Nightmare Town (Dashiell Hammett, 1948)

Last week marked the 60th anniversary of Hammett's death, so a quick tribute post is more than appropriate. After all, the guy can easily be considered the godfather to 90% of the authors featured on this blog.

A nice collection of three novelettes and one tiny, not even four pages long, story titled Albert Pastor at Home. Amusing (obviously) quick read, published in Esquire magazine in 1933. But even more funny is the anecdote about its origin provided by Ellery Queen in his warm introduction. Apparently, Hammett's agent had sold one story "exclusively" to two magazines, and Dashiell just penned this one quickly to solve the dispute! Oh, the good ol' days...

Two of the stories feature Continental Op. Scorched Face and Corkscrew were both published in 1925, and this is evident in their heavy influence by the Western genre. Especially the latter one, which is a decent take on the Yojimbo Red Harvest theme of the two gangs in a town not big enough for both of them. 

Good stuff, but I liked the Scorched Face better. A terrific plot, snappy street-wise dialogue, loads of action, and authenticity in describing the machinery of a big detective agency. Additionally, our Op hero has never been more determined to break the case. What spoiled it a bit for me was this totally over-the-top raid and shootout at the end. I prefer my detectives to be a bit subtler.

But the real prize of this collection is the titular Nightmare Town. Written in 1924, it precedes Hammett's hard-boiled bible, Red Harvest, for a few years. They are similar thematically, but this one is cruder and much crazier. It's like watching a 70s Italian Giallo where nothing really makes sense, but you don't mind all that much because everything is so stylish, and all the women are beautiful (and usually beautifully murdered). But the confusion here is created intentionally, and our hero is as lost amid all the WTFs as we are:

Was there never to be an end to this piling of mystery upon mystery, of violence upon violence? He had the sensation of being caught in a monstrous net – a net without beginning or end, and whose meshes were slimy with blood. Nausea – spiritual and physical – gripped him, held him impotent.

Mystery does get resolved, and this resolution is what makes Nightmare Town memorable. It's so preposterous and bonkers that, after the initial amazement, it actually makes sense. At least it made sense to me. If you like the final act of Jim Thompson's The Getaway, there's no way you won't like this one. And, for the record, I fucking love The Getaway!

Speaking of closing acts, this one also concludes in a somewhat surreal manner. To draw an analogy with movies once again, it reminded me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with our surviving couple fleeing the chaos (corruption?) behind them. Again, maybe not. Maybe it's not symbolic at all, and I only saw what I wanted to see. But in any case, it's brilliant stuff.

The beginning of the year is a time for resolutions, so here's mine. No, I will not stop smoking. Instead, I'll complete my Hammett's Dell collection. One down, five to go! If you have any spare copies that you're willing to trade or sell, please feel free to send me a message.

4/5

Facts:

Hero: 

2 x Continental Op

1 x Steve Threefall:

"Is that your real name?" the marshal asked.

"Of course it is," the justice snapped. "You don't think anybody'd be damn fool enough to give a name like that unless it was his, do you?"

Dames: 

These are all tough, masculine stories with no strong female characters. It has to be said, though, that the guys are not testosterone-fueled machos, and gals are not dumb blond bimbos in need of rescue. 

I'm pretty sure that Clio Landes from Corkscrew would be fun to hang out with: 

A thin girl of maybe twenty-five, with too-bright dark eyes, dark, short hair, and a sharp prettiness that was the mark of a larger settlement than this. You've seen her, or her sisters, in the larger cities, in the places that get going after the theaters let out.

Location:

See the Dell map for details.

"A tough town, is it?" Steve asked.

"Couldn't help being! It's only three years old – and a desert boom town draws the tough boys."

The town – I can't get accustomed to it. It's so bleak. No children play in the streets. The people are different from those I've! Known – cruder, more brutal. Even the houses – street after street of them without curtains in the windows, without flowers. No grass in the yards, No trees.

There's a hundred corporations in Izzard that are nothing but addresses on letterheads – but stock certificates and bonds have been sold in them from one end of these United States to the other.

The last one is indeed quite prophetic. And since this post has several movie references, I'll give you another one. Louise-Michel from Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern takes the piss out of these tax "optimizing" letterbox companies in a really smart and funny way. I like everything that these two guys have been doing, and Louise-Michel ranks among the top 3 of their movies. Highly recommended!

Body count:

5 + 5 + 0 + 8 (excluding the pony) = 18

Blackouts:

There's one in Corkscrew after our hero is wounded in a duel:

I missed whatever else he said. The numbness was leaving my side, and the feeling that came in its place wasn't pleasant. Everything stirred inside me...

