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.

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.

Charles Williams' All the Way (The Concrete Flamingo)

All the Way is a noir novel by Charles Williams, published as a paperback original by Dell in 1958. It was reprinted in Britain in 1960 as The Concrete Flamingo. It was filmed in 1960, as The 3rd Voice.

American writer Charles Williams (1909-1975) is one of the greats of hardboiled/noir fiction.

The narrator, a man named Hamilton, is sitting on a beach. There’s an attractive blonde nearby reading a book. But then he realises she isn’t reading the book at all. She is listening to him. Listening very intently. He tries to pick her up but gets the brush-off. Later she agrees to meet him. Her name is Marian.

She knows a lot about him. His name is really Jerry Forbes. He had to change his name and leave Vegas in a hurry after an unfortunate incident. He is not a murderer on the run or anything like that. He is not a criminal. He did however slug a guy, hard enough to break his jaw, in a disagreement over a woman. Leaving Vegas seemed like a good idea.

He finds out why she was listening to him. It’s his voice. His voice is uncannily similar to someone else’s. There’s a reason that that interests her. She has a plan. It’s not exactly legal but she assures him that he won’t be running any risk. And there’s $75,000 in it for him. OK, the plan does involve a murder, but it’s foolproof. And 75 grand is 75 grand.

Jerry is not a criminal but 75 grand (an immense fortune in the 1950s) would tempt anybody. He would like that $75,000 but the real reason he agrees to Marian’s scheme is Marian. He is becoming obsessed by her.

Marian is a bit strange. She is bitter and she has good reason to be bitter. A woman who has been dumped by her man for another woman (a woman more than ten years younger) can get very bitter. That’s what her plan is all about - revenge.

Her plan involves perfect alibis. Alibis that cannot be broken. That’s where Jerry’s voice comes in.

Marian is quite willing to sleep with Jerry. She’s very good in bed but she seems a bit disconnected from it all. This is a girl with a lot of red flags showing but Jerry doesn’t care. He wants her.

Jerry isn’t seeing things very clearly. Marian tells him that she’s using him but it makes no difference. He is in love with her and he knows she will learn to love him.

You can see some obvious plot twists on the way but the actual plot twists are not the ones you expect. The ending is brilliant and powerful.

You expect a Charles Williams story to have a nautical flavour and while this is not really one of his full-blown nautical thrillers boats do play a fairly significant part in the story.

There’s a love story here but it’s kept nicely ambiguous. Marian’s feelings towards Jerry are kept deliberately unclear. In a story such as this the reader will always expect one of the lovers to betray the other. This story has a few surprises in store in that department.

The plotting is excellent. Marian’s scheme is risky but fiendishly clever and elaborate. It’s a plan that deserves to work.

Jerry isn’t the smartest guy in the world and he’s not the most honest but he means well. He really does love Marian. He will do anything for her.

Marian is obviously playing a femme fatale role but she is not a straightforward femme fatale. I always like complicated ambiguous femmes fatales and Marian qualifies on both counts.

This is genuine noir fiction. It ticks most of the noir boxes. It’s beautifully written and the noir sense of doom builds very slowly. Jerry is not really committed to anything until late in the story. He can still back out. Except that he can’t back out. He has to have Marian.

This is top-tier noir fiction from a top-tier writer. Highly recommended.

Stark House Noir have paired this with another excellent Charles Williams novel, The Sailcloth Shroud. This two-novel volume is pretty much a must-buy for noir fans. I’ve also reviewed Williams’ superb 1954 novel A Touch of Death.

Cornell Woolrich’s Rendezvous in Black

Cornell Woolrich’s Rendezvous in Black was published in 1948. Woolrich’s particular genius is that his stories were so perfectly adapted to film adaptation. Very few writers have had more stories adapted for film and TV and that made him a crucial figure in the history of pop culture. And it turned out to be almost impossible to make a bad movie from a Cornell Woolrich story.

He wasn’t a great prose stylist, not even close to being in the same league as a Raymond Chandler, but Woolrich had a knack for coming up with really nasty gut-punch plots.

This book starts with a guy named Johnny Marr, a very ordinary guy, waiting to meet his girl at a drugstore. They’ve been planning to get married for a long time and pretty soon it’s going to be possible. The guy has come into some money, more than enough for them to get married. But he is destined never to marry Dorothy. She is killed in an accident.

That sets in train a series of bizarre and inexplicable murders. Very complicated murders.

The detective investigating the first murder has a problem. He is the only one who believes it is murder. There is however not the slightest chance of proving it.

Two more strange murders occur, apparently totally unconnected except for one tiny detail. That tiny detail detail convinces the cop he’s on to something but he has no idea what it is that he’s on to. He just fears that there will be more murders.

This is a kind of suspense story in five parts, with the detective’s investigation hovering in the background.

It’s a suspense novel but there’s a mystery as well. The solution to the mystery is so clearly signposted that one must assume that Woolrich intends the reader to figure it out without any difficulty. The detective however simply does not have the vital pieces of the puzzle that would allow him to solve the case.

There’s some very fine suspense. Woolrich is generally regarded as a noir writer and to a considerable extent he is, but he’s not quite a typical noir writer. And Rendezvous in Black is not quite typical noir fiction. You expect a noir protagonist to be at least partially responsible for the mess he gets himself into. He’s usually a slightly ambiguous figure, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. In this case there’s no character flaw. It’s just pure dumb bad luck - the remorseless working of impersonal and indifferent fate.

You also expect a femme fatale to play a major part in the protagonist’s downfall. There’s no femme fatale here.

There is the classic noir feature of impending and inescapable doom. Mostly this is a suspense novel but there’s more to it than that. This is perhaps an existentialist crime novel, or an absurdist crime novel. That sets it apart from noir where you have the feeling that no matter how tragic the story it does have a kind of logical inevitability. In Rendezvous in Black there’s nothing logical about life - it’s as if the universe has played a horrible trick on Johnny Marr for no reason whatsoever except that that’s how the universe works. And most of the characters in this novel are in the same position - it is impossible to see any reason why such things should happen to them. So overall I think absurdism is closer to the mark here than noir.

The plot is also more satisfying if considered from that perspective. Sometimes we’re the victims of bizarre crazy coincidences that can never be understood in rational terms. The plot here is outlandish because that’s the way Woolrich wanted it to feel.

