Reid Bennett #01 - Dead in the Water

Author Ted Wood (1931-2019) was born as Edward John Wood in Shoreham, Sussex, England. He joined the RAF Coastal Command and in 1954 he immigrated to Canada. Wood worked as a Toronto police officer for three years and then became a creative director for an advertising firm. As a writer, he scripted radio, stage plays, and television dramas including Encounter (1952) and the CBC Show of the Week (1964). 

In 1983, Wood tried his hand at writing full-length original novels. His debut, Dead in the Water, was published by Scribner in hardcover and later as a paperback by Bantam in 1984 (cover by Steve Gorman). Thankfully, the book was a hit due in part to a likable Chief of Police named Reid Bennett. Wood wrote a total of 10 books in the series from 1983 to 1995. I always like to start at the beginning, so I dove in for Dead in the Water to get the proper introduction to Wood's hero. 

The opening paragraphs of the book hit like a ton of bricks and instantly reminded me of tight-fisted characters from a Max Allan Collins or Mickey Spillane novel:

“Three of them were working on the girl. The biggest was zipping his fly and laughing while the other two took over, trying for the two-at-once trick. I was off duty. My gun was locked in the safe at the station and I'd changed into plain clothes, so they didn't even know I was a policeman. It wouldn't have mattered to the big one, anyway. He went six four, maybe two eighty. He figured he was Superman. Until I stuck two fingers into his throat. It could have ended there, with one dead, if the second one hadn't come at me. I pinned him but the third one didn't take the hit and so I had to break the arm on the one I was holding and put the third one down. He had a knife so I hurt him.”

It's a deadpan narrative, but it is extremely effective when combined with Wood's stellar, cool-as-ice writing style. His prose is short and to the point, presented in third-person narrative from Bennett. 

As the opening chapter continues, readers learn that Bennett was arrested and found innocent of any wrongdoing. But, the press and city pounded him to the ground and the effect ruined his marriage. Bennett packed up and went where no one could bother him, a small drinking village with a fishing problem called Murphy's Harbour in Ontario. Bennett accepts the role as the coastal town's sole police officer. Sure, he gets a little help from a makeshift deputy, an old WWII veteran with a bum-leg and a yellow hide. But his real assistance comes by way of an obedient German Shepherd named Sam. The dog plays a huge role in the book. 

The book's mystery involves Bennett investigating the disappearance of three men who were originally with a woman named Angela. She reports them missing but initially refuses to provide any details on what the men were doing in the middle of nowhere in a boat at 10PM at night. When one of the men washes up Bennett is surprised to learn he works for a security agency. Someone killed him and then made off with the other two, or they conspired to kill the agent to further their agenda. Bennett and readers need answers.

As a debut novel, Wood works his ass off providing just enough details to keep the case both mysterious and compelling. I read the book in one sitting and found myself rallying behind the Reid Bennett character. He's short on words, has a keen eye for details, and does some really interesting things to get people talking. Part of his action-oriented, fisticuffs experience is presented in short remembrance of his time as U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War. But, his history on the police force really delves into the criminal psyche. I learned a few new tidbits of criminality that have been lost to me over the last 250 crime-fiction novels I've read. Additionally, the chemistry between Sam, the good police dog, and Reid was a welcome change of pace. Reid developed certain key words that instruct Sam on what to do when there is danger. This is no Timmy-Lassie affair. Wood hammers in the violence when necessary and I really enjoyed the mix of savageness and procedural-fiction. 

Dead in the Water was just fantastic and I can't wait to pick up Bennett's next case with Murder on Ice (1984). I may also try the author's other hero, a bodyguard named John Locke that lasted three novels under Wood's pseudonym of Jack Barnao.

Do You Know Me?

In the Stark House Press reprint of One is a Lonely Number, my review stated, “This is a book that could never have been published in today’s climate as the societal norms have shifted too greatly.” That novel was exceptional, perfected by author Bruce Elliott's abstract writing style. Pulp fans may recall Elliott contributing to The Shadow paperbacks when the two-per-month schedule began to bog down author Walter Gibson. Elliott was an unusual writer that displayed his deep character studies by concentrating on Lamont Cranston more than the pulp hero identity that Cranston portrayed. 

I decided to try another literary work from Bruce Elliott, so I thumbed through some online pulp magazines and found a novella titled “Do You Know Me?”. It was published in the rather tame Thrilling Detective publication, specifically the February 1953 issue. This story follows an entertaining but average Shell Scott story (“Murder's Strip Tease”) by Richard S. Prather. That's not criticizing Prather's work, but I say that just as a stark comparison to what Elliott contributes to this issue. In Prather's contribution, a client wants to pay Scott to get a blackmailer off of his back. In Elliott's story, a deranged psychopath is preying on New York City by slicing off faces to destroy “masks”. Needless to say, Elliott was pushing the envelope, especially when you examine the full scope of what he's offering to his readers in this 24-page story.

The story is set in New York City over the course of a crisp autumn day. The author introduces “the man nobody knew” as a resident of a West Forty-Seventh Street apartment just east of Broadway. The room in which the man awakens has door frames and windows stuffed with newspapers. The radiator weazes its first harsh clanking of the season and the stove's greasy burners permeates the air with a rank smell. Beside the bed, written in lipstick, an ominous message is scrawled: Since you can't catch me, and since I don't want to kill again, I'm going to kill myself. 

The unknown man, who I'll simply refer to as “the killer”, is described as experiencing torturous thoughts as his days and nights are filled with agony. Elliott states “the plastic shell that surrounded him was slowly dissolving." This isn't the only time that the author describes this killer as if he is a mannequin, some sort of killer that awakens from a stiff catatonia once the plastic dissolves. He even goes as far as saying the killer's movement was like “a deep sea diver inside his suit”. This covering – metaphorically – is detailed as a gelatinous mass that surrounds bone and tissue. Like some macabre Hemingway fault, this character is stricken with some sort of physical ailment that contributes to his psychological trauma. The killer is terrifying, made more so by the six-inch razor-sharp blade he keeps in his jacket pocket. 

The killer emerges into the night and approaches a prostitute. He asks her repeatedly, “do you know me, do you recognize me, and where do you know me from?” The prostitute doesn't know him, and fakes interest to lure the killer upstairs. In hopes of turning a trick for money, she quickly realizes that the killer was very serious with his questioning. When he discovers she doesn't know him, he kills her. In his mind, he asks himself why he can't cut and rip off the “mask” while the victims are still breathing. This is really savage stuff for Thrilling Detective, but Elliott ups the ante. 

