The Long-Legged Fly (James Sallis, 1992)

James Sallis wrote a foreword to Derek Raymond's He Died with his Eyes Open, which I really liked. It is a good and honest text, full of (deserved) admiration for that strange novel. So that aroused a bit of curiosity in me, together with the fact that he also wrote a Chester Himes' biography, which is now pretty high on my to-do list. I've heard of Sallis before, of course, and have seen his books in bookstores, but somehow never got around to reading any of his stuff. At least I wasn't sure about it until I had read The Long-Legged Fly. Now I know for sure that I haven't read him because I would surely have remembered such a brilliant and unique style of writing.

And this one is also a bit strange. By form and overall feeling, it is definitely hard-boiled noir-ish stuff. But instead on crime(s) it concentrates entirely on its protagonist. We follow PI Lew Griffin, who specialises (I think) in missing persons cases through the various stages of his life and career spanning from 1964 to 1970, following an episode in 1984 and finally concluding in 1990. The author doesn't really bother to explain what made our guy successful in one period or what drove him into alcoholism and the gutter in another. Individual cases are not related and also not very complicated (or coherent if I'm completely honest), and again, the author doesn't even seem to be interested in plotting.

Sounds strange and disjointed, but it's anything but. At least once, you realise that this is not about whodunnit at all. It's a masterclass in writing, characterisation, atmosphere creating, treating people (and readers) with honesty and respect. Clever and thoughtful stuff that - at least for me - was hardly a page-turner. Quite opposite in fact, as I've read it slowly in the evenings with a cup of tea and not on the bus on my way to work. I just wanted to enjoy it as long as possible, absorb it, and let it sink under my skin.

So my only complaint about it would be that it's too short.

5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Lew Griffin, PI

Location:
New Orleans

Body count: 

3

Dames:
Vicky, the Scottish nurse and LaVerne, his lifelong friend/partner

Blackouts: 
The third part (year 1984) starts with "Light: it slammed into my eyes like fists". But we soon learn that he'd just awoken after a binge drinking (the air reeked of alcohol). Still, this can be at least partly considered as unconscious, as we all know how bad those hangovers can be, right?

Title: 
It was pretty much a WTF title until I had asked uncle Google about it, and he explained that this was the title of one of Yeats' poems. You can listen to it here and try to decipher it if you feel like it. But then again, maybe it's not about this poem at all because Sallis plays in a band called Three-Legged Dog, so he may have some weird fixations about animal legs? Nah, just kidding;)

Cover:
Nice one, always cool to see an air conditioner (or elevator) as a metaphor of descent into darkness. Or am I just imagining things, and it just means that it's pretty fucking hot in Lew Griffin's New Orleans?

Cool lines:  
We are not angels, Lew. Angels couldn't breathe the air down here. They'd die.[The Coolest!]

The Secret Lives of Married Women (Elissa Wald, 2013)

Two unrelated stories about the identical twin sisters. Leda, pregnant with her second child, moves into a new home with her husband and their child. There's a guy across the street renovating some vacant house, and for some reason, she feels threatened by him. True, he's a bit pushy and doesn't exactly respect her privacy, but still, it seemed to me that his only real sin was the fact that he had recognised Leda in an old porn movie. And if I understood that shit correctly, it wasn't even hardcore porn. By this time, we are well into 100+ pages, and events finally start to unfold a bit. In a pretty ridiculous turn of events, Leda is left to believe that her husband had killed that poor schmuck, which turns her on so much that they can finally have a decent fuck.

And that's it, the end of the first part. Now we need to go back in time and endure another story, this one about her sister Lillian. She's as stereotypical tough bitch top lawyer type as they come (these writers really shouldn't watch so much TV), who gets assigned to a case involving an ex-nun/ex-professional slave in a BDSM house now working (and being obsessed by) some blind, clueless guy. Again, nothing much really happens for the most part. Except that Lillian gets more and more horny and finally gets fucked hard in a tame SM scene where the only act of sadism consists of a few belt spanks of her ass. And a chapter later, her court case drama ends with a pathetic twist.