It doesn’t matter whether the characters in this book are good people or bad people. Some of them are very good people. Some are very bad. Some are neither particularly good or bad. It doesn’t matter. The universe will stomp you anyway. Noir is pessimist but this is a different kind of pessimism.

Rendezvous in Black is very Woolrichian and it’s powerful stuff. Highly recommended.

Like so many of Woolrich’s books this one has been filmed - Rendezvous in Black was the source material for Umberto Lenzi’s excellent 1972 krimi-giallo hybrid Seven Blood-Stained Orchids

I’ve also reviewed Woolrich’s 1942 Black Alibi.

Donald E. Westlake’s The Outfit

The Outfit, published in 1963, is the third of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels written under the pseudonym Richard Stark.

I’m not going to give away spoilers for the first two novels (although in fact Westlake does so in this novel) but this third book continues Parker’s feud with the organised crime syndicate known as the Outfit.

Parker is not a member of the Outfit (although he did a job for them once). He’s an independent professional thief. That doesn’t mean he’s small-time. His jobs are always major robberies. He’s very successful. He pulls very few jobs because the ones he pulls are very lucrative. In between jobs he lives a life of leisure in Florida.

Now he has a problem. The Outfit seems to have taken out a contract on him. He thought he had resolved his issues with them. Parker is annoyed but far from disconsolate. He has already established his ability to hurt the syndicate badly. Now he will have to hurt them again, to make them see reason.

The Outfit has a weakness. Their security at their various illegal operations is lax. It has never occurred to them that anybody would be crazy enough to try to rob them. That was before they encountered Parker. Parker is crazy enough to do it. Except he isn’t crazy, just stubborn. If Parker has to hurt the Outfit his campaign against them will be meticulously planned and well thought out. He’s a cold calculating professional.

I love the opening of this novel. Parker is in bed with his current woman, Bett. She is not a criminal. He isn’t the slightest bit in love with her but she suits him and she’s good in bed. A gunman breaks into the hotel room and starts shooting. Any normal woman would be terrified. Bett is excited. Parker realises he will have to torture the gunman for information. He finds such things distasteful but he thinks Bett might enjoy it. When he asks her if she would enjoy torturing the gunman she gets very excited. Parker knew there was something about this girl that he liked. We are definitely in Parker’s world.

There’s another early scene, involving two brothers and a woman, which is just so incredibly Parker-ish.

This is not a straightforward heist story. Rather it is a whole series of heists. Parker’s campaign against the Outfit is based on persuading other independent professional criminals to start raiding Outfit operations. Each of these robberies is a perfect heist story in miniature.

Parker comes up against some old foes in the Outfit, foes who might be thinking they have a score to settle with him. They still haven’t quite realised that they’re up against a very smart guy who thinks out his moves well in advance. Parker has survived a long time as a professional criminal. He knows that if you rely solely on being fast with a gun or your fists you won’t last long. You have to play it smart, and not react emotionally. Parker approaches his conflict with the Outfit more like a game of poker than a bar-room brawl. He’s a tough guy but that’s not what makes him such a fascinating character.

Parker is a full-blown anti-hero. He is ruthless and amoral and apparently emotionless. He has been misunderstood as having no redeeming qualities. That’s not quite true. If necessary he will kill without hesitation and without remorse. On the other hand he never kills without a reason and he never kills for pleasure. He is very careful not to kill innocent bystanders.

In this story he has a woman. He knows that eventually he will have to get rid of her, but getting rid of her does not mean killing her. It just means giving her the brush-off as cleanly and painlessly as possible. He has no intention of killing her. That would be cruel. Parker, despite his serious character flaws, is not a cruel man.

And despite those flaws the reader is going to be on Parker’s side. He’s just so super-cool.

It’s a tough cynical book. Very entertaining. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the excellent first Parker novel, The Hunter (AKA Point Blank) and the second, The Man with the Getaway Face. You do have to read this series in order. You also need to see the 1967 movie Point Blank, based on the first novel.

Colin Wilson’s The Mind Parasites

Colin Wilson’s novel The Mind Parasites appeared in 1967. Wilson is one of the most intriguing, baffling, controversial figures in 20th century literature, and one of the strangest. You cannot review a Colin Wilson novel without saying something about his ideas and his philosophy because his novels are extended meditations on those ideas and philosophies but it is difficult to explain Wilson’s thought without writing an entire book on it. So I apologise in advance if my brief attempt proves to be pitifully inadequate.

Wilson gained overnight fame at the age of 24 with his non-fiction book The Outsider. Wilson used the term outsider in a particular sense, to describe literary figures who were not so much social outsiders as intellectual outsiders. Wilson certainly saw himself in that light. Wilson was an existentialist but I would describe him as a Wilsonian existentialist. Even among intellectual outsiders Wilson was an outsider.

Wilson developed an increasing interest in the occult and the paranormal, but again he did so in a characteristically Wilsonian way. While others disagreed he also always maintained that his approach to these subjects was scientific.

In the early 60s he discovered Lovecraft. This discovery blew his mind, as they used to say in the 60s. He always had certain reservations about Lovecraft but he recognised him as an incredibly important writer and one of the key literary figures of modern times. The Mind Parasites was Wilson’s response to this discovery. That is not to imply that this is a Lovecraft pastiche. Wilson was not the kind of writer to produce a mere pastiche. There are lots of other things going on in The Mind Parasites, lots of other intellectual interests and speculations coming together, but Lovecraft was the initial catalyst. And you will find major elements here borrowed from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

The Mind Parasites is ostensibly written in the fairly distant future, apparently the early 22nd century, but it concerns events of the 1990s. So already we’re dealing with some games involving the past, the present and the future.

The narrator, Dr Gilbert Austin, is an archaeologist. He is puzzled by some excavations, and by some figures. In the future world of this novel it is possible to date archaeological finds with extreme precision. There is absolutely no doubt about the dating of these finds. There is no possibility of error. And yet the dates are impossible. Not just impossible by a few centuries, but impossible by many thousands of years. Dr Austin has to consider the possibility that everything we thought we knew about the past is wrong.

And then there are those inscriptions. They’re not just vaguely Lovecraftian. They are drawn directly from Lovecraft’s works, and yet they are thousands of years old. Could it be that Lovecraft thought he was writing fiction but was in fact writing historical fact?

