Black Is the Fashion for Dying (Jonathan Latimer, 1959)

Starts very promising. Without going into details, let me just quote the ending of the first chapter:

"A choking sound rose from his throat. Outside of a silver crucifix, suspended between two firm, pink-tipped breasts, Miss Omaha was stark naked."

Naked babes, Hollywood... oh yeah - bring it on!

But then it starts to build up into a classic whodunit. Page after page of a pretty monotone narrative is spent on establishing the cast, the setup and our first victim. But with not exactly subtle hints like "“...that’s Hollywood’s favorite pastime...planning how to kill Caresse", it's not much of a surprise when poor Caresse is killed. True to the formula, murder happens on a set during a movie shoot, and again, we can see it happening a few pages beforehand (a bit naive stuff with pistols and bullets as the props). But just in case we still didn't get it, Mr Latimer reminds us that we are now in a locked-room mystery:

“You know those locked-room murders they’re always putting in books?”
They nodded again.
“Well, this baby, if something don’t give, could make all of ’em look like kindergarten riddles.”

Oh, well. I have nothing against the good old-fashioned mystery every once in a while. Only this one turns into an amateur detective type, which is really not my cup of tea. And to make matters worse, it turns into two(!) amateur detectives type with Gordon directing Blake from his hospital bed, so the damn thing becomes reminiscent of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin cosy shit. To make it an even bigger mess, a bit of The Fugitive is thrown in. For no good (or at least credible) reason, our amateur sleuth #1 decides to run and hide from the police chase only to appear the next day in a big surprise (huh) revelation scene that takes place nowhere else but at the Oscar awards ceremony! I kid you fucking not. So much for that famous "warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse" search. But then again, cops don't play a significant role in this one. They are just observers of the "backward school of detection" method copyrighted by Gordon and practised by Blake.

Wanted to like this one so Mr Latimer would have a more favourable opening entry on this blog, but I was struggling to get over the line. It just dragged on and on... Not noir-ish, not hard-boiled, not even decently suspenseful. It felt like all the effort was spent creating an authentic H'Wood novel with a convincing atmosphere around the movie-making industry and its eccentric people. That aspect definitely works well, but unfortunately, it is the only one that does.

And one last thing before I finish. You wonder what happened to that naked beauty from the opening chapter? Hate to disappoint you, but nothing much really - she disappears and is later found dead. Turns out that her sole purpose was to distract our writer hero so that the bad guy could sneak into his house to take a peek at the scene he had just written... Surely there are easier ways to get a dude away from his typewriter for a minute?

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
From the "Cast of Characters" section:

Richard Blake—An up-and-coming young Hollywood writer, he worked hard to revise the ending of his script, but it didn’t come off exactly as he’d planned

Josh Gordon—A quick-witted, outspoken young director, he was forced to improvise and he managed to supply a most unexpected ending

Location: 
Hollywood

Body count: 
A bit hard to do a proper count. Definitely, a couple that I have already mentioned, which, together with a culprit's death, makes it 3. There's also a poet (and occasional screenplay writer) who died in the past (but it's not explained whether it was a violent death) and an actor who committed suicide. Irene, too, is excluded from the grand total since she only dies momentarily when hearing some shocking news over the phone ("The phone was dead. And so was she.")

The object of desire: 
Some ledgers that prove Fabro stole his Oscar-winning screenplay. 

Dames:
Mysterious blonde looking "like a child playing grown-up in her mother’s clothes":

About as cute as they came. A real doll, but probably older than she looked. They were almost always older than they looked.

And of course, Caresse: "...conniving, murderous, lying bitch, a jet-age Lucretia Borgia.":
Forty-five, if she was a day. A star for nearly thirty years. Five marriages, a telephone book of lovers, scandals, disasters, triumphs, and she still made carhops of the Mansfields and Monroes.

Blackouts: 
Hot metal grazed his head. Back of his eyes a skyrocket exploded, sent out millions of red stars. The stars flew upwards, became dancing motes of pinkish light that vanished into outer space. Something soft pressed his cheek. It was the rug. 