Title:

See 'Location' section

Edition:

Dell #379

In his introduction, Ellery Queen mentions that Nightmare Town appears in print for the first time since it was published in Argosy All-Story Weekly twenty-six years ago. According to Wikipedia, this was in 1924. There is no printing date information, but it's reasonably safe to assume it's from 1950 at the earliest. 

Cover:

By Robert Stanley. Very noir-ish, it blends nicely into the nightmarish atmosphere of Nightmare Town.

Cool lines:

A sleek-haired young man whose very nice manners and clothes completely hid anything else - brains for instance - he might have had. He was very willing to help me, and he knew nothing. It took him a long time to tell me so. A nice boy.

That was nice. The crazier the people you are sleuthing act, as a rule, the nearer you are to an ending of your troubles.

For answer to that I got a lot of information about myself, my habits, my ancestors. None of it happened to be truth, but it was colorful.

Masters of Noir - Volume 1 (1953-1959, published in 2010)

A great collection that starts slowly but gets better with each story.

Identity Unknown (Jonathan Craig, first published in Manhunt, August 1954)

Nice police procedural. All it takes for our detective is a pair of the victim's expensive shoes to establish her identity and, consequently, her killer. I liked its sharp style. There is no need for (too much) drama and emotions in a short story, right?

The Girl behind the Hedge (Mickey Spillane, first published in Manhunt, October 1953)

It seems like a logical decision for the editors of this compilation to shift gears with Spillane to follow up on the fairly plain opening story. You know - throw in a bit of sex and violence. No, sir.

I don't like writing this, and it's slowly beginning to look like I have something against good old Mickey, but this one is truly horrible. Instead of private eyes, cops, gangsters, dolls etc., we have a moral story about a couple of Wall Street brokers. One is good (?), and the other (surprise, surprise) is not so good. A real asshole, in fact, who some time ago stole the good one's fiancé. Hence, the poor sucker masterminded a diabolical revenge plan by making the asshole desperately fall in love with a mentally disabled girl and kill himself upon realising this.

And yes, that's it. Does it ring a bell? I forgot most about the classical adventures I read back in my primary school days, but this resembles one of those Count of Monte Cristo romantic revenge plots. I hope this is the case and that Spillane was fooling around and/or paying homage to some old master. But at least he stayed the classical Spillane as we know - one of his two protagonists calls this unfortunate girl a "hopeless imbecile". Fucking hell, what was this guy's problem??

Carrera's Woman (Ed McBain writing as Richard Marsten, first published in Manhunt, February 1953)

More like a Western, but still pretty cool. A bad guy vs. a good guy, and a woman playing a cat-and-mouse game in the scorching Mexican sun. Memorable for avoiding the obvious twist at the end.

Butcher (Richard S. Prather, first published in Manhunt, June 1954)

Can a good serial killer hunt story be squeezed into a short story? Probably not. But can a mediocre serial killer hunt story full of incredible coincidences be squeezed into a short story? Yes, definitely - this one is living proof. It's not all bad, and there are some okay moments and a decent twist at the end. Also good to see Shell Scott being a tough guy and not just some douchebag babbling about women.

Look Death in the Eye (Lawrence Block, first published in Saturn Web Detective Story Magazine, April 1959)

Another serial killer story! And it took exactly ten minutes to answer the above question and reject my hypothesis. Yes, writing a compelling short story about a serial killer is definitely possible. Although this one is not about the hunt, it is about the hunter instead.

It's Lawrence Block doing his Jill Emerson-ish erotic thing. But this time I was prepared and knew what to expect... and surprisingly I liked it. Liked it a lot, to be honest. Hot, a bit crazy, and also a little nasty! His recent one, The Girl with the deep Blue Eyes is now on my to-do list.

On a Sunday Afternoon (Gil Brewer, first published in Manhunt, January 1957)

A sexually repressed wife and her cowardly (impotent?) husband go to a family picnic after the Sunday mass, where they are attacked by a gang of juvenile delinquents. Cool stuff by the master.

Frame (Frank Kane, first published in Manhunt, December 1954)

Now we are getting somewhere! This one is a proper P.I. mystery with mobsters, dames, stolen loot, and even a decent body count. Great story, too. It kept me guessing right until the end.

Double (Bruno Fischer, first published in Manhunt, June 1954)

My favourite one in the collection. The bitter and woman-hating cop is fixated on the idea that the killer is his cheating ex-wife lookalike. Savage stuff, my only minor complaint would be that the apologies at the end are needless!

