Stopover For Murder (Terry Harknett aka Thomas H. Stone, 1973)

I don't particularly like the PI cases that involve personal crap. Too much drama and family shit. But the premise in this one is pretty cool - our hero doesn't try to track down some teenage junkie runaway daughter of his old friend (to whom he usually owes a favour). In this one, Chester Fortune simply wants to get laid. He's stuck at JFK for 12 hours waiting for his connecting flight, so instead of killing time at the airport bar, he challenges his fortune with an ex-girlfriend, Rhoda.

So it's a running-against-the-clock type of thriller, with our hero's libido clicking instead of some bomb triggering mechanism.

It moves with a supersonic speed. So fast that, in fact, it very quickly becomes comical because the amount of shit that happens to Chester in this short period (plus total mileage that he covers with his rented Ford) is just ridiculous.

But even with this crazy pace, it was still easy enough to follow, at least to some point. And I had an impression/expectation that all those gangsters, thugs, fashion photographers, pornographers, religious fanatics, washed-up journalists, cops, street gangs, etc., were leading to something. I was wrong. Instead of getting tighter, it slowly disintegrates and finally falls apart around the 10th chapter, in which Fortune "breaks" the case. Ending with the mandatory "shocking" twist is pretty pathetic, too. It simply doesn't hold water. For fuck's sake, could some old lady really kill a grown-up woman, drag her corpse down the stairs of the apartment building and stuff it into a car trunk? Totally unnoticed?

Short and violent pulp. I was slightly disappointed, especially after reading the much better Squeeze Play. Don't think I'll bother with the remaining two of the Fortune series.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Chester Fortune, mulatto PI - "A Man of Violence in a Violent World"

Location: 
New York

Body count: 

3

Dames: 
Rhoda Castle. Failed actress, now successful model (and porn star), trying to raise money for opening a theatre.

Blackouts: 
Almost:

The room was by turns dark, intensely bright and then hazy, but unconsciousness was kept tantalisingly at a distance.
 

Title: 
Chester has to make a stopover in New York, during which his ex-girlfriend is murdered.

Edition:  
First Nel Paperback Edition, June 1973

Cover: 
Pretty silly illustration of timid and confused-looking Chester.

Cool lines: 

/

Macao Mayhem (Terry Harknett, 1974)

I was a bit disappointed at the beginning. Just another formulaic thriller, placed in somewhat exotic surroundings and fueled by over-the-top violence. The story is about some sinister mastermind criminal orchestrating a plot in which a few small-time Hong Kong gangsters would kidnap a high-ranking US official and sell him for 5 million bucks to the Chinese (I think). It gets even more ridiculous when it turns out that this genius (mysteriously referred to as "Man from Macao") is only slightly less small-time than his crew. The story just doesn't add up (why the hell would killers bring a massacred body to a whorehouse?), and to make matters worse, the police investigation is pretty pathetic too and based on some hard to swallow coincidences (victim was a cop's friend, his partner's informer knew her housemaid, etc).

Mediocre stuff, especially considering it was written by the author of the solid Squeeze Play. But just when I expected it to fall apart entirely and explode into total chaos (true to its title), it got better. Much better. Relentless pace settles down a bit, and marginal characters (Jenny, her boyfriend/pimp Kai) become more involved. It turns into a 'proper' mystery that is actually quite smart, makes sense and builds up some proper tension as it nears the conclusion.

Unfortunately, neither suspense nor narration is sustained, and the whole thing disintegrates at the end. Too bad, it deserves a better ending.

It's far from perfect and could be improved by rewriting some dialogues and shortening action sequences descriptions, but I liked it anyway. Characters are natural, made of flesh. Especially, both killers are memorable - contrary to the cliches, they repeatedly (three attempts in 24 hours!) fuck up their contract, and Jo is just a scared alcoholic. Our two cop heroes also get fair treatment, but let's leave them for the next time. I will probably check out other books in this series.

3/5
 
Facts:

Hero: 
Senior Superintendent John Crown of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force and his partner, Chang Po. Their senior calls them "The Lone Ranger and Tonto".

Location:
Hong Kong (where "Spies were, of course, part and parcel of the scene.") and briefly Macao.

Body count: 
9, most of them meet their maker in a pretty gory fashion. Check this:

• First victim - when already dead! - is slashed with aikuchi from the throat down to her abdomen and then stabbed at least thirty times!
• Then the door cut him in half against the frame and the weight of the descending car pulped his upper body into the ground. The Challenger began its roll, trailing a spray of blood.
• Skin burst and bones crunched. Blood sprayed and crimson tissue oozed. Before so many of his vital organs were pulped into the street surface, Willie had time to reflect that he had been right to regard thirteen kills as unlucky.
• Ju's body was hurled high into the air. For an instant it was whole. Then it disintegrated like a clay pigeon hit with both barrels. Pieces of torn flesh, charred by heat and dripping blood, rained down over vehicles and horrified watchers.
• First shot took him in the stomach... The second entered the mouth, smashing the bridge-work...and lodge in the brain. The third and fourth went into his right and left eye... Blood poured out fast in vast quantities...
• Guy is shot dead (with a mandatory "spray of bright crimson") and then run over by the car!

