Review: The Kissed Corpse - Asa Baker (Davis Dresser)

Davis Dresser was the kind of writer I really admire and have tried to be in my career, a guy who was willing and able to turn his hand to different kinds of fiction and do all of them well. In the late Thirties, he was writing Western novels, spicy romances, and of course mysteries. He’d already had some success with MUM’S THE WORD FOR MURDER, published under the pseudonym Asa Baker, set in El Paso, Texas, Dresser’s home town, and starring special police detective Jerry Burke. In 1939, he published his second Burke novel, THE KISSED CORPSE, which Carlyle House brought out in hardcover.

Asa Baker isn’t just the pseudonym Dresser used on these books. Baker is also a character in them, a Western and mystery novelist who’s pretty obviously a stand-in for Dresser himself. He tags along with his friend Jerry Burke and narrates the stories of Burke’s investigations. In THE KISSED CORPSE, though, it’s Baker who turns up a murder and gets Burke involved.

He’s staying at a friend’s cabin in a canyon just outside El Paso. Millionaire oilman Raymond Dwight has an estate in the same canyon. Also not far away is the bungalow where former soldier of fortune Leslie Young lives with his beautiful wife Myra. Baker discovers that the oil tycoon is a peeping tom, spying on a sunbathing Myra Young through a telescope. Unfortunately, Myra’s husband makes that same discovery, and not long after that, Baker discovers his body while walking through the canyon.

Since this is a Davis Dresser novel, things are nowhere near as simple as they appear to be starting out, though. It seems that the Mexican government has taken over Dwight’s oilfield properties below the border, and he’s trying to put together a shady deal to recoup the loss. There are mysterious notes and threats and a seedy hacienda below the Rio Grande where the beautiful leader of a Mexican nationalist group holds secret meetings. There’s a beautiful, ambitious female reporter poking around who may or may not have been romantically involved with the murdered man. The oilman has a hard-drinking, gorgeous teenage daughter. Throw in a little blackmail, too, and Jerry Burke will have his hands full untangling the whole mess.

With its dangerous nighttime visit to the mysterious hacienda below the border, THE KISSED CORPSE has a rather pulpish feel starting out, but for a long stretch, it settles down and becomes almost an English country house type of mystery, with a bunch of suspects at a fancy estate and the dogged detective interrogating them. It’s a millionaire’s mansion in the Franklin Mountains, but the idea is the same. There’s some moving around later on, but eventually all the suspects come together again so Burke can reveal the killer and explain everything.

Dresser was a master of this sort of blend between the traditional and hardboiled mysteries. I don’t think he has the plot nailed down quite as well in THE KISSED CORPSE as he would in the Mike Shayne novels he wrote over the next decade, but it works well enough. Jerry Burke is a good character, too: a former cowboy, Texas Ranger, intelligence operative during World War I, soldier of fortune, and cop. Asa Baker is a likable narrator. Dresser spins his yarn in fast-moving prose that mostly has a breezy feel to it, although things can get rough now and then.

The same year this novel came out, Dresser also published DIVIDEND ON DEATH, the first book in the Mike Shayne series, and although he worked on other things besides Shayne over the next couple of decades, he never went back to Jerry Burke. I think the Shaynes are much better overall, but I wouldn’t have minded a few more Jerry Burke novels, too. Both books featuring him are pretty entertaining. MUM’S THE WORD FOR MURDER was reprinted twice under the Brett Halliday name. THE KISSED CORPSE got a single digest paperback reprint under the Asa Baker pseudonym. It is, however, available these days in an e-book edition under the Halliday name, and if you’re a Mike Shayne fan, I think you’ll enjoy both of the Jerry Burke novels, too.

Review: Return of the Maltese Falcon - Max Allan Collins

I’m starting the new year off well with an excellent novel from Max Allan Collins. I’ve been a fan of THE MALTESE FALCON since I read the novel in high school, the first thing by Dashiell Hammett I ever read, I believe. Needless to say, I was hooked. Now the original magazine version of the novel, as serialized in the iconic pulp BLACK MASK, is in public domain, and that’s what Collins has used as the starting point for his new novel RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON, which, as he points out, is a continuation rather than a true sequel.

And if, by some chance, you’ve never read Hammett’s novel, stop right now and read it before you read this review, and absolutely don’t tackle Collins’ novel until you’ve read the original, because they’re both, of necessity, full of spoilers. I mean it!

The action starts a week after the end of THE MALTESE FALCON, in December 1928. The dead Miles Archer’s desk has been removed from the office of Spade & Archer, and Effie Perrine, Sam Spade’s secretary, has put up a Christmas tree in its place. (Does that make this a Christmas novel? It sure does!)

A potential client pays a visit to Spade’s office. She’s Rhea Gutman, Casper Gutman’s daughter, and she wants to hire Spade to find the real Falcon. The one in Hammett’s novel was a fake, remember? Rhea is the first of four clients who give Spade a retainer to find the dingus. The others are Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan, Corrine Wonderly, the younger sister of femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and Steward Blackwood, an official from the British Museum who claims that institution is the true owner of the Falcon.

Spade plays all these characters against each other. He has run-ins with the cops. A dead body turns up. Spade is hit on the head and knocked out, and he’s captured by a gunman who wants to kill him. This is great stuff in the classic hardboiled private eye mode, the kind of thing that Dashiell Hammett invented, along with Carroll John Daly. Stylistically, Collins’ fast-moving, straight-ahead prose isn’t quite as stripped down as Hammett’s, but it’s certainly in the same ballpark.

