Quarry's Ex (Max Allan Collins, 2011)

My favourite Quarry so far, without a doubt. Not as violent (or dumb) as The Last Quarry and even more suspenseful and overall entertaining than Quarry in the Middle.

This time around, our anti-hero hit-man of hit-men operates on the location of the B-movie shooting set. Show business related crime novels are usually good fun and since this exploitation flick is titled Hard Wheels 2 we can expect lots of weird characters. Its main star is a former Playmate of the Year who is also a mistress of the mobster who financially backs the movie (=executive producer). This guy also fucks another member of the cast, but lovely bunny is not too concerned with that because she's fucking the director (and also gives our hero a quick blowjob). The male star is gay (queer as a three-dollar bill), and there are some suspicious extras/bodyguards, bikers, and of course, the creative duo of producer and director.

Quarry is hired to protect the director, but his assignment becomes a bit unusual when he discovers that his ex-wife is now married to this guy and that she also stars in the movie. And this is the first cool trick that Collins pulls because we all know that coincidences don't just happen, at least not in pulp novels. There must be a connection, right?

The action is good, and the violence is more than decent (and even funny at times). This one, too - like Deadly Beloved - is driven by great dialogue and would make a terrific comic book or movie adaptation. Just imagine a scene where Quarry gets a blowjob and afterwards the girl apologises for spitting his cum and not swallowing it - "You don't think I keep my figure not watching my calories, do you?". I know, I know. It's a bit silly macho crap, but what the hell - it's still a good, harmless laugh.

But here we also get a solid plot that thickens slowly and nicely. The author knows exactly what he's doing and where he is going. Quarry is no detective (hell, he doesn't even pretend to be one!) and doesn't go around interviewing people. Still, he efficiently solves the second part of his job (finding out who ordered the hit) using a simple process of elimination. The ending is good and surprising in more than one way. Double indemnity will be the name of the game, but I won't reveal how Quarry will manage to deal with his ex. Get the book and find out for yourself. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

4/5

Facts:

Hero:
Quarry, using the name Jack Reynolds

Location: 
80s, in a small town, Boot Hill, sixty miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada. However, since we are accustomed to Quarry being elusive and secretive, it's not surprising that this location cannot be found on Google Maps.

Body count: 
4 + another one from the past, not related to this story

Dames: 
His ex, Joni, and Miss Tiffany Goodwin.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
It's okay, although his ex is not really the central character. Maybe something like "Quarry goes to Movies" would be better.

Cover: 
Really cool and dark one. Loved those colours. Illustration is copyrighted by Gregory Manchess, and it's accurate enough, as there's a scene where Joni is swimming in the pool and Quarry comes over with a gun. But she's not naked; "her bikini tonight a red skimpy thing"

Cool lines:  
"Will there be nude scenes?" 
"Frequently. She was not hired because she gets mistaken for Meryl Streep"
"Jim, you and I know the number of Playmates of the year who have gone on to star in films can be counted on one hand and maybe a dick. What makes Miss Goodwin special?" 

I skipped lunch. It's not that killing some fuck freaked me out or anything, but neither did I work up an appetite.[The Coolest!]


The producer looked exhausted, maybe from having to deliver that speech about the choice of Tiffany being artistic and commercial.

He was on my left, the .38 in his right hand. and was aiming his dick with his left. Ambidextrous pisser, Jake was.  [The Coolest!]

The Continental Op (Dashiell Hammett, 1923 - 1930)

A collection of seven short stories about a nameless detective working for the Continental Op agency by one of the greatest crime writers.

Masterpieces, all of them. Superb, stunning stuff and a lesson in writing. For me, this is the foundation of the crime genre and urban literature altogether. Tough guys, asphalt jungle, no messing around, no rules, no sentimentality...

Over the years, it hasn't aged one bit. The second collection, titled "The Big Knockover", is already waiting on my shelf.

The Tenth Clew

Murder has been committed and our favorite nameless investigator together with his cop friend O’Gar (a bullet-headed detective-sergeant who dresses like a village constable in movie) is left with a few suspects and with a bunch of clues. Nine of them, to be exact, and they are all as typical/predictable/standard as possible. And when you start to wonder how the hell Hammett will be able to solve this complicated mess within a 40-page story, everything unravels pretty quickly. Because our lucid PI finds these clues far too obvious, and therefore the 10th clue (clew?) is essentially that the rest of them were planted, so he should look for the culprit in precisely the opposite way they are pointing. Pretty clever, wouldn’t you say? 

