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.

Who Dies There? (James Duff, 1956)

Graphic Books has become one of my favourite pulp publishers in recent years. I love their dark covers, and it happened more than once that I would buy their books blindly when chasing the stuff online. You know how it goes when you find some good deal on eBay: you just have to check out the seller's other items... 

But we don't buy these paperbacks just for their covers (or do we?). We actually try to read some of them, and the great thing about the Graphics is that I'm yet to find one that would really suck. I have been pleasantly surprised by some completely unknown authors, and I'm happy to report that this happened again with Mr James Duff, of whom I had never heard before picking up this one.

It's pretty much a Ross Macdonald clone with the familiar theme of messed-up families where sins and neurosis are passed from one generation to the next with devastating effects that finally culminate in a tragic and sad ending. You can only keep your shit swept under the rug for so long... 

It's not flawless. The dialogue could use a bit of rewriting, and plot development is occasionally silly and not very believable. For example, our sleuthing hero spooks some guy by nothing more than simply calling him three times and hanging up the phone. Really?

But the plot is decent, easy to follow (unlike Macdonald, with all due respect...), and delivers a good twist at the end. True, there are some cliches (like best friend cop), but it manages to avoid the most annoying ones like sex bombs throwing themselves at the hero and similar juvenile nonsense. Plenty hard-boiled also, which is always a plus.

The biggest reason why the book works is the hero, John J. Phelan. He comes in the grand tradition of Marlowe and Archer as the disillusioned loner, full of self-doubts, a bit sentimental, and with his own moral compass. We don't get to know anything about his past except that he was in WW2, and we can speculate that, somehow, that experience damaged him. I liked the way he gets introduced: upon receiving the fee, he immediately calls his bookie and places a bet with the entire amount. Nice touch. We now know everything we need to know about him without going into the usual stuff about the unpaid bills pilling...

I also loved the way it ends. There will be no sense of justice being served or any redemption for the family involved (The hell with them, I thought; the hell with them all). Johnny gets the second instalment of his fee (another 100 bucks), promptly calls the bookie and places another bet. The horse's name? Missie Gloom. And the bookie's response? "Ah, Johnny-boy, you're nuts. She won't even get outa the gate".

How much more noir-ish can one get?

4/5

Facts:

Hero:

What in hell, Phelan, what in hell? Why weren't you an accountant or a ditch digger or a truckdriver or a bank clerk or any goddamned thing but a private eye?

A good question. The only trouble with it was that it was unanswerable to the guy who had asked it. Me.

The bad guy(s):

"I'm Egan. Richie Egan. This is my place."

I said: "I'll now turn four handsprings and look to the heavens for guidance."

Dames: 

Pendleton sisters:

Honor wasn't a bad-looking dish, if you liked them thin. I didn't.

Landrith "was as beautiful as anything I'd ever seen, and she knew it".

Finally, our hero's love interest is the beautiful redhead Jean Gibbon - Miss SeaVue of Astoria, Oregon, 1953.

Location:

L.A.

Body count:

4 + a nasty dog called Turk

Blackouts:

The guy kept hitting me, and hitting me some more. He used his fist on my face and midsection, and his knee on my groin. He would grunt each time he hit me, and the other guy in the chair would laugh.

The last thing I remember was him hitting me.

They sure as hell enjoyed themselves.

References:

It's not exactly a reference that I usually write about, but it was depressing to read that the radios in 1956 were already reporting "about the latest skirmish on the Gaza border".

Title:

It sounds cool, but it's pretty silly when one thinks about it. There's never any doubt about who died in some particular location in this one.

Edition:

Graphic #134, no printing date or edition specified

Cover:

By Walter Popp. It depicts a scene in which drunk Honor tries to kill Johnny.

Cool lines:

/

Blonde on the Rocks (Carter Brown, 1963)

Let's stay on the rocks for another review, moving from the murder to a blonde. And yes, it's Carter Brown, so we can expect a new dosage of infantile and cryptic humour. Luckily, this one is from his Rick Holman series and not from the farcical and, in my opinion, much inferior Al Wheeler or Danny Boyd series.

The setup was quite original, and I liked it a lot. It opens with a famous actress hiring our troubleshooter to find out who had killed her! Obviously, not literally (even Carter Brown is now whacky enough for something like that), but killing in Hollywood can also mean blacklisting, which is precisely what happened to unfortunate Della. She hires Holman to discover who and why "put her on the ice".

Rick Holman discovers all that by the end of the next chapter. We are still only at page 30.

