A Nice Way to Die (Hank Janson, 1963)

Let me see if I got this one right: an exotic Slavic beauty arrives from Ileria with the sole purpose of wreaking havoc in America by corrupting its youngsters. Going from city to city stirring up ever-susceptible teenagers to make trouble and thus undermine US civic authority. To make things worse, this professional organizer of teenage crime is above the law. She has some (not really well-defined) post with one of the Commie embassies meaning she has been granted a goddam diplomatic immunity!

Ileria? One of the Iron Curtain countries with a rigid dictatorship that makes the Soviet regime seem like paradise by comparison.

You may be forgiven for thinking that this could be an intriguing attempt of the juvenile delinquent drama placed into McCarthy's communist witchhunt era. It's not. It's shit.

Not sure how to categorize it. It surely cannot be a mystery since as early as on page #14 (see 'object of desire' of the facts section below) everything is pretty much explained. It sure as hell isn't a fucking thriller unless you get thrilled by a gang rape? The action genre may possibly pass as our hero is proficient in scientific judo (huh?) and its mysterious art of healing called Karmo. I'm unfamiliar with these myself but this scientific/mysterious stuff must really be something since it also covers the handling of a woman's Adam's apple.

But then again, you wouldn't expect an author to know much about female anatomy when his attitude towards the fair sex is such as this:

"Right now I'd say you're about forty below zero - and as mean as a bitch out of season."

"That's what I like about you," she said waspishly. "You say such nice things. You're so sophisticated, so wordldly-wise, so..."

"Shut up!" I warned her sharply, "or you'll get a back-hander that'll spread your lovely lips all over your face."

She glowered at me, but she was perceptive enough to know I wasn't kidding. I almost never raise a hand in anger against the fair sex - unless it is really merited.

Very disappointing. I had bought a couple of Janson's early books a while ago because of their gorgeous Reginald Heade covers and they both turned out to be okay-ish. But this is just misogynistic thrash.

1.5/5

Facts:

Hero:

See the scan on the right side

The bad guy(s):

See the 'dames' section below. But let us not forget the Blooded Zombies gang that even terrorizes the cops:

"Why - are they supposed to be something special?"

"Yeah," he said grimly. "Special - like vicious, mean, crazy. They call themselves the Blooded Zombies; they hell around looking for trouble. The boys tote switch-blade knives, zip-guns and choppers, the girls wear bicycle chains for belts - and don't mind using 'em. You were lucky you weren't cut to ribbons last night, man."

...

"You might be taking on more than you bargained for, Hank. They've got the whole community and half the cops as scared as rabbits."

Dames: 

There's Ellie, a teenage beatnik chic, but the communist nymphomaniac Miss Tanya Varsak obviously takes the center stage: 

This one was a real tasty dish - a dame who could start a revolution by running the tip of her tongue around her lips and letting a fleeting promise flash briefly in her dark, upslanted eyes.

Location:

L.A.

It opens in Chicago where our hero has just landed on the plane from New York. The whole thing is (once again) a bit silly. You see, Hank has recently exposed some shit on the almighty Organization that now in turn promised him revenge. So he finds some lame excuse to fly to sunny California - he's no longer able to operate in Chicago because everyone would be afraid to be seen in his company.

This whole episode is entirely redundant and has no implications on the following events. 

Body count:

Pretty early on, Hank is tired (!?) and takes a nap:

I yawned and stretched luxuriously and turned over and closed my eyes. That was where I made my big mistake. I should have hopped out of bed and put my ear to the keyhole. If I had done that it is quite possible I might have saved myself a whole mess of trouble - and maybe three lives.

The napping part is okay and I have no issue with it but his body count doesn't match mine. I've counted a few more than just three although some of them don't get confirmed. For example - the car blows up with some kids in it but no definite death count is given later. So let's settle for the final figure of 5.

The object of desire:

My job, according to the Chief, would be to latch on to her and find out the score. He didn't put it quite like that though; what he said was, "Get the bitch in bed, Hank, and find out what makes her tick."

References:

"Take me now, Hank. Don't wait," she insisted, climbing on top of me with all the agility of Willie Shoemaker mounting a Derby winner.

Cool Blurbs:

"When she blew hot and cold, the climate was murder"

Kind of cool even though I admit I haven't got it. Surely the blowing thing doesn't imply what I (and you too) are thinking about. Or does it?

Title:

Once again, I'm a bit confused. Call me peculiar but there must be nicer ways to die than being gang-raped by a bunch of horny Mexican juvenile delinquents in a desert and then to perish "with a sorta PFUUUF! when the gasoline exploded"?

Edition:

Gold Star IL7-14

Cover:

Not credited but according to pulpcovers.com done by Paul Rader. Beautiful. I love the striking combination of gold blonde and red signalling the danger!

Cool lines:

Nothing really to report here. The whole thing is written in a most simplistic pulp style. With some dialogues that embarrass our hero. Here's a sample that should give you an idea:

"You're both wrong," I chipped in. "The right guy only has to look in a girl's eyes and no matter how she blinks or flutters her eyelashes, or looks the other way, he knows - and she knows he knows."

The amber flecks in her eyes flashed dangerously.

"You mean like the way you're looking at me?"

"Uh, huh." I grinned. "Why not?"

"Oh - and you think you know, and I'm supposed to know you know. Is that what you mean?" She asked haughtily.

"Uh-huh!" I grinned again.

Stiffs Don't Vote aka Forty Whacks (Geoffrey Homes, 1941)

I'm a big fan of Geoffrey Homes and was saving this one for a special occasion. It's election day today so let's celebrate the mysterious ways of the US political machinery with a book about non-voting stiffs!

It blends personal grudges of a small-town community with the local politicians' dirty contest to win over the electorate. So when the crime takes place, our hero has plenty of possibilities to investigate. Was it business or personal? Combination of both? With a touch of a crime of passion thrown into the mix? 

Once the case is solved, it does turn out that the story was solid and without plot holes. The solution too is quite complex and far from trivial so hat down to the author. Only by the time it ended, I pretty much lost interest.

It's 180 pages long. Which by itself of course is not a problem. But what is problematic is that after the first killing nothing much happens. There are no new developments to speak of except our hero constantly recruiting his helpers. There's his hard-drinking greedy boss/partner, their recently hired secretary Robbie, a newspaper reporter, and finally some lawyer. All this doesn't really help the pace since now we have five people running around like headless chickens doing fuck all instead of just one.

But the most annoying and distracting thing is Humphrey's crush on Robbie. He starts hitting on her the very first day this poor gal gets hired (#metoo!?) and keeps giving her the assignments that are well above her pay rate just so he can keep her close to him. And toward the end, we need to endure crap as corny as this: 

He stood in front of her and his hands gently held her arms. There was so much he wanted to say, so much he could have said if Robbie had been someone else. No glibness now. All his pretty speeches valueless - because he had said them so many times before. And if they were true, they wouldn't sound that way. Repetition had robbed them of the ring of truth.

Ok, I'll give Mr Homes some benefit of the doubt. You see, Robbie has a crush on Joe who is also the main suspect. So it may be possible that the author intentionally created this love(less) triangle to mislead the reader into believing that Joe is actually guilty so that Robbie will broken-heartedly fall in hands of our hero at the end. Kind of a double twist. But even if that were true, this shit is way too annoying to compensate for such a gimmick.

Well written with more than a decent plot but ultimately disappointing. Geoffrey Homes remains one of my main men so I'll call this one a slip and blame the editor instead of the author. Who knows how it would turn out with Robbie's character dropped (and consequently the book trimmed down for 50 odd pages) and some action sequences added. A few more stiffs wouldn't hurt it either.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero:

"Is this Campbell any good?"

"Do you need a detective?"

"Not now," Joe said. "You never know."

"I think he is," Robbie explained. "He doesn't say. His partner does. His partner is a big fat man named Oscar Morgan and I think he drinks a lot. His partner says that the firm of Morgan and Campbell is the best detective agency in the world. He says it is the only honest one in existence."

