Fifty-to-One (Charles Ardai, 2008)

There can be no other book that represents the 50th entry of this blog. It's a special edition celebrating the 50th publication of our favourite Hard Case Crime publishing house, written by its editor and co-founder, Charles Ardai. Taking place 50 years ago, this cleverly constructed work is comprised of 50 chapters, each titled using the titles of HCC published books (in consecutive order). And it is not limited to this "anniversary" edition just in terms of form, also (and more importantly) its content is well aligned too, since the plot's primary vehicle is the publication of a "dangerous" book. And yes, it is published by Hard Crime, and yes, one of our main heroes is the publisher himself!

But I wasn't exactly blown away by this one, maybe because I had expected too much since Little Girl Lost (first entry of this blog, btw!) was so brilliant. I also like tough professionals as protagonists, and I'm definitely not much into this "some shit happens to an average person" kind of stuff. The first question that usually comes to my mind and usually stays unanswered is, "Why the fuck doesn't she simply call the cops!?" Sorry to say, but Fifty-to-One is no exception to this rule.

For the apparent reason, it's long. And too fast moving - Tricia runs around frantically from point A to B to C to D and back to B and so on. Sometimes alone, other times accompanied by Erin, Coral, Mike, or Charley, and bumping into all sorts of criminals and shady characters. It sounds good, but it doesn't work terribly well, especially in the second half, when things start to get repetitive and at times even confusing. I'm surprised that Ardai wrote it in this linear fashion and concentrated so much on his leading lady heroine. True, there are two exceptions (a literal transcript of a chapter from the book describing the burglary and Mike's report to Tricia), but the whole thing would turn out more suspenseful if the chapters were told by different narrators. At least it is written very well and features a lot of dialogue, so it never gets boring. The plot isn't exactly watertight, but it was interesting enough to make this quite a page-turner.

Enough of this criticism, what the hell is wrong with me!? I shouldn't say anything negative about this special issue. It is Ardai's love letter to his 10+ years ongoing project and to pulp novels in general. I had immense pleasure in discovering cleverly disguised characters from previous books and HCC inside jokes (like the origin of unusually long feet on some covers). It brought back so many pleasant memories, and when I checked out the gallery of covers, I was surprised to find that I had actually read just 25 of those first 50 books. Which is good, as it leaves me lots of great stuff in the future.

3/5 for the book, 5/5 for the effort and concept and 10/5 to Hard Case Crime publishing!

Facts:

Hero:
Tricia Heverstadt, aka Trixie. Although the true hero is, of course, our editor, Charley Borden. At the end, he is considering changing his name, and Tricia suggests something easy to remember, such as Gordon or Arden. May I suggest "Ardai"?

Location:
NYC, late 50s

Body count: 
10, probably a stiff or two more because there are two shoot-outs (good guys vs. bad guys and bad guys vs. law enforcement) at the end, and it's hard to keep an accurate body count.

Dames:
Lots of them - Tricia and her sister Coral, Erin (I liked her a lot, she was a bit underused in my opinion), Renata, Heaven, Reenie, and a few other dancers/boxing fighters, etc

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Another example of clever writing is disguising a title into the "50" concept. Fift-to-One is a sadistic game of cards that the main villain plays with his victims. He picks up a single card from the deck and leaves his co-player with 50-1 odds to name the next one. You can, of course, imagine what happens with them in case it's not the right one... 

Cover:
Totally accurate, it describes Erin and Charley from the scene on page 36. Another great one by Glen Orbik

Cool lines:  
"Ladies, ladies, if I can interrupt this little tea party," Borden said, "we've got a big problem here. There are men - large men, angry men - who would be happy to do me great physical harm if I don't give them a piece of information you're telling me I can't give them. This is not an acceptable situation."

"Where are we going?"
"Brooklyn."
"What's in Brooklyn?"
"Cheap rent," Erin said. "And plenty of bars. And what do you find where there's cheap rent and plentiful booze?"
"What?"
"Artists," Erin said.
"Stella's  not an artist."
"No, Stella's a model.And who knows better where to find a model than artists?"

Songs of Innocence (Richard Aleas, 2007)

This is a follow-up to Little Girl Lost, so we are back again with John Blake, and it's three years after he had rediscovered (and lost again) Miranda, the love of his life. He is now even more guilt-ridden, has left the private detective business and is working at the college where he also attends free courses, one of them creative writing. But again, it turns out he has bad luck with women because his recent girlfriend is found dead in the bathtub, and her mother doesn’t quite believe she killed herself, and neither does our hero. So the stage is ready for the investigation!

And then we are slowly drawn into this strange mixture of dark family secrets, violent organised crime, weird characters and their relationships on a student campus and so on. Lots of colourful people are introduced, and most of them far from typical stereotypes, so you are never quite sure whether they are good or bad (Michael seems to be pretty cool, but he’s definitely underused, and especially Julie is an intriguing one; in the middle, I was sure she was the guilty one). Plot is somehow linear without major leaps into the past or something like that, but it’s developed masterfully and has a few dead ends, so again, you are not sure which indices are cold ones. Events are unfolding pretty rapidly over a period of a few days, and our hero can hardly find time (and place) to get some sleep. Like in Little Girl Lost, New York City plays a significant role as a dark, sinister backdrop to the story, and you can feel the author’s love (or maybe obsession?) for the city, but here it is more toned down and less intrusive for my taste. 

