The French Key Mystery (Frank Gruber, 1940)

A locked-room mystery with a cool and original premise. Our hero and his sidekick, a couple of small-time con artists, get locked out of their hotel room, and when they manage to get into the room, they find a corpse of a total stranger holding a valuable coin in his cold hand. For some reason that I must admit had escaped me, they decided to find the killer themselves instead of calling the authorities.

It's a classical, good old-fashioned cosy crime with an amateurish detective, but it's pretty cool. I'm not sure if the plot always holds water, but it doesn't matter since it's so fast-paced and entertaining. And both Johnny and Sam are terrific characters, especially the former, who is super likeable, although he is portrayed a bit too romantically for my taste. But he definitely has his moments, and one of the best parts for me was conning that used cars salesman asshole.

A bit of a letdown is the final revealing scene in which the whole cast is assembled in Janet's dressing room after her successful stage debut. It's simply silly, but I guess, in those days, every crime novel had to end dramatically with everyone present in the same room and Poirot/Marple/.../Johnny Fletcher doing their whodunit routine.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Fletcher chuckled. He was at reasonable peace with the world. His clothing was dry, he'd had his morning coffee and after a while the sun would shine. That was enough for him. He was a reasonable man.

"You're the man who lives - by your wits, shall we say?"
"Who doesn't? To be just as frank with you, Miss Winslow, I'm a book salesman. And if you'll pardon my modesty, I'll say that I'm probably the best book salesman in this country. I am a spellbinder-"
"True..." murmured Betty Winslow.
"At the same time," Fletcher went on heedlessly, "I've had some experience in criminal matters."

Location: 
New York, and briefly, some godforsaken mining town in Nevada

Body count: 

2

Object of desire: 
Vedder continued to regard the golden piece. "Where'd you get this? It's interesting. Only about 58,000 were coined."
"58,087 of the 1812's... which this isn't. It's an 1822, of which 17,796 were coined and only a few issued. It's the most valuable American coin in existence." 

Dames: 
Janet, an aspiring actress - "She was a swell girl but she lied like hell." [Fatale]

Blackouts: 
A hundred little red blacksmiths pounded against his skull with little red sledges. Their anvil work made a terrible din. Fletcher cursed the blacksmiths and they went away. Bees came then and buzzed and were enveloped in scaring, agonizing fire.
 

Title: 
"French key? What's that"?
"It's the invention of a Shylock hotel manager. Let's say you owe three weeks' room rent. The manager wants to lock you out, but wants to make sure you can't get in with your pass key and carry out your belongings. He takes this French key, which is made of soft metal, sticks it into the lock and breaks it off. You try unlocking that door then."

Edition:  

Avon, 1946

Cover: 
Very cool one, and even without the usual blondes + guns. It's actually related to the story: after being locked out of their room, Johnny and Sam must go through the adjoining room and its outside windows still to get to their room.

Cool lines: 

/

Very Cold for May (William P. McGivern, 1950)

Paul Pine reads McGivern in Halo for Satan, so I decided to have a go at this one. Pine's remark about "PI being brilliant and women in it beautiful" hinted at some sort of trashy pulp, so I was a bit surprised to find it a very classical murder story in the tradition of Agatha Christie. Not really my cup of tea, especially since our main protagonist is some sort of PR hotshot. Which is pretty fucking high on my top ten list of shitty professions.

But it turned out to be quite good and exciting. It deals with government corruption, moral hypocrisy of officials, war profiteering and media spin-offs that cover up all this shit. Murder mystery and our hero's personal dilemmas (also related to his marital problems) are elegantly placed in this background of post-war America.

However, it is a bit weak on the plot. As likeable and engaging as he is, Jake is not a very good detective at all. He is simply lucky to break the case because he gets his main clue from a slip of the tongue of one of the villains. Both the whodunit and the subsequent twist are unconvincing (the twist is surprising, though), and the "revealing" scene with the entire cast assembled in a true Poirot tradition is entirely unnecessary. I also found bits that (I guess) were supposed to make this a bit more hard-boiled (cop friend and that ageing mafioso type) a bit redundant.

But still, it was a good and entertaining read. It reminded me to read more classical mysteries.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Jake Harrison, senior account executive at Gary Noble and Associates, Public Relations.

Location:
Chicago

Body count: 

3

Object of desire: 
May Laval's diary. She's writing her "tell-all" memoir based on this diary that would expose the dirty deeds of many influential people, ranging from gangsters to politicians and businessmen.

Dames:
May Laval, a former model who still craves attention, attempts to garner it by publishing her controversial book. Then there's Jake's soon-to-be-ex (?) wife Sheila and ass-hole Riordan's wife, Denise. May is definitely the most interesting one of the three, so it was too bad she was the first one to go.