Dames: 

Well, there is of course Robbie: Class and chestnut hair with a red sheen to it and a figure you couldn't hide under a man's overcoat. A patrician. He withdrew the word. Lovely was better. Lovely and clean and sweet. Nice lips, not too full.

But I liked more Mrs Mary Otis and her bitchy attitude even though "the woman wasn't pretty but she looked kind and her ankles were good"

Her ankles?!!? What kind of a fetish is that? Anyway, after the promising start and memorable appearance in the classic dame-comes-into-the-office scene, she is denoted into the supporting cast and pretty much disappears until the conclusion. 

Location:

"Why?" Joe asked. "Why would anyone live in Joaquin?"

"I like it."

"It's flat and it's hot and it's corrupt," Joe said.

"The trees are lovely."

Body count:

1

References:

The book opens with Robbie meeting Joe and providing some missing verses of the song he's singing:

"The preacher he did come, he did come,

Oh, the preacher he did come, he did come.

And he looked so God-damn glum

As he talked of kingdom come..."

"I like that. Don't you like that?"

"I'm religious," Joe said. "It offends me. That's probably why I never learned it. Go on."

"As he talked of kingdom come-

God damn his eyes."

"There you are. Now sing it."

Great stuff. Hard-core! And needless to say, I was immediately off to google it. Didn't take long to identify it as the Sam Hall song and after reading the article on Wikipedia, I'm a bit embarrassed now for not knowing it before. Many variations from different performers are out there and it took me quite a few clicks more to find the one that's pretty close to what Joe is singing. You can (and really should) check out the lyrics here and while you are reading it, I can recommend listening to the Dubliners version.

God damn his eyes. Hell yeah!

Title:

Originally titled "Forty Whacks". Which is a great title and also relates to the story because our sole victim gets chopped up in pieces with an axe (!!!) and every now and then our man Humphrey hums this little chant to himself:

Joseph Border took an ax,

Gave his mother-in-law forty whacks

Why was this re-titled by Bantam? Was there some political campaign going on at the time and they took an opportunity to ride along and get some free publicity? Whatever the reason, they should have at least re-titled it properly as "Stiff doesn't vote" since there's only one murder in this one.

Dedicated to:

To Sally

Edition:

Bantam #117, October 1947

Cover:

Not credited but according to pulpcovers.com, it was done by Hy Rubin.

Nothing too special about it but I love the girl's (amused?) expression and find the idea of placing the title as a political campaign slogan a bit naive but also very charming.

Cool lines:

Nothing really that I would usually consider to be cool. But since today is election day, here is a couple that proves that some things haven't really changed much for 80 years:

Some men were putting a twenty-four sheet on a billboard in the vacant lot across the street from the Cooper Building. It showed a meek little man having his pocket picked by a pig-faced gentleman labeled "Public Utilities." Looking hungrily on was an animated slot machine with his arm around a bawdy wench in a very low-cut dress.

Charles Hyatt had on white lounging pajamas cut Russian style, which would probably have annoyed his constituents who loved to hear him talk about the "Red menace."

Revenge (Jack Ehrlich, 1958)

It's always a pleasure to read something different. This one is memorable for quite a few things and let's start with its unpredictability. The title and the cover suggest a somehow sleazy run-of-the-mill pulp yarn, so it comes as a surprise when it opens with a proper - well planned and executed - bank heist. And continues with our anti-hero raping a woman! Encouraged by getting away with these crimes, he promptly ups the ante and assassinates some local mobster!?! There's simply no telling where the story will go next, but it's pretty obvious it won't end well. And indeed, it does culminate in a big clusterfuck. With no sign of remorse or redemption from our asshole protagonist.

Described like this, you might think it's all a big mess, but I'm happy to report otherwise. The author manages to keep it tight, and there's a method to all this madness supported by some pretty twisted rationality that drives the narration. Definitely not your typical escapist quick read. I really needed to pay attention since there's not much dialogue, and the narrator frequently digresses into the past, describing and referencing the events that trigger his present actions.

 And most of all, it's not easy to stomach the sick shit like this:

I do believe that no woman can be taken only through rape. Except for the oddball, women are natural whores, and to make one requires very little. It's like Hoover said, a chicken in every pot and a whore in every bed. It's the American dream. A vine-covered cottage which is the price a guy has to pay.....

It doesn't change the fact that every man sells his soul to make a buck and every woman sells her body to share it with him. And it isn't really a bad arrangement...

But Ogden Nash once said it and I'll buy it: give the sissy his seduction, the he-man wants his rape.

Crazy. Simply insane. Would dare to guess that it was probably even more offensive in its time than it would be today in (unlikely) case it would even get published.

So yeah, Revenge is not a book about heist or rape or assassination. Instead, it's a character study of the sociopath. A guy who is full of hate and loathing for himself and society. 

Intense stuff, and even though it does get a bit repetitive at times, there are still plenty of fascinating and occasionally even funny parts. As an example, I kind of liked his planning of the crimes. He's an ex D.A. assistant, so he knows all the police technicalities and therefore prepares everything in advance with the utmost attention to detail and enthusiasm. In his words: "It was a problem I enjoyed solving". To be honest, the guy does have a pretty decent sense of humour. Check out the 'cool lines' section of the facts below.

Not so humorous are the parts that deal with his mental state. There are numerous factors and circumstances like his dominant father, shameful (in his mind) army service, distrust of women, sexual frustrations, etc. They are, of course, all intertwined, and it's hard to separate causes from the effects, and I'm not sure whether I managed to solve the mystery of what had made this guy insane. I think the final piece of the puzzle lies in the bizarre ending in which he finds refuge in his best friend's house. Not sure how to interpret the whole episode with the wife and kids and will have to think about it a bit. One confusing little nasty mindfuck this is.

An interesting book, memorable for many things. Most good and some simply awful. I'm pretty sure that some of Jim Thompson's psychotic characters wouldn't mind too much hanging out with John Cummings.

4/5

Facts:

Hero:

John Cummings. A prototype of a young white male suburban middle-class guy. Former high-school football star, former DA assistant, these days not the most prosperous lawyer but a pretty efficient criminal with a decent strike rate. Also, 100% psychopath.

Dames: 

His ex-wife Lou, his rape victim Jennie a.k.a. Mrs John Frederick Fitch French III (!!) and his most recent romantic and emotional confusion personified Sue. But they are pretty much dehumanized, and we never really get a chance to know them better. I mean, check out his opinion of Sue and bear in mind that she gets the kindest share of his misogyny compared to the other two:

Sue is a hell of a feminine dame and her clean freshness is more exciting than the most sultry slut.

Location:

A small town near New York

Body count:

1

The object of desire:

John is pissed off at the whole wide world and takes revenge against it.

Blackouts:

There was no pain at all, that's the funny thing. I had to fight to keep my mind concentrating. A lot of thoughts kept crowding in which had nothing to do with me. I tried to talk to myself but the gray blur came closer and closer to me and blanketed me.

References:

Then I piled the hi-fi full of records, mostly piano concertos. I put the Emperor Concerto on last because it's my favorite and played on two sides. I could flip the stack after the first playing and hear the ending of the Emperor in the right sequence.

Title:

See the "Object of desire" section above

Edition:

Dell #A168, First Edition, October 1958

Cover:

By McGinnis. One of those creepy, unsettling ones that make you feel like a voyeur and give you a bit of a guilty conscience for liking it.

Cool lines:

I maintained a detached interest in Lou's life like a man does in common stock which he sold too early and is now doing great things.

I felt revengeful and full of loathing and I felt the small and insignificant feeling a man gets when he gets looked over during a job interview.

Bit by bit, my practice was dropping off more every month. The golden degree tacked onto the Cummings name was fading into an oxidized bronze. It didn't matter, but it galled me because it proved people had more sense than I was willing to admit.

It was like a fever. Ideas and thoughts kept parading through my mind and I watched them like a bored jazz fan at the opera.

