The Devil's Home on Leave (Derek Raymond, 1984)

Simply loved He Died with His Eyes Open, so I expected something special, but this one still caught me unprepared. Insane stuff. It breaks almost every crime-writing rule!

It begins with the shortest chapter I have ever read. Check this:

I knocked at a second-floor flat in a dreary house, one of two hundred in a dreary Catford street.
After a while I heard steps the other side of the door. "McGruder?"
"Who's that?" said a man's voice. "Who wants him?"
"I do," I said. "Open up. Police."

And that's it. Bang! I was sucked in!

What follows is a discovery of the body of a guy killed in such a gruesome manner that even Herschell Gordon Lewis would be proud of it. Poor bastard had been killed with a humane killer (needle-gun used for cattle slaughtering) and then boiled (!??!!!), bled out, his teeth were totally smashed, he was dismembered, and finally, his remains were put in several shopping bags. WTF!?

But if you think this is going to be yet another standard serial psycho-killer chase formulaic thriller, think again. Because pretty soon, our nameless sergeant discovers (without much of an investigation btw - it's just "practice and instinct") who the killer is, and the cat-and-mouse game can begin. But things start to go a bit odd even before that - the chronological narration, which states specific dates (it starts on April 14th, btw), gets abandoned almost immediately, as well as the sidekick-like character of an investigating reporter. Like I said, the usual rules are intentionally broken to mislead the reader.

Lots of stuff happens afterwards, and the whole thing culminates in some weird political espionage involving Russians and the UK defence minister. The ending is excellent too, and (surprise, surprise) unexpected. Without revealing too much, let's say that crime sometimes does pay.

But of course, this is as far from whodunit as it can possibly be. It's about the struggle between good and evil, the sense of justice, humanity, authority (I liked the touch about his boss being reduced to just a voice over the phone), power and its abuse (the defence minister is a gambler and a pervert), remorse, dealing with guilt, and more.

And who the hell needs a coherent story anyways when you read something so very stylish and authentic (see the dictionary in the 'cool lines' section), violent, noir-ish, hard-boiled (police brutality in the 20th chapter!), with such an interesting hero protagonist and totally insane villain?

It has to be said, it's also highly morbid (see the body count section), bleak and disturbing, so I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But to me, it was a total thrill, I simply couldn't stop reading it!

5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Nameless; in his early 40s but still only detective-sergeant because "Justice is what I bother about, not rank.". Still working in the "Factory" on Poland Street in the unexplained deaths department A14. You can find him in room 205.

Location:
London

Body count:  
Violence and death are everywhere in this one, and I tried to keep the count as accurately as possible. I'm pretty sure there are 5 corpses directly related to the plot (or let's say to the plot's present time), and at least 15 are mentioned in various contexts and sub-plots: from an old woman thrown from the car (senseless killing for 70 quid of gear plus maybe a tenner) to serial killing of three (so gruesome that squatter girl who finds them dies of a heart attack) and to some random Norwegian "geezer" (who buried some young men in his garden). And let's, of course, not forget our hero's nine-year-old daughter Dalia, who was pushed under the bus by her crazy mother. 

Dames, Blackouts: 

Nope, none. And for the last time, all the standard rules are broken in this one.
 

Title: 
"Well," he said, "what do you think?"
"What I think," I said, "is that the devil's home on leave."
"What does that mean?"
"It means there's a maniac on the manor."

McGruder personifies the devil, and there are numerous references to him (or is it "it"?). And this asshole truly is one sick fuck - he gets a hard-on when he's about to kill somebody and then comes into his pants afterwards.
 
Cover: 
It's the only thing I dislike about this masterpiece. I understand the fire-walking metaphor, but there are so many more suitable motives that would do better justice to this book's unique atmosphere.

Cool lines:  
"You can't work that, you bastard!" he screamed. "There's a fucking law in this country!"
"That's right," I said, "and I'm it." [The Coolest!]


"As a copper I don't care about your privacy," I said, "your rages even less. To me you're just an operation - find 'em, nail 'em, wheel 'em in!"
"Must be dull, same operation all the time."
"You should know," I said, "you're the disease."

