Too French and Too Deadly (Henry Kane, 1955)

After Peter Chambers, the author, it's now time for Pete Chambers, the protagonist. A year ago, I had mixed feelings about the Death of a Flack, but it was easy to reach a verdict this time around. This one pretty much sucks, I'm afraid.

It starts with an entire page of Chambers' whining about sacrificing his moustache just to impress beautiful and desirable Carlotta with dark and dreamy eyes. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but this was a warning about how things would proceed. From the very first page, every single description of a scene, character or action takes ages... and our sleuth's constant "witty" wisecracking and sexist remarks don't help one bit.

As annoying as all this is, it is still bearable compared to the story. As we all know, the red herring is the most used plot device in mystery novels, but it reaches unprecedented levels in this one. More than once, the sequence of events doesn't make much sense chronologically (unless Chambers has at least one identical twin brother), and occasional introductions of "classical" clues are almost pathetic. Do people really write following-day appointment reminders on matchboxes? Would you compile a short, incriminating list under the Chinese lantern in your living room?

Enough bitching. Anyone could be guilty in this mess, so it's a bit ironic that the actual solution doesn't make sense. Henry Kane was just no Ross Macdonald.

A bit disappointing. I think it will take me at least another year to pick up another Kane novel.

2/5

Facts:

Some of the facts are incomplete because I lost half of my notes. For all the Blogger users out there: do not press Ctrl+Z while editing your posts. It won't undo your last change...

Hero:
"A wise-guy peeper," Frenchie aid. "Yeah, I know him awright. A smart-type guy. Makes with the big words and makes with a lot of them. A sharp-shooter guy."

Bad guys:
Carl Dinello was the upper uppercrust of the undercrust. Carl Dinello was one of the ten most powerful men, without portfolios, in the world. It was open knowledge that Carl Dinello was the remote octopus whose tentacles held control over all illegal gambling in the United States....

And, like everything else, it goes on and on... The amusing thing is that after this introduction, Carl Dinello is not mentioned again. This is probably as well since I think the whole thing is confusing enough without any "remote octopuses".

Location: 

New York

Body count: 

3

The object of desire: 
"Gold," Horace said.
The Lieutenant said, "Pardon?"
I said, "What?"
"Gold," Horace said.

"Gold?" Parker fumed, "Gold? What's gold?"

"This," Horace laid the bar on Parker's desk and pointed a long finger. "Gold."

"This?" Parker shot querulous eyes at me. "This is gold?"

"Gold," Horace said. "Gold ingot."

"Ingot?" I said. "What's ingot?"

"Bullion," Horace said.

"And what's bullion?" Parker barked. "Sounds like soup."

Dames:
"A dame, I hear."
"Carlotta Cain. And what a dame. Brains, class, and putting it mildly, gorgeous."

Edie Rogers - Flame-red hair and round brown eyes and a small red mouth that was puckered like a blister. She was small, with quick movements, and a figure that had launched a thousand tips. Her breasts were round, firm, pointed and protruding; her arms full, her hands and feet small.

Once more, it then proceeds for another two paragraphs with all her anatomical details and details about her wardrobe, but I'm sure you've got the picture.

There's also French alcoholic beauty Carlotta (the only cool and interesting character, btw), and let us not forget his "short, squat, ugly and wonderful" secretary Miranda.

Blackouts:  

/

Title: 
A bit of a spoiler.

Edition:
Avon #672, First Edition.

Cover: 
A nice illustration of a damsel in distress. There are two redheads in this one, but since she looks a bit Frenchy, I think she's Carlotta and not Edie.

Cool lines: 

Counsel for the defense was panting like an asthmatic hoofer announcing the next act.

I came up out of my chair like I had a wasp gone waspish in my back pocket.

I was more fatigued than a dealer in Vegas working over-time on New Year's.

I tore out its [car trunk compartment] insides like a taxidermist with a deadline working on the carcass of a buffalo.

Tom Reeves bounced around like a pogo stick that had been crossed with a Mexican jumping bean.

Death of a Flack (Henry Kane, 1961)

There are three beautiful women in this one, three cases of blackmail, and even three (!) private detectives somehow involved... but still, the plot is very simple and straightforward. Our hero doesn't really investigate in the traditional sense, such as conducting interviews, chasing leads, or piecing together evidence. Various clients simply hire him to perform relatively trivial tasks (such as delivering blackmail money), so he goes from point A to B and C, and along the way, collects a substantial amount of cash and a few large checks. There is no action, not much of a mystery or drama, not much of anything.

