The Stalker

In 1971, author Bill Pronzini's first two novels were published, The Snatch and The Stalker. The former was the first of Pronzini's successful and respected Nameless Detective series. The Stalker was the first of over 30 original, stand-alone novels. After positive Paperback Warrior reviews for Panic (1972) and Snowbound (1974), I was excited to re-enter Pronzini's early 1970s era of crime-fiction. I decided to retrace his steps and begin with The Stalker. 

The book begins in Granite City, Illinois in March of 1959. Six men successfully rob a Smithfield armored car transporting $750K in money from Mannerling Chemical. Aside from punching a guard, the heist is executed flawlessly and these six men become financially stable in less than 10-minutes. Readers are advised that the investigation into the robbery was unsuccessful in locating the men or the stolen money.

The next chapters feature newspaper articles from 1970 detailing the grisly deaths of three, seemingly unrelated men. These deaths appear to be random accidents, but in the book's compelling middle chapters, readers discover that these men were half of the 1959 heist crew. It's explained that three Army buddies – Conradin, Drexel, and the book's protagonist, Kilduf – planned the heist and are now the remaining members of a mysterious kill-list. 

Pronzini's plot development is exceptional as he leads readers into a dramatic mystery as these three men attempt to identify their stalker. Considering the heist was perfect with no fatalities, and that law-enforcement never located a single clue, the idea that someone has found them seems impossible. But, three of their crew is dead and the list has shortened. There is a tremendous amount of urgency, which Pronzini successfully balances with the slower pace of suspense and mystery. I won't ruin the surprise, but there is another character in the novel that adds some insight to the puzzle.

The Stalker is a short novel, but Pronzini is able to develop the characters at a quick pace that doesn't detract from the story's impact. I loved the relationships between Kilduf and his frustrated spouse, as well as the summarized backstory of these three characters and the wealth they spent or invested. Pronzini is able to create this mental anguish as the characters learn of their potential fates and how their criminal pasts may now extinguish their future. Was the money worth the guilt? Was the fortune worth the mental sacrifice? I love these questions as Pronzini violently shortens the kill-list one by one.

As either a murder mystery, a psychological suspense novel, or as crime-fiction, The Stalker is absolutely fantastic. Pronzini crafts a believable heist tale, but manages to reshape it into a thrill-ride. The end result makes it a mandatory read. Highly recommended! 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Girl on a Slay Ride

Louis Trimble (1917-1988) was a Seattle author that specialized in science-fiction, western, mystery, and espionage genres. He wrote under multiple pseudonyms and has been reprinted numerous times. In 2012, Prologue Books reprinted his crime-noir novel Girl on a Slay Ride, originally published by Avon in 1960. 

Cliff Mallory is employed as a salesman, but is described by another character as a high-class messenger. The term fits considering Mallory has a briefcase containing $40,000 in securities that he needs to deliver to his boss in Port Angeles, Washington. After the drop, Mallory is headed into the state's Olympic Mountains to enjoy his favorite pastime, camping and fishing. But, his plans take a detour when his ex-wife Denise calls asking for a favor.

After picking Denise up at the Portland airport, she advises Mallory that she's on the run from her husband and his Syndicate cronies. Her husband fears that she knows a little too much about his business dealings and wants to snuff her out. Denise called the only person she ever truly loved for help. Mallory and Denise head to the coast highway and follow it through the fog and dense forest to a small-town motel. After sensually making up for lost years, Mallory sees two men in the parking lot that he knows must be on to them. 

Back on the rural highway, Mallory and Denise are intercepted by a man calling himself Graef and two other guys. But, Mallory can't figure out if they are after Denise or trying to rob him of the $40K. The three thugs escort Mallory into a coffee shop where a newspaper shows Graef's photo and the ominous headlines that he is a rapist and kidnapper that has escaped from jail after killing a deputy. Quickly, Trimble's crime-noir escalates into a psychotic suspense thriller as Mallory and Denise try to escape this horrible scenario.

In some ways, I think Trimble combined a rugged, outdoor modern western with a crime-noir to create this very unique novel. It features a long chase through the pines and snow, with tracking, guns, and a survival element built in. But, the author isn't content with just that. Instead, he injects this frantic sense of suspense and mystery because everything isn't what it appears to be. I was thrown off by the story's twist and had to re-read certain chapters just to be sure I was clear on who's betraying whom. I applaud the originality and presentation, but there's a lot going on that requires some serious page dedication. 

Girl on a Slay Ride was a terrific, fast-paced narrative with plenty of action and intrigue. Trimble reads like John D. MacDonald here and I can't help but think he was slightly influenced by JDM's violent novel The Executioners (aka Cape Fear, 1957). It has the same intensity with one unforgettable character that is a repulsive, psychotic savage that preys on young girls. The original paperback's cover (Victor Kalion) conveys the emotional terror. What you see is exactly what you get. 

Recommended! Buy the ebook HERE.

Boy-Lover

Charles Boeckman (1920-2015), a celebrated jazz musician, authored short stories for the pulps and digests through the mid 20^th century. He also wrote paperbacks including mystery, western and suspense. In his autobiography, Pulp Jazz: The Charles Boeckman Story, Boeckman elaborates on the name Alex Carter, a pseudonym that he used to author a number of racy romance novels. In the book, he says he didn't want readers to connect these novels directly to him. He learned of Robert Turner, an author for the publisher Beacon, spending a night in jail for writing “pornography.” He didn't want to experience the same fate. It's a real shame that readers couldn't connect Boy-Lover to Boeckman considering its quality. It was published by Beacon in 1963 with a painted cover by Clement Micarelli.

Babs is in her late 20s, has a ravenous sexual appetite, and is mired in the suburbs with her tired, complacent husband Art. Instead of providing Babs hours of ecstasy, Art's idea of a good time is hosting tame neighborhood parties, discussing mechanical issues concerning  the couple's car, or just sleeping like a log. Babs is craving the sins of the flesh and has horny housewife eyes on a young mechanic named Jack.