"You lying, self-deceiving cunt," I said, "if the money were right you'd top a handicapped child in a wheelchair, cop for the lolly and bank it. You're full of shit, piss and death, McGruder, so don't try and launder yourself with me, friend."

"Phillips is a software wizard - the sort of microchip guru who makes a British government foam with excitement, like a snooker amateur with black over the top pocket." 

Plus a few slang words I noted down. It might come in handy next time I visit London...

• doing bird - serving a prison sentence
• grass, super grass - police informer
• screw - prison guard
• topped - (contract) murder
• hot cross - jailbreak
• bag - arrest
• punter or putting the black on - blackmail
• clocking (somebody) - checking somebody out, observing
• Black Maria - the transporting vehicle for prisoners

Hail to the Chief (Ed McBain, 1973)

A nostalgic one. My father used to be a big admirer of McBain, but I just couldn't get into his writing when I was in my teens. Too formulaic, not enough action, no femme fatales, detailed police procedures descriptions instead of snappy dialogues, etc. I preferred (and still do) the more vivid world of PIs.

I have learned to appreciate good writing and intelligent storytelling (I hope) since then, but I still couldn't enjoy this one. Its subject is juvenile gang violence, which isn't exactly my cup of tea, although (like any other subject) it can be done decently or even brilliantly. The whole setup in this one didn't work for me. How can you take seriously a bunch of kids who still live with their parents? And at the same time, they organise their gangs (they call them cliques) into mob-like hierarchies with counsellors, secretaries, war chiefs, etc. Sounded a bit silly to me...

There's no mystery, and it is a good example of content being sacrificed to the form. Our detectives' investigation runs in parallel with the reading of the gang leader's confession statement in flashbacks after being arrested. So, the whole narration boils down to this: a guy explaining what happened, followed by Ed McBain describing how our heroes reached the same conclusion using police procedures. It's an interesting concept, but it quickly wears off and becomes increasingly annoying. This approach would function much more effectively if the guy were interrogated instead. There are pages and pages without any dialogue, and the whole thing is, at times, really hard to digest.

Far from being bad, but it's just not for me. Still isn't, even after all those years.

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Detectives Steve Carella and Bertram Kling of the 87th precinct

Location:
The city in these pages is imaginary.
The people, the places, are all fictitious.
Only the police routine is based on
established investigatory technique. 

Body count: 
Let's round it to 10. It starts with three man, two girls and a baby in the ditch  (Nice racial and ethnic balance. Three of them were black, two of them were Hispanic and one of them was white), then two more during the story development and at least two in the final shootout. But probably much more since three gangs with approximately 50 members are fighting the third world war (they even have hand grenades!).

Title: 
Don't get it. It probably refers to Nesbitt, a chief of Yankee Rebels, but I can't remember anyone hailing him.

Cover: 
A pretty unimaginative human face constructed using the gang's colours and weapons. I doubt Carpenter considered this for a poster of his masterpiece, Assault on Precinct 13

Cool lines:

There was another color staining the ice. The color was blood. The bodies were naked. The nakedness made the night seem even colder than it was. 

I don't know any rich man's sons who got killed in that war over there, do you? And I don't know any rich man's sons who get killed in the street in the middle of the night. If there's a God, mister, he doesn't know about poor people.

I knew this was a drastic measure, but I reasoned with the council that if there is nobody left to fight a war, then the war automatically stops.

No House Limit (Steve Fisher, 1958)

I'm not really into the gambling-themed stuff, but I just couldn't leave this one sitting on a two-pound discount shelf in London's Forbidden Planet store. Published by the one and only Hard Case Crime, it almost felt like a duty to buy it and not just an act of mercy. But seriously - where is this world going to when one can buy half a dozen new books for the price of a pint of Guinness and a pack of cigarettes...