As I Lie Dead (Fletcher Flora, first published in Manhunt, February 1953)

It's hot, and two young lovers sit by the lake. She's dreaming about Acapulco, but his mind is elsewhere:

I saw that Grandfather had reached the raft. He was sitting on the far side, his back to us, legs dangling in the water. He’d made it out there in good time. For an old man, damn good time. He was strong, in spite of his fat belly. It didn’t look like he was ever going to die.

Guess what happens next?  You are right - grandfather won't be swimming much in the future. But that is just the beginning of the story. There will be blackmail, and murder, and betrayal. Excellent stuff, a bit depressing, but a great choice for a closing story.

3.5/5

Facts:

Body count: 

1 + 1 (added reluctantly since Wall Street yuppies shouldn't really count, right?) + 1 + 1 with at least 3 victims + 1 with a bunch of other victims (unfortunately, those eyeballs count is not specified) + 0 + 3 + 2 + 4 = 17

Dames:
Linda from "Carrera's Woman" is pretty cool (or should I say hot?):

There was sweetness in her kiss, and an undercurrent of danger, a pulsing emotion that knifed through me like an electric shock. She pressed against me, and her body was soft and womanly, and I forgot the marks of her nails on my arms and face, forgot that she could be as deadly as a grizzly. She was a kitten now, soft and caressing, and her breath was in my ears, and the movement of her body was quick and urgent. I lifted her, the .45 still in my hand, and carried her to the deep shadows of the rocks.

And cousin Cindy from "As I Lie Dead":

She was gold all over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

Edition: eBook

Cool lines: 

From "Carrera's Woman":

I hesitated before answering. “Ten G’s is a lot of money, baby.”
“I’m a lot of woman,” she answered.[Fatale]

From "Frame:

He debated the advisability of walking around back, decided to knock.

He slammed his fist against the big man’s mouth. There was the sound of crunching teeth. The big man went staggering backward and fell across a table.
“You won’t be needing teeth where you’re going.”

From "Double":

I growled, “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Shouldn’t I?” She got off the chaise longue and ran her hands sensuously over her half-naked body. “Look at me, Gus. Don’t you think I have a right to flatter myself?[Fatale]

From "As I Lie Dead":

I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I’d been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I’d seen that, I’d had everything from him I’d ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. 

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll go away together, honey. I’ve got our tickets right here in the gun. One way and a long way.”[The Coolest!]

Pearls are a Nuisance (Raymond Chandler, 1950)

Checked this one out while reading Chandler's letters and watching again the brilliant HBO series with Powers Booth. It's a collection of three short stories and a seminal essay The Simple Art of Murder.

Pearls are a Nuisance (1939)

Not bad, but quite forgettable cosy buddy-buddy nonsense. Probably of interest to Chandler's scholars only.

Finger Man (original story 1934, rewritten with Marlowe in 1950)

Opens with Marlowe testifying against some badass mobster. Besides the killing he's accused of, this guy Manny also seems to have a history of shady dealings with "a big politico, a fixer". Some influential people would prefer Marlowe to stay away from the Grand Jury, and the DA advises him to watch his step. Our main man responds simply by saying "sure" and returns to his office, where he's met by a friend who hires him as a bodyguard for the forthcoming night.

So by the end of the first chapter, the setup is complete. And the two plots merge pretty soon, which is good - I don't like those predictable endings with "surprising" revealings of "unrelated" sub-plots. What follows is a standard classical PI story, featuring gamblers, corrupt politicians, tough guys, and amoral dames.

Good stuff. Also memorable for the first appearance of Bernie Ohls in the Marlowe story.

The King in Yellow (1938)

Royalty from the title is King Leopardi (what a great name!), a jazz bandleader whose wild party is broken up by our hero Steve Grayce, a hotel detective. King has an attitude that matches his "blue" blood and gives plenty of it to Steve:

"Leopardi does what he likes, where he likes, when he likes. Nobody's stopped him yet, gumshoe. Take the air." 
... 
"I never did like house peepers," he sneered. "They smell like public toilets."

He doesn't stop at verbal abuse. The asshole even takes a shot at our hero! So, no wonder Steve throws him out of the hotel. But instead of management's gratitude, he gets canned for mistreating VIP guests. Jobless now, he decides to join the ranks of private investigators, and his first assignment is offered to him practically by itself - when cleaning the room after his fight with Leopardi, he finds a blackmail note in King's wastebasket.

