Daddy Cool (Donald Goines, 1974)

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with this one. I expected our hit-man hero to be a cool, Shaft-like badass, but he's more like an ageing guy having many problems with his family while running his pool hall. He is not very cool either - he loses his coolness when returning home from one of his "jobs" and finds his 16-year-old spoiled daughter Janet making out in a car with a young and "thoroughly unlikable" pimp, Ronald. Daddy Cool gets mad, slaps her, and as a result, she's so pissed at him that she packs her shit and runs away with the unlikable one. Soon she ends up whoring on the streets of Motor City, and daddy is not too happy about it.

But he's not too upset about it either because he's still unable to locate her two weeks later. Is he simply not streetwise anymore? Hard to say, but one thing is sure. Instead of looking for her, he takes another job in LA because it pays so well (25 grand). Greedy bastard! And an asshole too. When he finally returns, he releases his frustrations and rage on his two step-sons, who were given the ultimatum to either find her or move out of his house. I'm not saying that two of them are not good-for-nothing assholes, but still, I think he was a bit unfair to them.

It gets better and more dynamic towards the end with a somehow Shakespearean tragic, bloody family drama climax.

It's a quick and entertaining read, but I missed any kind of style in it. It does not have much of the ghetto noir feeling I had expected, plain dialogues lacking street slang, a sloppy and pretty unbelievable story, hardly any characterisation (especially Janet, which is done poorly), and a bit too exploitative (five pages of sex scene). The whole thing just feels like it was put together hastily, which - after reading Goines' biography - can very well be the case. Apparently, he wrote mainly to support his heroin addiction and published 9 books in 1974 alone. Amazing, big fucking respect!

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Larry Jackson, aka Daddy Cool, "one of the deadliest killers the earth had ever spawned".

Location:
Detroit mostly, except for the two jobs that Daddy Cool takes in Michigan and LA

Body count: 

7 + one German police dog

Dames: 
Daddy Cool's daughter Janet. She is an innocent 16-year-old girl when we first meet her, but two weeks later, she celebrates her 17th birthday street-walking and "doing tricks".

Blackouts: 
None. This is strange because he's savagely beaten when a gang of six mugs him. 

Title: 

See 'hero'

Cover: 

Pretty standard 

Cool lines:  
Pimping was his game, and no good pimp would allow some bitch's daddy to blow his game.[The Coolest!]

Yes, there would be hell to pay, and some crying. But casket buying would be the order of the day in the near future.

Moth (James Sallis, 1993)

I'm not sure why, but I expected the second Lew Griffin book to be more classically structured than the first one. Don't get me wrong: I loved The Long-Legged Fly, and all I'm saying is that strictly speaking, it isn't exactly a crime/mystery novel; it's more about putting Lew Griffin and his ugly yet poetic New Orleans on the map of crime novels. I was also hoping that LaVerne would be somehow involved in the next one. I usually don't fall for the "hooker with a heart of gold" cliche, but she was such a great character.

Nope. Moth simply continues where Fly had ended. Chronologically as well as stylishly. A pretty fragmented and wild storyline that frequently (especially at the beginning) jumps back and forth in time and digresses from the main plot to Griffin's private life. And since the main plot (can we even call it a "case"?) involves a personal matter of finding LaVern's junkie daughter, these flashbacks and episodes aren't distracting and complement the main story nicely. And btw - my heroine died sometime between Fly and Moth. Damn, I raise this pint of Guinness to her memory.

Great and interesting read, masterfully written. Maybe a bit repetitive at times (I could do without a few book references for sure) and definitely too fucking depressing. I have nothing whatsoever against the realism (everyone should read Pedro Juan Gutiérrez btw!) but stuff like a guy fucking his one-year-old daughter and afterwards slamming her head against the wall "so she wouldn't tell"... is a bit too much. Even for me.

So I need some time for this one to sink in, and then I'm definitely resuming with following Lew Griffin's fascinating life story.

4.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Lew Griffin, (ex? part-time?) detective, writer and college professor these days

"He told me if he sent you out to the corner for a paper, chances would be about fifty-fifty of his actually getting one, but that he'd trust you with his life. One of your stranger character references."

Location: 
New Orleans, Clarksville, Memphis

Body count: 
Hard to measure it this time. There were quite a few dead people, from crack baby to some anonymous girl gang-raped and left dead in a dark alley. But none of them is really connected to the case. Because there really is no case...

Dames:
Alouette, LaVerne's daughter.