Being constrained to use only the elements to be found in the original novel’s pulp serialization turns out to be a good thing. Collins is able to bring on-stage characters who were only mentioned before and invent new ones who fit perfectly in that setting. The resolution of the mystery and the way the book wraps everything up are extremely satisfying.

A number of years ago, I read and loved Joe Gores’ prequel novel SPADE & ARCHER. RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON is even better. I’m glad Max Allen Collins wrote it, and I’m grateful to Hard Case Crime for publishing it. It’ll be out officially in e-book and hardcover editions tomorrow. For hardboiled fans, I give it my highest recommendation.

Review: One For My Dame - Jack Webb

ONE FOR MY DAME was published originally in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in 1961 and reprinted in paperback by Avon (with a truly terrible cover) in 1964. It’s is the second novel in the recent double volume of Jack Webb’s stand-alone mystery and suspense yarns published by Stark House. I really enjoyed the first half of this book, THE DEADLY COMBO, so I had high hopes for ONE FOR MY DAME, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Rick Jackson is the owner of a pet shop in Los Angeles and leads a peaceful life with his pets, a goofy Great Dane, a hyperactive spider monkey, and a foul-mouthed mynah bird. However, Rick’s life takes a decidedly non-peaceful turn when he stops in a local watering hole one evening for a drink and finds himself sitting next to a very beautiful but very drunk redhead. He takes her back to his apartment over the pet store, but Rick is a fundamentally decent guy and doesn’t take advantage of her condition. He lets her sleep it off instead, and the next morning he puts her in a cab. He figures that’s the last he’ll see of her.

But it may be the last anybody sees of her, because she goes missing, and as it turns out, she’s the daughter of a prominent politician who’s been investigating the Mob. And Rick, as one of the last people to see her, suddenly has cops and gangsters both on his tail, as everybody wants to get their hands on something important the girl had in her possession. Rick’s problem is that he doesn’t know what it is or where it might be, but that’s not going to stop people from trying to kill him.

Hey, I can think of at least two series about hardboiled, two-fisted accountants, so why not a hardboiled, two-fisted pet store owner? Especially considering the fact that Rick has some pretty dark stuff in his background, as we find out while events unfold in this novel. ONE FOR MY DAME is one of those books that goes along in a pretty breezy, light-hearted fashion—until suddenly it doesn’t. And it’s a testament to Webb’s ability as a writer that both elements work extremely well. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining novel that I really enjoyed. THE DEADLY COMBO/ONE FOR MY DAME is available in e-book and paperback editions, and if you like smart, well-written crime fiction, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, September 1933

What would 20 cents buy in 1933? Well, it would buy a lot of things I suppose, but one possible answer is that it would buy an issue of BLACK MASK with stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, W.T. Ballard, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham. That's just a spectacular group of authors. Cunningham is best remembered as a Western author, but he wrote quite a few hardboiled yarns, too. His story in this issue is the first in a series about hotel detective Cleve Corby. Nebel's story is part of his Kennedy and McBride series, Gardner's features the phantom crook Ed Jenkins, Ballard writes about Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, Torrey's story is about policeman Dal Prentice, and Whitfield's is the first of two about private eye Dion Davies. Several of the stories from this issue have been reprinted, and I'm sure they're well worth seeking out. By the way, the cover of this issue is by J.W. Schlaikjer, who did quite a few covers for BLACK MASK during this era.

Review: Run, Killer, Run - Lionel White

Before there was Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) and his famous protagonist Parker, there was Lionel White, the first real master of the heist novel. White didn’t write about a series character, but many of the protagonists of his novels bear a resemblance to Parker, including Rand Coleman, the lead character in White’s first novel, RUN, KILLER, RUN. The original version of this novel was published as a digest novel by Rainbow Books in 1952 under the title SEVEN HUNGRY MEN. White revised it and Avon published it as a paperback original in 1959 under its current title. Then Black Gat Books reprinted that version in a very nice paperback edition that comes out today. (You can see the covers of the two previous editions below. I don't know who did the art on the Avon edition of RUN, KILLER, RUN, but the cover on the Rainbow Books edition of SEVEN HUNGRY MEN is by the great George Gross.)

Rand Coleman is a professional criminal serving time for robbery when a corrupt lawyer manages to secure his release and recruits him to pull off a big job: an armored car robbery that will net a cool two million dollars. In telling his story, White employs the classic structure of the heist novel. Coleman assembles his team and we get to know them: a couple of veteran mobsters, a hotheaded young punk, a washed-up boat skipper, a sullen first mate. A couple of beautiful girls wind up involved in the proceedings. The plan for the robbery is laid out, and then we get the execution of it.

Do things go wrong? Of course, they do! But Coleman and his team get their hands on the loot, and now all they have to do is make their getaway to Florida, and from there, who knows? Cuba? South America? Unfortunately, treachery, greed, lust, and violence are along for the ride, too.

RUN, KILLER, RUN may not have much in it that we haven’t seen before, but this is a very early example of this sort of noir crime novel. And White spins the yarn with such skill that I was totally caught up in it, eagerly turning the pages to find out what was going to happen. The twists and turns that White introduces in his plot never disappointed me, either. RUN, KILLER, RUN is a terrific novel, fast-paced and well-written and very entertaining. If you enjoy heist novels, I give it a very high recommendation.

