Review: A Touch of Death

A Touch of Death by Charles Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The beginning is quite clever as ex-football star Lee Scarborough responds to an ad of someone looking to buy a car and completely by chance meets up with Diana James who sizes him up and recruits him to help her find $120,000 in stolen money. Williams also uses a clever plot device when about a quarter of the way through the novel Scarborough, who started out scheming with one femme-fatale, takes up with another. This switch adds an extra kick to an already fast moving storyline. Plenty of action and suspenseful plot points keep the pages turning to find out who gets the money and who lives or dies. To provide more specifics risks a spoiler, but this novel has most of the archetypal film-noir elements, and it is surprising that, unlike twelve other of Williams’ novels, that this one was never made into a movie.

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Review: Fancy Anders Goes To War: Who Killed Rosie The Riveter?

Fancy Anders Goes To War: Who Killed Rosie The Riveter? by Max Allan Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This well researched short novel captures the lives of WWII Women at Work while providing a terrific mystery yarn that introduces Fancy Anders, socialite and daughter of a renowned detective, who goes undercover at an airplane factory to help solve the suspicious death of a woman that held the job previously. Fancy is a woman before her time, rebelling against the regimented lives of women in the 1940s. She is adventurous and fearless with modern sensibilities. I really liked the tight, compelling mystery plot, the dialog that contains several 1940s pop culture references and slang, and the cast of characters, especially her new friend Lulu. There are a couple other books in this series that I am looking forward to reading. Loved it.

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Review: Murder for the Bride

Murder for the Bride by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was MacDonald's second novel, published in 1951, and he steered completely away from the hard-boiled detective style of his first novel and produced an espionage novel full of Russian spies and ex-Nazis. But this is no John LeCarre style spy novel because it features an everyman protagonist in the classic noir sense. Dillon Bryant is a geological engineer scouting oil formations in Venezuela. He's fresh from a three-day honeymoon but has left his wife home in New Orleans. When he receives a letter saying that his wife is in trouble, he rushes home, only to find when he gets to his apartment that his wife has been murdered. The plot takes an intriguing turn as we learn that he'd married Laura after a quick whirlwind romance and that she is not what she seemed. Bryant initially refuses to believe what he hears and sets off trying to discover who she really was. Before too long he realizes he's a patsy and is embroiled in a plot involving Russian sleeper cells. From that point on there are plenty of plot twists and action to keep the pages turning until the end.

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Review: Any Woman He Wanted

Any Woman He Wanted by Harry Whittington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although this was published by Beacon in 1960 as a sleaze novel, it was originally written by Whittington as sequel to Brute in Brass, which was published by Fawcett Gold Medal. Whittington intended Mike Ballard as a series character but Gold Medal rejected this sequel. The hilarious thing is that anyone buying this based on the cover thinking that they were getting a story about a guy making time with four women was seriously disappointed. There is not so much as a kiss in the entire book. Hard to understand Gold Medal's rejection because this is just about the equal to Brute in Brass. The primary difference is that Any Woman He Wanted is not a noir. It is just a straight ahead crime novel. The novel starts with Ballard, now a homicide detective showing up at the scene of a robbery. A nice set-piece scene that establishes character via action. After that things slow down a bit with Ballard's back story, both pre- and post-Brute in Brass. So we learn more about his history, and for those who have read Brute, we find out what happened after that novel ended. It is now four years later and Ballard is a clean, but hobbled, cop. Enter new plot complications. He meets with the DA, who tries to hire him as a special investigator. Ballard knows that is death warrant and refuses. Next day the DA is dead and it is game on. The rest of the novel tracks Ballard as he battles it out with the new criminals who run the town.

280Steps has re-released this one as an eBook and it is also available in a Stark House edition along with A Night for Screaming.

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Review: Sin for Me

Sin for Me by Gil Brewer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

One of Brewer’s last books before he started writing knock-offs and TV Tie-ins under psuedonyms. The opening chapters are some of the worst writing I’ve read of Brewer’s but I skimmed ahead because at his best he is one of my favorite crime/noir writers. Written by anyone else, though, I would haver put this one down. Unfortunately it did not get better. Some of the action scenes are pretty good, with Brewer’s signature fast-paced yet descriptive style, but that’s the best I can say.

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Review: The Temptress

The Temptress by Carter Brown
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If you've read any of the other books in the Lieutenant Al Wheeler series (there's 51) you know what to expect from this one, which is number fifteen. Wheeler is tough talking and a smart ass and takes the piss out on everyone he interacts with, although less so the women he beds in his apartment equipped with the "hi-fi machine" and booze. Not a lot of action here. Couple of murders, but minimal police procedural, if that is your thing. Wheeler roughs up a couple of bad guys, but that's about two pages of description total. Mostly it is pages and pages of "witty" repartee and questioning leading up to a quick and thin whodunit reveal of the blackmail plot and the murderer. For collectors, the cover art in this third printing is by Ron Lessor, which was the first of four Carter Brown covers he did. The first edition (S1817) has cover art by Barye Phillips. Not certain on this, but there does not appear to be an edition with cover art by Robert McGinnis, who did most of the Carter Brown covers between 1961 and 1972.