Towards the end, this became clear to Mr Kane himself because he included this somehow apologetic (funny?) paragraph:

- a sizable sum in total aggregate of $7300, but if any of you, inspired by this reading, are overcome with the desire to rush into the business of private-eyeing, I must hasten to promulgate the harsh facts of the interminable succession of rank; blank days between bonanzas which flatten the average to exactly that - average. You want to make money? Invent a toilet paper with a new scent for each day of the week and sit back and wipe up the profits.

Hasten to promulgate the harsh facts of the interminable succession?

Anyway, this book'sn't bad at all, and some parts are actually hilarious (see the cool lines), but it lacks any kind of hard-boiled edge. Maybe because all the beautiful and wealthy people throw money (and sometimes themselves) at our PI, making his job trivial. And partly because he is not very likeable and/or interesting fella. He is a bit narcissistic too, and definitely a sexist asshole. There is a hard-to-digest scene in which he slaps Sherry twice simply because she wouldn't fuck him. True, he doesn't feel exactly good about it afterwards, but his rationalising is really fucking weird. He somehow concludes that she's a lesbian ("I now knew she was evil") and asks himself a rhetorical question: "Did that lessen my desire for her?". This brings us to some really misogynistic shit:

I knew why I had hit her. A courting male knows, almost instinctively, the manner of approach to the female of his desire. Some need flowers, some need poems, some need music, some need attentions, some need surliness, some need silence, some need dominance - Sherry Greco needed a good belt in the jaw. I had struck her as part of my wooing act. I had enhanced her respect for me. I had begun to earn her.

Crazy stuff. I wish Kane had dedicated some of this negative energy to improving the plot. It just leaves a dark spot on what is otherwise an entertaining little pulp.

3/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Pete Chambers, Fast-moving PI

"Now don't pretend to be a hipster with me, Mr. Chambers. I happen to know you for what you are - an incurable romantic, a Don Quixote in a custom-tailored suit, and essentially and forever, and admirably, a softie."

"Good-bye, Mr. Chambers. You're an awfully frigging clever bastard, aren't you?"

Location: 
New York

Body count: 

4

Object of desire: 
800,000 dollars worth tiara fashioned in 1550 by Benvenuto Cellini, especially for Eleonora, Princess of the House of Medici.
 

Dames: 
Three of them, introduced straight away, on the third page:

- the poetess, Miss Lori Gilmore (the jeweler's daughter), the inamorata, Miss Sophia Patri (the jeweler's latest sweetheart), the belly dancer, Miss Sherry Greco (my date) - were homogenous in aspects of beauty: they were all ravishingly attractive women, although each was of an entirely different mien... blonde, slender, sinuous, smoky-eyed, intense, reserved, and sullen... tall, red-haired, green-eyed, glistening-mouthed, and shaped with extravagant, bewitching, and always-exposed curves... a full ripe figure, tawny skin, and black smoldering eyes

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Flack part:

A flack is a press agent before he becomes a public relations counselor. A public relations counselor is a press agent with a fancy office, important clients, and a rapturous con.

Death part:

He appeared to be regarding us with three eyes, two of which were glazed. The third was a round red hole just above the bridge of his nose. Parker went to him, went from him, reported: "Very dead."

Edition:  
Signet, first printing, May 1961
 
Cover: 
Excellent and pretty hot illustration of Sophia Patri that (probably) depicts a scene in which our hero comes to Patri's apartment and gets ultra horny by simply seeing her armpit! (The smooth hollow of her armpit was more prod to libido than total nudity). According to this cool photo album, it was made by Robert Abbett. 

Cool lines:

Pretty weak on dialogues, but Henry Kane is THE master of metaphors. Although I'm not sure I actually get half of these (and there are many more in the book), they are still unforgettable:

The drizzle had sundered as the hymen of a star-struck virgin upon the first suggestion of a skinny crooner. 

A New Yorker has about as much use for an automobile in this city of car-crowded curbs and congested traffic as he might have for a chrome-adorned toboggan.

I had found him as reliable as rock, as solid as steel, as resourceful as a tiger on the prowl.

I was shuttling in and out of my apartment as though it were a bathroom and I was in the unfortunate piss press of chronic prostatitis. 

The lady's  motives were as grossly apparent as the bulge in the tights of the male star of ballet.

That sat her back on her pretty ass for a moment but she came up swinging like a marijuana group at a progressive-jazz session.

Studded throughout the place, like sparse cloves in an insufficiently spiced ham, were other wan business executives morosely mending last night's sins.

My gastric juices jumped like a sensitive gal insensitively goosed.

His eyes bulged like an overstuffed brassiere. 

The damned thing had more glow than an Irishman full of Scotch whiskey. 

Her firm, young, pointed, pear-shaped breasts had nipples that stuck out like the spiteful tongues of spiteful children.