Johnny Maguire #01 - I’ll Find You

Between 1950 and 1958, prominent interior designer Richard Himmel (1920-2000) wrote five novels starring a hard-nosed Chicago lawyer named Johnny Maguire with the first being I’ll Find You (U.K. title: It’s Murder, Maguire). Both the cover art and synopsis sell the novel as a melodramatic romance, but the reality is that Himmel wrote something likely to please readers of well-written hardboiled crime who are also comfortable with some romance and human drama in their stories. You can obtain this book as well as the entire Johnny Maguire series through Cutting Edge Books.

I’ll Find You begins with Johnny being rousted out of bed by the cops. A female client named Cynthia that he’d attempted to romance was dead, and Johnny was the last person to see her alive. As narrator, Johnny recounts the trajectory of their brief relationship (“She needed some rough stuff, she needed a guy like me to let her have it, to give it to her good.”) that became an obsession to the horndog lawyer. Here’s the thing: Cynthia had Johnny, as her attorney, bring her $200,000 cash the night of her death, and she supposedly committed suicide by walking into Lake Michigan in the pitch darkness with all that cash. Neither her body nor the money were ever recovered making it the most Fawcett Gold Medal demise in the history of death.

Johnny is a very funny narrator and a self-deprecating lawyer. He explains to the reader that he was a night school guy, and he shares an office on Chicago’s State Street full of low-end punk attorneys, poseurs who use fancy stationary to create the illusion of successful practices. He’s a ladies man, dead broke, and completely honest - with one exception. You see, Johnny does some legal work for a local mob boss in Chicago. Nothing serious, but Johnny knows that his client is seriously bent. His relationship with the racketeer makes for an interesting subplot that gets intertwined with the missing girl story.

Naturally, Johnny begins to suspect that maybe Cynthia’s “suicide” was staged, and he can’t get her out of his mind. The plot is really about Johnny conducting an investigation into Cynthia’s disappearance - and possible suicide - based solely on his romantic obsession with her. The mystery brings Johnny down to Florida in search of the truth. To be fair, there’s a lot of romantic content in the Florida part of the book, and if that’s problematic for you, skip this one. If you’re willing to buy the idea that a guy will turn the world upside-down for a woman he hardly knows based on a hunch she’s alive and in trouble, you’re bound to enjoy this short, well-written paperback.

Richard Himmel was an outstanding writer, and I’ll Find You is a quality book. It must have been a successful title for the publisher as the paperback went through five print runs between 1950 and 1955. That’s good news for you decades later because there should be ample old copies for you to find and read today. And you should. This is one of the better genre novels - call it romantic suspense- from the dawn of paperback originals. If it helps, disregard the overwrought romantic cover art and focus on the revolver sticking out of Johnny’s pocket. Recommended.

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Hawk #01 - The Deadly Crusader

Along with the nine-book run of Counter Force (1983-1985), author Daniel Streib's most successful contribution to men's action-adventure was the 14-volume Hawk series (1980-1981). The series' debut, The Deadly Crusader, was published by Jove and introduces an international hero named Michael Hawk. While the novel's artwork was alluring, consumers may have been misled by the character's dangerous profession. Instead of a globe-trotting spy spewing hot lead, this hero is a freelance reporter chasing hot scoops.

The novel begins by explaining that Michael Hawk was voluntarily arrested after breaking into a Russian psychiatric hospital. His prison experience was a planned expose on the happenings in and around the Iron Curtain. In the book's opening chapters, Hawk is returned to the US via a cruise ship headed to a sunshine-drenched Greek island where Hawk begins writing down his prison experiences while delighting in the riches of horny young female tourists.

By page 70, Hawk finds himself wandering around on the Greek island when a shootout occurs leaving one man dead. In an attempt to learn who was killed, Hawk attracts the attention of a wealthy dictator and soon finds his own life in jeopardy. Once his weekend lover is killed, Hawk demands to know more about the mysterious island and the dictator. Streib's narrative, while stretched sinewy thin, offers some insight to the character's backstory while attempting to propel the current story arc forward.

Needless to say, The Deadly Crusader is an uneven and thin narrative to explore. In fact, through the book's 187 sluggish pages, very little actually happens. The author's story never comes to fruition simply because nothing is ever explained to the reader. Streib just assumes readers understand all of the story's nuances through telepathy. In fact, I'm not sure this began as one full story. My theory is this book is a culmination of broken stories that were never finished and instead were just sewn up here to resemble something approximating a series debut. I speculate that Jove, who already had a smash hit on their hands with Nick Carter: Killmaster, thought they could fool their consumers into buying another “similar” series, so they concocted the idea of Hawk. Regardless of Hawk’s creative genesis, this paperback is terrible and I can't imagine the series improved thereafter.

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Parker #10 - The Green Eagle Score

By the time 1967 rolled around, Donald Westlake had really found his groove with the novels he wrote under the name Richard Stark starring a hard-nosed, emotionless thief named Parker. The commercial success of the series had far outpaced the popularity of the comedic crime novels Westlake authored under his own name, and the quality of the Parker stories showed no indication of deteriorating. That was also the year that Parker’s 10th paperback adventure, The Green Eagle Score, hit spinner racks.