Review: The Deadly Combo - Jack Webb

When I started reading hardboiled mysteries in junior high, I thought Jack Webb, author of the series featuring priest/detective duo Father Joseph Shanley and Sammy Golden, was the same guy as Jack Webb the star of DRAGNET (and some excellent movies like PETE KELLY’S BLUES and -30-, but I hadn’t seen those yet). It didn’t take long to figure out that Webb the novelist was a totally different person. I read a few of his novels, which were easy to find in those days in their Signet paperback reprint editions, and remember enjoying them. But I hadn’t read anything else by him, as far as I recall, in the 50+ years since then.

Until Stark House recently reprinted two of Webb’s stand-alone novels in a handsome double volume, THE DEADLY COMBO and ONE FOR MY DAME. I started with THE DEADLY COMBO, originally published as half of an Ace Double mystery under Webb’s John Farr pseudonym. The novel opens with the discovery of a corpse in the alley behind a Los Angeles jazz club. The victim is a former jazz musician named Dandy Mullens. The cop who catches the case is Mac Stewart, a big, ugly, former prizefighter who happens to be a jazz aficionado himself and a friend of the murdered man. Mac’s quest to catch Dandy’s killer reminded me a little of how Mike Hammer often set out to avenge the murder of a friend.

Mac’s investigation takes him through a series of jazz clubs, strip joints, and fancy apartments, from the sleazy and sordid to the high class (but perhaps no less sordid). It seems there’s a legend in the jazz world that Dandy owned a solid gold trumpet, given to him as a publicity stunt decades earlier when he was one of the top musicians in the world, rather than the washed-up bum he was when he was killed. Somebody wanted that trumpet bad enough to kill for it, Mac believes, but at the same time, he happens to know that the whole story is a myth. Or is it? Halfway through this novel, the plot takes an abrupt but believable twist, and things that seemed apparent suddenly aren’t. Mac will have a lot to untangle to find the killer, if he lives long enough himself.

THE DEADLY COMBO is both a fast-paced, violent, hardboiled mystery and a love letter to jazz music, all at the same time. Mac Stewart is a great character, a bit of an intellectual as well as a tough, hard-nosed cop. Webb’s style in this novel is the prose equivalent of jazz, swooping and swirling almost into a stream-of-consciousness improvisation at times. It takes a little getting used to, but it works and is very effective. The plot winds up almost as dense and convoluted as a Ross Macdonald novel, but I think it all makes sense in the end.

What I know for certain is that I raced through THE DEADLY COMBO and really enjoyed it. I stayed up later than I normally do to finish it, and that takes a pretty compelling book at my age. The Stark House double volume, complete with a top-notch introduction by Nicholas Litchfield, is available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon. I’ll be reading ONE FOR MY DAME soon.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Day of the Moon - Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann

As far as I can tell, DAY OF THE MOON has been published in only two editions, a 1983 British hardback from Robert Hale and a 1993 paperback reprint from Carroll & Graf. (No longer true. It's available in an e-book edition on Amazon.) It’s a dandy little crime thriller, tightly plotted as you’d expect from a couple of old pros like Bill Pronzini and Jeff Wallmann and written in terse, hardboiled prose that’s a joy to read.

Flagg (we’re never told his first name) is a troubleshooter for the mob, here known as the Organization. He’s headquartered in San Francisco. As the book opens, he’s looking for the loot from an armored car robbery which has disappeared following some sort of double-cross that left the planner of the heist dead. That job isn’t the only one Flagg has on his plate, though. He’s also investigating a series of hijackings involving trucks and merchandise owned by the Organization, including some moonshining equipment. That ties in with Flagg’s third assignment, which is to find the bootlegger who’s trying to muscle in on the Organization’s illegal liquor operation in the Pacific Northwest. Not surprisingly, the armored car robbery winds up being connected to Flagg’s other two jobs as well.

Flagg reminds me a lot of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker in his low-key professionalism and also in the fact that the reader winds up rooting for him despite the fact that he’s a criminal. He actually comes across as a private eye of sorts, except his only client is the Organization. He shies away from violence, although he’s plenty tough when he has to be, and prefers to rely on his brain rather than a gun. He needs both, though, to untangle this complicated plot. I’m not aware of any other books or stories featuring Flagg and don’t know if he was intended to be a series character, but he certainly could have been. DAY OF THE MOON is a fine, enjoyable novel. One of the reviews quoted on the cover of the paperback refers to it as a “good, old-fashioned page-turner”, and that’s exactly what it is.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on May 23, 2008. A few days later, on May 26, Bill Pronzini provided more information about the book's background.)

"You're right that Flagg was intended to be a series character. The novel was originally sold to Leisure here, but never published because of a change of regime and policy; Wallmann and I were lucky to sell it to Hale in the U.K. And to have Carroll & Graf do a U.S. mass market edition, all thanks to Ed G. (Ed Gorman)

Incidentally, MOON is composed of three novelettes, two from AHMM, one from MSMM, that we bridged together and revised into the novel format. There's one other Flagg novelette from AHMM that we planned to use as the basis for a second novel and that has never been reprinted or collected."

(And here's the listing of the original Flagg stories from the Fictionmags Index.)