In short: it's awful. Truly bad. I guess it probably tries to explore female sexuality, but it falls short and is immature. Far, far, far from a trashy exploitation or pulpy hard-boiled or even a simple erotic story. When I think about it, it's basically far from everything. Which is usually not a bad thing at all, but the problem here is that it is just so fucking boring! Won't even go into the style, as the whole thing feels like being written by a 15-year-old aspiring kid encouraged by winning some literary award in a local newspaper contest.

Why did I buy this piece of shit in the first place? Well, it is published by our beloved HCC, and occasionally I do read a novel written by a female author just to prove myself right about my rule about not reading them. Was also a bit intrigued by Junot Diaz (loved! his Oscar Wao btw) cover blurb, but this too proved right my rule about ignoring that publishing marketing crap printed on the covers.

So this is what I get for disobeying my own rules, and it serves me right. But you have been warned! Just skip this and leave it to the bored housewives and 50 Shades of Grey fans. Many of them wander around airport bookstores where this one belongs.

1/5

Added 7-Dec-2013:
I recently received a very passionate response (to put it mildly) to this blog post, and after re-reading the text, I admit I have pretty much deserved it. It does read mean and nasty and makes me look like a misogynistic asshole, so I do feel a need to apologise and to clarify it a bit. Of course, I do read books written by women; I just don’t read crime/mystery books written by women. I’m not saying they are all bad and won’t go into details about this issue, so let’s just say I don’t seem to understand feminine sensibility about the dark side :) But would love to be proven wrong and will gladly check out any reading tips.

Again, sorry if this text was offensive to you - it certainly wasn't my intention to insult anyone. Will definitely be more mindful about how I put together my posts in the future.

Facts:

Hero:
Twins Leda and Lillian

Location:
Portland and New York

Body count:
None. Or maybe a couple if we count an orgasm as a little death.

Dames:
Twins and ex-nun, ex-professional slave Nanette "Nan" Magdalene

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
There are not many secrets between these two married women. They are pretty honest to their hubbies except for that Leda's porn flick and Lillian's "SM" quicky in the Hilton hotel..

Cover:
Good as all Orbik's covers are, in this one he caught both of their expressions exceptionally well. But it's not too accurate because Lillian is not naked during her Hilton affair. It likely depicts the picture Nan used for blackmail.

Cool lines: 

/

Shaft's Big Score! (Ernest Tidyman, 1972)

Begins with Shaft returning home to Brooklyn from his vacation in Jamaica, which is a bit odd. I mean, he did visit the Caribbean, but that was two years later in Carnival of Killers. But let's not split any hair over this; we don't really expect these pulpy novels to be very consistent, do we?

And this one is as stereotypical as they come. After 10 pages, the stage is set - his good friend murdered, leaving behind a hot widow and a shitload of hidden money over which two rival gangs (blacks and Italians, of course) will fight mercilessly. And with a few horny dames thrown into this pot, there's our hero in the middle of it, trying to save his friend's honour and missing cash.

Cops are, of course, totally disinterested and incompetent. After the initial killing, they simply conclude that "this was a professional hit and it wasn't the last one". Which I found a bit odd because blowing up the entire building's floor to kill a single guy (not even a mobster!) doesn't seem very professional to me. But again, it's a Shaft novel, and we shouldn't try to make much sense of this black and white, violent world. It's better to just let it ride and enjoy such little nonsense. My favourite one was towards the end when just two (?) bad guys are chasing our main man, who's, btw, armed with a shotgun (!) It's evident that these two suckers are no match for "two hundred pounds of meat and meanness", so why the hell are they chasing him and not the other way around? Maybe because "the lessons of escape were bred into his bones"? Anyways, when they do manage to "corner" him, he simply shoots both of them. The end.

Of course, it's more about the style than the content, but still Mr. Tidyman could try a bit harder on the story aspect. It reads more like a screenplay (maybe that's the reason for the chase mentioned above), which can actually be the case here because IMDB doesn't state that the movie is based on the book, so maybe it was published after the movie came out.