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Review: Dolls and Dues

Dolls and Dues by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hitt's books make for interesting cultural anthropology artifacts because he usually focuses on some occupation or business or a business-like scam and then immerses his protagonist in that world. Here we have a union organizer circa 1957. The target is the 16,000 insurance agents at a large insurance company, and Paul Jackson's task is to get all those agents to join a newly created union and then call a strike against the insurance company. When the agents are slow to sign up Jackson comes up with his brainstorm: host big parties for the agents and make sure there are plenty of hookers and booze. The agents start signing up in droves. Jackson hires a crew of good looking women and sends them on a road trip to towns where the insurance company has lots of agents. The union dues start rolling in. I will spare you the rest of the plot, but it involves greed and fraud and the eventual fall of Paul Jackson from his perch as President of the union. See, he has a problem with the dolls. He beds pretty much every woman he comes in contact with, although none of that is ever described, simply alluded to in a sentence. So plenty of sleaze but no sex scenes.

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Review: Eve of Evil

Eve of Evil by George G. Gilman
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars 

A Christmas story in this ultra-violent Western series seems incongruent but Brit Terry Harknett, writing as George Gilman, pulls it off in this light-hearted short novel. The writer churns out outrageous coincidences in Edge’s adventure related to the biblical story of the birth of Jesus that had me smiling. The story has to do with Edge accompanying a young couple, Joseph and Maria, to a stable before Maria gives birth. Harknett’s writing is solid and the Preacher and his “daughter” characters stand out. Edge is uncharacteristically less violent and more thoughtful than usual which I welcome. Sometimes his brutality is distasteful to me. Still a high body count and clearly the most violent Christmas story that I’ve ever read. An entertaining and fast moving read. I liked it. Three and a half stars.

Review: Satan Takes the Helm

Satan Takes the Helm by Calvin Clements
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stories set in boats or snowed-in cabins, etc. work well in the crime/noir genre since it forces tensions due to the confinement of the characters, and then sustains them since there is nowhere to escape. The story here is a familiar one. Luscious young woman is married to an ugly, old freighter owner. She has eyes on a juicy inheritance. She hires a tough-guy captain to helm the freighter and then uses her charms to seduce him and then imply that maybe things would be better if her husband wasn’t around. Clement's spin on this theme is terrific, bristling with thorny dialog and conflict between the main characters as she cleverly manipulates circumstances to influence the reluctant captain. Some nice twists keep the tension escalating to a satisfying conclusion. Great book and an easy four stars.

Reprinted by Stark House Press in their superior Black Gat line.

Review: Kept

Kept by Sheldon Lord
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sheldon Lord was an early pseudonym of Lawrence Block. This starts out quite edgy with a guy hitchhiking and getting picked up by a blonde in a convertible and there's a sense that the storyline could go anywhere, particularly with the breezy, devil-may-care narrative voice. Yet, surprisingly, this turns out to be a Horatio Alger type story as well as a romance story. Our unemployed hitchhiking narrator decides he doesn't want to be the kept man of the Park Avenue blonde so he gets a job and works his way quickly up to general manager. He beds his secretary, but she turns down his marriage proposal because she can sense he's in love with someone else. So back to Park Avenue he goes to marry the blonde and then move to Westchester. Such a depressingly happy ending. Block was better after he switched his pseudo to Andrew Shaw and abandoned the happy endings and even better when writing crime/noir under his own name.

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Review: 69 Babylon Park

69 Babylon Park by Harry Whittington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This 1962 Whittington novel is not as sleazy as the front and back covers suggest. Instead it is psychological realism set in married student housing at a trailer park and it reminded me quite a bit of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road which had been published a year earlier. The beginning also has a bit of a David Goodis vibe as it reminds me of the beginning of The Wounded and the Slain. There's also a passage where protagonist Phil overhears students talking about his car-hop wife May that made me think of Raymond Carver's story "They're Not Your Husband" from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please. In that story a husband overhears guys in a diner making unflatteringly comments about his waitress wife. And in the same vein as those other works, 69 Babylon Park is a literary styled novel about a marriage disintegrating under the weight of expectations. The dialog got a bit long in places but there are some really choice scenes of confrontation and humiliation. If it hadn't been marketed as pulp I could see this Whittington rubbing elbows with the books by Yates and Carver.

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Movie Review: Private Property (1960)

Private Property written and directed by Leslie Stevens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A disturbing psychological thriller neo noir about two drifters, a smooth talking lothario and his halfwit and virginal partner Boots (played by a very young Warren Oates), plotting to seduce a beautiful and unhappily married woman. The disturbing thing is that the charmer intends to get the woman in bed then pull a switch-roo so his partner can finally get laid. The script is terrific detailing the machinations of lothario Duke, played perfectly by Corey Allen, and his methodical attempt to seduce an unwilling married woman. A bit too sexy for its time it was banned and censored and then lost for decades. It may be a low-budget B-movie but the direction, cinematography, and performances are all superb. An easy four stars and highly recommended.

Available to stream for free (with commercials) on Tubi.

Review: Hot Pants Karen

Hot Pants Karen by Mark Allen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This Bee-Line Books sleaze novel from 1970 is far more pornographic than it’s predecessors, the soft-porn novels of the 1960s. It tells the story of virginal Karen who is gang-raped, awakening her sexuality, which stuns her boyfriend Billy into enlisting into the war in Vietnam. and Karen to skip town to hang with anti-war hippies who turn her on to casual sex and orgies. Of course Karen and Billy still have feelings for each other when he returns after three years,which they try to deny by having sex with others. A good portion of the book is graphic sex scenes which are fairly well written although they become tiresome. The females are all very verbose during sex and spout streams of unintentionally hilarious dirty-talk littered with hippie vernacular and slang, language which permeates the book making it an amusing time capsule of the era. The Pro-War vs. Anti-War sentiments were a nice touch, and surprising no slut-shaming or punishment for for the females who engage in casual sex. A cut above average for a hard-core sleazer. Two and a half stars.