A wealthy advertising agent named Thomas is introduced. Thomas lives in the suburbs of Mount Vernon and travels to the city each day for work. Three days a week he attends therapy sessions because Thomas doesn't want to be a man. He despises his wife and is ashamed of his young son because the child's existence proves that Thomas is in fact a biological man. After leaving his therapy session on Park Avenue, Thomas decides that this night he is going to forget women and throw away his whole miserable life. Elliott describes Thomas' agenda: “Tonight he wanted a man and he didn't care if it was dangerous, and he didn't care if rough trade sometimes turned on you and beat you up, and sometimes even killed you. He wanted a real man.” Needless to say, this is provocative stuff for a mainstream pulp in 1953.

Through the course of Elliott's compelling, awe-inspiring story, more characters are introduced, each with their own backstory. What the author is presenting is a cross-examination of the diversity of New York City. A young waitress is introduced, along with her boyfriend, a city police officer, a doctor, and two Russian-born immigrants. All of these characters entwine in a disturbing series of events that mirrors an active-shooter situation today. In this story, the killer begins randomly murdering people in nightmarish fashion in the middle of Times Square. 

Elliott's provides some riveting stuff involving sexuality, social unrest, and mental illness. Circling back to the opening statements of this review, Elliott's One is a Lonely Number could have never been published in today's market. However, this author's short-story certainly could have been published today, but seems unfitting and way ahead of its time for 1953. It’s a reversal. I question how “Do You Know Me?” could have possibly been published in that conservative era. It is art imitating life, as if Elliott himself is asking the question of his readers and publisher. Even when you look at the more violent publishing turn with 1947's mature I, the Jury, written by Mickey Spillane, the mainstream literary world wasn't exploring sexuality and mental trauma in such an obvious way. Elliott's writing is just so abstract and impressive here. The message is subjective and in the eye of the beholder. I strongly encourage you to read the story for free online (linked below), or track down the expensive back-issue. 

The Fifth Grave

The legend of Jonathan Latimer’s 1941 novel The Fifth Grave is likely more famous than the book itself. Here are the facts:

In 1940, Chicago journalist and crime fiction author Jonathan Latimer (1906-1985) wrote a hardboiled novel called The Fifth Grave with lots of sex and violence. It’s about a hard-drinking private eye seeking to rescue a woman from a bizarre religious cult. Because of the era, no one cared about the boozing or considerable violence, but the sex (tame by today’s standards) made U.S. publishers nervous. As such, they declined to make the book available to American readers.

British publishers were more forward-leaning and released the novel in 1941 under the title Solomon’s Vineyard, and it became a minor literary hit. In 1950, a censored version retitled The Fifth Grave (the author’s preferred title) was released for U.S. audiences with the juicy and scandalous stuff about the narrator’s sex drive (he’s drawn to female butts) removed. When cheap paperbacks became the rage, U.K.’s Great Pan books reprinted the original version - along with other Latimer books - to the further delight of British readers. Meanwhile, the uncensored version of Solomon’s Vineyard never received a U.S. printing until 1983.

In all fairness, it’s more likely that the novel merely slipped through the cracks rather than continued censorship by shadowy puppet masters. The publishing world can, at times, have short memories and resurrecting a novel that had been a hit in England four decades earlier just wasn’t anyone’s priority. It’s fun to say that The Fifth Grave was “banned in the U.S. for 42 years,” but the truth is more benign. It wasn’t until 1983 before it occurred to a wise reprint house to release the unexpurgated original manuscript.

Several different versions of the book have been published over the years. The new edition from Black Gat Books is the definitive, uncensored version reprinted under the author’s preferred title.

The Review:

Karl Craven is The Fifth Grave’s narrator, and he’s a private detective cut from the same cloth as Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade or the Continental Op. Think of this generation of fictional characters as Hardboiled 1.0 before Mickey Spillane redefined the genre.

As the novel opens, Craven arrives by train into the fictional town of Paulton from his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri during the sweltering summer heat. On his way to the hotel, he notices a distant set of buildings around a temple surrounded by green fields and grapevines. He’s told that the compound belongs to a religious colony known as Solomon’s Vineyard populated by a thousand crazies awaiting the resurrection of their dead founder, an alleged prophet named Solomon.

Craven was summoned to Paulton by his business partner, Oke Johnson, who was in town working a case. When Craven arrives at Oke’s rooming house, he’s greeted by the local police advising him that his partner has been murdered. Oke was trying to recover a missing girl from the nearby religious cult, and he died without leaving behind any notes or reports. As such, Craven needs to recreate the entire investigation himself, snatch the dame, and get away safely while solving Oke’s murder in the process.

What follows is quite a journey of sex, violence, and corruption. Paulton is a town under the control of a gangster named Pug with the police serving as his toadies. There’s a possible relationship between the local mob and the cult that may provide Craven the leverage he needs to rescue the girl living at the Vineyard. The adventure finds Craven descending into a series of real binds without an obvious path to success. Also, if you like a violent fight scene, the one at the end is total aces.

I have a general bias against crime fiction of the 1940s, but The Fifth Grave is the exception. This book is awesome - even if it owes quite a bit to Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. Craven is such a badass main character (he even reads Black Mask Magazine in his hotel) that I wanted to spend more time with the guy. Unfortunately, the author never developed Craven into a series character, but Latimer wrote several unrelated novels throughout his career. I look forward to exploring Latimer’s body of work more fully. The Fifth Grave is a close-to-perfect novel. Highest recommendation. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

The Devil's Daughter

We really have gained some mileage out of Stark House Press's Lion Trio 3. This recently released omnibus features new editions of three rare, long out of print Lion paperbacks. We covered Sin Pit (Lion Book #198, 1954) by Paul Meskil HERE and HERE. Also, we covered Dark the Summer Dies (Lion Book #138, 1953) by Walter Untermeyer Jr. HERE. This review is for the third and final book in the collection, The Devil's Daughter. It was authored by Peter Marsh, a pseudonym for Alan Williams (1890-1945), and published as Lion Book #16, 1949. The omnibus is prefaced with an insightful article by Paperback Parade's Gary Lovisi detailing the history of these novels and reasons that they remain classics of dark crime-noir. 

The Devil's Daughter is a unique book, told in a conversational way between two people, Michael Perry and Laura. This storytelling style isn't something new, most recently having been used by Stephen King for the Hard Case Crime novel Colorado Kid (2005). Generally speaking, one would think reading a conversation shouldn't be an edge of the seat thrill-ride. However, if done well, the characters in the present day – the mood, emotions, character development – should progress to match the dark history, suspense, excitability of the past events they are presenting. In that regard, Williams is an absolute scholar and creates two dynamics, the mysteries unfolding in the past through this conversation and also the two characters adapting to each other's account as they slowly begin to change emotionally. It's a superb reading experience. 