Anyway, it's a fun read with great dialogues, cool slang, and some hilarious one-liners. But it does get a bit repetitive and dull towards the end as there's a 100+ page gap between the initial killings and the final bloodbath.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
John Shaft, PI - Just under two hundred pounds of meat and meanness ... A man in motion, moving almost as quickly as his mind.

Location:
NYC, mostly in Queens, where "It is is easier to get a cab than a cop. The cabs either have a better radio system or they are more eager to get the work"

Body count: 

9

Dames: 
Arna, the widow. Gail Sharrett, daughter of a mobster kingpin. Rita Towne, the mistress of another mobster kingpin. 

The latter one is a nymphomaniac (deep pit that could never be filled, a fire that could never be cooled) who fucks Shaft, and it's a pretty funny fuck too because our main man just cannot satisfy her. So after the intercourse, he simply concludes that "If he could have unscrewed his cock he would have given it to her to play with." He also tries to give her some advice, to which she simply responds by saying, "Don't talk. Fuck." [Fatale]

Blackouts: 
Two - on the first occasion he gets knocked off by the explosion, but second one is a more proper because he gets beaten to a pulp.

Title: 
A bit silly, but on the other hand, well aligned with the exploitation genre. Also inaccurate, because I have no idea what Shaft was supposed to score. Rita Towne doesn't really count, and he gives recovered money back to Arna so she can establish a fund for crippled kids and build a school for them. Also, not sure wtf is about that exclamation mark at the end?

Cover: 
My paperback is the first UK publication from 1972, and they didn't even bother with some original artwork for the cover. Just used a movie poster with Richard Roundtree, which is, of course, totally understandable - you can't get much better advertisement than that.

Cool lines:
"Say goodbye to your fucking empty head," Shaft told him. "I don't need it any more." [The Coolest!]


"Got another back there?" he asked the pudgy stewardess, holding up the plastic glass at her. She smiled the pudgy little smile. Did the pilots have to wind them up before each trip? Could she hold that smile as an engine fell off?"Here you are, sir. Scotch on the rocks." The voice had all the sincerity of a radio commercial for hemorrhoid ointment and the girl would probably smile all the way through a blow job. [The Coolest!]


He could see how nervous Kelly was getting. He was jumping like a broad with a sniff of coke on her clit. [The Coolest!]

Mascola didn't answer. He lay stretched out beside Cal's coffin. The right side of his head was missing. A coroner would say there had been probable brain damage before death. [The Coolest!]

"My car or yours?" Gail Sherrett asked coldly as they waited for the elevator.
"Mine's yellow," Shaft said, "with a build-in meter."

The First Quarry (Max Allan Collins, 2008)

Max Allan Collins takes us back to the early 70s on a ride with his anti-hero's debut assignment. Quarry is dispatched to some small college town in Iowa, where he's supposed to "take out" some asshole professor/writer working on a "non-fiction" book on Chicago's mobster. Two women are involved, and a gang war over the drug turf is taking place, so we know there will be plenty of sex and violence.

And since we are reading the Quarry book, we know it will be fun.

It moves forward rapidly, at times even too fast, as characters don't have time to fully evolve and breathe. Collins either drops them altogether (cute blonde at the very beginning) or Quarry simply kills them. There's this likeable private detective, Charlie, who brings few possibilities of mystery entanglement, but he too almost immediately ends up with an additional hole in his head, and storytelling goes back to linear mode. Which is cool, Quarry's novels are by their definition character driven, sometimes (like in this one) it's just too bad that the only character that drives them is Quarry and others are somehow neglected.

But, again, it's fun, especially after reading the initial few chapters and getting into the mood and into our protagonist's sense of humour. He's simply a cool guy and I'll give his first adventure an extra half point on account of how effectively he managed to finish this whole affair without "leaving any loose ends". Nice work indeed.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Quarry

Location:
Iowa City

Body count:

8

Dames: 
Dorothy "Dorrie" Byron, an asshole professor's abandoned wife and Annette Girard, artistic and slightly confused daughter of the mobster Lou Girardelli. Quarry fucks them both. Twice.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Quarry's first assignment.