Review: Horizontal Secretary

Horizontal Secretary by Amy Harris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As with many of these vintage sleaze novels you can't go by the description on the back cover. There really is no plot to this one. Ellie is a secretary in the shipping department. She's 27 and a virgin when the book begins. Blake, the head of the PR department is putting on the moves and succeeds in seducing Ellie. It's over quick and she's disappointed. She moves on to Frank, a police detective she last dated two years previously and had brushed off. Not this time. Again it's too quick. Is that all there is? she thinks out loud and Frank gives her another go, slower this time. Fireworks! And again and again. But then Frank doesn't call for three days. Blake does instead and she gives him another go. Blake is not the one. Frank finally calls and now wants to marry her. Nope. Ellie dumps him quick. Dave, the next door neighbor beckons as the book ends. This is still 1963 and, fair warning, the sex is not explicit. The first-person narration is strong and we experience this emotional whirlwind along with Ellie. Amy Harris wrote five other books for Midwood and they might be worth checking out: Y-175 Forever Amy, F-203 Birth of a Tramp, F-212 Touch Me Gently, F-215 Counter Girl, and F-265 All of Me. Cover art? Yes, that is Paul Rader's work.

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Review: Sugar Shannon

Sugar Shannon by Lawrence Lariar
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lawrence Lariar was a well-know cartoonist and editor of the Cartoon of the Year series of books. In the late 1940s-1960s he also wrote crime and mystery novels under the pseudonyms Adam Knight, Michael Stark, and Marston La France. Similar to Carter Brown, Lariar had a few different series characters, most notably the Homer Bull and Steve Conagher P-I novels. Although this novel is billed as "an exciting new series," as best I can tell this was the only appearance of Sugar Shannon, who, along with her friend Gwen Moody, are not P-Is, but reporters for a lower-tier New York newspaper. This was an ok mystery but not too exciting. Greenwich Village setting. Lots of quirky artist-types for the reporters to interview as they try to track down the killer. No action sequences. No sex scenes. Just a lot of room searching and interviewing of potential suspects. Sugar is tough-talking and fond of repartee. Stylistically, a Carter Brown comparison seems a close fit. This is the only Lawrence Lariar mystery that I've read and although I'm not rushing right out to find one, I wouldn't mind checking out another. In 2019 Mysterious Press/Open Road re-published all of his novels as eBooks so they are readily available.

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Review: The Turquoise Lament

The Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not the usual salvage job for McGee in this one as he sets about helping the daughter of a dead friend who saved his life once upon a time. Some neat backstory here that tells the tale of the time when McGee and Meyer were chasing after sunken treasure, the time when his life was saved, and it is plopped here, an embedded short story, as Chapter Two. McGee duty bound heads out on a rescue mission that turns into a mystery he has to chase down in the usual McGee way that is equal parts social engineering trickery and brazen thuggery. JDM really gave McGee some fun characters to interact with: a war photographer, a bush pilot flying a home made plane, a crusty manager of a trailer park, and the usual assortment of crooked lawyers and businessmen for McGee to shakedown. The teasing out of the mystery keeps the story moving and entertaining. McGee is back in top form busting chops and taking names. The only disappointment here is that there is not the usual 30-40 page climactic sequence to bring the novel to a smashing conclusion. With this one it is a short and sweet battle that is over surprisingly quickly. And it's no spoiler - six books left in the series, after all - to say that McGee lives to fight another day.

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Review: Play it Hard

Play it Hard by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Awesome. Brewer totally channels Cornell Woolrich in this paranoia driven narrative. Steve Nolan wakes up from a bender-fueled honeymoon to find a woman claiming to be his wife who isn't the woman he'd just married. No one believes him, though, and the chase is on as Nolan tries to figure out what happened. The prose is Brewer at his propulsive best. Nolan's mind races and we are tethered tight to that paranoia from beginning to end. I wasn't sure how Brewer would wrap this up and have it make sense, but I think he pulled it off. Great also that it ends with an action scene rather than drawing room summary. The "wife" is one of Brewer's better character creations and he lavishes some of his best descriptive writing on her. Sexes it up in this one, too. Recommended.

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Review: Caribbean Kill: Mack Bolan: The Executioner #10

Caribbean Kill: Mack Bolan: The Executioner #10 by Don Pendleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A compressed timeline story that also further introduces Jack Grimaldi, a mob plane and chopper pilot, who later changes his allegiance to Mack Bolan. The novel takes up immediately after the events in Las Vegas (Vegas Vendetta) and into reliable Don Pendleton high gear with some terrific action and adventure sequences. There are no dull Mafia backstories, females needing protection to advance the plot, no fat to trim, just flat out action. Yeah, the violence and gore can be a bit disturbing so the book may not appeal to most readers. On the Executioner/Bolan scale I give this four solid stars, one of the better of the early novels in the series.

Available from Amazon in paperback or digital.

