paperback originals Archives

Femme – Bill Pronzini

Bill Pronzini, Gil Brewer, noir, paperback originals, Private Eyes Comments Off

Apr 132013

Femme (2012) is one of two Nameless Detective novellas recently published by Cemetery Dance, an independent press known primarily for horror novels. It's a throwback for Pronzini to the days of the Gold Medal paperback original. Nameless meets his match in a woman who might have been appeared in any of the number of dark crime and noir novels that were the specialty of Day Keene, Bruno Fischer, and especially Gil Brewer. Pronzini has mentioned in 1001 Midnights that The Vengeful Virgin is his favorite of Brewer's books and I can see that wicked Cory Beckett might easily have been inspired by Brewer's legion of bad women who'll do anything to get what they want.

The plot is a basic find-the-man plot with Nameless hired to track down Cory's brother Kenneth who is on the lam from a robbery. As the story progresses Nameless soon learns that Cory is far from the decorous client and loving sister. She has an ulterior motive for finding Kenneth and Nameless is sure it has to do with money. But Cory wants more than just money.

For those who like their woman characters in crime fiction mean and nasty you get more bang for your buck in Cory Beckett than any other bad girl in the genre. She outdoes Phyllis Dietrichson, Cora Papadopoulos and Julie Bailey and a dozen others whose names may not so recognizable. And the final twist disparaged by some other blog reviewers I thought to be the perfect icing on this frigid monster. This is no book for feminists that's for sure. But for a quick dip into the depths of the darkest of noir you can do no better.

This was my brief contribution to a blog celebration for Grand Master Bill Pronzini who turns 70 today. I'm on the road headed home from the French Quarter Jazz Festival in New Orleans. I promised something and this may be short and sweet, but it's a review of a neat little book that I think lives up to, and in some ways surpasses, the kind of noir novel I love from the past.

Happy birthday, Bill! And keep on scribin'!

IN BRIEF: Case of the Village Tramp – Jonathan Craig

Jonathan Craig, paperback originals, police procedural Comments Off

Jan 312013

Another Jonathan Craig book and you know what that means -- sex and crime. The victim in this sixth book about cops of the 6th precinct is found wearing nothing but a chastity belt and tiara. A genuine medieval chastity belt. Museum quality, my friends. And the key is missing. Talk about a titillating start.

I read this back in December and I made no notes so I'm relying solely on my memory of the book. Sorry to report though only one month has passed I don't remember much. Craig really has a knack for dreaming up some of the strangest people to populate these police procedurals. But this time no real standouts in the cast other than a Casper Milquetoast medievalist, a very strange doctor who seems to have strayed out of a Sax Rohmer book from the 1920s, a hired killer who uses an icepick as his weapon of choice, and one of those drop dead gorgeous Lotharios Craig always throws into the works. Apart from the victim who turns out to be a nasty piece of work the women characters failed to stick in my cluttered mind.

This one was rather a low point in the series for me. Craig seems to be repeating himself and made the plot overly complicated this time even to the point of adding an odd mobster subplot with the hitman looming in the background. The victim turns out to be yet another in a long line of blackmailers who went too far. I'm tiring of that angle. Pete and Stan do yeoman-like police work as usual. Detection is not as good as in some of the other entries, but there's enough to elevate from some of the lesser Gold Medal books of this sort.

Another censored Belmont Tower cover

FREAK OF THE WEEK: One character I didn't forget is the creep who gets this regularly awarded dubious honor. This time the badge goes to a cop -- a captain no less --whose passion is aural sex. He loves listening to the details of the sex crimes and goads his fellow police officers into lingering over the details of the manner and method of the crime. When he hears about the chastity belt he's in his element. The reader gets the picture when Pete Selby says the captain leaves his hands in his pockets during the interview. Not the kind of guy you want as your co-worker, let alone your superior.

As those voiceovers go on TV here's the "previously on Pretty Sinister Books" section. Titles marked with an asterisk are the best of the bunch.

The Dead Darling (1955)*
Morgue for Venus (1956)
Case of the Cold Coquette (1957)*
Case of the Beautiful Body (1957)
So Young, So Wicked (1957)* - not part of the Pete Selby/Stan Rayder series
Case of the Petticoat Murder (1958)*
Case of the Nervous Nude (1959)*

Death on a Ferris Wheel – Aylwin Lee Martin

carny noir, obscure writers, paperback originals, Private Eyes, Pulp Writers Comments Off

Dec 122012

Here's a pop quiz, class. What do you think is the most overused plot gimmick in the world of vintage detective novels?