The Golden Horseshoe

Like The Tenth Clew, this one also opens with a line of dialogue, which is a nice touch, and I like it. In this particular case, Nameless is instructed by a lawyer to find a missing person. This individual is not a criminal, so the case seems somewhat uninteresting, and the lawyer even apologises for it. But we know better, of course, because during the briefing, murder and drugs are mentioned. Right after this mandatory introduction, the story and its narration switch into “extreme hard-boiled mode”.

Nameless goes into the underworld of drug addicts and must use all his skills and resources provided by the agency to track down his man to the Golden Horseshoe joint in Tijuana, where the story reaches its climax with a classical twist of exchanged identities. Oh yeah – mustn’t forget to mention home invasion bloodbath. As hard-boiled as they come!

The House in Turk Street
Completely different compared to the first two. Here, the trouble finds our nameless hero and not the other way around. By pure chance, he stumbles into an apartment where some pretty unusual gang is about to divide the loot. And since there’s really no such thing as a “usual gang”, let me just quickly go through its members: there’s a Chinese mastermind, a femme fatale, a muscular hood without much of a brain and an elderly couple. So these characters quickly subdue Nameless, and then he begins the game of cat and mouse. Because very soon, everyone tries to cheat everyone else to get the loot and/or simply stay alive. The story is full of twists, and tension is masterfully built, as everything unfolds over a single night, allowing the narration to be essentially done in real time. Superb stuff, someone should write a play based on this!

Another novelty is a strong female character, which is, of course, most welcome! Elvira is a prototype of born-to-be-bad scheming femme fatale (Beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous!), and Hammett seems to like her a lot. For one thing, he dedicates a hefty paragraph to her introductory appearance and also lets her go free at the end. But Nameless promises himself that “one day…”.

The Girl with the Silver Eyes
Another missing person case - this time, Nameless is hired by a lovesick poet to find his fiancée. He soon suspects foul play because it turns out that the poet’s uncle is a respectable millionaire, and there’s also a case of a forged 20 grand check. Which of course is more than enough dough for some crooks to get their hands on.

Again, hard-boiled to the max with a violent ending, but this time it is also considerably darker. With this story being a bit longer than the rest, there’s enough time to develop some drama and family tragedy. Plus, the good guy gets killed, and I also felt sympathy for Porky Grout, who’s an interesting character. He’s “a liar, thief, hop-head, traitor to his kind and the biggest coward on the west Coast”, but he’s kind of likeable and you feel sorry for him at the end.

And let’s not forget the central character – the poor, spoiled poet’s fiancé. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that Nameless’ “one day” promise from House in Turk Street has been fulfilled. 

The Whosis Kid
Once again, Nameless is not working on any specific job when he gets pulled into trouble. But this time it’s not by accident because he smells foul play after spotting the Whosis Kid at the boxing match. He’s an old acquaintance from his Boston days. “His racket used to be stick-up, gunman” and since “He could shoot and was plan crazy” he decides to follow him on his own initiative. Whosis Kid presence in Frisco indicates that some job is underway in which insurance companies – main clients of Continental Op – might be interested. Because you see, “Stick-ups are always in demand”!

This stick-up involves diamonds, pearls, and another motley crew of criminals. Once again, assembly is international as bad guy Maurosis is French, dame Ines is Spanish, and the Whosis Kid is "Boston American". Ines is the most interesting character in the story because she is a mix between a femme fatale and a damsel in distress. And she's not very likeable; the first time she appears, she kicks her dog sharply with the pointed toe of her slipper! Nasty bitch she is indeed! But also "Appealing, and pathetic, and anything else you like – including dangerous."

The Main’s Death
With 25 pages, this one is the shortest of the collection. It has a simply marvellous opening. Nameless is briefed by the two police officers about the murder of a dude called Main, so we get all the details straight away in a very condensed way. This briefing requires multiple readings because it's simply hilarious, undoubtedly one of the best parts of the whole book. Told entirely in slang by these two police sleuths, one of them being "freckled heavyweight, as friendly as a Saint Bernard puppy, but less intelligent".

The story is cool and pretty complicated, of course. $20,000 is stolen during a home robbery that goes wrong, and our hero is hired by a small and somewhat eccentric antique dealer to retrieve the missing cash. But the job is really just a pretext for him to find some dirt on his young cheating (?) wife. Needless to say, most of the money will be successfully retrieved (including 4 stamps worth 8 cents!) and the lady's honour will remain intact. Only one corpse in this one, though, but still great stuff!