It does take its time to get things going, but I really liked this intro. The story then progresses nicely, introducing some colourful characters (with even crazier names, such as Dolores Chiozza and Jumbo Walters), and everything concludes with an excellent, very surprising ending centred around a family tragedy. I could sense it coming with the old, broken couple and the blind man crying. The sad world indeed is the world of Raymond Chandler, but you enjoy every moment of it.

5/5 [anything written by the Master will always get five stars on this blog]

Facts:

Hero: 
We all know everything about Marlowe, but who is Steve Grayce, the (ex) hotel detective?

Steve frowned at the gun and didn't move. The big man looked him over. "You're tough," he said. "I been in the ring long enough to size up a guy's meat. You're plenty hard, boy. But you ain't as hard as lead. Talk it up fast."

Location: 
L.A.

Body count: 
None in Perils, 8 in Finger Man (half of them are related to the Manny Tinnen affair) and 7 in King

Blackouts: 

There's a pretty funny one in Perils:

I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor. This made me lose my balance temporarily and while I was thinking about how to regain it a wet towel began to slap at my face and I opened my eyes.

And a more proper one in Finger Man when Marlowe gets "coshed" from behind:

Then he dropped the cigarette and stopped on it and a quick, light step made faint noise behind me. I was far too late turning.
Something swished and I went out like a light.
 

Edition:  
Pan, 1980

Cover: 
Frank Dorr from Finger Man scratching his black Persian cat Toby.

Notable cover blurbs: 
This one, coming from the Daily Telegraph, is a bit old-fashioned but still pretty cool:
"...As tense as a tiger springing into action."
 

Cool lines:  
Obviously, since Chandler and Hammett invented the hard-boiled language, there's no shortage of cool lines, and below are just a few:

He had beautiful teeth, but they hadn't grown in his mouth.[The Coolest!] 

He took out a leather keyholder and studied the lock of the door. It looked as if it would listen to reason.

She had a mud-coloured face, stringy hair, grey cotton stockings - everything a Bunker Hill landlady should have. She looked at Steve with the interested eye of a dead goldfish.

But super cool stuff comes from The Simple Art of Murder essay. The whole thing is available online here. I just pasted a small example of its brilliance:

There is plenty of that kind of social and emotional hypocrisy around today. Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups in little clubs. These are the people who make bestsellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob-appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books, although they would like you to think they are fostering culture. Just get a little behind in your payments and you will find out how idealistic they are.

Me, Hood! (Mickey Spillane, 1963)

Needed something normal after that excruciating Woolrich experience, and who else would be more appropriate than good old Mickey Spillane? It's incredible how popular his titles still are and how easy (and cheaply) they can be obtained. So I usually keep a few of his paperbacks ready for the right moment, and this little one containing two novellas and one short story seemed perfect. With titles like "Me, Hood!" and "Kick It or Kill It!", there was no doubt about what I was going to get.

And yes, no surprises here. It's yet another sex & violence madness. The plot is pretty far-fetched, and due to its relentless pace (the whole thing is about 70 pages long), it quickly becomes almost incomprehensible. And to make matters worse, it falls into the "grand issues" category. But at least we get an early warning about this because our hero, after being recruited by a secret service (I think) to do some dubious job, quickly concludes that:

Patriotism doesn't exist on any local level. Suddenly we're international and I can only think of three fields where you striped pantsers could exploit me: The narcotic trade through Italy, Mexico or China; illegal gold shipments to Europe; then last, the Commies.

Welcome, once again, to the beautiful, frightening and simplistic world of Mickey Spillane. Btw, I liked the touch with commies being written with the capital C - makes the whole thing a bit personal, don't you think?

But it turns out that the evil our hero will be fighting in this one ticks the first check box. Heroin! And this is where things get absurdly hilarious, making this short pulp unforgettable. Because - believe it or not - 8 kilos (kilograms) of smack in the year of our lord 1963 cost "Millions. Not one or two. Not ten. More than that. Enough to get a whole city killed off."

Let's take a quick break and do some math. To help us understand things correctly, let's calculate the running costs of a junkie living in NYC in the early 60s. Assuming that the street price is twice as much as 'retail' (probably much more; I have no idea really) and considering inflation that blows 10 million to 77.79, we can calculate that the price of a single gram is 19.447.50 US dollars. Since the daily dose of an addict is at least 1 gram (according to this site), we can conclude that an average junkie in 1963 would spend almost 60 grand a month supporting their habit. Which, in other words, means that drug addicts used to be millionaires.