Review: Reckless

Reckless by Ed Brubaker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The RECKLESS graphic novels are unique in that they are true novels, not a collection of short comic books stitched together. This frees the creators, the acclaimed team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, from artificial page counts (the length of a comic book) for their chapters. Brubaker’s stated intention for the RECKLESS books were to create a series character like those popular in the 1960s-70s. James Bond, Nick Carter, Matt Helm, and mostly Travis McGee come to mind for me. The first novel introduces Ethan Reckless who spends much of his time surfing and then taking on side jobs to recover stolen money from  clients for a cut when he needs cash. Contacted by a former lover whose take from a robbery has been stolen by the ringleader named Wilder, Ethan methodically goes about tracking down Wilder while dealing with his own damaged memory and a ton of buried secrets. Both Brubaker’s scripting and Phillip’s artwork are amazing and the story is the type that I love. Highly recommended and an easy five stars.

I borrowed this from my public library with the Hoopla app on my iPad.

Review: The Scarlet Ruse

The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The closer I get to the end of my time rereading John D. MacDonald's novels the more I'm feeling that the Travis McGee series has not held up as well as MacDonald's noir novels. In this the fourteenth in the McGee series we have Trav doing mostly investigative type work, and the only action comes in the final third when we are treated to another of MacDonald's stellar rollercoaster structured climactic sequences. Not a fan of the long anti-climactic summary ending which follows, so let me tell you what I like about this one. The teasing out of a stamp collecting scam; and then learning all about stamp collecting. Watching the Mary Alice character deconstruct before our eyes by what she says and does. Her stinging dialogue is stunning and brilliantly crafted to reveal character. The edginess between Trav and MA, the jousting, whenever they are in a scene together keeps a live current rippling throughout this novel. MacDonald, the old OSS guy, deploys a lot of his spy craft via McGee and it is fascinating anthropology to follow along as McGee navigates back in the day before cell phones and google and the metaverse. Among the thematic highlights are McGee's declining capabilities, his suffering another near-death beating, and McGee once again throwing Meyer into the path of a scythe wielding reaper. These all foreshadow a series working its way to the end.

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Review: Too Black for Heaven

Too Black for Heaven by Day Keene
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This one was pretty boring. Although it does have a murder I certainly wouldn’t call this a crime novel. It could just as easily be classified as a romance novel because that is its ultimate direction. I did read it all the way through - albeit finishing it by speed reading the ebook version on my phone - just to find out what happens, but was disappointed as the story never really got into high gear. The basic plot is a child of rape seeking revenge, but the depiction of racism and the subplot of miscegenation do take over.

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Review: The Lusting Drive

The Lusting Drive by Ovid Demaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A variation of the good brother/bad brother theme with noble lawman, a one-armed Longmire type sheriff, forced to face his inner conflicts while investigating his sociopathic brother who is potentially a suspect in a small town murder. The bad brother is exceptionally well drawn, a nasty, manipulative liar who is charismatic and powerful enough to enthrall the unwitting town folks and susceptible females. His efforts to scapegoat a simple minded boy for the murder are ruthless and relentless which fosters resentment against him, especially from his lawman brother, threatening his well laid plans to inherit a fortune. This only serves to escalate his machinations and violence throwing the book into high gear and leading to an exciting (and very abrupt) ending. In general a terrific book that I recommend. Four stars.

Available now digital or paperback from Cutting Edge Books and Amazon.

Review: Celebrity Suite Nurse

Celebrity Suite Nurse by Suzanne Roberts
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Repetitious and repetitious. With that said, we follow nurse Poppy as she wrestles with the decision of whether to return to the clinic in her small Georgia home town or to stay in glamorous Miami Beach. And which of the two men in love with her will she choose? Handsome Dr. Harper or pop idol Nicky Farrell? All three of these characters are emotionally high strung, so that at least keeps the narrative pinging from emotional high to low with ricochets everywhere in between. If it were half as long it would have a made a tight if predictable novella. Instead we have sixty pages of repetition and that makes a boring novel. True to the formula, you know how this ends before it starts.

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Review: Sin Doll

Sin Doll by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Basic good girl gone bad plot. Cherry's motive is money and heavy hitting the booze makes her go further than she intended. Plus she's constantly berated with “you are no good, just like your mother, she was a tramp and put you up for adoption.” Next thing you know she is quitting her factory job and becoming the sin doll of the title by posing nude for 1950s era pornography. As with most of Hitt’s books he stays on the good side of the censors by omitting the sex scenes and skewing the narrative with moralizing. It gets redundant as she has the same don’t-be-a-bad-girl-be-a-good-girl arguments with her parents over and over. And her boyfriend wants to have the same argument over and over about getting married. Having to listen to all that, no wonder she drinks and has a lesbian affair instead.

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Review: New Gun For Kingdom City

New Gun For Kingdom City by Ray Hogan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hogan was a prolific writer of Westerns, a contemporary of, and perhaps overshadowed by, Louis L’Amour in the 1960s and ‘70s. The 100 or so pages of Ace Double novelettes seem to be the optimal length for Hogan’s fast-paced and action-packed stories. This one tells the story of a hard-boiled and somewhat shady loner seeking vengeance for his brother’s murder in Kingdom City, a town run by a corrupt and lawless family. Hogan interjects an adversarial US Marshall who is tracking bank robbers and duped mail order bride into the mix and the result is a terrific and lean thriller without an ounce of fat or padding. Hogan’s tales never disappoint and this is a really good one. Four stars.

Review: Quick-Trigger Country

Quick-Trigger Country by Clem Colt
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Clem colt was a pseudonym for Nelson K. Nye. I haven't read anything else by him so don't know how typical this is of his writing. Although there are plenty of action scenes the plot proceeds either by coincidence or non sequitur, in other words it makes no damn sense. The narration at times reads as if it were copied from old newspaper articles or tourist brochures celebrating the good old days of Tombstone. We even have a Wyatt Earp sighting. The dialog is hokey and it was like listening to Billy Crystal and Jake Palance in the movie City Slickers - minus the humor. Did I mention it has plenty of action scenes? I didn't say they were great action scenes. The lead character's name is Turkey. Totally fits this book. Not recommended.

