The Twisted Thing (Mickey Spillane, 1966)

After reading Goliath's Bone, I promised myself not to go near any of those semi-finished Hammer novels patched together by Max Allan Collins and to take at least a year's break from Spillane. I have bought a few of his paperbacks at a flea market since then, and I was growing increasingly excited and impatient as the end of my self-imposed embargo drew near.

But I picked up the wrong one. Nothing really works in this twisted thing. In short: Kidnapping case that soon turns into a murder investigation that quickly becomes an incomprehensible mess that drags itself like a fucking snail and finally reaches its climax with a pretty idiotic (but far from unexpected) twist.

The story is too complicated; it's part hard-boiled and part classical detective fiction, and it often doesn't make much sense. No decent characterisation: there's our superhuman Mike Hammer, and everyone else is either good or bad. Surprisingly, even depictions of Spillane's trademarks of sex & violence are somehow pathetic. Violence is pretty distasteful (torture, beating people to a pulp) and too repetitive (brain, blood, gore,... spurting, flying,... all over his coat, road,...).

Sex does deserve a separate paragraph. Check out these two descriptions:

• Roxy took a quick breath, grabbed the negligee off the bed and held it in front of her. That split second of visioning nudity that was classic beauty made the blood pound in my ears. I shut my eyes against it. "Easy, Roxy," I said, "I can't see so don't scream and don't throw things. I didn't mean it.".
• I followed her at a six-foot interval, enough so I could watch her legs that so obviously wanted watching.

Do you see where I'm getting at? I'm no psychiatrist, but this kind of behaviour seems to be a typical adolescent fear of adult women. You can watch them from a distance (and make remarks about them), but when you have one actually in front of you, your ass freezes. This is okay and sort of funny when you start looking at one of the toughest motherfuckers in the P.I. business in such a light.

It stopped being funny when a Lesbian arrived on the scene. And I didn't miss-type: she's lesbian with a capital L (used more than once). It turns more and more into a quite nasty, macho chauvinistic shit with remarks like "she only resembled a woman", "she being partially a woman", "she was only a half of dame", "if she thought it was like a man", etc. It looks like Mickey really got into this shit because our poor Myra's sexuality even plays a substantial part in the plot. 

Very disappointing. Not good, not exactly bad, but definitely boring as fuck. Something I never thought I'd write about Mike Hammer novel.

2/5 

Facts:

Hero:
Mike Hammer, PI

"I would like to know one thing, how good a detective are you?"
"I've killed a lot of men. I shoot the guts out of two of them...I hate the bastards that make society a thing to be laughed at and preyed upon. I hate them so much I can kill without the slightest compunction. The papers call me dirty names,... but I don't give a damn. When I kill I make it legal. The courts accuse me of being too quick on the trigger... I think fast, I shoot fast,.... and I'm still alive. That's how good a detective I am."

Location:
Wooster, near NYC

Body count: 

5

Dames: 

• Miss Malcom, aka (ex) stripper Roxy - a beautiful set of legs, natural curves, extraordinary pretty face
• Alice Nichols - concert of savage beauty
• Myra Grange (the Lesbian) - almost as tall as I was, ....figure that seemed to be well moulded
• Miss Cook, aka the Legs

Blackouts:
Yes, he gets knocked out several times (not 100% positive, but I think it was three times). There's nothing special about any of them, but there's one pretty crazy with a cool description of regaining his consciousness: "I came back together like a squadron of flak-eaten bombers re-forming."  

Title: 
Poor Ruston - an adult man trapped in a kid's body - is twisted.

Cover: 
Cool and pulp-ish (damsel in distress, gun) with an unusual yellow/red colour scheme. Not very accurate - even if it depicts a scene where Roxy was shot and wounded, there (1) shouldn't be the gun lying around, and (2) there should be some blood visible on her shoulder.

Cool lines:  
The guy knew guns. The safety was off and the rod was ready to spit. [The Coolest!]

Why is that some dames can work me up into a lather so fast with so little is beyond me, but this one did. I quit playing around. I pulled my .45 and let her get a good look at it. "You open that door or I'll shoot the lock off," I said.

