Rest In Agony

Rest In Agony, by Paul W. Fairman

No month stated, 1967  Lancer Books

(Original Monarch Books edition 1963)

A few years before he gave us the sleazy masterpiece that was the Coffy novelization (also published by Lancer Books), prolific author Paul W. Fairman turned out this novella-length horror yarn…which, per the copyright page, was first published in shorter form in 1963 by Monarch Books, under the pseudonym “Ivar Jorgensen.” Featuring a ridiculously naïve narrator, an evil Satanic cult, and a cameo by none other than Jesus Christ Himself, Rest In Agony couldn’t be better suited for this Very Special Glorious Trash Christmas Day Post. 

That original Monarch edition must’ve been real short, as this Lancer version is only 230 pages long, with some big ol’ print. Sorry, “Easy Eye” print. The novel is essentially a novella, featuring only a handful of characters and a basic plot that features good against evil. The only curious thing is when it takes place; narrator Hal buries a few clues here and there that the events he is about to tell us occurred a long time ago (“I still remember it clearly to this day,” etc), so either Hal’s in some fictional future and telling us about something that happened way back in 1967 (or 1963, if you’re going with the original Monarch edition), or the events of Rest In Agony occur much earlier in the Twentieth Century. 

To make this even more curious, Fairman gives us no topical details in the novel; it takes place in a bland “Smalltown, USA” setting with zero mentions of popular culture. About the most we learn is that people can take buses to a nearby city, and there are department stores to shop in, so the idea I got was that the novel occurred somewhere in the 1930s. But then, given the lack of any details, it could really take place at just about any time – this is not the Paul Fairman who gave us the no-sleazy-stone-unturned masterwork that was Coffy, unfortunately. This version of Fairman is a barebones, meat-and-potatoes writer at best. And whereas his Coffy was X rated, Rest In Agony would be rated PG at most. 

Further giving the impression that this takes place in a more innocent time than the swinging ‘60s, Rest In Agony is narrated by the most impossibly naïve and pearl-clutching protagonist, Hal, who is 21 in the story but acts more like he’s even younger…or perhaps even older, as he’s a total fusspot, morally outraged, and altogether prudish wuss. Worse yet, the dude’s in love with his sister, 18 year-old Lisa, and Hal informs us that he’s lately been trying to subdue the dawning realization that his feelings for Lisa are a little more than sibling-based. 

“My uncle died in agony.” So Hal opens his tale, dropping a few of those vague clues that all this was so long ago, and we learn that the uncle is Amby, a wealthy gaddabout who is screaming and dying on his deathbed as the novel begins, all while Hal and Lisa sit down below and listen, waiting for the agony to end. But on the day of the funeral, Hal is home alone and the phone rings – and it’s the voice of Uncle Amby, begging Hal for help. 

The supernatural aspect does not return for some time, and per the horror template Hal tries to shrug this off as a hallucination or whatnot – at least, no one will believe him. Then there’s this business about “The Book of Ambrose,” a book Uncle Amby supposedly wrote, at least according to a local sports reporter named Hugh Payson who keeps bugging Hal and telling him he’s doing a paper on the wealthy and famous Ambrose Sampson, and this book of his would sure be a big help for his research. 

There’s also a lot of stuff about dreams; folks, Hal sets a precendent for a narrator who sleeps the most in a book that I’ve yet read on here. No joke, practically ever chapter ends with Hal telling us he’s going to bed, or just about to fall asleep, or even being dosed into unconsciousness and voyaging again into the Satanic palace of pain (where pain is pleasure)…I mean the guy certainly gets his rest in the book. 

The dreams are also fueled by the wanton carnality to be found in the Book of Ambrose; Hal finds this handrwitten journal in Uncle Amby’s room, and reads it in a daze – it’s “filth,” is all our prudish narrator tells us, and it serves to make him realize that there was a wholly different side to the kindly, wealthy uncle Hal knew: in reality, Ambrose Sampson was a thrall of Satan, taking part in a host of vile and horrific rituals (none of which are described at all). 

Hal eventually lets Lisa read the diary, and she too is shocked by it, but she’s more understanding than Hal and suspects there might be more to the story than Hal thinks, and also Hal can’t help but noting how hot and beautiful she is and stuff. Just when the hints of incest become too much to bear, Hal and Lisa are informed that Lisa isn’t really Hal’s sister; she was really the unwanted child of some chick Uncle Amby knew, and Hal’s folks took the baby girl in and raised her as their own, never telling her or Hal…until now! 