Jack recently graduated high school and is now working at the local garage. When he delivers Bab's repaired car to her house, he is shocked to find her sunbathing in the nude while Art is at work. Babs slaps the seduction on thick as the experience increases from lemonade to dancing to bedroom antics as Jack loses his virginity to this gorgeous married woman in grand style. But, as you can imagine, Babs and Jack aren't fulfilled with just one encounter. Soon, they are sneaking out to do the nasty in abandoned parking lots, the closed mechanic's shop, and eventually into an apartment outside of town. It's here that Babs and Jack are shocked when their affair is revealed.

Boy-Lover isn't explicit by any stretch of the imagination. It's all PG-13 if it was released today. Boeckman's novel works exceptionally well as a character study – Jack as the inexperienced youth experiencing an accelerated maturity and Babs as the frustrated housewife that feels no purpose. The two need something from each other, but it isn't an emotional connection. Their responses to changes in their lives is met by sex – simply sex, nothing more and nothing less.

Boeckman takes readers through the rocky relationship that Jack and Babs feel. We feel Jack's frustration as a mechanic in a new town - the low wages, the impending poverty, the scorching cement – and sympathize. In many ways, this 1963 glimpse at the lower-class hasn't changed. It's timeless as these problems are eternal for generations of Americans. Jack contemplates the money left over on payday and has to decide if his last savings should be spent on a movie and popcorn. Alternatively, the upper middle-class Babs realizes what blue-collar money is worth. She is used to expensive cars, fine dining, and the ability to shop for high-quality wine and clothes. She faces a new awakening under Jack's small, but hard-earned, salary.

Boy-Lover is way better than it ever has a right to be. The cover is gorgeous, but it doesn't do the author or the publisher any real justice. This is just a fantastic novel that makes you feel a responsibility to the characters. On the last page I felt the impact of these two lovers and the impromptu life they led. I felt their emotional connection, their financial struggle, and the challenges they faced in an unconventional relationship. In a way, this is Boeckman's take on youth, the end of innocence, and the daunting threat of impending adulthood. I really enjoyed it and I think you will too. Recommended! 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Shotgun

William Wingate (1939-2012) was a South African born author responsible for seven novels and a non-fiction book about winning poker. His 1980 paperback Shotgun was released as Hardacre’s Way in England and later adapted into the crappy movie Malone starring Burt Reynolds. It remains available as an affordable ebook.

Our hero is John Hardacre, a tough guy who drifts into the remote Tennessee mountain town of Baptist’s Fire. Hardacre is first encountered pushing his broken Volkswagen Beetle into the town’s service station employing the novel’s affable narrator, a 15 year-old named Lou. About halfway through the novel, the author reveals something about Lou that will knock your socks off. I’m still laughing about how clever this revelation was.

The service station is owned by Lou’s pa, and he’s receiving pressure to sell from a wealthy mobster-turned-boss hog who’s buying up the town. As pa turns down these cash offers, the pressure becomes more coercive thanks to the developer’s henchmen. All of the town’s leaders, including the corrupt and feckless sheriff, are in the back pocket of this local bossman whose lackeys are beyond justice.

As the novel progresses, we see bullies in action targeting Hardacre for harassment on the street and the spontaneous outbursts of violence increase Hardacre’s profile as a target for the town establishment’s revenge. Hardacre’s unwillingness to bend in the face of bullies puts his hosts, Lou and Pa, squarely within the blast radius for more violence.

What we have here is a fairly typical western plot transported to 1980 Appalachia. Other critics have compared Shotgun to Shane by Jack Schaefer, but the influence of David Morrell’s First Blood also shines brightly. It’s established early in the paperback that Hardacre travels with a sawed-off shotgun and you just know the weapon will be a turning point later in the book when the inevitable violence erupts.

Fans of 1980s men’s adventure paperbacks should regard Shotgun as required reading. The story of a drifter being pushed beyond his tolerable limits by bullying authorities is timeless, and the author delivers the bloodbath that genre fans will love. 

Get the ebook HERE.

The Hit

After authoring westerns for a decade, Brian Francis Wynne Garfield began writing crime-fiction in the 1970s. His pinnacle may have been 1972's Death Wish, but books like Relentless and The Three-Persons Hunt were stellar genre entries. Based on my research, 1970's The Hit may have been Garfield's first traditional crime-fiction novel. 

At the relatively young age of 30, Simon Crane spends his days as an amateur geologist in the desert. Before his complacent lifestyle, Crane was an Army Intelligence Lieutenant, a collegiate baseball player, a newspaper reporter and a cop. On the beat, Crane was “accidentally” shot by his partner during a hardware store holdup. After taking two .357 bullets in the thigh, Crane is now on early retirement and disability, allowing plenty of time for rockhounding.

Crane's life is turned upside down when his former love interest, Joanne, shows up at his door with an incredible tale. She is employed as a secretary for one of the front businesses ran by the Aiello-Madonna-DeAngelo mob. Along with playing with Aiello's files, she occasionally allowed him to bed her down in his downtime. Due to the intimacy, Joanne knew that Aiello had over three-million dollars in his secure safe as well as incriminating evidence on lawmakers, politicians, mob members, and even herself. When she arrived at work that morning, Aiello was missing and his safe was open and empty. 

Shortly after explaining to Crane that she doesn't know what to do about her situation, two mob enforcers appear and search Crane's house for any evidence that Joanne may be hiding. Doing the smart thing, Crane and Joanne go to DeAngelo and Madonna and explain that they had absolutely nothing to do with Aiello's murder. DeAngelo doesn't believe them and feels that Joanne sold out the mob and now she's been fed to them as the scapegoat. DeAngelo issues a deadly deadline: 48 hours to either bring the money back or prove that they didn't kill Aiello.