And then the mind parasites strike. And the novel becomes much much weirder. The mind parasites are inside people’s minds, but they are not products of the human mind. They come from somewhere else. Dr Austin’s archaeological finds have cast doubt on our understanding of the distant past. The discovery of the mind parasites casts doubts on our understanding of the recent past, and the present, and the nature of reality and consciousness. The mind parasites are also a very real and terrifying threat.

This book just keeps getting weirder. I haven’t mentioned the wild stuff about the Moon yet.

The key to this book is not the Lovecraftian stuff but Wilson’s interest in the workings of the mind. His ideas naturally are heavily slanted towards the paranormal and fringe science but with a good helping of psychoanalysis and some esoteric notions about the unconscious. He sees the unconscious mind as an entire universe, and the exploration of that universe as being far more interesting than the exploration of outer space or any kind of conventional mainstream science.

Wilson would take a fringe idea and push it as far as any reasonable person would dare, and then push it a whole lot further. For Wilson there were no limits.

There’s plenty of action, there are epic battles, but all taking place inside people’s minds.

The Mind Parasites is simply unlike any other science fiction novel but it is fascinating and it is highly recommended for its extreme weirdness.

Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi

Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi was first published in 1942.

Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) was an American writer in the crime and suspense genres and a major figure in the evolution of noir fiction. In the 1920s he had tried to establish himself as a writer in the F. Scott Fitzgerald mould, with very little success. He found immediate success when he switched to crime fiction in 1940.

The novel begins with a publicity stunt. Kiki Walker had been a failed night-club entertainer in the U.S. but thanks to the efforts of her press agent Manning she is now a major star in South America. Manning’s latest stunt is to have Kiki show up at a restaurant with a black jaguar on a leash. This certainly attracts attention. It attracts even more attention when something spooks the jaguar. He creates mayhem in the restaurant and escapes into the night. There’s an intensive search but the animal cannot be found.

Then a young woman is killed. The evidence suggests that the jaguar was responsible. And then another young woman suffers a similar fate. Again it seems clear that she was killed by the jaguar. Inspector Robles has no doubts.

Manning however does have doubts. Maybe he just doesn’t want to accept that the jaguar was responsible since that would make it indirectly his fault - the jaguar got loose as the result of his publicity stunt. But there are a couple of puzzling little things that really bother Manning.

A third woman, a lady of the night, is killed. And then a fourth. In each case there are odd little details that continue to worry Manning. He is developing a theory. Nobody wants to listen to him but he cannot help feeling that his theory makes more sense than the official one.

This novel must have come as something of a shock in 1942. It just doesn’t slot neatly into a genre pigeonhole. It is most definitely not noir fiction. It does contain elements you would expect in the horror genre. There is certainly plenty of suspense. 

The decision as to which genre it should be assigned to is something that depends on how the plot ends up being resolved.

There’s also a degree of grisliness that would have been rather startling in 1942.

Manning is not a conventional hero type. He’s always been a fairly cynical sort of guy, not exactly a crusader or a knight in shining armour. He’s just the sort of guy who cannot let things go. All he’s likely to gain by playing amateur investigator is a lot of aggravation and a lot of embarrassment if his theory turns out to be wrong. He just can’t help himself. These killings really bother him and if he turns out to be right but hasn’t done anything about it he won’t be able to live with himself.

Inspector Robles isn’t quite the dumb cop to be contrasted with the gifted amateur. Robles is competent but he’s under pressure and having conducted his whole investigation on the assumption that a jaguar is responsible he feels he has to keep going on that assumption.

And it has to be said what while Manning is bothered by small details there really does seem to be overwhelming evidence that a jaguar is responsible for the attacks. It’s a case of two men who are both convinced that their respective theories are correct.

I don’t intend to give any hints as to plot details but the plot is rather wild, and the resolution is totally wild.

Black Alibi is a weird fascinating novel and its greatest strength is its weirdness. Highly recommended.

Black Alibi was filmed in 1943 as The Leopard Man, one of the series of superb RKO B-movies produced by Val Lewton. It’s one of countless film and television adaptations of Cornell Woolrich stories most of which are worth checking out. Woolrich’s stories just seemed to work remarkably well on the screen.

Colin Wilson’s The God of the Labyrinth

Colin Wilson’s The God of the Labyrinth was published in 1971.

Colin Wilson (1931-2013) was one of the most fascinating literary figures of his age. To say that his intellect was wide-ranging would be an understatement. He became a sensation at the age of 24 with his book The Outsider which to a large extent introduced existentialism to the English-speaking world. He wrote on philosophy and on the occult. He wrote crime novels and science fiction.

And he wrote novels like The God of the Labyrinth which are difficult to classify. You could call it an existentialist literary detective story combined with philosophical musings on sex and consciousness.

The first-person narrator is Gerard, a writer who had achieved notoriety with the publication of a scandalous sex diary. Sorme is on a lecture tour in the United States when he is offered a commission by a sleazy publisher to write an introduction to an erotic journal by a moderately obscure Irish rake named Esmond Donnelly. The manuscript Sorme is given is disappointingly brief and with few literary qualities. Sorme had however come across Donnelly’s name is another context a few days earlier. He is a firm believer that coincidences are not coincidences. He feels compelled to accept the commission.

The publisher tells him that he would be delighted if Sorme could find more material. Sorme is convinced that what he means by this is that he wants Sorme to forge the additional material, which Sorme certainly has no intention of doing. Then Sorme discovers that the whole existing manuscript is a forgery. There almost certainly was however a genuine manuscript which may still exist. Tracking down the original manuscript will be an interesting challenge and Sorme is becoming fascinated by Donnelley. In fact he’s becoming obsessed.

Finding the manuscript really does require the skill and patience of a detective. It may be in the hands of Donnelly’s descendants, or in the hands of descendants of various people with whom Donnelly was involved.

Sorme finds a variety of genuine writings by Donnelly, more than enough to justify a book.

The God of the Labyrinth includes copious extracts from Esmond Donnelly’s diaries. Some is mostly interested in the erotic material, not for prurient reasons but for philosophical reasons. Sorme believes that sex can be the key to unlocking elevated states of consciousness and he suspects that Donnelly held similar views. Esmond’s sexual adventures in some ways parallel Sorme’s own. Sorme also sees sexual desire as being driven not by purely physical desire. It’s an attempt to establish some mystic communion with a member of the opposite sex. When a man and a woman have sex it’s much more than a union of two bodies, or at least it can be much more.

We’re often not sure whether we’re getting the opinions of Donnelly or of Sorme or of Wilson. Wilson was certainly interested in ideas similar to those espoused by Donnelly and Sorme.