Dames: 
Unfortunate Mu Li (one of the highest paid call girls on the island), a bit less unfortunate prostitute Jenny (for some reason, she's referred to as "whore" all the time, which was really annoying), and let's not forget the sexy maid Rosita.

Blackouts: 
Chung gets knocked out, and it's pretty forgettable ("It was unsubtle but effective. With no chance of retaliation."). But another occurrence definitely deserves mentioning, even though it is not related to any of our heroes. Drunken sailor Hans de Jong is hit on the head when entering a brothel room where (surprise, surprise) "his" prostitute is, and the poor guy is so horny that he ejaculates when he sinks into unconsciousness!?!  I mean wtf - is this even possible??

Title: 
Pretty unoriginal. I think something like "The Man from Macao" would be better (I admit it's a bit 007-ish). It's also not very accurate because only 22% of killings take place in Macao. So "Hong Kong Mayhem" would be more appropriate (but still unoriginal).

Cover: 
Illustration (not credited) of Crown and Chang causing mayhem on the streets of Macao. Crown's facial expression is really cool; he looks plenty pissed off.

First time on this blog: 
Crime in Asia.

Cool lines: 
"No ifs!" Crown snapped. "You tried to sell yourself into this mess. I may let you buy yourself out of it. The currency is words."

Squeeze Play (Terry Harknett aka Thomas H. Stone, 1973)

The private detective is hired by an elderly, impoverished black woman to locate her niece. Innocent Avis left her Seattle home and went to San Francisco six months ago to find her long-lost sister. She found her alright, but in the process, got hooked on heroin and found herself mixed up in a nasty blackmail affair. It's a big-time game involving organised crime, beautiful women with a shady past, failed actresses with their sleazy cameraman companions, tough cops (one is named Bogart!), dirty politicians, switched identities and so on.

In short, it's a classical detective novel. Written in 1973! It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel and keeps things simple and as straightforward as possible. The plot is far from trivial but still easy to follow, and the final revelation (let's not even call it a twist) totally makes sense. The characterisation is more than decent, mainly our main mulatto hero, who is complex just enough. Special mention must go to the time and location - even though it takes place in San Francisco, there's no mention of hippies, Nixon, Vietnam War, etc. It felt like the author had intentionally ignored all that political and sociological crap and had instead simply focused on telling a damn good mystery story.

It's nothing special. Certainly nothing I would call a masterpiece, but it simply works. At least it worked for me. There are many more ways to fuck up this kind of novel than there are ways to make them right, and it seems to me that Mr Harknett was well aware of that.

I often buy crime paperbacks of unknown (to me at least) authors at flea markets and second-hand bookstores, and usually, they are pretty disappointing. But I'm glad I came across this one and will definitely check out the other four of the Chester Fortune series. I googled Terry Harknett (and Thomas H. Stone too) and was amazed how obscure he is, especially since he wrote more than 200 books! There's his Wikipedia page with a single link to some publisher, and that's it. No online interviews, studies, blog posts, etc. I would appreciate it if anyone could give me some tips about his stuff!

4/5

Facts:

Hero:
Chester Fortune, PI. The cover describes him as "Fortune is a Man of Violence in a Violent World"

Location: 
San Francisco

Body count: 
Pretty bloody affair for mere 120 pages: 6 + 5 mobsters + not sure about "two detectives and a patrolman went down, clutching at their stomachs and spraying blood"

Dames: 
Karen - "Youth was a thing of the past for her and he guessed she was into that period of a woman's life when the thirty-second birthday comes around every year."

Blackouts: 
There was a split-second of agony under his skull, a blinding flash of white light, then darkness. Cool and soft and damp like the earth in a forest after a summer storm.

Title: 
Poor beautiful damsel in distress Karen is being blackmailed (squeezed).

Cover:
See the 'hero' section

Cool lines:  
The severed head hit the ground and rolled. Flames exploded from the wrecked car and in their flickering light he looked into the sightlessly staring eyes of what had once been Natalie Webb.
"Told you the ride was coming to an end, baby," he muttered.[The Coolest!]


The right side of his chest was soaked with blood, which had finished seeping from the wound made by a knife. The heart they had cut out was lying several feet away from him.
"I always thought he was a heartless bastard," Bogart said between teeth clenched against his pain.
"Just wasn't cut out for the job," Fortune responded.[The Coolest!]