Title: 
Caresse's last lines of the "Tiger in the Night".

Edition:  
eBook

Cover: 
The eBook comes with a rather dull cover, so I used one of the old paperbacks instead. Not sure about its author.

Cool lines: 

It was going to be one of those days when it hailed frogs in Nebraska, when bats committed wholesale suicide against the Empire State Building, when a five-year-old in Peru gave birth to a three-headed baby.

“She’s really dead?”
“Even deader than her last picture.”

The Little People (John Christopher, 1966)

Far from the "pure terror" promised in its full title and even farther from this blog's usual crime stuff, but still, The Little People deserves an honorary post for its crazy cover. Nazi Leprechaun exploitation! The very moment I saw this illustration in some online article (which I cannot find now, goddamn), I went on eBay and scored a copy. I just love being seduced by such preposterous artwork!

It had been sitting on my "pretty high priority" bookshelf, waiting for the right moment, and I finally decided to check it out for this year's St Patrick's Day. Seemed appropriate for obvious reasons. Also, Paddy's Day is a national holiday here in Ireland, meaning we have a work-free day, which I'll likely need as this thing has 200+ pages of pretty small print...

In the end, it took me more than two weeks to complete it. I don't usually read two fiction books simultaneously, but in this case, I put The Little People down twice to read something lighter and then resumed it. Those 200+ pages (remember - of pretty small print!) don't contain much dialogue, and the whole thing is written in the semi-archaic English language, which can be very difficult to follow for a non-native speaker. The fact that there was no "pure terror" in it didn't make things easier.

Not saying it's bad at all. It's just not my cup of tea. The premise is interesting (a group of people finds these pathetic little creatures) and pretty sad (nazi experiments...), with some interesting ideas thrown in  (like how to preserve their human rights). Still, everything takes ages to start and complete. There are pages and pages of semi-philosophical crap intertwined with way too much personal/family shit to keep the reader focused. At least for this reader.

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
"Mary, the maid, says she's seen the little people near house."
Hanni said, "The little people? I do not understand that."
"It's an old legend in Ireland," Bridget said. "About this race of tiny men and women who can do magic. Mostly they're invisible, but occasionaly people can catch a glimpse of them. Some people."
"In Germany, also," Stefan said. Hanni still looked puzzled, and he turned to her, explaining. "Die Kobolde. Verstehst du?"
"Ah, yes." She nodded. "They do wicked things."

Location:
Bridget asked, "The Castle?"
"Well, it's not exactly a castle, though it's called Killabeg Castle and it has some of the old ruins still..."
Daniel Said, "Do you know it?"
"... It lies in a wild part of Mayo. There's no town within twenty miles, and the nearest railway is more than thirty."

Btw, there is a place called Killabeg House in Ireland, but it is located in County Wexford, not Mayo.

Body count:  

/

Dames:
Little Greta + little people's blonde, dark-eyed leader: "triumph of beauty in miniature".

Should also probably mention Bridget since she and her fiancé, Daniel, are the main non-little protagonists. But in a typically English conservative tradition, we just learn about her secretarial qualities:

For one thing, she had, as a secretary (not to him, but to Joe Grayson, one of the other partners), that rare intelligent competence which would enable her to tackle any situation with a probability of success.

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
They were wearing green costumes, like Greta, These, in the artificial light, the spotlight surrounded by blackness, gave the scene a harsh Disney-like unreality - the cinema's ultimate 3-D achievement after all the fumblings with Cinemascope and Cinerama and the rest. Who in God's name could have dreamed up that one?

Edition:  
Avon #2243, first printing, August 1968

Cover: 
See the 'Hero' and the 'Title' sections. Illustration credited to Hector Garrido.