Sorme finds lots of manuscripts. Some are forgeries, some are not. Some were written by Donnelly and some by others. Donnelly had been associated with some interesting literary figures. Sorme comes to realise that there is more at stake than an erotic diary. Donnelly’s interests ranged well beyond sex, perhaps into more esoteric fields. Sorme keeps coming across references to the Sect of the Phoenix, and even to the Hell Fire Club.

This novel is more than a literary detective story and as it progresses it becomes more and more difficult to be sure exactly what kind of a story this is.

Donnelly becomes an ever more elusive character, and Sorme becomes ever more obsessed.

There’s plenty of sex but it would be misleading to call this an erotic novel. It’s very cerebral and very obscure but it’s always interesting. No-one but Colin Wilson could have written this novel. As a writer he was a one-off and this novel is a one-off. But it is weirdly fascinating and it is highly recommended.

Edgar Wallace's The Frightened Lady

The Frightened Lady is a 1933 Edgar Wallace thriller.

Fairly typically the setting is a country house in England. Marks Priory is the estate of the young Lord Lebanon but he is definitely not in charge. He is entirely under the thumb of his mother. He doesn’t like it but every attempt at rebellion on his part has failed. Lady Lebanon is a formidable woman. She has intense family pride. An expert in heraldry, she is obsessed by the family’s history. She is not not just a Lebanon by marriage but by birth as well. She married her cousin. It is a very ancient family.

Young Lord Lebanon has other problems, specifically the rather sinister Dr Amersham. The relationship between his mother and Dr Amersham is obscure but it does appear that the doctor has some kind of hold over her. The servants detest Dr Amersham, probably with good reason.

Chief Inspector Bill Tanner of Scotland Yard becomes involved with this ancient family when the chauffeur is murdered. Tanner was in fact more or less on the scene at the time. He was in the village, Marks Thornton, investigating a case of counterfeiting.

There are all kinds of tensions at Marks Priory. The gamekeeper Tillings suspects his wife of being unfaithful, possibly with the chauffeur. There are two hardboiled American footmen which is very strange. One has to wonder how on earth they came to be in the service of such an old and distinguished family. Lord Lebanon has tried to dismiss them but has been overruled by his mother. Lady Lebanon’s secretary Ilsa Crane is terrified but nobody knows why. Every member of the family and every member of the staff seems anxious, unhappy and secretive.

And more murders will follow.

There are secrets here, possibly from the past. There might also be a question of money, the Lebanon family being extremely rich. There are sexual tensions. There are jealousies. There could be all sorts of motives for murder here.

Tanner is an efficient cop with an impressive record. His two off-siders are perhaps less formidable. Detective Sergeant Ferraby is young but very keen. Tanner regards Detective Sergeant Totty as the worst detective he has ever encountered, with a tendency to indulge in fanciful speculation. Totty is however almost a genius when it comes to spotting physical clues.

Ferraby gets himself personally involved when he takes a shine to Ilsa Crane.

There are plenty of suspects in the sense that there are plenty of people here with things to hide. Coming up with a plausible explanation for the crimes is a challenge even for a man as experienced as Bill Tanner, and he is unable to connect all the pieces of the puzzle until the very end. Despite his experience he has made a couple of false assumptions.

Wallace invites the reader to make false assumptions as well. He plays fair with the reader but like any good detective story writer he uses misdirection quite skilfully. He allows us to mislead ourselves.

The construction of Marks Priory began in 1160. It has been modified and extended and rebuilt several times. You won’t be at all surprised to learn that it is suspected that the house may contain secret passageways - this is an Edgar Wallace thriller after all.

This is closer to being a straightforward country house murder mystery than the more outrageous type of thriller for which Wallace was known, although there are a few outrageous touches and a few familiar Wallace trademarks.

The Frightened Lady is fine entertainment and is recommended.

The novel was filmed in 1940 as The Case of the Frightened Lady.

Robert Moore Williams' Somebody Wants You Dead

Robert Moore Williams (1907-1977) was an American writer. He mostly wrote science fiction but dabbled in other genres and used quite a few pseudonyms. His short novel Somebody Wants You Dead is quite obscure. I haven’t even able to find a publication date for it. I assume it was published in a pulp magazine (possibly under one of those pseudonyms) and then forgotten until Armchair Fiction rescued it from obscurity.

There is a helicopter that plays a part in the story so it must have been written in the postwar period and the scene depicted in the cover illustration with a woman holding on to the running board of a car does happen in the novel so it had to have been written when cars still had running boards. My guess is that this novel dates from the late 40s or very early 50s.

Zack Grey is a private eye. He’s been employed by a man named Grimsby to find a girl named Ruth Shaw. Grimsby claims she’s an employe who suddenly disappeared, along with some important papers. Grimsby might not have been telling the entire truth. That’s not Zack’s problem. A job is a job. Now he’s found Ruth Shaw and she’s very dead. Murdered. Just before dying she handed Zack a key. Then two guys show up, one of them toting a submachine gun. They’re real unfriendly. Zack is lucky to get away. He figures it’s a cinch that they killed Ruth Shaw.

While this is happening Ruth’s sister Sally arrives at the nearby Rocky Mountain Lodge where she’s supposed to meet Ruth. Ruth sent her two hundred dollars and an oblong steel box, the kind you keep securities in. Sally soon has her own problems with two other goons, young punks. They ransack her room, threaten her and try to rape her.

There’s an escaped convict on the loose, there seem to be quite a few people looking for something that they’re convinced Sally has in her possession, there’s lots of killing and quite a bit of paranoia.

The author also throws in a few time-honoured clichés familiar from 1930s B-movies and from Old Dark House movies.

Zack starts to take a liking to Sally and she seems inclined to reciprocate but of course there’s no way he can be sure he can trust her. There’s also no way she can be sure she can trust him.

Zack is a fairly standard PI hero. He’s no genius but he’s no fool. He makes some mistakes.

I don’t think this novel can in any way be described as noir fiction. Zack is not a classic noir protagonist and there’s no real femme fatale. This is more a hardboiled mystery suspense tale. The plot is quite serviceable. There are some suitably nasty and ruthless bad guys.

The style is very pulpy, but you won’t get any complaints from me about that. There’s no shortage of violence. The dead bodies start piling up at the Rocky Mountain Lodge.