Well, all that taken care of, Hal and Lisa are free to go at it…though, again, this is not the author who just a few years later would give us Coffy. There’s some kissing and heavy petting and zero description, and zero sex, but Hal and Lisa sure are hankering for it. All told, this entire revelation that Lisa isn’t really Hal’s sister is wonky at best, and given the brevity of the novel you wonder why the whole “I thought Lisa was my sister” scenario was even included. I mean it only serves to make the narrator look like a prudish wuss who has incestual designs on his sister. 

He’s also stupid; it wouldn’t take a genius to figure that this sports reporter guy might not be totally on the level. Anyway, Hal and his friend (who happens to be Lisa’s boyfriend, but the character is so laughably immaterial to the plot that you wonder why he was even included) hop on a bus to go to a neighboring town to check out a store that Uncle Amby did business with…a store where one of Satan’s minions works, a hotstuff babe who runs the cosmetics stand! 

I did appreciate how Fairman made it clear that Satan’s throngs aren’t always like bigwigs or famous people or whatnot, but come on! A sports reporter and a perfume sales lady; surely we are on the lower rungs of Satanic evil. It gets even lower than that; Fairman works in a “rats” angle, where red-eyed rats with keen intelligence begin to populate Hal’s nightmares and show up at odd times…this hit on a personal note because I’ve been drafted into part-time, unpaid rat catching this past year, thanks to my wife’s friggin’ garden. I catch them in a live bait cage, and they’ve ranged from “you’d be a cute little thing if it wasn’t for that damn long tail” to “Oh my living God I had no idea rats could get that big!” 

Well anyway, the way these things go, Lisa is captured, held as bait (perhaps in a live bait cage) until Hal turns over that damn Book of Amrbose. Oh, and the sports reporter reveals himself to be Satan’s Representative…sounds like an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that never was. For once Hal shows some insight when he asks Hugh why he had to take Lisa, given that Hal had already agreed to hand over the damn book…well, it’s because ol’ Satan’s Representative got a look at young Lisa, and now has the hellish hots for her. 

Hal spends the final quarter either sleeping, being knocked out, or experiencing things is a drugged daze. And also, apparently, getting laid – courtesy hotstuff Margo Danning, Hugh Payson’s sort-of Satanic commander in chief. She lures the addle-headed Hal to the ways of the “Prince,” entailing slightly risque parts where Hal witnesses Satanists having orgies and whatnot…all of it written in a very vague, obsfucated style. 

Meanwhile Lisa is there, but to her this opulent place of decadence is really a tacky dump, with white walls and no furniture; the implication is that all Hal sees is only in his mind, and his mind has been subverted by the devil. And also Hal, we are incessantly informed, is too “weak” to fight back – and we’re told this by the friggin ghost of his uncle, who pops up infrequently to gab with Lisa about how pathetic and weak Hal is…all while Hal is lying right there and listening to them! Soon it becomes clear that Lisa is the true hero of the tale, but Hal is the one telling the story. It is Lisa who has the power of pure spirit that cannot be touched by Satan, as memorably demonstrated when Hugh Payson tries to tempt her during a Satanic orgy…and then the heavens open…and Jesus Himself comes down to announce to Lisa how proud He is of her! (And yes, Fairman follows tradition and capitalizes the “He,” and I’ve followed suit.) 

Now I was of course reminded of that part in The Mind Masters #3 where God answered the hero’s prayer…but, as it turns out, Fairman has more up his sleeve. (No spoilers, but Hal for once gets smart and realizes it’s all Satan’s last, most desperate trick.) There’s no action finale; indeed, the finale is pretty lame, with the villains vanishing and also a few of them turning into rats…because meanwhile we’ve learned those red-eyed rats are in reality Satanists who have displeased the Prince and thus have been turned into rodents. But otherwise it’s a great cult to join, I’m sure, with lots of fringe benefits. 

Here in the finale we get one, uh, final reminder that all this was long ago; Hal tells us that “in future” he would always see Lisa this way, as the proud young woman who literally stood up to Satan. Oh, and as for Lisa’s dimwitted boyfriend, the stooge is so immaterial to the plot that the book ends with him still not finding out that Hal and Lisa aren’t really siblings; indeed, the guy spends the entire final quarter off-page, and is only mentioned again because Fairman presumably remembers him at the last moment. 

