Review: Killer's Caress - Cary Moran (Edwin Truett Long)

In 1936, Culture Publications, the publisher of the Spicy line of pulps, decided to branch out into hardbacks, using the same authors who filled the pages of their pulps. The result was a company called Valhalla Press, which managed to put out only two books before somebody decided it was a bad idea: PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER by Arthur Wallace (a name that may or may not have been a pseudonym, nobody seems to know) and KILLER’S CARESS by Cary Moran, who was actually a young writer living in Texas named Edwin Truett Long. PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER is a real rarity. I’ve never seen a copy in the wild and it can be found for sale on-line only now and then.

But KILLER’S CARESS is a different story. It’s been reprinted a couple of times, most recently by Black Dog Books. That edition is still available in trade paperback and e-book editions on Amazon. I’ve had a copy for quite a while, and after seeing something about it on Facebook recently, I was prompted to read it.

The protagonist of this novel is gossip columnist Johnny Harding, who writes a popular newspaper column called Johnny-On-the-Spot. As such, he knows everybody from bartenders to bigshot politicians, from hat check girls to ruthless gangsters and gamblers. He has a beautiful redheaded assistant and a big lug of a driver. One evening when he’s headed out to make his rounds of the nightspots and hunt material for his column, he’s nearly rubbed out by a couple of hired killers. Later in the evening, he runs into the rich, sleazy playboy who has inherited the newspaper where he works. Said playboy has enemies all over the place including his estranged actress wife who’s trying to divorce him, a gambler and nightclub owner, the above-mentioned hat check girl, a news photographer he’s fired, and Johnny himself. The way the guy keeps getting threatened, you know he’s going to wind up dead and Johnny is probably going to be blamed for it.

But that’s not exactly what happens. Somebody winds up being murdered, all right, but it’s a friend of Johnny’s, and that sets him off on a whirlwind of action, detection, and seduction. Johnny’s furious quest to avenge his pal reminded me very much of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, although Johnny, while a tough little mug (I kept seeing a young Jimmy Cagney in my head), is no Mike Hammer. The fact that he has a pal on the homicide squad and a competent knockout of an assistant also reminded me of the Hammer novels, and I can’t help but wonder if Mickey ever read KILLER’S CARESS.

Eventually there are more murders. The pace seldom lets up, and Long crams a lot into a story that takes place in about 48 hours. Everything leads up to a great scene on a gambling ship that includes not only a gathering of the suspects and an explanation of who committed the crimes, but also features a big shootout as the cops raid the boat.

The plot is really complex, but it’s one of those that seems to make sense, especially if you squint your eyes a little and hold your mouth just right. The big appeal to me is Long’s breathless, breezy style, which he was already perfecting in dozens of stories for the Spicy pulps under various pseudonyms and house-names. I had a great time reading KILLER’S CARESS. It reminded me of the hardboiled yarns I grew up reading, and I give it a high recommendation.

I’m also very much interested in the career of Edwin Truett Long, especially since I found out that he’s buried in Fort Worth, about 20 miles as the crow flies from where I’m typing this. But more about him in another post sometime, when I’ve read more of his work.

Murder in Music - Cary Moran (Edwin Truett Long)

In a career that lasted approximately ten years, from the mid-Thirties until his death in 1945, Edwin Truett Long wrote hundreds of stories under more than a dozen pseudonyms, mostly for the Spicy pulps. Most of them were stand-alones, but he did a few series as well, including eight stories about Jarnegan, a sheriff’s office detective in a mid-sized city who investigates only homicides. Seven of the stories appeared under the name Cary Moran, while one, for no apparent reason, was published under the name Clint Morgan. MURDER IN MUSIC is a Black Dog Books chapbook from 2006 that reprints four of the Jarnegan stories.

Art by H.L. Parkhurst

“Fatal Facial” is from the September 1936 issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES. The president of one of the local banks has absconded with a fortune in negotiable bonds, and the town is in a tizzy, of course. Jarnegan doesn’t want to investigate the case because he specializes in murders, but he gets a corpse soon enough and it doesn’t take him long to realize that the man’s body—beaten beyond recognition—is connected to the missing bank president. And of course, since this is a story for SPICY DETECTIVE, there are several beautiful babes in various stages of undress mixed up in the business, too.

Art by Delos Palmer

“Murder in Music” (SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, November 1936) finds Jarnegan investigating the death of a drummer from a jazz band visiting the city. It appears that the man was frightened to death by voodoo. But all is not as it appears, of course, and another band member soon turns up dead, giving Jarnegan two murders to solve.

Art by H.J. Ward

From the January 1937 issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, “Murder in the Sheriff’s Office” centers around a beautiful redheaded taxi dancer who manages to get herself bumped off in, you guessed it, the sheriff’s office when she comes there to say that she fears for her life. With good reason, obviously. And soon there’s a second murder for Jarnegan to investigate, as well. Long managed to pack quite a few homicides in these short stories.

Art by H.J. Ward

“Case of the Limber Corpse”, from the May 1937 issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, is the final story in the Jarnegan series. In this one, Jarnegan’s investigation into the murder of a munitions magnate is complicated by an angry hillbilly father who wants to force Jarnegan into a shotgun wedding with his daughter . . . and then use that shotgun to blow Jarnegan’s head off. As with the other stories, it’s a fairly complex plot that features another murder and various beautiful, semi-dressed women.

These aren’t fair play mystery stories. With the third person objective style, the reader is seldom if ever privy to Jarnegan’s thoughts and Long blatantly conceals some of the clues. Other clues are introduced and then promptly forgotten, probably a result of the speed with which Long wrote these yarns. However, none of that detracts from the snappy patter, the hardboiled characters and plots, and the headlong pace of the action. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and wouldn’t mind reading the rest of the stories in the series. Long was an inconsistent writer, but more often than not, I find his stories to be a lot of fun. In looking up his listing on the Fictionmags Index, I noticed that he passed away in 1945, when he was only 41 years old. I’m curious as to why he died so young, and it’s a shame we lost the stories he might have written if he’d lived.