glamorous but his cases tend to be sordid. He has a knack for getting mixed up in with very powerful, very ruthless, very corrupt criminals.

This time Muldoon is offered a lot of money for a job but is given no details. That’s how he meets Nancy Trippe, in Monaco. And becomes aware of The National Alert, published by Charles Pless. The National Alert is a scandal sheet and it’s a glossy high-profile very profitable scandal sheet. Some threats have been made but the nature of the threats is obscure.

Of course there’s a murder. Blackmail might be an obvious motive but revenge is a definite possibility as well The National Alert has ruined reputations and destroyed lives. And there are so many emotional and sexual intrigues among the circle of possible suspects. Love and lust must be considered as motives. And one must never forget greed.

There are four women, they’re all suspects and they all have motives and they’re all dangerous in very different ways. Alva is a very successful middle-aged writer with some scandals in her past and a taste for handsome young men. Nancy Trippe is a nymphomaniac and an obvious femme fatale type. Myra is a timid little mouse. They’re always dangerous - all those repressed passions. And Amy is sweet and innocent. Muldoon has been a private eye for a long time. He knows you never trust sweet and innocent.

There are quite a few men with motives as well. Harold is a gigolo and he hasn’t been loyal to the woman who assumes that she owns him. There’s ex-Governor Thorne, a politician whose sister has a scandalous past. There’s Black. He’s a private eye, he’s ex-FBI, and he’s very shady. Plus the crazy unstable American named Cooladge. And Marius, who has wide-ranging business interests, none of then legal.

Nobody wants the cops involved. They all have sound reasons for wanting his whole affair handled discreetly.

Muldoon doesn’t actually have a client yet but he’s confident that if he sticks around he’ll get one, and it’s likely to be a big payday for him.

This is not noir fiction but there is plenty of corruption and plenty of sleaze and decadence. There are ruthless rich people, and ruthless poor people who to become rich people. Almost all the characters have at some stage jumped into bed with someone they should have kept away from.

There’s not much action but there is decent suspense.

Muldoon is a fine hero. He’s at best moderately honest. He’s ethically flexible. He’s mildly interested in seeing justice done but he’s very interested in getting paid. He’s by no means a bad guy. He’s no anti-hero and he’s definitely no thug. But he does have to pay the rent. A man has to prioritise. He likes women and if they’re available he won’t say no. He certainly isn’t going to say no to the cute little Hungarian blonde. She looks very appealing in her scanty bikini. She looks even more appealing out of it.

Murder in Monaco is fine entertaining stuff. Highly recommended.

I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. Some are spy thrillers and some, such as Murder in Monaco, are more in the PI thriller mould but the exotic settings will give them appeal for spy fans.  His two earlier Hart Muldoon books, Woman of Cairo and Dear, Deadly Beloved, are both excellent. I also very much liked his non-Hart Muldoon thrillers The Persian Cat, Death and the Naked Lady and The Lady and the Cheetah.

Charles Williams' River Girl

River Girl, published in 1951, was the third novel by Charles Williams. Earlier that year he had had a major bestseller with Hill Girl.

Jack Marshall is a crooked deputy sheriff in a small town. He’s crooked in a small way. The sheriff, Buford, is crooked in a big way. They’re both under pressure from a crusading preacher.

Marshall is unhappily married and in debt and he’s disillusioned. Maybe a fishing trip will help.

That’s where he meets Doris. Doris and her husband Roger Spevlin live in a small shack at the far end of the lake. There’s something odd about them. They don’t talk the right way, the way people living in a remote shack eking out a living from trapping catfish should talk.

Doris is young and very beautiful but she’s very much on edge. And obviously very lonely. Marshall knows he should stay away from her. He also knows that he won’t.

Buford and Marshall are facing a major problem - a grand jury that could potentially blow the lid off the town’s corruption. That preacher, Soames, is planning to lead a moral crusade.

And there’s another problem. That girl in Abbie Bell’s whorehouse. That’s a scandal that will have to be hushed up.

All of these things - the grand jury, the young whore, Marshall’s obsession with Doris Spevlin - will intersect in interesting unpredictable ways.

The last thing Jack Marshall should do at this point in time is sleep with Doris Spevlin. But of course he does. They fall in love. Doris needs rescuing and Marshall starts to plan crazy ways of rescuing her. It all blows up in his face.

This is very much much noir fiction. Jack Marshall is a classic noir protagonist. He’s neither a good man nor a bad man. He’s a corrupt cop and he’s cynical but on the other hand he’s not violent. He has no desire to hurt anyone. He just wants to take his bribes (mostly to keep his status-obsessed wife happy) and be left alone and to spend as much time as possible fishing. He really does fall deeply for Doris. He really is trying to be a knight in shining armour although of course in payment for his trouble he expects to get the girl.

Jack’s biggest weakness is that he’s smart but not quite smart enough to get away with his complicated schemes.

Doris belongs to what I think of as the “innocent femme fatale” sub-type. She’s not a bad girl but she’s trouble and Jack should run away from her as fast as he can. Although she’s the one who leads Jack to disaster she’s perhaps the closest thing this book has to a reasonably admirable character.

Dinah is more of a classic femme fatale. She’s Buford’s mistress. She’s beautiful, glamorous, sexy and clever. She takes one look at Jack Marshall and decides he’s a big, dumb, hulking thug. That’s OK. Big, dumb, hulking thugs excite her quite a bit. Then she realises that he’s clever and devious. Now she’s really excited. With Dinah what you see is what you get. She looks like a very high-priced whore which is in practice what she is. But then she doesn’t pretend to be a Sunday school teacher.

Buford is not quite a straight-out villain. He’s as crooked as they come but his corruption is relatively harmless. As far as he’s concerned if a man wants to have a drink after hours or place a few bets or have a bit of fun with the girls at Miss Abbie’s cat house there’s no harm in any of that. By taking bribes to let those things happen he’s just allowing people to enjoy themselves. He would never take a bribe from a murder or an armed robber.

There aren’t any out-and-out villains in this story. All the characters are morally ambiguous without being evil.

Since this is noir fiction there is of course a sense of impending doom. Jack and Doris are like fish who’ve taken the bait.They can struggle but there’s no escape. It’s hard to see any way out for them. The odds are just stacked against them. All they have is their love but that may not be enough.

River Girl is top-notch noir fiction. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this one with another Williams classic, Nothing in Her Way.

Honey West - Girl on the Prowl

Girl on the Prowl, published in 1959, was the fifth of G.G. Fickling’s Honey West private eye thrillers. G.G. Fickling was in fact a husband-and-wife writing team.