Syndicate Girl (Frank Kane, 1958)

It starts with a bang. Several bangs actually: a judge is assassinated, his wife witnesses the killing, so she becomes collateral damage, a crooked cop frames a good cop for the hit, and finally - to make it sure, I guess - the mobsters kill him and stage his death as a suicide.

And the best part is that all this mayhem is orchestrated by a woman. The woman! The titular Syndicate Girl goes by the name of Mary Lister. She's a mob fixer and the top dog's messenger, later described as "more lethal than the atom bomb". Wow! Not often do we come across such a badass heroine in these old paperbacks.

But on page 24 (after the job well done), she departs for the airport, and we need to wait until page 167 for her to reappear. And when she does, we find her contemplating a cruise with her mafioso hubby because "the things are pretty quiet, and it's been a long time since we were away alone". And her man is planning to pull out of the rackets altogether.

So much for the atom bomb...

But anyway, our syndicate girl will never make that cruise. She packs her stuff and flies back to Jackson City to give this sleeper's remaining 25 pages at least some kind of a climax. Although, at this point, I pretty much stopped caring about how it finishes as long as it would be soon.

You may ask what happens in those 143 pages when she's not around? Nothing really worth reporting. Yet another Eliot Ness story about fighting corruption and ties between the politicians, mobsters, and media. Painfully slow and predictable.

This is my third or fourth Kane's non-Liddell book, and I'm losing my patience.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:
Mal Waters, a high-school football hero who went on to greater glory at Harvard law school, interrupted his studies to serve his time as a squadron leader in Korea and finally returned to his home town to become the D.A.

The bad guy(s):
Sylvan Murphy, top brains in the Syndicate. It was he who first saw the opportunities and advantages of organizing crime on a businesslike basis throughout the country.

I disagree with this, especially after recently spending a week in Sicily where I visited the No Mafia museum in Palermo.

Dames:
Besides Mary, there are several other tall and well-proportioned gals:

• Rita - tall, breath-takingly proportioned redhead
• Cora  - tall full-breasted brunette
• Bonnie - tall, loosely put together in a way that flowed tantalizingly when she walked
• Marta - tall for a girl, deep-breasted... full, even thick-lipped mouth

In all fairness, there actually is one cliche that the author manages to avoid. After being dumped by the cold and calculating Rita, our hero doesn't end up with Marta even though she's extremely honest, caring, understanding, etc.

Location:
Fictional Jackson City

Body count:
6

Way too low considering that we get the first three corpses in the opening chapter and that the book is almost 200 pages long. Should definitely be more. If nothing else, the two top dogs and both henchmen survive this one.

Also worth mentioning is that the whole episode about Bonnie's death and framing Mel is a blatant copy&paste from Kane's Green Light for Death published ten years earlier. Almost two pages, word by word.

The object of desire:
There's a cancer eating at this town. You can cover it up, but that doesn't stop it from eating. The only way to fight it is to tear it out of by the roots. That's what I intend to do.

Blackouts:
He was dizzily aware of a sinking sensation, then the ground came up and hit him in the face.

He tried to turn over, the floor tiled sickeningly and he slid into a merciful black void which erased the white-hot flashes and the searing pain from his skull.
Joey stared down at him without expression. "I don't think he's likely to get telephonitis in the next hour."

Cool Blurbs:
She was as tough as the hoods she worked with - until she met a man who made her feel like a woman

Not that cool, I'll admit. But decided to include it because it's totally false. No sparks, except a few leaded ones, are flying between Mary and Mal.

Title:
Well, even though Mary is not really the heroine, the title "Syndicate Girl" is much more cool-sounding than "D.A. Boy"

Edition:
Dell B123, First Edition, First printing - December 1958

Cover:
By McGinnis. One of his rare ones with no long legs, but still no less astounding.

Cool lines:
The killer hesitated for a moment, as though debating the advisability of making sure of the second kill. Instead he sprinted across the lawn to a row of hemlocks that had been planted to insure privacy. He melted into the shadows, satisfied there was no immediate pursuit.

Green Light for Death (Frank Kane, 1949)

We are used to efficient private sleuths, but Johnny Liddell tops them all in this one. Check out the recap of his first day on this case:

• It opens in the morgue where he identifies the body of his client/friend Nancy and meets Detective Seargent Happy (I kid you not!) Lewis
• Together they go to the police station where we meet Lewis' superior, Chief Connors. He's an asshole. See how crooked he is in the 'cool lines' section below.
• Liddell goes back to the morgue to have a chat with the medical examiner
• We find him lounging at the bar an hour later with "the ease born of long experience". He's then joined by Happy, and they decide to pay a visit to Nancy's roommate
• The interview with the redheaded singer Lorna Matthews goes well. She's more than willing to cooperate, and not before long does Liddell start calling her baby.
• He invites himself to wait for her in her apartment while she'll be out working. But pretty soon receives a couple of phone calls that confirm his suspicion of the foul play. 
• He's back in the Connors' office.
• The meeting doesn't go well. Johnny's off to have another drink and to get his shit together. But this reclusion is abruptly interrupted by a couple of thugs who invite him to go see their boss.
• It's one of those "engraved in lead" invitations, so he has no choice but to accept it. He meets their boss, and he's an asshole too.
• To avoid charges of justice obstruction, our hero needs a new client. So he walks straight into the local newspaper office and arranges that they hire him as a special correspondent.
• Then he drives to the town's outskirts, where the club of the aforementioned asshole #2 is located. This, btw,  also implies that after his arrival at the train station he also needed to arrange a car rental after checking into the hotel.
• He stirs some troubles in the club 
• And drives Lorna home.
• After dropping her off, he finds an all-night drug store and calls Happy to ask him some questions. At five o'fucking clock in the morning!

Talking about a slow day in the office!

And we are not even halfway through. Thankfully, by now Mr Kane had sorted out his misconceptions about the time/space constraints and so Liddell's second-day appointment book is much thinner. He sleeps until noon, meets his reporter sidekick, obtains a pint bottle of Cognac, uses it to extract some info from a beautiful blonde, has sex with her (the blonde, not the bottle), attends a briefing with his happy cop sidekick, and goes back to his hotel to take a nap! It's 8.45pm.

As brief as this segment is, it does give us the craziest part of the book. Liddell comes across a photo of some unidentified guy and promptly decides to charter a plane to send it to the New York agency headquarter so they can help him with identification. Furthermore, it's imperative that this photo gets back quickly, so his inside man doesn't get compromised. Therefore he makes his booking a round trip!

So yeah, our hero is now out of steam, and the author is out of ideas. For the remaining 100 pages Johnny will gradually abandon logical thinking and a subtle approach to the investigation and instead rely on brute force. The whole thing dissolves into a mess with a far-fetched premise, silly twist, and resolution that one can see coming way ahead. Kind of a sloppy imitation of Hammett's Red Harvest. One of those that give you the impression that the author did have some initial concept but was simply too lazy to develop it.

But despite all that, or maybe because of all that, it works really well. Even if you can't appreciate the chaotic storytelling and find our hero's relentless (even though not always rational) pursuit of justice a bit silly, you'll find plenty of charm in this one.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
This is only the second one of the series, and Liddell is still working for an Acme Agency (that could explain why he can afford to charter planes for his mail delivery, right?), but he already has quite a rep:

"So you're the guy Nancy did all the raving about. To hear her go on, you're a cross between Sam Spade and Ellery Queen with a little Superman thrown in one the side."

The bad guy(s):
"This guy Mike Lane. What about him?"
"Bad business. The local Lucky Luciano and Buggsy Siegel rolled up into one. He looks fat and soft but he's strictly rattlesnake."

You did catch the misspelling of Buggsy Siegel, didn't you?

Dames:
Redheaded nightclub singer Lorna Matthews aka The Red aka Baby.
Cigarette girl Verna Cross. Miss Chenango County 1952. Blondie.

