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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