A. The secret passageway
B. Oxalic acid as a murder weapon
C. A twin or triplet is revealed to be the murderer
D. Knife throwing in a suspect's past life

Ten points if you answered D. Even though the others show up time after time, knife throwing is easily the most tiresome, the one that will get me rolling my eyes and uttering "Oh please, not again" more than the others. In the past two years alone I have read seven books that include knife throwing in the plot. Three of those books were locked room or impossible crime novels and the solution to the impossibility relied on the murderer's expert handling of kitchen utensils. But I bet not many of you have ever read the prizewinner in all of mysterydom dealing with knife throwing. I award the blue ribbon in knife throwing to Aylwin Lee Martin's Death on a Ferris Wheel (1951). Why? Because there are four – count 'em four! – knife throwing suspects in this book. Two of them are women! That makes for a potentially lethal group of suspects, doesn't it? You don't want to be upsetting these people at a dinner party or in a butcher shop.

The book opens with the discovery of the murder victim descending from his fatal ride in the titular amusement park ride. His throat is gashed terribly and it is determined that the only way he could've been killed was by a knife thrown at him as he was making his way down in the Ferris Wheel. That's some very expert knife throwing if you ask me, but as the sharp witted Captain Homer Aselin notes it wasn’t necessarily the throat that was the target. Anywhere on the body would have served the killer's purpose. Throat, chest, back -- he would've been dead no matter where the knife landed.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that there are so many knife throwers in the book. After all, the setting for the crime is a travelling carnival and two of the suspects happen to be in show business. Or were at one time. As luck would have it both of the women who also at one time tossed a few blades back in the day were also former wives of Floyd Anthony, the murder victim and an ex-vaudeville performer who worked carnivals as a would-be comic, knife thrower and the handsome male half of a dance duo.

One of the highlights of the book is learning a lot of carny slang.

He was tossin' broads when he wasn’t grindin' for a G-String act.

is translated as

He was dealing a three card monte game when he wasn't talking to the crowd about a striptease act.

A "skinned mush" is the cane a barker uses as a prop to draw attention to himself and the acts. "Mitt camp" is a palm reading tent. Classic stuff! I also found out that "fuzz" as slang for a policeman comes from carny lingo. Reading paperback originals is a real crash course in fading aspects of American pop culture.

The 2nd Matt Hughes novel

At first the murder seems to be tied to the apparent theft of a diamond ring valued at $15,000 and Matt Hughes, our lawyer/sleuth, is hired by Arnold Kent to represent his wife who he suspects of aiding in the theft of the ring. But while uncovering the truth behind the disappearance of the ring (which eventually turns up in Anthony's personal effects) Hughes gets in over his head. Anthony turns out to be a former husband of Mrs. Kent who used to be his dancing partner under her stage name of Nola Barrett. And the theft might have been a cover-up for a blackmail payoff. This is all quickly learned within the first three chapters.

But that's only the beginning of the complicated plot. Soon the story becomes an overly involved tale incorporating a crooked casino and drug operation, bigamous marriage, elaborate blackmail schemes, two-timing lovers and murderous revenge. It's all pulp magazine rehash, not badly told, with some pretty good dialog, heavy on incident and with a few colorful characters including one of my favorite period un-PC stereotypes -- the gay pretty boy sadist. Oliver St. Julian is his name. (What else could it be?) He is, of course, often called a fruit, a pansy, or a nance but is always ready to smash someone in the face when called a name. Is he a knife thrower, too? You bet your gleamin' shiv edge he is!

In the end it's all a bit too excessive. The finale is a cumbersome and talky revelation of multiple secrets delivered in the old-fashioned B movie method with Hughes making page length monologues while the various villains throw tantrums punctuated with a healthy dose of swear words or collapse into confessional hysterical outbursts. "Yes, I killed him," says one character. "And I'd do it again and again." Or until there were no knives left to fling.

IN BRIEF: Flight to Darkness – Gil Brewer

Gil Brewer, noir, paperback originals Comments Off

Nov 132012

Vet noir. I think there's an awful lot of it. And I always seem to stumble upon it. I recently wrote about a Viet Nam vet up to his neck in bad women and murder (The Sexton Women) and here's another book about a hapless vet under the spell of a seductive woman.