Farewell Murder 
This one resembles a classical detective story, Sherlock Holmes type of shit, and maybe because of that, it is my least favourite of all. It's not bad by any means, but I've found others much better.

It starts in some remote village called Farewell, where this asshole Kavalov lives with his daughter Miriam (Her face had Asia in it. It was pretty, passive, unintelligent) and her husband. Kavalov had received death threats from his former associate, Captain Sherry, whom he had fucked over in a business matter, and who had now returned from Cairo with his black servant, Marcus. What follows is a pretty standard tale of greed, betrayal, revenge, and phoney alibis.

5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Nameless detective, 35 years, 180 pounds, a bit fat (so we can assume he's not very tall). Uses fake names Parker, Tracy or Jerry Young, the bootlegger. Been with the agency for 15 years. He had left the Boston branch to try army life, and after the war was finished, he returned to the Agency payroll in Chicago. Stayed there for a couple of years and then got transferred to San Francisco.

Location: 
San Francisco, briefly Tijuana and San Diego in the second story. Farewell in the last one.

Body counts:  
1 (+guilty party hanged), 6, 3 (+bad guy going to the gallows), 4, 5, 1, 2 (+guilty party hanged + one dog), making a grand total of 22 (+3 hangings + one dog).

Blackouts: 
My head filled up with funny notions. There wasn’t any room. There wasn’t any darkness. There wasn’t anything…

The entire back of my head burned with sudden fire … tiny points of light glittered in the blackness before me … grew larger … came rushing toward me ...”  

Cover: 
All recent Orion reprints have great illustrations on their covers, but this one is my favourite.  

Cool lines:  
Gooseneck stopped shooting and tried to speak. The brown heft of the girl’s knife stuck out of his yellow throat. He couldn’t get his words past the blade.

Physically he hadn’t gone to the dogs, but he had had his taste of the gutter and seemed to like it.

I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous!

Once more Tai ran true to racial form. When a Chinese shoots he keeps on until his gun is empty.

What put an edge to this conversation was that both men were talking over their guns.

He looked dead, and he had enough bullet holes in him to make death a good guess. [The Coolest!]


You're as wrong as Prohibition. [The Coolest!]

Plus some great slang:

“Vag, hell!” he snarled.“I got five hundred smacks in my kick.” (vag = vagrancy, smack = buck, kick = ?)

I don’t blame Fag. He acted according to his code. Fag was square. If I had told him that I was ribbing Burke up for a trimming, Fag would leave me alone. But when I told him I was through with a graft, had gone queer, that made me his meat. [The Coolest!]

The Confession (Domenic Stansberry, 2004)

I'm not entirely sure about this one, to be honest. It's about this forensic psychologist asshole, ex-playboy now richly married, who gets framed for the murder of his mistress and tries to prove his innocence. No, wait a minute! Things may not be so simple and straightforward. Maybe he wasn't framed after all, maybe his confession is just a deliberate mind fuck used to convince the jury (=readers). But can they (we) trust/believe him since he suffers from some amnesia, causing mental sickness?!? I think not, mainly because his previous wife had also died in suspicious circumstances, and besides that, there are some other similar and unsolved crimes mentioned.

And you too did see it coming, didn't you? It's not immediately apparent at first. But the whole thing just doesn't move anywhere, and soon you realise that the entire point of this novel is (will be) the shocking (?) final twist. Don't get me wrong - it's interesting enough and not boring at all as there's a bunch of interesting characters ranging from shady private investigators and gamblers to not-so-straight district attorney and defence lawyer. However, the trouble is that they don't really contribute to the story, and as a result, the suspense doesn't build up sufficiently. It takes a bit too long to really take off the ground (part 3 - titled Murder - starts on page 80!) and then too soon loses its sharpness. The second half contains much too much psychological crap, and the narration could surely use more dialogue.

It does have a few cool things I'll remember this by. It's written exceptionally well and manages to create a very sinister and unsettling atmosphere. Also succeeds in describing police and court procedures in great detail, so the author sure did his homework in the research department! What I liked the most was that all the characters are, more or less, unsympathetic assholes. Brave decision, and somehow I don't think Mr Stansberry will get many offers from Hollywood for adapting this one to the big screen. Our main protagonist cheats his wife (and - for fuck's sake - wears a pony tail!), his wife cheats him (bitch even tries to shoot him!), and his mistress cheats her fiancé. P.I. involved is willing to bend the rules, and let's not even start about that blackmailing gambler snake. But the best character (unfortunately also the most underused in my opinion) is his defence lawyer, Jamie. Manipulating bitch is a living proof why people hate layers!