All told, Rest In Agony is a somewhat fun if overly stilted and melodramatic bit of ‘60s Satanic Panic, not nearly as sleazy or lurid as it would have been if it had been published a decade later. I have no idea how this edition differs from the original 1963 printing, but overall I’d say the novel was passable if ultimately forgettable. And the cover art reminds me of the Berkley editions of Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood! 

Merry Christmas!

Flight To Takla-Ma

Flight To Takla-Ma, by Tedd Thomey
October, 1961  Monarch Books

With the vibe of a very long men’s adventure magazine story, Flight To Takla-Ma is a compelling Cold War novel with action, intrique, some spicy stuff, and even an unexpected romance angle. Author Tedd Thomey penned several paperback originals and his style is very much in the men’s mag vein, though I don’t believe he ever wrote for those magazines. (Some of his books were excerpted as “true book bonuses,” though.)

If anything Thomey has a knack for unusual plotting. Flight To Takla-Ma concerns itself with the “secret missions” of a would-be astronaut in the Taklamakan desert of China, but really it turns into more of a prisoner of war tale. It’s how the protagonist, square-jawed he-man Al Riley, becomes a spy that displays Thomey’s unusual plotting; namely, Riley accidentally breaks the neck of a woman he just had sex with and is offered a secret spy mission as a way to salvage his Air Force career!

Riley is a major, in the astronaut program, and he’s based in Mercury Beach, Florida. He’s really on the second-run list and is mostly training in case one of the main astronauts drops out of the program. Riley is a hotshot pilot with a successful war record in Korea, but his hot temper has kept him from truly achieving his goals. That and his rakish charm with the ladies. When we meet him Riley is berating a ranking officer over a faulty helmet piece, even slamming the helmet over the poor bastard’s head. But what really gets Riley in trouble is when, later that day, he meets the “nymphomaniac” blonde wife of a new astronaut on the program. 

This is Fay Exler, a “leggy-pure-bred blonde,” who scopes Riley out while he changes into swim trunks on the beach. She makes her interest known posthaste, and Thomey capably brings to life her ample charms. Monarch Books was a spicy imprint for its day, thus the word “breasts” appears frequently in these opening chapters. And when Riley and Fay have sex on the beach the next night, after sharing a bottle of wine, the ensuing scene is slightly more risque than what you might read in say Gold Medal Books:

He drew her very close, feeling her wet breasts, tasting the salt water on his lips, thrusting his leg between hers. He lifted her into his arms and carried her with a rush of water and excitement up onto the beach. 

Placing her on the sand, he covered her body with his own. She was remarkable from the beginning, her movements vigorous and unselfish. They forgot everything. Physically they were perfectly matched, and from the moment she caught and joined his propelling rhythm, he knew he had found a woman who regarded this ritual with the same frank, hedonistic delight as he did – a calculated but abandoned pursuit of the ultimate in exquisite awareness. She was with him all the way, from the slowjoy-piercing take-off, through the steady breath-taking climb, as they drove higher and higher, plunging toward unimaginable heights of sensation, till, somewhere in outer space, their world blew wide-open in a jet explosion of total ecstasy.

So in other words they get along great. But Fay’s very drunk on the wine and when they drink another bottle she jumps in the ocean for some skinny dipping. She’s so drunk she doesn’t realize she’s lost control of herself and she nearly drowns in the ocean. Once Riley catches up with her she is freaking out, half drowned, and he tries to calm her down. When this doesn’t work he slaps her, then punches her, but in his own panic he’s broken her damn neck! Now he has to drive the dying girl to the nearest hospital, only to be told she’s dead, and then he sits there and waits for her husband to show so he can explain himself. Talk about embarrassing!

Riley’s kicked out of the astronaut program and moved back to Edwards Air Force base in California, serving again as a test pilot. In his frustration and self-loathing he breaks record after record. He’s approached by mysterious General McKnight, an old Army vet who asks Riley a bunch of intrusive questions. Turns out McKnight runs Twelve-Twelve, an intelligence agency so top secret most people haven’t heard of it. At length Riley is picked for a secret mission; McKnight won’t divulge any details about it, but he promises Riley that, if he succeeds, McKnight will get him back in the astronaut program.

