The Yellow Overcoat (Frank Gruber, 1942)

This was my first Gruber's non-Johnny Fletcher book and I was curious if it would be more serious and not so tongue-in-cheek as the stuff in the Fletcher series (which, for the record, I absolutely love!). I didn't need to wait long for an answer.

Our hero Joe Devlin, an ex-hobo who just inherited a detective correspondence school (the institute!) from his eccentric uncle, is hired by some hillbilly to find his stolen overcoat. Offering him a fee ten times higher than he had paid for the old, stolen one. But since our man isn't a licensed detective, he hires one... who turns out to be an alcoholic... so Joe promptly hires another private eye to keep an eye on the first one. And guess what? This last one will be killed by yet another guy who shadowed all of them!

Welcome to Frank Gruber's wacky world! Cool stuff, a real page-turner. I loved it and couldn't stop smiling while reading it. But then, in the last third, it just falls apart.

After drinking with his new drinking detective buddy and (inevitably) stirring trouble and a fight in the bar, Joe abruptly departs Chicago on some wild goose chase that turns out to not be just an episode but instead takes a good chunk of the book. Unfortunately, it gradually becomes a snooze fest, with new characters needlessly thrown into the plot and some story developments that do little to develop the story. In short, and very bluntly - it turns into a mess. Even worse, most of the spark and playfulness of the first half fades away. It felt like chapter after chapter was used for padding and to reach the word count...

There are a few exceptions, the highlight being the hotel with night and day shift rooms, so our hero must share his room with another guest! Crazy and hilarious shit, I loved that one.

By the time it came to the final part - the mandatory big revelation act - I was pretty battle-fatigued and just wanted it to end. It didn't help much that it took Joe twenty pages to explain the plot and point out the culprit. Since this is a classic mystery, Gruber does his best to overcomplicate everything, and there are probably dozens of possible solutions to whodunnit in this one. So, the one used probably holds water, but it is just not very convincing. To put it mildly.

I'll give you just one example. Our guy didn't go on that goose chase for no reason. He went to that godforsaken place (see the location section of the facts below) with a very specific goal: to make sure there was a certain painting hanging on the wall of some pub, which would corroborate the statement of one of his suspects. You may be asking yourself why the fuck didn't he just pick up the phone, call the pub, and ask the bartender about it? And you would be asking the same question as I did myself...

Had it been trimmed for 50 or so pages, it could have been great. But this way, it's just all right. With due respect to Gruber, it's actually quite forgettable, to be honest...

 3/5

Facts:

Hero:

Joe Devlin is our main guy, but I liked his sidekick, P.I. Harry Bloss, more. The best detective in Chicago!

Dames: 

Martha Drexler, Joe's secretary at "the institute", also mysterious Susan Gard when her face is not bandaged. 

Location:

Chicago... and then off on the night train to Keewatauk. Huh, say that again - to where?

"Keewatauk," said the ticket seller. "That's Pengilly. Leaves in eight minutes. Change at Alborn for Pengilly."

"Keewatauk is a suburb of Pengilly?"

"Su-burb?" Naw; Keewatauk ain't on the railroad. You get off at Pengilly and change to a bus, which runs to Keewatauk. First, you change to another train to Alborn."

"Two changes - to go how far?"

"Eight-ninety miles. Don't know. I've never been there."

Keewatauk cannot be found on Google Maps, but Pengilly is there. And there's no train connection anymore to Chicago! 

Body count:

3

The object of desire:

"I see," said Devlin. "And you want to pay four hundred dollars to get the man who stole your coat?"

"Nah, not the guy. The hell with him! It's the coat I want; that's all."

"You don't want the thief arrested?"

"Nah, what the hell? Maybe he was cold and needed the coat. I'd a bought him one maybe, if he'd asked proper for it. That ain't the idea."

Blackouts:

A missile struck his arm with crushing force, bounced off and collided with his forehead. Fire exploded in Devlin's head and he fell forward on his face, unconscious.

References:

In one scene Devlin humms this tune:

Oh, massa had an obercoat,

He hung it on the wall.

And dat niggah came and stole

And wore it to a ball!

