The Murderer Vine (Shepard Rifkin, 1970)

This one takes a while to really take off. But it's time well worth waiting because we get to know our hero pretty well. He's a tough, a bit seedy, definitely greedy, small-time, divorce cases type of NYC private dick. Ex-cop with his own sense of justice and morals. Very resourceful and methodological. In short, our kind of guy, correct? He tells his story in a confession, flashback style, from some godforsaken place in South America where he has been hiding since the last job. So we can assume there had been some serious fuck up that made him go into this involuntary exile. So tension is rising nicely, and suspense is built just right by the time he finally arrives in Mississippi.

His assignment is straightforward - he must kill five men responsible for the death of some millionaire's son who was idealistic (crazy?) enough to go deep south into the bible belt as a civil rights worker supporting black people. Surrounding quickly becomes familiar and somehow cliched (local sheriff, big ass politician ass hole, etc), but the story's still flowing smoothly. A big problem, in my opinion, is that he's too well prepared!  Everything simply goes according to his plan (which was not exactly air-tight in the first place), and this whole thing quickly turns from a mystery/suspense into an ordinary revenge-type thriller. There are not many twists, and the central mystery becomes a question of whether our hero will fall in love with his super-cool and sexy assistant Kirby.

Don't get me wrong - it's a real page-turner, with some great characters and a dark atmosphere. I liked it a lot, but I certainly missed a bit more complex storyline. The best thing about it is how the racist aspect gets approached. Before reading it, I was wary of it being too political and/or depressing (for the lack of a better word). Obviously, it is political, and it does condemn racism. However, it still is the foremost hard-boiled thriller that uses these pathetic fucks and their pitiful mindsets to enhance the story and make it more interesting and emotional. A big credit for succeeding goes to a masterful characterisation of our main hero. When he arrives at that shit-hole of Okalusa, his only interest is earning his money by getting the job done. He initially ignores the racist crap (I loved that little episode on the bus), but towards the end, he "breaks very good rule" by becoming personally involved and "beginning to hate these people".

Smart, well-written, dealing with a despicable and dark subject in a pulpy, hard-boiled way. Brave and unusual, especially when considering it was written back in 1970.

4/5
 
Facts:

Hero:
Joe Dunne, PI

"What did you expect?" I asked.
"Someone sophisticated yet brutal. And you know what you look like?"
"Sure. A broken-down professional football player ten years after his last game, working as a used-car salesman."

Location:  

"You are entering Okalusa, Queen City of the cotton kingdom." ... "City limits Okalusa Pop. 28,165 Drive slow We love our children Lions meet Tues. 12:30 Rotary Thurs. 12:30" 

Body count: 

10

Dames:
Dunne's sexy assistant/secretary/undercover wife Kirby

Blackouts: 
He drinks himself into oblivion, but it's all part of his job: he tries to find out where the bodies are buried. 

Title: 
A bit melodramatic; Vine didn't kill anyone. It's just that three murdered boys were buried under the melon vine. But it is definitely a place to avoid as one of the locals warns our hero: "Theah's plenty dry-lan' moccasins come out of the piny woods an' lie around under the vines waitin' for frogs."

Cover: 
Great pinup illustration by Ken Laager of a hot blonde. But there's no relation to the book. At least I cannot find one.

Cool lines:  
"Wait a minute. You ask for proof that will stand up in court, then you ask for the execution of each one. It doesn't make sense."
"I'm the court."

She murmured in my ear, "Why are we vertical?"
"What?"
"Shut off the damn shower," she said. "We're not salmon in the spawning season."[The Coolest!]

The First Quarry (Max Allan Collins, 2008)

Max Allan Collins takes us back to the early 70s on a ride with his anti-hero's debut assignment. Quarry is dispatched to some small college town in Iowa, where he's supposed to "take out" some asshole professor/writer working on a "non-fiction" book on Chicago's mobster. Two women are involved, and a gang war over the drug turf is taking place, so we know there will be plenty of sex and violence.

And since we are reading the Quarry book, we know it will be fun.

It moves forward rapidly, at times even too fast, as characters don't have time to fully evolve and breathe. Collins either drops them altogether (cute blonde at the very beginning) or Quarry simply kills them. There's this likeable private detective, Charlie, who brings few possibilities of mystery entanglement, but he too almost immediately ends up with an additional hole in his head, and storytelling goes back to linear mode. Which is cool, Quarry's novels are by their definition character driven, sometimes (like in this one) it's just too bad that the only character that drives them is Quarry and others are somehow neglected.

