Nick Carter - Ice Trap Terror (Jeffrey Wallman, 1974)

Came across this one in Bill Pronzini's fantastic Gun in Cheek. It was around the time when I finished The Mongol Mask, and since they are both driven by a similar bizarre "meteorological" plot vehicle, it seemed only natural to compare these two alternative masterpieces (as Pronzini would put it) and gauge them on the scale of ridiculous-meter. And besides, it's about time this blog gets a Nick Carter entry.

But without boring myself again, I can only report that it is as bad as Mongol was. A similar kind of dull, humourless writing where bodies pile with lightning speed, and everything (including sex scenes) takes ages.

Until we reach the final shootout in the penultimate chapter. The mighty chapter thirteen!! Crazy stuff, impossible to describe how over the top that shit is. Instead, I'll take my time and retype some of the best bits below. Sit down, relax and enjoy:

One bullet caught him in the throat as he began to yell and the other poked his eye out.
Bullet poking an eye out??
 
"There have been reports of a woman."
Zembla gave a derisive snort. "Leave it to Carter to have a girl along, treating this as if were a vacation at a sex club..."

And btw - he speaks with "the furious, dogmatic voice". Dogmatic voice?

Fast forward a couple of pages, and we find Zembla attempting to kill Carter and Tamara, utilising one of the craziest killing methods I can remember:

The copter banked slightly and came slithering toward us.
"That bastard! That sonofabitch! I raged. "He's going to drift overhead and pick us off like sitting ducks! Keep your head down, Tamara. Don't look."

Towards the end, Carter has no escape plan, but:

There wasn't any thought as to the odds of discovering a boat, or if we could find a way to run it; there had to be a boat available, if we were to survive. It was as simple as that.

And sure enough:

There was a boat, a sleek and sassy thirty-foot craft, bobbing wildly at its lines like a maverick stallion straining in a chute.
 
The End. Brilliant, isn't it?

3.5/5 (adding an extra point for chapter 13)

Facts:

Hero: 
Nick Carter, agent of AXE

Location: 
It's hard to keep up, but Nick and Tamara fly to the following countries with her little Cessna: Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama.

Body count: 

53

Object of desire:  
Disrupting weather and creating a temporary ice age by creating artificial mountains to conquer Central America and start a Third Mayan Empire.

Confused? Let Colonel Zembla explain it himself:

"My idea is merely to make a mountain. That is, simulate one with radio waves, projecting all the symptoms of a mountain into the air currents of the troposphere. That would have to be about fifteen thousand feet to insure snow. Nobody will see it, and a plane can fly right through it, but the weather will know it is there!" 

Still confused? I cannot fully explain something I don't understand myself, so I suggest you check pages 35-38.

Dames: 
KGB agent Tamara:

It was a face to remember. So was the rest of her, for that matter. Her body was everything a woman's body should be - taut-breasted beneath her checkered woolen shirt, and leggy down to her mid-calf boots. Her face was heart-shaped and matched her body's promise of tenderness and passion.

But make no mistake:

Tamara was tough, pragmatic, and courageous, and above all, nobody's fool.

Blackouts: 
They should put Nick into one of those Duracell batteries commercials because he's indestructible. Shot and wounded twice, repeatedly beaten (including once getting kicked in his balls) and having sex (twice) while trying to save the world, and not once does he lose his senses. But at the end of that epic chapter #13, when the mission is accomplished, he finally gets his well-deserved blackout moment:

But as the yawning pit of unconsciousness closed over me, I looked up at the sky and smiled. The weather was changing again.
 

Title: 
See the 'object of desire' section

Edition: 
Tandem Book, 1977

Cover:  
See the 'hero' and 'object of desire' sections

Cool lines: 
Her round, high breasts were like frozen apples against my bare chest.[The Coolest!]

Nothing More Than Murder (Jim Thompson, 1949)

This one isn't particularly interested in the actual criminal act or the prior plotting that led to it. This is just as well since the bad guys' plan is pretty pathetic. Good old double indemnity insurance scam with a bit of a (silly) twist. The wife catches our hero Joe cheating, and then the trio together decides to resolve this unfortunate situation by faking her death and collecting the insurance money to pay her off so Joe and Carol can live and fuck happily ever after. And the silly twist? They manage to get the "replacement" body by simply placing an advert in a local newspaper seeking a woman who physically resembles Elizabeth (she would die in the fire, burned beyond recognition, so her body/face isn't significant).