Honey West inherited a private detective agency from her murdered father. Honey handles all the cases herself. She’s cute and sexy but she’s a hard-nosed professional PI.

You know this is a real Honey West book because by the end of the second paragraph Honey is naked. It’s not her fault. She just has really bad luck with her clothes. They just keep falling off. In this case she is, or was, wearing a bikini but with her 38-inch bust Honey was just too much woman for her bathing suit. Poor Honey will lose her clothes on several further occasions. It’s just one of those things that a lady PI has to deal with.

Luckily a hunky guy, Kirk Tempest, comes to her rescue but when he takes her back to his house to find some clothes for her he starts to get fresh. They have a bit of an altercation, they both end up falling into the swimming pool and Kirk is now very dead. But that wasn’t Honey’s doing. He’s dead because he’s impaled on a spear from a spear-fishing gun. It’s a bizarre accident. It was an accident because there was no-one around. Except that maybe it wasn’t an accident.

There were two Tempest brothers and a sister. The sister Jewel, is a famous strip-tease artiste. Her gimmick is that she always a gold mask over her face. There may be a reason for this. She may have been disfigured in a fire. But everything about the Tempest siblings is mysterious. The relationship between them is very mysterious. Love, hate, jealousy and other assorted passions were involved.

Jewel’s other trademark is her gold G-string. And a gold G-string is now a vital piece of evidence;. This particular G-string may have been concealing something other than the thing that G-strings are designed to conceal. It might conceal valuable information.

There will be lots of women wearing gold masks in this story. How many women? Who can tell? They are after all wearing masks.

There’s more than one gold G-string as well. And somebody wants to get their hands on one or more of those G-strings.

Jewel Tempest is to be interviewed on a TV talk show. At this point the authors begin their campaign of deception. Whenever Jewel makes an appearance we can never be sure it is really her, and none of the other characters can ever be sure either. There’s doubt about the identities of all three siblings. And there’s a woman who may be masquerading as Jewel, and possibly there’s a woman masquerading as a woman masquerading as Jewel.

The Tempests are mixed up with various showbiz people. All of them are sleazy, dishonest, greedy and ambitious and they’re all entwined in a web of mostly perverse sexual betrayals and jealousies.

The Honey West novels are all fast-moving and fairly hardboiled and they’re all sleazy but mostly they’re sleazy in a fun good-natured way. Girl on the Prowl amps up the perversity factor quite a bit.

Honey is not quite a stereotypical modern kickass action heroine. The Honey West novels are not non-stop fistfights and gunplay and martial arts action. Honey can handle herself but mostly she relies on her wits. She’s a private eye, not a super-heroine. She’s very good at nosing around in things that are none of her business, and persuading people (through charm, sexual allure and cunning) to tell her things they’d rather not tell her. She just keeps plugging away a a case until she gets results and she doesn’t mind exposing herself to danger.

Girl on the Prowl boasts an outrageous plot but it’s a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Honey West novels - This Girl For Hire, Girl on the Loose, A Gun for Honey, Honey in the Flesh and Kiss for a Killer.

I’ve also reviewed the excellent 1965-66 Honey West TV series that starred Anne Francis.

Modesty Blaise: The Iron God and The Wicked Gnomes

Two more Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures by Peter O’Donnell from 1973 and 1974, The Wicked Gnomes and The Iron God, reprinted by Titan Books in 1989.

By this time Enrique Badía Romero was well established as the Modesty Blaise artist (the original artist Jim Holdaway having passed away in 1970). Apparently O’Donnell would write the comic strips accompanied by crude stick-figure illustrations to give an idea of the action. They would then be sent to Spain where Romero would do the art work. The arrangement worked because right from the start Romero “got” Modesty Blaise. He knew exactly what O’Donnell wanted.

Romero’s style was subtly different from Holdaway’s but Romero maintained the essential feel.

The Wicked Gnomes was published in the Evening Standard from May to September 1973. Maude Tiller is a cute British spy who worked on a previous case with Modesty and Willie. Now she and Willie are having a romantic weekend together, until Maude is kidnapped by Salamander Four. Salamander Four is a freelance International espionage group, very efficient, very ruthless and totally without ethics. Modesty has crossed swords with them before. In this case the Salamander Four operatives are two very creepy killers.

Their plan is to exchange Maude for Pauline Brown, a communist spy currently serving a prison sentence in Britain. Tarrant, the British secret service chief for whom Modesty and Willie often work on a freelance basis, knows that there’s no way to stop Modesty and Willie from being involved. He assumes they’ll do the logical thing and start trying to find Maude to rescue here but Modesty has a much more unconventional plan in mind. Tarrant would not approve, so she doesn’t tell him.

Modesty ends up in a magic grotto dressed as a fairy queen. She’s done crazier things.

A good story with some nice touches and some decent action and Maude Tiller is a fun character. You don’t want to make Maude angry. She’s a sweet girl but she is after all a trained killer.

The Iron God appeared in the Evening Standard between October 1973 and February 1974. Both Modesty and Willie are in Papua where their light plane has to make a forced landing. They encounter a Papuan nurse who is in a lot of trouble. The local tribe isn’t very friendly. They’re head hunters, and they’re being led by a mad bad Irishman, O’Mara.

O’Mara is there because of the Iron God. I won’t spoil things by telling you what the Iron God is but you can see why O’Mara is so interested in it. And he has need of certain skills that Modesty and Willie possess.

Modesty and Willie have to do some quick thinking.

There’s quite a clever little plot here. If Modesty and Willie do what O’Mara wants he will then kill them so they have to play for time and that’s quite a challenge.

A very good story.

In fact they’re both fine stories. The Modesty Blaise formula was well and truly established by this time - exotic locales, colourful villains, outlandish criminal schemes, plenty of action, a hint of romance and a touch of sexiness. And plots that invariably hinge on the extraordinary communication and understanding between Modesty and Willie. Modesty Blaise fans will enjoy these tales. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first three novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer.

Fantômas: A Royal Prisoner

Published in 1911, A Royal Prisoner (Un Roi Prisonnier) was the fifth of the Fantômas novels.

The brilliant arch-criminal Fantômas is one of the most iconic figures in the history of French pop culture. Marcel Allain (1885–1969) and Pierre Souvestre (1874–1914) wrote thirty-two Fantômas novels between 1911 and 1913. Allain wrote further Fantômas novels about his collaborator’s death. Fantômas later featured in TV shows, silent movie serials, movies and comics.