La Place du mort aka The Front Seat Passenger (Pascal Garnier, 1997)

This one gives the psychological thriller genre a whole new definition. Revenge story with a "hunter becomes hunted" twist, where most of the action and mystery takes place in our protagonist's head. We get to know very few facts about Fabien's life, but plenty of his mental state. Which is, mildly put, not good. He's in a fucking state of disarray, and it seems to have some complex originating from his childhood when his mother abandoned him and his father. He definitely has issues with sex (mental ones; he can get it up all right), has a strange attitude towards children, etc.

Sociopath, pervert, psychopath? To be honest, I have no idea. I think he's a nice guy, but really messed up. Would a sane person come up with a plan to seduce his cheating dead wife's (also deceased) lover's wife? And I'm not even sure Fabien wanted to do that. He just decided to stalk her, and somehow they ended up in bed together.

Intriguing reading, totally unpredictable. Had no idea what our hero's intentions were in the first place, and what the hell was he about to do next (that breaking into Martine's house?). Especially the first half is mind-blowing with lots of stuff going on. It slows down a bit later and (with a cool twist) becomes almost normal. By normal, I mean that Martine's madness is much more straightforward and, for some reason, easier to understand. If nothing else, her actions leave no doubt about her mental state...

So it's far from being a whodunit (unless you are a psychology student), but still, I liked it a lot. Short and intense, unique, dark but also funny at times (see the 'cool lines' below), written with great style and easy to follow. It reminded me of Manchette's 3 to Kill. Crazy guys, these French and I'm very surprised that they are not more well-known. I couldn't find much information on Garnier online (nothing on Wikipedia about him!?) and would be grateful if anyone would share some interesting articles or interviews.

4.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Fabien Delorme

Location:
Paris, briefly Costa de Mallorca and finally Planay in Côte-d'Or - "a little dump near Montband".

Body count: 

6

Dames: 
Martine: "The other man's wife looked singularly uninteresting. She was a pale little blonde of about thirty, with staring blue eyes, practically no lips, and dressed in navy and beige. She looked like an over-exposed photo, with so little presence that one wondered if she was capable of casting a shadow."

Madeline: "Madeline appeared to be made of sterner stuff. She was a muscular fifty-year-old with the sharp eye of a bodyguard under a fringe of brown hair sprinkled with grey."

Blackouts: 
Yes, like Shaft in my previous post, Fabien also passes out when he gets shot.

Title: 
A bit enigmatic: there's a scene in which two women take Fabien on a trip towards the location where his wife died. One of them insists that he take a front seat (btw, he doesn't drive and hates cars), so the whole situation is a bit unsettling and menacing. So I thought the title was just another little mind-fuck that I didn't understand. But then I'd realised that the book's title's literal translation was actually "Place of Death" (I can't speak French, but Google Translate did confirm that). I dislike it when publishers/distributors change the titles of books/movies, but in this case, the translation sounds cooler.

Cover: 
A photo of a car in the night is pretty cool and noir-ish, but it should be larger. 

Cool lines:  
They glanced briefly at Fabien and pulled the handle of a sort of drawer. Sylvie slid out of the wall.
"Is this your wife?"
"Yes and no. It's the first time I've seen her dead. I mean, the first time I've seen a dead body. It's not at all like a living person."
Forlani and the men in white coats exchanged looks of astonishment.
"It's very important, Monsieur Delorme. Do you recognize your wife?"
Of course he recognized Sylvie, but not the smile fixed on her face.
"Yes, yes, it's her."
"Do you know what her final wishes were?"
"Her final wishes?"
"Yes, whether she wanted to be buried or cremated?"
"I've no idea... I imagine like everyone she didn't want to die at all."

Shaft Among the Jews (Ernest Tidyman, 1972)

Let's break down this using the classical three-act dramatic structure.

The setup/intro doesn't exactly start with a bang. We find John sulking and bitching about his poorly decorated office (don't ask - It's a price of pussy). It's not very promising, and it leans more towards some pretty corny soft-core porn instead of a hard-boiled crime I had expected. But funny nevertheless, just check out these:

- "Mr Shaft, did anyone ever tell you you are built like a brick shithouse?" 
- "Don't fondle me, darling. I don't need it. I've been wet for you since I looked at you at the party. And thought of you inside me."
- "You have a beautiful penis."