Notable cover blurbs: 
"Carefully laid-on horror." - The New York Times

Cool lines: 

/

The Ever-Loving Blues aka Death of a Doll (Carter Brown, 1961)

I assume this one was initially meant to be Carter's H'wood novel. Because for some unexplained reason, the big shot producer Guggenheimer (!) hires our man Danny Boyd and flies his gumshoes all the way from New York to California. The usual type of assignment - it's gonna be yet another case of finding the missing starlet.

Her name is Gloria Van Raven (!!), and Danny's job turns out to be trivial. Studio execs send him to interview Gloria's secretary, April Showers (!!!), and he gets the lucky break immediately. During his visit, Gloria phones April, informs her that she's enjoying herself on some yacht in Florida and asks April to bring her some clothes. Danny promptly recruits April as his assistant (or something like that), helps her pack, and they are off to the East Coast.

All this happens by page #10, and around this time, I started to raise my eyebrows a bit. True, Mr Brown was Australian who, according to Wikipedia, had not visited the States very frequently, but surely he must have known about the private detective jurisdiction? You know - the thing that cops and/or district attorneys always bitch about and threaten our private detective heroes with. And when you think about it, this whole thing doesn't make much sense from the pure logistical point of view, either. I mean, wouldn't it be simpler to send Danny directly from New York to Florida? And surely it would be much more economical for Gloria to simply buy a couple of bikinis and not bother her girl Friday to fly a suitcase of clothes all across America? Especially because she (1) intended to stay on that yacht for only five days at most, (2) was broke, and (3) didn't wear many clothes anyway...

But what the hell. Brown was contracted to write two novels and an additional short story each month (!?!!), so, understandably, he couldn't pay attention to every single minor detail. Let's move on.

Upon Danny and April's arrival, the rest of the cast is introduced quickly. They are the most stereotypical bunch possible: nightclub singer Ellen, bankrupted Wall Street trader, junkie trumpet player Muscat Mullins, Las Vegas big-shot gambler Baron accompanied by goons Meatball Murphy and Fingers Malloy (long story), fake insurance detective and, of course, mandatory local police detective.

The plot thickens... but unfortunately, not much. It seems that Brown ran out of steam by inventing all those ridiculous names and neglected the story a bit. Because it literally doesn't move anywhere, our cast is confined in cabins of some small town called Bahia Mar for the rest of the novel. There is not much action worth mentioning, except for a pathetic (probably meant to be humorous) attempt to reconstruct the murder.

So it's a bit like Agatha Christie's setup once again. With an inevitable round-up of suspects and a spectacular and surprising final whodunit revealing act. And spectacular indeed is! Danny manages to fuck it up even more than he did in The Sometime Wife. Again, he forgets to disarm the culprit, and this time, his ignorance results in a couple of fresh kills, one by a decapitation! Crazy stuff.

Nice, quick read, although a bit too goofy for me.

3/5 (Adding an extra point for the hilarious characters names)

Facts:

Hero:
"So you're Danny Boyd," he growled. "The real smart operator from the East Coast who can fix anything - for money."

And let us not forget about his profile:

"I'm Danny Boyd," I told her slowly, giving her plenty of time to catch the profile's full impact. "From the studio."
"It figures," she said pleasantly. "Only an actor talks to you sideways to be sure you don't miss it. How's the left view? Just as stunning, I bet."

Location: 
Starts briefly in Hollywood, but then the action moves to Florida to a fictional (?) resort/yacht harbour called Bahia Mar:

Bahia Mar looked like every guy's dream of how to live after the Bureau of Internal Revenue has made that glorious mistake and added five zeros to your ten-dollar refund check.

Body count:  

4

The object of desire: 
Guggenheimer sighted heavily. "I wouldn't worry about Gloria, only every time she makes a new picture, it never makes less than a three million gross at the box office. It's not the dame I care about, you understand, Boyd? It's the money."

Dames:
Gloria Van Raven - "redhead built with the exuberant generosity of a Renoir painting..." with "twin peaks of her Junoesque breasts..." who "reminded me of a still from the French movie that gave one of the South Dakota censors a coronary occlusion last year."