Of course, with such an amateurish (stupid?) plan, it is only a question of when and not if they will get caught. It's also a question of who will blow up the whole setup, since Joe soon finds himself blackmailed by a couple of local scumbags, investigated by the insurance company PI. At the same time, his accomplice/lover gets increasingly distrustful (and unpredictable). And if all that wasn't bad enough, he's also in the middle of a fight against his movie theatre's (very hostile) takeover.

And this is where the novel's brilliance comes in. Joe is somewhat like Sheriff Nick Corey from Pop. 1280 - a manipulator who constantly schemes to get his way out of trouble. So, instead of a classical whodunnit, the suspense here is about guessing how he'll manage to untangle the messy web he got himself caught in. And although he's a bit of an asshole (but then again, the whole cast consists of assholes), he's still likeable and even honest in his own way, so I must admit I was kind of cheering for him.

Excellent stuff, and even though this is very early Thompson (his first "proper" crime genre novel), it is put together masterfully. Snappy dialogues, superb characterisation of the main protagonist (I am sure that others are intentionally neglected), great storytelling with some flashbacks thrown in, and just enough psychological depth to keep it interesting, even though the plotting is not very strong. It simply works. Everything clicks as it should.

And I cannot finish this writing without mentioning the small-town mentality and seedy movie theatres and film distribution industry milieu into which the story is set. Amusing stuff that creates a good atmosphere and gives the story a realistic and authentic tone. Too bad that "Glossary of exhibitor terms" is at the end and not at the beginning of the book. I was a bit confused at first when coming upon terms like "dark" (not in operation; a dark house), "product" (pictures) and "paper" (advertising matter). However, it wasn't too distracting, and it eventually became cool once I got used to the slang.

Maybe a bit too light and naive for my taste  (I saw that ending twist coming way too soon), but it didn't really matter. Enjoyed it a lot.

4.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
According to a local newspaper, "Joseph J. Wilmot, local theatre magnate".

Location: 
An imaginary small town of Stoneville. At least, I think it doesn't exist, since I couldn't find one on Google Maps that would be "an hour driving from the City" or "thirty miles from Wheat City".

Body count: 
2, possibly another one since I'm not sure how to interpret "I caught him right in the act of slugging Jimmie Nedry".

Dames: 
I'd thought she looked awkward and top-heavy, and, hell, I could see now that she didn't at all. Her breasts weren't too big. Jesus, her breasts!
She looked cute-mad and funny-sweet. She looked like she'd started somewhere and been mussed up along the way.
She was a honey. She was sugar and pie. She was a bitch. [Fatale]

Blackouts: 
The whiskey never reached my mouth. I couldn't get it that high. It trickled out on my shirt front, and then the bottle dropped from my hand to the floor. And I followed it.
 

Title: 
Cool sounding. It probably refers to a trivial and oversimplistic plan that our murderous trio puts together.

Edition: Black Lizard 1985

Cover: 
Nice, old-school type of illustration. Made by a guy named Kirwan, who apparently created covers for all of the Black Lizard's classic reissues. And they all look great!

Notable cover blurbs: 
"Jim Thompson is the best suspense writer going, bar none."
- New York Times

Not that I disagree, but still, it seems strange that they would regard him as a "writer going" seven years after his death.

Cool lines:  
She smiled, kind of like an elevator boy smiles when you ask him if he has lots of ups and downs.

The Lost Sister (Russel D. McLean, 2009)

Hardly a crime/mystery novel, more like a family drama. Heavy one. The goddaughter of the local mobster disappears, and our hero becomes involved in her search. With "gets involved", I'm being vague intentionally because I'm still not sure what the fuck his motive was. First, he's contacted/hired by the local newspaper. Then the cops ask him to be some sort of a counsellor (!?), a few chapters later, the girl's asshole godfather wants him on the case, and finally even some fellow private investigator (!!!) pays him 200 pounds to find this girl. That has to be some kind of precedence - I cannot think of another one where PI gets hired by another sleuth. Can you?

The investigation itself is as weird as his motives are unclear. He only interviews three people, and then (in a 30-page-long scene!) the other PI more or less explains everything that our main man McNee needs to know about the story. You know - stuff from the past that detectives are usually supposed to uncover themselves... But then again, this is not such a bad thing since otherwise, this book would probably be 1000 pages long instead of "just" 300.

Yes - 300 pages. It does take its time. Moves slowly, constantly going back into the past... with the body count counter remaining still... taking its time to tell the reader a thing or two about the local history... and architecture... and - worst of all! - with our hero constantly whining and feeling sorry for himself.