But, again, it's fun, especially after reading the initial few chapters and getting into the mood and into our protagonist's sense of humour. He's simply a cool guy and I'll give his first adventure an extra half point on account of how effectively he managed to finish this whole affair without "leaving any loose ends". Nice work indeed.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Quarry

Location:
Iowa City

Body count:

8

Dames: 
Dorothy "Dorrie" Byron, an asshole professor's abandoned wife and Annette Girard, artistic and slightly confused daughter of the mobster Lou Girardelli. Quarry fucks them both. Twice.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Quarry's first assignment.

Cover:
Excellent one, done by Ken Laager. Liked its dark and sexy feel, and it's also very accurate - it depicts a scene from page 118. One small remark though - Quarry seems to be a bit lost in thoughts and uninterested, but in the book, he's actually horny as hell.

Cool lines:  
"I'm nothing to you but your 'girl' - I'm not a serious writer doing serious work!"
I wondered if a serious writer would use the word 'serious' twice in the same sentence.

She said, "I'm not in love with Professor Byron or anything. We're just good friends."
I could use a good friend who looked like her who would blow me.

[Before killing a guy]  He'd gone to the store. He had to eat, didn't he? Well, actually, he didn't, but he didn't know that.

"Do I look like I was born the fuck yesterday?"
For all the gunk on his hair, he might have been born the fuck a few seconds ago.[The Coolest!]

The Cutie (Donald E. Westlake, 1962)

Okay, cutie is not really that good-looking chick on (as usual) a hard-case crime cover. It’s an expression that NYC's biggest crime czar uses for the murderer of some no-name starlet. Besides killing the poor soul, this cutie character also tries to pin the crime to some no-name stuttering junkie. And this junkie has apparently some connections in Europe, so czar is pissed off at cutie, and he wants him punished. And this is where his right man – our hero – Clay comes into the play.

Sounds far-fetched? It does, at least for me. But the good thing is that the story is masterfully told, and you don’t have time to think about how idiotic the plot really is in its essence. And so, for the first third, you are really involved, but then it unfortunately starts to fall apart. My main problem is the total lack of any real investigation or classical detective work. Because Clay basically just compiles a list of victims’ ex-husbands and boyfriends and then goes through it, eliminating them one by one. It gets pretty absurd when, at the end (pg. 221 to be precise), it even occurs to him “that it was just barely possible that the killer wasn’t on my list at all.” And he’s not a very skilful investigator in the first place, to be honest. He uses “organisation” to do most of the dirty work for him, but when he himself is interrogating suspects, he comes up with crazy shit like “I can’t think of any more questions. Can you think of any more answers?”

So you are not too disappointed/surprised by the ending. Without giving much away, let’s just say that the unfortunate girl wanted to hire a lawyer to handle her divorce, and out of all the lawyers in New York, she picked her own husband. Come on, Donald!

So, like in 361, it has a great start and a mediocre ending. Westlake is not really good at plotting, but he is excellent at language and characterisation. Although that Ella chick was a bit redundant for me. She didn’t contribute anything to the story and was used only (1) to show that our hero possesses at least some kind of morals and has second thoughts about his work, and (2) to also show at the end that he's too tough to afford having morals. Or something like that. Who cares anyway...

2.5/5

Facts

Hero: 
Clay. A long time ago, he was George Clayton; today, he is just Clay. He’s the right-hand and troubleshooter of Ed Ganolese, the “crime czar” (in the tabloids) with a finger in the pie. Any pie. To the cops, he is “penny-ante crook with half an education, half a conscience, and half a mind”

Location: 
New York, early 60s

Dames: 
2 victims + Ella, the first woman who makes Clay think about leaving his job.

Cover: 
Excellent, done by Ken Laager

Body count: 

4

Cool lines:

He kept shaking like an IBM machine gone crazy. (on junkie)

Billy-Billy doesn’t have strength to kill time (on the same junkie)

“Mavis St. Paul”. “Mavis?” He snickered again. “I’ll look for a broad named Mildred who came from St. Paul.”

His secretary, a big, well-busted, well-hipped blonde with an I-know-what-you-want-and-it-will-cost-you expression perpetually on her face, was just getting settled behind her desk.

Laura Marshall is easily described. It only takes four words. She’s a rich bitch suburban matron.