Thomey races through Riley’s training in espionage; in addition to more precision flying maneuvers he’s also taught the rudiments of the Russian and Chinese languages and given lessons on encryption and etc. But Riley’s still a hothead and breaks out of camp five weeks in; he steals a car and gets to Las Vegas, a few hundred miles away, where he picks up a hot redhead and scores again, in another explicit-for-its-time sequence just a chapter or two after the last one:

As soon as he picked her up and carried her to the bed, she pressed her naked breasts against the skin of his chest. Her hands grasped his shoulders insistently, her nails digging deep into his flesh and then even deeper. Her hips began a wonderful rhythm against him. Her green eyes looked up at him boldly, full of desire and excitement, and then she very deliberately bit deeply into the muscle of his chest, her teeth sharp and demanding.

Whether the lady is a vampire is unstated, but Riley again has a good ol’ time before finally deciding to mosey on back to Edwards. When he arrives he finds that he’s not in trouble – McKnight expected this of him, and besides Riley’s too damn skilled in all regards, particularly flying. Rather, McKnight informs Riley that he’d better get ready to move out the next morning: Twelve-Twelve is heading to Pakistan. After a long flight in his F-121A – and Thomey is very good at aviation fiction, giving enough detail to make him sound knowledgeable about the subject to the layman – Riley is briefed.

He’s to fly to the nearby desert of Taklamakan, where the Russians have built a missile base called Takla-Ma. (Taklamakan by the way was also visited by Nick Carter in Operation Starvation.) Riley is the only person going on the mission, despite the several other pilots who flew here with him. He is to drop something – McKnight won’t divulge what – into a specific area in the camp. The place is guarded by Russian and Chinese troops (this being set in the days before the two countries had their falling out), not to mention MIG-25 fighter jets. The flight the next morning is a taut, suspenseful sequence, Riley flying at 500 mph just 50 feet off the ground.

But he misses his target due to a dusty whirlwind that obscures the marsh he’s supposed to drop the mystery object into. While trying to fly back over the spot Riley is shot down; while bailing from his jet he sees what appears to be a stone falling from it. When Riley wakes up, beaten up from the impact of his fall, he is a prisoner in Takla-Ma. We are only now 50 pages in the book, and here Flight To Takla-Ma will stay for the duration. As stated, it’s more of a prisoner-escaping-the-odds tale of survival rather than a piece of Cold War espionage action.

So in other words, this is sort of a pulp novelization of the real-world U-2 incident with Gary Powers, which took place in May, 1960. McKnight even sets Riley up with a U-2 escort for the first half of the flight to Takla-Ma, and later the Russians and Chinese inform Riley that it too has been shot down, over Russia, just like Powers was. However, Gary Powers is never referenced in the book – and it would be natural for Riley to compare his own plight with that of Powers – so either Thomey just didn’t want to so visibly show his hand, or perhaps he did write the book before the U-2 incident and it just took a very long time to get published.

Takla-Ma is filled with Russian and Chinese soldiers, but Riley only interacts with two of them. In charge of the Chinese is Colonel Lu Fie-tzu, aka “Colonel Lou,” an Intelligence chief who went to UCLA and speaks in perfect English. (“Howdy, fellow,” he greets Riley when our hero wakes up after the crash.) But Lu is really a sadist, we’ll eventually learn. In charge of the Russians, and the entire base, is Colonel Fedotov, an obese KGB man who is more interested in drinking and talking about Russian greatness. The first-page preview mentions the “inevitable Communist enchantress” who will try to sway Riley to the dark side, once the drugs and brainwashing don’t work: this is Judith, an Indian nurse who is “distinctly lovely” and “dainty, small-boned and small-breasted.”

The love angle develops between Riley and Judith, but Thomey doesn’t force it. Judith is against using drugs for evil and thus secretly saves Riley from the brain-melting drugs Lu wants to use on him. The Russian and Chinese keep drilling Riley on who his accomplice is here in the base, who he was trying to airdrop a message to. But Riley knows nothing and can reveal no info even under sodium pentathol. Gradually Riley will figure out that he dropped a transmitter, disguised as a stone, and he’ll even spot it lying on a pile of rubble not far from his prison cell. It will become his mission to get out there and retrieve it.