Garfield's short novel contains gambling, mobsters, double-crosses, car chases, and the obligatory “body buried at a road construction site”, all main ingredients of any great crime-fiction dish. The mystery aspect could be the fact that Crane is attempting to find the answer to save his own life. This is a genre trope of many 1940s and 1950s original paperbacks.

The Hit showcases Garfield re-creating the magic of crime-noir and makes both Crane and Joanne likable heroes throughout the propulsive plot. While there are a lot of characters to remember, the storyline and development isn't overly complicated or convoluted. Instead, this is just another good Brian Garfield novel with enough gritty violence and perplexing mystery to satisfy seasoned genre fans. 

Get the ebook HERE.

Quarry #16 - Quarry's Blood

Max Allan Collins’ Quarry series about a paid assassin is probably the best series (still) going today. The books blend action, mystery, sex and humor in a perfect combination, so I was excited to read the 2022 installment, Quarry’s Blood.

As the novel opens, it’s 1983 and Quarry (age 31) is at a strip club in Biloxi, Mississippi re-connecting with a stripper he once knew named Luann (stage name: Lolita). If this rings a bell, that’s because Quarry’s Blood begins as a sequel of sorts to 2015’s Quarry’s Choice, although Collins does a good job getting the reader up to speed if you’ve never read the other novel or forgotten the particulars. Mostly, Collins is just bringing back a beloved former character and consider yourself lucky as Luann is a fan-favorite love interest for Quarry.

Anyway, Quarry used to be a normal hitman, but now he’s a hitman who gets paid by intended victims to kill other hitmen before they can kill the targets. If possible, he also investigates the situation to figure out who hired the hitman in the first place — because if you don’t do that, why bother? The upshot is that Quarry returns to Luann because his 1983 investigation indicates that a hitman is targeting his former stripper friend for extinction.

We also join Quarry in 2021 (age 69) looking back on his life and greatest hits over the years. He’s content with his life of retired solitude when a visitor comes-a-knocking. The visitor isn’t carrying a gun, but rather a notebook. She’s an author of true crime novels, and she’s pieced together who Quarry is - or was - and wants to interview him for a book. She’s aware that Quarry has over 40 kills to his name and other things about him that I won’t spoil here.

Quarry is also facing a problem of someone trying to kill him. Does it have something to do with his prolifically murderous past? Or maybe it’s connected with this true-crime journalist poking about? This leads to a lot of revisiting historical hits to learn the one that triggered the violence of the present. There’s a meta-fiction aspect the whole endeavor that will also delight series stalwarts - you’ll know it when you read it. Of course, Collins ties the past and the present together in a tidy and well-construction manner forming one multi-generational tale.

Quarry’s Blood is another excellent installment in the series, but probably not a great entry point for a new reader since there are so many references to other Quarry adventures. This one’s for the fans. There’s an afterward by the author implying that this may truly be the last Quarry novel. I’m calling on Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai to figure out a way to put the screws to Max Allan Collins to ensure there are more installments forthcoming. Whatever it takes… 

Buy a copy of the book HERE

Bird in a Cage

Frederic Dard (1921-2000) has been called the Harry Whittington of France because he authored approximately 300 crime-noir paperbacks during the mid-20th century using his own name and a wide variety of pseudonyms. Readers may be familiar with his 175-installment San-Antonio police procedural series that received a sizable run of English translations. A London-based reprint publisher called Pushkin Vertigo has been reprinting many of Dard’s greatest hits with crisp, new translations for modern audiences, including his 1961 stand-alone paperback, Bird in a Cage (Le Monte-Charge).

Our narrator is Jerome and he has returned home to Paris on Christmas Eve after spending six years incarcerated for the murder of his girlfriend. Arriving at his childhood home is a melancholy experience since his mom died four years earlier when Jerome was in prison. Facing the crippling sadness of a Christmas alone, Jerome decides to treat himself to a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant.

At the restaurant, Jerome encounters a woman and follows her to a movie theater. He sits next to her and holds her hand in the dark providing the poor fellow with some much-needed human contact. After the show, they wander about Paris a bit and wind up at her place headed for a sexual encounter because they are French and that’s what the French do.

Just as Jerome is about to close the deal with this mysterious woman, they enter her parlor and lying underneath the tree is the girl’s estranged husband with his head blown off. Needless to say, this throws a monkey wrench in Jerome’s big plans to get laid after six years of forced celibacy. Moreover, Jerome is forced to disclose to this new widow that he’s a newly-released ex-con (and convicted murderer) and probably not her strongest alibi.

Jerome sets out to solve the murder, and seemingly impossible things begin to happen deepening the paperback’s mystery. The solution recalled the architectural misdirection often seen in a John Dickson Carr locked-room mystery in which a seemingly perfect crime is explained through elaborate planning and execution. As a mystery, the solution worked, but it didn’t make for a particularly edgy or hardboiled novel.

The writing (or rather the translation) was uniformly great making this an enjoyable 120-page quickie. The book’s final page was abrupt and confusing, but it didn’t impact the mystery itself. Overall, I enjoyed this foray into French noir and will probably come back for more. 

Buy a copy of the book HERE

Mourn the Hangman

Harry Whittington's second contemporary novel was 1951's Murder is my Mistress, published by Graphic as #41. One year later, Whittington was featured again by the publisher with Mourn the Hangman, Graphic #46. The book was reprinted by Prologue in 2012 in paperback and digital editions.

Steven Blake and Bruce Bricker own Confidential Investigations, a private-eye business based in Gulf City, Florida. Their most recent job placed Blake undercover as a laborer for Arrenhower, a manufacturer with a government contract to produce airplane parts. Blake's job was to infiltrate the company to discover evidence that the company is a contract profiteer (using government money to buy supplies to make products for a competitor). After Blake locates proof, he drives back to Gulf City and reports it to his partner. When Blake returns home, he finds his wife has been murdered. Instead of calling the police, Blake runs smack-dab into another crime-noir plot of “innocent man on the run from the police after finding a corpse.”  