Michael Perry runs a nightclub and resides in a posh apartment above it. He's a corrupt character that routinely uses cameras to spy on the women's restroom and microphones to listen to patron's conversations at the bar and nearby tables. While the reader can speculate that Michael is into a lot of bad stuff, on paper he is mainly just a drug dealing pervert. Laura, a stunning beauty, catches his eye and eventually he invites her upstairs to his apartment. It's here that Laura discovers mirrors on the ceiling, different types of cigarettes for drug “moods”, and the not so discreet cameras and microphones. Michael, wrought with desire for Laura, confesses he likes to have a good time. 

Before Laura agrees to fool around, she wants Michael to hear a story. Taking the bait, Michael agrees and this is how the reader is submerged into both characters' histories. Through the course of the conversation, Michael realizes he does know Laura, and that she was a part of his shady criminal past. When Laura explains that she has systematically seduced and murdered many of Michael's former allies, the novel takes a bleak, but enjoyable, turn into some really violent events. It is a race to the end as the body count stacks (in Laura's tale). Will Michael suffer the same fate?

The Devil's Daughter is a unique book for all of the storytelling techniques I've alluded to already. However, as a reading experience, the author pulls no punches. There are a lot of elements in this novel that are somewhat uncommon for 1949. The time-period was a pivotal point in crime-fiction. The 1940s was the birth of the paperback original, but also as the decade came to a close, Mickey Spillane's 1947 smash hit I, the Jury really pushed the boundaries of what writers could say and do within the context of their story. 

Williams injects the gritty, violent determination of prohibition era bootleggers and the extreme nature of their business practices smoothly into the book's narrative. It is punctuated by a captivating, unforgettable scene that is written in a tremendously violent way. It's nearly an unprecedented chapter that wasn't typical of a consumer “everyday” paperback. This culmination into ruthless aggression was an obligatory portion of the plot's development, another staple that binds these characters together in a turbulent way. 

If you enjoy clever, well-written novels that stray from the path of least resistance, then The Devil's Daughter will certainly be an entertaining, worthwhile investment. Combining this novel into a collection with the exceptional Sin Pit makes the price of admission an easy expenditure. Stark House Press has outdone themselves again. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

The Cheaters

Ledru S. Baker Jr. served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during WW2. In 1951, his short literary career began with the bestselling Fawcett Gold Medal paperback And By My Love. He followed with three more novels before his death in 1967. Cutting Edge Books has released nearly all of Baker's works, including The Cheaters, originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1952. The book is available in both digital and physical editions as a stand-alone or as part of the Ledru Baker Jr Reader, an omnibus also containing Brute Madness and And Be My Love. 

Orchestra musician and bandleader Jack Griffith works at a posh Hollywood night club that is controlled by the Syndicate, specifically a Mafioso named Moss Morrison. One evening, Griffith is summoned to a meeting with Morrison and offered a peculiar proposal. Morrison wants to divorce his wife, a hot ticket named Mardi, but needs something on her to avoid a huge payout in alimony. Sensing his wife's attraction to Jack, Morrison offers Jack a large sum of money if he can swindle Mardi into a romantic fling. Griffith accepts the deal, but after meeting Mardi he falls in love with her. 

Just when you think Baker's smooth prose is surely leading into the overused “innocent man on the run” formula, the talented author switches the narrative entirely. Instead, Griffith figures out the whole setup while falling in love with a clever and sexy waitress. When she's taken captive by the Mob, Griffith recalls his WW2 days of fighting the Italians in brutal, bloody combat. With an iron-fisted vengeance, Griffith takes the fight to the Mob.

Baker's writing is exceptional and injects a heavy dose of realism and violence for a 1952 novel. The Cheaters mixes the grit and grime of Donald Hamilton (Matt Helm) with the sarcastic afterglow of Mickey Spillane (Mike Hammer). Baker's writing is just so engaging and produces a strong, emotional reaction. An example:

    They looked up, and their startled faces gave me all the time I needed. I shot the first one through the head; his skull and hair rose magically. I snarled and turned to the other one as the noise and blast of the gun, the smell in the room and the power I received from the recoil took me away from Los Angeles and threw me back to the Po Valley.

    I swung the gun toward the other one. He had risen, and his hand was pawing inside the coat when I said: “Hell's waitin'! Good-by!” at the same instant that I fired.

    The first shot threw him back into the chair. The second one caught him in his throat and ripped out the back of his head. I guess it did, because there were little pieces of bone on the window like flys trapped on flypaper. 

If you have a penchant for strong, “fight or die” heroes forced into inevitable violence, then The Cheaters will surely hit you like a ton of bricks. This is uncompromising, unwavering crime-fiction.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Skin

Before his death in 2006, Mickey Spillane told his wife to give all of his unfinished manuscripts to Max Allan Collins with the assurance, “He’ll know what to do.” Since then, Collins has polished, edited, and completed several of these novels and stories for publication. “Skin” is a 36-page Mike Hammer story that Spillane began in 2005 and was finally published in 2012 after completion by Collins.

The novel opens with Mike Hammer driving back from instructing at an upstate New York Police Academy with his best friend, NYPD Officer Pat Chambers. Interestingly, the authors have aged Mike and Pat and placed the old men in a modern setting with cell phones and computers.

While driving home, Mike notices the remains of a dead body along the side of the road. He stops and sees that the body is completely pulverized with nothing but a human hand intact. It’s almost as if the body fell out of an airplane or was gnawed into pulp by wild animals.

The hand in the pile of guts begins Mike’s journey to find the killer - even finding a sexy, nightgown-clad client in the hunt. As Mike approaches the truth, the authors employ some fairly terrifying horror-fiction elements. The climax is a bloodbath of brutal violence and street justice - the most exciting conclusion I’ve read in ages.

“Skin” is an edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller starring a famous aged detective still capable of making the pages fly by for the reader. As a fan of Collins’ work, I definitely saw his fingerprints all over the prose, and I’m genuinely curious what the division of labor was between these two crime fiction legends in this unlikely collaboration.

Leaving aside the mystery of primary authorship, “Skin” is one of the most satisfying pieces of ultra-violent fiction I’ve read this year. It’s an easy entry-point for those unfamiliar with Mike Hammer, yet there are plenty of series Easter eggs for long-time fans to enjoy. “Skin” is simply a masterpiece of short crime fiction. I promise you won’t be disappointed. Highest recommendation. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Jerry Long #01 - Code Three (aka Dead Shot)

James M. Fox was actually Johannes Matthijs Willem Knipsheer, a Dutch author born in 1908. He moved to Los Angeles after WWII and started writing mystery novels. His best known work is the Johnny and Suzy Marshall series, published between 1943-1957. My first experience with Fox is his three book series of police procedural novels starring Detective Sergeant Jerry Long. To test the waters,  I tried the series debut, Code Three, originally published in hardcover by Little Brown in 1953. It was published as a paperback in 1955 by Bantam under their Pennant Mystery brand (P79). At some point the book was also published as Dead Shot. 