Gloria's secretary blue-eyed blonde April Showers who could "match the Van Raven figure any time - curve for breathtaking curve".

And finally, Ellen Fitzroy, the nightclub singer - "A tall brunette... the full curves... her strong white teeth making a brilliant contrast with the dark tan of her body."

Strong white teeth!? 

Blackouts: 
I got struck by lightning. It hit in back of my right ear and the whole world exploded, hurling me way out into a black, bottomless void.

Title: 
"It's his own composition of course," Valdez said slowly. "He calls it 'The Ever-Loving Blues'."
"They figure a jazzman's no-good unless he's unhappy," I said, "and the real top men suffered all their lives. If the quality of that composition's any standard, Mullins must be the unhappiest guy on the whole earth!"

Edition:  
Signet #1919, First printing, March 1961

Cover: 
Jazz and babe - the winning combination. But it's only half accurate. There's a trumpet player in this one, but there's no scene with April (remember - she's the only blonde one) holding a gun. 
Beautiful illustration. The artist is not credited, but I'm pretty sure it's the work of McGinnis. 

Cool lines: 

"Where was she last seen?" I asked
"Check with her girl Friday," he said curtly. "She's a nice girl."
"Here - in Hollywood?" I stared at him. "You're kidding."
Guggenheimer suddenly looked tired. "I got gag writers I pay for that kind of corn, Boyd."

"You must be April Showers," I said between my teeth. "What was if before? May Schmaltz?"
"If it was to trade insults, why didn't the studio send a writer?" she asked curiously.

Grifter's Game (Lawrence Block, 1961)

At first, I thought this one would be memorable for the main hero's simply incredible naiveness bordering sheer stupidity. It takes 146 pages and an old Hitchcock movie for our poor sucker Joe to realise that  things are not exactly what they appear to be:

Later, lying in bed and trying to sleep, I realized something. I tried to imagine a movie in which the hero steals two pieces of luggage, one of which is loaded with a fortune in raw heroin. Then the same hero happens to pick up or get picked up by a girl who subsequently turns out to be the wife of the guy who owns the luggage and the heroin.
Coincidental?
More than that. Almost incredible. 

However, I'm glad to say that, instead, it will stay in my memory for its excellent ending, which I didn't see coming at all. Needless to say, Joe gets screwed over by the girl, but his payback is really something. Without giving away too much, let's just say that there's a reason why Mr Block brought that (initially a bit nonsensical) heroin stuff into the story. Original conclusion, indeed. Nasty, grim, disturbing and fatalistic. The way I like them.

All in all, it is a nice take on the ever-inspiring theme of "old rich husband, young unsatisfied/greedy wife".

3.5/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Joe Marlin, a con man. However, he comes across more like a gigolo who specialises in skipping luxury hotels without paying the bills.

Location:
Philadelphia, New York, Atlantic City, Miami, Tahoe, Las Vegas

Body count: 

1

The object of desire: 
The usual: girl for the boy and money for the girl.

Dames: 
She told me her name was Mona and I told her my name was Lennie. She was a lot of fun, besides being a sex symbol.

Title: 
A bit misleading. Like I said, Joe is more like a gigolo; he's certainly nothing like the Paul Newman/Robert Redford kind of grifter, and his "game" is simply killing some old dude from a point-blank distance. But I guess "Grifter's Game" sounds much better than "Gigolo's Assassination".

Edition:  
Hard Case Crime #1. Yes, the first HCC edition!

Cover: 
A nice illustration by Chuck Pyle. It's pretty accurate, too, as it depicts the killing of Mona's husband in a drive-by shooting. I like the way her eyes seemed to oversee the whole scene from the background.

Cool lines: 
“You’re sweet,” she said. “Very sweet.”
“Isn’t your husband sweet?”
“Forget him.”
“How can I? He’s married to the most beautiful girl in the world.”
Another smile.
“Well?”
“He’s not sweet. He’s old and he’s fat and he’s ugly. Also stupid. Also revolting.”
It was quite a list.
“So why did you marry him?”
“He’s also rich,” she said. “Very rich. Very very very rich.”