A Royal Prisoner begins with King Frederick-Christian of Hesse-Weimar (a tiny mythical kingdom) visiting Paris. It’s not an official visit. He’s in Paris to see his mistress, the glamorous courtesan Susy d’Orsel.

Reporter Jerome Fandor (one of the three recurring central characters in the novels) meets the king and they get drunk together. Then there’s an unfortunate incident, with a woman apparently committing suicide by throwing herself out of a window. The French authorities want it to be a suicide. Anything else would cause diplomatic nightmares. The problem is that a witness saw enough to make it certain that this was murder. And the only person with the woman at the time was the king. The king is now very much the prime suspect for murder.

Detective Juve (another of the recurring central characters) is instructed to investigate and to come to the politically acceptable conclusion that this was suicide. But Juve doesn’t operate that way. He intends to find and arrest the murderer, even if it is the king.

There is a great deal of confusion about the murder. A third person may have been present.

Meanwhile Jerome Fandor has been mistaken for the king. And he’s meet a pretty lacemaker who has fallen in love, thinking that she has fallen in love with the king.

Mistaken identities, false identities and disguises will play key roles in this story, as in many of the Fantômas stories. Both the police and the criminals are often operating on false assumptions.

There is also a threatened revolution in Hesse-Weimar. And a stolen diamond. One of the most valuable diamonds in the world.

These are all classic ingredients in Edwardian thrillers and mysteries. The Fantômas novels have a very pulpy feel. There are kidnappings and narrow escapes and secret passageways. In this case there’s a mysterious singing fountain, and the reason it sings will become important. There’s a wildly convoluted plot. There’s breathless excitement. There’s romance. There’s everything needed for a fun crime/espionage/adventure romp. Plus there’s the sinister figure of the ruthless criminal mastermind Fantômas. The ingredients are there and the authors know how to combine them to perfection.

One interesting element is the air of sexual sophistication. Susy d’Orsel is a courtesan. She is technically a prostitute. But she’s a nice girl and not one of the characters expresses the slightest disapproval of her. The king is having an open affair with such a woman but no-one expresses any disapproval. This truly was La Belle Époque. Paris was the city of love, which meant it was the city of sex.

Fantômas’s mistress, the wicked sexy Lady Beltham, naturally puts in an appearance.

Fantômas himself is a figure of mystery. We see the story from the points of view of Juve and Jerome Fandor. They suspect Fantômas’s involvement early on but they can’t prove it. Fantômas is ever elusive. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he fails, but bringing him to justice seems impossible. He is sinister and ruthless. One of the great fictional super-villains.

A Royal Prisoner is fast-paced crazy pulp fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Fantômas novels - Fantômas, A Nest of Spies (L'Agent Secret) and The Daughter of Fantômas - as well as the insanely entertaining 60s movie Fantomas (1964).

Bill S. Ballinger's The Longest Second

The Longest Second is a 1957 crime novel by Bill S. Ballinger. Assigning it to a particular crime sub-genre is a bit tricky. It’s certainly a mystery novel. It has some hardboiled flavouring. It has some affinities to noir fiction. But there’s other stuff going on as well.

Bill S. Ballinger (1912-1980) was an American crime writer who enjoyed great success in his lifetime as a novelist and a writer for film and television. He had a definite taste for narrative experimentation. Perhaps that’s why he isn’t as well remembered as he should be - his experiments could be rather bold. This novel uses a technique (the split narrative) that he employed quite often, in novels such as Portrait in Smoke, but in The Longest Second he’s throwing in some other experiments as well.

There is a serious crime, but there’s nothing simple about it. There’s a mystery to be solved and there are three separate investigations being conducted, not all of them by the police.

A man getting his throat cut certainly qualifies as a serious crime. The man involved is not very happy about it at all.

I don’t want to give any details at all about the plot for fearing of spoilers. The plot does involve silversmithing, stained glass, an Arabic inscription and two women. One of the women might perhaps be a femme fatale.

The story is also very much about memory and identity. It concerns a man who has neither.

It’s also a story about the past. Everything hinges on the mysterious past of a particular man.

The storytelling techniques used here are definitely risky. Ending such a story in a satisfying plausible way is a challenge. There’s the danger that the whole thing will turn out to be too clever for its own good. Ballinger pulls it off reasonably well although it is, unavoidably, a little contrived.

Ballinger is doing more than experiment with narrative structure. He’s being equally daring with the entire concept of characterisation. And with character motivation. This was seriously avant-garde stuff in the 50s but Ballinger manages to make the book an exciting and engrossing mystery story as well. There are plenty of indications early on of the direction the story might be taking but the ending is still not quite what you might be anticipating.

This is one of those books in which the reader knows a lot more about what is really going on than any of the characters do but there’s still crucial stuff we don’t know.

And the characters are not automatons doing things because the plot requires them to do so. The key character does have choices. He has free will.

The Longest Second is wildly unconventional but it’s entertaining if you set aside your genre expectations and just go with it. Highly recommended.

Ballinger was for decades a totally forgotten writer but Stark House have now brought a lot of his novels back into print (The Longest Second had been out of print for half a century).

I’ve reviewed Ballinger's 1950 novel Portrait in Smoke (paired with The Longest Second in a Stark House two-novel edition) which I recommend very highly.

Theodore Roscoe's Murder on the Way!

Murder on the Way! is a 1935 novel by Theodore Roscoe. It was originally published in the pulp magazine Argosy under the title A Grave Must Be Deep. I can’t tell you which genre it belongs to because I have no idea. And I don’t care. All I know is that it’s insane amounts of fun.

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992) was one of the grandmasters of pulp fiction and writer some of the finest stories ever written about adventure in exotic settings. He spent some time in Haiti in the early 1930s which gives this novel an air of authenticity.

Patricia Dale (known to her friends as Pete) is more or less engaged to a more or less penniless artist in New York. An artist by the name of Cartershall. Pete always refers to him as Cart. Then a strange little Haitian lawyer shows up. He announces that he is Maître Pierre Valentin Bonjean Tousellines, Comte de Limonade. Pete is in line for an inheritance from her Uncle Eli. He has left a huge fortune and a vast estate in Haiti. All Pete has to do is go to Haiti. So she and Cart fly to Haiti.

It’s all a bit of a culture shock but the reading of the will is a bigger shock. The will is eccentric to say the least (and the method of burial prescribed for Uncle Eli is very bizarre). The seven heirs have been assembled and they’re the most disreputable bunch of cut-throats one could imagine. Several of them are murderers. The entire estate goes to one of them but he must remain at the estate for 24 hours after the reading of the will. If he fails to do that the inheritance passes to the next in line, with the same condition attached. Pete is the last in line. Given that the other six are villainous scoundrels there’s obviously the potential here for murder. Multiple murder.