Somebody Wants You Dead is a reasonably enjoyable read although you would be advised not to set your expectations too high. This is no neglected gem. Recommended.

Armchair Fiction have paired this one with M. Scott Michel’s 1946 crime thriller The Black Key in a two-novel paperback edition.

Edgar Wallace's The Door with Seven Locks

The Door with Seven Locks is a 1926 Edgar Wallace thriller.

Dick Martin is a young Scotland Yard sub-inspector about to retire because he’s come into money, although now he’s wondering what on earth he’s going to do with himself. Being a cop was his life.

He’s just handled on odd case. He was to arrest a professional burglar named Pheeney but the man has an unusual alibi. At the time he was picking locks, in a totally lawful manner. He had been hired to break into a tomb.

Perhaps as a joke his superintendent assigns Dick to one last case - involving a stolen library book. That case will have surprising consequences. One of the consequence is that he meets an adorable girl named Sybil. The other consequences are more sinister - he meets a doctor named Stalletti. Stalletti occupies his time with some rather startling experiments.

Although Dick doesn’t want to become a private detective his superintendent also suggests he might like to take on a case, on a one-off basis, for a lawyer named Havelock. It involves keeping tabs on the young, unstable, eccentric, world-wandering Lord Selford. Dick is at a loose end and dreads boredom so he accepts.

These three plot strands will soon begin to intersect.

Dick is a bit surprised when someone tries to kill him, and even more surprised that his assailant doesn’t seem to be quite human.

There are also some keys which seem to be important. Sybil has one of these keys. Someone else is very keen to get hold of it.

In fact there are seven keys, and all seven are needed to unlock a door with seven locks. Nobody knows what is behind that door. The door is in the Selford Tombs, a burial complex built into a hillside by one of the current Lord Selford’s distant ancestors. That ancestor was notoriously wicked. The father of the present Lord Selford also had a reputation for wickedness.

There are quite a few shady characters mixed up in this case. Some turn out to be more sinister than initial appearances suggest while others might be fairly harmless common-and-garden crooks.

There are clearly all kinds of secrets associated with the Selford family. Sybil is distantly related to Lord Selford and indeed appears to be his only living relative.

There is a rumour that Selford Manor contains hidden rooms. There are kidnappings. Innocent people are drugged. Telephone lines get cut. There are what appear to be monstrous creatures. There are murders. There are gunfights. There are ancient sins.

Dick Martin naturally falls in love with Sybil, giving him a personal stake in the case. He’s a good detective but he’s dealing with fantastic crimes that are totally outside all his past experience.

Wallace as usual provides plenty of breathless excitement and a delightfully outrageous plot that positively races along. Wallace had a knack for making such plots finally come together in a surprisingly satisfying manner.

And as so often in Wallace’s books there are hints of gothic creepiness. Hugely entertaining and highly recommended

The Door with the Seven Locks was adapted for film in 1962 as an entry in the prolific cycle of German Edgar Wallace krimis (the German name for crime films) made by Rialto. I’ve reviewed that movie as well.

Don Wilcox’s The Ice Queen

Don Wilcox’s short novel The Ice Queen was published in Fantastic Adventures in January 1943. It’s a lost civilisation tale, my absolute favourite genre.

The Ice Queen takes place in the 19th century. Jim McClurg is an artist. He’s been hired to make a visual record of a polar expedition organised by Lady Lucille Lorruth. Five years earlier her husband disappeared in the Arctic while on a fur-trading expedition. Lady Lucille would like people to think that she believes her husband is still alive and that the object of her expedition is to find him. Jim suspects that she’s only interested in those furs. In his final communication Lord Lorruth claimed to have collected a vast number of furs, worth a rather large fortune.

The brig Aurora is commanded by Captain French. He drinks a lot and does not appear to be very honest. It’s not clear whether Lady Lucille is angling to marry the captain for the sake of his fortune (he’s a rich man) or whether the captain is angling to marry Lady Lucille for the sake of that fortune in furs.

Jim is mostly interested in the girl on the tiger. She’s very pretty, she looks like a Viking maiden, she rides a pure white tiger and she’s been shadowing the Aurora. This is impossible of course. The girl cannot exist. And yet she does exist.

There’s a stowaway who knows far too much about this frozen wasteland, and seems to know all about the girl. She is apparently a queen. We later find out that her name is Veeva.

There are unexpected dangers in the Arctic. Huge ice bubbles appear from nowhere. Several members of the party are imprisoned in these bubbles. It is possible to dig one’s way out but they’re very disconcerting, and the worry is that an ice bubble forming over the ship might sink it.

There is also a strange lost world in these frozen wastes. Possibly a very ancient world although its origins are unknown even to the inhabitants. This lost world holds the answer to the disappearance of Lord Lorruth.

A complication is that every male member of the expedition is hopelessly in love wth the beautiful young ice queen while Lady Lucille sees her as a deadly threat.

The trick with lost civilisation stories is not just to make the lost civilisation interesting, but believable as well. There have to be plausible explanations for the strangeness of such a civilisation. Wilcox succeeds rather well on both counts. Veeva’s icy realm is strange but it makes sense. Even the fact that Veeva claims to be 22,000 years old makes sense. And the sleeping king ends up making sense. It all hangs together.

There’s a suggestion of menace about Veeva’s realm, but it’s a subtle menace. Veeva appears to be good-natured and cheerful. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the expedition members to be afraid, and yet there’s something slightly sinister about it all.

There’s a suggestion that Veeva may have access to certain powers, possibly technological and possibly magical, and that technology or magic may be behind some of the mysteries of her kingdom, but it’s left nicely vague and ambiguous.

This books ticks all my boxes. I love lost world stories and I love adventure, horror or science fiction stories in polar settings. And how could anyone not love a pretty young heroine who rides a huge white tiger whilst wearing furs, a metal breastplate and a Viking helmet?

The Ice Queen is very pulpy but it has plenty of atmosphere, danger and excitement and it’s hugely enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I know almost nothing about Don Wilcox (1905-2000) other than the fact that he was American and his writing career seems to have been confined to the 1940s and 1950s. I have read another of his novels, Slave Raiders from Mercury, and it’s very pulpy but quite enjoyable.

Armchair Fiction have paired this one with Poul Anderson’s The Sargasso of Lost Starships in a two-novel paperback edition.

Richard Stark's The Man with the Getaway Face

Donald E. Westlake wrote 24 novels, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, featuring his anti-hero Parker. The Man with the Getaway Face was the second in the series, appearing in 1963.