Day of the Moon, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine June 1970, as by William Jeffrey
Murder Is No Man’s Friend, (ss) Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine November 1970, as by William Jeffrey
The Ten Million Dollar Hijack, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January 1972, as by William Jeffrey
The Island, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine August 1972, as by William Jeffrey

(I've met both Bill Pronzini and Jeff Wallmann, one time each, on separate occasions. I'm sure some of you know them much better than I do. I found them to be fine fellows and excellent writers. In fact, I need to read more by both of them. In the meantime, I still highly recommend this novel.)

Review: Dream Town - David Baldacci

DREAM TOWN is the third and for the moment final book in David Baldacci’s series about Aloysius Archer, ex-GI, ex-con, and as this book opens on New Year’s Eve 1952, a private detective working for an agency in Bay Town, California, up the coast from Los Angeles. But Archer is in L.A. to celebrate the new year with his friend, actress Liberty Callahan. While they’re having dinner at Chasen’s, a female screenwriter who knows Liberty joins the pair briefly and, finding out that Archer is a private eye, hires him to find out who’s responsible for some vaguely threatening things that have happened to her lately.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, before 1953 has hardly gotten started, there’s been a murder and Archer has literally tripped over the body, just before (of course) he gets hit on the head and knocked out. That’s just the beginning of an extremely complex plot featuring, as they say, a cast of thousands. Well, not quite, but sometimes it almost feels that way. There are a lot of characters to keep up with in this book as Archer’s investigation takes him from the highest planes of Hollywood royalty to a bunch of down-and-dirty, very dangerous characters—and sometimes those are one and the same.

Okay, obligatory complaint about how the book is too long. It is, but the plot almost justifies the length in this one. For the first half of the book, things seem relatively simple, but then Baldacci throws in twist after twist, to the point that I almost felt like I was reading an Erle Stanley Gardner book. I had a really strong hunch that the whole thing was going to go off the rails sooner or later, too, but Baldacci makes it all make sense.

With that plot, setting, and time period, you know I’m the target audience for this book. All three of the Archer books seem heavily influenced by Raymond Chandler, and that influence is really strong in this one. Archer is an excellent protagonist, smart enough and tough enough to survive but not a superhero by any means. He’s pretty good with the banter, too. Baldacci does a good job capturing the early Fifties, other than one anachronism.

The first two books in this series are ONE GOOD DEED and A GAMBLING MAN, and I enjoyed both of them. DREAM TOWN is even better and ends on a great note for sequels. Baldacci has said he’s going to write more about the character. I really hope he does. You can get this one in e-book, audiobook, hardcover, or paperback, and if you’re a fan of private eye fiction in the classic style (even if it’s not old enough to actually be called a classic yet), I give it a high recommendation.

Review: The Red Tassel - David Dodge

THE RED TASSEL is the third and final novel by David Dodge to feature Al Colby, a private detective/troubleshooter who works primarily for U.S. business interests in South America. It was published in hardcover by Random House in 1950 and reprinted in paperback by Dell in 1952 with a cover by Robert Stanley. The same Stanley cover art graces the recent reprint from the fine folks at Black Gat Books, which is available in paperback from Amazon and also includes an excellent introduction by Randal S. Brandt.

In this novel, Al Colby, who is a very likable narrator/protagonist, is hired by beautiful redhead Pancha Porter, who inherited a lead and silver mine in the mountains of Bolivia from her father. The mine’s production has dropped dramatically, and Pancha wants Al to find out why and put a stop to it. The situation is complicated, as far as Al is concerned, by Pancha’s insistence on traveling to the mine with him. And since she’s footing the bill, he can’t really say no.

They run into trouble before they even arrive and meet all the colorful characters at the mine and the nearby village of Indian workers. Those colorful characters include a witch doctor who holds a grudge against Pancha’s late father, a neurotic young man and his overprotective mother, assorted surly servants and employees, and an old woman who wanders around acting like a lunatic . It’ll come as no surprise to most readers that a murder takes place sooner rather than later, and Al find himself in deadly danger more than once.

Dodge and his family lived in South America and the setting for this novel is based on a real place. You can tell that from the excellent descriptive writing. THE RED TASSEL is well-plotted, too, not extraordinarily complex but always solid and intriguing. I figured out the killer’s identity and most of what was going on, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this book even a little bit. That’s how good the characters and the writing are.

Dodge is best remembered for his novel TO CATCH A THIEF, which served as the basis for the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. I haven’t read that one, but I have read the second Al Colby novel, PLUNDER OF THE SUN (also a movie) and the posthumously published THE LAST MATCH. I really liked both of those books, too. I need to read more by David Dodge. I thoroughly enjoyed THE RED TASSEL and give it a high recommendation. It’s a smoothly told, very entertaining tale.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Each Dawn I Die (1939)

I was never a big fan of James Cagney’s movies when I was a kid, which means that even though a lot of them were shown on TV, I never watched all that many. That actually worked out okay, because now that I am a fan of his movies, there are still quite a few of them I’ve never seen until now, such as 1939’s EACH DAWN I DIE.

In this one, Cagney plays a crusading newspaper reporter who has evidence that the district attorney and his assistant are crooked. So the DA frames him for manslaughter on a drunken driving rap and gets him sent to prison for 20 years. That, of course, discredits all the allegations against the corrupt politicians.