Anyways, like I mentioned, gambling is not exactly my thing. So I had a problem comprehending the basic premise in this one. There's an independent (=not run by the mob) casino in Las Vegas, and some anonymous syndicate (=mob, I'd guess) is trying to take it over. Since "gamblers are not gangsters", they hire some ultra bad-ass high-roller who will play crabs for three straight days and nights against the house, attempting to bankrupt the casino by winning ten million bucks. And for some reason, casino owner Joe (our hero btw) needs to be present at the crap table all the time.

So the whole concept seemed silly to me. But it had the potential to develop into something (more) interesting. There are a few cool characters and beautiful dames (we are in Vegas after all), and parallel to the main story, there's another subplot in which Joe's right-hand man is shielding his boss from the various distractions that might break his concentration. Because during this "siege", the syndicate tries to disrupt things by "pushing the queer chips", switching dice with "shaved" ones and even dispatching a hit-man from Chicago.

But all those episodes are just fillers for the central theme. Which is not even gambling. It's LOVE! Joe and his piano player both fall desperately for two women they've just met. In fact, once the siege is over, both of them will propose to their newfound loves. So instead of a hard-boiled gangster pulp novel, this turns into incredibly cheesy (see the 'cool lines' section) and, at times, hilariously funny romance crap. Too bad.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Joe Martin, owner of the Rainbow's End casino. Or is it maybe Sprig, his tough right-hand man?

Location:
One of the richest, most exclusive playlands on this earth is a strip of U.S. highway just outside Las Vegas, Nevada.

Body count: 

3

Dames: 
Sunny Guido - "I'd trade my casino for her!" [Fatale]

Blackouts: 
None, even though Joe is on the verge of collapse all the time during the siege. He pulls it off because, in between the sessions, Sunny takes good care of him (even fucking him twice!).

Title: 
Bad-ass gambler Bello requests that the casino lift the betting limit, and Joe, as a fellow high roller, is unable to reject his request since not respecting such unwritten rules would ruin his reputation. I know, I know... I told you I've found the whole concept silly...

Cover: 
The guy in front is definitely Bello, the girl is most likely Dee (an exquisite young girl ... with large breasts and rounded hips ... in a dazzling white blue-sequined cocktail dress ... looking sexy), and my guess is that the guy standing in the dark behind her is Sprig since (a) he's a guy who operates from the background and (b) Joe is probably standing at the other end of the crap table facing Bello.

The girl's face looks a bit strange, but otherwise, it's quite a nice illustration. Credited to R.B. Farrell (for whom Google has never heard of btw)

Notable cover blurbs: 
"Sex, sadism and action." by Washington Star.

Pretty funny what was considered sexy and sadistic 50 years ago...
 

Cool lines: 
No witty, snappy one-liners in this one, I'm afraid. There's occasional cool slang, mostly related to gambling, but I'll remember this one for some truly corny dialogues that made me laugh my ass off. Chapter 20 is simply brilliant! Here it is, a bit condensed:

"And is it?"
"I thought so for a while."
"Don't you know?"
He looked at her. "I'm wondering."
...
"This is better," he said.
"Much better."
"I feel alive again."
"So do I."
...
"Please say it out loud."
...
The word offended her. "Joe-"
...
She whispered: "I love you."
...
"It sounds beautiful, Joe!"
"It sounds insane. But I want to do it...Why are you crying?"
"I'm not - it's just - I'm so happy!"
His voice was warm. -"I'm happy, too. I'm not sure I've ever been happy before - really happy."
...
[They start fucking now. Ups, sorry - they are making love!]
....
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, darling."
"Hurt?"
"No, everything's lovely"
...
"Oh, Joe-"
"I love you," he said. "God help me, Sunny, I love you, I really love you."
"I love you, too!"
...

Night Train (Martin Amis, 1997)

I was having my Saturday morning newspaper & coffee ritual last week and came across a review of Amis's last book. Glanced through it (it didn't make much of an impression btw) and then took a walk to the city centre to check out the flea market. So, when I saw Night Train selling for 3 euros at the very first stall, it wasn't a coincidence - it was a sign from above demanding that I check it out. And why not? In general, I don't often go for the "serious" authors disguising their stuff into pulpy crime novels. Still, lately, I've been fortunate to pick up lots of great and interesting books from the likes of Sallis, Raymond, Manchette, Garnier, and a few others.