After Shaft's character (and the beauty of his penis) has been established (in case we forgot how bad-ass he/it was), he gets hired by a group of Jewish diamond dealers, and we enter the second act, the "action/tension rising" one. And this one also doesn't exactly work, at least not right away. The whole assignment is a bit vague - someone has been knocking off diamond merchants, and Shaft (the schvartze) is simply supposed to "be poking around, making dishonest man nervous". His employers don't even bother giving him some decent clues. They merely drop the name of "soon-to-be the main villain" to him. Not much explanation is given, simply that "Something's not right... something is not kosher with Morris Blackburn".

So this is not a classical mystery case, and our hero cannot really start any proper investigation. At least none of the usual ones, as they are described in Detectives for Dummies. So he decides to go undercover as a janitor at the building where the villain works. And at that point, I must admit I really started to wonder where this mess was leading to. But we are still around page 50, and it gets better and better from here on. The plot thickens nicely as an old doctor, with a secret formula and a beautiful daughter, is thrown into the mix. Plus Israeli special agents, plus a local dirty cop, plus a corrupt and immoral diamond merchant, together with his hitman.

Third act - the resolution phase? Total fucking shoot-out with Sten guns (which are Uzis, I think) and even a rocket launcher(!) resulting in a bunch of corpses. Case fucking solved and closed. Shaft is now rich, and he also scores with our damsel in distress.

And that's it, basically. Reminded me a bit of Spillane's Goliath Bone. I'm aware that it's not a fair comparison, but they are both violent and sexy and dealing with some truly ridiculous plots (dreams of a million alchemists are fulfilled in this one) involving Israel and world domination. But I remember reading Goliath Bone just made me sad for the old maestro, while reading Shaft was pure fun.

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero:
John Shaft, PI

Location:
New York

Body count: 
7 real people and 6 diamond salesmen

Dames:
Amy Taylor-Davis - She had a Maserati gearbox built into her pelvis, five forward gears, two reverse. [Fatale]

Cara Haze, the complete antipode of Amy - pure, innocent, lost, shy, etc. Shaft, of course, fucks her too:  "He entered her slowly, watching her face. They gazed at each other in a silent communion...."

I expected their paths to eventually cross, and there's a perfect opportunity for that when Shaft needs to hide Cara in a safe place. He takes her to his apartment, but in my opinion, that was a pretty stupid move since the bad guys knew exactly where he lived. Wouldn't it be wiser to take her to his lover's place? True, he would be unable to do the "silent communion" with her, but at least she'd be safe.

After the intense and impressive introduction, Amy gradually fades out of the picture. Which is a shame because I liked her. And there's another dame with great potential mentioned briefly, but left forgotten immediately after. Cherry Culp, as you can tell from the hilarious description below, would be a great addition to the colourful cast of characters:

She seldom saw her husband, of course, and he demonstrated his gratitude for that deliverance with continuing, unquestioning financial support and a recognition of the fact that she was utterly worthless as a human apart from her efforts at keeping the economy strong as a continuous circulator of currency. [Fatale]

Blackouts: 
Yep, even Shaft is not tough enough to take two bullets and not pass out.

Title: 
Great title, a bit politically incorrect if you ask me, but definitely way cooler than "Shaft in Little Odessa" or "Shaft Among Diamonds" or some shit like that.

Cover: 
A cool illustration of Shaft being surrounded by babes and bad guys. Very 70s.

Cool lines:  
Shaft was still playing the outraged innocent. He sounded about as sincere as a cab driver giving thanks for a bent dime.[The Coolest!]

When you bought Shaft, you bought his anger.[The Coolest!]

If he had a choice at that moment between getting laid and standing there in the shower with a drink in his hand, he'd go for the shower. A piece of ass is a piece of ass, but a hot shower is also a place to think, drink, urinate, pick your nose unobserved, and wash away the smell of your prejudices.

Israel. Nobody came from Israel. That was where everybody went for a nineteen-day tour or to live and kick an occasional Ay-rab in the ass.

"Why don't you get a haircut?" Shaft snarled. "You look like a broad from the Bronx who used to give the best head in the Village."
"Prick," Berkowitz said.
"That's what she wanted. But I don't need a blow job now, so get the fuck out of here."