ChatGPT identified it as "Oh, Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground", but this is just another hallucination as the words don't match at all. And it is most definitely not about the slaves "weeping at the grave of their deceased master". But, anyway, cool and funny lyrics.

Title:

See the 'object of desire' section above

Edition:

Popular Library #188

Cover:

Good old "woman-in-peril" theme. Love it. By Rudolph Belarski.

Cool lines:

"How is your uncle?"

"That depends on where he went; he checked out. That's why I'm here. I'm his heir."

"They sure dye these rabbits swell these days."

"Rabbits, you're calling it?" cried the storekeeper. "A genuine mink-dyed fur coat and you're calling it rabbits? Mister, should a mink coming in this store he'd crying, 'mama, papa!'"

"I have here a fine engraving of Abraham Lincoln. It could become yours by showing me the register from the last month and answering a question."

"Add a dollar to it," said the man behind the grill, "and I'll drink a bottle of milk with my mouth full of chewing tobacco and that's a real trick."

"A man after my own heart," said Devlin, pushing the bill under the wicket. ""Let's see the register."

And here's one, probably the least hard-boiled one-liner on this blog. But somehow, I still find it charming:

"Take a nice little walk for yourself, to the east. Walk until your hat floats!"

Never Kill a Cop (John B. West, 1961)

What a difference does it make when I know in advance that the book I'm about to read is going to suck! I remember reading one of the Rocky Steele series long ago and being astonished at how horrible it was. Rocky is Mike, Vicky is Velda, Lieutenant Pat Chambers is Captain Johnny Richards, etc. 

Yep, it's a shameless Spillane rip-off. With our gumshoeing tough guy (nicknamed by some cops the morgue-magnet!!) roaming the savage streets of New York, with the .45 magnum called Betsy in his mitt, grinning all the time, enforcing his particular brand of justice:

"I don't work like the law. In my court, you're guilty until proven otherwise, and from where I stand, you got a snowball's chance in hell!"

The less said about the plot, the better. It starts with the bad guys hiding a corpse in Rocky's Caddy. Huh? Yes, of all the cars in NYC, they randomly picked his. The plot then quickly thickens. No thanks to Rocky's detective skills, but more to his premonition, female hormones (??) in his belly, eerie feelings and hunches he gradually makes progress and finally comes to the realization:

"This thing gets bigger every hour. Murder first. Then prostitution, and now hot lettuce. Ain't there any end?"

If you're confused, let me explain that the hot lettuce means counterfeit money. And the way the scheme works (I think) is that prostitutes are handing back counterfeit bank notes to their customers. Since the horny shmucks are embarrassed about the whole hanky panky thing, they want to leave as soon as possible once they get their pants back on. Hence, they don't pay much attention so it's easy to distribute the lettuce. Makes more sense now?

But since this time I knew what to expect, I was ready... and I must admit this was one huge FUN to read. The whole thing is hilariously over the top and completely out of control, with Rocky always and firmly in the centre of madness. He's constantly pissed off and on the move all the time. One just cannot but not like the guy. Let me share this unforgettable episode instead of giving you some heavy character study:

There's a scene where some bad guy ambushes our man in his car. The usual stuff, threatening him under the gun and "advising" him to back off. We've been through this a zillion times before. But here, once the villain leaves the car, Rocky promptly slams his heap into reverse (one time I was thankful for the automatic transmission!) and runs the poor bastard over! I couldn't believe what I was reading, and I still cannot decide what to think about it. Is Rocky a despicably sneaky asshole or is he the ultimate badass? You're welcome to leave your opinion in the comments.

My new guilty pleasure. The next Rocky Steele is on its way while I'm typing this. 

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:

"Come on, Mister Aloysius Algernon Steele. What else?"

That crack was a red flag. Nobody - but nobody - not even a copper - calls me by my given names unless he wants his mug splattered over the five boroughs - or unless he's got the goods on me.

The bad guy(s):

"You can't scare me, copper," he almost whispered. "Nobody's gunning for Studs Hackett. Nobody. Not unless he's got rocks in his head and wants to exchange 'em for lead."