Had any Lately? (Troy Conway, 1969)

My first Coxeman left me speechless, so I should write something more substantial about this one. However, to put any of this craziness into context, we first need to understand the story. So here it goes.

The entire male population of Sarmania has somehow lost its sex drive. Men are simply not horny and are refusing to fuck their women. Because of this biological oddity, the country's survival is at stake since they haven't been reproducing for a full five years now. Rod is sent there to investigate what's going on, although he's not particularly concerned about the country's future. The thing is that Sarmania is behind the Iron Curtain, so the Reds must be involved.

Upon his arrival, he is raped by fifteen sex-starved women and later runs (or should I say rams) into several more. One of them is the beautiful sexologist J.R., who lives in a secluded, Frankenstein-like castle, conducting fertility tests on gorilla Peter. J.R. is frigid and therefore off-limits (for the time being), so Rod - as a part of a scientific experiment - fucks the three women working for her. On his way out, he's frustrated and concludes that she is a "confirmed man-hater, possible Lesbian, potential suicidal type" and that J.R. probably stands for "Just Rusting".

Here, we come to the second most hilarious point of the novel. When he returns to the hotel, there is a riot on the street. Women demand him to you-know-what them. This horny mob is led by Angelica, who proclaims:

"I, Angelica, say this. He will rest all day and night. Tomorrow morning, we will issue ration cards. For each and every woman here. Each in turn will be able to enjoy ten minutes with this remarkable man."

Fucking ration cards!!!?! Don't you just love it?

Rod manages to escape and eventually returns to the castle. Not surprisingly, he does score with J.R. this time around, and she goes crazy over his bouncing balls. Oh yeah - and there's an army of apes living in that castle protecting our beautiful rusting sex scholar. And another thing - Rod and J.R. discover a cause of the Sarmania's misfortunes. But things are not what they seem! Rod goes back to town, makes some calls, gets himself informed, and heads back to the castle for the final showdown after a few more lays. Upon his arrival, he then witnesses the most hilarious scene of the novel!

J.R. is lying naked on the floor, holding a pistol in each hand and is surrounded by six naked men lined up in a semicircle. They all have hard-ons (equipped with rigid weapons), and (in that cool scientific voice) she commands them to "Jump. Up and down. In position. Jog. I say, Jog!". So they start jumping and waving their balls at her, but she's still not satisfied! Seems like she craves Rod's "family jewels" specifically.

??????

Later on, there's some silly crap about uranium mines and J.R.'s Sarmania takeover, but in essence, that's it. In a concise and abbreviated version. Can I really put any context or meaning into any of this without the post running for ten pages or more? I can't. I'll try with the next one, since I was lucky enough to score a pack of ten Coxeman paperbacks on eBay for a mere 50 bucks.

I'll just finish by saying that, as over the top and silly and juvenile as it is, it never gets obscene. There are no four-letter words in this one. Instead, we are continually treated to a never-ending stream of hilariously crazy metaphors. Rod's dick is everything from (a bit too frequently used) an old-fashioned "family jewels" to a pretty self-explanatory "eight wonder of the world" or rather bizarre "red candle" and so on. I think the most memorable one is referring to coming in a girl's mouth as her "drinking of the red wine of life". Crazy stuff, indeed. I needed to pause reading a few times to think over and decipher some of this nonsense.

It could have been a bit more hard-boiled-ish, but it's still unforgettable.

4/5

Facts:

Hero:
I, Rod Damon, am still the greatest Coxman of them all. Ask anybody.

Me. Damon. The greatest Coxman of them all. The pride of L.S.D. The noblest roamin' sexologist in the universe.

"Whoremaster!" the man nearest me suddenly shouted.
"Lecher!" cried another.
"Adulterer" another man blurted, spitting at me.
"Despoiler of our women!" another man screamed in my face.
"Beast of the field!"
"Fornicator!"
"Lustful dog!"
"Sodomist!"