Blackouts: 
He's shot in the arm and passes out.

Title: 
Another poetic one, this time from the verses of  James Wright:
Further, the dark moths
Crouch at the sills of the earth, waiting.

Not sure how to decipher it.  A simple explanation would be that moth symbolises a lost person (Lew or Alouette) that is irresistibly drawn to something they cannot escape and which will eventually burn them to death. 

Cover: 
Why do women look so incredibly cool when smoking in b&w photos? This one reminds me a lot of Anna Karina from Vivre Sa Vie.

Cool lines:  
"Ain't here," he said after a moment.
"Thank you. But allow me to make an assumption; possibly unwarranted, from that. To wit: that she was, at some unspecified point in the past, been here, though she is not presently."
"Say what?"

I stepped back into the living room and discovered that the .38 was no longer under the cushion. It was now in someone's hand, and pointed at me.

Copp For Hire (Don Pendleton, 1987)

She stepped into his office. Beautiful. Hot!... and dead two pages later. Sleazy, dirty cops. Another corpse. His office and victim's apartment ransacked (still only on page 25!). Strip club. Strippers (obviously). Sex. Car chase. More corpses. Dirty politician (it runs all the way to Washington) and his psychopathic henchman (worse than that he's a psycho with a license). Even more corpses and another car chase. Local Chinese mafia, white slavery, pornography, S&M, blackmail...

So it's a formulaic thriller featuring an ex-cop becoming PI with his own moral and justice code. His client is killed before he even starts the investigation, but he somehow feels obliged to her in a good ol' Marlowe-ish manner ("Came to me for help. Didn't give her any - should have. I am upset about that. Very upset."). But similarities with the classical detective figure end at this point because his modus operandi is to basically (and usually violently) just stir shit and see what comes floating on the water. And he does that in some style indeed! He's such a bad-ass that Pendleton doesn't even bother to describe the fight with six (!!) bouncers in any details. He simply "puts them down gently". The fight with three cops is more detailed, and it takes one whole page. It's well worth it since it's extremely brutal with stuff like "bones protruding from the sleeve of his jacket".

Very hard-boiled and a bit noir-ish, which is always a winning combination. Lightning pace (five corpses and a sixth near miss in 12 hours) but still easy to follow. Pretty much non-stop action is nicely complemented with somehow crazy narration. It's told in the first person (as all good PI mysteries should be, btw), but every now and then, it switches from the past to present time, and on a few occasions, our hero even addresses readers directly. I found that a bit annoying at first but got used to it.

I liked it, but unfortunately, it all goes to shit in the last act. Like Pendleton simply got bored with this whole thing and decided to quickly wrap it up instead of adding a twist or two. The deal that Copp makes with the local authorities (being the catalyst, maybe, to shake this thing off center) doesn't make much sense, the agreement with the local mobster is kind of silly, and the final shootout... well, it's not exactly a shootout at all.

But cool stuff anyways. I'll definitely pick up some other Copp stuff.

3/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Joe Copp, PI

"No, I - you see... you are a private detective, aren't you?"
The lettering on the door says that. Well, what it says is Copp For Hire, which is also what my business cards say and what the godawful expensive yellow pages ad says. A small conceit. I was a public cop for eighteen years. Still think of myself that way except that now I have private sponsors.

Location: 
L.A. and Honolulu

Body count: 
7, including an innocent old night watchman but excluding (at least) "four brutal killings in the last 12 months"

Dames: 
Belinda Buckaroo aka Bewitching Belinda aka Linda Shelton - Age twenty-five, blond all over and beautiful all over the full five feet and ten inches... Bright, sharp, well-spoken and poised. Working on PhD in behavioural psychology. Also, the madame of the high-class hookers "club".

Blackouts: 

None. This is pretty amazing considering some fights Copp is involved in and his lack of sleep. In the first 24 hours of the case, he sleeps only two hours and his next (and last) rest is during the five hours flight from LA to Hawaii.

Title: 
see 'Hero' section

Cover: 
Standard (and dull) thriller pocketbook paperback two-sections type cover. The upper one displays the author's name in huge letters and the title. Below is a beautiful lady and Dirt Harry kind of Magnum. Can't see much relevance to the story.

Cool lines: 
"Joe. When are you going to give up those goddamned cigarettes? They cause heart disease, emphysema, cancer - they'll even make you impotent.
I said, "I never heard that."
"Heard what?"
"Impotent."
"Oh yeah. Anything that needs good blood circulation to function properly. Nicotine constricts the blood vessels. Been having trouble lately getting it up?"
"Getting it down," I said.

