Dead at the Take-Off (Lester Dent, 1946)

Let's start with the main plot and its subplots. As crazy as this stuff is, it is still the easiest to put into words.

A guy escapes an assassination attempt in New Mexico, fakes his death and flees to New York. But hired killers track him down, make sure their second try is the final one, and now have one day to transport his corpse back to the West Coast. The guy got killed because he wanted to sell some trade papers to our hero, who is now on the plane, accompanied by a couple of sidekicks, to meet him. The plane's stewardess, Mary, is his ex-flame and is currently being courted by both the pilot and the first officer, Carl. Also on the plane is the dead guy's sister (their father will join at the stopover in Kansas City), and also on the plane is Mary's asshole ex-husband. And, of course, the three killers are transporting the corpse on this very same fucking plane.

Is this a screwball comedy? A cosy mystery in the skies? Or, since the doors cannot be locked tighter anywhere but on the plane, could this be a locked door mystery? Nope, none of these. Not by far! It is actually a very high-brow intellectual character study. How else would one explain the writing as exquisite as this:

With terrified suddenness the sound of running water ceased in the bathroom.

Awareness of personal danger took a cold bite at his mind.

He saw now there were undercurrents, perhaps counterplots, on which he had not counted.

He shaded his pretended surprise overcarefully with an expression of dubiety, equally fake.

So, yes, it's one of those...  Where people are purloining, not stealing. They prevaricate instead of being truthful. They fall with jolting unexpectedness. Some have particular anatomical features like spatulalike fingers (but with square tips), and others have leonine heads. Some possess cold, calculating calm. 

The late great Elmore Leonard would be appalled because here nobody ever simply says something. They do it hoarsely (9), softly (4), bitterly (4), sharply (3), violently (3), quietly (3), coldly (3), grimly (2), archly (2), casually (2), gloomily (2), earnestly (2), harshly (2), urgently (2), levelly (2), thoughtfully (2), foolishly (1), feelingly (1), politely (1), unsmilingly (1), gravely (1), slyly (1), diplomatically (1), vaguely (1), pleasantly (1), instantly (1), lightly (1), gaily (1), cunningly (1), patiently (1), briskly (1), impulsively (1), wildly (1), unheedingly (1), stiffly (1), huskily (1), angrily (1), icily (1), positively (1), flatly (1), dryly (1), thickly (1), crisply (1), heavily (1), uncertainly (1)

For all you data science people out there: the grand total of all these adjective/adverb occurrences used with speech-related verbs is 257. Thank you very much, ChatGPT!

Mind you, these are just speech-related! They do it pallidly, sometimes with guttural vehemence. Other times with a timbrous voice. The voice that can also flow forth confidently, melodiously, and reassuringly. If required, they speak a language of slanderous vulgarity. And sometimes they appear moribund or trancelike. They can feel exultant, or at least vibrant. With beatific feelings...  

What can I say!? This is relentless and simply brilliant! But I must admit that without Kindle's built-in dictionary, I'd likely get unendurably agitated after the first chapter! In such a case, I might stare at nothing with splenetic violence or a peculiar expression of ferocious purpose.

About ten years ago, when I started to encounter such archaic prose in pre-50s paperbacks, I was taken aback, but I've since learned to enjoy it immensely. To be quite frank, I laughed my ass off as some of this shit is genuinely hilarious. Especially in the second half, when the story pretty much plays itself and we just need to go through a bunch of drama.

Another joy is reading about the commercial aviation industry, which was, in 1946, a complete novelty (I guess), and the author is fascinated with everything about it. There's a telephone service on board (but it's a new thing, so not everyone knows about it), there's a sleeper section, and separate lounges for men and women. The passengers are divided into compartments, so it sounds more like a train, if you ask me. Needless to say, they can smoke (and they do it a lot!) on the plane and also while having a stroll on the tarmac during the stopover wait. And yes, there's no problem bringing the guns on board. 

But let's wrap this up by returning to the story. Surprisingly, and very appreciated, there is no happy end; our guy doesn't get the girl! And the other romance with the triangle around Mary finishes odd - one of the lads suffers a heart attack, so it's not exactly clear (at least not to me) who our stewardess will choose.

So nothing conventional about this one! 

4/5

Facts:

Hero:

He considered and weighed Molloy. He had not been impressed by Molloy’s hard physical strength, but he had recognized a relentless efficiency in Molloy, and it worried him. Bitterly he told himself: I should have been more wary with that man, whoever he is. He is a capable man, accustomed to action, and he has confidence. A dangerous man.