Cover:
Excellent one, done by Ken Laager. Liked its dark and sexy feel, and it's also very accurate - it depicts a scene from page 118. One small remark though - Quarry seems to be a bit lost in thoughts and uninterested, but in the book, he's actually horny as hell.

Cool lines:  
"I'm nothing to you but your 'girl' - I'm not a serious writer doing serious work!"
I wondered if a serious writer would use the word 'serious' twice in the same sentence.

She said, "I'm not in love with Professor Byron or anything. We're just good friends."
I could use a good friend who looked like her who would blow me.

[Before killing a guy]  He'd gone to the store. He had to eat, didn't he? Well, actually, he didn't, but he didn't know that.

"Do I look like I was born the fuck yesterday?"
For all the gunk on his hair, he might have been born the fuck a few seconds ago.[The Coolest!]

Pop. 1280 (Jim Thompson, 1964)

Straightforward story about a local sheriff of some godforsaken Texas hillbilly county. A simple-minded dude with simple problems concerning women, trying hard to be re-elected since being a local law enforcer is about the only thing in the world he feels he knows how to handle. See "cool lines" below and you'll get the picture.

Of course, it's not as simple as that. Although incredibly entertaining and easy to read and follow, Pop. 1280 is anything but a simple read. The story is quite complex, involving numerous characters and events that ultimately lead to a significant decrease in the initial population by the end. Plotting is superb, and tension build-up, together with the final twist, are good enough alone for the highest grade this total masterpiece gets from me.

But the real story and detective challenge (for the reader) takes place inside Nick's head. Who the hell is this guy? At the beginning, he's just a simplistic, clueless and almost retarded asshole driven by the desire to be re-elected. As the first bodies start to emerge, we realise that he's not exactly harmless, but he's almost cute, and in a way, we still find ourselves sympathetic towards him. At least I was, maybe because of his hilariously cunning scheming, or his incredible (ab)use of grammar, or simply his questionable luck with women. But there's just so much that man can take, and it becomes more and more clear that our main man is not exactly right in his head.

And this, for me, is the novel's main appeal - was he crazy all along or did something finally push him over the edge? We will get the answer, and it will be a creepy one. Also, an unexpected one, I couldn't see it coming at all.

Pottsville definitely deserves a few words. Cesspool of humanity it is, without a single likeable character around. Liars, cheaters, wife beaters, misogynists, people fucking their relatives (kids not excluded), nymphomaniacs, mentally retarded, simply mean, greedy and ignorant hillbillies (I caught him reading a book!) and most of them total racists. Racism is one of the prevailing themes and Thompson uses it as a tool to emphasize storytelling, sometimes even its humorous parts - I giggled at the scene when Nick spreads around the rumor that his election competitor Sam has "raped a little two year old nigger baby" but stuff like "niggers shouldn't be counted as a regular population since they have no souls" just makes you speechless and leaves you sad. No wonder Nick went a bit crazy in such an environment.

Cool thing - and another touch of maestro - is that Pottsville doesn't really feel like some big ass metaphor for America's little towns. At least not at the beginning, that is. I had the impression that Thompson simply enjoyed inventing these oddballs and playing with them. However, as the story progresses and darkens, it becomes increasingly clear that the author is a pessimist, suggesting that the only way out of this state of decay (Pottsville) is to become as insane (or religious) as the people living there. To put it into Nick's words: "There can't be no personal hell because there ain't no personal sins. They are all public."

This is unforgettable stuff; it should be made mandatory reading in primary schools.

5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Sheriff Nick Corey

Location:
Pottsville, 47th largest county of the state (of Texas, I assume)

Body count: 6

Dames: 
His mean, bitchy wife, Myra, plus mistresses Rose and Amy

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Pottsville has a population of 1280. But it could also be titled Pop. 1274...

