Some Die Young (James Duff, 1956)

I really enjoyed Duff’s "Who Dies There?" and was eager to check out the second (and last) instalment of his P.I. Johnny Pelham series, published that same year. But unless I’m missing something (and I doubt I am), or my standards have mysteriously shot up since last October (they haven’t), this one could as well be written by some other author. 

One of those formulaic, connecting-the-dots mysteries where every action (however illogical it is) and clue inevitably leads our hero step-by-step to the conclusion with a surprising twist. The twist that I saw coming even before the author was finished setting it up.

Nothing really works, and on a few occasions, it gets so bad that it's actually fun to read. There's a scene in which our Johnny remembers a piece of scratch paper he had snatched, and then it takes him five minutes to go through his coat pockets to find it. Five. Fucking. Minutes!?!

But there are many more painfully bad ones. Nasty shit about slapping women around and being just generally rude ("you are too old for me") towards the fairer sex. And lots of shit that is simply stupid. When, for some reason, Johnny decides to mess up the crime scene, he informs us that he did so using his handkerchief so that... you know, he wouldn't leave any fingerprints!

Mr. Duff simply didn't understand the basic mechanics of crime fiction and its target audience. Nor women. And he most certainly wasn’t quite up to date on the streamlined efficiency of the average 1950s man’s coat.

Mediocre and boring. No wonder the series lasted only a couple of books. At least it saves me from having to write that I'm through with it... But I'm still glad to pick up the first one.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero:

"You come very highly recommended, Mr. Phelan. I've been told you're very discreet. I hope you can remain so."

"For fifty dollars a day," I said, "I can be the soul of discretion."

Dames: 

"What do you know about Claire Harding?" I asked.

She straightened the skirt over her knees. Her eyes were serious.
"For the suckers, or you?"
"For me."
"She's a bitch."
I waited for her to continue.
"I mean that—you be careful. She's a first-class bitch. She's cut more throats in this business than I'd care to think about."

But bitch or no bitch, she is shockingly beautiful:

She came through the doorway then, and I got to my feet. She was a little older than she appeared to be on the screen, but, still and all, she was positively the most shockingly beautiful woman I had ever seen. The sunsuit was much too brief for my comfort.

And then there's Dianne Cochran, her personal secretary/confidante with an overly large mouth and quite ample bosom:

Her face just missed being beautiful; it was wide, with high cheekbones and an overly large mouth. Her bright black hair was cut short, her legs were long and trim and her bosom was quite ample, even in this crowd.

And finally, elusive Helen Bethke, the slut:

“If that’s what is troubling you,” I said, “I can see your problem.”

Claire Harding turned to look at me. Anger crossed her face and left it. She didn’t like to be compared with other women, especially young ones.

“That, as you so aptly put it, Mr. Phelan, is not my problem. She’s just a young slut. She has no talent.”

Location:

Hollywood, land of divorce, masquerade and make-up.

Body count:

4

 

The object of desire:

"Harrison is in some kind of trouble, Mr. Phelan," she said. "I'm not sure just what kind it is. But he hasn't been himself lately."
"You want me to find out what that trouble is?"
"That's right."
"Sounds simple enough."

Obviously, it only sounds simple. It will turn into some incomprehensible "dope racket" mud in which the European syndicate is buying 250k worth of drugs from Americans. 

Blackouts:

He was running down the aisle between the booths, heading for the back door. I started to follow. A hand grabbed me roughly by the shoulder and then something hard hit me in the back of the head and then it was like it always is . . .
It always scares the hell out of me.

Title:

Misleading, none of the deceased here are particularly young. But since 75% of victims are private detectives (I kid you not!), maybe something like "Some Die as PIs" would be more appropriate?

Edition:

Graphic #139, no printing date or edition specified

Cover:

Pretty standard woman-in-peril cover. By Roy Lance and the guy is credited, which is always nice to see.

Cool lines:

This section should be blank, but I thought it would be fun (of sorts) to share some of Johnny's witty, sharp one-liners

"That's a bad habit," she said.
"All habits are bad," I said.

"There are cops and cops," I said. "And there are people and people."

"You're not saying much."
"No, I'm not."

"Go to hell," I said.

And the concluding paragraph:

I stood there, and just looked.
It was a nice night.
Yeah, it was.
THE END

Murder in the Raw (Bruno Fischer, 1957)

Given that Bruno Fischer is more than solid, and given that a lot is happening in this one, it is quite astonishing how boring it is. Unless you are into corny romances? Because sparks start flying right away between our hero Clem and beautiful Elena, and we are not even halfway through, when shit like this becomes the norm:

"It's no good," she said.
"What isn't?"
"It can't work out."
"Elena, I love you."
"You mustn't."
"Do you love me?"
"It's not that. There are too many ghosts."