So this makes a difference and puts a new perspective on the whole setup. Obviously, since "There hasn't been a single shipment that size in twenty years", we can now better understand the ridiculous body count and involvement of the CIA and Mafia. Italian boys even dispatch their top East Coast enforcer, Keyser Soze-like dude named Lodo, to kill our hero. Which is another (also unintentionally funny) story, but I don't want to reveal everything.

2.5/5

Kick It or Kill It!

Craziness continues. Drugs again, but this time we also get Commies because "Reds are injecting a poison into this country." All three axis of Evil are somehow involved: Cuba is a collection point for China-grown narcotics, and the whole deal is supervised by the Soviet attache. Also aided by mysterious and uber sinister Mr Simpson, who eventually (and most unsurprisingly) turns out to be a corrupted senator.

In short, it's Spillane's take on Hammett's Red Harvest. A secret agent arrives in a godforsaken little town and cleans it up. So I don't think that recapping the last five pages will be a major spoiler:

"The guy on the dock died easily and quietly... I took him with one sudden stroke... The other one... went just as easily... My hands were tied. My feet weren't. It took only three kicks to kill him... Then I was ready... When the man there saw me he tried to call out and died before he could. The other one was just as unsuspecting. He died just as easily. Soft neck... There was Harry Adrano. I shot him. There was Calvin Bock. I shot him. There was Sergei Rudinoff. I shot him and took the briefcase off his body and knew that what I had done would upset the Soviet world... There was the man who owned the airlines and I shot him... so I shot him too... I brought the shotgun up and let him look all the way into that great black eye and then blew his head off."

I liked that "soft neck" touch. Otherwise, no further comments are needed...

2.5/5

Facts (only for Me, Hood!):

Hero: 
I asked, "Who am I?"
His answer was flat and methodical. "Ryan. The Irish One. Sixteen arrests, one conviction for assault and battery. Suspected of being involved in several killings, several robberies and an un-cooperative witness in three homicide cases. Associates with known criminals, has no visible source of income except for partial disability pension from World War II. Present address.."
"That's enough," I said

Location:
New York

Body count: 
18, not counting "Holmes in emergency ward with a couple of slugs in his chest and not expected to live."

Dames: 
Miss Carmen Smith. Ryan's description (shortened, as it goes on for two hefty paragraphs):

Most times a woman is nothing... then one day you see one... you not only like but one you must have... instinctively you know... she's big and beautiful... full-breasted... She's not trying for anything. She doesn't have to... long legged and round and in her loins there's a subtle fire that can be fanned, and fanned, and fanned.

Blackouts: 
None. There is one in "Kick It or Kill it!"

Title: 
"May I ask who you are?"
"The name is Ryan, honey. In common parlance I'm a hood. Not a big one, but I get along."

"The things you do... are so different. I never know what to expect-"
"They're hood things, kitten."

Cover: 
Great looking dark-haired semi-naked woman. Hm, did I just use the word 'woman'? Correction - in Spillane's world, they are called sweeties, kittens, dolls, kids, sugars, honeys...

Cool lines:  
I don't think I looked like the typical Haynes client. I wasn't carrying a briefcase, either. I was carrying a rod, but that was one reason for the $200 suit. It didn't show. 

"I need a doctor..."
"You'll need an undertaker more."
"Look..."
"Talk." My hand started to go white around the butt.[The Coolest!]

Four Novellas of Fear (Cornell Woolrich, 1936 - 1940, republished in 2010)

Reading The Vengeful Virgin got me nostalgic and put me in the perfect mood to read this short collection of four Woolrich stories republished recently. It has been sitting on my shelf for a few months, just waiting for the right moment.

As expected, not much of the asphalt jungle's bright city lights here with cynical detectives investigating complex plots involving dirty politicians, blackmail, or addicted celebrities doing porn flicks. These are simple stories about everyday people driven by simple pleasures, whose actions are motivated by the most basic instincts and feelings. Although fear is mentioned in the collection's title, greed is its most common theme.

Eyes That Watch You (1939)
A nasty and pretty hard-boiled one, even though its protagonist is an old, handicapped lady who cannot even speak. She overhears her daughter-in-law plotting the murder of her son, but she's (obviously) powerless to do anything about it. Everything takes place in this old secluded house which gives a novel great tone. The thing I liked the most about it was the great suspense. Woolrich plays a kind of cat-and-mouse game with his characters (and of course with the reader), and just when you think that poor sucker might get away, he actually gets killed. Nice!

Good story, masterfully written and executed - my favourite of the collection. It's such a good material that I find it a bit surprising it has never been made into a movie. Especially since (according to Wikipedia) Woolrich has had more books adapted into film noirs than any other author of that era.