Cover: 
The Orion edition's cover is hardly worth commenting on. I'm also including an older cover that I find interesting because it attempts to market this dark masterpiece as a light-hearted western comedy. Although when looking at the guy's facial expression long enough, you'll see a glimpse of psychotic tendencies in his eyes.

Cool lines:  
"Me?" I said. "I do my job all the time."
"You! You stupid silly spineless fool! You don't do anything!"
"Well, that's my job," I said. "Not doing nothing. I mean. That's why people elect me."

What I loved was myself, and I was willing to do anything I god-danged had to to go on lying and cheating and drinking whiskey and screwing women and going to church on Sunday with all the other respectable people.[The Coolest!]


"Can't very well run a town without one, right, Buck?"
"Right! Why if they wasn't any whores, the decent ladies wouldn't be safe on the streets."
"Kee-reck!"  Ken nodded. "Fellas would get all full of piss an' high spirits and take right off after 'em."

"The next time they even look like they're goin' to sass you, you just kick 'em in the balls as hard as you can."
"Huh?" I said. "But - but don't it hurt awful bad?"
"Pshaw, 'course it don't hurt. Not if you're wearin' a good pair o' boots without no holes in 'em."
"That's right," Buck said. "You just be sure you ain't got any toes stickin' out and it won't hurt you a-tall."

Lemons never Lie (Donald E. Westlake aka Richard Stark, 1971)

I'm not too keen on crime books in which heroes are ordinary people somehow sucked into the sinister underworld. True, occasionally this formula can function (can't remember a good example from the top of my head, though), but Lemons Never Lie is definitely not one of those instances.

Alan Grofield is a stage actor who runs summer theatre (whatever the hell that is?) in some rural godforsaken place. This requires money, and he finances this whole operation by occasional theft. Because, you see, he's also a professional thief.

Could a decent novel ever come out of such a moronic premise? I don't think so, not even when written by one of the genre's greatest craftsmen.

After initial setup, it turns into a cat-and-mouse kind of chase around the USA involving Grofield and some insane psychopathic asshole, Myers. It is written in a fast-paced and straightforward style, with a decent body count piling up, making it easy to read and follow. Quite fluent too, although on a few occasions the whole thing becomes simply laughable. I think I shall remember it by one of the most original torturing scenes - our main man Grofield strips down some poor schmuck and starts opening the front door. Since the outside is so cold, the guy gets terrified of catching pneumonia and immediately spills everything out to his ruthless torturer. I kid you not, read it yourself (page 193) if you don't believe me.

Not good, not bad. Something you take on a plane and forget about when you arrive at your destination and pick up the next book.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
A member of a increasingly disappearing breed of professionals, Alan Grofield was an actor who limited himself to live performances before live audiences.

Location: 
Las Vegas, Mead Grove, Indiana, St. Louis, Monequois, New York

Body count: 6

Dames: 
None really. There's his understanding and artistic (also an actress) wife, but she hardly qualifies for a dame.

Blackouts: 
Yes, two of them. And since our hero is hardly some bad ass criminal (although he is professional) we can forgive him for the both of them. None is described particularly vividly - In the first one, "Grofield turned around and faced the wall. He knew what was coming, and hunched his head down into his neck, trying to make his skull soft and resilient. It didn't do any good. The lights went out very painfully." In the second one, he was simply hit in the face by a two-by-four and was subsequently out for a mere 5 minutes.

Title: 
One of those intriguing and funny wtf titles, but it has a really simple explanation. Right at the beginning, Grofield scores a jackpot (three lemons) on the slot machine and gets a little annoyed about it because he feels that he has used all his luck.

Cover:
Pretty cool, although the girl should be more in front. But very accurate, it depicts the corpse #3 and the fact that Grofield burns down the house to destroy all the evidence (I think) since he's such a professional. Credited to a guy R.B. Farrell, but a Google search on him didn't come back with anything useful.