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Review: The Last One Left

The Last One Left by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Starts really slowly with multiple third person narratives, each with detailed character introductions and much backstory. I stalled out lost after a few chapters and had to restart from the beginning. I have a deep admiration for JDM’s early stand alone novels with their taut linear plots and low word counts. This novel is far more ambitious telling the tale of a complex scheme initiated by the devious and deadly beauty Crissy Harkinson to steal a load of dark money by faking a boating accident. This personally involves Texas lawyer Sam Boylston, an overbearing perfectionist with a marriage on the rocks, and with a kid sister on the missing boat. MacDonald was an exceptional writer and the prose here, albeit a bit wordy for my tastes, is superb. Yeah, the plot is complex and there are probably too many characters but MacDonald deftly ties the multiple narratives into a cohesive and compelling story. It takes a some effort and focus by the reader to get pulled past the slow start but the rewards are substantial. An excellent book that I’m going to dock one half star for the slow start and the excessive verbosity. Four and a half stars.

Review: On Company Time

On Company Time by Daniel A. Morton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A shallow tale of office romance. Robin arrives in the city from a small town in Iowa and quickly lands a secretarial job for the publisher of a scandal sheet. She falls almost instantly in love with co-worker Jim but before she can consummate that love, her boss - "Just call me Nails, everyone does" - goes into full seduction mode. Soon he's groping her in the office, in the restaurant, and in the taxi cab, where he, yes, you guessed it, nails her. It is that kind of book. What follows is a few dates with both the boss and Jim, more hanky panky, and some petty office jealousies, which causes a few people to get fired. Jim and Robin quit, but not before telling off Nails. That's it. Only 123 pages of large type and I read this in the amount of time it took to slowly drink a beer. Which may or may not be a recommendation. It's a Midwood paperback. Vintage 1960s sleaze. Not much to this one and not worth tracking down.

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Review: The Lustful Ape

The Lustful Ape by Russell Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Russell Gray was a pseudonym of Bruno Fischer and this novel of murder and blackmail gets off to a typical Fischer quick start as Dirk Hart, an ex-cop turned private detective, learns that his estranged wife was murdered right after visiting him in a negligee. Things get a bit confusing in the first few chapters as Fischer rapidly introduces a lot of characters and spins out sub-plots galore, but then he starts pulling all the threads together and we have ourselves a page turner. The title and back cover tease copy are misleading: there is a character named Ape, and he is lustful, but no more so than the other characters, and his lust has little to do with the story. This is all about a blackmail scheme that Dirk needs to unravel before he too ends up dead. Satisfying murder mystery. Also available as a Gold Medal paperback with the Bruno Fischer by line, and an ebook version is available from Prologue Books.

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Review: The Damsel

The Damsel by Richard Stark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is the first of four books in the Grofield series that Donald Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, spun off from his Parker series. At the end of The Handle - the eighth book in the Parker series - Parker leaves Grofield in a Mexico hotel room with a bullet wound in his back and a suitcase containing his share of the loot from their just completed heist. That's where The Damsel picks up Grofield's story. The implied plot is how does Grofield make it back home to midwest USA with his money. The book starts, however, with a woman climbing through his hotel window. She's escaping from guys Grofield recognizes as gangsters and his complications have escalated. What follows from there is a complicated but ultimately non-sensical plot that takes Grofield and the damsel of the title across Mexico to Acapulco to save the life of a totally undeserving dictator. It does have some excellent action scenes as Grofield is particularly resourceful in dispatching the gangsters. For the most part, though, this is a mix of Mexican travelogue (some of Westlake's best writing) and banter between Grofield and the damsel, which is reputed by many reviewers to be witty, but that I found mostly boring and imminently skippable. As with the Parker series, about halfway through we switch from Grofield's POV and spend several chapters with various antagonists. While these are all well-written character portrayals and serve the plot by showing what everyone else is up to, they are also essentially character assassinations designed to reveal how despicable these characters are. It's hard to care about any of these characters. I'll avoid any spoilers and stop here by saying that the ending was completely disappointing and not worth the journey. Westlake's writing in this first Grofield novel is silky smooth but entirely without the edge of the Parker novels. Probably better than I'm giving credit for but that is not a recommendation.

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Review: Nothing More Than Murder

Nothing More Than Murder by Jim Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thompson's first noir novel and I really enjoyed the unfolding of the insurance scam and then the complete undoing of Joe Wilmot as his enemies start putting the pinch on him from every angle. Fantastic twist at the end, too. Thompson cleverly keeps the details of the scam from us readers early on, but does it in a way that creates a lot of tension: Joe and his wife Elizabeth talk about what they are doing in the quite realistic way that people do who know what the subject is and don't need to mention every detail. So we know they are up to something but not exactly what. Of course, it all comes out as the action unfolds. Really liked the snarky way the insurance investigator just keeps setting Wilmot up; those were good scenes. Not so good was the way Thompson drifted into Wilmot's back story throughout the last two thirds of the novel. It really didn't add anything to the story. There was also a lot of details about the movie house business, some of it was interesting, but that could have been trimmed down, too for a faster-paced story line.