Jerry Long, and his partner Chuck Conley, are called to the scene when a dead body is found under a tree in the park. The dead guy's gruesome appearance suggests he had been given the boots by some tough guys and then dumped. The only identification is a tattoo, which prompts Long to call his buddy at the precinct's records department to inquire about it. 

The dead guy is identified as a local bookie, so Long pursues the guy's ex-wife, a fleeing woman named Jenny, to get some answers. When he drives up to her apartment, guns explode and the woman runs for safety. Later, Long connects the clues that lead to a powerhouse mobster named Manny. Where the book gets really interesting is that Long, who's a city detective, collides with the county sheriff's office. The tug-of-war is one of those “you're traipsing on our turf” territorial disputes. However, Long finds evidence that Manny is controlling the county cops, which forces him on the outside of the investigation. 

Code Three reminded me of a 1958 paperback called City Limits, the second installment of the Mike Macauley series written by Richard Deming using the pseudonym Nick Marino. The central plot of the city versus county law enforcement is similar, complete with the mobster and the hero colliding. Typically, these story elements are often found in crime-fiction detective novels. Adding to the gritty, hardboiled style, I found Fox's writing similar to Mickey Spillane – blood and guts, tough guy talk with fisticuffs, babes, and cold steel. 

My major drawback to Fox's Code Three is the story seems jumbled, fragmented, and often dense in the details. I had a very hard time understanding what was happening, and couldn't quite comprehend the flow of events. Even at a relatively short 120 pages, I struggled to finish this book. I found myself counting pages, which is a surefire signal that I'm completely lost. I love the main character, found his tactics compelling, but the plot development and presentation was jarring. I'm not giving up on Fox with just a small sample size. But, surely you can do better than Code Three if you want to sample the author's work. Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Jerry Long Series

1. Code Three (aka Dead Shot) 1953
2. Free Ride (1957)
3. Dead Pigeon (1967)

Johnny Liddell #06 - Bare Trap

Inspired by the countless private-eye novels and shorts, original paperbacks (and some hardcovers) began appearing featuring heroic detectives solving the outrageous cases. There was Mike Shayne, Mike Hammer, and Lew Archer leading the way. Frank Kane's New York private-eye Johnny Liddell was among the publisher's top echelon, The series ran a total of 29 novels and a multitude of short stories, beginning with 1947's About Face (aka Fatal Foursome). I've read a handful of the novels and mostly enjoy them. I have a slew of the series paperbacks, so I picked Bare Trap to read next. It is the series sixth installment and was originally published in 1952. It was later reprinted in 1965 by Dell with different cover art. 

Liddell is finishing up a case in San Francisco when he receives a phone call from series staple and love interest Mugsy. She asks if Liddell can take on a new case in Los Angeles before he flies back home to New York. A young actor named Shad has gone missing and his agent wants the investigation to be hush-hush. If they hire a local PI, the missing kid could make the papers and create a career misstep. With a chance to visit Mugsy in LA, Liddell takes the case.

Shad's agent is a guy named Richards, a fat loudmouth that explains that Shad is set to inherit a ton of money when he reaches the age of 21. There's hints that the kid is in some trouble, but Liddell thinks the disappearing act will solve itself. A few hours later, Liddell finds the kid riddled with bullet holes in the back. 

Liddell's case transforms from a missing person's gig to a murder investigation. With the assistance of Mugsy, a local inspector, and a prolific columnist, Kane's hero runs a convoluted gauntlet of blackmail and deception. The road leads to Richards running a badger scheme where he uses a local honey to photograph high-profile Hollywood celebs. He then uses extortion tactics to push the celebs into writing IOUs, which Richards then turns into gambling debts to repay back the mob to settle his own sheets. Got it? 

Frank Kane was notorious for recycling plots and Bare Trap is no different. In the series debut, About Face (Fatal Foursome), Liddell is hired to find a missing actor in Hollywood and receives help from a journalist and a coroner. The 'ole extortion bit using photographs or videos is an overly used genre trope, most notably Mickey Spillane's third Mike Hammer novel, Vengeance is Mine. Yet, there's a really abrasive tone to the novel – actresses with cut throats, multiple beatings, numerous fist and gun fights, a knife attack, and tons of shady characters - to keep the reader fully invested. While never particularly dense, I still had to consult a short list of characters to remember who everyone was. 

Detective stories can be run of the mill, familiar, and stereotypical, but they still provide a lot of enjoyment for crime-fiction fans. Bare Trap is no exception. 

Buy the eBook HERE.

Mike Hammer #03 - Vengeance is Mine

In 1980, the top 15 list of all-time US fiction bestsellers included seven novels by Mickey Spillane. That's a true testament to the power and popularity of Spillane's iconic private-detective, Mike Hammer. As I make my way through Spillane's bibliography, I found that the Mike Hammer debut, I, the Jury (1947) left much to be desired. However, the book's sequel, My Gun is Quick (1950), was nothing short of amazing with its masterful prose soaked with realism, impending doom, and emotional anguish. Appreciating that particular masterpiece, I held off on reading another Mike Hammer novel for over a year. Now, the time has come for the third series installment, Vengeance is Mine. It was originally published in 1950 as a hardcover by E.P. Dutton and has been reprinted countless times in multiple formats. 

“The guy was dead as Hell. He lay on the floor in his pajamas with his brains all over the rug and my gun in his hand.”

That's the opener to Vengeance is Mine. Thankfully, the remainder of the book remains just as heavy and unforgiving. Throughout this violent, twisting narrative, Spillane slaps readers with Hammer's hardest case yet, one that pays with redemption instead of cash. The plot concerns Hammer awakening after a night of drinking with his friend, Chester Wheeler, dead. Hammer isn't a murder suspect because the police feel that his friend simply committed suicide. But, Hammer knows he always carried six loads in his gun, and two shots were fired. The circumstances lead to Hammer contending with the DA and using his police ally Pat to find a teardrop in the ocean. Who killed Wheeler?

Hammer's investigation leads through a swamp of political blackmail and conspiracy within the slimy walls of a sin palace called The Bowery. It is here that Hammer meets a sexy dancer named Connie and a bit player named Dinky, an old nemesis that Hammer previously shot. Connecting the dots proves to be difficult considering all roads leading to Chester Wheeler are closed. Anyone involved with Wheeler's past is wearing bullet holes or broken necks. But, Hammer is consistently moving forward as he vengefully fights for his dead friend.  