The Murderer Vine (Shepard Rifkin, 1970)

This one takes a while to really take off. But it's time well worth waiting because we get to know our hero pretty well. He's a tough, a bit seedy, definitely greedy, small-time, divorce cases type of NYC private dick. Ex-cop with his own sense of justice and morals. Very resourceful and methodological. In short, our kind of guy, correct? He tells his story in a confession, flashback style, from some godforsaken place in South America where he has been hiding since the last job. So we can assume there had been some serious fuck up that made him go into this involuntary exile. So tension is rising nicely, and suspense is built just right by the time he finally arrives in Mississippi.

His assignment is straightforward - he must kill five men responsible for the death of some millionaire's son who was idealistic (crazy?) enough to go deep south into the bible belt as a civil rights worker supporting black people. Surrounding quickly becomes familiar and somehow cliched (local sheriff, big ass politician ass hole, etc), but the story's still flowing smoothly. A big problem, in my opinion, is that he's too well prepared!  Everything simply goes according to his plan (which was not exactly air-tight in the first place), and this whole thing quickly turns from a mystery/suspense into an ordinary revenge-type thriller. There are not many twists, and the central mystery becomes a question of whether our hero will fall in love with his super-cool and sexy assistant Kirby.

Don't get me wrong - it's a real page-turner, with some great characters and a dark atmosphere. I liked it a lot, but I certainly missed a bit more complex storyline. The best thing about it is how the racist aspect gets approached. Before reading it, I was wary of it being too political and/or depressing (for the lack of a better word). Obviously, it is political, and it does condemn racism. However, it still is the foremost hard-boiled thriller that uses these pathetic fucks and their pitiful mindsets to enhance the story and make it more interesting and emotional. A big credit for succeeding goes to a masterful characterisation of our main hero. When he arrives at that shit-hole of Okalusa, his only interest is earning his money by getting the job done. He initially ignores the racist crap (I loved that little episode on the bus), but towards the end, he "breaks very good rule" by becoming personally involved and "beginning to hate these people".

Smart, well-written, dealing with a despicable and dark subject in a pulpy, hard-boiled way. Brave and unusual, especially when considering it was written back in 1970.

4/5
 
Facts:

Hero:
Joe Dunne, PI

"What did you expect?" I asked.
"Someone sophisticated yet brutal. And you know what you look like?"
"Sure. A broken-down professional football player ten years after his last game, working as a used-car salesman."

Location:  

"You are entering Okalusa, Queen City of the cotton kingdom." ... "City limits Okalusa Pop. 28,165 Drive slow We love our children Lions meet Tues. 12:30 Rotary Thurs. 12:30" 

Body count: 

10

Dames:
Dunne's sexy assistant/secretary/undercover wife Kirby

Blackouts: 
He drinks himself into oblivion, but it's all part of his job: he tries to find out where the bodies are buried. 

Title: 
A bit melodramatic; Vine didn't kill anyone. It's just that three murdered boys were buried under the melon vine. But it is definitely a place to avoid as one of the locals warns our hero: "Theah's plenty dry-lan' moccasins come out of the piny woods an' lie around under the vines waitin' for frogs."

Cover: 
Great pinup illustration by Ken Laager of a hot blonde. But there's no relation to the book. At least I cannot find one.

Cool lines:  
"Wait a minute. You ask for proof that will stand up in court, then you ask for the execution of each one. It doesn't make sense."
"I'm the court."

She murmured in my ear, "Why are we vertical?"
"What?"
"Shut off the damn shower," she said. "We're not salmon in the spawning season."[The Coolest!]

All Shot Up (Chester Himes, 1959)

Grave Digger came back in a hurry. His face was set.
"Hell's broke loose on the street," he said, poking his arm into the coat Coffin Ed held for him.
"We'd better hop it then," Coffin Ed said.

Just another night in Harlem and another routine assignment for the pair of our favourite badass detectives. Two assignments, to be precise, in two unrelated cases: a hit-and-run accident that leaves the victim flattened into a concrete wall (!!) and the heist of a local black politician.

Chaotic stuff, fucking bloody mayhem racing relentlessly with a blinding pace. Hard to follow at times (especially at the start), but nevertheless delightful to read. The story just sticks together, and at times it seems that the glue that keeps everything from falling apart is violence. It's a continuous thread throughout the novel, but it's far from some glorified and over-the-top cheap shit. Very realistic and believable. The interrogation scene at Paris Bar is simply mind-blowing, and it (almost) makes that famous bar scene from The French Connection look like it's coming from a Disney movie. Crazy stuff, most writers these days would think twice before putting down such politically incorrect police violence, and probably no publisher would touch it.