As Flight to Darkness (1952) opens Eric Garth is about to leave a V.A. hospital where he has been given a clean bill of health. After returning from the Korean War traumatized and broken he had been under a psychiatrist's care for a disturbing recurring nightmare in which he murders his brother Frank with a wooden mallet. Now successfully having completed his treatment he hopes to return to Florida and return to his career as a sculptor. Going along for the ride is Leda Thayer, Dr. Prescott's nurse and assistant. Leda gave Eric more than his fair share of TLC while at the V.A. and now he's hoping to sample more regularly Leda's considerable non-nursing talents. But we know that Eric is doomed, for on the very first page he describes Leda as a "lush tropical flower blooming poisonously through a crack in a stretch of hot cement sidewalk." Not exactly a flattering metaphor, is it?

Leda, a truly fatal femme fatale, and Eric her love-struck mark make for quite a wanton couple. Neither can keep their hands or lips or anything else off each other for very long. These men of noir just don’t know the difference between love and desire. It's always their undoing. With Eric Garth you keep hoping he'll finally see the light. It takes him nearly three times before he starts to catch on.

Click to enlarge

He's framed for a hit and run accident, sent to another psych ward in Alabama, but manages to escape to Florida. There he meets up with his brother and learns that he has married Leda. Uh-oh. Then there are those wooden mallets hanging in the sculpture studio. One of them finds its way to Frank's skull and Eric is framed for the murder. Still, he is under the hypnotic sexual spell of Leda who amazingly does everything but get entangled with that randy Zeus/swan. For all his stupidity and thinking with his crotch you keep rooting for Eric hoping he'll see that his ex-gal pal Norma is the right choice and his savior from the path that leads to hell. He's not a bad guy at all, but you know he will never see the light until it's far too late. When he does he's compelled to exact a cruel revenge typical of Brewer's protagonists. But is there also the rare redemption for this Brewer hero? I'll leave that for you to discover.

BTW - the cover illustration is not accurate. Leda should be wearing a nightgown and Eric should be wearing pajama bottoms only. But I guess Gold Medal had yet to get really racy with their covers so early in their operation.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The Curse of Rathlaw

Halloween, occult detectives, paperback originals, Peter Saxon, supernatural, The Guardians, witchcraft Comments Off

Oct 312012

This is a series of books published from 1968 through 1970 in various paperback and hardcover editions centering on a group called The Guardians who run an occult detective agency. Though easy to find via online sources I rarely find them in bookstores out here. So when I came across a copy of this second book in a series I've always wanted to read I immediately grabbed it. "Peter Saxon" is a house name for at least five different writers all of whom contributed to the Sexton Blake series for Amalgamated Press. The Saxon name was also used, with two writers dreaming up the plots and three others writing the books, to market these occult thrillers featuring the Guardians. If this book is any indication of what the others are like then I am eager to read them all.

The Curse of Rathlaw (1968) is at its core an elaborate revenge story with two supernaturally powerful brothers plotting their other worldly vengeance on the Rathlaw family. Fergus Trayle, the elder and more evil of the two brothers, was caught in the act of raping a young woman by some men on a hunting expedition. They bring Trayle (known to the locals as the Hermit of Black Loch) to Sir Alistair Rathlaw, laird and bigwig in this part of Scotland, for punishment. Rathlaw sickened by the Hermit's act resorts to a rather medieval punishment and has Fergus publicly whipped and beaten. Humiliated and enraged by the brutal severity of his punishment Fergus curses Sir Alistair's family and promises that his only son will be the end of the Rathlaw line. Sir Alistair will know the prophecy is approaching fruition with the passing of two omens: 1. Alistair's brother will be struck blind and 2. a kelpie (a water spirit in the form of a horse) will appear in the area of the Rathlaw estate. Following those two events Sir Alistair should be prepared for the worst -- the death of his son. Sir Alistair is frightened enough after the fulfillment of the two omens to seek out the Guardians hoping they will be able to prevent the third and final act in the Hermit's revenge.

Fergus and his brother Cosmo are thoroughly wicked men ready to use and abuse everyone they encounter. Cosmo makes his living as a medium and he thinks nothing of using his hypnotic powers to manipulate a woman still in love with her long dead lover into believing he wants her to join him in eternity. So she offs herself, but not before signing over her entire fortune to Cosmo in order that "he might continue his good work in psychical research." Poor woman. That's only a sampling of the nastiness the Trayle brothers indulge in.