It’s the kind of setup you might find in an English country house murder mystery and such books were hugely popular in 1935. The seven heirs plus Uncle Eli’s doctor and Tousellines are completely cut off at the estate. The weather has made the roads impassable. Someone has cut the telephone wires. This is the kind of setup you’d find in an Old Dark House movie, and these popular at the time as well.

For most of the book it seems like it’s going to be a story along such lines, albeit in a very exotic setting. And written in a flamboyant outrageous pulpy style and with rollercoaster pacing.

The locals follow the Voodoo religion. Roscoe isn’t making any of this stuff up. Voodoo was arguably the dominant religion in Haiti at the time.

There are a couple of extra complications. Uncle Eli may have been murdered. His doctor thinks he may have been murdered by a zombie. And there is a bandit uprising which could spread to the whole country and the rebels claim to be led by the King of the Zombies. The King of the Zombies being - Uncle Eli!

The expected mayhem occurs. There are lots of murders. All the murders take place in bizarre circumstances.

The local police chief, Lieutenant Narcisse, is perplexed. He suspects everybody. Which is not entirely unreasonable.

Cart and Pete will meet the King of the Zombies. This is one of those tales in which you cannot be quite sure if there’s something supernatural going on or not. Whether that really is the case is obviously something I’m not going to tell you.

This is a murder mystery and a suspense thriller and a horror story and an occult thriller. There’s lots of craziness. There are secret passageways and all the fun things you get in Old Dark House stories.

Murder on the Way! is just wildly entertaining. Highly recommended. And it's in print!

Roscoe revisited some of these themes a couple of years later in the equally superb Z Is For Zombie, also set in Haiti. And if you enjoy jungle adventure tales check out Blood Ritual.

Gerald Kersh’s Night and the City

Gerald Kersh’s Night and the City was published in 1938. The 1950 film adaptation, regarded as a classic of film noir, is now much better remembered than the novel. The movie has little in common with the novel. The 1992 film adaptation has an even more tenuous connection with the novel.

Gerald Kersh was British-born but later became an American citizen. He enjoyed some success during his lifetime but is now entirely forgotten. Interestingly enough, given that the novel deals with professional wrestling, Kersh was at one time a professional wrestler.

The novel can at a stretch be considered noir fiction but it is not a crime thriller in the conventional sense. It is a novel of the criminal underworld in London but this is not the underworld of gangsters and bank robbers. This is the world of sleazy businessmen who have never been involved in a single really honest business deal in their lives. They run clip joints. They’re involved in crooked sports promotion. They’re mixed up in anything that can turn a profit.

The protagonist is Harry Fabian. He’s a Cockney who pretends to be an American. He is a small-time pimp (or ponce as they were called then in Britain) but likes to give the impression that he is a professional song-writer who has hobnobbed with Hollywood movie stars. In fact he’s never set foot outside of England. He has never knowingly told the truth in his life. He lives on the earnings of his prostitute girlfriend Zoë.

Now he’s planning something big. He’s going to be a big-time wrestling promoter. Harry is a fake but he does understand one thing - wrestling is showbiz. His idea is to make it even more phoney than it already is but to make it entertaining. He has found a partner. Figler is no more honest than Harry. The idea is one that might work, but Harry has neither the brains nor the drive nor the self-discipline to make it work. He blows the capital for the venture on making a big splash at the Silver Fox night club.

At this point his story intersects with the stories of two girls, Vi and Helen. They’re hostesses at the Silver Fox. Vi is a part-time whore but won’t admit it. She makes most of her money by taking drunken customers home, sleeping with them and then robbing them. Helen has more ambition but also a streak of ruthlessness.

And then there’s Adam. He works at the Silver Fox but he also hangs out at Harry Fabian’s training gym. Adam wants to be a sculptor. It’s mostly a fantasy, just like Harry’s fantasies, Adam is madly in love with Helen. Helen sleeps with Adam and lets him think she loves him but her ambitions to make money matter more to her than love.

If you want to take a deep dive into squalor, degradation and misery this is the novel for you. Every single character is either crooked or deluded or vicious. They are all losers. Kersh doesn’t just want us to see the squalor, he wants us to smell it. It’s clear that he regards humanity with contempt. He seems to be particularly repelled by women. Life is worthless, meaningless, cheap and sordid. Everybody lies. They lie to others and they lie to themselves. In Kersh’s world everybody betrays somebody. He clearly sees women as being especially treacherous.

These people are losers for various reasons but mostly they all live in a world of fantasies and illusions. When they have something worthwhile they throw it away.

The only character possessing even a shred of decency is Zoë. She’s a prostitute, but an honest one. She offers Harry her love, but he thinks he can do better.

I very much doubt that Kersh thought of himself as a crime writer, or a genre writer. He had obvious literary aspirations. I suspect that he saw Night and the City as a serious novel about the seamy underside of English society.

Night and the City is actually rather similar in feel to Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, coincidentally also published in 1938. If you count Brighton Rock as noir fiction then I think you could count Night and the City as noir fiction as well.

Night and the City is unrelentingly bleak and pessimistic but it does have a certain power. Harry Fabian is one fiction’s most memorable losers. Recommended.

Robert Bloch’s Psycho

Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho dates from 1959. A year later it would be the basis for one of Hitchcock’s most famous movies. I like Bloch as a writer so I can’t offer any adequate explanation for the fact that I had never read the novel until now.

There is one problem here. If you’ve seen the movie (and I’ve seen it several times) then you know something very important about Mother right from the start. I think it’s obvious that Bloch expects the reader to have very strong suspicions by the halfway point but it’s also obvious that he doesn’t intend for the reader to be absolutely certain. When you know for a certainty right from the beginning it does inevitably lessen the enjoyment of the novel quite a bit.

The movie followed the novel very closely, but with a couple of subtle but important differences of focus.

I never assume that everyone has seen a movie even when it’s as well-known as Psycho so I’m going to try to avoid spoilers.

Mary Crane (she becomes Marion Crane in the movie) has stolen a great deal of money from her boss. It’s Friday. Nobody will know the money is gone until the banks open on Monday (banks being closed on weekends was always a useful plot device in crime thrillers of the past). Mary has covered her tracks well. She has switched cars several times. Now she’s lost so she’s very grateful when she sees the motel Vacancy sign. She needs to eat, and to sleep.