Enough said. It's beyond incredible. This is simply a masterpiece. Reminded me again that I need to get that Himes biography written by James Sallis. So many incredible books to read, so little time...

5/5

Facts:

Hero:
Coffin Ed and Grave Digger. 

The story was in Harlem that these two black detectives would kill a dead man in his coffin if he so much as moved.

Mammy Louise swooped down on the dog and dragged it off before he did it injury.
"Not dem, Lawd Jim, mah God, dawg," she cried. "You can't stop dem from goin' nowhere. Them is de mens."

Location:
Harlem, New York

Body count: 
8, and I'm grateful to Mr Himes for summarising them at the end because it was nearly impossible to keep count in this madness. Victims changing names and identities (even gender on one occasion!), people surviving stabbings, and even having a knife stuck in their skull (Brain specialists all over the country had been alerted to the case).

Dames:
It's definitely a masculine novel, but there are two interesting female characters. A beautiful seductress, Mrs Holmes (Her breast stuck out from a turtleneck blue jersey silk pullover as though taking aim at any man in front of her) and simple, but very street-wise, Roman's girlfriend Sassafras (btw what a cool name, isn't it?!).

Blackouts:
You kidding? The whole thing happens in two days, so there is no time to pass out for our two bad-asses.

Title: 
Very appropriate - the whole thing is one big major fucking shoot out!

Cover: 
I like all the covers from the Penguin Himes reprints, and this one is no exception. Once again, it catches the book's dark and gritty mood. Just not sure who that sinister (or is he scared?) black dude in the front is supposed to be. Casper? Roman? It cannot be the main villain (because he's white).

Cool lines: 
"One's a white man," Grave Digger said.
"What else?" Coffin Ed replied.
What he meant was what else could keep the black citizens away from the circus provided by killing.

"The rich used to live here," Coffin Ed remarked.
"Still so," Grave Digger said. "Just changed color. Colored rich folks always live in the places abandoned by white rich folks."

They had the feeling that time was rushing past like a maniac with a knife.[The Coolest!]


He ran into a brace of slugs and came reeling back with two sudden eyes in his forehead.[The Coolest!]

The Curious Eat Themselves (John Straley, 1993)

Yet another attempt at putting a new twist on the classical PI genre by having a bit of an unconventional protagonist in some exotic surroundings. We are in cold Alaska, and our hero's name is Cecil Younger. He was hired by some unfortunate girl to find the assholes who had raped her, but Cecil becomes client-less as early as the first page when poor Louise is pulled from the ocean with her throat cut. Promising start, I like it when crime books follow the unwritten rule of having a corpse in the first act. And since we are in Alaska (and since the back cover also hints at this), we know that her death will just lead our white knight to some big corporate environmental fuckup.

Which, of course, it does. But things go rapidly from intriguing to slightly confusing to simply fucking boring. Cecil basically has no clue what to do or how to lead a proper investigation. True, he does solve the case of his dead dog, but apart from that, he's far from being a mover and shaker. Basically, anyone who has five minutes to spare, from corporate bastards to cops and even his ex-wife, gives him clues and instructions about what's happening and what he's supposed to do next.

So it soon becomes boring and repetitive. And for several reasons, I think. The plot just doesn't move anywhere. An occasional corpse does pop up here and there, but in general, there's no mystery to be solved. Narration simply goes from point A to point B without any twists, and characters are just stereotypical, one-dimensional black/white guys. Although it must be said that at least they are not presented as eccentric weirdos in a "Northern Exposure" type of simplified crap.

Interestingly, the thing that really kills the novel's pace is the language used. Very good, rich, at times even poetic, but just not focused and tight. The author pays attention to every possible fucking detail, and there are pages and pages of some completely redundant descriptions. A good example would be the chapter before the last one. We are at the end, where things usually start to unfold, and the tempo shifts typically a gear or two up. Not in this one: we need to follow three castaways as they get their shit together by lighting a fire, hunting deer, preparing food, and other survival skills. Truly incredible anti-climax...