These are definitely hardboiled crime novels (very hardboiled) but they don’t qualify as noir fiction.

Parker is one of the great anti-heroes in fiction. He’s a career criminal specialising in large-scale robberies and he’s unstoppable because he simply doesn’t consider the possibility of losing. If a job does go sour Parker just moves on.

This novel opens with Parker getting a new face, a necessity after the events of the first Parker novel (and I'm not going to reveal even a hint of a spoiler for that one). The plastic surgery has depleted Parker’s funds somewhat so he agrees to do an armoured car job with Skimm. Skimm’s girlfriend Alma came up with the plan.

Parker doesn’t trust Alma and he doesn’t like her plan. Right from the start he has no doubt that Alma is planning a double cross. But Parker really does need money urgently so he’s prepared to do the job. He’s sure he knows exactly how Alma intends to execute her double cross and he’s confident he can take appropriate steps. He’s also confident that he can make sufficient changes to her plan to make the job viable.

Interestingly the heist is not the real focus of the novel. The real focus is entirely unconnected with the heist. It concerns that plastic surgery job.

The heist itself provides some excitement and suspense but the real suspense kicks in afterwards. In a lot of crime stories it’s the betrayals that come after the crime that are the meat of the story but that’s not the case here. There really are two entirely separate plots running in parallel.

Anti-heroes don’t come much more ruthless and coldblooded than Parker. He is incapable of feeling remorse or regret. He cares about other people only insofar as they are useful to him. He will kill without hesitation. He will use whatever level of violence he considers necessary.

Parker’s mind is icily logical. Emotion is never allowed to interfere with his plans.

He should be a monster, and human monsters are rarely interesting. Parker does however have a couple of redeeming qualities. He kills only when he feels it is necessary. He uses violence only when he feels it is necessary. He gets no pleasure from violence. It’s not that he has a conscience. He simply sees unnecessary violence as inefficient, wasteful and risky. He might be incapable of feeling genuine human affection but he is also incapable of actual cruelty.

He is also, in his own way, an honest crook. If you’re involved in a job with Parker and you play things straight with him he’ll play things straight with you. He won’t consider double crossing someone unless he knows for sure that that person has double crossed him.

Parker has no illusions about women and has no intention of ever getting emotionally involved but he has no actual dislike of women. In fact he has no actual personal dislike of anybody. That would be a distraction and it would be inefficient.

And there was a woman once, and he still thinks about her. Once, just once, he experienced something resembling a normal human emotion.

All of this means that despite his extreme anti-hero status the reader finds it impossible to hate Parker. We feel a certain grudging admiration. He’s an unapologetic ruthless criminal but we can’t help hoping he gets away with his crimes.

There are indications in this book that by this time Westlake knew he had found a winning formula and that there were going to be more Parker novels to come.

The Man with the Getaway Face is great hardboiled crime. Highly recommended.

I've also reviewed the first Parker novel The Hunter (AKA Point Blank).

Edgar Wallace's The India-Rubber Men

The India-Rubber Men is a 1929 Edgar Wallace thriller.

London has been hit by a series of daring robberies carried out by men in rubber gas masks, armed with gas bombs. They have become known as the India-Rubber Men.

Inspector John Wade of the river police is interested in the goings-on at the Mecca, a kind of riverfront boarding house for ship’s officers. Not a very reputable establishment. It’s run by Mum Oaks, a very disreputable middle-aged woman. Her niece lives there as well. Lila is a timid but attractive young woman and Inspector Wade has grown rather fond of her.

Wade starts to see some connecting threads but they’re rather puzzling. There’s a penniless lord who isn’t penniless any more. There’s a mysterious sea captain. There’s a mysterious man who takes young Lila out to dinner once a year. There’s a woman who tries to drown herself, and she’s clutching a photograph of Lila. There are numerous attempts on John Wade’s life. There are abductions and a woman is drugged. There are break-ins in which nothing is stolen. There are fast motor launches that appear and disappear. There are suspects who should be thousands of miles away, but they aren’t. There’s a lawyer who knows something. There are links to events in the past. There’s an inheritance.

This is pretty classic Edgar Wallace stuff. Apart from the India-Rubber Men there are small-time river thieves. There are jewel thefts. There are hidden rooms. There’s gunplay (with machine-guns). And Chicago gangsters.

There’s also a policeman in love.

A good deal of the action takes place on the river or at sea. There’s a definite nautical flavour to the activities of the bad guys (and I do love nautical mysteries and thrillers). Naturally there are various sea-going and river-going vessels that seem innocent, even when they’ve been thoroughly searched. But in reality they are far from innocent.

There’s quite a collection of bad guys and it’s not until late in the story that we start to suspect the identity of the most dangerous of the villains. There are quite a few characters who are not at all what they appear to be.

Wallace liked convoluted plots but he was always able to resolve them satisfactorily and this story is no exception.

Wallace also liked to build an atmosphere of breathless excitement and he does that here. There’s suspense, action and last-minute escapes. There’s a very high body count. Wallace was interesting among British writers of that era. He didn’t stint on the murder and mayhem and his villains were violent and ruthless. In some of his books in the 1920s he seemed to be trying to inject a slight American flavour. Not a bad idea since Chicago gangsters were big news at the time.

There’s some romance as well.

Inspector Wade is a likeable enough hero. He bends a few rules, but not too much. He’s also inclined to rely on bluffs, which don’t always come off.

Wallace seemed to be incapable of writing a dull book. He knew his market, he knew the right ingredients to include and he delivered the goods.

This is a fine Edgar Wallace thriller and it’s highly recommended.

The Blue Fire Pearl - The Complete Adventures of Singapore Sammy, Volume 1

George F. Worts (1892-1967) was a prolific pulp writer under his own name and also using the pseudonym Loring Brent. The Blue Fire Pearl: The Complete Adventures of Singapore Sammy volume 1 includes five stories featuring the young American adventurer known as Singapore Sammy. Sammy is on a quest to find his father. He’s tracked him all over the Far East.

These stories, written in the late 1920s, are typical of the tropical adventures pulp genre and they’re fairly good examples of that genre.

In The Blue Fire Pearl Singapore Sammy is confined in the dungeons of an evil crazy maharajah. Sammy is still looking for his father, not out of filial affection but because his old man cost him his inheritance and he wants that money. His father has two obsessions, elephants and pearls. This maharajah’s realm has plenty of both. Sammy is to be pitted against another American captive in a boxing match. The winner gets his freedom and a fabulous blue pearl worth a fortune. The loser will be executed.