In this average Whittington novel, Blake is determined to locate his wife's murderer. The suspect list includes his partner, his wife's former lover, and Arrenhower's CEO. As Blake dodges the law, he becomes the primary target for a motivated police lieutenant. When the net tightens, Blake runs to Jacksonville to escape hired gunmen. Fast cars, a seductress, an ex-fighter, and corporate fraud all prove to be real highlights of Whittington's plot. The emotional, moral centric theme is personal loss and sworn vengeance. 

At 150 pages, the book's pace is just too quick to really allow readers to settle into the story. Cheers to Whittington for keeping it breezy, but I wanted to learn more about Blake's involvement with Arrenhower and his backstory as a former homicide detective.

Mourn the Hangman proves that Whittington was still perfecting his storytelling skills in the early 1950s. By 1955, Whittington had nearly 20 full-length, original novels on his resume, including many written under pseudonyms. His catalog varies and this novel is just another Whittington book, nothing more, nothing less. 

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The Big Bounce

Between 1953 and 1961, Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) authored his first five career novels and all were westerns. Leonard played his first hand of crime-fiction in 1966 with a relatively unknown novel called The Big Bounce. He shopped it to a variety of publishers and they all declined. In 1969, Fawcett Gold Medal published the book simply because it had been adapted to film the same year starring Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young. The movie was a flop, so Hollywood tried again in 2004 with a cast including Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, and Charlie Sheen. It was such a disaster that Leonard described it as the “second-worst movie ever made”, alluding to the fact that the first one was the worst. Despite the publication and theatrical horror associated with The Big Bounce, I decided to read it. I wish I had those hours back.

The book begins with three men watching a video tape of migrant worker Jack Ryan (no relation to Tom Clancy) executing a home-run swing with a baseball bat on his crew leader's face. Readers later learn that Ryan was a former Baseball Player and has now spiraled down the labor ladder to the position of Seasonal Picker of Cucumbers in a lakeside region of Michigan. Ryan and acquaintances (he never had friends) rob a lake-house and steal $750 from wallets and purses. Ryan fears that the other guys will get caught simply because the box they placed the wallets and purses could be found.

After being fired from his job for smashing the foreman with the bat, Ryan is hired as a Handyman by a resort owner named Mr. Majestyk (oddly, no relation to the character Leonard created five years later). Ryan spends time in his new position avoiding an average-looking female guest who desperately wants to get lai....wants to have her window fixed. Ryan hooks up with Nancy instead, a young seductress who is banging two men, one of which is the owner of the cucumber farm. Ryan and Nancy run around shooting glass objects while planning to steal the payroll money from the farm.

I have no Earthly idea why anyone in Hollywood wanted to make a film from this novel. Or, why anyone would want to attempt it again. The book is mindless with its lack of plot structure and features one of the most uninteresting protagonists I've read. I nearly gave up reading it twice, but just kept pushing onward out of respect for Elmore Leonard. There isn't anything remotely compelling about the story, the character development, pace, or dialogue. If you must read everything Leonard wrote, then I guess you owe it to yourself to experience the good and the bad. Beyond that, avoid this book!

Buy a copy of the book HERE

Innocent Wanton (aka Young Nurse Desmond/Student Nurse)

Peggy Gaddis Dern (Erolie Pearl Gaddis, 1895-1966) used pseudonyms like Georgia Craig, Joan Sherman, Perry Lindsay, and Peggy Gaddis to author romance novels and nurse fiction throughout the mid 20th century. Her first published work was erotic and racy novels printed by the lowly publisher Godwin in 1935. In the 1940s, she began to be published by Phoenix Press, Gramercy, and Arcadia. Prior to her death, Belmont and other publishers began reprinting her sexy romance novels to entice nurse-fiction fans. A great example is Young Nurse Desmond, published by Belmont in 1963. This novel was originally titled Innocent Wanton and published by Phoenix Press in 1950 under Dern's pseudonym, Gail Jordan. It was also printed under the title Student Nurse by Uni-Book as Digest Paperback #37.

Innocent Wanton is a sexy, juvenile delinquent style novel about a young girl named Martha that loses her virginity to a celebrity playwright named Jordan. Martha isn't a nurse, but works as a trainee in the Happy Valley Nursing Home. I'm not even sure the book discloses her last name as Desmond. After providing some pills to Jordan (who is there voluntarily), she learns that he is in this facility due to a drinking problem. Jordan immediately falls in love with Martha and desires to have her. After he begs Martha to have dinner with him, he is able to cajole her into the back seat where he takes her innocence on the cold vinyl seat. 

Later, Jordan proposes to Martha, she says yes, and the two move to a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Martha quickly realizes that Jordan is a bit of a scumbag when she discovers that he has a girlfriend on the side. Risking the rewards of a robust alimony check, Martha bails on the marriage and rides a bus to the most overused locale in crime-noir history – the always reliable shore-front cottage in Small Town, Flordia. Her fierce independence doesn't last long when a man named Paul spots her bouncing out of the water. After “learning sex” from Jordan, Martha is determined to give her body to Paul in the most domineering way possible. However, Martha's problem is that Paul has a secret, a hidden connection to Jordan's past life. He is withholding information from her in hopes that she will be an easier lay. How can she escape these horny, secretive men and find true love?

The cover of Belmont's Young Nurse Desmond paperback, which again is the re-titled version of the earlier Innocent Wanton, states the book is about a young nurse's involvement with doctors, interns, and secret hospital affairs. The artwork clearly has the main character dressed as a nurse and leaving a general hospital. Does this sound like the same book? 

Unfortunately, Belmont and other publisher were notorious at cashing in on the hottest literary trends by reprinting prior novels. Dell probably made a great deal of money reprinting early mystery novels as Gothics in the 1960s and 1970s. In this case, Belmont is cashing in on nurse-fiction, a genre that Peggy Gaddis contributed to for 25+ years. By changing the author from Gail Jordan back to the marketable Peggy Gaddis name, and slapping a nurse on the cover, it probably swayed fans into believing this is a new release for the author.