Surprisingly, it still works well. It isn't a page-turner, but it's definitely not dull. It is skillfully written, and although the pace is slow, it has a nice rhythm. Dialogues are clever, and they contain a decent dosage of the local slang (although it rarely goes beyond the usual Scottish wee, lass, aye, shite stuff). For my taste, there's a bit too much of the psychological/philosophical crap, but at the same time, I didn't find it pretentious at all. And to be (a wee) pretentious myself, I'll conclude that McLean may have tried too hard to create something extraordinary and lost focus on the story along the way.

Interesting and honest writing, but simply not hard-boiled enough for me.

3/5

Facts:

Hero: 
PI McNee

She looked at the card. Said, "Who're you trying to fool? Nobody's a private investigator. Not in Dundee of all places."

"You're a man with a conscience and a code and all that other bollocks, but you're also a man who drags his own disaster around with him like a wrecking ball. You want to help people. But you can't. Can't even help your fucking self."

The psychiatrist... had unofficially diagnosed me like this:
"You have to be the hero. Save everyone. Doesn't matter if you know it's bad idea. It's a compulsion. To satisfy your own ego."
I'd called shite.

Location: 
Dundee was Scotland's fourth city in terms of size, constantly jockeying with Aberdeen for the coveted position of third. But its reputation as the city with the small town feel was what gave it the edge.

Body count:  

2

Dames: 
Mary Furst is 14 years old, and both sisters are a mess, so neither exactly qualifies as "dame"

Blackouts: 
Couldn't hear the words. Couldn't hear the voices. My face was on fire, pain searing up and along my cheekbones.
Finally, I blacked out.
Call that a mercy.
 

Title: 
The kettle boiled. The switch clicked.
The idea slipped into focus.
The sister.

Edition: 

Five Leaves Publications, 2009. Signed!

Cover: 
Looks like a fucking computer manual. When I see such plain covers, I often think of authors and how shitty they must feel about their publishers investing fuck all in the cover art. Long live the Hard Case Crime!

Cool lines: 

/

The Mongol Mask (E. Howard Hunt writing as David St. John, 1969)

I liked House Dick a lot and was really looking forward to reading this one. The outrageously blatant and hilariously over-the-top Conan the Barbarian-like cover art (accompanied by "atomic sex" and "torrid action" slogans) promised a memorable experience. So, I would check eBay from time to time for a decent copy priced around $15, and I didn't hesitate for a moment when one was finally listed.

Our spy hero, Peter Ward, is introduced through a recent assignment in which he rescues a political prisoner/informer in Spain (I believe). On his return home, we learn more about him. The usual stuff - dead wife, alive and loving sister with a couple of kids who adore him, etc. He also has a dog. Standard stuff, and a bit boring, to be honest. It lasts for about forty pages, and then he starts his mission in Hong Kong.

And this is where things slowly go to shit. It's not clear what the objective of his mission is supposed to be. The Chinese are apparently trying to attack the Soviet Union (!?) with some badass missiles (even worse than nukes) that would, in turn, somehow fatally affect the USA (??). So, he needs to go to this remote town near the Mongolian border, where the rocket launch pad is, to check it out. Or something like that. After 100+ pages, he finally manages to arrive and destroys one missile, but another is successfully launched (even though he blows up the entire complex).

These 100+ pages are indeed painful to read. Every chapter becomes more tedious (and unintentionally comedic) as nothing significant happens during this odyssey. Or, to be more precise, nothing happens that would support the story coherently. The funny thing is that, after a while, even Peter himself - super spy as he is - loses track of time and is unsure how long it has been since the mission began.

So the sinister missile is off and on its way to hit an unknown target. Peter is picked up by the rescue plane and safely returns to the Pentagon. One would assume that this concludes his assignment, but several chapters are still left. Because we finally get to know what the conspiracy is all about based on the hard evidence (some soldier's personal diary) that he has brought back. And it's hilarious; check out the 'object of desire' section of the facts below.

And yet, the best is still to come. Peter is dispatched to Greenland, along with a group of military and scientific personnel, where he - surprise, surprise - saves the world. And he will do that using Prometheus:

"Want to tell me a little more?"
"Well, we've been working on this model as a substitute for ABM emplacements. Prometheus, we call it, and the ray diameter - one square centimeter -  radiates a pulse a hundred million times hotter than an equal area of the sun's surface. I - uh - I gather you're not a science man, so I'm putting this pretty basically."

Everything is so insane that it actually has the potential to be a trashy masterpiece. But it's not. It's simply and plainly bad. Written poorly, with no tension or suspense, very predictable, with pages and pages of dull descriptions without any dialogue.