The Night I Died (1936)
Greed again. And the plot of killing a close family member again. It even starts similarly to Eyes That Watch You, with our hero overhearing a sinister conspiracy about killing him. And once again, it is his greedy spouse, but in this one, he manages to escape the dark demise that she had arranged for him. But unfortunately, in the process, he crosses the line to the dark side, becoming a greedy, violent and paranoid asshole himself. Cool stuff and a good combination of hard-boiled story and psychological drama.

You'll Never See Me Again (1939)
Good opening line (It was the biscuits started it) that implies that once again there will be family trouble. Not murder this time (at least not yet), but a classic plot with an inexplicable wife disappearing and her hubby frantically trying to find her while becoming a prime suspect himself in the process. Fast-paced page turner at the beginning, but unfortunately, in the second half, it dissolves into a standard and predictable "run against the time" type thriller. With 70 pages (and only one corpse!), this is the longest entry of the collection and also, in my opinion, its weakest. Good story, but the plotting towards the end didn't work for me; some stuff was hard to believe.

Murder Always Gathers Momentum (1940)
Excellent and very promising title that indeed delivers (see body count section below!). This one is not so much about money or greed; it's more about cowardice and how it sucks our anti-hero into a spiral of crime. Actually pretty sad, and you really feel bad and sympathetic for the poor sucker. Reminded me of Mickey Rooney in Quicksand. Minus happy end (thank god!) plus cool final twist.

3.5/5

Facts:

Location:
Various small towns

Body count: 

1 + 1 + 1 + 6

Dames: 
Safe to say that only Vera from Eyes that Watch You qualifies as a dame:

She came, the murderess, in pink satin and foamy lace, like an angel of destruction, stroking her loosened hair with a silver-backed brush.  [Fatale]

Title: 
Cool sounding, but I think it would be more suitable to replace fear with greed.

Cover: 
Super eerie photo, unfortunately uncredited. This journey into the darkness with a meaningless speed limit is relevant to all four stories.

Cool lines:  

Eyes That Watch You:

- Are you sure everything's shaped up right?
- Yeah. He's insured up to his ears. All his stock's been bought in my name. The business has been doing pretty good, and there are no other relatives to horn in.

They exchanged a kiss. A blood-red kiss of death. 

The Night I Died

Then we turned in, one to a bed. "I'm dead," was the last thing he yawned.
"You betcha sweet life you are, brother!" I thought grimmly.

Murder Always Gathers Momentum 

He kept buying off time with bullets.[The Coolest!]

Irish Dukes (Mike Faricy writing as Jack Tunney, 2012)

This blog is mostly about crime/mystery novels, and besides that, I don't usually bother to write reviews of short stories. But this one is special because it's the first book I've ever read on the Amazon Kindle reader. So I think it deserves a few words.

On second thought, it does deserve to be mentioned anyway. True, there's not much shooting going on, but it has a nice pulpy feeling, and its noir-ish atmosphere is perfectly aligned with the usual stuff living on this blog. Hell, it even surpasses many of the other books mentioned!

The story is simple and straightforward. Told using the first-person narration as we follow Sergeant Kevin Crawley from his final day of military service in post-war Germany, who makes a stop in his native Dublin before he is dispatched to Japan. Kevin is an orphan and doesn't really know what to expect on his return to his hometown. But as we all know very well, in these types of novels, he will find nothing but trouble.

His father is long gone, missing, and the remaining relatives are living in poverty and are being blackmailed by their evil landlord and his muscle-men. The entire neighbourhood is terrorised by this asshole, and it soon becomes clear that "You're our one hope, Kevin. Sure as the sun comes up, the good lord sent you to rid us once and for all the likes of that knacker." And since our hero is a boxer, boxing gloves (and of course his attitude!) are his only weapon. Everything will be resolved in the boxing arena...

Short and sweet. I was a little disappointed by the lack of a more detailed portrayal of Dublin, which was the main reason why I decided to buy it. Sure, people are drinking Guinness, and we have a few occasional "grands" thrown in, but I was hoping for a bit more. What I did like was its dark tone and refusal to fall into some romantic nonsense. There is a damsel in distress, and they do fall in love, but the author fortunately doesn't pay much attention to it. Instead, much more time is dedicated to the fights themselves. They are described brilliantly, which is not surprising, and it's after all expected from the Fight Card Book series. Btw - also liked the little gag about using "rounds" instead of "chapters". Nice one!