Title: 
A word game that I didn't find as amusing (or intriguing) as it had probably been intended. I mean - May is dead, and dead people are very cold.

Edition:  

Penguin, 1987

Cover: 
This has to be the dullest cover so far on this blog. Have no idea what kind of message the art directors at Penguin tried to convey by putting an old picture of an empty street on the cover. Surely it's not suggesting that Chicago has become a ghost city because of all the corruption, etc?

Cool lines:  
"Jake, you act like you're tired or something."
"I was taken unexpectedly drunk last night," Jake said, and winced. He wondered if he were likely to develop into the sort of graceless idiot who was never at a loss for rakish comments about his hangovers.

The Devil's Passkey (Jimmy Shannon, 1952)

Pretty much everything in this one is bad, so let us just focus on the plot's main device - Trivium. And no, I'm not talking about this metal band or the systematic method of creative thinking. Trivium is a new synthetic drug, the "Most deadly millions-maker ever conceived to kill mankind."

The "millions-maker" aspect is somewhat unclear because this drug can apparently be produced using ingredients freely available in local pharmacies for the price of an aspirin. This paradox is so ridiculous that the author must address it and at least try to offer a logical explanation. And he does. Well, sort of. It's hinted that commies might be behind the whole setup. It goes on and on (and it's pretty fucking funny too), but the basic idea is that Russkies would weaken America by flooding the home of the brave with cheap and highly addictive drugs. Or some shit like that.

But this hypothesis is quickly abandoned (at least it never gets mentioned again), and we are back to the good old setup with two rival gangs and our world-saving-hero PI standing between them. But it must be said that he's not doing this job particularly well. He gets beaten all the time (see the blackout section of the facts below) and loses suspects on at least five (yes, five!) occasions. When he gets stuck, he asks his religious friend to pray to God to break the case (I kid you fucking not) or simply relies on his instinct. And those parts are hilarious, too. Check it out:

Hell - I can't explain all the processes of reasoning that lead a man to do what he does. In women they call it intuition. In guys guess it's just plain "nose".

Huh?

It's simply bad. And not in a good way either. The blurb on the cover says "Written in the Mickey Spillane Style", and it's pretty accurate. I wouldn't call it a style, though. It's more like a copy.

It made me intrigued about Jimmy Shannon, and I tried to find more about him, but even Google couldn't come up with anything useful. But Ruff Boy is listed on the Thrilling Detective website, and it looks like this is his only novel. There's no other info there except for a quote from Bill Pronzini's book Gun in Cheek, saying that Ruff is possibly "the least intelligent private eye ever." Cool stuff, Gun in Cheek just made my to-do list.

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Ruff Morgan, aka "Ruff Boy", ex news reporter, now P.I.

Not a very likeable dude. One of those obnoxious know-all, macho-type assholes. It would be nice to say "please" or "thank you" every now and then when he's bossing everyone around. Btw,  for some reason, he's commanding/coordinating half of the NYPD. Plus, his jokes are pretty lame unless you find crap like this funny: "Jim whistled low and it wasn't Beethoven"

Oh, yeah - and why does he do it?

Why do I stay in it? Because I hate crooks. I hate rackets. I hate guys who make fools of jerks who won't stop pouring their hard-earned cash into jerk traps.

Deep stuff indeed...

Location: 
New York

Body count: 
10, not counting undercover cop Jane's mother suffering a stroke after witnessing her daughter getting killed. Also, not counting at least 10 "hoods and boys" who die in the final shoot-out.

Object of desire: 
The chemical formula for Trivium. I can give you a part of it (the other one died together with Professor Crocker): df 5 PHY 51 ADFR 5

Dames: 
Conservative, Spillane-ish kind of a mother and a whore type of women. His fiancée Katy is beautiful, pure and innocent (literally as she's still a virgin), and then there's Jerry, the scheming and greedy dame. But still, our horny Ruff Boy has no problem fucking Jerry for five straight days. The whole thing is pretty misogynistic and hard to digest since Jerry gets beaten on at least three occasions.

Blackouts: 
He passes out for the first time on the very first page, which has to be this blog's record! It goes like this:

That's when he jammed my left eye so far back in my head that it went to work with the brain department. I sailed across the counter and landed in Hattie the hat-check girl's lap. Good night Ruff Boy Morgan!