Memorable only for its cover.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:
Peter Ward - C.I.A. superstud

Location: 
Spain, Pentagon, journey from Hong Kong to far inside China's inland, back to Washington, concludes in Grenland

Body count:  
27 - assuming that the plane crew that Peter and Mei-tang shot down (with an old rifle and a Magnum gun!) consisted only of a pilot and gunman. 

And not even counting the victims of Peter's sabotage. The exact number is never specified, but the Major that Peter interrogated said there were over 100 soldiers on-premises. And there was also a delegation of VIPs (six vehicles) present at the launch.

Object of desire:  
Evil little yellow/red people want to melt both Polar caps, which would "result in catastrophic flooding of the earth's surface.... submerging such coastal cities as New York, Washington, San Francisco, New Orleans, to name a few... And that is what we face... we reasoned that since Communists China's industrial resources are located far inland, China's leadership could point to those peripheral losses (Shanghai, Canton and Tsingtao) as defence against charges o Chinese responsibility... the world's food supply would constrict, starvation would be the order of the day - in all countries except China where, knowing what to expect, they would increase their food supplies and perhaps have enough surplus to use in a new and horrible game of international blackmail: accept the overlordship of China, or starve."

Huh, "overlordship"? Even my spellchecker is lost with this one.
 

Dames: 
Mei-tan - the widow of an executed Chinese scientist. She soon succumbs to Peter's charms, and in no time, they start fucking. And although the cover promises "Atomic sex", all we get in this department is some pretty corny stuff: "He felt her hand touch his hair, stroking it gently... her tights touched his... he turned to feel her small nipples prick his chest... their bodies met... desire overcame fatigue... their bodies merged in the primal combat in which there is no victor and no vanquished."

Blackouts: 
He glimpsed something moving with great speed, a grenade exploded in his skull... Then unbearable, enveloping pain smothered him completely.
 

Title: 
Beats me. There's no mask, Mongolian or not, involved in this one.

Edition:  
First Dell printing - July 1969

Cover: 
Crazy stuff (the middle one is giving him a blow job, isn't she?!), and it actually depicts the scene where Peter is taken prisoner by some Mongolian Amazons (ahem) who use him as their sex slave.

No illustration credits are given, but according to this super cool site, it was created by the legendary Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

Notable cover blurbs: 
"Fantastic adventures... orgies of the most lurid kind... wildly exciting"
-- King Features Syndicate
 

Cool lines:  
None really. Unless you find stuff like this amusing:

Who knows? he pondered. The decision might even have been made. Washington's made decisions before - maybe they've made one now. They didn't tell me to blow the dam and destroy the missiles I discovered. But they supplied the means. 

And, btw, I didn't mistype. These kinds of switches from a third to first-person narration (and from past to present) are pretty frequent... 

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: 

/

The Deep End (Fredric Brown, 1952)

A high-school kid is killed in an amusement park by a roller-coaster train during its morning test run, and veteran newspaperman Sam Evans has a hunch that it was not an accident. To convince himself, he goes to this "accident" scene and stands beside the track while the train is approaching. It (of course) makes such a noise that even the earth starts to rumble, and since unfortunate Jimmy wasn't deaf, this can only mean that he had been run over by the wheels. The stolen wallet of an all-American football star student was found in the victim's pocket, so ergo, its owner is a killer. Investigating journalism at its best!

In fact, this guy is a serial killer! After some digging, it turns out that there were four accidents/murders in his high school recently, and a few hobos were found dead in the shady part of the town (jungles) where our psychopath likes to take night walks. It seems like his ill mental state originates from his infant years when he killed his sister.

Some of these findings/conclusions come from Sam's old flame Nina into whom he accidentally bumps. And she proves to be an invaluable source of information because (a) Nina is a social worker assigned to help the victim's family, (b) she's also a teacher in the high school that the killer attends and finally, (c) she used to fuck the killer. There are other hard-to-swallow coincidences, like Sam's family doctor is the same one who tried to revive the killer's little sister ten years ago.

In short, it's a bit of a mess. Not very believable and pretty dull, to be honest. Written in a first-person narration, which I usually like, but in this one, a lot of time is spent on the hero's inner thoughts (even his dreams) and "thinking out loud" kind of rationalising and deduction. Which is pretty shitty because Sam is not much of an investigator (asshole even reads Nina's private diary!). Instead of doing his job correctly, he spends most of the time fucking Nina and whining about his failing marriage. To be honest, that former part was kind of amusing and probably quite daring for the 50s. I mean, they are both so horny they don't even mind when she gets a period (she simply dismisses it by "I'm not very sick, darling; it was mostly a false alarm.")