Night Train starts pretty cool and, as much as it's trying not to be, somehow formulaic. Jennifer, the daughter of the local police chief, had committed suicide, and our hero, Detective Mike, is asked by her heartbroken father to investigate the matter. And we can categorise this "matter" as murder since there were three bullets found in Jennifer's brain. For some reason (that I still can't get), the investigation must not be official, so we have a nice police procedural mixed with the classic PI type of story. There's also some personal crap thrown into the mix; as a kid, Jennifer read stories to Mike when she (yep, Mike is a female) went through the alcohol detox.

So far, so good. It's a bit wild (jumping from past to present tense, mixing dialogues with narration), but still pretty straightforward, and it seemed to me it had some purpose and goal. The language used is a little weird and definitely over artificial; there's no way in hell that a tough police cop like Mike, who had solved over 100 murders and is about to retire, would talk and contemplate like she does. But still, it's cool, and some of the lines are actually pretty fucking funny (see 'dames' section of the facts).

But quite early came a "Wait a minute, this is bullshit!" moment. The whole thing doesn't move anywhere, makes less and less sense as it goes on and becomes dull, pretentious babbling about the meaning of life. "Witty" jokes and "profound" observations became way too repetitive and distracting, and it seemed to me that they were simply used to hide the author's inability to express himself concisely. And at the same time, the story steadily falls apart. I was sure that the main twist would be some pathetic mind fuck about having no twist at all. It doesn't exactly turn out like that, but close enough: the big twist is that whodunnit is not actually revealed. Or maybe it was (Trader would be my guess); to be honest, I wasn't paying much attention towards the end and just wanted to finish it off.

Written for the reading clubs and dinner parties. Probably not bad, but definitely not for me...

2.5/5 (adding an extra half point for that "fuck him, give him five bucks" mailman story)

Facts:

Hero: 
I'm a police. I'm a police and my name is Detective Mike Hoolihan.

A fourty-four-year-old police with coarse blonde hair, bruiser's tits and broad shoulders, and pale blue eyes in her head that have seen everything.

Location: 
Second-echelon  American city, mildly famed for its Jap-financed Babel Tower, its harbors and marinas, its university, its futuristically enlightened corporations (computer software, aerospace, pharmaceuticals), its high unemployment, and its catastrophic inner-city taxpayer flight.

You are probably as confused as I was...

Body count: 1

Dames: 
Jennifer - Man, what a bod: At twenty, she looked like a model in an ad for those cereals that taste great but also make you shit right.  [Fatale]

Unconscious moment: /

Title: 
Night train keeps getting mentioned repeatedly in various contexts, symbolising all kinds of shit. The first time we come across it, it is actually pretty funny. Our hero's apartment is located near the railway line, so because of the noise it causes, the night train is "something that keeps my rent down". But pretty soon, the good old night train starts to symbolise everything and nothing, and eventually, I got bored with trying to decipher all that crap. Judge it for yourself:

Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness. You won't get there so quick, not by natural means. You buy your ticket and you climb on board. That ticket costs everything you have. But it's just a one-way. This train takes you into the night, and leaves you there. It's the night train.
 
Cover: 
X-ray of a gun. Somehow related to the story (gun definitely is), but the whole concept is another one of those metaphorical nonsense. You know, like seeing the truth through things, etc. 

Notable cover blurbs: 

This one, quoting Sunday Independent, deserves to be mentioned because it's so totally ridiculous and misleading: 

Tough, noir, Chandleresque...

Come on, guys, what the fuck!?!??

Cool lines:   
Not even Italian police are sentimental about full moons. You're looking at a workload increase twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. A full moon on Friday night and you're talking a two-hour backup in the emergency room and long lines trailing in and out of Trauma.

The Switch (Elmore Leonard, 1978)

Last Wednesday marked the first anniversary of Elmore Leonard's death, and what better way to pay the maestro respect than reading one of his novels? Had this one sitting on my shelf for several weeks, and it was the perfect time to check it out.