Location:
Fictitious burg called Waterville. A nod to Red Harvest's Poisonville?

Body count:
7

Blackouts:
Two of them. First, his ass gets kicked by the hoodlums:

He knew he was slipping, fought to maintain consciousness. There was another blinding flash behind his ear and he sank quietly into the engulfing depths of the black blot.

And a chapter later by the cops:

He hardly felt the rabbit punch that felled him, dropped across the unconscious body on the floor as though the ground had been moved out from under him.

Title:
"What's the green light mean?"
"It means the guy's a stoolie or a flycop. The floor men are to keep an eye on him while he's in the joint. When he leaves, we signal the boss here, and he arranges for him to get taken care of."
Liddell nodded. "Green for death. That's what I thought."

And this deserves some explanation. There's a major counterfeit money operation taking place in the Villa Rouge nightclub. The way it works is that when the big-time hoodlums (you know, from Chi) come to the place for the first time, the yellow stage light marks them. This triggers their background check, and they'll get either the red or green spotlight next time. You already know what the green means, but red indicates to Casino croupiers to let them win on the (obviously) rigged roulette tables so they can cash out their (counterfeit) money. This convoluted gimmick serves the purpose that they never know who the seller of counterfeit money is.

So yes, the whole thing is a bit bonkers. Leaving aside the unfortunate choice of colours (green for death, red for money?), I wonder if it doesn't violate the basic principle of trust between criminals. Would you really go into the counterfeit money laundry business with somebody you didn't know?

Dedicated to:
TO MY MOTHER
with my deepest affection and gratitude

Edition:
Dell #918

There's no printing info on my copy which is a bit confusing. You see, it was copyrighted in 1949, but the novel actually takes place around 1955. Did I read a science-fiction story? Is my copy some hard-to-find collector item with the erratum on pg 116?

I googled it a bit and noticed it had been republished several times and that it also came out as a serial. So maybe my Dell edition came out later and was slightly altered since there's no usual "unabridged" note on the cover.

Doesn't really matter. I'm including a cool cover of one Crack Detective stories issue here, and you can download another one here.

Cover:
Nice one by Victor Kalin. But couldn't resist adding yet another cover. Quite accurate btw as it depicts a scene in which Liddell breaks into "marijuana fueled orgy".

Cool lines:
Chief Connors' eyes stopped taking census of the flyspecks on the ceiling.

The cops in this town are so crooked they could hide behind a corkscrew without throwing a shadow.[The Coolest!]

The combination of her low-cut dress and Liddell's vantage point made the effect one of which Johnny eminently approved.

Back at the bar he ordered another brandy, tossed it off with a grimace. He was debating the advisibility of another to keep that one steady in his stomach when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

He cut off the sputtering from the other end by the simple expedient of dropping the receiver on the hook.

The Desired (Carter Brown, 1959)

What the hell, let's quickly do another Carter Brown.

This one has a bit of Agatha Christie's feel about it. There is a closed group of quirky characters, and most of the action takes place in some secluded house. A thing to mention about this cast is that there's really no need for any of them to be particularly extraordinary. It does neither help nor hurt the story itself.

But, I guess, everything in Carter Brown's universe must be over the top, and it would be silly to complain about the lack of realism and sloppy characterization. Let's instead move on and take a look at our hero.

Al Wheeler certainly is no Hercule Poirot and resembles more of something like the clueless Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther series. Especially in the first half which ends with the failure of his ingenious plan to lure the killer into a trap. During the ambush, our man messes things up, gets knocked off, and - upon awaking - discovers the additional corpse that he now needs to deal with. But the blow on his head seems to do him some good because he gets his shit together and starts a proper investigation.

So the second half is much better as the plot actually thickens, and the pace accelerates to a memorable and bizarre ending. Wheeler makes yet another fuckup that results in a shootout and a bunch of fresh corpses. There's this shy, fragile, young secretary Ellen who was abused both physically and mentally before this climax and is now understandably shaken and terrified by the whole ordeal. And yet, the bloodbath makes her horny!!?! So guess how she and our hero decide to calm themselves down for half an hour that the law will need to get to the scene. Needles to say, the sex act will happen off the page.

And there's another instance of such sex & violence weirdness. Just as crazy as the one above.

Sexy Bella is needling and teasing our hero right from page one. But once she starts ridiculing his virility, he snaps and... basically starts raping her. The whole package - ripping off her clothes, twisting her arm, her struggling and crying... The entire page of such shit. He does regain his senses just in time and (I think) is ashamed of his attempt, but then it comes: "What made you stop?" and "Maybe that'll teach you not to reject an unconditional surrender when a girl offers one!"

It's just stupid. It's stupid for all the usual reasons and because it's totally redundant since it adds nothing to plot progression or character development. Would argue that the book is not misogynistic and just as sexists as most of the pulpy stuff written in that period. So these isolated episodes don't feel genuinely mean or nasty; they are more like something thrown in to add a bit of spice. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the publishers encouraged stuff like this to stir some controversy that would boost sales.

In any case, it's a shame since it tarnishes otherwise more than a decent book.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Me, I'm a cop, but I look like a bum actor in search of a middle-aged matron worth her over-weight in diamonds.

The bad guy(s):
Tino Martens had been in the rackets since maybe the first time he whipped a diaper off the kid in the next cradle when the kid wasn't looking.

Dames:
Isobel Woods, Tom's daughter
A tall blonde, with her hair hanging down across one eye, and the build of a female Viking.

Ellen Mitchell, Tom's secretary
She had an intelligent, elfin face, and the kind of figure I started dreaming of way back when I first realized a honeymoon wasn't for eating.

And my favourite - Pearl, the ex-stripper, now Tom's spouse.
"I bet you look just the way Jean Harlow used to look," I said sincerely.

Location:
Fictitious Pine City

Body count:
6

Blackouts:
The usual stuff with explosions and pitch-black void:

Then the sky fell on my head, and the world drifted down around my face slowly, the pieces disintegrating in sharp, painful explosions of white light inside my skull. I could see the brilliant flashes and I knew the explosions had to be outside, but I felt the pain inside. Then suddenly it was all over, and I drifted comfortably in a pitch-black void, peaceful as the womb.

But the way he comes out afterwards is pretty original:

I was still swaying gently, like a teen-ager exposed to rock and roll for the first time.

References:
"Was it Jung who said the mind is its own censor - that we live in the same world, but to each individual it's a different world, that no happening or incident is the same to any two people?"
"I wouldn't know," I told her. "I do know it was Wheeler who asked the question and you haven't answered it yet."

I put Ellington's "Indigos" on the hi-fi machine because it made superb mood music right then. Most of the song titles seemed an accurate forecast of my future - "Solitude" - "Autumn Leaves" - and the rest of them.

I was listening to this record while writing the review and really liked it. Just gloomy and melancholic enough for these strange covid-19 days

Title:
Not sure to whom this is supposed to refer. True, all three women are desired, but none of the killings is a crime of passion.

Edition:
Signet D2654, Third Printing

Cover:
By McGinnis. From that perspective, shouldn't the mirror reflect her body?

Also, adding an earlier Signet edition cover painted by Baryé Phillips. A bit more accurate because the book actually opens with a car crash.

Cool lines:
Around one-thirty in the afternoon, Doc Murphy bounced into the apartment. He ripped off the bandages with the loving tenderness of a barracuda shark taking a sample bite out of a well-upholstered girl swimmer.
"Huh!" he grunted when the last bandage had been torn off. "The most amazing thing about you, Wheeler, is that you're healthy!"
"It's just clean living, Doc," I said modestly. "I live by the rules - the three W's - you know, wine, women and willful smoking."

Tino admired the excellent manicure job on his fingernails for a moment, then looked up at me with his big St. Bernard eyes.
"One of these days I might find the time for it," he said pleasantly. "It could be kind of amusing."
"Time for what?" I said. "Another manicure you don't need?"
"To take you apart, copper," he smiled thinly. "See what kind of sawdust comes running out."
"You said that deliberately," I told him reproachfully. "Now you know I won't sleep nights."