Once he’s in the big house, Cagney befriends a charming gangster played by George Raft. I was never a big George Raft fan, either, but now I like his work quite a bit. A lot of your typical prison stuff happens—clashes with the screws and fellow cons, guys getting shivved, our protagonists being thrown in the Hole, things like that—before Raft manages to escape with a promise to clear Cagney’s name once he’s on the outside. But things don’t quite play out the way you’d expect . . . until they do.

EACH DAWN I DIE, directed by William Keighly (who directed several good Cagney films) and based on a novel by Jerome Odlum, is a thoroughly entertaining movie, an old-fashioned prison picture that hits all the usual beats but hits them very skillfully. Cagney and Raft both turn in excellent performances, and the supporting cast features just about every tough he-man supporting actor from the Thirties except Ward Bond and George Tobias, plus weaselly Victor Jory as one of the bad guys. George Bancroft is especially good as the tough but sympathetic warden. The violence of the prison riot at the end is pretty graphic for the time and very effective. Some of the plot twists are a little far-fetched, maybe, but they still work and really grab the viewer.

I had a great time watching this movie. It reminded me of all the afternoons I spent sitting on the floor in front of the TV watching old movies on the local stations. I might not want to go back to those days, but I sure don’t mind revisiting them now and then. And if you’re a Cagney and/or Raft fan and haven’t seen EACH DAWN I DIE, I give it a high recommendation.

Review: Shield for Murder - William P. McGivern

A couple of weeks ago when I reran my review of William P. McGivern’s novel ROGUE COP, my friend Jim Doherty suggested that I read McGivern’s SHIELD FOR MURDER, a novel about a cop with even less of a moral compass than the protagonist of ROGUE COP. It was an excellent suggestion, and I appreciate the recommendation.

SHIELD FOR MURDER gets down to business right away. It opens with Philadelphia police detective Barny Nolan murdering bookmaker Dave Fiest and stealing $25,000 that the bookie had on him. This is considerably more than Nolan expected to get from the killing and robbery, but unfortunately for him, the 25 grand was intended to pay off a bet made by a local gangster, and the guy wants his money back.

Nolan’s life is also complicated by young newspaper reporter Mark Brewster, who senses that there’s something fishy about Nolan’s story. Then there’s Linda Wade, the beautiful nightclub singer Nolan’s in love with. His stormy relationship with her is also a constant distraction. And Nolan, like a lot of guys who get in over their heads in noir novels, isn’t the brightest fellow in the world. Combine that with his hair-trigger temper, and it’s inevitable that his troubles start to pile up.

SHIELD FOR MURDER is a slow burn of a novel, alternating between Brewster’s investigation into the bookie’s murder and Nolan’s violent background, and Nolan’s efforts to navigate through the walls that seem to be closing in around him. Not all that much actually happens until late in the book, but McGivern’s writing is so good that it doesn’t really matter. It’s hard to say who’s the protagonist in this book, Nolan or Brewster, and to be honest, neither of them is very likable. At the same time, you can’t help but sympathize with them, at least a little.

I will say that there were times when I felt McGivern’s low-key, realistic prose could have used a bit more drama, and I wasn’t that fond of the ending. However, I raced through the book and that’s always a good thing. The police procedural bits reminded me of the 87th Precinct novels, and I can’t help but wonder if Evan Hunter ever read this. Dodd, Mead published it in hardcover in 1951, several years before the first of the 87th Precinct books. Pocket Books did a paperback reprint in 1952, there was a movie version starring Edmond O’Brien, well-cast as Barny Nolan, in 1954, and Berkley did another paperback reprint in 1988, the edition I read.

SHIELD FOR MURDER is out of print, but copies of both paperback reprints are available for reasonable prices on the Internet. Despite a few misgivings, I think it’s a very good novel and well worth reading if you’re a fan of noir crime fiction.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Climb a Broken Ladder - Robert Novak

I had never heard of this novel or the author before reading it. There’s a political columnist by the name of Robert Novak, but I have my doubts he’s the same guy who wrote CLIMB A BROKEN LADDER and B-GIRL, both published in 1956 by Ace and as far as I’ve been able to determine, the only two books by this author.

CLIMB A BROKEN LADDER is a low-life novel, I guess you’d call it, a story about the drunks, beggars, and prostitutes who live along Seattle’s skid row, characters with colorful names like the Bohunk, Big Phil, Newsy Nellie, and Pushover Patty. Though not as well-written, it reminded me of what I’ve read by Charles Bukowski, since a lot of the book finds the characters just wandering around in an alcoholic haze. This makes for a pretty meandering plot, but the story does have a coherent thread running through it, that being the budding romance between the Bohunk and Newsy Nellie. The book picks up steam in the final third with a twist or two that I didn’t see coming. It never quite becomes the noir crime novel that I thought it might, but it’s dark enough to please most readers of noir.

One thing I really liked about the book is its Seattle setting. I expect most skid row novels to be set in New York or San Francisco or some place like that. Novak also does a good job of working in the back-stories of the various characters, and then at the very end throws in a final plot twist that left me going, “Huh,” even though I wouldn’t go quite so far as to call it jaw-dropping. This is a pretty stark book that impressed me enough I may have to try to find a copy of Novak’s other novel, B-GIRL.