A temporary alliance might be useful, but it might also be dangerous. A competent story.

The second story, Cobra, also concerns pearls. Specifically a black pearl. Singapore Sammy is robbed and left for dead and he’s out for revenge. All he knows about the man responsible for the attack is that the guy has the eyes of a cobra. Sammy also has to help out an old buddy down on his luck. Maybe he can do that in a way that will further his bid for vengeance. What Sammy needs to do first is to turn a small amount of money into a large amount and he has a rather clever plan to do just that.

Sammy’s plan is clever and the story itself is very clever and a lot of fun.

In South of Sulu that blue pearl leads Sammy into another dangerous adventure. He is tempted by stories that the pearl is one of two identical pearls and of course the two together would be worth a vast fortune. He also feels that he may be getting close to finding his father. Perhaps it’s the thought of owning two blue pearls that makes him careless. He falls victim to a card sharp. He finds himself in big trouble, and those sharks (real sharks not card sharks) may be an even bigger problem.

Plenty of action in this tale and a nicely gripping finale in which Sammy faces apparent certain doom.

In The Pink Elephant Sammy really does find a pink elephant. At least it’s a baby elephant that is not the normal elephant colour and and that makes it sacred. And being sacred makes it fabulously valuable. Unfortunately Sammy is not the only adventurer who knows about this elephant. Sammy hoped to get rich and win the favour of the King of Siam but now his problem is how to get out of the kingdom alive. He is very hot on his father’s trail now but his father is smart and treacherous and ruthless.

Some good double-crosses and some humour in this entertaining tale.

Octopus is a story about a real octopus and a man known as the Octopus. Both are equally dangerous. It starts with two American sailors being fleeced in a card game. This is a situation that is always likely to end in a brawl but in this case the consequences are much more serious.

One unexpected consequence is that Sammy turns treasure-hunter, in partnership with one of the sailors. It’s sunken treasure and deep-sea diving for treasure is perilous at the best of times. We’re talking old school deep-sea diving here, not scuba diving. Finding the treasure is easy. The problems start once they find the treasure. A fine exciting story.

All five stories are good. The first story is slightly the weakest but the other four are excellent.

This is fine pulp adventure fiction that makes good use of its exotic settings and provides ample thrills. Highly recommended.

The Blue Fire Pearl is one of the titles in the excellent Argosy Library series from Steeger Books.

I’ve reviewed one of the collections of Peter the Brazen Far East adventure tales, The City of Stolen Lives (written as Loring Brent). I think the Singapore Sammy stories are stronger than the Peter the Brazen stories.

Richard Stark's Point Blank (AKA The Hunter)

The Hunter, published in 1962, was the first of the twenty-four noir novels featuring his anti-hero Parker written by Donald E. Westlake under the name Richard Stark. It was filmed in 1967 as Point Blank and subsequent printings of the novel carried the title Point Blank. I believe it has also appeared under the title Payback. For convenience I’ll refer to the novel as Point Blank.

The Richard Stark books are harder-edged than the books he published under his own name. Point Blank is very hard-edged indeed.

Parker is a career criminal. About once a year he pulls a job, usually a payroll or something like that. After a year or so, when the money starts to run out, he pulls another job. He is very careful and he’s never been caught. Between jobs he lives in resort hotels. He has a pretty wife named Lynn and although Parker isn’t the falling in love type he’s as close to loving Lynn as he’s ever been to loving any woman. It’s a nice life. It suits Parker.

Then came a job that didn’t go smoothly. Parker was killed, or at least that’s what everyone thought. He wasn’t killed and now he’s back and he has some scores to settle. He was double-crossed and that’s not the sort of thing he’s prepared to forget.

He intends to find Mal Resnick. He believes Mal was the one who double-crossed him. Mal isn’t easy to find but Parker has plenty of time and he’s patient.

At first Parker just wants revenge, but later he decides he wants something more. Going after that something more would be crazy but Parker is running on momentum and he’s determined to see it through to the end.

While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the plot the most impressive thing about this novel is Parker. He’s an anti-hero on steroids. He doesn’t get any particular pleasure out of killing but it doesn’t bother him either. He is obsessed and relentless. He’s not so much brave as simply indifferent to risks. And he is a very hard man. In this story he runs into a lot of men who think of themselves as tough guys or hardened professional killers but they’ve never come up against anyone quite like Parker. Parker tends to wrong-foot them because he takes risks that they never expected any sane man to take.

There’s not much positive one can say about Parker. He doesn’t have a good side and he doesn’t have a lighter side. But he is fascinating.

We learn a little about the motivations of the other characters, especially Mal Resnick, but the focus is overwhelmingly on Parker. Westlake uses third-person narration but we see events entirely from Parker’s point of view. What we learn about Parker’s motivations is that he hardly understands them himself. He isn’t operating according to a coherent plan. He’s like an out-of-control locomotive. Once it’s started it could end up anywhere.

There are no agonising internal conflicts. Parker is aware that he has made some mistakes. The heist that went wrong and that caused all the problems is one he should have stayed well clear of. But he doesn’t spend time on regrets or remorse or self-reflection.

Westlake’s prose is as tough and relentless as Parker. This was not Westlake’s usual style. He used the Richard Stark books to experiment with a very different ultra-hardboiled style.

The book is not short on violence. It’s not described in particularly graphic detail. Its impact of the violence depends more on its sheer cold-bloodedness and casualness than on anything else.

There’s some sex but not much and it’s not even moderately graphic.

It’s certainly a dark story. Is it noir fiction? The answer is yes, to a certain extent. It sure is hardboiled.

Point Blank is a roller-coaster ride and a very entertaining one. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed a slightly earlier Westlake crime novel, The Cutie. It was his first crime novel and has appeared under several alternative titles. It’s worth checking out.

Edgar Wallace's The Green Ribbon

The Green Ribbon is a 1929 Edgar Wallace thriller with a racing background.

Edna Gray is a young pretty English girl who has been living in Argentina. At the age of twenty-two she has suddenly become a very rich young woman and she has returned to England to take possession of a rather large but run-down country estate. She intends to live in Longhall, a large rambling neglected old house which forms part of her inheritance. 

On the ship she had met a Mr Luke and they had struck up something of a friendship (although not at this stage a romance).