The story opens with Parker and his woman sunning themselves on a Puerto Rican beach when a visitor from Parker’s past arrives with a business opportunity. Fusco is fresh out of the joint after doing a three-year stretch and his ex-wife is dating a U.S. Air Force paper-pusher named Devers. The relationship between Fusco, Devers, and Ellen the ex-wife is surprisingly cordial, and they’ve stumbled upon an opportunity for a $400,000 payroll heist at an upstate New York Air Force base. Pulling a theft on a military installation poses some logistical hurdles, so they need an expert planner like Parker to make it happen.

Parker has the appropriate misgivings about working with amateurs, but he leaves the beach and his girl behind, so he can assess the viability of the score in New York. As always, Parker is the consummate, stoic professional, and his time spent in New York casing the base and weighing the pros and cons of the heist make for some predictably outstanding scenes.

Westlake shifts the third-party perspective quite a bit in this installment, and along the way the reader is treated to scenes where ex-wife Ellen repeatedly overshares with her therapist unwittingly tipping the shrink to the upcoming robbery and getaway plan. Could this create a problem for the crew down the line?

There’s a lot of build-up and character drama leading up to the heist. I found it all very interesting, but it wasn’t exactly action-packed. Once the execution of the job is underway and the plan goes sideways, fans of the series will feel right at home. Overall, this wasn’t the best Parker novel, but that’s only because of the high watermark set by the rest of the series. If The Green Eagle Score was a stand-alone novel, it would be regarded as a masterpiece of the heist genre. Instead, it’s just an average installment in a masterpiece of a series. You should definitely read it, but be aware how it stacks up in the Richard Stark canon. Recommended.

Postscript

An exciting book bonus abridgment of The Green Eagle Score was printed in the July 1968 issue of For Men Only magazine under the name "The Young Bedroom Raiders" with some sweet men’s adventure magazine illustrations.

You can check out some screen grabs of the piece at: LINK

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 31

Saddle up for a wild ride as Paperback Warrior presents an All-Review Western Roundup. We discuss and review our favorite westerns including authors like Richard Matheson, Larry McMurtry, Louis L'Amour, Ralph Hayes and more! The hosts also discuss their favorites of the adult western genre including an epic crossover event featuring adult western heroes. Stream the episode below or your favorite streaming platform. Direct downloads are HERE.

Listen to "Episode 31: All-Review Western Roundup" on Spreaker.

Handyman #01 - The Moneta Papers

Along with authoring entries in the Nick Carter: Killmaster series, Jon Messman kept a productive schedule in the 1970s with a successful series run with Revenger before achieving commercial success with the popular adult western series The Trailsman. Perhaps one of the best of Messman's literary career is the six-volume paperback series Jefferson Boone: Handyman. It was published by Pyramid Books and debuted in 1973 with The Moneta Papers. The entire series has been reprinted in new editions by Brash Books with an introduction by yours truly.

Jefferson Boone is a silky, posh hero that works inconspicuously with the U.S. State Department. His father was a career diplomat and had mentioned to his son that the department needed a behind the scenes “handyman” that can plug holes for America's foreign allies. Working with a government liaison named Charley Hopkins, Boone is offered a variety of international assignments that conveniently pads out the series. The first assignment that's revealed to readers is The Moneta Papers, a carefully construed Italian mission that features a real estate transaction as the launching point. But, as readers quickly learn, there's nothing ordinary about this property purchase.

Boone's female friend Dorrie is a wealthy European playmate working to secure her fourth marriage. Dorrie owns a number of remote islands that remain as a lease-to-purchase for the U.S. Government. After a number of years, Dorrie has finally agreed to gift the islands to the U.S. provided they can arrange a paper transaction. The problem is that every delivery man has been murdered in route to secure the transaction. The suspect? Dorrie's fiance Umberto, a spoiled kid who has aligned himself with a career politician that aspires to be the next Mussolini.

Boone's first endeavor is to learn if Dorrie is involved with the failed delivery attempts. Second, Boone must investigate Umberto's past and current political allies. Using disguises, a fast Ford Mustang and his snub-nosed .38, Boone embarks on a perilous mission to learn the truth. Messman's writing incorporates Formula 1 racing, various shootouts, a Swiss Alps skiing adventure and sexcapades (albeit more topical than descriptive) to propel the narrative.

Fans of James Bond and Nick Carter should like Messman's protagonist. While Boone is an international, intellectual hero, the author carefully avoids pure snobbery. In fact, Boone's budding romance with a small-town Indiana school teacher helps ground the hero with more American wholesomeness. By 1973, it was a crowded market for these types of globe-trotting champions. Thankfully, Messman's series and character stand the test of time. This was an excellent novel. Get the book HERE

Larry Kent #642: Curves Can Kill

Between 1954 and 1974, there were hundreds of novellas and paperback original novels produced in Australia starring hardboiled New York Private Eye Larry Kent. The series was published by the same company that brought the world the Carter Brown mysteries and packaged with salacious cover illustrations similar to the Hank Janson books. The primary authors were Don Haring and Des Dunn, but all the books were released under the house name Larry Kent. Piccadilly Publishing has been reprinting Larry Kent’s adventures as affordable eBooks while maintaining the original cheesecake cover illustrations. I’m starting the series with #642: Curves Can Kill, a 1965 installment written by Don Haring.