(This post originally appeared on November 14, 2008. I never found a copy of B-GIRL, and looking it up now, the copies that are for sale on-line are too pricey for me. If I ever happen to run across it in the wild for a decent price, I'll grab it, I'm sure, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen, as they say.)

Review: The Blonde and Johnny Malloy - William Ard writing as Ben Kerr

A couple of weeks ago, I read and enjoyed William Ard’s SHAKEDOWN, a breezy, fast-moving private eye yarn recently reprinted by Stark House in a double volume with THE BLONDE AND JOHNNY MALLOY. I’ve read that one now, too, and as a grim, gritty hardboiled crime novel, it’s quite a contrast to SHAKEDOWN. But it’s every bit as good, if not better.

Johnny Malloy is a young convict working on a prison road gang in Florida, serving a ten-year sentence for driving drunk and causing an accident in which two people were killed. He’s five years into that sentence when a couple of unexpected things happen. A beautiful blonde in a red car starts driving by the place where the prisoners are working every day, giving them an eyeful. And then, without any warning, Johnny is paroled, an arrangement set up by his brother-in-law, a gambler and nightclub owner who has considerable political influence.

Johnny is grateful for being released, of course, but he soon discovers that his brother-in-law didn’t act out of the goodness of his heart. Far from it, in fact, since the guy has a plan that involves Johnny winding up dead. Oh, and that beautiful blonde? She works for the brother-in-law, of course, and before you know it, Johnny realizes he might be safer back on the road gang.

Ard makes the wise decision to spin this tough yarn in a relatively compressed time frame of five days, Monday through Friday, and he packs a lot of action and plot twists into those days, too. There’s a heavyweight prize fight with a fortune bet on it, a coalition of gangsters, cops, beautiful women, kidnapping, and a whole pile of trouble for Johnny Malloy. He handles it well. He’s not incredibly tough, or smart, for that matter, but he gets by. He’s a good protagonist, the villains are suitably despicable,  and the blonde is a better developed character than most beautiful babes in books like these.

I really enjoyed THE BLONDE AND JOHNNY MALLOY. Ard was a fine storyteller, no doubt about that. This one was published originally as a paperback by Popular Library in 1958 and is one of Ard’s later novels. He died much too young in 1960 at the age of 37 and no doubt would have given us many more fine novels if he had lived longer. You can read this one in that top-notch double volume from Stark House, available in paperback and e-book editions. If  you’re a fan of hardboiled novels, I give it a high recommendation.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Rogue Cop - William P. McGivern

William P. McGivern is one of those authors whose work I’ve been aware of for decades without ever reading much of it. I read his World War II novel, SOLDIERS OF ’44, which is part war novel (which works pretty well) and part military/legal thriller (which didn’t work, as far as I’m concerned). A few years ago I read his private eye novel BLONDES DIE HARD, written under the pseudonym Bill Peters, which I liked. You can read my comments on it here.

Now I’ve read his novel ROGUE COP, and it’s easily the best McGivern I’ve read so far. Philadelphia police detective Mike Carmody is the rogue cop of the title, up to his neck in graft and corruption. His younger brother Eddie is also a cop, but of the honest variety, and when Eddie winds up with the local mob after him, Mike has to take sides and choose whether to protect himself or his brother.

There’s probably not a lot in this book that will surprise the veteran reader of hardboiled thrillers, but boy, the pace really rockets along. McGivern’s prose is just as smooth as it can be, and he does a great job of creating rounded, morally conflicted characters, chief among them Mike Carmody himself. There are plenty of tough action scenes, and a great line near the end. I’ll definitely be seeking out more McGivern novels, and if you haven’t read ROGUE COP, it gets a high recommendation from me.

(I've actually managed to read something else by William P. McGivern since this post originally appeared on October 31, 2008, but it was one of his science fiction novels rather than one of his crime novels. You can find my review of THE GALAXY RAIDERS here. But I still intend to read more of his crime yarns.)

Review: Shakedown - William Ard writing as Ben Kerr

Johnny Stevens is a private detective working for an agency in New York. His boss sends him to Miami Beach on what seems like a simple assignment: Johnny is supposed to keep tabs on a doctor who may be blackmailing a young wastrel/playboy who happens to be the son-in-law of a canned food tycoon. The client is actually the public relations firm that represents the father-in-law. Johnny doesn’t know what the outcome is supposed to be and doesn’t really care. His assignment is just to keep track of where the doctor goes at night and who he sees. Just a simple shadowing job, right?

Well, you know it’s not going to stay simple, and sure enough, there’s a murder attempt the first night Johnny is on the job. On the second night, the killer succeeds, and even though the murder takes place in front of 300 witnesses, Johnny finds himself on the spot for it and has to figure out who the real killer is in order to clear his name. That’s not the only murder before this case is wrapped up, either. Throw in several beautiful young women for Johnny to juggle, some gangsters, gambling dens, and nightclubs, and you have all the elements for a highly entertaining private eye novel of the sort that I grew up reading.