All in all, it's an interesting read. Perhaps a bit too ambitious and occasionally a little pretentious, striving too hard to be original.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Jake Danser, forensic psychologist

Location:
California Hills

Body count: 
3 + another one in an unrelated (?) case

Dames: 
Elizabeth, the wife. Sara, the mistress. Jamie, the lawyer. The latter one is not really a dame in the right sense of the word, but is mentioned nevertheless because she's the best character in the book.

Blackouts: 
Our hero suffers from Hayes Syndrome. Or Blackout Syndrome, as it is more commonly known. But although this is supposed to be one of the significant plot vehicles, he doesn't really blackout that often.

Title: 
Spot on, as the whole book is written as a confession.

Cover:
Sara is strangled with a necktie, so no objects there. However, the illustration is somewhat sloppy. The victim's face does not appear terrified enough, and the colours are off. Especially its purple/orange background and blue hands holding a necktie.

Cool lines:  
I could guess what he was thinking. My background matched the FBI profile for certain kinds of criminals. So did that of a lot of other people though. President Clinton, for example. Martin Luther King.

The Barbarous Coast (Ross Macdonald, 1956)

There was trouble in the air and it was the end of rough year and I was little tired. I looked at George Wall's pink, rebellious head. He was a natural-born troublemaker, dangerous to himself and probably to other people. Perhaps if I tagged along with him, I could head off the trouble he was looking for. I was a dreamer.

Archer is hired by an ageing manager of a high society club to find a missing woman. He has a sidekick this time in her husband, whom she had left, and the poor guy is torn apart by grief and jealousy. So, for the most part, he's not very helpful and basically just makes Archer's work harder. Which, of course, wasn't easy to begin with. It seems that everything originates from the two-year-old and still unsolved murder of Hester's best friend. So in no time at all, we are drawn into Macdonald's usual dark world of deceit, blackmail, murder, mental illness, greed, shady characters of mobsters, doctors, movie people, fucked up families and so on.

Once again, Maestro delivers another hard-boiled masterpiece. Even darker than usual because crime seems to have some kind of psychological roots (we get to learn about the psychiatric concept of "folie a deux" - madness for two). Archer is tired and disillusioned (It's a rough life", I said, "You see people at their worst"), so don't expect a happy ending here. But having said that, do not expect heavy drama and complicated character study crap either. Sure, we get these, but Barbarous Coast is still a first-class mystery novel.

Everything simply works. Plotting is superb and driven by standard (and proven) tools of the trade (almost identical twin sisters, a burned body, etc.). Characterisations, language and narration are in the league of their own, and its astounding pace is sometimes even hard to follow. We are, of course, accustomed to Archer being quick, but here everything unfolds over a couple of days. After the furious start, it gets a bit more settled when we arrive at a pivotal scene in Channel Country Club, which takes a good portion of a novel (almost 50 pages!). Masks begin to fall, and skeletons start to drop out of the closets.

My only (and very tiny) objection is the lack of Archer's detective skills. In this one, he mostly follows leads revealed to him during interviews; not much physical evidence is relevant.

5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Lew Archer, P.I.

Location:
L.A., briefly Las Vegas

Body count: 5

Dames: 
Hester Campbell, ex-diver. Her sister Rina. Isobel Graff, Gabrielle Torres

Blackouts: 
He gets beaten quite a lot and loses consciousness three times. But he's so cool and used to it that he doesn't really make a big deal out of it: "The front end of the Sunset Limited hit the side of my head and knocked me off the rails into deep red darkness." Or just "The sky broke up in lights. Something else hit me, and the sky turned black."

Title:
Don't really get it, and it's not very cool-sounding either. A couple of killings do take place on the coast behind The Channel Club, but that would hardly be enough to call the whole coast barbarous. So it's probably referring to L.A. in general.

Cover:
Cool photo of a gun in a holster covering a woman's breast. But it has nothing to do with this novel, dames are not armed here. At least not with the guns...

Cool lines:  
The dingly little room had the atmosphere of an unsuccessful dentist's waiting room. Marfeld came out of Frost's office looking as if the dentist had told him he'd have to have all his teeth pulled.