Holman keeps digging because there are some shady circumstances surrounding the incidental (yeah, right!) demise of Della's lover in a car accident. But he's pretty inefficient and will only be able to muster a grand total of three suspects by the time the book finishes. One of them turns out to be insane and gets incarcerated in an asylum, so the prospect of some big final roundup looks less and less likely. You don't need to take my word for it; such an idea sounds "childish and stupid" even to our main guy...

Fortunately for him, there will be no mandatory suspects roundup in this one as the murderer storms into Rick's house and tries to settle everything with a bit of a gunfight. Cool! And there's even a nice twist with body-swapping that I didn't see coming. Even cooler!

That covers the beginning and the end, but what happens in the middle? In one word: women! There are pages and pages of superlatives about the number of beauties that Holman encounters. The whole thing is so idiotic and over the top that it actually becomes funny to read. Check out the "dames" section below, and you'll see what I mean. 

Peasant-rich curves? Delicate ankles? With all due respect, Mr Brown,... but come on!?!!

3/5

Facts:

Hero:

You've gotten to be a real big man in your own line, right? These days anybody in the whole goddamned business has got troubles, what do they do? Right away they send for Rick Holman!

The bad guy(s):

Erik Stanger strode into the office, looking like something Wagner composed on an off day.

Dames: 

I liked them all! Witty and delightfully amoral.

Let's start with Della August, the titular blonde and one of the three top actresses in Hollywood. In the opening scene, our hero is struck by "the impact of the swelling curve of her jutting breasts and the long line of her lovely legs."

Not to mention that "her negligee is merely a silken sheath that hides her peasant-rich curves from his always vulgar gaze."

Then there's the bad guy's wife, Mrs Monica King:

It was like nature had made a big joke when it made her - by giving her about the most sexually appealing body of any woman I had ever seen in my whole life.

The brief black bikini only emphasised the magnetic nudity of that glorious abundance of flowing curves and spheres. Her breasts flowed outward with the majesty of a tidal river, until they culminated in a deeep fulfilment that made your whole body ache with desire at first glance. Her waist was a fragile, incredibly small bridge that merged into the swelling curves of her hips, which looked like they had been machine-turned, with a tolerance close to a ten-thousandth of an inch, into erotic perfection. Her legs were equal parts perfect, with rounded thighs, slender calves, and delicate ankles.

My favourite one would definitely be Eugenie St. Clair:

A tall, lithe brunette. Large, luminous dark eyes. High, exquisitely molded cheekbones. Both lips full and invitingly soft. A beautiful face, an intelligent face.

I figured that predatory was the word I wanted, maybe.

It has to be said that she has absolutely no role in this book, but I didn't really mind. How could I, as long as she came up with crazy stuff like this:

"Tell me more, Mr. Holman?" she whispered huskily. "Do you find my face beautiful? Is that why your vocal cords were paralyzed all that time? Or perhaps the deep sorrow that overshadows my life shows in my face - to a kindly man of the world gifted with acute perception, such as yourself?"

Location:

Tinseltown

Body count:

2

The object of desire:

"Why would they do this to you?" I asked.

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know why, that's what I want you to find out, Rick. They started out to kill me, and in six months they've almost done it. I feel like a ghost already, with no work, no offers even, no nothing!

Blackouts:

We have one, and it's a bit unconventional. Holman is in a regular fistfight, but when he receives a punch in the solar plexus, he plunges into "a soaring whirlpool of blinding colors, alternating with Stygian darkness".

Luckily, we don't need to wait long for the explanation:

"Ah! You are back with us now? It hurt, but it was even worse in your mind, yes? That is because I was very scientific when I hit you. No permanent damage, but a temporary and partial paralysis of the diaphragm."

Title:

Della is blonde and has been "put on ice (rocks?) with all the studios". 

Edition:

Signet G2328, First Printing, July 1963

Cover:

Beautiful and sexy, by McGinnis. I'm adding the second edition's cover as it is equally great. Looks like they both came from the same photoshoot.

Cool lines:

"Oh, of course!" She giggled again. "I am stupid, aren't I?"
"Yes," I said simply.

I'd rather drop into the nearest cemetery and read the headstones than talk over old times with you.

I'll bet the only shotgun she's ever seen in her life was at her first wedding!

Murder On The Rocks (Robert Dietrich, 1957)

It's bad enough that our hero is a pipe-smoking accountant, but what really kills this one is that he is a self-absorbed, narcissistic snob who has an opinion on everything and everybody. He keeps making idiotic, corny jokes and comments that sometimes border on bizarre.