The real highlight of the book is the emphasis on Scottish folklore, Celtic superstition and weird occult practices. Among the many included are the Su-Dith, a superhuman dwarf; frequent divination using radiesthesia; and a mute boy who has the uncanny power called "The Horseman's Word" that he uses to summon a water kelpie. The scenes with the boy and his mentally unhinged mother are the best in the book I think. Too bad much of the story is spent on the somewhat tiresome evildoing of Cosmo and Fergus of a kind we've all read of before. Overall, the book is more in line with an action horror movie from the 1960s and has many sequences that will seem all too familiar with anyone well versed in the genre. The finale, especially, brings to mind the occult ritual scenes in The Wicker Man, The Witches, The Devil Rides Out and many, many other horror flicks and stories.

Below is the correct series order by original publication date. Anything else you may find on the internet purporting to be the order of this series is incorrect. Part of the problem is that a number order for the series was printed on the covers of US paperback publisher Berkley's editions of the books. All of these editions were published in the 1970s and they are mostly second printings of the books. The Killing Bone cannot possibly be the first book because Dark Ways to Death was published in hardcover in the UK in 1968. Caveat lector!

The Guardians series
Dark Ways to Death (1968)
Through the Dark Curtain (1968)
The Curse of Rathlaw (1968)
The Killing Bone (1969)
The Haunting of Alan Mais (1969)
The Vampires of Finistere (1970)

Case of the Nervous Nude – Jonathan Craig

Jonathan Craig, paperback originals, police procedural Comments Off

Oct 172012

Not true. She was wearing shoes!

Not that I was in search of the sleaziest police procedural ever written but I do believe I have found it in Case of the Nervous Nude (1959). Out of the six books in this series that I have read so far this will win hands down in a competition of the book with the most oddballs, the most alternative sex practices, the most deviant and/or amoral characters, and the book with the darkest and most depressing atmosphere of the lot. I usually bestow the title of "Freak of the Week" to at least one character in a Jonathan Craig novel but there are so many to choose form I may have to have a kind of horse race finish with win, place and show.

The deeper I delved into this police procedural series the more I discover how Craig learned to concoct plots that are more and more multi-layered with the kind of red herrings and subplots you expect to find in books written by masters of the traditional mystery. This was like Ed McBain crossed with Agatha Christie with a dollop of Jean Genet – if you can imagine such a monster hybrid of genre fiction. Sleazy sex, creepy characters and solid police investigative techniques complete with bureaucratic obstacles and dreary paperwork all combine in a compactly told tale of outcast New Yorkers with lust and greed and several other deadly sins in their hearts. The number of characters with murder in their past, for example, rivals any Christie novel. Turning the pages is like releasing a Pandora's trunk of cruel wife killers, avaricious abortionists, and sex fiends upon the world. Looking for any sign of that jewel called Hope at the bottom of the trunk is almost pointless.

The story opens with Pete Selby and Stan Rayder, our cop protagonists, on their local beat. It's a foggy night and Stan hears something odd, but he can barely make out the sight. It is a woman running in high heels and as she approaches he sees that she's wearing nothing but the shoes. The naked dame jumps into a car waiting for her and it speeds off into the night. The two cops make their way in the direction from where she was running and find a garage with a door slightly open and a Cadillac with its motor still running. Inside the Cadillac they find a dead man, his face flushed not with a sunburn but the telltale signs of carbon monoxide poisoning. Further investigation uncovers an exhaust fan that had been tampered with to prevent it from removing possibly deadly fumes. It's a scene of murder for sure.

The usual police routine follows of identifying the victim, trying to locate the naked girl, and figuring out if she was with the guy or had anything to do with his death. Selby and Rayder will uncover several people with murder and larceny in their hearts. A jewel robbery, the thieves and some missing loot will keep turning up in their investigation. Along the way we meet a parade of the strangest characters in any of these books. Here's just a sampling:

"Drummer" Dugan – a local hood who gets his nickname from the way he pounds on doors to collect debts. He also loves to listen to marching band music. Oh! and he's a leper.

George & Elizabeth Willis - the parents of the naked girl who have the unusual habit of arguing through their dog. George will call his wife Liz to irritate her and she'll reply "The name is Elizabeth. Not Liz. Tell him, Chappy [the dog], tell him my is Elizabeth." The wife addresses the dog when she really is talking to her husband. Utterly bizarre.