The character of Larry Kent started as a newspaper reporter in 1950 on a popular Australian radio drama called, I Hate Crime. The popularity of the radio show launched the novellas and eventually the novels. Kent’s character became a private investigator in the mold of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. As time went on, the writers borrowed a page from Stephen Marlowe’s Chester Drum and Michael Avallone’s Ed Noon when the hero began accepting espionage assignments from the CIA in selected novels. A variation on this “private eye as spy” gambit is the storyline at work in Curves Can Kill.

The action opens with Kent tied to a chair being worked over by a Romanian goon wanting to know what Kent knows about “Z Detail.” Unfortunately for the wisecracking Kent, he doesn’t know much, so he must continue to suffer the abuse - from both fists and a switchblade - with no reprieve. It’s a brutal and violent opening scene that will play well for readers who like their pulp fiction more extreme than Carter Brown could ever offer.

Fortunately, we don’t need to sit through 120 pages of Kent being carved up with a switchblade. He is rescued and finds himself in the hands of Z Detail, an America-friendly private intelligence outfit with close ties to the CIA. The Z-boys want to hire Kent as a contract operative for the vast sum of $300 per week.

His first mission as a contract operative for Z Detail involves befriending a woman in New York. Kent’s version of befriending looks a lot more like a Carter Brown novel, and the swinging sixties attitude toward women is on full display. None of this would fly today, but that’s part of the fun of vintage fiction. Anyway, the woman has access to a secret that Kent needs to learn, and giving any more info away would spoil the fun for you. Suffice to say that all this eventually ties back to the Romanian goons who tried to filet Kent in the opening chapter.

This is one of those great books that kept surprising me with the quality of the prose and story. I had been misled to believe that the Larry Kent series was disposable fiction with a production schedule too aggressive to be among the outstanding works of pulp fiction. Instead, as I read Curves Can Kill, I found myself repeatedly muttering, “Wow, this is really good.” Fans of violent spy-mysteries with major twists and turns will love this book as much as I did.

There are some slow sections but no boring ones in this Larry Kent mystery-adventure. It all leads up to a shockingly violent bloodbath of a climax - one of the finest I’ve read in ages. Overall, I was very impressed by this paperback, and I’m excited to read some more. With over 800 installments, we are unlikely to run out of Larry Kent content in this lifetime. It’s great to discover a new series with an endless amount of content to enjoy. Highly recommended.

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The Chase (aka Pursuit/Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry)

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry was a 1974 film that capitalized on America's car chase fascination spawned by cinema hits like Bullitt and The French Connection. The movie became a cult hit, leading fans to learn more about the film's source material, a crime-fiction novel by Richard Unekis titled The Chase. The book was originally published in 1963 by Gollancz, then again in 1964 by Signet under the title Pursuit. Once the film was released, the novel experienced another identity crisis with a re-release under the name Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry by publisher Panther. Oddly, it was Unekis' only literary work.

The first thing to realize is that The Chase novel is vastly different from its theatrical counterpart. In fact, Dirty Mary isn't even a character in the book. Instead, the film features two ex-convicts, Grozzo and Rayder, robbing a small midwestern grocery store and subsequently trying to outrun the dragnet. Unekis utilizes 1968's explosion of muscle cars (V8s in smaller frames), the rural dirt roads of America's farmland and more modern police techniques as opposed to one-dimensional road block snares. In a way, the book is a technical manual of procedures which eventually leads to its own mediocrity.

The actual heist was way more compelling than the subsequent 100 pages of car chases. The author's description of the grocery store's management and payroll practices was intriguing. In essence, it was the perfect target for an appealing $80,000 grab and go robbery. While the store manager is featured sporadically in the book's beginning, he becomes wasted fodder as the narrative moves from heist to fast getaway. On film, flinging gravel and the sounds of tires screeching and engines roaring probably made for an entertaining 90-minutes. But high RPMs don’t necessarily make for a riveting page-turner.

There are far better crime-fiction and heist novels than The Chase. In fact, a greatly improved version of this same story is Hillary Waugh's 1960 novel Road Block reviewed HERE. If you still feel the need to pursue this story, the film is probably a better use of your time than the paperback.

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Croc

David Hagberg died on September 8, 2019 at age 76 in Sarasota, Florida. In addition to a successful spy-fiction career under his own name, he also wrote 22 top-flight installments in the Nick Carter: Killmaster series and 6 paperback Flash Gordon novels. In 1976, low-end paperback publishing house Belmont Tower released an early-career Hagberg thriller called Croc under the pseudonym (or truncation), David James.

In the 1970s, the public’s imagination was captured by urban legends about kids flushing baby crocodiles down the toilet and the reptiles growing to giant size in the sewers by feasting on rats and other vermin. Case in point is an "alligator in the sewer" novel called Death Tour. 