This is my first experience with Peggy Dern and I mostly enjoyed the book. I have a tolerance for romance novels based on my love of Gothics and we've covered the romance-heavy slave Gothics (also known as plantation novels). The sex isn't graphic, but Martha was described in a voluptuous way that motivated me to learn more about her. Her torrid relationship with Jordan came to a satisfying conclusion and I genuinely enjoyed the rivalry between the lovers. I think if you enjoy juvenile delinquent-styled stories (Martha is 18-yrs of age) then you will probably find enough to like here. Innocent Wanton, aka Young Nurse Desmond, aka Student Nurse, is a lukewarm recommendation. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Barr Breed #02 - The Body Beautiful

While writing over 150 teleplays, Bill S. Ballinger (1912-1980) still had the opportunity to author nearly 30 novels. His crime-noir and detective fiction is still held in high regard, including two novels he wrote about a Chicago private-detective named Barr Breed. I read the first of these novels, The Body in the Bed (1948), and really enjoyed it. It was only a matter of time until I tracked down the sequel, The Body Beautiful. It was originally published by Signet in 1949 and was reprinted several times through the mid-1960s. 

As described in the first novel, Breed is a private-investigator that runs a staffing agency featuring detectives. His agency is employed by stores, banks, railroads, and any business or individual attempting to retrieve or prevent an economic loss. Often, these investigations eventually lead to murder. In The Body Beautiful, trouble lays its bothersome load right on Breed's front steps.

Breed and his friend Benny stop by the Marlowe Theater to view a traveling performance called The Golden Girls. Mostly, it's scantily clad beauties dancing while suspended in bird cages. After the titillating performance, Benny introduces Breed to one of the show's star performers, a knock-out named Coffee Stearns. During the awkward date, and subsequent awkward dates, Breed can't penetrate Coffee's social walls. But, once she realizes he's a detective, she lowers her guard and bra straps. The two kindle a relationship, but it's short-lived. During a performance, Coffee falls from one of the cages and plunges into the crowd. The cause of death? A knife in the back. 

Breed is torn up over the murder and wants to investigate free of charge. Like most of these crime-noir detective novels, Breed's police ally is Sergeant Cheenan with the Homicide Division. The two have a bitter relationship due to Breed's reckless abandonment outside of the law. But, Cheenan knows Breed is a relentless gumshoe, so he allows him a long leash. Before Breed starts the investigation, he receives a phone call from a man wanting to hire Breed. The job is worth $1,000 if Breed can confirm that Coffee Stearns was really a woman named Betty Anne Beals. Intrigued by the offer, Breed takes the case.

Ballinger was a tremendous talent and The Body Beautiful is another fine testament to his storytelling skills. I love this Breed character and the two-sided personality he possesses. Sometimes he's Mike Hammer screaming at everyone in the room and at other times he's just a wisecracking predecessor to 1950's Shell Scott. Like the first novel, Breed displays a ferocious fighting spirit, but prefers to rely on others to make mistakes or provide tiny clues that eventually lead to the mystery's resolution. 

While mostly saddled in Chicago, the book takes a jaunt to New York briefly. Through a cross-section of suspicious performers, Breed must interview everyone involved in the production and its past performances. I found the characters intriguing and the plot's twist and turns fascinating. The book's grand finale is a suspenseful chase scene through the empty theater as Breed is forced to match wits with the mysterious killer. 

If you enjoy these mid 20th century detective novels, then you will love The Body Beautiful. It's clever, suspenseful, funny, and hard-hitting. Unfortunately, this was the second and last appearance of this dynamic detective and that's a real shame. I wish Ballinger could have found a steady and consistent paycheck writing a series of Barr Breed novels. But, we only have these two works as a small glimpse of what might have been. 

Get the book HERE

Barge Girl

Stark House Press continues to reprint the original novels of New Jersey native Calvin Clements. During his life, Clements was in the Navy, served as a firefighter in New York City, and later perfected writing by contributing numerous scripts for television shows like Gunsmoke, How the West Was Won, and Dr. Kildare. Along with authoring short stories, he wrote four stand-alone paperbacks, two of which are paired together in a new Stark House two-in-one, Hell Ship to Kuma (1954) and Barge Girl (1953). I read and enjoyed Hell Ship to Kuma, as well as another of Clements' novels, Satan Takes the Helm (1952). Barge Girl was on my radar and thankfully has arrived in a gorgeous edition with an introduction by Timothy J. Lockhart (Smith, Pirates).

As a tugboat captain, Joe Baski tows barges around New York City. He's been on boats his whole life, including a sting as a quartermaster during WWII. But, his dream is to own a boat of his very own. Over the years, Baski has invested a few dollars every week to build what is ultimately a $50,000 boat. His next move is to quietly finish out his employment and then start his own charter business in the Florida Keys. Then came the “barge girl”, a married knockout named Stella.

When Joe first lays his eyes on Stella, he knows he must possess her. Stella's husband is much older, a weathered barge watchman that has become complacent with his boring existence. Stella wants more out of life, but feels an obligation to her husband. When she meets Joe, there is an instant attraction, a hot chemistry that refuses to burn out. Joe needs Stella for the next phase of his life and Stella wants to go, but is fighting an inner urge to be a devoted wife. 

Without spoiling your enjoyment, Clements successfully combines a love story with a suspenseful death, set against the backdrop of the 1950s shipping business. Like his prior novels, Clements still offers readers technical lessons on freighters and barges, but it doesn't distract from what amounts to be a thrilling narrative as Joe and Stella wade the waters of seduction and deceit. Fans of police procedural novels may enjoy the book's finale, complete with a pesky and thorough insurance investigator. 

Overall, Clements is simply masterful and remains one of the most frustrating authors of the mid 20th century. With only four novels to his name, readers deserved so much more than what he produced. Thankfully, I still have one more Clements novel to read, Dark Night of Love (1956) and at least 14 short-stories, all of which have been listed in the Clements bibliography at the back of Stark House's reprint. 