Everything, except maybe a lack of wittier dialogues with some slang, reminded me sometimes strongly of Chandler’s Marlowe. More modern type of sleuth, of course (really liked stuff with internet email), but still – our hero is wandering in the big, corrupt city on his lonely, stubborn pursuit of his understanding (and of course enforcing) of justice, honour and loyalty. He’s not too sure about himself, haunted by demons from the past, beaten frequently, doesn’t trust the police, doesn’t accept much of the help and is ultimately betrayed again by his loved ones (well, kind of). He never really controls the situation, it’s more like the other way around: “I felt like the last pawn on a chessboard, rooks and knights and bishops closing in on every side. I was inching toward the far side of the board and I wasn’t going to make it”. 

Good stuff indeed, although I do have a few little complaints. First of all, John should be tougher. Being a nerd with glasses is kind of okay, but PI (even an ex one) shouldn’t really be concerned with train conductors. Also, the relationship with Dorrie is a bit strange and ambiguous; we never quite know if they were just fuck buddies or were actually in love. We do get some kind of explanation when John’s friend suggests to him that they were Porn Buddies. After he stares blankly (me too, for that matter), he does get definition, I quote: “You know - when two guys agree that if anything happens to them, the other will come over and clear out his buddy’s stash or porn before the guy’s parents or girlfriend can stumble onto it.” We learn something new every day, but somehow it still doesn’t seem realistic that he should get into all this trouble if they weren’t really that close. Finally, I’ve found the last part before the revelation to be a bit too long, and the Philadelphia episode somehow redundant. True, it introduces a key character, but I think it takes too long and slows the plot unnecessarily.

My last little rent goes to the structure of the book. The first part (of three) is told in flashback, and then the story shifts to “real time.” I find this a bit superficial and kind of pretentious. And each part starts with William Blake’s quotes that I can really connect to the story. To me, this is just intellectual crap, but probably because I’m not a native English speaker. Maybe you can give it a try. Here’s the first one, from where this little masterpiece got its title:

Can I see another’s woe,

And not be in sorrow too?

Can I see another’s grief,

And not seek for kind relief? 

William Blake, Songs of Innocence

4/5

 

Facts:

Hero: 
John Blake, age 31. Ex private investigator. He also gets some help from his ex-girlfriend, Susan, who used to be a stripper and is now a private investigator.

Location: 
NYC, briefly Philadelphia

Dame: 
Dorothy, aka Dorrie, is a student with a troubled past and a dark family history. 

Body count: 
5, maybe/probably 6 (4 murders, 1 suicide, 1 most likely suicide; 2 bad guys, 4 innocent)

Cover: 
Good and pulpy, but not very accurate. At least I can't remember any naked chick covering herself with a teddy bear and a gun. By Glen Orbik.

Cool lines:  
I don’t bother nobody. Just do my job. I’ll work for whoever pays me. I don’t care if he’s white, black, Hungarian, whatever. You show me the green, I’ll show you the pink.

Little Girl Lost (Richard Aleas, 2004)

I’m glad to start my blog with this little pulp. It’s a debut novel from Richard Aleas, and it seems he put lots of love and knowledge of classic hard-boiled crime novels into this one. We have our lonely hero wandering around the big asphalt jungle trying to find out how his old flame from 10 years ago ended up as a newspaper's headline titled “Stripper found murdered”. The more he finds out, the less he likes it as he sinks deeper and deeper into the big city's depravity and the corruption of the human soul. The big twist and the ending are a bit obvious, but the story is still believable, easy to follow, hard-boiled enough, fast-paced, and there are plenty of intelligently placed clues and unusual characters to make it a real page-turner.

What raises this novel above average is our main protagonist. He’s a modern version of old school type private dick (at the end, you cannot help but think about Sam Spade in Maltese Falcon), but he is not some sort of old guy who can’t keep up with progress and still holds on to old methods. John Blake is in his late twenties, and he’s kind of an inexperienced apprentice to his boss/friend, ex-cop Leo, because he doesn’t really know what to do with his life. He uses the internet (thank god, he is far from some stereotypical genius geek type), isn’t much of a ladies' man (although he does score once!), not very muscular (like his “role models”, he gets beaten a lot) and very capable and resourceful (I liked the way he gets himself from the prison). In short: an excellent merge of classical PI into modern noir. 

As mentioned, the twist is predictable. I mean, you have two beautiful blonde strippers and one of them gets her face blown off to the point where she is unrecognisable. It’s so obvious that I kept thinking the author would use this formula to create some sort of double twist. It doesn’t really happen, which is a shame, but it also doesn’t damage the overall good impression. The ending is still a bit shocking, and more importantly, like in all good books, the journey towards the truth, revelation, and the main protagonist's self-discovery is at least as important as the classical whodunit itself.

I encourage you to go find the little girl lost.

4/5

Facts

Hero: 

John Blake, PI

Location: 

New York

Dames: 

Strippers Miranda aka Randy, Jocelyn aka Jessie, Susan.