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Review: Savage Surrender

Savage Surrender by March Hastings
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Sally Singer, writing here as March Hastings, was a skillful writer that toiled at penning mostly lesbian and sleaze novels for low-brow publishers like Beacon. Here she tells the story of a racecar driver and journalist named Chuck, his nymphomaniac wife Eve, a frigid woman named Robin who is married to an abusive husband, and their wimpy son, aptly called Skinny. The plot revolves around Chuck’s sexual obsession with Robin, with the other characters contributing various complications to his motives. Singer’s strength is her crackling dialog, although her plotting often falls flat. More of a drama than sleaze, and although a murder does occur there is no hiding of the body or noir type elements that I was hoping for. The murder does free Robin from her frigidity which I thought was a bit of a forehead slapper. The novel was okay but I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend it. Two stars, maybe two and a half.

Recently reprinted by Cutting Edge Books.

Review: Dolls and Dues

Dolls and Dues by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hitt's books make for interesting cultural anthropology artifacts because he usually focuses on some occupation or business or business-like scam and immerses his protagonist in that world. Here we have a union organizer circa 1957. The target is the 16,000 insurance agents at a large insurance company, and Paul Jackson's task is to get all those agents to join a newly created union and then call a strike against the insurance company. When the agents are slow to sign up Jackson comes up with his brainstorm: host big parties for the agents and make sure there are plenty of hookers and booze. Yes, the agents start signing up in droves. Jackson hires a crew of good looking women and sends them on a road trip to towns where the insurance company has lots of agents. The union dues start rolling in. I will spare you the rest of the plot, but it involves greed and fraud and the eventual fall of Paul Jackson from his perch as President of the union. Oh, yeah, he has a problem with the dolls. He beds pretty much every woman he comes in contact with, although none of that is ever described, simply alluded to in a sentence.

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Review: One for Hell

One for Hell by Jada M. Davis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This 1952 Fawcett Gold Medal noir novel has been lauded by readers as a lost masterpiece and it was deservedly brought back into print by Stark House Press in 2012. Jada Davis was a talented writer who decided that life as a fiction writer was more work and less profitable than other careers and he only published one more novel in his lifetime. ONE FOR HELL tells the story of a corrupt oil boom town that employs a charismatic drifter as a strongarm only to lose control of him as his sociopathic tendencies are revealed. The strength of the novel is in the characterization of the drifter - detailing his lies, deceit, and manipulations that keep piling up into a fragile house of cards that force him to escalate the violence to keep it from falling down - and taking his corrupt town partners with it. The subplots detailing the personal affairs of the townsfolk seems superfluous and I was glad when the narrative returned back to the drifter. Plenty of terrific dialog and several interesting characters although the drifter really shines as one of the most fascinating noir characters that I’ve ever read. Lost masterpiece? Sure, I’m on board and give it a solid five stars.

Available in paperback or ebook from Stark House Press.

Review: The Handle

The Handle by Richard Stark
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a real let down after The Seventh, which had always been one of my favorites in the Parker series by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake). The setup is actually quite good as The Outfit has hired Parker to take out a competitor who's operating a casino on a private island (owned by Cuba) 45 miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas. They want Parker to rob the casino and its operator of everything and then burn the place down. Parker does recon and hires a crew and buys weapons. Unbeknownst to both The Outfit and Parker, the casino operator, Wolfgang Baron, is also under surveillance by the Feds because he's a nazi war criminal. The feds make a deal with Parker: we leave you alone and let you do your robbery, but we want you to deliver Baron to us. And that's the kicker as the story shifts gears from setup to heist. From this point on the novel seemed rushed and more expository as the narrative disappointingly shifts away from Parker's POV into first Grofield's (a character from The Score who is the lead in another four book series by Stark) and then Baron's POV, and we experience the heist and its aftermath from those two POVs and don't come back to Parker until the final twenty pages of the novel. And that wrap-up is somewhat perfunctory and extremely anti-climactic. So I'm not a real fan of this one.

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Review: Untamed Lust

Untamed Lust by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In between all the sleaze-noir rutting, what we have here is some of Hitt's most evocative writing. And where does his best writing show up? In his descriptions of Eddie out trapping animals in the woods. Fascinating that one of the rare times that Hitt's writing approaches literary quality is when he describes trapping turtles, otter, fox, and mink. Hitt is usually at his best when describing his characters at their work and he is at the top of his game describing Eddie in the woods. He is laughable, however, when he describes Eddie bedding down the three women in this novel with prose steeped in junior high sensibility. Hard to get too excited about this novel because its interesting characters and a good noir plot are obscured by Hitt's at times shallow writing.

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Review: 13 French Street

13 French Street by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was Brewer's big seller—with more than 1.2 million copies sold on its original Gold Medal print run—and, from a literary standpoint, it certainly has some of his best prose. Although I'm more partial to Brewer's propulsive out-of-control style, the best example being A Taste For Sin, but 13 French Street has plenty of forward energy. Overall, I give it 4.5 stars, with the deduct being mainly for repetition, and that is partly by design as the bulk of the action takes place claustrophobically on the second floor of the house. As with Brewer's Satan Is a Woman, the femme fatale spends the first half of the novel teasing the protagonist - Alex Bland - into an obsessive and near insane frenzy. Once he's hooked, the murders begin. A brilliant noir depicting Bland's self-destruction as his conscience is eroded by desire, at first reluctantly, then willfully, and finally under a haze of alcohol as he deliberately tries to drive away the pain he's caused himself by jettisoning his conscience.