The motel manager is a slightly odd guy named Norman Bates. He lives in the house behind the motel with his mother.

The first thing Mary needs to do is to change her clothes. Of course she doesn’t know that Norman is watching her undress through a hole in the wall.

After having dinner (which Norman was kind enough to prepare for her) she really needs to take a shower.

Other people will become involved. People like insurance investigator Arbogast. He wants to recover the stolen money. He’s prepared to offer Mary a deal. If she returns the money no charges will be laid. Mary’s boyfriend Sam Loomis and her kid sister Lila will also become involved. They all want to find Mary.

Hitchcock made a very daring narrative choice in the film. Something happens a third of the way through that you don’t expect to happen at that stage. This also happens in the novel but in the novel it’s no big deal. It’s the kind of thing you find in plenty of crime novels. It’s a very big deal in the movie because Hitchcock very cleverly misleads us into thinking that a particular character is the central character but the central character is actually someone else. It’s just a slight change of emphasis but it’s enough to demonstrate Hitchcock’s genius.

The movie made a few interesting changes. In the novel Norman Bates is 40, very overweight and balding. Apart from his other issues he is clearly very physically unappealing to women and that’s a major part of his problem. You get the feeling that all it would have taken would have been for one woman to go on a date with him and then he might have had a chance of avoiding all the subsequent disasters. By casting Tony Perkins, a fairly good-looking actor with a great deal of charm, Hitchcock emphasises Norman’s tragedy. He is not a hopeless loser because women find him repulsive. He really didn’t have to end up as a hopeless loser.

This makes him a tragic oddly sympathetic monster which was presumably Hitchcock’s intention. And Hitchcock’s instincts were correct. The movie packs more of an emotional punch. All Norman needs is to find the confidence to actually approach a woman. If he did, she might well go out with him. But he never does find that confidence and tragedy ensues.

It’s intriguing that Brian De Palma made a similar change when he adapted Stephen King’s Carrie. In King’s novel Carrie is very overweight which emphasises her inability to attract interest from boys. In De Palma’s movie Carrie is no super-babe but she’s kinda cute in her own quirky way. When Tommy takes her to the prom he really isn’t embarrassed to be seen with her, or to be seen dancing with her and kissing her. Carrie goes so close to making it.

Psycho is very much one of those stories that requires the reader (or the viewer in the case of the movie) to take the wild and wacky theories of psychiatry seriously. Back in 1960 people actually did take this stuff seriously. It’s also a story that really doesn’t work once you know the solution, and that’s an even bigger problem with the novel. At least the movie has Hitchcock’s stunning visual set-pieces. Psycho is far from being my favourite Hitchcock movie and the novel really doesn’t do much for me at all. Both the novel and the movie are greatly weakened by having things over-explained in a very unconvincing fashion. Worth reading perhaps if you’re a very keen fan of the movie.

James Hadley Chase's The Doll’s Bad News

The Doll’s Bad News (AKA Twelve Chinks and a Woman AKA Twelve Chinamen and a Woman) is a 1941 James Hadley Chase crime thriller. It was his third published novel.

James Hadley Chase (1906-1985) is an interesting figure in pulp fiction history. There was a time when paperback editions of his books were absolutely everywhere. Anywhere that paperbacks were sold his books would be there. He wrote ninety-odd novels which sold by the truckload. He is now almost entirely forgotten.

Chase was English but at the end of the 1930s he figured out that the formula for success was to write American-style hardboiled gangster stories with American settings. He had never been to America but he gave himself a crash course in American slang and the geography of American cities. He got some details wrong but his books were fast-moving, exciting and entertaining. They were also violent and had an appealingly lurid style.

The Doll’s Bad News starts with New York private eye Fenner getting a new client. She wants him to find her sister. Then some unknown guy phones and tries to convince Fenner that the girl is an escaped lunatic. Fenner isn’t buying that. He tells his secretary to stash the frail away in a hotel somewhere but the girl does a vanishing act.

Then things turn nasty and the case becomes personal for Fenner.

Fenner has a lead that takes him to Florida, to Key West. He poses as a gangster. There are two major gang bosses, Carlos and Noolen. Either one might perhaps lead him to that missing sister and to the solution to a murder. Carlos is mixed up in an illegal immigration racket. There are lots of unsavoury characters. There’s a rich guy named Thayler who owns a yacht. The nature of Thayler’s involvement isn’t clear. There are a couple of dangerous dames. Glorie is Thayler’s woman although it’s probably more complicated than that. There’s also Nightingale, who runs the funeral parlour. He has connection with both gangs.

Fenner’s idea is to play the chief gangsters off against each other. It’s a dangerous game but at least it will make things happen.

Things do indeed happen. A full-scale gang war erupts. It doesn’t erupt spontaneously - Fenner makes it erupt. There are epic gun battles on land and sea and lots of explosions. Chase figures his readers want plenty of mayhem and that’s what he’s going to give them.

Although there is some lurid subject matter there is curiously a total lack of actual sleaze content. Glorie makes it clear she’s up for some bedroom hijinks but Fenner isn’t buying. The reason for this may be Paula. Paula is Fenner’s secretary and there are hints that they’re in love with each other.

Fenner is also smart enough to know that when a case involves dangerous females a private eye who starts hopping into bed with said females can find himself in a whole world of hurt. He already has quite enough on his plate.

Fenner is a fairly typical private eye hero although perhaps more inclined to co-operate with the cops than most. He doesn’t want to bring the cops into this case because he has personal grudges to settle but he is careful not to alienate the cops. There is a definite streak of ruthlessness to Fenner. He’s one of the good guys but he’s not averse to exacting some private justice.

Chase keeps things moving along at a very brisk pace. There’s plenty of hardboiled dialogue and atmosphere. There’s a complicated but effective plot. It’s all nicely pulpy.

There’s plenty to enjoy in The Doll’s Bad News. I’ll definitely be checking out more of James Hadley Case’s work. Highly recommended.

A.S. Fleischman’s Venetian Blonde

A.S. Fleischman’s thriller Venetian Blonde was published in 1963. You couldn’t really come up with a cooler title for a thriller.

A.S. Fleischman (1920-2010) had been a professional magician. He wrote some excellent spy thrillers in the early 50s. Venetian Blonde came later and it’s a crime thriller rather than a spy thriller. Fleischman later had a hugely successful career as a writer of children’s books.

Venetian Blonde is moderately hardboiled with perhaps some hints of noir.

