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!]

A Killer is Loose (Gil Brewer, 1954)

This Brewer's pulp has no virgins or femme fatales. Instead, we have Ralph Angers - an eye surgeon specialist who only wants to build a hospital. He even has the exact blueprints of this hospital, and he carries them manically with him all the time. I say manically because he, in fact, is a maniac. The poor guy is a Korean war veteran who has suffered a nervous breakdown and now wanders around a small Florida town where he stumbles upon our hero, Steve. To be precise, it's the other way around since it is Steve who saves Doc's life and, by doing this (unknowingly), forms a bond between the two men. Which, in practical terms, means he becomes (a kind of) hostage who must follow the crazy doc on his killing spree.

It's fast-moving, told in real-time and totally unpredictable. Cool stuff, but unfortunately, it doesn't work all the time. Especially parts where the action takes place outside are not always totally believable. I mean - surely someone would have noticed a couple of guys walking around in the evening covered in mud with one of them carrying a gun in plain sight? But parts that take place indoors are excellent! Home invasion on Mrs Graham's house is a masterclass in tension escalation (reminded me to see Desperate Hours again), and the scene with that little girl alone in the big house repeatedly having to play "Dancing in the Dark" on the piano is the creepiest stuff I've read in a long time.

It's not exactly an in-depth study of mental illness, but it's not just another serial killer story either. I think it suggests that sometimes we need a bit of shock therapy to appreciate the things we have. Steve is an invalid, he's jobless and has his house under two mortgages, but once he embarks on this insane journey into the darkness with Angers, all he can think of is his wife delivering their baby. Nice.

4/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Technically, Steve is the hero. However, he continues to whine and complain, doing little to address the situation, instead repeating how hopeless it is. And sometimes even praying. Fucking praying! So I'll choose Dr Angers as the hero in this one.

Location: 
Some unnamed small town in Pinellas County, Florida

Body count: 
5, not counting the old man who was shot (but never confirmed as dead) after the accident and not counting a cop towards the end (who simply dropped after being shot). Btw, and for the record, I didn't feel too bad about that real-estate asshole.

Object of desire: 
To build a hospital where Dr Angers could perform eye transplantation surgeries.

Dames: 
Lillian, a former dancer from Seattle and now (involuntary) girlfriend of Dr Angers. There's also large-breasted and round-hipped Mrs Graham.

There are also a couple of appearances of Harvey Aldercook's woman. She is totally irrelevant to the story (I don't remember if we even get to know her name), so it is even more surprising how viciously she is presented:

She was an insult to the female gender, a short circuit in the voluptuous, tender woman flesh man dreams upon. She was one of these ash-blonde, bony, saucer-eyed, skull-grinning, jut-jawed, false-breasted, fake-fannied, angle-posing, empty-thighed in-betweens they stamp out like tin slats for Venetian blinds in some bloodless, airless underground factory to supply that increasingly bewildering demand for sexless models such as she for certain women’s fashion magazines, where they loll backward gaping and pinch-nostriled in tight red and silver sashes, over an old freshly varnished beer barrel, holding long skinny umbrellas, point down in a sand dune. Sometimes you see them swooning pipe-lidded, paper-pale over a swirling Martini in a triple-sized cocktail glass with their long fleshless golden-tipped claws clamped buzzard-like around the stem.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Dr Ralph Angers is loose, and he is killing people.

Edition: 
eBook

Cover: 
Pretty cool, but it could be better. Angers' facial expression doesn't look particularly psychopathic. And he doesn't have a briefcase for his roll of blueprints.

Cool lines:  

The drunk down the bar lifted his head. "I'm alcoholic. Will somebody buy me a beer?"

The Luger was like a melting chocolate cake in my hip pocket. [The Coolest!]

13 French Street (Gil Brewer, 1951)

Very Edgar Allan Poe-ish beginning. Our hero arrives at a secluded countryside house to visit his old friend, who lives there with his hot wife and ageing mother. Something's definitely wrong, and this delightfully dark and sinister atmosphere is nicely rounded up in the following dinner scene:

Dinner was a wake. We sat for three quarters of an hour over a rare roast of beef. And I met Verne's mother. Yes. Really there were three corpses at that table. The old woman, Verne, and the roast of beef.

Things then move forward pretty quickly with a somehow predictable sequence of an affair, a murder and a case of blackmail. Needless to say, we know from the start it will end tragically.

But it's still great. The affair between Petra and Alex is all about sex. Very carnal stuff. There are no profound declarations of love made while watching the sunset. To be honest, Petra does seem a bit confused and cannot distinguish between love and lust. Her husband is impotent, making him "a machine with one part not working" to her. So "there's nothing wrong with him, only I'm too much for him... He couldn't keep me - happy", which leads to a conclusion that "He's sapped. He's a dead weight. He can't do anything any more." 

On the other hand, Alex's reasoning is much more straightforward: he's simply horny as hell. And he cannot handle the guilt of fucking his best friend's wife and deceiving his fiancée, so he turns to heavy drinking. What a sissy :) But there's a great feeling of fatality and inability to control his destiny right through the book's opening sentence: "Petra's letters should have warned me" to the realisation that "you are stuck like a fly in the glue".