Buy a copy of the book HERE.

Woman Hunter

Lorenz Heller (1910-1965) wrote three books for a digest-size paperback house called Falcon Books using the pseudonym Laura Hale. Stark House Press has reprinted two of them, so I started with the 1952 dramatic heist novel, Woman Hunter.

Marty Doyle is a boxer who is hiding out in a fleabag apartment in Newark, New Jersey. A couple days earlier, he was supposed to take a dive in the ring but failed to do so. Now he has a pissed off mobster looking for his head, and the only thing that can make it square is to reimburse the mobster the $15,000 he lost betting on the fight.

Marty’s manager is an old-timer named Chuffy who knows a thing or two about both sides of the law. Chuffy wants to pay the mobster the fifteen grand to get Marty back in the ring and working toward a lucrative title shot. Chuffy doesn’t have many marketable skills, but he’s really, really good with guns.

Through his own underworld connections, Chuffy falls in with a heist crew looking to pull a big-money armored car job and lands Marty a gig as the getaway driver. The catch is that Chuffy and Marty need to hide out with the other crew members in a remote cabin before the job, so nothing goes sideways with any of the human resources.

As an author, Heller always puts a lot of energy into fully developing his characters. It was important to him that the reader understands everyone’s motivations. In a 180-page paperback, that can come at the expense of plot and action. That’s the problem with Woman Hunter. The set-up is super-interesting, but it quickly devolves into too much soapy romantic drama. A violent gun-filled conclusion was unable to save this snooze of a novel.

I stand by my assertion that Lorenz Heller is an unsung hero of crime fiction from the paperback-original era, but Woman Hunter isn’t the top-of-the-heap. Stark House is to be commended by bringing Heller’s work back to life, but this one can be safely skipped. 

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Macabre Manor

Based on a small sample size, the Gothics that I've read from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s have teased a supernatural element. The covers and taglines always suggest that the big mansion or castle contains a ghost or spirit haunting a beautiful woman. The finale fizzles out to be a scorned lover or disenchanted relative that suddenly becomes greedy and secretive. It was conventional style that is reminiscent of the shudder pulps of the early 20th century. At the beginning of the 1974 Manor book Macabre Manor, authored by Elizabeth Grayson, the protagonist appears to be tormented by a demon. Is the terrifying demon real or just a figment of her twisted imagination? Needing to resolve this important question, I jumped into this 190 page vintage paperback. 

Joyce has recently married Philip Hammond and moved into his family's mansion on the Caribbean island of  St Michael. After a walk on the beach, Joyce is visited by a demon calling himself a French man named Jean Pierre. He appears to Joyce as a “zombie” and slowly begins to demand things from her. After Joyce suffers a nervous breakdown, she is hospitalized and treated for anxiety. The Hammond family feels that Joyce isn't really interacting with a demon, instead she's suffering from fatigue and her new surroundings. When the demon asks Joyce to poison her father-in-law, the book begins to delve into a criminal conspiracy involving a bank and illegal gambling. 

Macabre Manor is merely an average Gothic novel with the traditional genre tropes – inheritance, wealthy family, supernatural sprinkles, and a vulnerable female embarking on a dark mental journey. According to Goodreads, Elizabeth Kary used the pseudonym Elizabeth Grayson to author a number of historical romance novels. However, based on my research, I can't verify if this author is the same one that wrote two other Gothic novels in the 1970s for Manor Books – By Demon's Possessed (1973) and Token of Evil (1974). Based on the quality of Macabre Manor, I'm in no hurry to find out. 

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Frisco Flat

According to Cutting Edge, author Stuart James grew up in rural Pennsylvania and at 15 went to work as a sports reporter for the Delaware Valley Advance. He sold his first story in 1951 to a pulp magazine and later became a staff writer for True and Popular Mechanics. While writing original paperbacks, James became an editor for Midwood Books, a subsidiary of Tower Publications that focused on adult romance novels with lurid covers. It was here that two of James' novels were published, The Devil's Workshop (org. title Bucks County Report (1961) and Judge Not My Sins (1961). Lee Goldberg's Cutting Edge has reprinted four Stuart James' novels including Frisco Flat, originally published in 1960 by Monarch. 

After a short career in boxing, Frankie Cargo receives a letter from a friend suggesting that he comes back home. Home is Frisco Flat, a fishing community off the California coast where Frankie grew up. Frankie learns that his father has died and a man named Sam Barlow now controls a majority of the town's industry. Frankie then discovers that his childhood home is now being occupied by a gorgeous squatter named Tosca, the girlfriend of the town's law-enforcement officer. Frankie gets in a fight with the officer and realizes coming home to Frisco Flat was a very poor decision.

Frankie's father left him a great fishing boat, but Barlow wants to buy it. By owning the boat, he will have a complete monopoly on the fishing industry. Frankie has other plans and borrows money to repair the boat and get it to sea. After days of hot, stinky fishing, Frankie's ton of fish should net him a solid profit to build the business back. But, someone working for Barlow shoots up Frankie's boat, thus sinking the vessel and Frankie's livelihood into the ocean depths. However, Barlow's men don't realize that Frankie grabbed something extremely valuable to them, a package worth a million dollars to the highest bidder.

Based on the book's original cover art, I was expecting it to be a romance novel. Instead, it is a gritty, fast-paced crime-noir with lots of traditional genre tropes – criminal empire, the unlikely hero, beautiful women, a heist, and violence. Lots of violence. Frankie's transformation from the town pushover to the defiant hero was such a pleasure to read. I found that James storytelling presented itself like a good screenplay, which makes sense considering he spent a majority of his career in Hollywood on scripts and treatments. There are two hot romances for Frankie, but James doesn't dwell on it. Instead, he pushes the narrative into a crescendo of vengeance that was reminiscent of a western yarn.