Not bad at all. I liked the brain department part. And there's more in the first chapter:

- About the twentieth smack in my eye, I blacked out. The last thing I remember was a drag on my twist and a taste of my own blood.
- I blacked out for a minute. But you got to a point where pain isn't important.
- I passed out completely

And we are far from finished! There are two more: on one occasion, he's flying like a kite over New York (which is pretty cool), and on the other one, there was simply "Wham-bo! on the back of my skull" 
 

Title:  
Ruff and Jerry are kept prisoners in some futuristic laboratory made of glass walls where:

Now I learned the secret of these doorless and lockless walls. That almost needlelike key could be inserted into an almost invisible hole. A veritable Devil's passkey!

Edition:  
Signet, 1953

Cover: 
A slight variation of  "The 3 S's - Sex, sadism and the smoking gun" theme. It depicts a scene in which our poor unfortunate Jerry gets belted across the mouth and intimidated by Brock and Torrence.

Cool lines:  
None really. It's poorly written, and slang usage goes as far as the usual kissers, dames, and mugs. Plus, there are all these exclamations like Boy! Brother! Gosh!... which are amusing (after the initial WTF) at the beginning, but they soon become really annoying.

Dead in Bed (Day Keene, 1959)

In 1959, there were 80 private investigators and 145 detective agencies listed in the LA yellow pages. Still, our damsel in distress insists on hiring Johnny Aloha to find her mother, who has been on a binge for several days. The only reason why Gwen chooses him is that he used to know her mother 15 years ago when he was still in his teens. She's so determined that Johnny is one and the only one adequate enough for this job that she flies from LA to San Francisco to persuade him to take the assignment instead of going on a planned vacation to his native Hawaii. And she offers him 10 grand (around 80 grand these days according to this inflation calculator) and - in a good femme fatale tradition - promises him a "bonus of her fair white body"...

So, we have a missing person case with a personal touch and not the most believable opening. Not exactly promising, but I've read worse, and some eventually did turn out to be quite good. So I carried on optimistically.

For the following several chapters, it's okay. Classical sleuth story - PI follows various leads (torn letter fragment found in a wastebasket, lost earrings, an inscription on the back of the old photo, notes, etc.) that take him from point A to B and C. He's getting closer and closer to the elusive Hope Starr. Along the way, the supporting cast gets introduced: a (mandatory) cop friend, a (another mandatory) newspaper reporter friend, an English Colonel and his (I kid you not) butler and his secretary Betty. There's also a sub-plot about some Chinese badass gangster with a score to settle with Johnny. Which is cool and a pretty smart touch, as we (together with Johnny) are unsure where the shit will come from during the investigation.

But this whole setup is pretty much totally spoiled. Because from very early on, it turns out that the mentioned bonus about getting Gwen's body wasn't just a subtle hint. For some reason, this innocent (literally - she's still a virgin) kid totally falls for Johnny, whose libido responds accordingly. Most of the time, the two of them forget entirely about the "case" and simply try to get laid. This whole "relationship" is a total mess and borders on bizarre, so I won't even try to describe it. But in any case, it totally takes the focus off the plot and makes the whole thing a bit dull.

The ending is a bit better. The twist is okay, but the problem is that it's hardly unexpected. So many pages got wasted on that corny romance/sex nonsense that other characters never developed, and not much has happened either, so this "twist" is pretty obvious.

It's entertaining but nothing special. I guess it was edgy and provocative in its time with stuff like Hope fucking GIs before they went to the Pacific (giving them hope?), but it just hasn't aged well. It gave me the impression that Keene had an idea about the basic plot, but instead of developing it further into something substantial, he opted to simply throw some sex into the pot, wrap it up and pick up the check.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
P.I. Johnny Aloha from Hawaii, operating in L.A. these days.

"Now tell me this. How good a detective are you?"
I didn't see any reason to be modest. "One of the very best. And if you don't believe me, you can ask the Internal Revenue Department." 

"He said you were a crazy Havaiian but one of the best private eyes in the business and could be depended to co-operate in every way with the law."

Location: 
L.A., San Pedro, some ski resort at Lake Arrowhead

Body count: 6

Dames: 
The most interesting character by far is Hope Starr, "The oversexed, fabulous and fantastic, much married cafe society beauty" and "...practicing nymphomaniac in the last stages of acute alcoholism..."

Gwen is a typical poor little rich bitch. Young, beautiful, horny, soon to inherit a forty-million fortune (plus compound interest for the past twenty years!)

And let's not forget Aloha's secretary, Betty. Ex-Miss Strawberry Festival of some small town in Oregon. Another virgin, even though she's 19 going on 20.

