Model For Murder (Robert Terrall writing as Robert Kyle, 1959)

This one doesn't waste any time with the usual introductions. On the very first page, there's a mandatory "I'm a private investigator" monologue, and next, we learn that we are in New York and that our gumshoe is already on the case. He's about to hand $500 to a girl blackmailing his client (page two) when she starts shooting at him through the closed door. And then, for some strange reason (or is she simply pissed off at herself for failing to kill him?), she decides to shoot herself!?! And we are still in the middle of the third page!

Great start! And it gets better - proxy endorsement letter (something related to stock exchange trading), stolen jewellery, and counterfeit money are objects of desire in this one. They are, of course, also the reasons for the mayhem that follows. Blackmail, murder, robberies from the past, fucked up families, sleazy hotels (and fancy hotels with sleazy detectives), gangsters, G-men, cops, jazz clubs, beautiful women, tough guys,... and our private dick in the middle of all this. Used and eventually betrayed by his client.

It may sound too convoluted, but it's easy to follow. Partly because the action is almost entirely driven by our hero. Not much happens without Ben's actions actually provoking it. There are no parallel sub-plots that would later cause some dramatic twists. No clues are given that would not eventually become important.

But although a little too linear for my liking, it's still an enjoyable old-school hard-boiled novel. Always a pleasure to go back in time when people lived in hotels, used public phone booths and when police used something called Speed-photo to send fingerprints around. Amazingly, even the mighty Google cannot come up with anything useful when searching for "Speed-Photo".

4/5

Facts:

Hero
Ben Gates, PI

Location
New York, Cleveland

Body count

4

Dames: 
Plenty of them in this one. The first one to walk on (and off) the stage is Gail Ives - "an obscure supper-club singer, at present unemployed". Then there's greedy and amoral Mrs Ringsted (she was in her early forties, and had made up her mind to stay there as long as possible), a call-girl Sandra Foote (although young, this girl had her grow), beautiful model Dorothy Terranova, "skinny" and not-so-dumb trophy wife Diane Santos. And in Cleveland, there's a prostitute Jeanette and another one whose name has escaped me. I probably forgot some other girls altogether...

Ben manages to score with not just one, but two of them!

Blackouts
One:

Simply "There was a blaze of reddish light." Regaining consciousness is a bit more elaborate: "The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the cluster of stars known as Orion. It is the only constellation I can recognize, and I don't see it often, since I seldom find myself lying on my back in a parking lot after dark."

And a half:

"... he only hit me once. I could still distinguish between light and shade, but physical objects bled into each other , and the smog was bad. I was able to walk by myself, though they insisted on helping me."
 

Title
It sounds cool, but it has nothing to do with the story. Or does it? The thing is that Dorothy is actually a model and a friend of the victim. But after her promising (and very sexy) introduction, her character is left behind completely forgotten, so I expected her to re-appear in the final twist. Something like when we all expected Seagal to show at the end of the Executive Decision, even though he had dropped from the plane an hour before. But nothing like that happens... so nice touch, Mr Terrall - you got me on this one!

Edition
Mayflower-Dell Paperback, 1965
 
Cover
Fantastic one, super cool! It depicts (with a bit of artistic freedom) a scene in which Ben meets Dorothy after her nude photoshoot. No credit is given to the illustrator, but it's the work of the great Bob McGinnis, according to Amazon's website.

Cool lines
I washed and shaved, used one of Diane's big-toothed combs on my hair and straightened my tie. There was lipstick, dirt and blood on my shirt, but there was nothing I could do about that.

"I've been humane so far," I remarked. "Please, don't stick your head out of the car, or I'll blow it off." I added, for Blick's benefit, "Bang, bang."

Fit to Kill (Brett Halliday, 1959)

Basic detective novel structure dictates that our gumshoeing hero gets hired by some unfortunate soul, or gets involved in a crime accidentally, or is pulled into some family shit. But not this one: Fit to Kill starts with some sort of journalistic investigation spy-ish background story, and it spends quite a hefty 50+ pages on it, which means that our main protagonist, PI Mike Shayne, makes his entrance as late as in the 7th chapter.

Which is a good and a bad thing at the same time. It's good because it's a bit unconventional (and therefore interesting), but it's bad because the background story is mediocre. Standard stuff involving some dictator of an unidentified banana republic, resistant fighters, a damsel in distress, a mysterious package and so on. Its main character, Shayne's friend Rourke, isn't exactly convincing and is, in fact, pretty fucking boring. He's supposed to be this stereotypical kind of hardened newspaper reporter, but most of the time he acts like some naive horny kid. I don't know, probably Halliday characterised him intentionally this way so Mike Shayne would be cooler in contrast.