She bent over her typewriter, pounding the keys like they were part of my face. I lit a cigarette and though profound thoughts about life - like a good woman is never hard to find - it's the bad ones who are so hard to get.[The Coolest!]

Murder in the Key Club (Carter Brown, 1962)

Live snooker is finally back on after the three long covid-19 lockdown months! Meaning I can only spare my time for simple, quick reads, and there are not many that fit the bill better than Carter Brown's novels.

As usual, it follows the three-act structure. First, our hero Rick Holman, the top showbiz fixer, gets hired as a sort of bodyguard by Carter Stanton, a sleazy nightclub and dirty magazine owner. And promptly gets a list of the usual suspects:

"Your editor, your wife, your sleeping partner, and your horn player," I said. "Anybody else?"

Yes, there will be a few more. One of them none other than the (did he do it?) butler! So the second act, the "rising action" section, will be spent by our hero interviewing the suspects and trying to get laid. This brings us to a conclusion, the mandatory roundup climax. And to be perfectly honest, it's a bit silly affair. Check it out:

Stanton comes up with an ingenious plan of throwing a big, orgy-like party with all the above suspects invited. At its height, he announces his willingness to smooth things over in a civilized manner with whoever his potential killer may be. So he intends to discreetly turn off the lights and meet his nemesis in the study room. Of course, he neglects to inform the crowd that our Mr Fixer will be waiting there as well and will - oh, well - fix the issue with the sucker one way or the other.

We all know that nothing good ever happens in crime novels once the lights are off, right?

And obviously, such a silly proposition insults the would-be killer's intelligence and makes us question Stanton's judgment in hiring Holman in the first place. You see, this asshole never misses an opportunity to remind our hero about the exuberant daily rate he's paying for his top services. Wouldn't he be better (cheaper) off to simply hire a muscle-man to wait in his study room? You decide. The whole thing is a bit too much tongue in cheek for my liking.

But it's still cool. Nothing spectacularly good nor bad. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it manages not to get too silly most of the time. But, once again, I've found the puritanical take on sex interesting, and it reminded me a lot of Spillane and his adolescent portrayal of women (see the 'dames' section). Ridiculous to the point where the actual act of sex is wholly inferred:

"This is quite comfortable, really," she said in a drowsy voice. "Why don't you come on down?"
By the time I'd lit a cigarette, she was snoring gently.

Kind of a "look but don't touch" approach that I guess would be laughable even for the young adults these days. However, there's no problem with visceral violence:

He gave Stanton one barrel of the sawn-off shotgun, held tight in his hands, at point-blank range.
The little fat man spun aimlessly for a moment like a rag doll, then sprawled limply on his back across the carpet. Where his face had been, there was only a crimson horror.

So yeah, Carter Brown's books are products of their time. I don't think they've poorly aged; let's just say they've aged in a particular way. There's still a lot of charm in them if one bothers to look for it. And without getting too philosophical about it, I can only finish this by saying that I still enjoy picking them up every now and then.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
"What was it Aginos of Stellar Productions called you? - an iconoclast? Yeah, that's it - an iconoclast. A breaker of idols, right? A nice way of saying a guy is just goddamned rude the whole time, right? But then, I guess when you've built a reputation as the Mr. Fixit of show biz the way you have, you can afford to be goddamn rude the whole time?"

"How about you, Mr. Holman? - how do you chisel a living?"
"I'm an industrial consultant," I said.
"It doesn't sound exactly exciting!" There was a quizzical look in her eyes, "You look like something different - a cross between a con man and a bouncer, maybe?"

The bad guy(s):
There's an ageing mobster:

"That means it's pretty dirty money," I said, dutifully lowering the volume. "Meyer's name is synonymous with about every big-time syndicate racket in the last thirty years."

And his muscle-man:

He was a kid and older than despair, both at the same time. Maybe all of twenty-two, white-faced, with dark eyes that jeered at the basic conception of humanity. In the old days they would have called him a torpedo, and these days they'd call him a psychopath. Either way, it added up to the same thing - an instrument of death, quick, competent, and professional. Just looking at him could make my scalp prickle uneasily.

Dames:
In this one, babes are called "houris" - a name for a pet or bunny (or whatever you call them) that Stanton uses for centrefold models in his magazine. Paula is the dumb one:

"She's built just fine," I said coldly. "But every time she opens her mouth, nothing comes out."
"You go for the intellectual kind of broad?" He nodded quickly.

Indeed he does. Meet Nina the intellectual houri:

A tall blonde... with an easy, graceful walk... small but sharply defined breasts... long graceful legs... every movement she made exuded an explosive exciting vitality... sharp, intelligent planes of her face... sparkingly alert hazel eyes

And let's not forget Stanton's wife Melissa:

She was a tall, statuesque redhead with calculating, cobalt-blue eyes, and her controlled sensual mouth was made to be savaged.

Location:
Another no-name city in Carter Brown's faux American crime world.

Body count:
4

The object of desire:
"That's why I hired you, Holman. You've got to find out who wants to kill me so bad, and stop them before they try again with real bullets!"

Blackouts:
I was doing just fine, right up until I reached the tenth stair - then the whole second story of the house caved in on my head.

Title:
Cool sounding but inaccurate. Although Stanton owns a club with such a name, none of the four murders occurs there.

Edition:

Signet S2140. First printing, June 1962

Cover:
Lovely monochromatic painting by McGinnis. A bit Sin City-ish, isn't it? Not sure which houri is she supposed to be. Combination of Nina and Melissa?

Cool lines:
The first impression was of a second-hand missile salesman who'd always be safely out of the district before you tried your first blast-off from a homemade launching pad.

He grinned, showing the white horsey teeth that looked more like piano keys than anything else, and he had about four octaves bunched in his mouth.

I'll Kill You Next (Adam Knight, 1954)

Page 100 and our hero still has no tangible results or clues other than pathetic whining "he wasn't the type" on investigating his friend's alleged suicide. But Steve shouldn't be too surprised because he's just running around like a headless chicken for the better part of the book and gets knocked out every now and then. And to be a bit mean, his lack of progress can easily be attributed to a somehow unorthodox approach to interviewing his suspects, which is basically to threaten them with calling the cops if they don't cooperate. What a sissy...

So now he gets frustrated (along with the reader) and changes his M.O. He's yelling at women, slaps them, pushes them around to get some helpful information. A bit mean and nasty and, of course, totally redundant stuff. This is not the type of hard-boiled prose we love and appreciate. What an asshole...

It just doesn't work. The unlikeable protagonist and non-moving plot and the pace that is just off. It keeps breaking the flow and dialogue with over-descriptive bullshit about everything and nothing (usually about women's anatomy). It is flat, without any real edge or tension, repetitious and dull dialogue with no snappy badass one-liners.

Try it if you need to battle insomnia.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:
"Detective," I said. "My name is Steve Conacher and I'm an investigator, a skip-tracer."

Dames:
There are several, and my favourite was Kate with her refrigerated eyes. But the main one is Vicki, who resembles the great American sex machine:

Her body was a masterpiece of planning, even under the casual red robe. In the quick moment of her leaving, in the flash of her hips and legs across the room, her whole frame sang of sex, an easy, rhythmic movement that would set the wolves howling on any street in the world.

Location:
New York

Body count:
2

The object of desire:
Then listen, sweetheart, I'm not in this for kicks, for laughs, for small talk and corny routines. Mike Smith was one of my best friends. Somebody murdered Mike. Somebody wanted him out of the way, don't you see? I'm going to find that person and kick his face in for killing a nice guy like Mike.

Which is cool and we all dig a bit of vendetta every now and then. But it becomes comical when he almost gets hired as a recruiter in order to find the cartoonist talented enough to step in the big shoes of his deceased friend. You see, Steve used to hang out a lot with this artistic crowd which somehow makes him an expert.