Blackouts: 
In the beginning, he's beaten and mugged, but he doesn't pass out. Our Johnny is a pretty tough guy because, towards the end, he gets a blow from behind and still doesn't collapse:

It numbed me rather than hurt me. I could think but I couldn't move. Also, by some weird chemical process, all the calcium in my legs seemed to have evaporated. 

But they finish him off on the next page by hitting him again with the blackjack, and he's finally out.
 

Title: 
I not only had the wrong woman in my bed, but, unfortunately, she was dead.

Edition:  
A Triphammer Thriller, World Distributors (Manchester), 1972

Cover: 
Nice and very memorable for two reasons. It has a beautiful naked lady lying and masturbating (I think) on the bed, and - contrary to the exploitative nature of these pulps - the whole thing is exceptionally bright with overexposed light that makes the motive (masturbating woman) hard to see at first.

It depicts the scene in the Big Bear hotel where Gwen waits for Johnny to deflower her. And it's just one of those that doesn't make much sense. I mean, she picks him up in his apartment, and then they drive 3+ hours to stop her mother's bigamist wedding. They check into a hotel, and then, instead of facing her, she sends Johnny to deliver the ultimatum. So, I would assume that she's tired and the whole situation is very tense and awkward. But I would assume wrong because while waiting for Johnny, she simply strips, jumps into bed and waits for him to get back so that they can finally have sex.

Cool lines:  
She's had six or seven husbands and God and the laundries know how many lovers.

The Last Good Kiss (James Crumley, 1978)

Private detective C.W. Sughrue is hired by the wife of an alcoholic writer to find her hubby and bring him back home before he drinks himself to death. The man has been on a crazy binge covering several thousand miles, and C.W. had always been one step behind him until he finally lost the lunatic and gave up on his search. But then, madame informs him that she received a postcard from San Francisco with the following "cryptic couplet": "Dogs, they say, are man's best friend, but their pants have no pockets, their thirst no end."

A weird message, indeed (remember, the guy is a writer) that can be interpreted in many different ways. Still, it immediately makes our hero (remember, he is a detective) start looking for an alcoholic dog "hanging" around the bars in the San Francisco area. After three days, he does find this beer-drinking beast named Fireball Roberts in some "ramshackle joint", and yes, he is getting intoxicated with elusive Abraham Trahearne. Our protagonists then form a weird friendship (and together with bulldog Fireball!) start the unforgettable journey.

Fueled with booze and with most of it happening on the road, this is probably the closest to some sort of Gonzo hard-boiled mystery I'm ever likely to read. But having said that, it doesn't mean that this is some light, comical reading. It is, in fact, very fucking dark, and it takes its crime aspect deadly seriously.

Two stories intertwine. I'm generally not particularly fond of the technique because it always results in some big twist revealing that the stories are, in fact, related. Surprise, surprise. But it can work if (a) plots are solidly constructed and (b) the novel is written by a skilful writer. And in this one, it works beautifully.

How can it not work with the main characters both damaged by war (younger with Vietnam, older with WWII)... an alcoholic writer with a block... married to a beautiful wife who waited for him during the war... Doesn't ring a bell? Check out the 'Title' section of the facts below ;)

Great stuff, brutal but strangely poetic, pretty crazy at times. I loved it! Hunter S. Thompson meets Raymond Chandler.

5/5

Facts:

Hero
C.W. Sughrue - P.I. who also works part-time at a topless bar. 

"C.W.," I said.
"What do the initials stand for?" she asked, smiling.
"Chauncey Wayne," I confessed.
"C.W. will do fine," she said, then laughed. 

Location
Impossible to list all the places that C.W. drives to in his El Camino. Starts in Montana, then his first lead takes him to San Francisco and from there to Bakersfield, Spring Creek NV, Denver,  Columbia Falls, Salt Lake City, Colorado and back to Montana.

Body count

3

Dames
Ex-wife Catherine - "She could have passed for thirty. A great thirty- And she damn well knew it." Plus Betty Sue aka Melinda

Blackouts
He gets punched when trying to find a key to his hotel room after returning from town, so now he's "tired of trying to get drunk without success". 

Title
 Two possibilities. When he kisses Catherine "so hard it blurred the careful lines of her lips, mussed her hair, and made her drop her carry-on bag", she responds by saying, "You bastard. That was the last one." (note that she does not explicitly specify it was the last good one!). Towards the end, there's the more profound and fatalistic kiss of Betty Sue, and she simply whispers: "Thank you for everything."

Hard to decide. I think this book should be called "The Last Good Kisses". The second one seems more probable, but I would still go for the first one. The thing is that the kiss scene is immediately followed by a paragraph in which C.W. contemplates his life, and this paragraph (which is pretty cool btw) contains the following sentence: "My future [seemed like] a series of long goodbyes." So I would like to think that Crumley gave the nod to Chandler's masterpiece. Or was he just arrogant and suggested that every one of his future books would be as good as The Long Goodbye?