Vengeance is Mine features Hammer's secretary Velda more involved than ever in the investigation. It's also the first novel where she fatally shoots a bad guy. Both Hammer and Velda become more intimate, but Hammer is still plagued by flashbacks and memories of Charlotte Manning, a lover from the series debut, I, the Jury, that he had had to shoot and kill. Like the prior novels, Hammer is also still suffering from PTSD from his war experience. I felt that the emotional baggage added more depth to the character, making Hammer a more dynamic hero when compared to his contemporaries in Johnny Liddell and Mike Shayne.

While not as good as My Gun is Quick, Vengeance is Mine is still an absolute masterpiece and another fine example of Mickey Spillane's extraordinary storytelling. It just doesn't get much better than this. Highly, highly recommended.

Note –  Supposedly, Spillane bet his editor $1,000 that he could write a book that, if the last word was left out, would change everything in the narrative that had happened before. The editor took the bet and lost (credit to author Stephen Mertz for sharing that). 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

The Girl with No Place to Hide

Between 1958 and 1961, Philadelphia native Marvin H. Albert (1924-1996) employed the pseudonym Nick Quarry to write a six-book series starring a hardboiled Manhattan private detective named Jake Barrow. The series has been largely lost to the ages until a recent resurrection by Stark House imprint Black Gat Books. The third installment, 1959’s The Girl with No Place to Hide, is back as a mass-market paperback for modern readers to read and enjoy.

Jake is our narrator for this taut 185-page mystery. After leaving a strip club at 2:30 in the morning, our hero witnesses a woman – a real dish, by the way – being dragged into an alley by a thug. Jake dispatches the mauler, saves the damsel in distress, and brings her to his apartment for safekeeping. Her name is Angela, and she’s filled with secrets. Angela is convinced, with good reason, that someone is trying to kill her. However, she doesn’t trust Jake enough to share the complete story. Jake steps out of his apartment for a few minutes before returning to find that Angela has disappeared.

Without a paying client, Jake takes it upon himself to find Angela and learn who is trying to kill her and why. He makes a logical leap that her threat is somehow tied to a grisly murder of a newspaper ad man around the same time and leverages his relationships with NYPD homicide to get the inside scoop. There’s a side plot involving a middleweight prizefighter with an approaching title bout. There’s also wiretaps, heaving breasts, thugs who kill, thugs who need killing, dirty cops, love triangles, torture, extreme violence, and 1950s stylized sex. No joke, this paperback has something for everyone, and the influence of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer shines brightly throughout every page.

As a character, Jake is a hardboiled archetype who loves the ladies, booze, and using his gat when pushed too far. Albert is an unsung hero of the paperback original era who was equally proficient in the crime and western genres, and The Girl with No Place to Hide presents the author at the absolute top of his game. The mystery and its solution were perfectly crafted with enough red herrings to keep the reader guessing until the satisfying solution. Let’s hope this reprint sells like hotcakes, so Stark House/Black Gat bring back more Jake Barrow mysteries. Highest recommendation.

Addendum

Although The Girl with no Place to Hide is the third installment in the Jake Barrow series, the paperbacks can be read in any order. Here’s the original series order – all published under the Nick Quarry pseudonym by Fawcett Gold Medal:

1. The Hoods Come Calling (1958)
2. Trail of a Tramp (1958)
3. The Girl with No Place to Hide (1959)
4. No Chance in Hell (1960)
5. Till it Hurts (1960)
6. Some Die Hard (1961)

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Mongo's Back in Town

Emil Richard Johnson (1938-1997) authored 11 paperback original crime novels and won an Edgar Award while serving a 40-year sentence for murder and armed robbery in Stillwater State Prison in Minnesota. His 1969 novel, Mongo’s Back in Town, was the basis of a 1971 TV movie starring Joe Don Baker, Telly Savalas, Martin Sheen and Sally Field.

It’s Christmastime as Mongo Nash arrives home to an unnamed city on a Greyhound bus. However, this is no ordinary trip home after a six-year absence. You see, Mongo is a killer-for- hire, and he’s back to take care of a contract killing at the request of his brother, Mike. The brothers have a complicated relationship involving a bar and a girl that Mike arguably stole from Mongo. But when Mike needs someone whacked, he still calls his hitman brother to get the job done. 

Mike needs Mongo to kill a thief and recover some stolen goods before the goods are due to the local mobster. Meanwhile, we have a federal agent in town named Gordon also looking for the same stolen items. Gordon spots Mongo visiting all the wrong people and assumes he’s mixed up with the shady deal. This sets up the compelling cat-and-mouse game that provides the meat of the paperback’s second half. 

I know this sounds biased, but Johnson was an amazingly good writer for a guy in prison. His own favorite writers included Ed McBain and Mickey Spillane, but his plotting more resembles Elmore Leonard and Charles Willeford. The storytelling and pacing are flawless, and the characters are vivid and fully-realized for a 156-page paperback. 

You need to be prepared for some graphic hardboiled violence as well as some retrograde attitudes toward women and sex. Mongo is not a nice guy, but you can appreciate his professionalism under the awkward familial circumstances. Prison was a good place for the author to study the mannerisms of hard case sadistic tough guys, and Mongo is clearly an amalgamation of scary men with a short fuse that Johnson likely encountered while incarcerated. 

Mongo’s Back in Town is a great crime novel. I’m told it’s Johnson’s best work, but that’s not going to stop me from further exploring his body of work. Unfortunately, his books have been out of print for some time and can be a costly used purchase. Hopefully, some enterprising reprint house will take the initiative to revive Johnson’s books, and this lost classic would be a great place to start

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Race Williams #09 - I'll Tell the World

Carroll John Daly’s Race Willams character was the prototype used by Mickey Spillane for his hardboiled detective, Mike Hammer. For that matter, there’s more than a dash of Race Williams in Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan. Race’s ninth adventure was “I’ll Tell The World,” a novella that originally appeared in the August 1925 issue of Black Mask and remains available today as a reprint.

As the story opens, Race is broke again and hoping for a new client in search of a “confidential agent” for hire. While browsing through the newspaper classified ads, Race sees a coded message that reads:

“Tom: As promised, 69th C.P.W. Two’s day. Eleven years old. Frantic. Dorothy.”

Race smells an opportunity to make some money and his decoding of the message sends him to a Manhattan street corner where someone else’s clandestine meeting is taking place Tuesday at 11pm. Hiding in the shadows, he witnesses a lone woman being abducted by two men who toss her into their car. Ever the stealthy sleuth, Race follows quietly behind.

The confrontation between the kidnappers and Race only serves to deepen the mystery and underscores the depravity uncovered by sticking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong. For her part, Dorothy the kidnap victim is filled with secrets and appropriately skeptical of trusting Race, the stranger who saves her.