Blackouts:
Well, he's pretty incompetent, so he gets the shit kicked out of him no less than four times. None of them is very memorable. If I had to vote, I'd go for the first one. Thwacking thud?

#1 - I turned to bring Gwen back into focus. But I never made it.
Because she hit me with a thousand pounds of lead. She dropped it on my head, a thwacking thud that sent hot needles of pain into my eyes.
I was out cold.

#2- Somebody had thrown a building at me. The blackness waved and rolled around my head as I fought to open my eyes.
I never quite made it. Somebody walloped me again.
And this time, the blackness became permanent.

#3 - And I stepped into another smack in the face.
...I awoke in a bucket of black.

#4 - The noises above me were welling up in a monstrous cacophony of confusion. I heard many voices, many steps. Before my eyes closed it seemed that the room was suddenly filled with people.
"Easy, sister," somebody was saying. "Take it easy."
I passed out on that line.

References:
There's a bunch of references to various cartoonists, but most of them seem a bit forced, and the whole thing sometimes feels a little pretentious and patronizing, But here's a couple with which we are more familiar:

I released the pressure a bit. "Who wrote that continuity for you?"
"A friend of mine-" she said, "Ernest Hemingway."
"Weathering?"
"John," she said. "John Steinbeck."
"Weathering?" I asked again. "Or some other punk?"
"Gardner," she said. "Erle Stanley."
"You're wasting my time, Katie."

"Your imagination demands a big, broad and flat-headed gentleman to play detective for you. Admit it, girl."
"Not quite, Uncle Luke. Maybe I'm the Ellery Queen type."
"Upper class," I smiled. "Out of my league."

Title:
It's cool sounding (or is it?) but has no real connection to the story. I'm including the back cover scan, which may give it some meaning, but the whole text is fabricated. None of it is part of the book. Don't we just love these old pulp publishers?

Edition:
Signet 1276, First Printing, February 1956

Cover:
Another great one by Robert Maguire, although not as iconic as the one he did for Knight's another Steve Conacher yarn Stone Cold Blonde. It makes you sad that such great artwork was wasted on such mediocre books.

And, as the title, the cover is also totally inaccurate. No woman gets killed in this one.

Cool lines:
Nothing really cool, but here are some WTFs that you might try to decipher:

His cadaverous face was strangely handsome, in the way that a thin girl might be handsome.

Weathering lived in a sloppy hole, two small cubicles and a bath, as disorganized as a Bohemian nightmare, as upset as a schizophrenic bride.

She spoke softly, too low for her usual speech pattern. Her words carried a strong alcoholic quality.

Ed McBain's Mystery Book #1 (1960)

With the abundance of covid-19 time on my hands, I'm (yet again) sorting and categorizing my movies and books. I finally tackled the petabytes of stuff downloaded over the years and have re-discovered a bunch of exciting stuff. When I came across this one, I thought it would make a fitting choice to wrap up the recent cops killing and hatings posts.

Ross Macdonald was also a big reason to select it, and Midnight Blue is - as expected - an excellent Lew Archer story written by the grandmaster with his distinctly elegant style and theme of messed up middle-class families. It keeps sidetracking the reader into obvious conclusions but finishes with a good old crime of passion. Sad and tragic with no winners once after Archer ends his investigation. Not the most original or surprising ending, but I still liked it a lot for its fast-moving pace and more than a decent ratio of pages/corpse.

I'd known Anthony Boucher only by name before reading On A Day Unknown, but this will soon change. Brilliant stuff, although I must admit that my knee-jerk reaction after reading a couple of pages was, "For fuck's sake, not one of those". British (!) true-crime (!!) police procedural (!!!) - "The case was a splendid challenge to a pathologist."

But soon my dismay turned into curiosity, and by the fifth page, I was enjoying this immensely. It's a tender and tragic love story of two lost souls in England during the war years. The Canadian Indian soldier and a local British girl: 

"At first," said Sangret, "when I slept with Joan I used to have connexions with her sometimes two or three times a night and later on sometimes not at all." They had reached a state of intense need to be with each other even in the absence of sexual hunger - which may be one definition of love.

And you can imagine what the connextions are, don't you? If not, this will clarify things:

We started kissing and cuddling and I asked her if she would 'go with me.' I mean by this that I wanted to have connexions with her. She did not refuse in any way and I had connexions with her. I did not use a French letter and I just did it the natural way.

(Throughout, both in his long statement to the police and later on the witness stand, connexions is the normally monosyllabic Sangret's only word for sexual intercourse. One imagines that it was suggested by a police stenographer.)

There's not a single line of dialogue! The whole thing is written as court transcripts compiled from various testimonies that are complemented with the narrator's witty comments and observations (he was, however, totally and literally illiterate). Very original and very funny but also sad and poignant

The next one is Fletcher Flora. I liked his story As I Lie Dead from the Masters of Noir #1 but have since read a couple of his other things and wasn't much impressed. And after It was All the Girl had to Live For Now - Somebody Else's Death, I'm even less impressed. Apart from its cool title, this is totally forgettable. Probably something Mr Fletcher put together quickly to cover his rent:

A hitman (of sorts) shoots a politician during the rally because the guy had ruined his girlfriend's father. It then finishes with some wisdom about the revenge not solving anything, and "he understood with silent and assured despair that he had killed two people from the window upstairs".

Richard S. Prather's Film Strip was no disappointment because I knew what to expect. I just cannot get into his Shell Scott. His brand of cosy crime mixed with hard-boiled style doesn't work for me, and I find its juvenile humour silly and sometimes idiotic and offensive. A teenager could call his girlfriend "my dear little imbecile", and maybe some of his friends would find it funny and laugh at it. But coming from a grown-up with white hair?

It begins with the "little imbecile" performing a private striptease for Shell on the beach while there's a murder in progress on a nearby cliff. It will also end the same way because the ridiculous plan to trap the murderer will go wrong. Shell is cornered by the killer in an empty movie theatre, and our exhibitionist cannot think of a better way to distract him so that Shell can take him over. Enough said...

Helen Nielsen's Confession plunges the reader into the midst of an angry mob about to lynch a couple of kids accused of hit and run. They break down under pressure, and the boy signs the confession. During this riot, we get the complete picture of what had happened in flashbacks. Well written, tight, and tense. Works well on both narrative and emotional levels. But the happy ending and simplistic morality message spoiled it for me a bit. I think the girl's "betrayal" would be more effective (shocking?) if the couple were older people and not some teenage kids eloping to Vegas to get married.

Hard Sell from Craig Rice is great. Fuck Shell Scott, this is the kind of humour that I like:

He found himself looking at a large man with iron-gray hair, blue eyes, and a prominent chin. The man looked so healthy that Malone wanted to turn away again.

Or, if you're not convinced, this (note that von Flanagan is a cop!):

Malone agreed. "You don't seem to be taking much of an interest in this one. Something wrong?"
"Plenty," von Flanagan said. "For one thing, it's an impossible one to solve. For another, I don't want to solve it"
"Why not?"
Von Flanagan shook his head wearily. "Malone" he said, "have you ever had a run-in with a magazine salesman? Have you ever had one of those little monsters stick his foot in your door and tell you how much you needed his rotten magazines? Have you, Malone?"
Malone nodded.
"They should kill every last one of them," von Flanagan said. "I mean it, Malone. Anybody kills a magazine salesman he deserves a medal."

Great stuff. Outrageous! One cannot but like the main protagonist Malone "the little lawyer" and admire his efficiency as he solves this one by mainly drinking at the bar and making some phone calls along the way.

With two double ryes under his belt and a pair of beer chasers keeping them company, Malone felt in condition to use the phone. 

Admittedly, the "suicide" solution is a bit bonkers, and I'm not sure I really got it, but I don't care. Like Mr Boucher, Mr Rice is another one on my radar now.