3/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Sergeant Kevin Crawley from Chicago

Location: 
Dublin, 1951

Body count: 
Open for a discussion, but I would argue there is a corpse. Twenty years ago, Kevin's father disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and now the bad guy, Basil, is wearing his family ring...  

Dames: 

Mary

Blackouts: 
There are two fights, but on both occasions, Kevin's opponents are the ones who can't stand back up on their feet after the countdown to ten.

Title: 
Not really sure, unless "duke" means something in boxing jargon

Cover: 
Well, it's all about boxing, isn't it? However, this is not entirely accurate if we start splitting hairs. The thing is that Kevin never actually practices boxing with the punching bag.

Cool lines: 
I glanced up into his eyes. They were blue, a chilly blue. Along with that 'S' curved nose they suggested a personality bordering on the difficult.

"So what you're saying is even though there are only American teams involved... even though no one else, anywhere, understands the game... you call it your World Series?"
I thought about it for a moment. It certainly sounded reasonable. "Yeah, sounds about right."

The Continental Op (Dashiell Hammett, 1923 - 1930)

A collection of seven short stories about a nameless detective working for the Continental Op agency by one of the greatest crime writers.

Masterpieces, all of them. Superb, stunning stuff and a lesson in writing. For me, this is the foundation of the crime genre and urban literature altogether. Tough guys, asphalt jungle, no messing around, no rules, no sentimentality...

Over the years, it hasn't aged one bit. The second collection, titled "The Big Knockover", is already waiting on my shelf.

The Tenth Clew

Murder has been committed and our favorite nameless investigator together with his cop friend O’Gar (a bullet-headed detective-sergeant who dresses like a village constable in movie) is left with a few suspects and with a bunch of clues. Nine of them, to be exact, and they are all as typical/predictable/standard as possible. And when you start to wonder how the hell Hammett will be able to solve this complicated mess within a 40-page story, everything unravels pretty quickly. Because our lucid PI finds these clues far too obvious, and therefore the 10th clue (clew?) is essentially that the rest of them were planted, so he should look for the culprit in precisely the opposite way they are pointing. Pretty clever, wouldn’t you say? 

The Golden Horseshoe

Like The Tenth Clew, this one also opens with a line of dialogue, which is a nice touch, and I like it. In this particular case, Nameless is instructed by a lawyer to find a missing person. This individual is not a criminal, so the case seems somewhat uninteresting, and the lawyer even apologises for it. But we know better, of course, because during the briefing, murder and drugs are mentioned. Right after this mandatory introduction, the story and its narration switch into “extreme hard-boiled mode”.

Nameless goes into the underworld of drug addicts and must use all his skills and resources provided by the agency to track down his man to the Golden Horseshoe joint in Tijuana, where the story reaches its climax with a classical twist of exchanged identities. Oh yeah – mustn’t forget to mention home invasion bloodbath. As hard-boiled as they come!

The House in Turk Street
Completely different compared to the first two. Here, the trouble finds our nameless hero and not the other way around. By pure chance, he stumbles into an apartment where some pretty unusual gang is about to divide the loot. And since there’s really no such thing as a “usual gang”, let me just quickly go through its members: there’s a Chinese mastermind, a femme fatale, a muscular hood without much of a brain and an elderly couple. So these characters quickly subdue Nameless, and then he begins the game of cat and mouse. Because very soon, everyone tries to cheat everyone else to get the loot and/or simply stay alive. The story is full of twists, and tension is masterfully built, as everything unfolds over a single night, allowing the narration to be essentially done in real time. Superb stuff, someone should write a play based on this!

Another novelty is a strong female character, which is, of course, most welcome! Elvira is a prototype of born-to-be-bad scheming femme fatale (Beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous!), and Hammett seems to like her a lot. For one thing, he dedicates a hefty paragraph to her introductory appearance and also lets her go free at the end. But Nameless promises himself that “one day…”.

The Girl with the Silver Eyes
Another missing person case - this time, Nameless is hired by a lovesick poet to find his fiancée. He soon suspects foul play because it turns out that the poet’s uncle is a respectable millionaire, and there’s also a case of a forged 20 grand check. Which of course is more than enough dough for some crooks to get their hands on.

Again, hard-boiled to the max with a violent ending, but this time it is also considerably darker. With this story being a bit longer than the rest, there’s enough time to develop some drama and family tragedy. Plus, the good guy gets killed, and I also felt sympathy for Porky Grout, who’s an interesting character. He’s “a liar, thief, hop-head, traitor to his kind and the biggest coward on the west Coast”, but he’s kind of likeable and you feel sorry for him at the end.