SHAKEDOWN was published originally in hardcover by Henry Holt in 1952 and reprinted in paperback by Popular Library in 1954. The by-line on the book is Ben Kerr, but the actual author was William Ard, the popular Fifties writer who passed away in 1960 at the much too young age of 37. In addition to the stand-alone mystery and suspense novels and a two-book series featuring PI Barney Glines that he authored as Ben Kerr, he wrote a well-regarded series under his own name featuring PI Timothy Dane and a couple of books starring ex-con Danny Fontaine. He started a series starring private eye Lou Largo but wrote only part of the first book before dying. Lawrence Block completed that book, and John Jakes wrote several more under Ard’s name featuring Lou Largo. Ard’s most successful work during his lifetime may well have been the Western series he wrote in the late Fifties starring adventurer Tom Buchanan, published under the pseudonym Jonas Ward. Ard wrote five of those and started the sixth one, which was completed by Robert Silverberg. Used copies of the Buchanan novels were easily found in used bookstores when I was a kid, and I eagerly bought and read all of them, without having any idea who actually wrote them, of course. Nor did I care, at that point.

The fine folks at Stark House Press are about to reprint SHAKEDOWN and another of Ard’s Ben Kerr novels, THE BLONDE AND JOHNNY MALLOY, in a double volume with an excellent introduction by Nicholas Litchfield. I’ll be getting to THE BLONDE AND JOHNNY MALLOY soon, but for now I can give this book a high recommendation based on SHAKEDOWN. It’s very fast-paced, written in a breezy, entertaining style, and Johnny Stevens is a likable protagonist, tough but not overly so, smart but not brilliant, quick with a quip and charming with the ladies. I’m a little surprised that this is his only appearance, but hey, Ard was busy with other things. I love this kind of book and always will. I had a really good time reading SHAKEDOWN.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Suitable for Framing - James Atlee Phillips

Like last week’s THE FAST BUCK, James Atlee Phillips’s novel SUITABLE FOR FRAMING concerns treasures looted during World War II. That’s where the similarities end, though. In SUITABLE FOR FRAMING, the things everybody is after are fabulously valuable paintings, rather than jewels. And SUITABLE FOR FRAMING is much better written than THE FAST BUCK.

The narrator in this novel is Jesse Barker, a journalist who gets finagled into joining a scheme to smuggle some paintings out of France following World War II and sell them to a Mexican general Barker happens to know. Most of the book takes place in the Mexican mountain town of Hidalgo, and Phillips paints a very vivid picture of this setting. As anybody who has read very much in this field will expect, the plot falls apart and becomes a maze of double-crosses, and of course there’s a beautiful woman involved, and Barker gets hit on the head and knocked out several times. Plus you get a colorfully eccentric (and really evil) villain, Mexican wrestlers, spooky scenes set in graveyards, and a considerable amount of action.

I’ve always liked Phillips’ novels about espionage agent Joe Gall, which he wrote under the name Philip Atlee, although the plots in them sometimes get so complicated that I can’t keep up with them. I also really like his early novel PAGODA, which introduces Joe Gall when Gall was still a pilot, rather than a spy. SUITABLE FOR FRAMING is a little lighter weight than those books but shares many of their virtues: crisp prose, good descriptions, and hardboiled action. One thing that annoyed me was Phillips’ habit of paraphrasing what his characters are saying, rather than just quoting the dialogue, but I sort of got used to that technique after a while. As a rule, though, I don’t like that. I liked the book overall, though, and I think if you’ve read and enjoyed Phillips’ other novels, you’ll enjoy this one, too.

(This post first appeared on October 3, 2008.)

Review: Crown Vic 2: If I Were a Rich Man - Lee Goldberg

CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is the second volume in Lee Goldberg’s new series featuring ex-con and former professional car thief Ray Boyd. Ray wanders the country driving an old Crown Victoria interceptor that’s been decommissioned as a police car, making money when and how he can—often, but not always, illegally—and looking for just enough adventure and excitement to keep life interesting.

In this novella, Ray is on the hunt for a fortune in diamonds stolen in a robbery years earlier. He was in prison with one of the men who pulled off the heist. Legend has it that the guy hid the gems somewhere, and they’ve never been found. The problem is that the thief is an older man, he’s been released from prison, and he’s now in an assisted living center, suffering from dementia, so he may not even remember where he cached the diamonds. But if he does, Ray is going to find them and get his hands on them himself.

However, Ray’s plans are complicated by a beautiful young woman and a little matter of blackmail that ultimately may endanger his life.

Goldberg really keeps things racing along in this yarn. There are a couple of twists I should have seen coming but didn’t, and that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s skill in maintaining a breakneck pace. And Ray Boyd continues to be a fascinating character. He’s not a nice guy, at all. He reminds me a little of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker, except that Parker has some sort of moral compass that Ray seems to lack completely. In fact, this guy is so terrible you have to ask yourself how anybody could make him the protagonist of a series. But despite that, in the end you find yourself rooting for Ray to succeed, or at least I do. And that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s talent, too.

I don’t know if there are more Ray Boyd stories in the works, but I hope so. For now, CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is available in e-book and paperback editions. I really enjoyed it, and if you like hardboiled crime yarns, I give it a high recommendation.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Fast Buck - Ross Laurence

THE FAST BUCK is one of those books that drops you right down in the middle of the action and lets you catch up as you go along. Joe Chicagano, also known as Joe Chicago, is a down-on-his-luck prizefighter who gets involved with the Mob following World War II. He’s not much more successful as a hood than he was as a boxer, and as this novel opens, he’s regaining consciousness on the floorboard of a car being driven by a beautiful woman he calls Legs, because that’s all he can see of her as he comes to. He’s been beaten up and as the mysterious woman shoves him out of the car into the gutter, all he knows for sure is that somebody stole ten thousand dollars from him, and he’s going to get it back no matter what it takes.