And by the time this suffering ends, we can hear the wedding bells. 

Other than that, it's yet another dysfunctional family drama, with the usual sexual repressions and "bad blood" neurosis passing through generations. Fisher is good, but he's no Ross Macdonald; there's no pace to speak of, some dialogues are borderline idiotic, and most of the characters are just dull.  

However, I'd like to conclude this review on a positive note. For all the Hollywood writers who are tirelessly scanning the internet for old and obscure pulp books waiting to be adapted to the big screen (and I know there must be millions of you out there!), here are a few tips on how to make this one work:

• Drop one of Elena's siblings. Having two fucked up childred is enough. I vote for Kirk to leave the stage as he doesn't bring much to the story, and Echo is the only really cool character in this sleeper. See the 'cool lines' below and you'll see what I mean.
• Cocker spaniel Desdemona needs to go
• If Desdemona stays, she must be killed. I realise it sounds harsh, but this could be used to develop one of the mob henchmen's psychotic character. 
• The scene (four pages!) with our suspects group playing tennis is an insult, and I felt intellectually abused while reading it. This simply has to go.
• The whole artistic background of Art has to go. Nothing but ballast.
• The Agatha Christie-esque stuff with the unfinished painting of six faceless women fading into mountains is confusing and unnecessary. I doubt that even the author himself knew what this was all about (see the 'references' section of the facts below). Off it goes, too!
• But number one! You need to do something about the main character!! Spending vacation with his mother? Having to have breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee before allowing himself a first cigarette of the day?? Going to the bathroom to change clothes when his Elena is present??? Unbearable... is it possible for anyone to be more soft-boiled than that?

So, simply paste these bullet points into your AI's prompt of choice, and you'll have a guaranteed blockbuster! You are very welcome.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:

"Clem Prosper, who is called by his first name by the President of the United States."

Dames: 

Beautiful Elena Tearle and her horny (half?) sister Echo. Also, Clem's journalist buddy Carrie:

"Remember me, Mrs. Season? My byline is Caroline Hunter."

"The sobsister," Elena said contemptuously.

"You're out of date, my dear," Carrie purred. "There are no longer sobsisters. There are future writers."

Location:

Some idyllic village beside the lake, 250 miles north of NYC. There are also flashbacks to the story that take place in Bronxville, apparently a posh suburb of New York, where Elena and her gangster hubby bought a swanky house.

"When all was revealed after his murder, his neighbours couldn't have been more astonished if they'd discovered a Democrat had been living in their midst."

Body count:

3

The object of desire:

To make Elena an honest woman, and possibly find out who killed his best friend.

Blackouts:

A proper one:

"Kick him! he said. "Smash his kidneys!"

Flicker's legs in the baggy clacks appeared on the other side of me. One foot drew back. I twisted my torso, for whatever good that could do, but he kicked higher up. His shoe caught me in the temple.

That ended it for me. I drifted off into a darkness where there was no more punishment.

And there's another one that I'm includng for completion and to illustrate what a sissy our main hero is:

She had poured me a big one. It hit me when I stood up to go to the refrigerator. The pictures on the four walls spun in a nightmare of color. I spun with them. I floated away from the table. I forgot what I had got up to do. I collapsed in the armchair.
Some time later Carrie was speaking to me. I had no notion how much later.

References:

Clem know his crime books:

“The dog that didn’t bark at night,” I murmured, watching the frisky cocker spaniel romping on the grass. Elena shot me a puzzled sidelong look and I explained. “From Sherlock Holmes. Dogs bark at night, and the puzzle was why that particular one hadn’t. That goes for Desdemona as well. Why didn’t she make an uproar over strangers being on the grounds?”

And he is an intellectual, well-versed in Greek mythology:

“Echo,” she murmured, not looking at me.
“That’s right, Ira’s interpretation of the story of Echo. You know the myth. Echo was a mountain nymph who pined so for Narcissus that she faded until nothing was left of her but a voice. A girl named Echo posing for him must have given Ira the idea. Echo the model for Echo the mountain nymph. Ira had that kind of mind.”

Title:

Two out of three victims are murdered by shotgun shots to the head, so this probably qualifies them as being "in the raw".