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Review: End of the Tiger and Other Stories

End of the Tiger and Other Stories by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

MacDonald, who published 500 stories and 70+ novels in his career was a master craftsman and this collection of 14 stories and 1 novella shows off his technique quite well. The collection opens with “Hangover”, which was published in 1956, and reads like an episode of Mad Men, as an alcoholic ad executive gets fired for saying the wrong things (namely the truth) to Detroit auto executives at a big rollout meeting. “Blurred View” is a neat noir with an inventive double-cross ending. Same with “The Fast Loose Money,” only with a long simmering revenge twist added in. The plot twist of “Triangle” - a story of a husband trying to hide an affair - is absolutely devilish and MacDonald pulls it off smooth as can be. The novella “The Trap of Solid Gold” was published in 1960 and depicts the now all too familiar story of a young executive forced to live beyond his means to maintain the image - with home, cars, country club memberships, etc. - that the company expects its executives to portray; and the inevitable downfall ensues. Amazing ending sentences, which it will not spoil the story to quote: “Happy endings were reserved for stories for children. An adult concerned himself with feasible endings. And this one was feasible, as an ending or as a beginning. You had to put your own puzzle together, and nobody would ever come along to tell you how well or how poorly you had done.”

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Review: The Name of the Game Is Death

The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first started reading Gold Medal and other crime-noir paperbacks in junior high and back then this novel was one of my favorites. Marlowe pulls off the rare feat of creating a sociopath that you want to root for. The book begins in the middle of a bank heist in Arizona and our first person narrator is wounded and goes to ground. His robbery partner heads to Florida with the money. They have a plan to meet up. After a few weeks a telegram from his partner arrives and after reading it our protagonist realizes that his partner didn't send it and that someone else must have the loot. He begins driving cross country and in the course of this five-day journey from Arizona to Florida we see him not only in lethal action, but he also conveys incidents from his past that show how he became the criminal he is. Strangely enough, it humanizes the sociopath. In Florida he establishes himself as a tree surgeon in a small town, which is his cover story while he tries to find out what happened to his partner and the money. So we see him in normal human activity, but we also see the calculated way that he operates and know him for what he is: a cold blooded killer. Just a fascinating narrative perspective. As the novel progresses there are twists and turns, with an especially neat side-plot that has other criminals following our guy while he tracks down the ones who took out his partner. Marlowe delivers some neat cat and mouse scenes before the final explosive ending. One of the best in the genre and a must-read for fans of these Gold Medal paperbacks.

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Review: Candy

Candy by Sheldon Lord
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another early Lawrence Block book. The first chapter is a doozy as our first-person narrator Jeff comes home late still reeking with his mistresses' perfume and is confronted by his wife. The narration is flavored equally with asshole-ness and self-loathing and really starts the book off with an edge. Then we get a back story chapter showing how Jeff gets involved with Candy. Candy's goal is to be a kept woman and clearly Jeff doesn't make enough to keep her. He becomes obsessed with her. She dumps him. His wife leaves him. He hits the bottle. Losses his job. And then tries to find Candy. To say more would be spoiler, except that the crime elements all come late in the book. In the iBook store this is classified as erotica. It isn't, not even by 1960 standards. Couple of sex scenes, but they are not even written to excite. Overall, some good stuff here, but also plenty of filler, and it's easy to see that Block was ready to make the move to Gold Medal style books.

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Review: Yesterday's Virgin

Yesterday's Virgin by John Furlough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Furlough is a pseudonym used by Glenn Lough/Low for his Beacon offerings. This one is backwoods sleaze, a favorite subgenre of mine, and tells the story of hunky Harty Blestow, a cranky and amorous young buck living in a cabin on his deceased grandfather's land where there is rumored to be hidden treasure worth $25,000. A darkened-bedroom mystery woman warns Harty of a plot devised by some violent local hillbillies to steal the treasure, which Harty doesn’t believe actually exists. At the same time a couple of cute and horny distant cousins from the big city unexpectedly show up to do a little ancestry digging. Very well written for a Beacon with some wild and outrageous plotting and plenty of sex and violence. The writer makes fine use of cliffhangers at the end of the chapters, like the Hardy Boys books, making this one propulsive and difficult to put down. A very pleasant surprise and very clearly a top notch backwoods sleazer. I liked it a lot. Four stars.

Review: B-Girl Decoy

B-Girl Decoy by Eve Linkletter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The best part of this novel is the first third where the whole "B-Girl" ploy is described and shown in great detail as Mercedes goes undercover as Eva. Written in 1961, so what you have is a contemporaneous depiction of the scam. The middle third is decent as a lot of complications are introduced and the energy picks up as the point of view shifts away from B-girl/undercover cop Eva whom we began with. The final third is weak despite more plot complications because none of the police part is realistic, and in fact, is quite moronic. Where this novel really falls apart, however, is that when we are in Eva's point of view she never seems to think the way an undercover cop would. So the novel is a fascinating period piece with a great historical depiction of what the B-Girl scam was, but as a novel it fails because the main character is not presented in a way that is believable. The minor characters, on the other hand, seem quite believable. So a rare example where it is the main character who is the prop rather than the supporting characters.