Then he discovers that the police think he died in a fiery car crash the night before. When he starts trying to figure out what happened to him and find out who took his money, people he talks to have a habit of being murdered in circumstances that make the cops think he’s the killer. Joe’s not the smartest guy in the world and he knows it, but he’s extremely stubborn – and he wants his money back.

From here the author really piles on the complications, packing several competing groups of mobsters, stolen gems that were looted during World War II, numerous murders, boxers, and actors into not much more than 40,000 words, if that. The headlong pace of this book is its real strength, along with the occasional good line and some vividly sordid descriptions of various lowlifes and their environment.

Don’t mistake this for some sort of lost classic, though. It’s not. The writing, for the most part, is too unpolished and awkward for that. As far as I’ve been able to determine, Ross Laurence wrote only this one book. I wondered at first if the name was a pseudonym for an author better known under some other byline, but I don’t think so. THE FAST BUCK really reads like a first novel, with flashes of real talent struggling to get out through the amateurish writing. If anyone knows more about the author, I’d be really interested to hear it. I wouldn’t rush out to find a copy of this book, but if you run across it, it’s worth reading for the unrealized potential you can see in the author, if for no other reason.

(Reaching all the way back to September 26, 2008, when this post first appeared in a somewhat different form. It doesn't seem like it's been nearly 17 years since I read that book.)

Review: Crown Vic - Lee Goldberg

I’m not sure how this book slipped past me when Lee Goldberg published it a couple of years ago, but I’ve seen several mentions of it and its sequel recently and figured it was time for me to read it. CROWN VIC is a collection of two novellas featuring Ray Boyd, an ex-con and former professional car thief who drifts around in a black-and-white Crown Victoria that was once a police car, not looking for trouble, mind you, but usually finding it anyway.

The first novella is called “Ray Boyd Isn’t Stupid”, and he proves that when he takes a job as a handyman at a lakeside resort and winds up involved with the beautiful but amoral wife of the place’s middle-aged owner. It seems he treats her badly and has a lot of money stashed, and things would be so much better if Ray would just get rid of the guy for her . . .

This is, of course, the plot of countless 1950s noir novels published by Gold Medal, Dell, Avon, etc. But unlike the protagonists of those books, Ray isn’t stupid and turns the whole thing on its head—or at least he tries to. But Goldberg is pretty tricky with the plot of this one, springing twist after twist. It’s very well-written and very, very entertaining.

The second novella, “Occasional Risk”, finds Ray stopping for a few days at a rundown motel in Arizona. Every reader of noir novels knows that nothing good ever happens at rundown motels, especially when a beautiful blonde with trouble dogging her heels checks in. Goldberg draws some pretty specific comparisons between Ray and Jack Reacher in this one, and the comments are not only accurate but also pretty funny. The plot doesn’t have quite as many twists but still carries the reader along in fine fashion.

I read both of these novellas in one sitting each, which is pretty unusual for me these days. That’s how good they are. Ray may not be the most admirable character around, but he does make for compelling reading. This one, which is available on Amazon in e-book, audiobook, and paperback editions, gets a high recommendation. There’s a sequel out already and I’m looking forward to reading it.

Review: The Joy Wheel - Paul W. Fairman

Eddie Kiley is just a normal 16-year-old guy growing up in Chicago in 1926. His dad is a salesman, his mom is a housewife, and he has an older sister he squabbles with. One of his uncles is a cop, and another is a drunk. He spends his time going to school, hanging around with his friends (some of whom are his cousins), and thinking about girls, especially the beautiful but unattainable Mimi Taylor.

Eddie is the narrator/protagonist of THE JOY WHEEL, a 1954 novel by Paul W. Fairman published originally by Lion Books and just reprinted by Black Gat Books. The story follows Eddie for a year or so as he learns about life, falls in with shady company, wrestles with his conscience, uncovers family secrets and tragedies, and generally just grows up. There’s plenty of crime in this book, as Eddie gets a job working around bookies and gangsters and even inadvertently witnesses a murder, but it’s not really a crime novel. Likewise, although Eddie’s relationships with several different young women are very important, it’s neither a romance novel or a softcore novel.

Instead, THE JOY WHEEL is a coming-of-age novel that’s a little on the gritty side, and I think it’s a great one. Paul W. Fairman is best remembered for his work as an author and editor in the science fiction field—and his reputation there is a little mediocre, to be honest—but he was also a journeyman writer who turned out mysteries, Westerns, movie novelizations, and TV tie-in novels. I haven’t read a great deal by him, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read and consider his SF to be pretty good.

But THE JOY WHEEL is so good it took me very much by surprise. The characters are great, Eddie’s narrative voice is fun to read, and Fairman really had me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen. I wish he had written more novels like this.

Maybe he did. I have a couple of his mysteries and one Western but haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. Very late in his career, Fairman also wrote two historical romance novels under the name Paula Fairman (although you won’t find any mention of that on-line, for some reason), then died while writing a third one which a friend of mine finished and then continued ghosting as Paula Fairman for twenty or so more books. I have the two that Paul Fairman wrote and hope I get around to reading them, and more by him, one of these days. Meanwhile, I give THE JOY WHEEL a high recommendation. You can get it on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.