In Croc, Hagberg’s fictional take on this trope stars New York City Division of Sewer Maintenance workers Peter Boggs and Marian Fascetti who handle maintenance and upkeep of the labyrinth of tunnels under the Big Apple streets. Boggs has been doing the job for 35 years and has grown cautious over time whereas Fascetti is the young, hotshot risk-taker of the pair with a beautiful and pregnant wife at home.

In the first chapter, the partners are investigating a cave-in in an old tunnel where runoff flows into the Hudson River. Always the cowboy, Fascetti goes beyond the debris pile to investigate further when he is eaten by a giant reptilian creature while Boggs watches from a safe distance. It’s a bloody, scary and violent scene that sets up the novel’s action for 211 big-font pages.

For reasons not entirely clear, Boggs doesn’t tell his boss that his partner was just eaten by a 30-foot subterranean crocodile. He lies about the dead man’s whereabouts and keeps the existence of the monster a secret. It’s implied that this has something to do with Boggs’ alcoholism and the idea that no one would believe him if he tells the truth. His reaction and the cover-up weren’t entirely realistic to me, but then I remembered I’m reading a 1976 paperback about a dinosaur-sized crocodile in the sewers, so I should probably shut up and pick my battles for realism elsewhere.

Hagberg trots out the genre tropes for this one. We have the 38 year-old college-educated supervisor always riding Boggs’ ass about this and that. We have a screw-up cop assigned to investigate the missing workers in the sewers. We have the investigative reporter from the New York Post hip-deep in the story (and sewer water) determined to get the full scoop.

It’s also important to remember that Hagberg wrote Croc during the height of the Jaws craze, and he borrows a lot of the same themes, including bureaucratic skepticism of the threat, for this reptile-based thriller. The good news is that Hagberg had great plotting skills even in this early effort.

As the paperback’s cover art and basic premise indicates, Croc is a helluva lot of fun to read, and the story is never dull or repetitive. Providing the reader goes into it with the right attitude, there’s a lot to enjoy in this underground labyrinth of glorious tension and violence. Recommended.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 30

On our 30th episode, it's a Fawcett Gold Medal All-Review Extravaganza! We discuss vintage paperbacks by John D. MacDonald, Lionel White, Dan J. Marlowe, Basil Heatter and more! We are available on all podcast platforms or stream below. Download directly HERE.

Listen to "Episode 30: Fawcett Gold Medal All-Review Extravaganza" on Spreaker.

Doomsday Mission

The king of the paperbacks, Harry Whittington, is often described by fans as a master of crime-noir. The talented author penned a number of crime-noir and suspense novels, but also contributed to other genres like romance, sleaze, plantation (slave gothics) and westerns. But, like his contemporary Charles Runyon, Whittington authored just one military fiction novel, Doomsday Mission, published by Banner in 1967.

The book begins as a chopper touches down in the Phuoc Long Province, a heavily trafficked area along the Cambodian border during the early days of the Vietnam War. U.S. Army Lieutenant Robert Edwards and three sergeants emerge from the helicopter and meet with 40 Vietcong defectors intent on assisting US factions. The plan is to march up the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a village ripe with North Vietnamese Army (NVA) underground supply tunnels.

Lieutenant Edwards is a rookie combatant who immediately clashes with his three sergeants. They want to navigate this long trek to the side of the road, hacking through dense foliage in lieu of walking a visible path. Edwards refuses and the large platoon is immediately under heavy fire from the NVA. The narrative's pace is simply driven by the various gunfights and skirmishes the platoon encounters. By presenting the story in that fashion, it comes across uneven and disjointed.

Any author who maintained a high-volume of literary works like Whittington will surely deliver variable quality. In this instance, Doomsday Mission just isn't very good. The characters were never developed enough for an invested reader to care about their future. Additionally, there is a 10-page story arc that features one of the sergeants bathing a Vietnamese woman in a seductive fashion. It was an ill-advised attempt for the author to break from the action.

You can read much better Harry Whittington books than Doomsday Mission.

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My Old Man's Badge

Pennsylvanian Charles Weiser Frey (1910-1963) authored six crime fiction books during the 1950s under the pseudonym of Ferguson Findlay. The first of these was his 1950 novel, My Old Man’s Badge that was also re-released in 1959 as Killer Cop. The story was adapted into a 30-minute episode of the long-forgotten TV show, Suspense, and (most relevantly) recently reprinted by the good people at Black Gat Books for modern consumption.

Our narrator Johnny Malone is a rookie New York City street cop. The heroic thwarting of a robbery in progress thrusts Johnny into the position of detective long before the promotion would have happened otherwise. Johnny continues to live in the shadow of his late father - also a handsome Irish cop - who was killed on the job 14 years earlier when Johnny was 11. The crumb who shot Dad was never caught and revenge becomes the driving force of My Old Man’s Badge now that Johnny has made detective.