It's a story about the kidnapping that goes wrong (as all abductions eventually do). This time, the fuck-up happens because the husband doesn't really want his wife back (furthermore, he prefers her dead) and also because, to be honest, Louis and Ordell are hardly some hard-core professional bad-ass criminal types.

A bit crazy, full of weird black humour that fluctuates between thriller and (almost) comedy. At times, pretty unreal and even unbelievable, but the story somehow holds water. At least I couldn't find any major plot holes or inconsistencies.

It's, of course, all about the characters. Nobody (except Willeford) does them better than Elmore Leonard. Once again, it was such a joy to follow their introductions (or audition as Leonard used to call this stage) and further developments. It felt like the author really enjoyed them and had a lot of fun moving them around like figures on a chessboard, disposing of them (Marshall) or introducing some new ones (Melanie). My only minor criticism would be regarding Frank because he really is a bit too cartoonish and stereotyped asshole yuppie.

Not Leonard's best work, but still immensely enjoyable.

4/5

Facts:

Hero: 
No central hero in this one. At first, I liked Ordell (probably because Samuel L. Jackson was so cool in Jackie Brown), then I started to cheer for Mickey (she liked George Carlin btw), but in the end, I think Melanie won over them all.

Location: 
Detroit. Shortly the Bahamas

Body count: 

1 + one critically wounded police officer

Dames: 
Mickey, the tennis wife and double-crossing Melanie

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Kidnappers Louis and Ordell refer to the exchange of Mickey for the money as "The Switch". But it could also mean the switch inside Mickey because once she was kidnapped, "She felt alive. Excited but calm."

Cover: 
Dark and sinister photo showing kidnapped Mickey. Pretty accurate with her wearing the white blouse and black tape over her eyes. It depicts a scene in which kidnappers first contact Frank with the ransom demand.

Cool lines: 

/

The Cockeyed Corpse (Richard S. Prather, 1964)

Private detective Shell Scott gets an assignment to investigate whether the death of an actress on the set of an obscure nudie flick was an accident or a murder. Being bored in the hot L.A., our hero doesn't waste any time to depart for the filming location in Arizona, expecting to have a weekend of paid vacation in the company of the remaining female cast. This, of course, won't happen because we know in advance some hoods are hanging around the ranch where the production takes place. And to make things clear to Shell (plus to make action go), two cowboys attempt to shoot him upon his arrival.

So we have a plot, but unfortunately, it doesn't thicken much from here on. There's almost no mystery or suspense: bad guys try to kill Shell, and beautiful women try to seduce Shell while he tries to prevent them from being killed. Initially, this setup of hard-boiled city gangsters and sexploitation movie-makers confined in a rural background is both interesting and unusual, but it soon starts to fade out.

Weak, hard to swallow plot and pretty unbelievable twist aside, that book's style was what annoyed me the most about this one. It's only 140 pages long, but it doesn't move anywhere. Everything takes ages (that fucking rodeo needs ten pages to complete), and Prather spends more effort on describing trivial stuff than letting the story breathe and develop with any kind of decent pace. I also had a bit of a problem with the dialogues. They are pretty lame and without some cool slang and/or cynical one-liners that one would expect from the hard-boiled PI and city hoodlums (Shell at one stage calls them sub-humans, which I found pretty funny).

Also, I didn't care much about our hero. He's a kind of Mike Hammer wannabe - maybe tough enough (he kicks the shit out of the three assholes quite efficiently!) but definitely pretty pathetic at his attempts to be witty or street-wise and failing miserably as a womaniser. Check out his thoughts on four girls who were trying to seduce him:

They stuck closer together than was normal, certainly than was fair. They were going to barbecue together, to the dance together, and - I got the impression - to bed together, which was certainly a sickening impression.

Huh?

I don't know. It's an unusual blend of cosy and hard-boiled crime that was written for a younger audience and hasn't aged very well. I'm sure some people love this kind of stuff, but I'm not one of them.

2.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Shell Scott, PI

Location:
"Sun and Sage" Dude Ranch, Arizona.