I'll give you an example: when he notices two teenage girls (heavy-chested!) staring at lurid covers of horror books displayed on the magazine rack, he just can't help himself but bark at them:

"Back to your algebra. When you're a little older it'll be a big help to your husband in figuring a system to beat the ponies."
The girl's eyes popped open. "Huh?"
"Well," I said, "it was a thought for the day." 

I don't know... Am I too literal-minded? Is someone out there who finds this kind of shit even remotely funny? You're welcome to leave the comment below.

Since he's an accountant, it would be unfair to hold his lack of detective skills against him. Like every efficient bureaucrat, he hires a proper private detective and takes over the investigation once he gets a short list of suspects. And I wonder why he takes over because he never misses a chance to explicitly explain to everyone around him that he is not a proper PI and has no intention of getting involved in the case.

The case? The standard story of some missing, insanely expensive diamond, a couple of murders, one junkie, a beautiful night-club singer, two horny sisters throwing themselves at our hero, a sinister mafia guy, incompetent police that is nowhere to be seen, etc. To be honest, it starts all right, but after the first fifty pages or so, it gets stale. Most definitely nothing that we haven't read before. 

So, yes, it's bad, and you may wonder why I even bother writing this review. The reason is simple: it contains the most ludicrous plot device I have ever encountered. And I'm a big Mike Avallone fan! Now check this: Steve narrows down his suspects to just a couple of them because he realises that the culprit is most likely a drug addict. So far, so good. The good old elimination method, right? But the crazy part is that one of his remaining suspects got hooked up on morphine when he was imprisoned in the fucking concentration camp!!!

No need to make tasteless jokes about nazi experiments in death camps, so let's stop right here. 

It's difficult to admit, but I'm beginning to realise that my relationship with our favourite Watergate spy is beyond salvageable. As love affairs often do, ours started a good ten years ago with a bang when I was devouring Hard Case Crime books and read his brilliant House Dick (which, btw, still has my favourite HCC cover!). Since those days, everything just kept going downhill, and I've been through a series of forgettable novels.

This one is at least memorable but for the wrong reasons. Skip it.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:

Steve Bentley, a tax consultant.

You're alert, quick, and highly intelligent. You've proved yourself in the world of business and you have your clients' respect. By any standards you're quite sufficiently cultured to mingle with any social group. You're honest, solid, and you have integrity. And beneath it all you're little bit of a snob. Do I make myself clear?

The bad guy(s):

When Cadena was a tank sergeant on Luzon he had pulled the head off a dead Jap to win a ten-cent bet.

Dames: 

Two daughters of some Banana Republic ambassador: Iris Sewall (with eyelashes bigger than butterflies) and Sara Cutler (The little sister. She looked like a mantrap).

Plus Janice Western, the night club singer: She had the look of a female with plenty in the bank and a private way to get more.

And let's not forget Mrs Bross, his ageing secretary who enjoys shopping during her lunch breaks.

Location:

As for Washington, it has, per capita, more rape, more crimes of violence, more perversion, more politicians, more liquor, more good food, more bad food, more tax collections, more hotels and apartments and more gold toothpicks than any city in the world. A fine place if you have enterprise, durability, money and powerful friends.

Body count:

3

The object of desire:

The Madagascar Green. La Verde de Madagascar. Cleopatra's Emerald. It was too romantic for me, the terms were too large, the menace too heavy.

Blackouts:

/

References:

In his typical condescending style, Steve treats us with a short review of The Teahouse of the August Moon:

The movie was Marlon Brando with gauze tapes slanting his eyelids and a straw coolie hat shaped like a hollow gong, the kind J. Arthur Rank's blacksmith beats in those British films. In the picture Brando spoke a lot of Japanese and some English. The pronunciation of both was bad, but I assume there was artistry behind it all.

Title:

We have some murders, and there's the precious rock of Madagascar Green diamond, so it's close enough. But even the title of this one could be improved; how about something like "Deadly Harvest of Cleopatra's Emerald"?

Edition:

Dell #A141, First edition, first printing - June 1957

Cover:

It's horrible, and unfortunately, it's similar to what we see in bookstores today. Would it be possible that Dell's art director was as unimpressed with the book as I was, so he just threw a sketch of some damsel in distress at the bottom and splashed the title in big letters all over the page? Sloppy and so very un-pulpy.

Cool lines:

/