Thomey injects a few action scenes, despite the fact that Riley is confined to a small cell. He breaks free soon after capture, leading to a sequence where he bashes in the heads of a few guards and steels a jeep. But he is of course captured – there’s still about 80 pages to go – and it’s back to the grilling and the drugging. More focus is gradually placed on Riley and Judith’s growing love for one another. She is a delicate flower and has been abused by Lu, whom she fears. Her character is warm and loving and innocent – but not naïve – and Thomey successfully paints the picture that she is very different from the women in Riley’s past.

Riley eventually figures out that McKnight sent him here due to the upcoming launch of the experimental Lenin II rocket; the Twelve-Twelve contact here was to transmit the exact moment the test rocket was launched. Through Judith Riley learns that it’s a lady named Madame Lysenko, widow of the man who built the Lenin II. Once Riley manages to escape again he and Judith hide in Lysenko’s apartment while the Chinese and Russians run amok on the base, fighting each other in an open war. Here Riley and Judith consumate their newfound love, and given the romance angle Thomey treats it all a lot more poetically than the earlier encounters, with lines like, “This was excitement and desire far beyond body and flesh.”

It’s not an action-packed tale, and indeed the men’s mag vibe of the opening 50 pages is soon lost, but Flight To Takla-Ma does have a thrilling finale, with Riley and Judith trying to escape the war-ravaged base. Even Judith gets to blow someone away, and Thomey has a nice bit of character payoff here where Judith, freaking out and panicking during the escape, loses control of herself, and Riley has to forcibly calm her down. It’s not over-elaborated, but it is a good callback to the similar sequence with the panicking Fay Exler in the ocean. Only now Riley – thanks to being in love – is a “complete man,” and this time he’s able to calm the girl without breaking her neck(!). 

Overall I enjoyed Flight To Takla-Ma, though to tell the truth I wanted something more along the lines of the story promised by those first 50 pages…a story of a hard-ass pilot taking secret missions for a top-secret spy agency. Instead the story became more of a prisoner of war deal, going more so for suspense and, eventually, romance. But Thomey’s writing is polished and professional and it’s very impressive how he was able to deliver such a meaty tale in just 142 pages.

Play It Hard

Play It Hard, by Gil Brewer
May, 1964  Monarch Books

Like Ennis Willie, Gil Brewer is another hardboiled pulp writer of the ‘50s and ‘60s whose name I’ve been seeing a lot during my recent kick. And also like Willie, Brewer’s a cult author whose books, despite their quality, never got the visibility they deserved when they were published and are now overpriced on the used books market. I was lucky to get this one for six bucks; many of Brewer’s novels have been reprinted in recent years, but unfortunately Play It Hard isn’t one of them.

Brewer’s publications for Fawcett Gold Medal are the most valued by his fans, but he also wrote for a few for the sleazier imprints of the day, like Monarch Books. I don’t think Monarch was a straight-up “sleaze” imprint (or at least what passed for sleaze in those days), but they were apparently a bit more risque than mainstream imprints like the Fawcett Books line. In other words, you’ll come across the word “breasts” a lot more often in a Monarch book. And Brewer, who appears to have been known for his sexy but evil female characters, is well up to the task.

Curiously though, Play It Hard has a publication date of May, 1964, and the cover proclaims it’s the “first publication anywhere,” yet the book is copyright 1960 by Brewer. So did it take four years to get published? Or did Brewer write it back in ’60, only for the manuscript to be rejected by Gold Medal or someone else? I’ve looked through Brewer’s catalog and Play It Hard doesn’t appear to be a retitled reprint of an earlier Gil Brewer novel, so I have no idea. But at any rate, all that matters is the quality of the book itself, and I have to say I enjoyed the hell out of it, despite its implausibility. 

At 142 pages of fairly small print, the novel, which is written in third-person, charges right along. Brewer has to write it this way, otherwise the reader will start asking too many questions. And as it is, it’s hard enough for the reader to not ask questions, for the central plot of Play It Hard is so bonkers you have to laugh: A guy wakes up one morning to discover that his wife of less than a week has been replaced by an auburn-haired sexpot, but no one believes him and the fake wife insists she is his wife! So this is more of a psychological noir story rather than your average hardboiled deal; either way it’s a lot of fun and Brewer’s writing is very enjoyable.