Fred Sharma – somehow Fred manages to fool everyone into thinking he's a 35 year old Adonis. But up close and personal Pete sees he's closer to 50 and one of the poorest walking adverts for hair dye and plastic surgery out there. He also is a self-confessed sex addict with a penchant for frotting. For what? (I hear you ask in your usual puzzled voice.) Turns out it's a predilection for rubbing up against women in public places – especially crowded subway trains. A real charmer Fred is.

Wilbur Loftus – aka "the Ghoul" is a mortician's student who nearly killed his wife by giving her an overdose of "truth serum" when he suspected her of philandering with some local Lothario. She didn't tell him much and went into a coma instead.

Hootin' Annie – bar owner. I'll let Craig's words do the job here: "…real name, Anna Weber, born in Pell Street in New York's Chinatown – was Eurasian, an enormous neckless old harridan with a grayish-yellow skin, hooded black eyes, hair so black it had blue highlights in it, a voice her Jersey customers swore could be heard all the way to Hoboken, and a background that included being a lady bouncer in a waterfront dive in San Francisco, heading a phony Caodaist mission in Los Angeles, running a mitt camp with a succession of traveling carnivals, and teaching a refined form of judo to young ladies from Park and Fifth Avenues. She was a "character's character in an area where characters seem sometimes to outnumber the noncharacters three to one."

This nude is so nervous she left her clothes on

Any one of them is deserving of the dubious honorific of "Freak of the Week." My preference for win, place and show would be Fred, Wilbur and the Willises with that second and third place running close to neck and neck. Feel free to come up with your own freak awards in the comment section.

I almost forgot! As a bonus the reader gets a crash course in sex crime terminology, circa 1959. The book is littered with slang terms that I'd never heard of in the hundreds of books I've read from this era. A dumper whore, for instance, is a prostitute who likes to be beaten with a cloth belt. Circus shows are gatherings with girl on girl action scenes where the johns pay to watch but no joining in is allowed. A ringmaster is what you call the pimp who runs a circus show. The girls are probably called performers or acrobats, though it's not mentioned outright. You'll not learn things like that watching Law and Order: SVU. Don't you love vintage crime novels?

The following books by Jonathan Craig have been reviewed previously on this blog. Those marked with an asterisk are my favorites (so far) and come highly recommended.

The Dead Darling (1955)*
Morgue for Venus (1956)
Case of the Cold Coquette (1957)*
Case of the Beautiful Body (1957)
Case of the Petticoat Murder (1958)*
So Young, So Wicked (1957)* - not part of the Pete Selby/Stan Rayder series

The Sexton Women – Richard Neely

Gil Brewer, noir, paperback originals, Richard Neely Comments Off

Aug 162012

Viet Nam vet Johnny Sexton returns home to ask his rich father Tom for $30,000 in a movie making deal he and his friend Jim Ralston are planning. During the visit Johnny falls for his father's very young , very sexy wife Lucille. When Dad Sexton reports his lawyer has discovered that Ralston and his other movie investors are in the porn biz he vetoes the loan. Relations between Johnny and his father were not that good to begin with and now the son is pissed off. His anger gets the better of him. He vows to get not only his $30,000 but even more money.

Like any noir anti-hero he, of course, confides in his object of desire who wickedly encourages him. An arson plot is rigged at an old house where his father lived with his first wife – Johnny's mother. When the wreckage is bulldozed by Tom's own construction company they turn up a skeleton. But it's much smaller than Tom Sexton's body, has all teeth intact (Tom wore dentures) and the skull is bashed in. Dental records prove it to be Tom's first wife. Uh-oh. What happened to Dad's body? And who killed Mom?

This is a deviously constructed book, as fast paced as any paperback original from the 1950s on which it is modeled. The Sexton Women (1972) matches those crime novels in every aspect and to a certain extent goes further than books by Day Keene, Bruno Fischer and Gil Brewer in terms of sleazy sex and amoral behavior.

Neely is an underappreciated writer of nasty noir done up 1970s style. He is probably best known for The Plastic Nightmare turned into a movie, the pulpy fun thriller directed by Wolfgang Petersen retitled Shattered and starring Tom Berenger, Greta Scacchi and Bob Hoskins. His other novels well known among discerning readers include The Japanese Mistress and The Walter Syndrome.