Edition:

Gold Medal #1011, Second Printing, February 1961

Cover:

Clem's damsel-in-distress rescue #2, when he pulls Elena out of the water naked.

Cool lines:

"She shot Barney in the face with a shotgun. They say it was an awful mess. And he was so frightfully handsome. Elena hasn't been the same since." She gave me a bright, quick grin. "Neither has Barney, for that matter," she added, and giggled.

"Do you think I'm as attractive as Elena?"

"You're different types," I said judiciously.

"Our coloring," she agreed. "And our features aren't at all alike. Sometimes I think we're really half-sisters. I mean our mother used to play around a lot."

All the Way (Charles Williams, 1958)

It doesn't exactly start with a bang. Williams opens the book with a merciless unleashing of his blue-water noir: outriggers, halyards, gimbals, free spools, ground swells, etc. Relentless shit, it just doesn't stop. As a non-native speaker and complete fishing ignoramus, I spent more time googling these terms and laughing my ass off while decypring them using this nautical slang dictionary.

Luckily, as soon as the first chapter concludes, we’re back on terra firma. And we’ve got ourselves a femme fatale - one with a serious axe to grind with her ex-boss/lover. She’s a woman scorned, and hell hath no fury, right? So she makes our clueless hero fall for her, then pulls him into a perfect crime scheme. And... as cliched and tired as it sounds, it works and it’s just great! Even though the plot requires some suspension of disbelief, it hardly matters - the pace is so frantic that the reader (at least this reader) doesn’t have time to spot the plot holes. It also doesn’t hurt that the writing is superb.

The ending’s cool, too - sort of subversive in that it refuses to deliver a shocking twist. The twist is the lack of one. Our duo pulls off the perfect crime and gets to keep the loot, but they break down psychologically and emotionally. I usually go for more hard-boiled stuff, but it’s actually refreshing to see this kind of conclusion now and then. Still noir-ish and dark as hell. 

Probably the best Williams I have read so far.

4.5/5

Facts:

Hero:

However, let me finish this dossier. Correct me if there are any errors. Your full name is Jerome Langston Forbes, you’re usually called Jerry, you’re twenty-eight, and you are from Texas—at least, originally. You’re single. You drink moderately but you gamble too much, and at least twice you’ve been involved in a messy affair with a married woman. You attended Rice Institute and the University of Texas, but didn’t graduate from either. I believe it was some trouble over a crap game at Rice, and you left the University of Texas to go into the Navy during the Korean war. You don’t appear to be the plodding type of wage-earner, to say the least. Since your discharge from the service in nineteen fifty-three you’ve owned a bar in Panama, written advertising copy for two or three San Francisco agencies, been a race-track tout, and at the time you got into this brawl in Las Vegas you were doing publicity for some exhibitionist used-car dealer in Los Angeles. Is that fairly accurate?”

Dames: 

Exquisitely feminine, nicely moving Miss Marian Forsyth:

Too slender, I thought, to attract much attention among all the stacked and sun-gilded flesh lying around on Florida beaches, but she was smart-looking and exquisitely feminine and she moved nicely. She appeared to be around thirty.

Location:

All over the US. Most of the action takes place in Florida, in several cities where our guy is establishing his air-tight alibi, but he also flies briefly to New York. Towards the end, he is in San Francisco, then spends some time mourning in Mexico, and finally ends up in New Orleans, where it all began.

Body count:

One proper murder and one suicide.

The object of desire:

Marian wants to kill her ex-lover and steal 170k bucks from him. Or is it the other way around? 

She was right, of course. It all fitted perfectly, like the stones in an Inca wall. If sheer deadliness could be beautiful, this operation of hers was a masterpiece.

Blackouts:

/

References:

I was lying in bed around eleven reading The Hidden Persuaders when the phone rang.

Title:

Fitting as they both indeed do go all the way. But it could also be titled something like "Concrete Flamingo". Jerry buys one of these statues (God, the things you people sell to tourists!) so that he can weigh the body to keep it underwater. Once the search for Chapman's body starts, this concrete flamingo catches the morbid public fancy.

Edition:

Dell First Edition #A165, First Printing - September 1958

Cover:

Nice Kim Novak illustration by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka. It depicts our pair's farewell scene, see the "cool lines" section below.

Cool lines:

“Good night, Marian.” I looked back from the open doorway, and, as always, she reminded me of something very slender and beautifully made and expensive—and utterly wasted—like a Stradivarius in a world in which the last musician was dead. I closed the door and went on down the hall.