Skelly has just arrived in Venice California. He is a professional cardsharp. He is very good at it. Or at least he was. Now he’s lost his nerve. The skill is still there but to be successful as a cardsharp you need nerve as well. His big problem is that he owes 125 grand to a guy who can get quite unpleasant about such things. If Skelly is really lucky he’ll just have both his legs broken but it’s more likely he’ll be found floating face down in a canal. He can avoid all this unpleasantness by paying back the 125 grand. The trouble is that his personal fortune at this amount amounts to $31.45.

He meets two women. One is the psychic and mystic Evangeline Darrow. Her real name is Maggie. She’s married to a con artist buddy of Skelly’s. Maggie is working on a long con and the payoff could be huge. She needs Skelly. Skelly isn’t interested but then he thinks about the prospect of being found floating face down in that canal and figures maybe he will join Maggie in the con.

The other woman is Viola. She’s a cute blonde and she’s a crazy beatnik chick and she keeps following Skelly around like a puppy. This annoys Skelly, until he realises he’s fallen in love with her.

The con Maggie is working on involves a very very rich old lady, Mrs Marenbach. Maggie figures that if she can put the old dame in touch with her deceased nephew Jamie it could be good for a cool million. Mrs Marenbach is no fool and she’s very suspicious but Maggie has an angle that she’s confident will work.

Skelly gradually starts to suspect that something doesn’t add up. There’s something Maggie hasn’t told him. He isn’t even sure who else is on this deal. Maggie claims her husband is in Mexico, but maybe he’s much closer to hand. He’s also a bit concerned by Porter, the sleazy private eye.

The con itself is clever enough and Fleischman throws in some neat plot twists.

Fleischman’s background in stage magic and vaudeville and his obvious familiarity with the mindset of carnies gives the book an authentic flavour. Fleischman clearly understood the tricks used by phoney mediums.

And there’s nothing better than noir fiction that involves phoney spiritualists, illusionism and con artists.

Skelly isn’t a bad guy. He’s dishonest but there are limits to his dishonesty. He’s a crook with ethics, of a sort. He’s not as cynical as he thinks he is.

Maggie is every bit as cynical as she thinks she is. She’s beautiful and sexy and that makes her dangerous. Skelly’s problem is that he’s not sure just how cynical and dangerous she might be.

There’s some nice hardboiled dialogue liberally sprinkled with carnival and criminal argot.

There’s not much violence but the threat of murder hovers in the background.

And there’s a quirky love story as well.

Venetian Blonde is a very enjoyable read. Highly recommended. It’s been reissued by Stark House in a double-header edition paired with Fleischman’s Look Behind You, Lady.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Fleischman’s spy thrillers. They’re all set in exotic locations and they’re all excellent - Malay Woman, Danger in Paradise, Counterspy Express and Shanghai Flame.

Charles Williams' The Sailcloth Shroud

The Sailcloth Shroud is a 1959 crime novel by Charles Williams.

Charles Williams (1909-1975) was an American crime writer whose work could be described as hardboiled or noir or suspense fiction, in varying degrees in different books.

The Sailcloth Shroud is a nautical thriller and I am personally very fond of nautical thrillers.

Stuart Rogers (the narrator of the tale) has just arrived back in the U.S. on the Topaz, a ketch he bought cheap in Panama on the assumption that he could sell it at a substantial profit in the States. It was not the happiest of cruises. He had taken on two men, both experienced seamen, as crew. One of them, Baxter, died of a heart attack on the voyage and as a result of unfavourable winds there was no way of getting the body back to an American port in time. Baxter had to be buried at sea.

Then the other crewman, Keefer, turns up dead. Murdered. Brutally beaten to death. There’s some mystery about the money Keefer was carrying. He was supposed to be broke but several thousand dollars were found on the body. For some reason the F.B.I. is interested and curiously enough they’re more interested in Baxter’s fate.

There’s no evidence against Rogers but the Feds think that he knows more than he’s saying. Some other people, very unpleasant people (in fact they’re the guys who killed Keefer), also think Rogers knows something. Which is distressing because Rogers really has told the complete truth and he really doesn’t know anything else.

His problem is that although his story is true, although Baxter really did die of a heart attack, Rogers can’t prove it. Baxter’s body is at the bottom of the Caribbean. Rogers really is telling the truth when he says that there was no alternative to a burial at sea, but he can’t actually prove that either.

Rogers figures that it might be a good idea to do a bit of investigating himself. If he can turn up anything that will clear up the mystery he’ll be able to get the Feds off his back, and, those goons as well.

He knows there are two women involved. Both women were connected in some way with Baxter. And there’s clearly a mystery attached to Baxter.

Stuart Rogers is a regular guy who is not equipped to deal with murderous hoodlums. He briefly considers buying a gun but dismisses the idea. He’s an amateur. These heavies are pros. A gun would just get him into more trouble. Rogers is not a tough guy but he’s not totally soft either. He might not be an experienced brawler but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re scared enough and desperate enough and you’re fighting for your life.

He’s also very much an amateur investigator but he does stumble across a couple of leads.

This is a tale of a pretty ordinary guy suddenly caught up in a nightmare that he doesn’t really understand.

It’s somewhat hardboiled but it's not really noir fiction even if it does have its darker moments. It doesn’t contain the key ingredients that distinguish noir fiction.

It is however a gripping and extremely well-written thriller with plenty of atmosphere and the nautical aspects of the tale add plenty of interest. Top-notch stuff. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this with another Charles Williams thriller, All the Way, in a double-header paperback edition with is pretty much a must-buy.

Peter O’Donnell’s Pieces of Modesty

Pieces of Modesty, published in 1972, was Peter O’Donnell’s first Modesty Blaise short story collection. By this time he had already written five extremely popular Modesty Blaise novels.

There are six short stories in this collection and they’re rather varied in tone and approach.

The first story, A Better Day To Die, begins on a bus on a remote road somewhere in Latin America. For the whole trip Modesty has been subjected to a lecture by a clergyman on the evils of violence, and on her own wickedness in resorting so often to violence. The reverend gentleman is escorting a party of schoolgirls.

A shot rings out, the bus driver is dead, and Modesty and her fellow passengers are now prisoners of a rag-tag but trigger-happy party of guerrillas, although really they’re not much more than glorified bandits. Modesty would be a lot happier if the clergyman had not seized her little .25 automatic and tossed it into the bushes. The clergyman assures her that it is always wrong to meet violence with violence.

This story is interesting in showing a very ruthless side to both Modesty and Willie Garvin. They don’t enjoy killing (Modesty does end up respecting the clergyman’s courage in sticking to his non-violent principles). But when it’s clear to them that lethal force is justified they become merciless and efficient killing machines.