The cops know that it was a German national named Rudy Hoffmann who killed Johnny’s dad, but they never caught the elusive kraut. The German’s backstory is fantastic - one of the most compelling bad guy origin stories I can recall from this era’s fiction. When Johnny is informed that the killer is back on the New York streets, living in the shadows, and gunning for Johnny, the young detective asks to be assigned the case to bring Hoffmann to justice. As such, the reader is treated to a vendetta story swathed in a police procedural wrapper.

Chasing the only lead he has, Johnny goes undercover as a Bowery bum living among the human refuse looking for clues. Hoffmann has an axe to grind with the Malone family, and Johnny wants to neutralize the German before he gets killed just like his father. The path from Johnny to Hoffmann is a circuitous one, and Johnny joins a dope-distribution gang in his undercover capacity to generate leads.

The beginning and end of My Old Man’s Badge are both excellent - among the best scenes you’ll read. The middle, however, dragged a bit for me. Johnny’s descent into the undercover life of crime was a bit convoluted and the plot had way too much gangland drama in the dope ring. Things get back on track once Johnny finds his dad’s killer, and the climactic, but predictable, ending is extremely well done.

Overall, the paperback is definitely worth your time, but it could have used a stronger editorial hand 70 years ago. In any case, I’m glad I read it, and Black Gat should be lauded for resurrecting the novel.

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Death Merchant #70 - The Greenland Mystery

During the 1970s and 1980s, men's action adventure fiction offered a robust selection of serial titles like The Destroyer, The Executioner, The Penetrator, and The Butcher. The catalyst was Pinnacle Books, a successful mass market paperback publisher that catered to male consumers and readers. Beginning in 1971, Pinnacle added Death Merchant to their impressive catalog of titles. The series was written by Joseph R. Rosenberger and featured a character named Richard Camellion, a globe-trotting CIA agent. Along with his cunning military tactics, Camellion was a master of disguises, allowing him to infiltrate hostile forces both as a spy and a combatant. The series ran 71 installments from 1971 through 1988 including a double-sized novel, Super Death Merchant: Apocalypse. While I've read Rosenberger's other literary work (Geneva Force), my first experience with Death Merchant is oddly the last book of the series, #70 The Greenland Mystery.

Like The Polestar Incident, which was the series' 21st installment, The Greenland Mystery features an extraterrestrial storyline. This isn't the first action-adventure series to introduce the possibility of aliens into the mix. The Executioner #84 and #273 both featured Mack Bolan fighting a Black Ops team around the mysterious Area 51 in Nevada. In this novel, Camellion and his partner Quinlan are assigned to an exploratory station in Greenland. Once there, Camellion learns that the research scientists have discovered an alien city buried deep in the ice.

With Rosenberger's writing style, readers are accustomed to the author's bizarre narratives and deep political analysis. The idea that aliens crashed in Greenland and built a city isn't particularly swerving out of Rosenberger's lane. The CIA is worried that the pesky Russians will invade the research facility and scavenge any alien technology that exists. Camellion, Quinlan and a small team of agents scout the facility and create ambush spots along the perimeter. Once the obligatory invasion begins from the Russians, it's up to Camellion's team to hold the line and protect the resources.

My issue with Rosenberger and Death Merchant is that the battle scenes are overly technical. Readers should be enjoying the “rock'em sock'em” action instead of the author theorizing that the 12.7 DshK is more powerful than the 14.5 KPV MG. It's overindulgent to describe every firearm on the battlefield down to the ballistic metrics. I just read the second installment of Peter McCurtin's Soldier of Fortune and it is vastly superior to Death Merchant simply because the focus is on developing characters and story instead of an armory.

When the action heats up, The Greenland Mystery is just an average read. If I could carve off 80-pages of technical nonsense, these books would be far more appealing. After reading this installment, I've reassured myself that having just three Death Merchant books on my bookshelf is more than enough. The series has its fans, I'm certainly not one of them.

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The Saint #06 - Alias the Saint

With novels, novelettes, and short stories spanning from 1928 to 1997 (not to mention movies, TV, comics, and radio), The Saint is one of the most enduring characters in thrilling adventure fiction. Even more amazingly, all this literary output was done under the authorship of just one man, Leslie Charteris (1907-1993), until 1964 when ghost writers started carrying the load for the popular British series. Many of the paperbacks in the series are actually two or three novellas packaged together in one volume. Today, we’ll tackle Alias the Saint from 1931, a collection of three novellas that originally appeared in The Thriller magazine in the U.K.

Simon Templar is The Saint, a nickname derived from his initials, ST. Always a charming and debonair sophisticate with a cheeky sense of humor, the character evolved over the years from a vigilante and gentleman thief (a’la Robin Hood) to a spy and all-purpose global adventurer. He solves mysteries, executes elaborate heists, wastes Nazis, and charms lots of babes. Worldwide law enforcement, particularly Scotland Yard, wants him behind bars and they are always present to warn the folk hero thief to behave himself when he arrives in their territory. However, the cops aren’t shy about enlisting his help when they are in need of a superior mind. Most of the books and stories have been reprinted many times, so you should have no problem finding loads of content if Simon Templar is up your alley.