This little known book among Neely's fifteen titles is one of those twisty roller coasters with a vertigo inducing plot and a genuine noir atmosphere in which the innocent are punished and the guilty get their just desserts. It's hard to sympathize with Johnny, a model of human baseness -- greedy, selfish, vengeful, sex-crazed. You can't help but read on envisioning a suitably nasty end for the guy after all his scheming. And when that end comes there's also a delicious irony thrown in for good measure.

FFB: Case of the Petticoat Murder – Jonathan Craig

Friday's Forgotten Books, Jonathan Craig, paperback originals, police procedural Comments Off

Jul 062012

In this fifth book in the series featuring 6th Precinct cops Pete Selby and Stan Rayder Jonathan Craig finally proves he can write not only a gritty, urban crime novel, but a twisty, red herring laden mystery. In Case of the Petticoat Murder (1958) there are the usual seedy sexual practices, colorful lowlife Greenwich Village characters, and ample amount of routine often dreary police work. This time, however, the crime turns out to be a puzzler cleverly concocted with devious misdirection worthy of a Golden Age whodunit.

Naomi Ellison is discovered hanging by her neck from a steampipe in her Greenwich Village studio apartment. She is completely nude except for a pair of stockings and high heeled shoes. Immediately we get a lesson in crime solving as Selby tutors a novice policewoman in murder disguised as suicide. In a lecture that goes into graphic detail that I will spare you he point s out the angle of the body clearly indicates it was hoisted up after death. Later, the M.E. supports his theory when it is learned that Naomi was strangled with a petticoat found tightly twisted and not so well hidden in a dresser drawer.

The victim, as usual, is a beautiful young woman with a secret life. Though she may have presented herself as a friendly neighbor Selby and Rayder soon discover that Naomi was renting out her apartment to couples who were indulging in illicit love affairs. Her home was in effect an assignation hotel room. Selby starts compiling a list of her customers and through routine interviews with them gradually pieces together a portrait of a women who not only supplemented her income as a hostess for sexual playmates but as a blackmailer. Careful readers should note that Craig's laying down of clues starts first and foremost with the manner in which Naomi's body was displayed. It will turn out to be one of the biggest clues to the identity of her killer.

I've often talked about the unusually modern aspects of Craig's books. When first published in the late 50s readers of these books might have been taken aback by not only his frankness in discussing sexual fetishes, but his frequent use of profanity. In the past, editors at Gold Medal have replaced the F bomb with tame euphemisms like "frag." Here we get the real thing. "Bullshit" and "half-assed" are only two of the terms that popped up. I think he may be the first of their authors to get a completely uncensored story in its final published form. And although there really isn't a character saddled with some odd form of sex practice or fetish there is a section which describes the practice of erotic asphyxia, both solo and in pairs, which I think was a pretty daring thing to throw into a crime plot for a book released in 1958.

I liked a lot of his minor characters. Craig is very good at capturing unique speech and slang of working class Manhattanites. And his strength in making those characters original in they way they dress and live is at its best in ...Petticoat Murder. Those who stand out are Josie Daniels, a diner waitress, who provides some vital clues to one of the suspect's hidden past; Marty Hutchins, the elusive athletically built boyfriend who appears in a photo Selby takes from Naomi's apartment, turns out to be something of a "kept boy" with a ferocious temper; Miss Hardesty, a snotty receptionist whose missing alligator handbag will provide one of the more interesting clues to the crime; and Johnny Farmer, the strangest guy of the bunch, a hayseed illiterate Lothario always on the prowl for a shapely willing woman whose home turns out to be one of the most repellent dives ever described in a paperback original.

As for police business, the 6th precinct novels always point out the drab and dreary job that is a real policeman's gig. The paperwork, the forms, the constant phone calls to BCI -- a branch of New York government bureaucracy Manhattan cops are always dealing with -- and, specifically, the Lost Property Bureau all figure prominently in this book. We even get a scene that gives us a little more insight into the irascible nature of Barney Fells, Selby and Rayder's immediate superior. Fells was a cop who loved the street and was an excellent policeman but when the lieutenant retires early he is promoted to fill the spot. Now saddled with a desk job he despises he has become a tool of police bureaucracy, forced to keep his team in line according to the book his moods become ever crankier, his temper always getting the better of him. At one point Selby's flagrant disobedience for strict police procedure so infuriates Fells he predicts Selby's lonely future: "You're hopeless, Pete. Give you another five years and you'll end up in the same damn fix I'm in. And you know something, smart ass? It'll serve you right."