Hm - Beast of the field??

Location: 
Starts and ends in Japan but mostly takes place in Sarmania. Which is a little eastern European country known for its excellent rice. Yes, rice in Europe...

Body count: 
Only 2. But this is Coxeman novel, so let's instead list all the fucking:

1. Mariko (You don't make love like a man. Like God)
2. Raped by 15 women (with pretty non-eastern European names): Wilma, Helga, Dorla, Irma, Dirma, Lowella, Helene, Paula, Pita, Irena, Alice, Sally, Francesca, Rhoda and Minnie 
3. Lowella Sparma - she comes so hard that she faints
4. Mrili
5. Mrili and her two virgin sisters, Tillie and Millie
6. J.R.'s staff: the cook Miss Poldin (Marry me), the personal secretary Lottie Linkel (I'll give you anything. I'll darn your socks, wash your cloths) and the gardener Freda Farkus (she cannot speak English so "Freda Farkus was glassy-eyed. She stared back at me through a foggy maze of disbelief.")
7. Allie (Merry me) - now Rod (finally!) starts to mention some of his famous techniques: The Rope Ladder, The Japanese Rope Trick, The forty-fifth position of Dealey's exposition, Damon Drop
8. J.R. staff getting raped by the six sex-recovered locals. Wouldn't mention this, but Rod himself almost gets gang-banged, too!
9. J.R. (I'm dead). Because she's frigid, he uses The Hesitation Method since "This is a guaranteed cure-all for broads who were coming out of the deep freeze". Later, I guess when she is unfrozen, he utilises something called a "see-saw elevator ride" and finishes her off with "Oriental Love Dance". Next time, he promises to show her "The Australian Method" and "South Pacific Syndrome".
10. Allie (x3)
11. J.R. and Peter. Wouldn't mention this either but remember - Peter is a fucking gorilla!
12. One for the farewell with the mob ringleader Angelica 
13. Back in Japan with Mariko (San...I shall cry...) - using "what the Orient calls The Intertwining Leaves position"

So the total count reaches 31
 

Dames: 
Bewitching nymph Mariko -  She had graduated from Japanese burlesque to Number One Queen of Tokyo Films Ltd, but there was nothing limited about her. At the ripe old age of twenty-two, she was older than Time itself in the Sex Department.

Allie de Marpana - the bellboy (or the bell-girl): "Her eyes were as blue as the Navy and her lips as red as Heinz ketchup."

Lowella Sparma, prime minister's mistress.

J.R. Thule: "What Lowella Sparma had, she had more of it... What Allie had, she had improved on."

Blackouts: 
After being raped by 15 women:

I, the future author of one of the rarest works in THE FETISH ENCYCLOPEDIA, ten volumes inclusive, was raped by fifteen women on the morning of my arrival in the sleeping dominion of Sarmania in the year of Our Sex, 1969. Me, Rod Damon, head of L.S.D.
Dingalinga.

Have no idea what "dingalinga" is supposed to be, but this is how he "dropped off":

But there is a limit. There has to be. The blood in my head began to dance a merry jig. The room tilted. Above me, the panting mouths, the dangling mammaries, the gyrating pelvises all converged into one roaring central region of burning blackness...
...
I did the only sensible thing under the circumstances.
I dropped out.
I fainted.

Even though Rod is unconscious, he still somehow manages to hear women admiring his firmness. Because - and do I really even need to clarify this? - he keeps his hard-on, and they keep fucking him and arguing about whose turn is next!
 

Title: 
A pretty rhetorical question for Rod...

But I'm not sure if this is the 12th or 13th of the series. When I was looking for a cover image, I came across the one that states this is the 12th, but mine says it's the 13th.

Edition: 
Paperback Library

Cover: 
Provocative and cool, but it should really be that scene with J.R. naked, holding guns and surrounded by bouncing balls.