Here are capsule reviews of the three novellas comprising Alias The Saint.

“The Story of a Dead Man”

This was the first published novella in The Saint series. We get to meet Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard, a recurring character in the series whose professional goal is to lock up the legendary Simon Templar. For that reason, Teal is appropriately skeptical to find Templar working in a benign London office job like a legit citizen. Templar’s droll interactions with both Teal and his coworkers make for some funny reading, and Charteris’ writing style is head-and-shoulders above his American pulp contemporaries.

By today’s standards (or even 1950s standards), the pacing is a little off. There’s way too much time setting up the characters before the mystery plot begins. Once it does, it’s a messy little tale of a dead swindling businessman. The story is more than a little confusing thanks to too many characters and subplots, but the characters are vividly drawn, and the prose is superb. It took some focus and re-reading to ensure I didn’t lose the thread.

In this one, Templar is more Sherlock Holmes than James Bond, but he gets to kick ass a couple times in the narrative coupled with some lethal gunplay. In the introduction to a newer edition, the author said that “The Story of a Dead Man” definitely isn’t his best work, but neither is it his worst. I certainly enjoyed it enough to move onto the next novella.

“The Impossible Crime”

Simon Templar has his eye on a guy running an import business who may also be a heroin smuggler for a fugitive Chicago mobster. The smuggler receives calling cards (the stick figure logo with the halo) from The Saint, so he’s understandably nervous. An opening scene in which The Saint visits the terrorized smuggler recalls something American readers may recognize from The Shadow or The Spider stories of the same era.

This core of the story is a locked-room mystery in the tradition of John Dickson Carr. Interestingly, Templar is asked by Scotland Yard’s Inspector Teal to assist in the investigation of a man shot to death in a locked room with no sign of a weapon. The victim happens to be the smuggler Templar has been investigating on his own leaving us with a whodunnit and a howdunnit.

There’s some decent gunplay, a sub-plot involving s kidnapped girl, and some genuinely funny quips from Templar. The locked room mystery is solved - twice, in fact - and the payoff is clever as hell. Overall, “The Impossible Crime” still feels a bit dated, but it’s a far better story than its predecessor in this collection.

“The National Debt”

A female chemist is kidnapped and forced into indentured servitude by some crooks with an evil plan, and The Saint goes undercover to investigate the matter and rescue the woman. The challenge is that the woman doesn’t seem to want to leave. Is she hypnotized? Drugged?

More interestingly, the question remains what the kidnappers want with the chemist and what is she developing for them? It’s a mystery to be solved by Templar, and it’s also the strongest of the three stories in this collection despite a rather abrupt conclusion. The action veers a bit into Doc Savage territory without becoming too cartoonish on the journey.

Conclusion

It would be totally unfair to judge a wildly popular mystery-adventure series that lasted 70 years on the basis of this collection of the character’s first novellas. However, I actually enjoyed this introduction to Simon Templar even if the novellas failed to live up to the promise of the lurid cover art found on reprints decades later.

The Saint is a fantastic character, and I’m excited to read more of his later adventures after Charteris found his footing. I’ve been told that The Saint in Miami from 1940 is a high watermark in the series. Watch this space in the future for more on this iconic series.

You can buy Saint novels HERE

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 29

Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 29’s feature is about Australia’s popular Larry Kent series. Eric reviews S-Com #1, and Tom presents an early rarity by David Hagberg. The guys also ponder what makes a paperback “vintage” as well as an impromptu discussion of Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch series and non-fiction reference books. Stream it below or on your favorite podcast app. Direct downloads are HERE.

Listen to "Episode 29: Larry Kent" on Spreaker.

Mrs. Homicide

Like his contemporaries in Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, and Talmage Powell, Day Keene (real name Gunnard R. Hjertstedt) was a successful Florida Gulf Coast writer. With over 50 published novels and dozens of short stories, the author's legacy has endured thanks to publishers like Stark House Press. Mrs. Homicide was originally published as a 1953 Ace Double paired with William L. Stuart's Dead Ahead. Now, Mrs. Homicide exists in a three-novel omnibus by Stark House Press.

The novel's conspicuous beginning introduces Manhattan homicide detective Herman Stone. Stone is in a precinct house watching his wife Connie being questioned as a suspect in the murder of a wealthy businessman. Connie was found drunk and half-naked in the victim's apartment. She has no memory of the victim or how she arrived at his apartment. Further evidence suggests that she had sex with the victim, and there's a message on a photo frame that indicates the two were in a relationship. The cops' offer is to waive the death penalty if Connie will confess. She refuses and Stone is left in the proverbial “rock and a hard place” position.

The narrative explores Stone's investigation into the murder with hopes that he can overcome the overwhelming evidence against his wife. Once Stone hooks a racketeer kingpin named Rags Hanlon, the defense begins to take shape. Stone's probe into Hanlon's business dealings and his connections eventually leads to his suspension from the force. Alone, with no allies, Stone's efforts to free Connie becomes a fight against corruption.