The structure of the book echoes a few aspects of Golden Age detective novels. There is a slow reveal of a murder in the past that Naomi became privy to. There are ample clues and police leads that take the form of stolen items from her apartment that turn up in the hands of various suspects. There is the hunt for a missing address book with numerous secrets. There is the previously mentioned hand tooled, alligator handbag manufactured by a small company that keeps track of its creations by means of serial numbers and registration cards. One of the suspects turns out to be a wife killer on the lam very much in the manner of a frequent plot device employed by the Grand Dame herself, Agatha Christie. I doubt Christie would find much to admire in the book's emphasis on the sex-obsessed characters, but had she read the book straight through she might be forced to give a gold star or two to Craig's tightly plotted puzzle of a mystery with all its clues -- both red herrings and the real McCoys. The Case of the Petticoat Murder certainly is teeming with plot twists and subplots.

Finally, I always like to bestow on one character the title of "Freak of the Week." Up until this book that character was always a sexual fetishist. This time, however, the honor goes to a more empathetic little guy. It's Louis Lozeck, an elderly gentleman who visits the precinct when his delusions get the better of him. He finds refuge in the police offices and has as one of his few friends Pete Selby who sympathizes with the old man's mental illness. Louis, you see, is abnormally afraid of his sister-in-law with whom he lives. Every now and then he fears for his life. He is convinced she is in league with the Devil and is plotting to do him in. When life gets too fearful for him he heads on down to the 6th Precinct for a hour or two of chit chat, he buys Selby some coffee, Selby lets him keep the change. It's a scene of both weirdness and a tenderness rarely given the spotlight in Craig's work. I liked seeing that side of Pete Selby. I hope to see more of that in the remaining five books in the series.

Previously reviewed books by Jonathan Craig on this blog:

The Dead Darling
Morgue for Venus
Case of the Cold Coquette
So Young, So Wicked (not in the Selby & Rayder series)
Case of the Beautiful Body

IN BRIEF: Free Ride – James M Fox

gangsters, James Hadley Chase, James M Fox, paperback originals, Pulp Writers Comments Off

Jul 042012

Leo Maxwell, an ex-boxer, is being transported via train to Phoenix where he will be tried for manslaughter. Two cops, Jerry Long and Chuck Conley, are in charge of his safety. En route they learn that Maxwell managed to win over $20,000 on a long shot bet at a horse racetrack. Even before the train leaves the station an attempt is made on Maxwell's life. Sgt. Long handles the three goons with the usual pulp fiction style fistfight. Turns out they are members of a Sicilian syndicate. Long and Conley try to get Maxwell to confess the racetrack winnings were a gang related con game. Maxwell refuses to cooperate. Everyone on board seems to know that Long and Conley are cops. Maxwell in handcuffs seems to be the give away. As the train continues its journey from New Orleans through several Texas towns onto Arizona more attempts are made on Maxwells' life.

Like the best of the paperback originals that specialize in crime we get the usual ingredients for a quick read. Fistfights and action galore. Lots of James Hadley Chase style ersatz American dialog meaning it's littered with wiseacre period slang that no real person ever used. A myriad of suspicious characters make trouble for the two cops.

Among those characters are:

Homer Finch -- a salesman on his way to a cosmetic convention. He spends much of his telling stupid jokes and playing pranks with novelty gag items.

Thomas Carpenter -- older gent way too interested in the police business and a bit too interested in other passengers like...

Gloria Starr -- burlesque stripper, con woman who gets Carpenter to pay for her meal in the dining car when she "forgets" her purse

Carol Wallace -- claims to be Maxwell's girlfriend. Attempts to bribe Long with sexual favors in order to free Maxwell.

Long sends orders to headquarters to run criminal background checks on all these passengers and a few more. He suspects that one or more may be involved in a plot to either free Maxwell and get him off the train or to kill him before the train arrives in Phoenix. It turns out he's right, but just who is involved is rather hard to figure out. And there are indeed a few surprises before this action tale comes to its violent finale with plenty of fists and bullets flying.