The main mystery of “I’ll Tell The World” is: What chaos has Race stumbled upon here? Why the classified ad? Who are the powerful people behind Dorothy’s kidnapping? And what is their agenda? Without a paying client, Race pursues this because he is curious. Just like the reader. Eventually, his curiosity is rewarded with a paying client who engages him to investigate the matter.

And that’s where the story loses its way. Daly falls for the trap of many early 20th Century mystery writers and creates a confusing and labyrinthian plot that is hard to follow and a pain to read. Race’s swagger remains but the plot lost me at the novella’s halfway point. I’m not giving up on Race Williams, but this installment was a bumpy ride best forgotten. 

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Race Williams #01 - Knights of the Open Palm

Carroll John Daly (1889-1958) invented the hardboiled detective genre in Black Mask Magazine with his May 1923 story “Three Gun Terry.” He followed it up the next month with “Knights of the Open Palm,” launching the Race Williams series of stories and novels that continued for over 20 years. The character later inspired the creation of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and thousands of other imitators.

As the debut story opens, narrator Race Williams explains that he’s a private investigator who splits the difference between cops and crooks. A client named Thompson comes to Race’s office seeking to engage him to rescue his kidnapped 17 year-old son from the Ku Klux Klan. The kid may have information about a recent Klan murder which prompted the alleged abduction. The KKK must have been rather powerful in 1923 because Thompson is surprised that Race accepts the assignment to defy the Klan and rescue the boy.

After an informant in a tavern teaches Race the secret handshake as well as Klan buzzwords, Race decides that the best way to find the missing kid is to infiltrate the fraternal order in full regalia. So, it’s off to the small farming town of Clinton, a rural hamlet firmly in the grip of the shadowy, hooded menace. It doesn’t take long at all for things to come to a series of confrontations between Race and the local KKK muscle.

For a story written nearly 100 years-ago, Daly’s writing is still pretty fresh. Race’s hardboiled and colloquial patois must have been groundbreaking at the time and recalls the bragging tough-guy patter later imitated by Mike Hammer, Shell Scott and many others. Race is a fantastic character - funny, fearless and confident. There were scenes where I found myself nodding along and muttering, “Hell, yeah!” along the way.

After reading “Knights of the Open Palm,” it’s easy to see why Race Williams captured the public’s imagination a century ago. The character - at least in this story - lives at the intersection of The Continental Op and Mack Bolan. And that’s a very good place to be.

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The DaVinci Rose

Jim Henaghan (1919-1984) was a well-known columnist for The Hollywood Reporter with a reputation for bluntness and candor that often rustled the feathers of the showbiz industry’s establishment. He also worked as a rewrite man for Paramount and was an executive for John Wayne’s production company. Under the pseudonym of Archie O’Neill, he authored a five-book adventure series starring Jeff Pride that earned the admiration of Mickey Spillane. The first novel in the series was 1973’s The DaVinci Rose.

Jeff Pride is a former international private investigator turned travel agent (back when that was a thing) who bounces around the world with his sexy Asian-American secretary-sidekick Cherry. Cherry wants to get romantic with Jeff, but he thinks that would be unwise for a number of valid reasons that I’ll let Jeff explain to you when you read the book. Cherry’s flirtation with her boss is a running gag in the novel and presumably the series. In any case, she’s a perfect sidekick character for a novel like this.

As the paperback opens, Jeff is in his Israeli hotel room when he awakens to find the corpse of a guy in a suit lying on the ground next to his bed. An altercation in the room brings Israeli police into the picture. The cops take Jeff’s passport pending further investigation. For his part, Jeff figures that the situation arose from his heroic past rather than his benign current job as a travel consultant.

The killing, violence and skullduggery all concerns a missing art piece - a ceramic rose hand-crafted by Leonardo da Vinci. Dangerous people think that the dead guy in the hotel delivered it to Jeff who actually knows nothing about the damn thing. One thing leads to another and Jeff agrees to get back into the investigation game and find the ceramic rose.

I really enjoyed The DaVinci Rose primarily because Jeff Pride is such a great narrator. The action took the character all over Israel balancing a treasure hunt adventure with a hardboiled mystery. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment. Recommended.

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Solomon's Vineyard

The Hype

The legend of Jonathan Latimer’s 1941 novel Solomon’s Vineyard is likely more famous than the book itself. Here are the facts:

In 1940, Chicago journalist and crime fiction author Jonathan Latimer (1906-1985) wrote a hardboiled novel called Solomon’s Vineyard with lots of sex and violence. It’s about a hard-drinking private eye seeking to rescue a woman from a bizarre religious cult. Because of the era, no one cared about the boozing or considerable violence, but the sex (tame by today’s standards) made U.S. publishers nervous. As such, they declined to make the book available to American readers.

British publishers were more forward-leaning and released the novel in 1941, and it became a minor literary hit. In 1950, a censored version retitled The Fifth Grave was released for U.S. audiences with the juicy and scandalous stuff about the narrator’s sex drive (he’s drawn to female butts) removed. When cheap paperbacks became the rage, U.K.’s Great Pan books reprinted the original version - along with other Latimer books - to the further delight of British readers. Meanwhile, the uncensored version of Solomon’s Vineyard never received a U.S. printing until 1983.

In all fairness, it’s more likely that the novel merely slipped through the cracks rather than continued censorship by shadowy puppet masters. The publishing world can, at times, have short memories and resurrecting a novel that had been a hit in England four decades earlier just wasn’t anyone’s priority. It’s fun to say that Solomon’s Vineyard was “banned in the U.S. for 42 years,” but the truth is more benign. It wasn’t until 1983 before it occurred to a wise reprint house to release the unexpurgated original manuscript.

Since then, the novel has been reprinted multiple times as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook. You should have no problem finding a reading copy.

The Review

Karl Craven is Solomon’s Vineyard’s narrator, and he’s a private detective cut from the same cloth as Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade or the Continental Op. Think of this generation of fictional characters as Hardboiled 1.0 before Mickey Spillane redefined the genre.

As the novel opens, Craven arrives by train into the fictional town of Paulton from his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri during the sweltering summer heat. On his way to the hotel, he notices a distant set of buildings around a temple surrounded by green fields and grapevines. He’s told that the compound belongs to a religious colony known as Solomon’s Vineyard populated by a thousand crazies awaiting the resurrection of their dead founder, an alleged prophet named Solomon.

Craven was summoned to Paulton by his business partner, Oke Johnson, who was in town working a case. When Craven arrives at Oke’s rooming house, he’s greeted by the local police advising him that his partner has been murdered. Oke was trying to recover a missing girl from the nearby religious cult, and he died without leaving behind any notes or reports. As such, Craven needs to recreate the entire investigation himself, snatch the dame, and get away safely while solving Oke’s murder in the process.