First time on this blog: 
Full frontal nudity cover

Cool lines: 
She didn't stop until Grand Central Station was firmly positioned where I could enter and drop my baggage.

She had a gloriously slick and comfortable resting place for the family jewels.

I pressed with my thumbs until both of her half-moons widened into a glorious entrance-way to the stars, to the Valhalla of womanhood.

My formula for instant sleep was very simple. I closed my eyes and counted naked Sarmanian peasant girls jumping over the window sill of my bedroom, breasts bouncing, fannies bobbing.

The Marksman #11: Counter-attack (Frank Scarpetta, 1974)

I'm far from being an expert in men's adventure novels (come to think of it - I'm not an expert on any kind of novels), but I'm 100% positive that something is definitely wrong with this one. Doesn't feel like a finished product at all. It's more like a bare manuscript that the author would pitch to a publisher and then complete quickly after approval. While having a drink or two, probably.

Starts somewhat ambitiously with a complicated plot that involves five crates of heroin smuggled from Egypt (poppy fields in a fucking desert?) into America. So what's ambitious about such trivial plotting, you might ask? The thing is that these crates were intercepted by the US customs (and/or some secret UK agency) and then stolen back by the Mafia before finally, our man Magellan got to them. Their content changed from heroin to marijuana to a pile of bricks and even sand during this period. All this enfolds really fast, and I admit that I lost track a bit. But to my defence, it seems like Mr Scarpetta, too, got a little lost, so he, fortunately, stopped fooling with this nonsense and made it clear that they indeed do contain heroin (worth $650 million) and that they indeed are in Marksman's possession.

From here on, it settles a bit, but it again goes totally wild in an abrupt ending. Only a few pages before the conclusion, another girl is introduced (and immediately forgotten), and then the final shootout happens on the very last page in no more than four (4 !!!) paragraphs.

You can, and you should read a proper and super cool review on the one and only Glorious Trash blog. I'll just abruptly finish mine with a quick summary:

• slightly pathetic hero
• incredibly pathetic pair of villains. One is such a sissy that suffers a mild stroke upon receiving some bad news
• no sex
• let me repeat: there's no sex in this men adventure novel! The closest it gets is this: Magellan made her nakedness complete, then stood back and coolly regarded her in the dim light. The sight of her beautiful, young body kindled a pang of memory, but only briefly.
• pathetic body count. For some reason, Marksman uses a gas grenade in the last shootout and thus spares the lives of two main villains and seven gangsters who "represented some kind of an execution squad"
• no globe-trotting. The whole thing takes place in New Orleans
• no "world domination" or "communist takeover" grand plot

At least it's short. However, it's so bizarre that it's hardly amusing.

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
Philip Magellan, The Marksman - "A cruelly efficient killing machine, crazed for revenge"

Location:
New Orleans

Body count: 
7 (one single kill and a couple of triplets)

The object of desire: 
He had one thought! To personally wipe out the narcotic traffic here and, in process, blast open the immaculately kept secret of who masterminded the formidable crime organization whose headquarters was in New Orleans. 

Dames:
Chantal, Choisi's daughter. Her role is very mysterious and never quite explained...

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
I wasn't sure about this. I thought initially that Marksman was left with some score to settle with Mafia from one of the ten preceding volumes or that he was still revenging the death of his wife and daughter. But no, the back cover informs us that "Summoning the enormous power at his command, Borghese launched a blistering counterattack to recover the smack and wipe-out The Marksman."

Edition: 
Belmont Tower Books, April 1974 

Cover: 
One of the mentioned triplets killing. It's cool, but inaccurate because the Marksman did both of them disguised in a hippie outfit.

Cool lines: 

/

Murder with Honor (Philip Wilding, 1960)

Kicks off as a blackmail case that our hero solves swiftly in just a couple of chapters by kicking the shit out of the bad guys. In the build-up to this scene, we learn about some Nazi conspiracy, and pretty soon after, there's a jewels theft (you know - "a new angle") followed by an inevitable corpse.