The story is clever, too. It's a drama about damaged people in post-war America, not a crime/mystery story, although it cleverly disguises itself as one. Jenny's character definitely plays a role since she has/had a relationship with Verne, but this is never fully revealed, so the reader expects some kind of twist. At least I did. I also liked that it didn't follow the usual pattern in which the hero gets fucked at the end and the femme fatale walks away unpunished.

Hot stuff. Real page-turner.

4/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Alex -An archeologist with no place to dig and with no one to give a damn if he did dig - but with a dream.

Location: 
Fictitious (I think) town of Allayne

Body count:  

3

The Object of desire: 
Sex/Money for Petra, Sex for Alex

Dames: 
It's all about Petra (btw the very first word in the book is her name):

She was tall, slimly provocative. All in black. Black hair, worn long, tumbling around her shoulders. Black eyes, all pupil, or all iris. Her skin was very white. Her black eyebrows arched slightly, making her eyes seem bolder than ever, and her smile had shock value. Long-legged, full-breasted, and the neckline of her dress reached down. Down. She was bold, beautiful woman.

Petra. She stood alone. There was nobody like Petra. One image was made, then the gods shattered the cast. Why?

Her breasts were large, perfectly formed, upthrusting, and firm. Her body was flawless, as if she had been carved with some lusty godlike precision from a warm, utterly unblemished slab of pure alabaster.

Blackouts: 
Lust and guilt drive Alex to drink himself into oblivion:

I barely made it to the toilet. I blacked out in an agony of retching, tearing the stuff up, trying to vomit all the crazy hell out of the bottom of my guts.

Title: 
Book's very first paragraph:

The minute I stepped through the doorway at 13 French Street, I sensed something wrong - something I couldn't nail down. But she closed the door before I had a chance to run.

Also, a bit of (not exactly subtle) symbolism. Number 13 doesn't need an explanation, and the France part of the title comes from Alex and Verne's serving in France during WW2, where their friendship was forged, and Verne (admittedly drunk) had promised Alex that they would share his future wife.

Edition:  

Gold Medal #211, 1951

Cover: 
See 'Dames' section

Cool lines:  
He looked as if somebody had machine-gunned his soul. 

His voice was hollow, and when he smiled it wasn't a smile at all, just a torturing of the muscles around his mouth.

The Vengeful Virgin (Gil Brewer, 1958)

I knew I'd never get enough of her. She was straight out of hell.

Shirley and I generated something together that drowned out conscience. This was just something we were going to do together. And, of course, the money. I wanted it. I would get it.

Shirley Angela was under my skin like the itch and it was going to take a lot of scratching.

He was ready to die. He was old enough. He sure as hell was rich enough.

Doom. You recognize doom. It's a feeling and a taste, and it's black, and it's very heavy. It comes down over your head, and wraps tentacles around you, and sinks long dirty fingernails into your heart. It has a stink like burning garbage. Doom.

Boy meets girl. They are both young, horny and greedy, and the only thing standing between them is the girl's wealthy stepfather. Sounds like a postman is ringing twice, doesn't it? Feels almost like heresy writing this, but in many ways this one is even better than Cain's famous masterpiece.

We know the whole plot (and its ending) after reading just a few pages. But what Brewer manages to pull off masterfully is the immense build-up of the tension and suspense as we dive deeper into the vortex, approaching the inevitable doom of our condemned lovers.

And the trick is that in this crime book, there will be no mystery! There are some characters introduced (Victor's doctor, Shirley's horny neighbour, Jack's ex-girlfriend) that could (and usually would) form some sort of alliance with one of our protagonists to double-cross the other. There's no such thing here; the final big twist is essentially nothing more than a lack of any twist.

And Jack himself - as one would expect from the TV fixer-upper - is a pretty lousy killer. To be blunt, he's a total amateur! He even prepares a list of all the possible fuck ups and then forgets to destroy it, so it can be found by the cops when they search his apartment. He also has second thoughts about the whole thing and is prepared to call it off  (He'd croak natural, and everything would be perfect). But of course, there's no way out; the greed got hold of him, and he's doomed.

Great stuff, just don't expect an intriguing story full of twists and subplots centred around some colourful anti-hero. Without a question, still pure pulp with both sex and violence pretty graphic and disturbing ending, but this is for me foremost a sad, cold and intense book about the dark places in our souls and addictions in our heads.

4.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Jack Ruxton, a TV repairman and the owner of a small electronics shop.

Location:
Miami. However, it doesn't play a significant role except on one occasion when our hero is in the water and becomes concerned about the alligators.

Body count: 

3

Dames:
Shirley Angela, a confused and horny combination of femme fatale and damsel in distress. Her neighbour, Mayda Lamphier (nervous type, and loud). Jack's neurotic ex-girlfriend, Grace.

Blackouts: 
None, but there's a funny description of the nightmare where Jack is chasing Mayda through an endless living room full of TV sets. 

Title:
Obviously, and without some major spoilers, it refers to Angela. And the second part is a kind of twist.

Cover: 
Cool and very hot! By Gregory Manchess. But not 100% accurate - although there is a scene involving piles of money and fire and a naked (not just in underwear!) chick with a gun. And for some reason, two empty whiskey bottles are missing.

Cool lines:
Not many witty one-liners or cool descriptions here. It goes as far as "The language she used would have shamed a drunken Marine"