What follows is quite a journey of sex, violence, and corruption. Paulton is a town under the control of a gangster named Pug with the police serving as his toadies. There’s a possible relationship between the local mob and the cult that may provide Craven the leverage he needs to rescue the girl living at the Vineyard. The adventure finds Craven descending into a series of real binds without an obvious path to success. Also, if you like a violent fight scene, the one at the end is total aces.

I have a general bias against crime fiction of the 1940s, but Solomon’s Vineyard is the exception. This book is awesome - even if it owes quite a bit to Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. Craven is such a badass main character (he even reads Black Mask Magazine in his hotel) that I wanted to spend more time with the guy. Unfortunately, the author never developed Craven into a series character, but Latimer wrote several unrelated novels throughout his career. I look forward to exploring Latimer’s body of work more fully. Solomon’s Vinyeyard is a close-to-perfect novel. Highest recommendation.

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Designing Fiction: A Richard Himmel Paperback Primer

Did one of America’s most famous interior designers have a side-hustle writing tawdry paperbacks at the advent of the new medium? Today we take a peek behind the curtain and present you with the untold story of author Richard Himmel.

Richard was born in Chicago in 1920 and called the city home for nearly all his life. The young man loved the written word and attended University of Chicago to study writing under the tutelage of his mentor Thorton Wilder, the writer of Our Town. 

“He always intended to become an English teacher. He was a voracious reader,” Richard’s son John Himmel told Paperback Warrior. “In his library, he had first editions, including a D.H. Lawrence collection. He was always drawn toward the literary arts.”

Richard’s plans to teach writing were sidelined by World War 2. When the time came to serve, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. However, an illness prevented him from being shipped overseas into the fields of battle. “The Army realized early on that he was a pretty smart boy, and he was assigned to General Patton’s staff,” John explained. “He wrote pamphlets and brochures for all sorts of things such as identifying Japanese aircraft as well as a primer on the Japanese language.”

After the war, he returned to Chicago with the intention of becoming an English teacher. While waiting for this to occur, he took a job at his sister’s housewares store in the northern suburb of Winnetka. “He began taking on decorating jobs and his career was made,” John said.

Richard’s knack for colors and spacing eventually made him one of the most sought-after interior designers in the United States with high-profile clients including boxer Mohammed Ali and Hugh Heffner’s Playboy Club. However, as his business was growing and becoming established, he never lost his love of the written word. 

Around 1950, a new outfit called Fawcett Gold Medal had plans to revolutionize the publishing industry by releasing all-new novels directly to the paperback format with salacious painted covers. For the past decade, paperbacks had just been reprints of successful hardcover literary works. The idea of releasing original material in a 25 cent paperback filled an important hole in the book market for readers after the pulp magazines had disappeared. Paperback originals were poised to be the next big thing, and publishing houses like Fawcett Gold Medal needed talented authors who could write compelling prose quickly.

At the time, Richard – and all of America – had become infatuated with the prose of Mickey Spillane and wrote a book called I’ll Find You about a hardboiled Chicago lawyer named Johnny Maguire who functions as a private eye for his clients. Richard submitted the manuscript to Fawcett Gold Medal, who released the book in 1950 as the imprint’s fifth paperback original. The book was an instant success and saw five printings through 1955 and a second life in 1962 when it was re-released as It’s Murder, Maguire. 

“He got a literary agent in New York named Sterling Lord, and they worked together to get his books published,” John said. This put Richard in good company as Lord represented some of the biggest names in 20th Century literature including Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Howard Fast. 

The second installment of the Johnny Maguire series was The Chinese Keyhole from 1951. It’s an odd sequel because there is no mention of Chicago whatsoever whereas the first novel was steeped in local Windy City sites and flavors. Another major change is that The Chinese Keyhole is a spy novel, not a hardboiled crime story. There’s a hasty explanation at the beginning of the book that Attorney Johnny Maguire was also an occasional spy for a shadowy U.S. intelligence agency. The paperback is great, but it was a weird and abrupt genre shift. My theory is that Richard wrote the book as a stand-alone spy thriller and his literary agent or publisher told him to edit the book to make it Johnny Maguire #2. Mickey Spillane taught the publishing world that there’s money to be made in series characters, and Himmel was apparently happy to oblige.

Later in 1951, Fawcett Gold Medal released the third Johnny Maguire novel, I Have Gloria Kirby and things went gangbusters. Over one million copies were sold firmly establishing Richard as one of the bestselling authors in the Fawcett Gold Medal stable. It was also a big year for Richard and his wife for another reason - the arrival of their son. They chose a familiar name for the boy: John Maguire Himmel. 

Throughout the 1950s, Richard was working during the day as an interior designer and at night as a successful writer pecking away at his typewriter with two fingers and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Growing up, I still remember that sound, and I still have his typewriter” John said.

The success of the Johnny Maguire series opened the door for Richard to get his romantic and sexy mainstream novels published as well. The best of these books (The Sharp Edge, Beyond Desire) were also published by Fawcett Gold Medal while others found homes and multiple printings elsewhere. The Johnny Maguire series continued for five total installments through 1958’s The Rich and the Damned.

This was followed by a 19-year hiatus from writing and publishing. “There was a period in his life when he wasn’t really writing because his career as a designer took off,” John said. “He really didn’t have much time to write, but it was always in his mind. Eventually, he went back at it.”

Richard returned to publishing with three longer stand-alone thrillers between 1977 and 1981, each with page counts exceeding 300 pages. The novels were successful and moved the action to international settings, including Iraq, Cuba, and China. By this time, Richard was a high-profile member of Chicago society, and each subsequent paperback was greeted with increasing fanfare. John recalls the release party for his dad’s 1979 Cuba thriller, Lions at Night. Richard used a parking lot on a busy street corner of Chicago’s famed Magnificent Mile for the extravagant outdoor gala. “He rented actual lions and guys dressed in guerilla fatigues for a big-ass party there, and he sold a lot of books,” John said. “My dad was quite a showman.”

Richard’s final manuscript, a novel with a working title of The Uncircumcised Jew, failed to find a home. The book was submitted to publishers through his agent in the 1990s and just didn’t sell. Richard’s literary winning streak had ended. “I think he got a little bit discouraged,” John said. 

Aging and dealing with health issues, Richard’s career as a novelist ended, but he never fully retired from the decorating business. According to John, his father was sick for a long time at the end of his life. “He was a heavy smoker and obviously a workaholic. He also didn’t get much exercise.” Heart problems lead to his death in 2000 in Florida.