His sidekick #1, George:

Thick, stolid, obviously a hard-muscled man, and probably a sudden one, George had the formidability of an army tank.

His sidekick #2, Kiggins:

Kiggins was a strange, icy woman from whom he had never seen a single display of a warm emotion. He didn’t think she was frigid inside. He suspected Kiggins of being made like a bomb, with a hard casing.

The bad guy(s):

Men like Senator Lord had to be stopped, made to pay. This, Molloy reflected, could be called socially essential.

Dames: 

Janet Lord, old pot o’ gold’s daughter, herself: 

Janet Lord’s face was rather monotonously oval, the way pretty girls’ faces are oval, but the mouth was nice, the nose had character, and there was alertness about the eyes. 

Mary Rounds, the stewardess:

She looked five years younger than she was—she was twenty-five—and she was lovely, her face having a sulky quality that was provocative; her body slim, rounded, exciting.

Location:

From downtown New York to the airport terminal (with a limousine!), flying to Pittsburgh and then to Kansas City (where the temperature at 10 pm is 92 degrees!). Airborne again, but turning back after the final shootout up in the clouds.

Worth mentioning here that Mr Dent invented a new colour: 

The terminal building was made of bricks that should have been clean but weren’t. The bricks were darkly filmed. They were Pittsburgh color, not dirty, exactly, but an industrial color.

Body count:

6

The object of desire:

Never, he imagined, would he again sleep well until Al’s death was avenged ... Morbid? ... Perhaps. But Al had been his only brother, actually all he had left of close blood kin.

Blackouts:

/

References:

In the seat beside George, Kiggins lowered the book she was reading. The book was Die Geburt der Tragödie, by Friedrich Nietzsche, in the original, which was enough to scare George by itself. 

But can you imagine the consternation of these representatives when they saw our Nick Carter-like approach to Janet Lord, the senator’s daughter? Their moves, being startled moves, might be crude ones.

Title:

Very accurate, there's a corpse on board at take off. And there will be several more when the plane finally lands.

Edition:

eBook

Cover:

Pretty generic one as expected for an eBook edition, but I'm including two old ones that I nicked off this blog with a nice review and this amazing site that has lots of information about the book publishing history.

Cool lines:

There are so many of them that I need to divide this section into several categories. 

First, the usual ones:

The corpse, she knew, was a corpse. She knew it instantly—horribly.

His thoughts turned and rushed at Molloy the way a small dog attacks a moving automobile.

“Dolan!” Batsie croaked.

“Huh?” Dolan wheeled.

“Oh. What do I do?”

“Add both of them to your sphere of observation.”

“Your enfeebled body, Senator, is an invitation for pity,” Molloy said harshly.

“You called the johns?” Batsie croaked. [johns are the cops]

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Molloy laughed. “For you, my little friend.”

A creeping paralysis took Batsie.

Some language acrobatics

Two days now, I tell myself nothing but no. I do it with flourishes, like this: ‘I deny, disavow, negate, and abnegate, and I disaffirm, abjure, disclaim, and contradict.’ 

Molloy had his gaze fixed on the small man and George. He was seeking to gauge the chances of an immediate flare-up. 

They sprang with horror-stricken singleness of purpose upon the corpse.

She waited. It was his venturesome nature to plunge at once into the matter, and he plunged.

Some true WTFs

He was abruptly hungry, ravenously hungry; then, in a moment, the hunger recoiled senselessly and he not only had no desire for food, but also felt as if he had never been hungry and might never be again.

The pillow, large and soft and as white as the inside of a nun’s hood...

...as if his ideas were frightened pigeons and he was trying to catch them and make them all sit in an orderly row on a rail. 

The eyes, large, clear, lustrous, an intense blue-black, could not have snapped more lustily over an algebra book at a high-school girl.

Molloy’s smile was the smile of a pleased satyr.

And let's conclude with some aerodynamic ones

The plane hit more down-currents. Usually turbulence extends for quite a distance, often as much as twenty miles, ahead of cold-front thunderstorms. The air liner had entered this. It flew unsteadily, first one wing tip going up or down, then the other, like an embarrassed but dignified lady who was quite drunk.

The turbulence of which was now behind and through with. The air ahead would be cool and hard with a feeling of life to it, not soft and without body, like the warm air mass they had left.

The wheels kissed. There was, for a moment, a tortured scream, the voice of a thousand agonies, from the tread of tires scrubbing the runway.

The passengers’ dinner had been served and eaten. Faces had the smug, titillated look that comes from full bellies and the pleasures of digestion.

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.