Modesty also displays some slightly shocking touches of cynicism. Or perhaps not cynicism - perhaps merely an acceptance of brutal realities. An excellent story.

The Giggle-wrecker is outlandish and even whimsical. It starts in a straightforward manner. A Japanese scientist who defected to the Soviets a decade earlier now wants to defect back to the West. He’s now in hiding in East Berlin. Getting him out is quite possible but would involve a major operation which would put the British espionage network in East Germany at risk. Tarrant, the British spymaster for whom Modesty often does jobs, doesn’t want to take that risk.

The alternative to a major operation would be to get a couple of unconventional talented freelancers to do the job. Freelancers like Modesty and Willie. They encounter unexpected and frustrating problems until Willie has a brainwave. His idea is pure madness but it might work. A light but amusing tale.

I Had a Date with Lady Janet is narrated by Willie Garvin. He has a new girlfriend, a charming girl with one leg. Then a nightmare from the past catches up with him - Rodelle, a very unpleasant man he thought he’d killed, isn’t dead after all. Rodelle wants revenge but he intends to strike at Willie through Modesty whom he has kidnapped.

There’s lot of mayhem in a crumbling old baronial house in Scotland. And it really is literally crumbling. A story very much about the unusual but intense Modesty-Willie friendship and quite exciting as well.

A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck is mostly a story of Willie and Modesty trying to find a way to help their friends John Collier and Dinah without appearing to help them (there’s nothing worse than being put in the position of seeming to be asking for help). There have been a series of spectacular robberies, which may turn out to be the perfect opportunity.

It also offers a reminder that Willie and Modesty are not cops or government agents. Their attitude towards the law is decidedly flexible. A fairly enjoyable story.

In Salamander Four Modesty gets mixed up in industrial espionage after a wounded man shows up on the doorstep of the remote Finnish cabin she is sharing with a renowned sculptor named Hemmer. He’s doing a sculpture of her. She’s giving him lots of encouragement in the bedroom and out of it.

The wounded man, Waldo, is an old rival from her criminal past. A rival but a friendly rival. Waldo’s troubles are none of her business but she doesn’t take kindly to attempt to kill people she knows socially. A pretty decent story.

The Soo Girl Charity is a story in which Modesty’s bottom plays as crucial role. It goes without saying that Modesty has a very nice bottom. She has no great objections to having it admired. Even a gentle friendly pinch is something she can take her in her stride. But this was different. What business Charles Leybourn did to Modesty’s bottom was neither gentle nor friendly.

Modesty and Willie decide that Leybourn needs to be taught a lesson in manners. Their plan involves stealing. They haven’t stolen anything for such a long time so this sounds like fun.

It turns out that there is more than bottom-pinching going on.

This is the best story in the collection. There are several twists, including a very nice one at the end.

Pieces of Modesty is an interestingly varied collection and is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first five novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death, The Impossible Virgin, And I, Lucifer.

Carter Brown's The Bump and Grind Murders

The Bump and Grind Murders is a 1964 Carter Brown crime thriller.

The phenomenally popular and prolific English-born Australian pulp writer Carter Brown created a dozen or so series characters, one of the lesser-known being female private eye Mavis Seidlitz who featured in a dozen books between 1955 and 1974.

Brown could be described as a Hardboiled Lite writer with a slightly tongue-in-cheek approach. On the basis of The Bump and Grind Murders I’d say that the Mavis Seidlitz novels were among his most lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek. And also among the sleaziest.

While all fictional lady PIs owe a debt to Honey West I’d have to say that Mavis Seidlitz bears very very little resemblance to Honey West. Honey is tough, resourceful, brave and competent and she’s a smart cookie. Mavis isn’t very tough, she’s accident-prone, she’s ditzy and she’s staggeringly incompetent. The Honey West novels combine solid PI action with touches of humour and a huge dash of sexiness. The Bump and Grind Murders has a reasonably solid plot but it’s played mostly for laughs.

Mavis makes every mistake a PI could make and invents some brand new mistakes that nobody else had ever thought of.

The only thing Mavis and Honey West have in common is an extraordinary tendency to end up without any clothes on.

Mavis is a partner in a detective agency with Johnny Rio. The agency is hired by a nerdy guy named Hatchik to protect his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Irma, is a stripper at the Club Berlin. Hatchik has tried to persuade Irma to give up her stripping job but Irma takes her art very seriously. The Club Berlin’s gimmick is that everything is German-themed and the strippers use German-sounding stage names. Irma is Irma Der Bosen, which apparently means Irma the Bosom. Once Mavis gets a look at Irma’s superstructure she decides that the name is extraordinarily appropriate.

Mavis will of course go undercover at the club, as a stripper. Her act involves having her clothes fall off accidentally. She has a partner, a guy called Casey, who helps to ensure that her clothes fall off.

There is tension between the girls at the club. The manager is slightly sinister and there’s a really sinister guy with a scar hanging around. Then of course there’s a murder, but Irma is not the victim.

The plot gets a bit crazy and that’s partly due to Mavis’s amazing ability to misunderstand everything that is going on. She discovers that the club is being used as a front by a spy ring and that there’s an undercover CIA agent working there.

The strip club setting works well, adding some seedy glamour.

Brown perhaps makes Mavis (who is the first-person narrator) just a bit too ditzy but this does the advantage that we’re dealing with a kind of unreliable narrator -if it’s possible to misunderstand something and leap to the wrong conclusions Mavis will do just that. That makes the plot a bit more fun. And Mavis can be amusing at times.

Towards the end Brown throws in a bunch of plot twists and the fact that the narrator doesn’t have a clue what’s going on around her does increase the surprise factor a little.

Classical strip-tease was of course all about the tease and the sleaze factor in this book is a bit like that - it isn’t anywhere near as sleazy as we expect to to be, even when Mavis gets naked.

Carter Brown had zero literary pretensions. His books were pure entertainment, a bit trashy, but always fun. The Bump and Grind Murders is recommended.

Nicholas Freeling’s Love in Amsterdam

The first of Nicholas Freeling’s Van der Valk mysteries, Love in Amsterdam (AKA Death in Amsterdam), was published in 1962. Van der Valk is a Dutch police detective and these mysteries are set in Amsterdam.

It begins with a man named Martin in police custody. A woman named Elsa has been murdered. Martin knew Elsa very well over a long period of time and had obviously been her lover. He was in the vicinity of the murder scene at the time of the killing.