Moving on. Before the main feature, there's a cool intermezzo. A "special report" on the history of forgery and counterfeit titled Reasonable Fascimile, written by Rex Lardner. Educational, I guess, but foremost funny. Quite a tongue in cheek stuff like this:

The earliest counterfeiters, who clipped coins and made new ones from the shavings, had their ears
clipped when caught. King Canute decreed that their hands should be cut off. The Romans deprived counterfeiters of their citizenship and then removed their ears and noses. Later, these steps not considered sufficiently discouraging, their ears, noses, hands, and feet were cut off and what was left was served to hungry lions. One presumes they were hungry.

It finishes on the resigned note that there's a bunch of counterfeited merchandise being sold these days, but not much can be done to prevent this. It kind of makes you long for the days of good old King Canute.

McBain's 87th precinct novelette The Empty Hours is the main part of this digest, and, I guess, it was its main selling point. But I won't spend much time on it because I don't want to repeat myself when it comes to this serial. It is a bit paradoxical that the police procedural methods actually hinder the story and make it less plausible in this one.

For example, as we are approaching the end, cops are still (a week or so after the crime) for some reason interrogating the victims' neighbours and informers even though they have plenty of hard evidence and other leads to pursue. And btw, there's a description of a line-up that is more or less copy/paste-ed from the Cop Hater. And similar to that one, here too, they find the solution by fluke.

The last story is Richard Matheson's chilling The Faces. A little psychological gem about the abuse and mental illness that (I believe) says that some people simply shouldn't have kids.

An excellent choice to finish this interesting collection with a flavour of horror.

4.5/5

Facts:

Dames:

From Midnight Blue:
She had on a plain white blouse, which was full of her.

From the Empty Hours:

She moved with an expert femininity, a calculated unconscious fluidity of flesh that suggested availability and yet was totally respectable. She seemed to have devoted a lifetime to learning the ways and wiles of the female and now practiced them with facility and charm. 

Body count:

3 + 2 + 1 (discounting of course the spiritual dead) + 1 + 1 + 3 + 0 (discounting the counterfiters devoured by hungry lions) + 2 + 1 = 14

References:

"On A Day Unknown" retells the story of Georg Büchner's Woyzcek (so now we also know from where the Boucher pseudonym is coming from). But even though I've seen Herzog's film, I must admit I didn't make the connection until once this play is explicitly mentioned at the end. 

Cover:
Pretty cool. It could be portraiting a scene from either The Empty Hours or Film Strip. But since none of the tough guys has white hair, I would lean more to the former.

Cool lines:
From Midnight Blue:

She touched her thin breast absently, pathetically, as if perhaps she hadn't been much needed in the past.

Killer Cop aka My Old Man's Badge (Ferguson Findley, 1950)

One of those that count on the reader to not pay much attention. You know the type - we read them during our morning commute while on autopilot mode, craving coffee and still half-asleep. Incapable or just too lazy to be bothered by the apparent story flaws and inconsistencies.

But in these strange covid-19 times, I have plenty of time, so I did pay attention, and here's how the plot thickens in this one:

1. Cops receive an anonymous letter tipping them that the cop killer from the past is back in town.
2. The letter's paper analysis reveals its poor quality. It must be used in one of the cheap hotels around Bovery.
3. They decide that the best way to handle this affair would be to send a man undercover.
4. They do. This man, our hero, tracks down the guy who's selling the paper.
5. This guy also runs the dope racket with a small gang of three misfits.
6. And one of them just has to be the wanted cop killer.

Mind you, this is just the beginning. It gets crazier.

Before proceeding, it's worth mentioning that everyone drinks excessively in this one. Billie even eats her breakfast with whiskey! So you cannot help to think that maybe the author himself had a drinking problem and was unable to keep the coherent story going for more than a couple of chapters. Not saying he did, but such issues would certainly help explain the occasional switch from the first to the third narration. Or needlessly establishing a character that would be soon dropped without much explanation.

It seems like the editor (huh?) was losing patience too the more they neared the end. We are treated with some hilarious stuff. Our hero is chasing the bad guy and is frantically shouting at witnesses, "Where did he go?" while a big blood trail splattered on the floor is clearly pointing in the right direction.

Even Johnny is not immune to the fatigue as this goes on. At one point, when weighting his options and assessing the possibilities of progressing the investigation, he simply abandons the idea and instead takes a nap:

It was interesting to think about, but I went to sleep instead.

Brilliant! And it had the potential to be one of those great little silly books. But it just doesn't know when to stop. Instead of wrapping it up with some sort of a bang, it goes on and on and on. True, even more silliness will follow, but the whole thing is less and less amusing and more and more boring with every page you turn.

So I wouldn't recommend it for your commuting literature. You may fall asleep and miss your stop.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Johnny, the cop, who "prowls the Greenwich Village streets"

Dames:

Billie, the junkie nightclub singer:

If she was the Billie Bloomer who was expected, the bartender's observation of "everything's in the right place" was entirely correct. There was plenty of it, too, so much that Tony mentally asked himself, "True or false?" She dropped one of her gloves on the floor as she hung her coat in the almost empty check room. As she bent over to pick it up, he saw the answer was "true."

She's cool, but the Countess de Callene is even cooler. Too bad she appears in just one scene, and her character serves no purpose other than having sex with our hero:

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she wanted to know.
Well, she was. For all I could tell, she was a dope taker and a tramp and God knows what, but she looked darned good, sitting there in that room wearing nothing but a sheet, and I told her so.

Not really important, but it turns out she's not really of royal blood. And has a bit odd sense of humour:

"Were you born in Brooklyn?" I asked. "So was I."
"That makes us practically cousins, so we can't get married. All our children would be idiots, or Ptolemies, or born with two heads. I can't stand two-headed kids. Come over here and have another martini."

It wouldn't be fair not to mention his darling fiance, nurse Mary. A typical girl next door, not interesting at all. But, unlike Countess, she does have an important role. For some strange but convenient coincidence, one of the bad guys is wounded and ends up in the hospital where she works. You know - "of all the hospitals in NYC, she walks in mine",  And there's more. When realizing this guy is Johnny's suspect, she promptly injects the poor sucker with a truth serum!!

Location:
New York

Body count:
It opens with a couple of corpses (see below), but this happens in the story that establishes our hero. Not linked directly to the main plot, so we can safely exclude them from the body count. In this prologue, we also witness the demise of Johnny's parents. We'll skip the mother, but his cop dad's death is pivotal to the story, so it counts.

Besides the old guy, there are four more violent deaths, so the grand total is 5.

Muddy's death is the best one by far. When Johnny finds him dying "with the purple-lipped hole in his chest, where a wide knife had been slipped between his ribs" he asks him "What's wrong?"

The object of desire:
Johhny wants to find his father's killer, but there's also a subplot that involves a shitload of heroin:

"We've got a nice little deal all arranged, Murphy. Couple of kilos of pure heroin, and I mean pure. It'll be worth a million dollars to us when we get it and cut it down."

By the way, cops have no problem with letting this deal go through to get closer to the cop killer!

Blackouts:
Almost:

I dove across the table and had my fingers at his throat when Cookie knocked me on the head with the butt of his gun and I went limp. He didn't knock me out, but I pretended to fade away. It gave me a chance to think what to do next.

References:
One of the bad guys has issues with Irish lads, so a cop provokes him by playing Molly Malone.

Here's Sinead O'Connor's version. Always lovely to hear this sad and beautiful song.

Cool Blurbs:
"She Lived For Love - He Killed For It"

Which sounds cool but has nothing to do whatsoever with the story. Shouldn't be surprised really... published by Monarch.

Title:
Also misleading. Our hero kills only in the first paragraph and in the last sentence.

Edition:

Monarch Books #114, April 1959

Cover:
Pretty cool one. Even accurate in case it depicts the scene where Johnny and the Countess meet. Obviously, before the two-headed kids stuff happens...

Illustration not credited. Any ideas?

