Retribution (Van Lacey, 1959)

Brad Connor, a no-name and nobody kind of guy, is minding his own business when someone tries to kill him. He survives the attempt, but his good friend Matt is not so lucky. They both have just one enemy in common, but he's supposed to be dead - Henri Rheims, sadistic asshole and devil himself reincarnated, was a prison warden in a Japanese camp where they were held captives, and he had died in a fire when the camp was liberated. Is it possible that he had survived and is now looking for revenge? And for a retribution!

The answer is, of course, yes. Not only has he survived the fire, but he has also come to the States to expand his criminal activities. He is now  Jonathan Byrd, host of sinister parties where he is drugging prominent scientists (with marijuana!, sic) to reveal their findings about H-bomb developments that he can sell to Russians. The only obstacle on his path is potential witnesses who could recognise him. So they must die.

This is a basic premise, and as you can probably figure out for yourself, it presents quite a problem. I somehow still cannot understand why someone would go through all the trouble of killing two guys (plus framing another one for murder!) who are convinced that he's dead in the first place!?? Especially, we learn that later, because he had completely changed his appearance in the meantime.

I think a more skilful writer could still pull something better out of this. But everything else is also so fucking sloppy and amateurish. There's no real reason (or need) for Marie's character and development of their relationship, which is at best unnecessary and at worst ridiculous. Something similar could be said for Hagen, the GI man who gets involved in the case. Detective skills of two combined are pretty pathetic (I suspect something, yes. I don't know what. I wish i did.) and I cannot see why they needed to fly to LA to just interview a guy. Surely there were phones in America in the late 50s?

It has some bright points worth mentioning, though. A brilliant touch is that Matt's body is found in the morgue. Now, how cool and original is that!? It really gave me high hopes at the beginning of an intriguing mystery. Another thing I enjoyed was the heavy use of slang, as we get more than a decent dosage of dames and reefers and coppers. Bad guys are heeled (armed), and so on. I think my favourite one was: "She fished a mirror out of her white leather bag and okayed herself".

But dialogues are far too scarce. And so it is action (app 100 pages between corpses), so reading this was a struggle at times.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:
Brad Connor

Location:
New York, briefly also L.A. and Chicago

Body count: 

4

Dames: 
Evie the nurse. Marie, the reporter. But "Dames'll be bad medicine kid, because the case is hot."

Cover:
Cool, comic book style art. But not too accurate - Brad gets a shot at through the window, but he is not actually hit.

Blackouts: 
Three of them - in fact, the book starts with one. On second occasion "ammunition truck exploded up above my left eye. I was out." and last one "I node-dived headlong into the cellar of limp oblivion."

Cool lines: 
I smelt trouble. I was right. Trouble hit me. Hard. The slug would have paid me off if Matt hadn't yelled. 

I was by that time as jumpy as a virgin entering the Tunnel of Love with an all-in wrestler.[The Coolest!]