Our hero is Steve Nolan, a war vet, whether Korea or WWII is not stated, who lives in some (I think) unspecified town in Florida and makes his living as a mattress manufacturer. Apparently this is quite the way to meet the ladies, as we’re informed that Steve has gotten lucky again and again, as selling mattresses is a surefire way to get a lady in the sack. (I knew I shouldn’t have gone into Marketing!)  But Steve’s recently become a married man; meeting a hotstuff lady named Janice on the beach in nearby resort town Oceanside on a much-needed vacation, Steve fell in love with her and proposed. Janice accepted, and they’ve been married only a week. None of Steve’s friends or family have met her.

All this is relayed gradually in the text; when the novel begins, Steve is in a stupor, either from drinking too much or from being drugged. Honeymooning along the Gulf Coast, Steve and Janice hammered the drinks with a bushy-eyebrowed stranger the night before, and it all descended into a black void so far as Steve’s memory goes. He comes back to consciousness in his own home, which he shares with his aunt Eda, and discovers that the woman who claims to be his wife is not the Janice he married. But Eda doesn’t believe Steve, nor does longtime family doctor Earl Paige, who tells Steve he’s had a nervous breakdown and is just confused; of course Janice is the same woman he married a few days ago.

Here’s the big problem. Brewer does a superb job making this a psychological thing: did Steve really have a breakdown? Is it only in his mind, and is this the same Janice he married? Brewer skillfully plays out this absurd scenario so that you buy it. However, Monarch Books chose to blow the entire mystery by clearly stating on the back cover that the woman is not his real wife!! Talk about spoilers. At any rate the pseudo-Janice is a smokin’-hot babe with auburn hair and a killer bod which she enjoys showing off; she’s real game for Steve to get better so they can have some hot marital sex asap.

Another problem with Play It Hard, or at least what seemed like a problem to me, is that we never meet the real Janice. Hence we never truly empathize with Steve. As other characters tell him, “If my wife was replaced by a woman who looked like that, I wouldn’t be complaining,” and that’s how the reader soon feels, as the ample charms of pseudo-Janice are constantly played up to the point where you figure Steve should just close his eyes and think of England. I believe the reader would be more inclined to feel Steve’s pain if we’d been given a glimpse of the real Janice, rather than the story of how they met being doled out in backstory midway through the text.

This doesn’t really detract from the book, though. As I say, the entire concept is so goofy but so superbly written that you get swept up in it. Let alone that Steve never bothered to take a photo of the real Janice or to get much information about her; we’re to believe they quickly fell in love and decided to quickly marry, even foregoing the usual blood tests (something which I thought didn’t become standard until later). Now here’s Steve trying to convince everyone that this super-hot chick with the killer bod isn’t his real wife, even if she claims she is; about the only “test” he can think to put her through is to try on the real Janice’s clothes, including her lingerie. It all fits pseudo-Janice.

Steve isn’t the sharpest tool; Gil Brewer followed the preferred Gold Medal theme of making his protagonists average guys, but Steve really would only be considered “average” if your core demographic was like truckers with a kindergarten-level education. He never really comes up with much of a plan on how to “expose” the new Janice, who continues to implore him for some good lovin’. Instead Steve just runs around his little town, trying to get people to listen to him, particularly Dr. Earl, who is obstinate that this is Janice (even though Earl never met her), and that it’s all in Steve’s head.

Even more resistance comes from Steve’s “friend,” a cop named Rhodes. He at first listens to Steve’s wild story, asking common-sense questions about how Steve can be sure it isn’t the same woman (one thing noted is that the only thing similar about pseudo-Janice is that she has the same-colored hair as the original version). Yet Rhodes soon becomes an enemy, openly questioning Steve’s innocence in all this, particulary when the raped and murdered corpse of an auburn-haired young woman washes up on shore. Before this happens, though, Steve finally gives in to pseudo-Janice’s horny demands and has sex with her on the living room couch.

Brewer writes a sequence a bit more explicit than you’d read in other mainstream novels of the time, but nothing too outrageous, and still vague and metaphorical for the most part. One thing he does get across is that pseudo-Janice sure enjoys it a whole bunch. (And I guess sickly Aunt Eda, upstairs in his room, sleeps through all of the girl’s wailing.) But immediately after this Rhodes calls Steve and hauls him down to the precinct to identify that aforementioned corpse. This is a sad scene that, again, would have had even more impact if we’d met the real Janice beforehand. But as it it, the cat is now out of the bag, as Steve swears to Rhodes that this is the woman he married, not the imposter back in his home.