Reminded me a bit of Jean-Claude Izzo. John Straley, too, has chosen the wrong genre for his writing (maybe that's why he's into writing poetry these days). I did like the beginning, but then it all became too messy. Don't think I'll check out other books in the series.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Cecil Younger, pretty much an antipode of classical hard-boiled detective: doesn't drink, doesn't carry a gun, lives with a mentally handicapped friend.

Location: 
All over Alaska. Cecil is based in a small town called Sitka, but he's flying around like man obsessed. Was impossible to track him because even he, at one point, realises that "I had been in three other airports but I didn't remember which ones."

Body count: 

5 + one dog

Dames:
His ex-wife Hannah

Blackouts: 
He jumps off the plane that's about to take off and wakes up one day later. 

Title: 
The tattoo on his ex's shoulder. Apparently, from a poem "Straw for the Fire" written by Theodore Roethke

Cover: 
A bit wild and certainly unusual for crime novels. It's cool and definitely in the book's spirit, but I still prefer classical covers with blondes and guns.

Cool lines:  
I hate being on the wagon. It's like getting my life back but losing one of my senses.

He had a look of a tired day-care worker who wanted to slap the snot out of a kid but knew the parents were watching.

Fit to Kill (Brett Halliday, 1959)

Basic detective novel structure dictates that our gumshoeing hero gets hired by some unfortunate soul, or gets involved in a crime accidentally, or is pulled into some family shit. But not this one: Fit to Kill starts with some sort of journalistic investigation spy-ish background story, and it spends quite a hefty 50+ pages on it, which means that our main protagonist, PI Mike Shayne, makes his entrance as late as in the 7th chapter.

Which is a good and a bad thing at the same time. It's good because it's a bit unconventional (and therefore interesting), but it's bad because the background story is mediocre. Standard stuff involving some dictator of an unidentified banana republic, resistant fighters, a damsel in distress, a mysterious package and so on. Its main character, Shayne's friend Rourke, isn't exactly convincing and is, in fact, pretty fucking boring. He's supposed to be this stereotypical kind of hardened newspaper reporter, but most of the time he acts like some naive horny kid. I don't know, probably Halliday characterised him intentionally this way so Mike Shayne would be cooler in contrast.

With Shayne's arrival on the scene, the novel's pace shifts several gears up. In fact, it turns into the "real-time mode" which - once again - turns out to be a good and a bad thing. Good thing being that shit really starts to happen pretty rapidly, but the bad aspect of this is that it simply doesn't work too well. Don't get me wrong: the plot is not terribly complex, and it's easy to follow, it's just that its timing is way off sometimes. Simply too many things happen in twelve hours to make the story believable.

But it was still cool to read. Shayne is a pretty interesting character because he's supposed to be this cliched hard-boiled detective, but still he makes a few mistakes. Right at the start of the case he loses the girl he was tailing (He was frozen with indecision, which was an unusual state for Shayne), later moves a corpse before police arrives to the crime scene, walks into the Professor Quesada's house without any plan (so he gets knocked out) and other silly stuff like that. But still, he manages to tie up all the loose ends very efficiently in a great ending when all the pieces fall in place.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Michael Shayne, PI

Location:
First part in some unidentified "Central American republic", second part in Miami.

Body count: 

3

Dames:
Carla Adams with "elegantly nyloned legs" - She had the delicacy of colouring that is only found in girls with precisely that color hair.

Blackouts: 
Yes, but it's just "Shayne fell forward and the mist closed in about him." 

Title: 
Cool sounding, but also pretty puzzling one. The badass who does all the killings seemed very fit to me. Or is it referring to Rourke, who is finally fit to kill someone after his whole ordeal? If yes, who is he supposed to kill?

Cover: 
Not the usual paperback half-naked chicks & guns stuff, but quite interesting and nice one. This is relevant to the story, too, because thick glasses play a part in the novel, although it is far-fetched. Let me explain: the killer wears glasses, so without any second thoughts, Shayne links him to the asshole Renzullo, and - even more far-fetched - the police buys this idea without any reservation, so - check this, I shit you not! - they start a manhunt for a guy wearing glasses - "I want every outgoing train, bus and plane checked for a man wearing thick glasses"

Cool lines:  
Rourke asked the switchboard girl for the right time. It turned out to be time for supper, so he called room service, and ordered a bottle of rye and ice.