So, a lot is happening, and I liked some of it. The plotting is decent, the characters are colourful enough, it has that lovely old-fashioned feel about it (Heathrow airport is still called Heath Row), and it's pretty fucking hard-boiled considering it was written in 1960.

But it just doesn't work, or at least it didn't work for me. Nothing major is wrong with it, but the sum of minor flaws outweighs the benefits of the cool things. All that Nazi crap is totally redundant. Hero is a bit of an asshole - he's one of those know-all types (for some reason, he keeps tampering with evidence). He also appears to have a sixth sense for determining someone's guilt based on the initial impression he gets of them.

Also written poorly. Some of the dialogues work, and every now and then, there's an occasional hard-boiled-ish flash (see 'cool lines' below), but mostly, the text is dry and dull (for some reason, the author needs to go into great detail about how people are dressed). There's a scene in which Crane is saved by his sidekick, Red, and the entire rescue operation spans 10+ pages, which are painfully boring and actionless, describing every little detail without a single line of dialogue. Wouldn't it be better and more efficient to just fast-forward this crap and then maybe later have Red or Crane do a quick recap?

There are some cute moments (the main villain is referred to as "Herr Leader"), but there are also many nasty ones. Italians are called wops, women are sometimes bitches and so on.

I don't know; nothing is horrible, but everything is far from good. It was a struggle to finish those 150 pages of small print. Herr Leader does manage to escape at the end, so I speculate that Wilding resurrected him again. However, I don't think I'll bother looking for any more of his stuff...

2/5

Facts:

Hero: 
She read the card and stared up at him wide-eyed. "Nicholas Crane, Private Investigations? Then you - you're detective?"
He nodded. "Keep it under your hat, Gladys," he said, thinking this would be most unlikely.

Vittori went pale, "The Police?" he gasped.
Winthrop knew better. "He's no copper," he sneered. "He sounds more like a G.I. who's lost his way home."
Crane said: "Shut up, Pansy!"

Location: 
London and some estate called Manor House in Denton, Sussex

Body count: 
7

Discovery of Lucy's body is pretty funny: "He bent down and touched her face and noticed the patch of blood on the breast of the suit. The dame was stone cold. Lucy d'Avigne had been killed!"

Dames: 
Bunch of them. We have a french maid who is a "tasty dish", Terry Logan who "was a hot number whichever way you looked at her" and - definitely my favourite! - Crane's secretary Betty, who speaks in super cool street-tough slang. But they are all overshadowed by Honor d'Avigne! Every single fucking time she appears, the entire following paragraph is padded with detailed descriptions of her dress, radiant beauty, intelligence, devotion to France...

Blackouts: 
He almost faints during the first fight:
Crane began to see a red misty curtain before his eyes... Nick Crane's brain tried to convey a message to his body, but it would not respond... [after taking a couple of shots of Scotch] the room went round once, and then came back right side up.

And later, there comes the proper blackout:

He was half-way into the big room when it came. He had not heard a sound. It was very quiet. Too quiet. A crashing blow behind his ear send a thousand star-spangled pains through to his eyes. A great red wave that changed rapidly to black engulfed him, completely obliterating any interest in the outside world.
Crane had been sapped as easily as a third-rate amateur.

Nothing special, but I liked that "third-rate amateur" conclusion.
 

Title: 
A bit silly words play. You do get it, don't you? Honor d'Avigne, honor...

Edition:  
Banner Books, looks like the first edition

Cover: 
Honor d'Avigne in front and her murdered sister Lucy in the back

Cool lines:  

"Listen, rat!" he said. "I'm going to take you apart and find out what makes you tick. Afterwards I'm going to clean this joint up and take back the jack, or what's left of it, to Honor d'Avigne. The dough you've been high-jacking her for over the last year."

But if some observant character should glance that way it would look like a parked car belonging to a necking couple who had gone off into the woods to find out whether they had anything in common.

He stood in the darkness and mediated. Not on infinity, but on an immediate line of action.