The novel slowly morphs from a psychological suspense tale to more of a thriller as Steve realizes something’s really going on. Now he’s certain it’s not just in his head and that isn’t the real Janice in his home, but the girl refuses to tell Steve anything, smiling tauntingly at him as he threatens her. Why Steve never goes at her with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch is a mystery to me. He does get to vent a little steam when he finds a dude lurking outside his house one night; after a quick scuffle, Steve’s knocked flat and realizes that the attacker was the dude with bushy eyebrows who bought drinks for Steve and the real Janice the night all this craziness began – the last night he saw the real Janice.

Brewer takes us into the homestretch as the narrative acquires a breathless pace. Steve shuffles back and forth from Oceanside, where he met the real Janice, to his home town, tracking down clues and questioning witnesses. Meanwhile Aunt Eda’s getting sicker and sicker, even though Dr. Earl’s constantly treating her. And meanwhile pseudo-Janice just sits up in her room and waits for him. One of the biggest failings of Play It Hard is that pseudo-Janice, who is really such a great femme fatale, is kept off-page for so long. Steve spends more time with Claire, his childhood sweetheart, a gal he’s been in love with and vice versa for years, but the relationship never worked out, or something. (Brewer throws in another somewhat-explicit sex scene via flashback.)

Claire turns out to be the only person who believes Steve, not that this is much help for him, as she too soon disappears from the narrative, abducted by whoever is behind all this. Another problem with the novel is that no matter what Brewer comes up with, it will ultimately be unsatisfying; the concept is too weird and almost sci-fi for the mystery and suspense genre. And as it goes it does turn out to be a mundane impetus behind the whole “fake Janice” ruse; turns out Steve’s home, which he’s lived in with Aunt Eda since he was a child, once belonged to an associate of Al Capone, and the thug supposedly stashed his loot somewhere in the house.

A certain character in the novel has lusted after this money for years and years, and now thanks to a stroke of luck has discovered that it might be in Steve’s home. The villain then pushed Steve to take a much-needed vacation and meet a girl; the girl, Janice, was in reality a hooker who was paid to marry Steve. The villain’s desired goal was that, being married, Steve would decide to move out of the house with Aunt Eda and thus the villain would be free to go in and out to search for the loot – especially if Aunt Eda was bedridden. But when Janice decided to push for more money, the villain had her killed off and then came up with the bizarro idea to replace her with a fake and make Steve think it was all in his head. Obviously such a plan was guaranteed to fail.

The novel culminates in a bit of an action scene, but Steve never does become an ass-kicker of a protagonist. Instead he just sort of stands by, waiting for his moment to strike, while the villain exposits on his scheme. Sick of the pseudo-Janice’s complaints and criticisms, the villain blows her face off, with Brewer describing her corpse with the memorable phrase “lying in a leggy huddle.” Humorously, pseudo-Janice’s body is talked up at all times, like in an earlier moment, perhaps intentionally funny, where Brewer describes her breasts for a sentence or two, and then writes something to the effect of, “though Steve was no longer interested in them.”

As for the stashed loot, it’s long gone, something Eda reveals in the final paragraphs. So in other words it was all for naught. However Steve has realized at long last that Claire is his true one-and-only, and that he was a fool to ever think otherwise. Thus Brewer delivers a veritable happy ever after, even if we’ve learned that the woman he’s been hunting for throughout the novel was tortured and repeatedly raped before being killed. But since she was just a whore, one who was hired to get Steve to fall in love with her and marry her, it doesn’t matter. She deserved her horrible fate! 

Brewer’s writing is great, with that noir style down pat. Short, punchy sentences, memorable dialog. Steve meets an assortment of fringe characters during his travels and they all have their unique charms. Also Brewer doesn’t shy from the spicy stuff, with pseudo-Janice’s breasts and body described frequently and at length. And as I say, you get the idea that Brewer knew his concept was goofy and just charged right on through it, which only adds to the enjoyability factor. Anyway, I was so entertained by Play It Hard that I’ll definitely be reading more of Brewer’s work.