Day Keene is one of the most popular authors here at Paperback Warrior for a reason. His storytelling is masterful and his characters skirt the fine line between moral and immoral. While Mrs. Homicide was an okay read, I didn't find it to be of the same caliber as his other works like Joy House, Sleep with the Devil or Death House Doll. They can't all be winners, but Mrs. Homicide fell a bit flat in developing an engaging story. Disappointingly, nothing really happens for two-thirds of the book. Stone's procedural (and non-procedural) investigation didn't have enough twists and turns to really propel the story.

Overall, maybe there's a reason that this novel hasn't been reprinted since 1966. You'll find better Keene novels in circulation today. Mrs. Homicide may only appeal to collectors or fans that just need everything.

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The Penetrator #24 - Cryogenic Nightmare

The Penetrator series was a Mack Bolan knock-off written by Chet Cunningham (even numbered installments) and Mark K. Roberts the odd ones) under the house name of Lionel Derrick. The books are generally mind-numbing, escapist fun of varying quality. The cover of the 24th installment, Cryogenic Nightmare, promises a Florida setting, and who doesn’t like some fun in the sun to fight the winter blues?

The Penetrator is Mark Hardin, an American Vietnam vet action hero with Native American blood, a fat bankroll, a fortress of solitude and a passion for wasting bad guys. His vigilante missions have made him a fugitive, and the FBI likens him to Robin Hood in the paperback’s prologue. His target selection and assignments are managed through a college professor who also provides analytical support to Hardin on his missions.

In this installment, The Penetrator’s target is Preacher Mann, an organized crime figure with tentacles stretching into all sorts of badness, but pimping seems to be his true passion. Cunningham gets right to the point by describing Mann as a “vegetarian negroid” and shows off the pimp’s opulent lifestyle by explaining that Mann owns a Betamax hooked up to a 48-inch TV screen. Even in today’s world, one would have to control a substantial criminal empire to achieve such entertainment-system decadence.

After receiving his assignment from the professor, The Penetrator heads down to West Palm Beach, Florida and begins a lot of pretty standard gumshoe work investigating Mann’s business interests and shell companies. These scenes have some decent gunfights but go on much too long. Readers want to see the sexy, frozen babes we were promised on the cover art and synopsis.

It’s not until well into the second half of the paperback that Hardin learns of Mann’s diabolical plan to kidnap super-hot chicks and cryogenically freeze them for future consumption as high-price call girls. Hardin eventually penetrates Mann’s hidden island lair where the villain is kind enough to fully explain his creative and moronic plan in painstaking detail to our hero.

Cryogenic Nightmare is really a prose comic book with fun action set pieces building towards a final showdown between The Penetrator and the evil Preacher Mann. The novel owes a lot to corny, 1930s-style pulp fiction where bad guys experiment on damsels in distress in underground island hideouts until the swashbuckling hero can save the day. The pacing of this installment wasn’t great, but you don’t read The Penetrator for literary greatness. Mostly, it’s a fun read as long as your expectations are under control. 

Purchase a copy of this book HERE

Soldier of Fortune #02 - The Deadliest Game

The Soldier of Fortune series was published between 1976 and 1985 with a brief hiatus in the early 80s. The series was created and edited by Peter McCurtin (1929-1997), a talented action-adventure scribe who also authored 10 of the series' 18 installments. The premise is very simple: anti-hero Jim Rainey is a professional soldier for hire whose loyalties always lie with the side who signs the checks. The Deadliest Game (1976) is the series' second novel and finds Rainey hunting terrorists in Argentina.

Political extremists calling themselves the Cordoba Committe are terrorizing the Argentinean city of La Boca. While visiting a friend named Quinlan, Rainey finds himself in the terrorists' crossfire at the War Ministry Annex. After teaming with Quinlan to kill the baddies, the country's president offers Rainey $5,000 if he can dispose of the terrorist cell. Rainey accepts under the condition that he has complete autonomy in his methods. However, the president still wants Rainey to adhere to some military rules of engagement and assigns him an ex-Nazi leader named Richter to assist.

The book's early chapters features Rainey recruiting the vilest of mercenaries for the job. Playing off of 1967's The Dirty Dozen (and Garrison's Gorillas television show), Rainey eventually incorporates military criminals into his small Army. But aside from the Cordoba Committe, Rainey's stiffest opposition is Richter, an old war horse who favors uniformed parades over modern day guerrilla tactics.

I've always loved McCurtin's writing style, and this novel nicely showcases the author's talent. His first-person narrative adds a unique perspective to what is quintessentially a team-based combat book. In the hands of another author, Rainey's character could have been one-dimensional with the familiar formula of 1-2-3-Kill. Thankfully under McCurtin's prose, both Rainey and the supporting characters are far more dynamic. McCurtin's colleague, author Ralph Hayes, wrote seven of the series' installments under McCurtin's name, and I think they are equals in terms of storytelling.

