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: 

/

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!]