With Shayne's arrival on the scene, the novel's pace shifts several gears up. In fact, it turns into the "real-time mode" which - once again - turns out to be a good and a bad thing. Good thing being that shit really starts to happen pretty rapidly, but the bad aspect of this is that it simply doesn't work too well. Don't get me wrong: the plot is not terribly complex, and it's easy to follow, it's just that its timing is way off sometimes. Simply too many things happen in twelve hours to make the story believable.

But it was still cool to read. Shayne is a pretty interesting character because he's supposed to be this cliched hard-boiled detective, but still he makes a few mistakes. Right at the start of the case he loses the girl he was tailing (He was frozen with indecision, which was an unusual state for Shayne), later moves a corpse before police arrives to the crime scene, walks into the Professor Quesada's house without any plan (so he gets knocked out) and other silly stuff like that. But still, he manages to tie up all the loose ends very efficiently in a great ending when all the pieces fall in place.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Michael Shayne, PI

Location:
First part in some unidentified "Central American republic", second part in Miami.

Body count: 

3

Dames:
Carla Adams with "elegantly nyloned legs" - She had the delicacy of colouring that is only found in girls with precisely that color hair.

Blackouts: 
Yes, but it's just "Shayne fell forward and the mist closed in about him." 

Title: 
Cool sounding, but also pretty puzzling one. The badass who does all the killings seemed very fit to me. Or is it referring to Rourke, who is finally fit to kill someone after his whole ordeal? If yes, who is he supposed to kill?

Cover: 
Not the usual paperback half-naked chicks & guns stuff, but quite interesting and nice one. This is relevant to the story, too, because thick glasses play a part in the novel, although it is far-fetched. Let me explain: the killer wears glasses, so without any second thoughts, Shayne links him to the asshole Renzullo, and - even more far-fetched - the police buys this idea without any reservation, so - check this, I shit you not! - they start a manhunt for a guy wearing glasses - "I want every outgoing train, bus and plane checked for a man wearing thick glasses"

Cool lines:  
Rourke asked the switchboard girl for the right time. It turned out to be time for supper, so he called room service, and ordered a bottle of rye and ice.

Kill Now, Pay Later (Robert Terrall, 1960)

Cool, old-school PI mystery. It does not start very glamorously, though - Ben Gates is hired by an insurance company to watch over wedding presents at the reception. The job is somehow inapt and inadequate for any great detective, and soon turns into a murder investigation as our hero tries to clear his name to stay in the sleuthing business.

All the right hard-boiled ingredients are there: a wealthy old family with a dominant patriarch and wild Junior (expelled from Yale and Princeton), a few scheming dames with dubious morals and questionable pasts, a couple of murders, a robbery, tax evasion, blackmail, dirty pictures, smut movies, a corrupted private detective, unscrupulous police officers, etc. The story is good and complex just enough, told straightforwardly without many twists in our favourite first-person narration.

But something's missing. Style is smooth enough, but the language could be more colourful and would definitely benefit from more slang and/or witty jokes. Pace at the beginning is excellent, but somehow drops just when the plot starts to thicken. There are almost 200 pages between corpses, which understandably affects the suspense building.

However, it still left me wanting more. It was somewhat disappointing to discover that Mr Terrall (also known as Robert Kyle, Brett Halliday, and John/Jose Gonzales) wasn't particularly prolific. The Ben Gates series contains just five entries. All of them are out of print and hard to find. I did see some of his novels on eBay and Amazon's second-hand offers. Do you have any suggestions?

4/5

Facts:

Hero:
Ben Gates, PI, 34 years old

Location: 
The countryside outside New York

Body count: 

4

Dames: 
Anna DeLong, an indispensable secretary who likes to keep control. Shelley Hardwick, a party society girl who's "In hock to more people". Hilda Faltermeier, a part-time maid.

Blackouts: 
"Somebody slugged the goddam coffee." 

It's a pivotal moment for the story because right away at the start Ben gets drugged: "The voices cut in and out, as thought they came from a TV set with a poor connection.... I reached for the corner of the table, but it was gone by the time my hand got there. The walls had begun to change places."

Title: 
No contract killers in this one, so I'm not really sure who was supposed to do either the killing or the paying. But still, of course, an extremely cool-sounding title!

Cover: 
Sexy, done again by Hard Case Crime regular Robert McGinnis. Redhead looks hot, and her look is as provocative and suggestive as it can be! But it needs to be said that her right leg seems to be a bit out of proportion. Maybe Mr McGinnis has a thing with the long legs (who doesn't, btw) because he has extended another one on the cover of Little Girl Lost. Anyways, this time I'm also including an older cover which is even better!

Cool lines:  
She had fewer buttons on her skirt that I had thought at first. Even with close scrutiny, and this is a matter which I like to give close scrutiny, I could only count one.

"And you do want to go on being a private detective?"
"I think so. I don't know of any other job where you meet so many peculiar people."

"I don't like other people to handle my gun," I said. "It's one of the things I'm eccentric about."