Dames: 

First, his .45 gun, Betsy:

Funny how a guy feels safe with a rod in his mitt.

Then, his secretary, Vicky Boston:

She was not only the best secretary a guy could want, she was also a P.I. on her own... Vicky also is real stacked. For whistles. She's got just the right amounts of just the right things in just the right places, and a face so pretty there oughta be a law against it.

Then there's gun moll Miss Angelica Carson Martin, alias Angie Carson, alias Carrie Martin. Rocky goes crazy for her before even meeting her in person:

Then I heard her voice. Brother! What a dame! Her voice drew me a picture of her and my ears stood up straight. "Hello," was all she said, but it was earful.

When they meet, the whole page is filled with superlatives, but let's just summarize it into:

I'd have bet her measurements were 36-24-36, and the two peaches that stood out of her chest pointed straight at the sky like a pair of ack-ack guns.

Ack-ack guns?! The meeting, however, doesn't go too well because she drinks too much (!) and tries to fuck him (!!!), so Rocky comes to the shocking realisation:

Little devils were dancing in her eyes, and it struck me then. The chick was a nympho!

Btw, he seems to have other problems with sex and his masculinity:

I figure little Benny's my friend, too, and he's a fairy. That don't make me a freak, does it?

But let's leave that for another book review...

Location:

Dawn was breaking, and pale red and gold fingers of light made the skyline glow like it was on fire. New York. My New York.

Body count:

A bit of a bloodbath with 8 corpses altogether. The last killing is pretty cool: 

Betsy spoke to him once. One short word, and there was a period behind it - a blue-black period that jumped up smack between his insane, bloodshot eyes.

The object of desire:

I didn't know a thing except that someone had tried to make a sucker out of me, and for that he was gonna get the shaft. Everything else was secondary to that.

Blackouts:

The Empire State Building dropped out of the sky and smacked me on the side of the head.

I love the way he comes out of it:

I got the strength to open my eyes. The place was full of coppers. Johnny Richards was three of 'em, and Morris was the other three.

References:

It opens with a reference to "Death on the Rocks", one of the previous books of the series:

It all began on April 4. I'd spent the last coupla months in Africa hunting big game, and had even run into murder case.

Title:

"God help any son of a bitch stupid enough to knock off one of my boys. He'll fry - or my name ain't John S. Richards. You know the saying, Rocky - nobody kills a copy and gets away with it."

"That listens good, but it don't work," I argued.

This is the third book titled "Never Kill a Cop" on this blog! If you are curious about the other two, you can find them here and here.

Edition:

Signet #1929, First Printing, April 1961

Cover:

Incredible, we have a cover without a blonde and without a gun! And cool one too, I quite like it. The illustrator is not credited, but the style and colour palette are very similar to the one from my previous post.

Cool lines:

Rocky has a weird fascination with the animal kingdom, fish in particular. The phone, for example, is "dead mackerel", and I needed ChatGPT to explain it to me. Happy now to share it with you:

Yes, the term "dead mackerel" is a metaphorical expression used to refer to a phone that is not ringing or receiving any calls. Essentially, it implies that the phone is as inactive as a dead fish. This expression is often used humorously or informally to describe a period of quiet or lack of communication on the phone.

But there are many, many, many more hard-to-decipher metaphors that I didn't bother the poor AI robot with. Have fun:

• It was raining so hard that day a good healthy salmon could have swum straight up to heaven and spawned angelfish.
• My spirits were lower than whale dung, and that's on the bottom of the sea.
• The chick was as hot as little sister on her wedding night in one way and as cold as a well-digger's ass in the Klondike in another.
• She was as rigid as a rifle barrel.
• I was hungry as a bitch with ten pups.
• This deal was as mixed up as a Western omelet.
• The windows were as dark as Suzie Wong's past. 
• The night was as black as the inside of a wolf's mouth at midnight.
• The cabby got gabby. I needed his talk like I needed leprosy.
• He figured like a second-class Mongolian idiot.

And finally, let's wrap it up with some words of Steele wisdom:

Experience had taught me that when they fall on their back or on the seat of their pants, watch for 'em to get up again, but when they fall on their kisser, the fight's over. Forget it.