Cool lines:  
Tired and aging mixed-race jazz quintet tried to figure out how to make transition to rock. So far, all they were sure of was the volume level; you couldn't hear yourself think. Looking at the conversations going on up and down the bar, and in the booths behind him, Grofield decided the place must be full of lip readers.

He Died with His Eyes Open (Derek Raymond, 1984)

This one is really unusual, almost weird. Not too surprising, since I picked it up because I remembered that Derek Raymond's name was mentioned by Mark E. Smith in his hilarious autobiography, Renegade. So welcome to the wonderful and frightening world of modern British noir!

Begins as yet another police procedural with a badly beaten body found in a dark alley of the dodgy part of London. The inspector in charge of the case discovers the victim's letters and some recorded tapes (ah, good old days!) and starts searching for the bad guys using these recordings.

Kind of. Our nameless sergeant works alone, at his own pace, using some pretty unconventional methods. His sense of justice and punishment is also strange, so his character resembles more of a classical PI than a policeman. So much for the police procedural clichés - which is, btw, just fine with me.

Letters and recordings also prove not to be much evidence. In fact, they serve just as a vehicle for telling a parallel story about our unfortunate victim. Which is cool since his background is really interesting. In fact, it is so fascinating that even our nameless detective becomes more interested in the man's story than the actual crime and begins to form a mental connection with him. I think.

This continues for the better part of the novel, and then it gradually becomes increasingly bizarre. Our hero tracks down and immediately afterwards starts fucking the victim's wife. He even moves with her into her apartment because (I guess) at this point, he's already connected mentally with her dead ex, so this means he can connect to her physically. Not sure again, but they also fall in love. Or something. In any case, he seems to have figured the whole thing (crime and fucking/loving part) out, so not much of an investigation will follow. There will be a shocking and bizarre (not only metaphorically) ending, but it is not entirely unexpected or surprising. Simply because there's no way that this strange novel could finish in the classical whodunnit style.

So we have two or three stories entwined, but the whole thing is anything but a mess. Very concise, Derek Raymond knew exactly what he was trying to tell and how to convey all those stories. Great storytelling with effortless shifts from hard-boiled, violent content to more mellow, psychological drama. Bleak and depressing at times (Staniland's journey and fate), but masterfully written. Not trying to be clever with tough one-liners, but still with a fair amount of sharp black humour and slang. Not really character- or action-driven, but still tense and compelling. It loses some of its charge towards the end, but it is still immensely enjoyable.

Unique and memorable. It got under my skin a bit, and I will definitely check out other Raymond titles.

4/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Nameless sergeant. Working for the Unexplained Deaths department - A14 branch, "the most unpopular one"

Location:
London

Body count: 

2

Dames:
Barbara/Babsie - Frigid iceberg with gross psychic problems and the mind of a petty criminal.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Probably refers to the poor Charles, but I honestly cannot remember whether his body was found with its eyes actually open. Doesn't really matter; it's a cool-sounding title anyway.

Cover: 
A nice and intriguing one with great artwork. Also relevant: our hero is Nameless (faceless), he smokes (see cool lines below), and the tape recorder plays a significant role in the novel.

Cool lines:  
I lit a Palace filter. It tasted revolting; I only smoke them because I hope they might help me give it up.

"Good evening to you,"  he boomed heartily. "My wife tells me you've come about my brother Charles. What has he been up to this time?"
"Well, he's gone and died," I replied.

Nice and gentle way to break the bad news, but it needs to be said, it's still not nearly as cool as Hoke did it in New Hope for the Dead.

"Well, what about him?"
"Well, he's dead."
"As if I fucking cared," he said. "Who are you, you cunt?"
"I'm a police officer," I said. "And watch your tongue. One more slip like that with it, and I'll tear it out of your head."[The Coolest!]


"Look," he said furiously, when the penny had dropped, "do you want me to come out an round an give you some manners right in the mush?"
"Yes, why not" I said. "If you've got a spare face at home."

"Well, the vehicle wasn't marked." [traffic warden]
"There's a silly reason for that," I said, taking the ticket. It's because a lot of these modern villains can read.