Body count: 

8 plus "one only half live".

Dames: 
April, blonde Delise, redheaded Choo Choo, black-haired and black-eyed Zia.

Blackouts: 
Two of them. This is not bad for such a short novel, but it's not great for a guy who calls himself the unconscious detective. The first one is more than decent:

I don't know how it is that you can know that you've been sapped, when the fact of the matter is that a split second after being sapped you're unconscious. I guess it's just that my mind works with lightning speed - because I knew I'd been sapped.

But then (as usual) it goes on for another hefty paragraph and spoils everything. Coming out is described pretty well, too, in a classic Marlowe-ish manner:

I was climbing out of a dark, slippery hole, and soft tentacles of blackness wrapped themselves around me, holding me back.

But here, too, it just continues to go on and on. 

The second one is not as good. He simply falls off the wild horse.
 

Title: 
The main villain stages his fake death by killing some unfortunate dude and later refers to him as the "cockeyed corpse" because his face was smashed after falling from a height of seventeen stories. When Shell finishes off this villain asshole, he uses the same expression to describe his final state.

Cover: 
Surviving girls (see 'dames' section) of "The Wild West" movie cast who are running for cover when an attempt on April's life was being made. So it's pretty accurate, except for those tree branches covering their boobs.

Cool lines:  
I knew him. I also knew the gun in his left hand, an unusual gun, a Beretta Brigadier, 9 mm. Luger.
The Brigadier is an automatic pistol which fires nine shots. In the right place, one would be enough. And he had it aimed at one of the right places.

Daddy Cool (Donald Goines, 1974)

I was a bit disappointed with this one. I expected our hit-man hero to be a cool, Shaft-like badass, but he's more like an ageing guy having many problems with his family while running his pool hall. He is not very cool either - he loses his coolness when returning home from one of his "jobs" and finds his 16-year-old spoiled daughter Janet making out in a car with a young and "thoroughly unlikable" pimp, Ronald. Daddy Cool gets mad, slaps her, and as a result, she's so pissed at him that she packs her shit and runs away with the unlikable one. Soon, she ends up whoring on the streets of Motor City, and daddy is not too happy about it.

But he's not too upset about it either, because he's still unable to locate her two weeks later. Is he simply not streetwise anymore? Hard to say, but one thing is sure. Instead of looking for her, he takes another job in LA because it pays so well (25 grand). Greedy bastard! And an asshole too. When he finally returns, he releases his frustrations and rage on his two step-sons, who were given the ultimatum to either find her or move out of his house. I'm not saying that two of them aren't good-for-nothing assholes, but I think he was a bit unfair to them.

It gets better and more dynamic towards the end with a somewhat Shakespearean, tragic, bloody family drama climax.

It's a quick and entertaining read, but I didn't notice any particular style in it. It does not have much of the ghetto noir feeling I had expected, plain dialogues lacking street slang, a sloppy and pretty unbelievable story, hardly any characterisation (especially Janet, which is done poorly), and a bit too exploitative (five pages of sex scene). The whole thing just feels like it was put together hastily. Which,  after reading Goines' biography, can very well be the case. Apparently, he wrote mainly to support his heroin addiction and published 9 books in 1974 alone. Amazing, big fucking respect!

3/5

Facts:

Hero:
Larry Jackson, aka Daddy Cool, "one of the deadliest killers the earth had ever spawned".

Location:
Detroit mostly, except for the two jobs that Daddy Cool takes in Michigan and LA

Body count: 

7 + one German police dog

Dames: 
Daddy Cool's daughter Janet. She is an innocent 16-year-old girl when we first meet her, but two weeks later, she celebrates her 17th birthday street-walking and "doing tricks".

Blackouts: 
None. This is strange because he's savagely beaten when a gang of six mugs him. 

Title: 

See 'hero'

Cover: 

Pretty standard 

Cool lines:  
Pimping was his game, and no good pimp would allow some bitch's daddy to blow his game.[The Coolest!]

Yes, there would be hell to pay, and some crying. But casket buying would be the order of the day in the near future.