You try to put the bite on my or any friend of mine  - it's the quickest way to get a hole in the head to go with the hole in the head you already got.

Anger and anxiety wrenched at her face, but she was one of those girls who couldn't look ugly. There was a sculptured beauty built into her bones, and she held herself with a sense that her beauty would look after her.

"You a mobster or what?"
"That's a funny question."
"Yeah, sure, uproarious. You got a hand gun in your armpit, and you're not Davy Crockett."
"You shatter my illusions."[The Coolest!]


Bassett's face underwent a process of change. The end product of the process was a bright, nervous grin which resembled the rictus of a dead horse.

Killer Solo (David Hiltbrand, 2004)

Needed something trivial after that Burnett crap, and this one looked simple and straightforward enough to do a trick. It's been sitting on my shelf for some time, waiting to fill a gap like this. Because, you see, I don't particularly like these stories about some extravagant characters in uncommon surroundings, and recent experiences with shit like Money Shot and The Corpse Wore Pasties surely hadn't improved this.

Killer Solo takes place in the show business, this time in the big-ass arena rock tour, so we know in advance that there will be plenty of weird guys and gals around. At its centre is our hero, private detective Jim McNamara, who used to work for a record company and during this employment had managed to develop his drug abuse from being just a simple pothead to a serious coke addict. After kicking the habit, he ended up being sort of a Rock'n'Roll detective hired by showbiz people to keep their protegees straight and away from the drugs.

It begins classically. Jim gets hired by an insurance company to investigate the accidental (yeah, right!) death of a Shirley Slaughterhouse's tour crew member. Shirley is a kind of Marilyn Manson shock-rocker asshole (looking like Johnny Depp with dysentery) surrounded by even bigger assholes in the likes of his band members, his agent and his neurotic girlfriend. Other interesting characters are introduced as well: a group of right-wing Christians led by a fanatical reverend, Jim's AA sponsor (a bit redundant, in my humble opinion), and finally Paula, the record company's P.R. person. She appears to be the only sane person on the tour's board, but she, too, is a bit redundant and (spoiler!) pretty much serves just for the romantic aspect of a story.

So what I'm basically trying to say is that it starts really fucking promising. The plot is interesting, the pace is rapid (people fly from one city to another, staying in various hotels), and I also enjoyed its style. Hiltbrand uses language that is rich enough and mostly cool and amusing, with lots of references to popular culture, but without too many of the usual "witty jokes".

But then, approximately halfway through, it gradually loses its pace. Instead of focusing on crime, the author begins to concentrate on our hero and his relationships with Paula, his mentor, and especially with Shirley, who, by the way, turns out not to be such an asshole. I started to like the guy myself because he had tested Jim's musical knowledge by playing him Husker Du and choosing Mudhoney as their password keyword.

Everything becomes dull and predictable, and I still wonder what that episode with the guitarist audition was about. There's just one more corpse until the final showdown, and we are not even sure whether it's related to our case or not. Ultimately, everything is resolved in a thrilling fashion, rather than through good detective work.

Shame, disappointing ending after the promising start.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Jim McNamara, Rock'n'Roll detective

Location: 
Rock tour across the USA: Portland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, ...

Body count: 
3 + one security guard left in the dumpster, but we cannot be sure whether he's dead or just knocked unconscious

Dames: 
Paula Mansmann - part matador, part pickpocket and part Geisha

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Pretty stupid and not related to the storyline. I'm sure something better could be chosen with one of the main protagonists being named Slaughterhouse.

Cover:
Not very imaginative and also unrelated to the story, as nobody gets shot in the eye through the sunglasses.

Cool lines:  
She laughed and swiveled in her chair, recrossing her legs. My eyes drifted to her skirt and shifting thighs. I reflected on how automatically men respond to visual stimuli and how adept women are at choreographing that response.

[on OD'd junkie]  
He looked like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic when he starts to drift down under the icy water.[The Coolest!]


Most rockers listen to their music at punishing, Spinal Tap levels... Hearing loss is an ironic occupational hazard of the modern musician. Roll over, Beethoven.

She was leaning against the doorjamb, glaring at me like I was a prom-night pimple.[The Coolest!]


I spent one winter with the Cramps. I still get the willies thinking about it. Lux Interior was like a bargain-basement Iggy Pop. ... Forget Fellini; it was a Quentin Tarantino movie every night.