Inspector Van der Valk does not have enough evidence to charge him and is in fact inclined to believe that Martin was not the killer. He does however intend to keep Martin in custody for questioning. He is sure that Martin is lying about something important and he is convinced that that something is the key to solving the case.

Van der Valk makes it clear from the start that he has no interest in nonsense such as taking casts of footprints or looking for cigar ash or lipstick traces on cigarette butts or fingerprints. Van der Valk’s methods are psychological.

He is convinced that the secret to identifying the murderer is to find out why Elsa was killed. It’s the motive that interests Van der Valk. In fact the motive is the sole focus of his investigation. Van der Valk is also not interested in giving Martin the third degree or intimidating him. He believes that if he can get Martin to talk about Elsa and think clearly about the events of the fatal night and the events that led up to it then eventually Martin will want to tell him the truth. Van der Valk does not believe that he will get anything useful out of Martin unless Martin gives the information voluntarily. Van der Valk is prepared to manipulate Martin but he does so openly - he tells Martin exactly what he is doing.

It’s made clear that Van der Valk is not hoping for a confession. He genuinely does not believe Martin is a murderer. Martin is not a murderer but he is the key to catching a murderer.

Van der Valk is a man with a somewhat earthy sense of humour and he is perhaps a bit of a rough diamond but he’s an affable sort of chap and he and Martin get along quite well. Martin is more of a semi-willing collaborator in the investigation than a suspect. The fact that Martin is now happily married to Sophia may be part of the reason he is holding things back but it’s also likely that there are things Martin does not want to admit to himself.

Slowly the complicated and sordid truth about the relationship between Martin and Elsa is brought to life. They had a passionate, obsessive but unhealthy relationship. Elsa was promiscuous and she was manipulative and selfish. Elsa used men. Sex plays a major role in the story since it played a major role in Elsa’s life but for Elsa sex was always a weapon. There’s some kinkiness in this tale but it rings true given what we find out about the people involved.

It has to be said that if you’re hoping for anything resembling a traditional fair-play puzzle-plot mystery you’ll be very disappointed (and the plot most definitely does not play fair). The mystery plot is pretty feeble. But clearly Freeling had no intention of writing a mystery of that type. He doesn’t care about the plot at all. This is a psychological crime novel.

Generally speaking I dislike psychological crime novel. Too many of them try to put the reader inside the mind of a serial killer or a psycho killer of some kind and I have no desire to be put inside the mind of such a person. But Love in Amsterdam is different. Firstly, while there’s a killer there is no serial killer or psycho killer. Secondly and more importantly (and more interestingly) in this book Freeling is trying to put us inside the head of the victim rather than the killer. And since the victim is dead he can’t do that directly. The only way the reader (and Van der Valk) can get inside Elsa’s mind is indirectly, through Martin. This is a genuinely intriguing approach.

Of course we also get to know Martin very well. He’s quite fascinating. He’s not quite a loser but he’s made a lot of mistakes and he has taken an awfully long time to grow up. He has indulged in very self-destructive behaviour. But he’s not a total loser. He’s trying his best.

Elsa isn’t quite a monster, but she’s close. She’s the kind of woman who might not set out to destroy men’s lives but she will do so anyway. She is bad news, but fascinating in the way that Bad Girls always are fascinating.

If there’s a slight weakness here it’s the motive which I felt needed to be fleshed out just a little.

Overall a psychological crime novel with a genuinely interesting approach. Recommended.

Peter Rabe's Journey Into Terror

Journey Into Terror is a 1957 crime novel by Peter Rabe.

It opens with a killing. A senseless killing. Two criminal outfits shooting it out in Truesdell Square and a girl named Ann just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up with a bullet hole in her forehead.

Ann was John Bunting’s girl. They were to be married the following day. Now that his girl is dead Bunting is just an empty shell. He gets drunk. He gets drunk again. He keeps getting drunk. Then he hears another drunk, a guy known as Mooch, talking about all the people who have done him wrong over the years and how one day he will have his revenge.

And suddenly Bunting knows what he has to do. He has to kill the guy who killed Ann.

He doesn’t know where to start. All he has a name. Saltenberg. Saltenberg may have some connection with the events in Truesdell Square. Bunting has also heard that a whore named Joyce might know something. Joyce doesn’t know anything her sister Linda does. Linda isn’t a whore. She’s a widow. Since her husband died she’s been dead inside. Just the way Bunting has been dead inside.

Linda has some vague connection with Saltenberg. Saltenberg is a businessman but he’s not exactly an honest businessman.

The answer may lie in Florida, in a town named Manitoba. Bunting heads for Florida. Maybe Bunting is finally doing something positive, but maybe he’s being manoeuvred into it. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Linda tags along with him. She doesn’t care about Bunting or Florida and she doesn’t care about herself but Joyce has kicked her out and she has to go somewhere.

Bunting and Linda don’t get along. There is no whirlwind romance. There’s nothing between them. They don’t exactly hate each other. They don’t care enough to hate each other. But maybe in their own broken ways they have made some some kind of connection. At least Bunting is now vaguely aware of the existence of another human being even if he doesn’t like her. And for Linda it’s much the same.

Bunting finds out that Ann’s killer had to be one of four men. The four men are Tarpin and his associates. They’re decidedly shady businessmen. In fact they’re small-time gangsters. Bunting has found a way to infiltrate Tarpin’s gang. It’s not clear how he intends to find out which one of them was the killer. He just assumes that he’ll find a way. His objective is clear but he hasn’t given much thought to the methods necessary to achieve it. He’s an obsessive but not a very clear-headed one.

So this is a murder mystery as well as a revenge story. Neither Bunting nor the reader has any idea of the identity of the killer.

The real focus is on the two central characters, Bunting and Linda. They’re both severely broken people and they have a lot in common. They’re both dead inside. The question is whether there is any hope for them, whether they can find a way to put themselves back together. Maybe they’ll just destroy themselves, or destroy each other. Maybe they can give each other a reason not to destroy themselves.

They’re not exactly sympathetic characters. They have entirely shut down their emotions and they have also shut down their entire personalities. They’re zombies.

The four men who might have killed Ann have a bit more depth than you might expect. They’re not very nice men but they have their own vulnerabilities and fears.

This is a psychological crime novel with perhaps a slight noir feel, if you’re prepared to define noir very loosely.

Like the other Peter Rabe books I’ve read this is an odd but strangely fascinating tale. Highly recommended.

By the same author I have also reviewed Stop This Man! and The Box and they’re both odd books as well.