Despite the average finale, I found The Deadliest Game to be a riveting, high-caliber read. The novel was released by both Tower and Belmont in the U.S. and features two different covers. For a complete bibliography and some additional series background, check out the Paperback Warrior review for the 17th entry Bloodbath HERE. Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Sin Hellcat

Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake are two of the most beloved writers in crime fiction. However, most fans are unaware that they co-authored three books together when they were young men starting their writing careers in New York City. The trio of paperbacks fell broadly into the category of “sleaze fiction,” and the best of these collaborations is said to be Sin Hellcat, a 1961 Nightstand paperback written under the name Andrew Shaw that’s currently available as a paperback reprint and cheap eBook.

Harvey is living a mundane, split-level suburban existence with his frigid wife and a job as a mid-level Manhattan advertising executive. He likes to remember his college years when he was a sexual, albeit inexperienced, young lover with his girlfriend, Jodi. The novel’s opening act treats the reader to generous flashbacks from Harvey’s college years when he and Jodi were first exploring one another sexually and later when he was trying to get laid at the ad agency as a mailroom clerk. These are the sexy - but never overly graphic - scenes that comprise the first half of the book in a rare example of actual genre fiction character development.

In present day, Harvey reconnects with Jodi who is now a high-end prostitute - a plot twist disclosed in the novel’s opening paragraph (which, honestly, sorta took the oomph out of what would have been an interesting twist). After spending the night at Jodi’s place, Harvey is awakened by a goon with a camera and a blackmail proposition. I won’t give it away, but I was happy to read that Block and Westlake chose to add some intrigue and muscle to the sexy mix with a plot involving international smuggling of sorts.

As a huge fan of both Block and Westlake, I had fun reading this early collaboration by them before they made it big. There were sections of the novel where I recognized each of their narrative voices in their tadpole states. Most of the paperback toggles between flashbacks from Harvey’s checkered past to the current, genuinely intriguing situation with Jodi on an international mission.

Is Sin Hellcat a lost masterpiece? No. But it’s way better than a 1961 sleaze paperback deserves to be. There’s enough titillation to keep the dudes flipping the pages, and enough edgy, adventurous content to add some substance to the work. Meanwhile, the writing style(s) is pretty excellent and genuinely funny and insightful at times. It’s not top-tier Block or Westlake, but it was a nice way to kill a few hours. Recommended. 

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 28

In the newest Paperback Warrior Podcast episode, we discuss John D. MacDonald's iconic Travis McGee character, including a review of the series' ninth installment, "Pale Shade for Guilt". We also evaluate the debut novel in Jon Messman's Handyman series, "The Moneta Papers", and have an impromptu look at Lawrence Block's Chip Harrison novels. Stream wherever fine podcasts are presented or stream below. Direct downloads are HERE. Listen to "Episode 28: Travis McGee" on Spreaker.

Hell Ship to Kuma

Calvin Clements (1915-1997) utilized his experiences in the US Navy to author a number of adventure novels and short stories. After serving in Southeast Asia, Clements would become a fireboat pilot with the New York City Fire Department. Beginning in 1959, Clements would begin writing for television shows like “Gunsmoke”, “Have Gun, Will Travel”, “How the West Was Won” and “Dr. Kildare”. His original paperback novels were nautical-themed and often set in remote locations of Asia. Fawcett Gold Medal published three of his literary works: Satan Takes the Helm (1952), Barge Girl (1953) and the subject at hand, Hell Ship to Kuma (1954).

Clements introduces readers to the fearless, but financially strapped, Captain John Roper. After a disaster at sea, Roper's former employer has relieved him of his duty. Now, Roper is a lowly ship mate looking for work in an Asian port. It's here where our protagonist meets up with Captain Murdoch and his salvage boat, The Wanderer. After a brief job interview, Roper finds his new employer to be arrogant and belligerent. But despite Murdoch's shortcomings, money talks and Roper is broke.

Life on The Wanderer proves to be a hard and cruel existence. Murdoch is a madman, often scolding the crew with Old Testament scripture while simultaneously belittling their roles on his ship. Thankfully, Roper befriends a passenger named Karen and the two have an instant attraction. Karen is journeying to the island of Kuma to become a dancer, but Roper has suspicions that she's being too naive to believe her performances will be limited to just dancing.

While all of this is somewhat interesting, the narrative itself is built around a heist. The idea is that Murdoch and the crew will cooperate with the tiny island of Kuma to steal a freighter of metal. Once they replace the freighter's labor with their own crew, they will offload the metal onto the island and then radio that the ship and it's freight has sunk. Over a two year span, they will slowly sell off the metal and split the profits among the crew. But like any good heist novel...mixing money, greed and criminals is a dangerous combination.

Hell Ship to Kuma was entertaining enough but never rises above average. For a 1954 adventure novel, I think the author prides himself too much on describing Southeast Asian ports and islands to readers who will likely never see these exotic locations. John Roper is an admirable hero and his plotting with Murdoch was an engaging read. However, the entire heist aspect doesn't come to fruition until page 100, leaving only 60 pages remaining to tell the tale that matters. Overall, Hell Ship to Kuma is worth reading if you control your expectations and don't spend a fortune on it. 

Thankfully, the good folks at Stark House Press have reprinted this novel as a twofer along with the author's Barge Girl. Buy a copy of this book HERE