However, Frisco Flat isn't terribly original. In fact, it bears a lot of similarity to Edward S. Aarons' 1953 novel The Net. In that story, Barney is a prizefighter that receives a letter from his brother asking him to return to his hometown. The town is a small coastal village where Barney's brother and father own a fishing business. Barney's father has been killed and a town bully named Hurd wants to buy out the family business. When Barney refuses, violence rises to the occasion. Sound familiar?

Obviously, James probably read Aarons' book that was published seven years earlier. But, despite the similarities and borrowed storyline, Frisco Flat was terrific. The romantic angle, character arc, and the surprises were worth the price of admission. If you enjoy great crime-noir literature of the mid 20th century, then you'll absolutely enjoy this book. Cutting Edge made a fine choice by adding Stuart James to their already impressive catalog of classic authors. Frisco Flat proves it in spades. 

Buy the book HERE

Valdez is Coming

Thus far, I've enjoyed everything Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) has written. From westerns like Escape from Five Shadows (1956) and Last Stand at Saber River (1959) to crime-fiction like Mr. Majestyk (1974). Arguably, one of his best western novels is Valdez is Coming. It was originally published in 1971 and was adapted into a 1974 movie starring Burt Lancaster. 

The novel features Bob Valdez as a constable working in Arizona in the late 1800s. After riding shotgun for a stagecoach, Valdez returns to town to discover several armed cattlemen surrounding a small farm. The group is led by a hardheaded, wealthy rancher named Tanner and a gunman named Davis. Tanner claims that he recognized the farmer, an African-American, as a man who murdered a friend of his years ago. Valdez questions the validity of Tanner's accusation and is dismayed by the vigilante justice that was set to occur. 

After Valdez questions Tanner, he walks through the circling guns to visit the farmer directly, eye to eye, and learns that the man may be completely innocent of the crime and has paperwork that proves a solid alibi. But, Davis refuses to idly stand by and impatiently fires at the farmer. In the exchange, Valdez fatally shoots the farmer. Once the gun smoke clears, Tanner examines the corpse and admits that he made a mistake and this wasn't the same man.

Mournfully, Valdez wants Tanner to pay the farmer's pregnant widow $500 as compensation for wrongfully killing her husband. He mentions it to the men and they ride away. When Valdez rides into Tanner's camp to ask for the money, he is ridiculed, shot at and ordered to stay away. Refusing to accept no for an answer, Valdez attempts asking again, this time riding to Tanner's ranch to make the request. It’s here that Valdez is violently tied to a wooden cross and cruelly forced to walk miles through the desert. After being rescued, Valdez contemplates his next move; accept defeat and carry on or continue the pursuit despite the odds. 

Leonard's novel centers around a character arc as Valdez slowly changes into the buckskin version of his younger self. Throughout the book, Valdez thinks about his prior life - a history of violence – and ponders his complacency in the present as a constable. Tanner's action is like a toggle switch for Valdez's transformation. The violence, emotional turbulence, and romantic angle – surprisingly, it has one – balances the hero's cool demeanor. While never a coward, Valdez still possesses reserved tendencies that ultimately make him weaker in the book's first and second acts. 

Leonard's storytelling prowess is awe-inspiring as he makes this rather simple story explode into an emotional and violent battlefield. There is clearly a reader investment – no matter if you are a western fan or not – that leads to a satisfying conclusion despite some negativity that is associated with the book's finale. I like the way Leonard finished the novel and found that the story didn't require a traditional ending. The “cowboy riding off into the sunset” conclusion may have tarnished Leonard's narrative.  Instead, it's simply a conventional western until it isn't. And that is what makes Valdez is Coming a masterpiece of the genre. 

Get the book HERE

The Short Stories of John M. Sitan

 A recent Facebook posting in one of my book groups wondered if John M. Sitan was an alias of another writer, such as Jonathan Craig or Gil Brewer, also writing stories for Manhunt at the same time. I had no idea myself, so I did some homework to find out more about this shadowy author.

By way of background, Sitan authored only three short stories in Manhunt and then disappeared as a writer. According to The Manhunt Companion by Peter Enfantino and Jeff Vorzimmer, Sitan wrote the following stories for Manhunt in three consecutive months during 1954:

“My Enemy, My Father” – June 1954
“Confession” – July 1954
“Accident” – August 1954

Enfantino and Vorzimmer review all three stories favorably in the guide, but they single out “Confession” as something special. The story of a serial sniper (reviewed below) was selected by editor David C. Cooke for inclusion in his 1955 Best Detective Stories of the Year anthology. Vorzimmer later featured the story in his curated The Best of Manhunt 2 compilation from Stark House Press released in 2020.

I searched far and wide for any indication that Sitan’s work was ever published elsewhere and found nothing. The guy apparently sold three stories to Manhunt and then nothing else, so it’s not crazy to wonder if he was a pseudonym or a house name.

As fun as it would have been to unmask the pen-name of John M. Sitan, a few minutes of internet sleuthing revealed that he was, in fact, a real guy.

John McElroy Sitan was born on May 1, 1925 in Longview, Washington. He served in the U.S. Army during World War 2 from 1943 to 1946. Upon his return to Washington State, he began a 30-year career as a technical writer for Boeing. It was while he was gainfully-employed by Boeing that he decided to do some non-technical writing for the top hardboiled crime digest at the time, Manhunt.

For reasons unclear to me, he never caught the bug to continue his side-hustle as a fiction writer. Instead, he and his wife Hazel focused on getaways to a cabin John built himself on Mount Index and traveling the world on vacations following his retirement. The couple never had children, and John died on November 9, 2012. His limited contributions to the world of hardboiled crime fiction would have been lost to the ages but for a renewed interest in Manhunt spurred on by Stark House Books, Enfantino, Vorzimmer, and Paperback Warrior.