FFB: Be Silent, Love – Fan Nichols

Fan Nichols, Friday's Forgotten Books, paperback originals, suspense Comments Off

Jun 292012

US 1st edition (Simon & Schuster, 1960)

Once in a while I come across a writer whose work has been labeled uneven to mediocre, often dismissed or derided, who has nonetheless written a single book that will redeem that writer's maligned reputation in my eyes. Such a writer is Fan Nichols. The book in question is Be Silent, Love (1960).

Don't be put off by the title which seems to evoke a romance novel or a HIBK mystery. Be Silent, Love is neither. It's not often I resort to catch phrases and reviewer speak, but here I have to. This book a page turner par excellence.

The story can be reduced to a single sentence: a hit and run accident brings misfortune to an adulterous couple who try to cover up the accident. Their predicament is further complicated when the victim, a teen age high school football star, dies of his injuries. If you were to read such a capsule blurb you would probably choose to pass on reading it. Sounds way too familiar, right? Smacks of movie-of-the-week melodrama -- or worse -- sentimentalism. You would be very wrong. And you'd be missing out on a thriller that truly thrills.

The UK edition (T.V. Boardman, 1961)

Nichols has concocted cliffhangers at the end of each chapter so that it is nearly impossible to stop reading. The tension mounts, the plot complications always increasing. The story is a study in Hitchcockian relentlessness. The more Kay Hubbard tries to do good the worse things get. Her lover, David Drake, was driving the car. It was his idea not to stop. His reasons are plentiful: he may be separated from his wife, but he is legally still married to her; the car, a prize won in a charity raffle, is uninsured and Kay has no driver's license; and most importantly he has his reputation as a rising executive in his advertising firm always in mind. David appears to be concerned about Kay's safety and possible arrest, but really he only cares about himself. The reader knows this, Kay doesn't. This makes for some interesting plot developments as the story winds its way through a maze of misadventures, coincidences and machinations.

While Kay and David do their best to deceive the police and newspaper reporters little do they know that Pete Lockley, the owner of the cabin they have been using for their trysts, has seen David drive away at night in the red Thunderbird that caused the accident. Later Pete who thinks Kay is married to David sees her in the company of Bill Webb, a high school teacher who is doing some sleuthing about the accident on his own. Lockley who has some questions about the night of the accident innocently calls out to Kay: "Mrs Drake!" and she freezes. Bill is confused. Kay is scared out of her wits but thinks quickly and dismisses Lockley as a man who has mistaken her for someone else. This seemingly innocuous incident will have dangerous repercussions for the rest of the book. It is an example of how tightly plotted the story is, how nothing is misplaced in the intricate structure, how everything that happens matters to the story. It really is a marvel of storytelling.

Fan Nichols began her career as a mainstream novelist, then ventured into the romance genre, eventually blending her fondness for career driven female characters with a penchant for seedy and tawdry settings. Slowly she added criminal themes to her books and the bulk of her work was sold to publishers who specialized in genre paperback originals. Her stories of backstage romances with Machiavellian show girls and bar room temptresses sport titles like Angel Face, Ask for Linda and Devil Take Her. While some of them can be labeled crime novels (often with a minimum of bad deeds) most of them are pale imitations of the kind of book James M Cain wrote far better.

Be Silent, Love, however, is a fully developed crime novel and probably Nichols' most gripping story. There is a lot at stake. The characters are desperate, trapped, driven, using and abusing each other all in an effort to get at the truth or, in David's case, to escape punishment. And poor conflicted and tortured Kay is caught in the middle. Whose side will she turn to? Will she give in to David's selfish scheming? Or will she confess all to Bill who suspects she is hiding an awful lot? Will Pete Lockley use his eyewitness testimony for personal gain? Or will he do the right thing and go to the cops? This is certainly one of Nichols' two best books. The other is The Loner, a dark and frightening study of a mad killer obsessed with strippers. But while that story tends to dip a bit too deeply in the lurid and fantastical, Be Silent, Love is more realistic yet just as gritty and dark.

Luckily, the critics and publishers recognized the greatness of this little book as there are at least three different editions available: a US hardcover, a UK hardcover, and a US paperback reprint with the not much better altered title The Girl in the Death Seat. All three are available through a variety of online selling entities and all copies I found (for a change) are sensibly priced. Any reader in search of an entertaining read loaded with genuine suspense, a page turner for the summer, a "really good beach book," should look no further than Be Silent, Love. Just overlook the poor title and dig right in. I guarantee you won't be able to stop after the first chapter.

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