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Review: The Lost Continent

The Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Originally published as BEYOND THIRTY in All Around Magazine in 1915 the short novel was then un-published until 1955 when Ace released the mass market ERB paperbacks re-titling it as THE LOST CONTINENT. Sort of a post-apocalyptic Lost World story that tells of a period 200 years in the future where Europe has been decimated by war and has returned to tribal barbarism and overrun by jungle animals. The Panamerican narrator/hero is forced to cross the 30th parallel, which is strictly banned and enforced, and he ends up in England dealing with lions, tigers, and wolves, plus uncivilized natives including a beautiful princess, A pretty typical ERB adventure yarn with the flowery prose of the time and cardboard characters. The hero’s marriage to the queen of England was an unexpected and somewhat outlandish touch. An okay Lost World story that doesn't quite measure up to the Caspak and Pellucidar books.

In the public domain and freely available at Gutenberg.org

Review: The "B" Girls

The "B" Girls by Thomas N. Tomm
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good find that has me looking for more books by Tomm. At the sentence level this is some of the best writing I've read in a sleazer. Literary quality. Structurally, though, pretty dang strange. The mystery is introduced with thirty pages to go and then is quickly solved. It does look backward and explain some of the events from earlier in the novel, but totally missed the opportunity to have the protagonist chasing the mystery from the start. Same with the murder, which comes at the halfway mark; should have happened much earlier in the book. Instead we get a lot of character development and a mild adventure and plenty of sex scenes in the first 80 pages without knowing where things are going or why. The writing is good, though, so who cares? Then we have the murder and our protagonist is on the run for fifty or so pages, before finally waking up and realizing he has to solve the mystery we didn't know existed. It's actually quite complex but is dusted off in 15 or so pages after 10 pages of setup. Enjoyed this one a lot, but it definitely could have been a more rip-roaring crime novel with a different structure.

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Review: Knock Three-One-Two

Knock Three-One-Two by Fredric Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some devilish twists at the end so I won't say too much about what happens. The setup is that a psychopath is on the loose, having strangled two women already, and early on we get a couple of scenes from the killer's perspective as he tries for a third victim, but is thwarted both times. Although the omniscient narrative jumps around to a lot of different characters, the protagonist, however, is Ray Fleck. Ray is a gambler and he has racked up big losses that he can't pay back to his bookie. Ray is also a chiseler and a liar and a thief and worse. We see him at his worst trying to raise the money he owes. Ray and the psychopath will meet. Enough said. Brown dials up some neat plotting, but I was disappointed in this one because a lot of the narrative was exposition rather than scenes. That complaint is just my personal preference to scene based narratives and might not bother other readers. He also used a couple of other clunky narrative devices. For example, a character writes a letter to a psychologist friend to explain his theory about the psychopath. So deduction for clunky narrative techniques that detract from an otherwise good story. Add a star for the cover art.

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Review: Devil in Dungarees

Devil in Dungarees by Albert Conroy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After a great first chapter that sets the stage as we meet two doomed (no spoiler, this is noir after all) protagonists - Walt Bonner, a cop planning a bank heist, and Peggy Jennett, the devil in the dungarees, leading him on with herself as bait - the story slows down a bit as we meet the other robbers involved in the heist. At this point the narrative also shifts from Walt's POV to what will become an omniscient POV. What we lose with the close identification with Walt is repaid with a much broader sense of the action. And action is the key, because from the moment the robbery starts there is no let up until the end. Conroy (a pseudo of Marvin H. Albert) adds a new complication every couple pages with the classic plotting technique of pose a problem, solve it, create another problem, and keep it up to the last page. As a page-turning, action-packed, crime-noir novel, this has all the goods. Would have a made a great movie.

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Review: Old Dogs

Old Dogs by Ron Schwab
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Old Dogs in the title refer to Jack and Rudy, a pair of aging and retired Texas Rangers now ranchers, and Thor, a loyal and much loved dog. A young woman claiming to be Jack’s granddaughter shows up out of the blue asking Jack to help recover her herd of horses that that been rustled by hostile Comancheros. Jack, unaware that he even has any offspring, is at first shocked and then inspired to come out of retirement for one last dangerous mission to recover the stolen horses. This mission drives the plot but is really secondary to the themes of growing old and love of family, friends, and dog. Truly a wonderful book that packs an emotional punch, especially I think, for men of a certain age - like me. One of the best Westerns that I’ve read in a while and highly recommended. Five stars.

Available as an inexpensive ebook.

Review: Love or Kill Them All

Love or Kill Them All by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Writing as Nicky Weaver, this was Orrie Hitt's attempt at a hard boiled detective. Maybe it's not as bad as my one star would indicate, but there are so many better books. Why bother? The dialog is really bad, corny and full of non-sequitors. Dialog is usually a strength of Hitt's books. Not here. The plot is somewhat coherent, but Nicky Weaver's investigation isn't. Doesn't happen very often - didn't and don't want to finish this one.

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Review: Dirt Farm

Dirt Farm by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Classic Hitt. Clean prose and plenty of tension. Similar plot to several other of his books: drifter type shows up looking for work. This time it's a farm. There's too many women around for him to keep his mind on the job. Hitt does a great job using the dialog to show character, letting several characters hang themselves with their words. Would have been better if there were more action and less talking, however, and could have used more sex and more violence. Lost steam in the second half and the ending was also disappointingly anticlimactic.

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Review: Operation Fireball

Operation Fireball by Dan J. Marlowe
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Plenty of good scenes and writing here, and Drake, in this the third book of the series is now someone we want to root for, however, just too many scenes, especially in the first half of the book, that don't advance the plot. It's as if Marlowe got stuck on the same plot point, thought it was more important than it was, and then wasted a lot of energy with half-step-forward, half-step-back scenes. He turns the characters and the action loose in the second half, but this is not as strong as the first two in the series or his other non-Drake books.

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