Initially promising with that identity switch trick, but unfortunately, it never really takes off.

2/5

Facts:

Hero:
Sam Evans, newspaperman

Location: 
Not specified. But it must be a pretty small town since everyone knows each other (and fucks each other and share the same doctors).

Body count: 
2 for sure, probably much more, but it's never clarified which accidents were actual killings.

The Object of desire:
But does a tiger need a motive? Oh, it has one often: hunger. But not always even that. A rogue tiger will kill for the pure savage joy of killing.
 

Dames: 
Sam's high-school sweetheart, Nina, is quite a tragic figure. So excited and happy to meet Sam again that she immediately jumps into bed with him. They soon start calling each other "darling", but then Sam betrays her confidence by reading her private diary.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
A bit of psychoanalytical crap from Sam's dream: "I was standing at the deep end, just a foot or so from the edge."

Edition:  
Quill Mysterious Classic, 1980

Cover: 
Plain and forgettable. It always saddens me to see reprints of the old masters with such cheap covers.

Cool lines: 
None. Unless you find stuff like this funny:

Ed is the Herald's city editor. A lot of editors are named Ed. It doesn't mean anything. I've known reporters named Frank and Ernest and once I knew a girl named Virginia.[The Coolest!] 

Am I missing something? Do these names refer to real people or fictional characters?

Kiss Her Goodbye (Allan Guthrie, 2005)

"Framed man on the run proving his innocence" type of story. And this time (thankfully!), our hero is not some clueless doctor or school teacher. Joe Hope is a badass muscle man working for his best friend, who also happens to be a nasty loan shark. Nice touch. It scores a point for originality.

And it starts very promisingly. There are a couple of bodies, a bit of family drama, decent character development, a great pace, and some action... A real page-turner with tension building nicely, and just enough hints are thrown in for us to suspect our hero's best friend might be... well, you know - not such a good friend after all.

But then it simply stops. Nothing happens whatsoever, except that the good guys are becoming increasingly convinced that the bad guy is indeed guilty. There's no investigation, no new clues, no additional characters, no sub-plots (btw what the fuck was that crap between Adam and Dotty?), no nothing. And as this progresses, we, too, get a pretty good idea of where all this boredom will eventually lead. So, no mystery or tension, and I really struggled to finish it.

The Grand finale is a bit weird. Since our team of good guys (still) has no proof or single solid piece of evidence, they come up with some ridiculously elaborate plan to get a confession from the suspect (ah, fuck it - by now, we all know he's guilty as hell) by simply torturing him. And not just him; Joe even threatens to kill his baby. Huh? Is this supposed to be hard-boiled? Not really. I would say it's pretty pathetic.

Mediocre and forgettable. Skip it unless you're trying (like I do) to complete your Hard Case Crime collection.

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Joe Hope - enforcer of the local mobster/loan shark. Even though he's in a shitty line of work, he seems to be a nice guy. He got lots of my sympathy right away on the very first page when he rants about overpriced LCD TVs.

Location: 
Edinburgh and briefly a remote island of Orkney, where Allan Guthrie was born.

Body count:  

2

Object of desire: 
Clearing his name and getting revenge 

Dames: 
Tina - a stereotypical hooker with a golden heart.

Blackouts: 
I think there actually is one, although it's not explicitly specified. Judge it for yourself:

Joe crumpled to the floor at Adam's feet, tried to get up and sank to the floor again.
After a minute or two Joe rolled onto his side, head throbbing. He'd have a fucking lump the size of an old man's bollock tomorrow.
 

Title: 
Cool sounding but not accurate. Joe Hope's way of saying goodbye to his loved ones is not to kiss them. He prefers to torture and kill the guilty guy and his offspring.

Edition: 

Hard Case Crime #008

Cover: 
Except for the horrific yellow background, it's a nice, old-school illustration by Chuck Pyle (probably not the country singer dude). It depicts a scene in which Tina beats the shit out of some schmuck with a baseball bat. She's okay and pretty sexy, but I liked Joe more. Tough guy, leaning on the car in the background with a mildly amusing facial expression, more or less saying he doesn't give a shit.

Notable cover blurbs: 
Usual nonsense like "memorable, stunning, pitch-perfect, hard-edged, fast-paced, noir, hard-boiled." Both Ed Gorman and Jason Starr probably read just a few of the opening chapters.

Cool lines: 
None really, which was really disappointing. Hoped for some of that insane Scottish street slang, but all we get in this one is an occasional "wee".