Today, Richard is mostly remembered as a visionary in the field of interior design. John took over the business and has continues in the field keeping the Himmel name alive as the go-to brand for upscale decorating clients. 

The Johnny Maguire series, one of the most successful side-jobs of the paperback original era, was almost lost to the ages until Lee Goldberg’s Cutting Edge Books started reprinting the books in 2019 as trade paperbacks and affordable ebooks. John is thrilled that his father’s literary work has found a new audience in a new century. “There was very little that he put his mind to that didn’t excel. My dad was a generic genius.”

Richard Himmel Bibliography:

1950 I’ll Find You / It’s Murder, Maguire (Johnny Maguire #1)

1950 Soul of Passion / Strange Desires / The Shame

1951 The Chinese Keyhole (Johnny Maguire #2) 

1951 I Have Gloria Kirby / The Name’s Maguire (Johnny Maguire #3)

1952 - The Sharp Edge 

1952 - Beyond Desire 

1954 Two Deaths Must Die (Johnny Maguire #4)

1955 Cry of the Flesh

1958 The Rich and the Damned (Johnny Maguire #5)

1977 The Twenty-Third Web

1979 Lions at Night

1982 Echo Chambers

Footnote  

Thanks to Paperback Confidential: Crime Writers of the Paperback Era by Brian Ritt for providing information used in this feature. 

Best of Manhunt: Volume 2

In 2019, Stark House Press generated a commercial and critical hit with the release of The Best of Manhunt, an anthology of stories from the legendary 1950s crime fiction digest. Knowing a good thing when they see it, the reprint publisher has compiled a second volume of blood-on-the-knuckles tales from the popular magazine’s heyday for an August 2020 release.

By way of background, Manhunt began publishing in January 1953 capitalizing on the success of a new breed of hardboiled authors with Mickey Spillane leading the pack supported by muscular authors including Evan Hunter and David Goodis willing to make five cents per word for their stories. While the magazine’s run stretched into 1967, everyone knows that the publication largely lost its way by the mid-1960s. As such, the new anthology front-loads the content with stories primarily form the 1950s.

Before the stories, the reader is treated to a series of essays about Manhunt Magazine by scholars Peter Enfantino, Jon L. Breen, and Robert Turner followed by over 400 pages of twisted, violent short fiction. Anthology editor Jeff Vorzimmer intentionally sought out many “deep tracks” from the magazine’s history choosing many authors who never achieved paperback stardom. There’s a lot to enjoy in stories by John M. Sitan, Roy Carroll, and Glenn Canary who share the pages with heavy hitters including Bruno Fischer, Donald E. Westlake, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

Reviewing an anthology is always a challenging task - particularly in a literary buffet filled to the brim with this much quality. Here are some thoughts regarding a handful of noteworthy stories in the collection:

As I Lay Dead by Fletcher Flora (February 1953)

Fletcher Flora brings the reader a perverse and twisted little tale. Cousins Tony and Cindy work each other into a sexual lather while oiling each other’s skin on the man-made beach. Meanwhile, their wealthy, fat grandpa floats in the lake nearby. It occurs to the lusty twins that if something happened to grandpa, they’d be free - and financially-set - to run away to Acapulco together where the booze, sun and screwing never stops.

Flora’s novels are often tinged with a heavy dose of non-graphic sexuality, and “As I Lay Dead” amplifies that aspect of this writing. Murder, blackmail, and double-crosses are also on the menu making for a perfect story. Whatever you do, don’t skip this one. It’s everything that dark crime fiction should be. With over 160 published short stories to his name, I can’t help but think this might be his best magazine work.

Shakedown by Roy Carroll (April 1953)

Roy Carroll was a pseudonym for Robert Turner, a short story guy who started in the pulp magazines. His literary agent was Scott Merideth, who curated a lot of the talent that appeared in Manhunt. It was at Merideth’s urging that Turner shifted his style from over-the-top pulp writing to the gritty and realistic crime digest format.

“Shakedown” is narrated by Van who has just knocked up a chick at work and has no intention of doing the right thing by the poor girl. He comes up with the idea that she should bang their boss, pin the pregnancy on him, and be set for life as the old man’s wife.

As you can imagine, the plan goes very wrong when the boss doesn’t take kindly to being shaken down by a knocked-up employee in his typing pool. If you can handle some 1950s misogyny with your crime fiction, you’re going to enjoy this one just fine.

One More Mile to Go by F.J. Smith (June 1956)

I could find next to nothing about author F.J. Smith other than the fact that several of his stories appeared in various Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. “One More Mile to Go” is a rare third-person narration from the pages of Manhunt. A small-town Louisiana shopkeeper strangles his nagging wife in her sleep and needs to hide the body somewhere (a recurring theme in Manhunt).

Along the way to the body stash site, he’s pulled over by a state trooper, and the interaction feeds the tension of the situation. It’s a good, simple story. Nothing revelatory, but certainly not a waste of your time.

The Geniuses by Max Franklin (June 1957)

Richard Deming is the only author to appear twice in the anthology with one story under his own name and this one under his Max Franklin pseudonym. “The Geniuses” is about two teenage thrill-killers long before murderous youth was a regular occurrence in American life.

Bart and Edward are high-IQ college kids who find themselves to be social pariahs among their campus peers. A conversation about how one might craft the perfect murder takes a nefarious turn when they begin experimenting with these ideas on a classmate. It begins as an intellectual exercise and then becomes deadly real high-wire act. Under any name, Deming is a solid talent and was rightfully among the bedrock of the Manhunt talent pool.

Girl Friend by Mark Mallory (September 1957)

Mark Mallory was a pseudonym for Morris Hershman who did a lot of writing in the mid-20th Century in the science fiction, war and crime genres. He was also a regular contributor to Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

“Girl Friend” is a diabolical little story told as an interrogation transcript of a 14 year-old girl accused of murder. As the story unfolds, the kid appears to be the daughter of a prostitute pressed into service herself. Her mom would command top dollar for the girl by telling the clients she was a twelve year-old virgin. As the nightmare narrative shifts into a murder confession, the brilliance of this nasty little story really takes shape. Despite the disturbing set-up, don’t skip this gem.

Midnight Caller by Wade Miller (January 1958)

Wade Miller was the popular collaboration of Robert Wade and Bill Miller that produced so many outstanding crime and adventure novels in the paperback original era. “Midnight Caller” is a short-short story - only two pages long - about a woman being menaced by a sexually-aggressive intruder in her bedroom. It’s a tense little story with a fun punch line at the end.

Paperback Warrior Verdict:

The Best of Manhunt 2 is another masterpiece of short fiction that will be an essential part of any hardboiled library. I’m hoping that it’s another monster success for Stark House to justify more volumes in the future. Highly recommended.

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