Cool lines:
Great opening paragraph:

Smith & Wesson's Police-Model .38 is the smoothest-working revolver ever made, and yet I was having trouble breaking the cylinder to get rid of the five empties. It wasn't the gun's fault. It was mine. My hand was shaking as though I had been on the booze for three months, or as though I was a rookie cop who had just killed a couple of men.
Which I was.

Cop Killer (George Bagby, 1956)

I barely fell over the line with this one. Endless pages of convoluted sentences that can (and often do) switch context several times before they are finished. Written in some weird, archaic language in which bodies are cadavers, and there are not many nouns without accompanying adjectives like germinating, subcutaneous, lugubrious... Amusing at first, soon annoying but then simply distracting. I lost interest and stopped looking up this crap in the dictionary halfway through.

The plot is decent, although a bit simplistic and could (should?) probably fit just as well into a short story or novelette. But still, every story point is re-established several times, and sometimes even the most trivial facts are described with almost obsessive attention to detail. To make this (even) worse, the duo of our investigative protagonists keeps mulling over these facts repeatedly, thinking aloud about them and discussing the theories and possibilities. The word "would" is probably used several times on every page.

No action, no story development. There are times when this becomes apparent even to our hero. But his typical response would be something like this:

Schmitty shook his head. "Just keeping more angles open," he said, "until they close up on me. We need contusions or abrasions."

The most shocking aspect of this one for me was to realize that it was the 26th entry of the series that would go on and run for another 27 books. So you collectors out there, if you're missing this one from his middle period, you may be interested to know that my copy is now available on eBay. Give me a shout, and I'll be happy to give you a discount. You deserve all the breaks you can get if you plan to go through with this one.

Boring.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:

It uses the gimmick in which narration is in the first person, and the author is supposed to be the narrator (he's not, his name is Aaron Marc Stein). Which is generally fine but, in this case, doesn't make sense. Dr Watson tagged along with Holmes, but you can't do that with the police inspector. Not unless you're in some sort of an official position to be able to do so. An assistant? Maybe his partner? At least his best buddy news reporter or private detective? We just don't know. All we learn is that he is "his ink-stained shadow, Bagby".

So de facto hero in this one would be Inspect Schmidt, aka Schmitty. Bagby seems to be fanatically devoted to him with a passion bordering on something more than just a professional admiration. I simply couldn't share such sentiment. The only thing that makes this guy special (eccentric?) is taking off the shoes whenever he gets a chance!? But more importantly, he's a bit of an asshole as he does fuck all about the savage beating some kid gets from his uncle or about the smacking that Miss Smith gets from Papa Black.

The bad guy(s):
The main suspect for the cop killing is a fifteen-year-old kid to whom more than a hundred pages are dedicated. Maybe justifiably since he is a true badass who started his criminal career four years ago with "rushing the theatre door" at the movies.

Dames: 

Miss Smith is the only female character (!), and she appears twice (!!) on a grand sum total of three pages. But she's cool; I liked her a lot. And btw, she delivers the only cool line in the whole book. See below.

Location:
New York

Body count:

2

Title:
See 'the bad guy' section?

Edition:

World Distributer Books, WDL M914, 1959

Cover:

Same cover as the original Dell edition. By James Hill.

It's actually authentic in depicting the scene in which the kid is interrogated by the cops. They make him take off his shirt so they can examine the bruises his asshole uncle left him after giving him the "licking he wouldn't forget". Thankfully, these bruises are left out of the illustration.

Cool lines:
"Cigarette me, somebody," Miss Smith growled. "I'm half dead for a smoke.[The Coolest!]

Never Kill A Cop! (Hal Braham as Mel Colton, 1953)

Like in the last two posts, the cop gets murdered to kick off the proceedings in this one too. But unlike those two - where the whole police department would get mobilized - here, nobody seems to be bothered with the killing.

Even though our main protagonist is a cop, this is far from the police procedural. It's more like one of those small-town setups with local (corrupted) cops, (corrupted) politics, organized crime and - needless to say - scheming dames with some psychology thrown into the pot. You know, the type that the guys like Jim Thompson and Gil Brewer perfected, and so when reading this, you can appreciate them even more and understand why they are such masters.

But don't get me wrong, this one is not bad at all. Just a bit chaotic. Starting with our hero Danny, a hot-tempered badass who gets in fistfights no less than three times in the opening four chapters alone. One of them happens like this:

He jutted his chin out. "Who are you, a cop?"
I blew smoke in his face. His eyes blinked momentarily. I ran a thumb along the side of my lower lip. I said: "You keep following me and I'll slap you flat on your ass."
He looked me over carefully. He said it before he meant to, I guess, because it was either rank foolishness or smart talk, because he muttered, "You're sure one tough bastard-"
He went flat on his ass.

So don't expect any witty verbal exchanges or cool one-liners in this one. It needs to be said that Danny doesn't appear to be very bright either. He keeps getting deeper and deeper into a hole because of his totally irrational behaviour. Indeed, in a small town where everybody knows everybody, you wouldn't flee a bar after some brawl in which you have knocked off a guy unconscious? Can you really be surprised to find yourself a suspect after shooting at cops? After discovering the body and, for some reason, neglecting to report it to the authorities? And after deciding to keep the gun found in the dead man's pocket.

Thankfully, after a while, he does get his shit together and manages to solve the case. Although, if I wanted, I could probably easily find a bunch of inconsistencies that don't exactly hold water. But there's no need to do so. It's a quick, entertaining read with many shortcomings that actually make it charming. I particularly liked the ending and found it cool that our hero decided to move to California and get some real education:

"Out West, in California," I interrupted, "they have schools for cops. They're teaching them to be trained, professional men in police work. I'm going out there to one. I want to be a trained cop, Phil. I don't want to have to use fists all my life to prove a point or get a confession."

Always a good thing to see people being aware of their shortcomings. Cops especially. And if I come across the sequel to this book, I'll be more than happy to pick it up and check on Danny's progress in California.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Danny Harrington, a cop... for a while... until he's demoted... and then reinstated again

Bad guy(s):
Mr Joslyn: the big shot gambler, the syndicate man from Centerville - the hub, the pivot.

Dames:
There's his girlfriend Irene and his sister Lil, but the main femme fatal in this one is definitely Martha:

Martha was sex. Sex wrapped up in cellophane. In a glass case. Never, never touch.[Fatale]

And speaking of sex, like most everything else in this book, it's depicted in some crazy manner that one needs to decipher. And which makes it sort of amusing. Check this as an example:

Then she began to groan and whimper and there was the suspicion of great pain, for there was constriction and there was desperation. There was the pressure of defiance, and the acceptance finally, and with the warm mellow glow that followed.

I think I can guess what the "Mellow glow" would be. But Great pain? Desperation?

Location:
The fictitious town of Bishop, fifty miles away from Centerville (huh), "the gambling syndicate's base of operations"

Body count:
5

Object of desire:
That, I think, is the biggest flaw because you have no idea what's driving this dude most of the time. Right after the opening killing, all he wants is to get laid. Either with Martha, his brother's wife (!) or with Irene, the girlfriend of his now ex-partner/friend (!!) who btw once saved his life. Then he gets this epiphany about "I've got to know the truth, one way or another", and finally is all about stepping out of the shadow of his younger, more successful brother.

And yet another example of this book being all over the place. But again, it's also something that makes it captivating. You simply can't tell what will follow in the next paragraph, let alone the next chapter.

References:
"Ever study Freud?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head. "Not much." I was watching the gun in her hand, and waiting for the tag line to come.
"This gun," she continued, "or any gun, is a male symbol."

Title:
Like in Never Kill a Cop, there's no comment needed. And they made the point in this one even stronger by adding an exclamation point to the end.

Edition:
ACE double D-19 MY

Cover:
Cool one by Bernard Barton. A bit ambiguous I think - Is she afraid of him or is she trying to seduce him? Maybe both?

Cool lines:
"I'd rather we talk about you," she replied.
"You're talking about trouble, kid," I said.
Martha turned quickly and faced me. Her lips were so damn close I could feel her breath. "Maybe I like trouble," she snapped.