What she doesn’t know is that Mark Luke in a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector. She also doesn’t know why he’s so interested in Gillywood Farm (which she now owns) or why he has the idea that she might be in danger. It has something to do with her tenant, Mr Goodie. Mr Goodie leases Gillywood Farm for his business which is training racehorses. He has turned the farm into a kind of fortress.

Edna does not like Mr Goodie and she cannot imagine why he wants to buy Longhall or why he is offering her fifty thousand pounds for it, which is at least five times what the property is worth.

Luke also has no idea why Goodie is interested in Longhall but he feels that it is one of the things he needs to find out.

Luke is investigating Mr Trigger’s Transactions. This is a racing racket run by a Mr Trigger. Luke knows this, and he knows that Mr Goodie and a Dr Blanter are involved. Also involved is Arthur Rustem, Edna’s lawyer. Although he’s not really her lawyer now. Since he had an unfortunate misunderstanding with the Law Society he is no longer allowed to practice law but he still manages Edna’s estate.

Luke therefore knows the identity of those involved in the crooked gambling racket and he knows roughly how the swindle is worked. His problem is that it’s not clear that this racket is actually illegal. It’s certainly unethical and dishonest but Mr Trigger has come up with an incredibly profitable operation that remains technically within the law. Or at least it appears to be technically legal. Luke is sure that if he digs deeply enough he will discover something for which the conspirators can be prosecuted.

The scheme is very clever and provides an exceptionally interesting and original driving force for Wallace’s plot. It also adds a bit more suspense. Luke is convinced that Edna is in danger but he can’t protect her by arresting those who endanger her, and he can’t even figure out exactly why she is in danger. There’s also the mysterious behaviour of Mr Garcia, an old family friend of Edna’s who suddenly disappeared and then turned up in Constantinople.

The estate provides a perfect setting for Wallace’s purposes. There may not be any secret passageways in Longhall but there is an elaborate cave system nearby which is just as much fun. And there are plenty of classic Wallace ingredients. There is murder. There is racetrack skullduggery. There are Mr Goodie’s huge savage dogs. There are odd mysteries - why did Mr Goodie suddenly have to move all his stables? There’s a collapsible aeroplane. There are car chases. There are exotic poisons. There are hints of sexual depravity, and drug-taking. And there’s some romance.

Edna is a personable heroine. She’s no fool but she has no idea how she managed to find herself in the middle of such a complex and dangerous situation. Mr Luke is also a likeable hero, intelligent without being brilliant and confident without being arrogant.

And there are plenty of villains. Some of the bad guys are truly twisted and malevolent, others are just greedy and short-sighted and some are slightly ambiguous. You don’t know which of the villains are the ones to really worry about until late in the story.

A great racetrack mystery thriller and although the criminal scheme is complicated Wallace gives us enough racing background to make it perfectly comprehensible once the details are revealed.

The Green Ribbon is top-tier Wallace. Highly recommended.

Charles Williams' Nothing in Her Way

Charles K. Williams (1909-1975) was an American pulp crime writer. He wrote twenty-two novels. The 1960 novel Fires of Youth was published under his name but he did not write it. He sometimes gets confused with the other Charles Williams, an English writer who was part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Inklings circle.

Nothing in Her Way, published by Gold Medal in 1953, is a book about a confidence trick. I just love crime novels dealing with conmen and con tricks. And this novel deals with a whole series of fascinating confidence tricks.

It all starts when the protagonist/narrator, Mike Belen, runs into his ex-wife Cathy. This happens while a conman is trying to persuade Mike to fall for the oldest con in the book. Mike and Cathy have quite a history. They knew each other when they were little kids. And there’s a weird bond between them. While they were still kids Mike’s father was swindled by a man named Lachlan and ended up in gaol. Mike and Cathy swore they’d get revenge one day. Kids make such promises but these two have never forgotten that childhood pledge. It’s been an obsession with them. Especially for Cathy. Now Cathy tells Mike that the time has come. She knows where Lachlan is and she has a fool-proof plan.

But this con can only work if they have a lot of money to play with. Cathy has that figured out as well. They will first pull another confidence trick, on a man who was one of Lachlan’s accomplices.

They’re going to have a couple of accomplices themselves. One will be Wolford Charles, one of the sharpest bunco artists around. The other is a mysterious guy named Bolton.

Then Donnelly steps into the picture. He’s a gangster type and he claims that Cathy owes him money but won’t pay. This worries Mike but doesn’t seem to bother Cathy.

The plot comprises two incredibly complex cons plus minor cons plus countless double-crosses. No-one knows how much anyone else knows. No-one knows if anyone else can be trusted. No-one knows what their partners’ motivations are.

There aren’t just double-crosses. There are triple-crosses and quadruple-crosses. There are devious schemes hidden inside other devious schemes. Williams provides us not just with plot twists, but with genuinely unexpected plot twists. There’s plenty of misdirection.

There’s not much action. There’s some, but these are non-violent criminals. Conmen don’t wander about with guns. They rely on their wits rather than on muscle or firepower. And the conmen in this story know how to think on their feet. No matter what kind of jam they get into they figure they can talk their way out of it.

The plotting is so tight and the plot twists are so good, and the suspense is so effective, that Williams is able to resist the temptation to throw in superfluous gunplay and fistfights. This story doesn’t need them.

The story builds to a very satisfying conclusion.

Cathy has plenty of femme fatale qualities. She can twist men around her little finger. She’s been doing that to Mike for years. Even when he knows what she’s up to she can still manipulate him. And she always has her own agenda. She is not however merely an evil spider woman. She’s the best kind of femme fatale - you can never be sure if she’ll turn out to be a good girl or a bad girl, or maybe both. Mike has known her for twenty-three years and he still can’t figure her out.

Mike is an interesting character as well. He’s not quite a crook and he’s not quite an innocent dupe. He doesn’t mind doing things that are illegal but he has to be able to justify his actions to himself, under his own particular moral code. Now he’s in a situation where he’s walking a tightrope, doing criminal things whilst trying not to succumb entirely to the lure of easy money through crime.

Even the minor characters have some complexity. Mike isn’t sure what to make of Bolton or of Donnelly and the reader also isn’t sure about them. They might be what they seem to be, or they might not. They might be genuine bad guys, or they might not.

Intricate and skilful plotting, ingenious confidence tricks, characters with some depth, taut suspense - what more could you want? Highly recommended.