And let’s not forget the central character – the poor, spoiled poet’s fiancé. Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that Nameless’ “one day” promise from House in Turk Street has been fulfilled. 

The Whosis Kid
Once again, Nameless is not working on any specific job when he gets pulled into trouble. But this time it’s not by accident because he smells foul play after spotting the Whosis Kid at the boxing match. He’s an old acquaintance from his Boston days. “His racket used to be stick-up, gunman” and since “He could shoot and was plan crazy” he decides to follow him on his own initiative. Whosis Kid presence in Frisco indicates that some job is underway in which insurance companies – main clients of Continental Op – might be interested. Because you see, “Stick-ups are always in demand”!

This stick-up involves diamonds, pearls, and another motley crew of criminals. Once again, assembly is international as bad guy Maurosis is French, dame Ines is Spanish, and the Whosis Kid is "Boston American". Ines is the most interesting character in the story because she is a mix between a femme fatale and a damsel in distress. And she's not very likeable; the first time she appears, she kicks her dog sharply with the pointed toe of her slipper! Nasty bitch she is indeed! But also "Appealing, and pathetic, and anything else you like – including dangerous."

The Main’s Death
With 25 pages, this one is the shortest of the collection. It has a simply marvellous opening. Nameless is briefed by the two police officers about the murder of a dude called Main, so we get all the details straight away in a very condensed way. This briefing requires multiple readings because it's simply hilarious, undoubtedly one of the best parts of the whole book. Told entirely in slang by these two police sleuths, one of them being "freckled heavyweight, as friendly as a Saint Bernard puppy, but less intelligent".

The story is cool and pretty complicated, of course. $20,000 is stolen during a home robbery that goes wrong, and our hero is hired by a small and somewhat eccentric antique dealer to retrieve the missing cash. But the job is really just a pretext for him to find some dirt on his young cheating (?) wife. Needless to say, most of the money will be successfully retrieved (including 4 stamps worth 8 cents!) and the lady's honour will remain intact. Only one corpse in this one, though, but still great stuff!

Farewell Murder 
This one resembles a classical detective story, Sherlock Holmes type of shit, and maybe because of that, it is my least favourite of all. It's not bad by any means, but I've found others much better.

It starts in some remote village called Farewell, where this asshole Kavalov lives with his daughter Miriam (Her face had Asia in it. It was pretty, passive, unintelligent) and her husband. Kavalov had received death threats from his former associate, Captain Sherry, whom he had fucked over in a business matter, and who had now returned from Cairo with his black servant, Marcus. What follows is a pretty standard tale of greed, betrayal, revenge, and phoney alibis.

5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Nameless detective, 35 years, 180 pounds, a bit fat (so we can assume he's not very tall). Uses fake names Parker, Tracy or Jerry Young, the bootlegger. Been with the agency for 15 years. He had left the Boston branch to try army life, and after the war was finished, he returned to the Agency payroll in Chicago. Stayed there for a couple of years and then got transferred to San Francisco.

Location: 
San Francisco, briefly Tijuana and San Diego in the second story. Farewell in the last one.

Body counts:  
1 (+guilty party hanged), 6, 3 (+bad guy going to the gallows), 4, 5, 1, 2 (+guilty party hanged + one dog), making a grand total of 22 (+3 hangings + one dog).

Blackouts: 
My head filled up with funny notions. There wasn’t any room. There wasn’t any darkness. There wasn’t anything…

The entire back of my head burned with sudden fire … tiny points of light glittered in the blackness before me … grew larger … came rushing toward me ...”  

Cover: 
All recent Orion reprints have great illustrations on their covers, but this one is my favourite.  

Cool lines:  
Gooseneck stopped shooting and tried to speak. The brown heft of the girl’s knife stuck out of his yellow throat. He couldn’t get his words past the blade.

Physically he hadn’t gone to the dogs, but he had had his taste of the gutter and seemed to like it.

I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous!

Once more Tai ran true to racial form. When a Chinese shoots he keeps on until his gun is empty.

What put an edge to this conversation was that both men were talking over their guns.

He looked dead, and he had enough bullet holes in him to make death a good guess. [The Coolest!]


You're as wrong as Prohibition. [The Coolest!]

Plus some great slang:

“Vag, hell!” he snarled.“I got five hundred smacks in my kick.” (vag = vagrancy, smack = buck, kick = ?)

I don’t blame Fag. He acted according to his code. Fag was square. If I had told him that I was ribbing Burke up for a trimming, Fag would leave me alone. But when I told him I was through with a graft, had gone queer, that made me his meat. [The Coolest!]