Edition
First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Edition, 1988

Cover
Very appropriate, see 'Location' section.

Cool lines
"In what condition did you find him?"
"Drunk," I said, not specifying which of us.

"Unlike yours, old buddy," I said, "mine act ain't act." Then I grabbed his wrist and squeezed the heavy silver bracelet into his soft flesh. "Intellectual discourse is great, man, but in my business,  violence and pain is where it's at."[The Coolest!]

Back in town, I worked a couple of divorces and repossessed a few televisions from households where domestic strife was the commodity of exchange. It worked like a charm. My cynicism restored itself, and my bank account remained flush.

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."

Wild Wives (Charles Willeford, 1956)

PI Jake Blake is sucked/suckered into two love triangles in a single day. The first one is kind of amusing (at first), but the second one is violent, sexy and ultimately deadly. Man is killed, and Jake and his femme fatale accomplice must hit the road to Mexico to escape the electric chair. Passion cools down pretty soon and fades out completely when money (or lack of it) gets involved. A tragic conclusion is inevitable, and justice will be served in the end - in the "Postman Always Rings Twice" manner.

Not sure where to start. I love Hoke Moseley stuff, but I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, written 30 years prior. Was Willeford's quirky style already distinct and memorable so early on, or was this going to be just another detective novel?

Such concerns were dispelled right away. There is a classical opening scene with a detective sitting bored and jobless in his crummy office when a femme fatale walks in with a gun. But here, our damsel in distress is a teenager with a water pistol! Hehe, nice touch. The whole thing quickly takes a more serious tone, but as the story progresses, it soon becomes clear (and cool too!) that this will not be a detective story. It's instead a "crime of passion" kind of thing in which the main protagonist just happens to be a private detective. In other words, Willeford is playing with the genre, and he's using one classical crime/mystery template to tell a story of another one.

It goes even further because there's also a little twist in the "passionate lovers condemned to destroy each other" part. The thing is that neither of them is quite likeable, so we don't really root for anyone in particular. Florence at first appears to be a cool, horny and calculative bitch (always plus in my book), but then we learn that she's just a messed-up girl who recently came out of a mental institution. And without going into details, let's simply say that Jake is pretty much an asshole.

The most enjoyable part was that I didn't have time to think about such matters, given the furious pace. Towards the end, it reaches almost comical intensity. The Las Vegas wedding scene with a gin-soaked witness sleeping in the chapel (one page) and the one in which Jake wins $1400 on a dice game (two paragraphs) are both unforgettable. It says "A Novel" on the cover, but with less than 100 pages, I think it qualifies more as a novella. Either way, it's impossible to put it down once you start reading it.

Could go on and on about this little masterpiece, but instead, let me just finish this post by saying: "Read It!". Can't think of many better ways to spend a couple of hours of your life.

5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Jake Blake, PI

Location:
San Francisco, Las Vegas

Body count: 

3

Dames: 
At the beginning:

Florence had something that I'd never run into before in my entire life. During the many years I had spent in the army, I'd met women in Paris, Berlin, Manila and Tokyo, but never, never one like her before. The mundane domestic variety I'd clashed with in the States I didn't count at all--I decided to stick it out for awhile to see what would happen. 

And a bit later:

I hadn't realized it before, but Florence Weintraub was just about as dumb as a woman could get. When it came to any thinking, I realized, I would have to do it all.

Blackouts:
He drew his fist back. I saw it coming but I didn't feel it. It was a sure-shot solar plexus blow and the film turned a dirty black, interspersed with shooting stars...
 

Title: 
It's, of course, about Florence, but I'm not sure why the plural is used. She has mental problems, but it's never explicitly specified that she is schizophrenic.

Edition:  
First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, March 2006

Cover: 
See 'Dames' and 'Title' sections

Notable cover blurbs:  
This one from Elmore Leonard is well known, but let's just put it here for the record (and play a little with a typeface): 
"No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford."
 

Cool lines:  
"Now, try this: I call it a Desert Wind. Nine-tenths gin, one-tenth vermouth. No olive. No onion. Nothing, just a toothpick."
I sipped the Desert Wind. "It's fair," I said, smiling, "only next time, skip the toothpick. The wood absorbs too much of the gin." [The Coolest!]

"Go to your room!" He told her fiercely.
"Fuck yourself," she remarked quietly and wandered over to the fireplace.
"I wanted to take a look at you, Blake," he said, ignoring Florence's suggestion.