"You will be the second to die. Right after him. Understand that? It's not a threat; it's a commitment."[The Coolest!]

I told her, "I'm expensive."
"How expensive?"
"Just like a hooker," I replied. "Hundred dollars an hour plus expenses."
She said, "Jesus," and bit her lip. Then I got the first smile out of her. Not much, but a wry little twist of the lips. "Cheap hooker," she said.
I smiled back, "Well, I don't give as much. What do you want me to do for you?"

A Bullet for Cinderella (John D. MacDonald, 1955)

The disc jockey stopped and whistled softly. "How about that, folks? They give me this stuff to read and sometimes I read it and don't even listen. But that's a hot one. That one can grab you. Bodies under concrete. Cars in lakes. Suicides that aren't suicides. A red-headed gal and an ex-Marine. Man, that's a crazy mixed-up deal they've got down there in Hillston."

I'm not the biggest fan of urban noir. To be honest, I cannot even remember anything of that genre - not written by masters like Cain, Thompson and Woolrich - that I haven't read recently. But I do have one memorable now, it's MacDonald's Cinderella.

It starts phenomenally and continues steadily with building up the suspense and mystery by gradually adding characters and events from the past. Everything works, from the tight and smartly evolving plot to superior characterisation. Our guy is not a typical anti-hero driven by greed. He's just another messed up kid trying to get his shit together after spending some rather unpleasant time in a Korean war prisoners' camp. Written beautifully, using pretty simple yet somehow poetic language (see 'Unconscious' section).

Excellent stuff, but just when it was supposed to switch into the final gear, I was a bit disappointed. When our hero unravels the mystery, I was sure there was another twist coming (like Toni and Fitz scheming some shit together), but it turns out that Tal's conclusions were, in fact, correct, so the last third of the novel turns into a more or less standard thriller.

4/5

Facts:

Hero:
Tal Howard, ex-soldier returning from the Korean war and trying to find himself again.

Location: 
Hillston - "It's more town than city. There isn't much of a transient population. Everybody seems to know everybody. It's a pretty good place." Probably fictitious since I cannot find it on Google maps.

Body count: 6

Dames: 
Our titular heroine Antoinette Rasi aka Toni Raselle aka Cindy aka Cinderella - Feral look. Gypsy look. A mature woman so alive she made the others in the room look two dimensional. [Fatale]

Ruth is Toni's opposite -  "This was a for-keeps girl... This was a girl you could hurt, a girl who would demand and deserve utter loyalty." So, obviously, she's a pretty dull and single-dimensional character. I'd guess MacDonald used her to exemplify Tal's divided and messed up psyche. Or something.

There's another one from the past, but we don't get a chance to know her better. Which is unfortunate because Eloise apparently used to be a "lush, petulant, amoral and discontented wife".

Blackouts: 
He gets ambushed and knocked off: "Pain blossomed red behind my eyes, a skyrocket roaring was in my ears and I felt myself fall into darkness. A few pages later he faints again when being interrogated.
 

Title: 
Cool sounding but not very accurate. Also a pretty big fucking spoiler.
 
Cover: 
Unusual one because it doesn't depict a specific scene from the book. Instead, it portraits an imaginary one from the past with young Toni sitting in front of the miserable river shack where she grew up. Cute and already sexy in an innocent way, but already hinting at the "feral, gipsy" look. Although not taking place in "present", it makes a lot of sense because it explains why Toni became a "fancy whore" later (see the 'cool lines' section below). 

The Sniper mark over it spoils everything. It's just ridiculous. Stuff like this belongs to spy thrillers... But I need to give credit to the publisher for deciding to keep the original cover art (made by George Gross) and not using some generic one.

When searching for the cover picture to post here, I came across this amazing blog that posts exclusively covers of MacDonald books. Great idea, amazing content and really cool and interesting comments. Highly recommended! And I just couldn't resist borrowing one for Cinderella - it's one of the coolest I've ever seen, and it really does capture the mood (and actual scene) of the book.

Cool lines:  
"Maybe you admitted too fast that it was money, Tal. I am noted for my fondness for money. It pleases me. I like the feel of it and the smell of it and the look of it. I'm nuts about it. I like all I can get, maybe because I spent so much time without any of it. A psychiatrist friend told me it was my basic drive. I can't ever have too much." [Fatale]