Copies of Manhunt are rare and prohibitively expensive, so mere mortals are forced to leverage modern short story anthologies that reprint the greatest hits from the legendary digest. As such, I’m left with only one resource to read Sitan’s work - the second volume of The Best of Manhunt from Stark House Books, where I found Sitan’s only enduring story, “Confession” from July 1954.

“Confession” is the story of a sniper named John Egan. As the story opens, Egan is pulling the trigger on his scoped and silenced rifle that results in a nurse’s head exploding as the round penetrates her skull on the street below. Egan is not a paid assassin. He’s a factory worker who happens to be a crackerjack shot with a long gun. He’s basically a serial killer before there was a term for such things.

When he takes to the road, the reader gains insight into Egan’s real motivations. Sadly, our modern society has become accustomed to mass killers without conscience. However, when Manhunt published Sitan’s story, it must have been a chilling peek behind the curtain of a remorseless psychopath. The ending was a bit abrupt to me, but it was a satisfying story in line with the dark fiction that made Manhunt great.

Despite his minimal contribution to the catalog of American crime fiction, John M. Sitan was a unique voice who deserves to be remembered. It would be nice to see his other two stories find a modern audience in a future anthology.

Buy The Manhunt Companion HERE:
Buy The Best of Manhunt 2 HERE:

Sin in Their Blood

Sin in Their Blood is a 1952 hardboiled crime paperback by under-appreciated author Ed Lacy (real name: Leonard Zinberg, 1911-1968) that remains available today as a reprint. 

Our narrator is Matt Ranzino. He’s a musclebound former boxer, cop and tough-guy private detective who set his practice aside to fight in the Korean War. While serving overseas, he suffered a head wound that almost killed him and contracted a case of tuberculosis that landed him in a hospital bed for 11 months. He’s now back in his unnamed hometown looking to rebuild his life with no money or job. 

His first stop is to visit his old PI partner, Harry. While Matt was overseas, Harry’s business really took off when Harry discovered the lucrative business of blackmailing businesses into allowing Harry to screen their employees for Commies. Harry offers Matt a job with his new Red-Scare firm, but Matt declines. 

Matt’s time in the hospital left him with a scarred lung that could burst open and kill him if he gets involved with any rough stuff, so he really wants to take it easy and live off his military pension. Because that wouldn’t make for much of a mystery novel, Matt finds himself at a crime scene where he is cajoled into investigating the murder of a dead socialite for a lofty fee of $50 per day. 

Once Matt has the gig, we have a rather typical private eye mystery - albeit with a rather exhausted and fragile hero at the helm. Ed Lacy was at the top of his writing game in 1952 when he authored Sin in Their Blood. The story moves along at a great clip, and the characters are all vividly drawn and interesting. It’s a conventional mystery tale, but it’s also the story of a shattered war hero regaining his confidence after the trauma of combat. 

There’s also a damn fine love story featuring a unique female character among the tough-guy patter and fisticuffs. I’ve enjoyed the romantic elements in other Lacy books, but this one is the tops. 

Overall, we have a fairly perfect private-eye yarn that deserves to be remembered. I’m happy to do my part by reviewing it. Now go do yours by reading it. 

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Phantom Manor

Author William Edward Daniel Ross (1912-1995) specialized in gothic paperbacks of the 60s and 70s. Using a variety of pseudonyms, the Canadian writer authored over 50 stand-alone gothics as well as an abundance of novels related to the television show Dark Shadows. My experience with the author is the gothic titles written under the pseudonym Marilyn Ross. After enjoying his 1965 novel Fog Island, I decided to read Phantom Manor. It was published just a year later by Paperback Library with the allure of another vulnerable beauty trapped in a mansion shrouded in evil. 

Phantom Manor is set in the late 1800s and stars a Philadelphia woman named Jan. She finds herself financially strapped when her sick father passes away. Her immediate relative is a grandfather living in England, an aggressive man that had an estranged relationship with Jan's mother. Before Jan's mother died, she swore that she would never return to her family's fog-shrouded Phantom Manor. But, Jan wants to know more about her family and sends a letter to her grandfather explaining her father’s recent passing. Her grandfather responds with an urgent invitation for Jan to finally visit her family home.

The family's robust estate is a coastline manor situated on a small peninsula. When the tide rises, the only road leading from the estate to the village is enveloped in seawater. This is an important part of the book's finale and also lends some isolation to the book's narrative. Upon Jan's arrival at the manor, she discovers that her grandfather had died from health complications prior to her visit. She also learns that one of her uncles is now deceased and another has ran off to Australia chasing women and good fortune. He hasn't been heard from in decades and most fear he is now dead. Remaining is the estate's staff, the dead uncle's widow, her disabled son, and a distant cousin that serves as the manager of the manor. With no immediate relatives available, the grandfather named Jan as the sole heiress of Phantom Manor. 

Jan learned that years ago (and recapped in the book's prologue) that her grandfather and a nearby monk order had feuded over land rights. It was rumored that the feud led to the death of a monk named Francis. Supposedly, Phantom Manor's third floor is haunted by the monk's vengeful ghost. Oddly, the estate staff has Jan's lodgings on the third floor. Needless to say, she's immediately attacked by this skeleton specter. Later, she falls to an unseen attacker in the house's wine cellar and is also nearly crushed by a large falling stone outside. After multiple attempts on her life, she begins to align herself with the family attorney. Together, the two suspects that the dashing and handsome distant cousin (the only family member remaining alive) could be the mysterious attacker (you think!?!).

Phantom Manor is rather dull with a bulk of the narrative spent on Jan's relationship with the distant cousin and her new role as the manor's sole heir – learning the staff, new instructions for the staff, fighting with the staff, firing the staff, etc. It's like reading a human resources guide on running a mansion. I didn't find any of it particularly spooky and mostly it was missing the atmospheric touches that made Ross's Fog Island work so well. I did enjoy the crime-mystery aspect of the book's closing finale, but I had already figured it out in the book's opening chapters.  

Overall, there are hundreds and hundreds of these gothic paperbacks. There's no reason to spend any of your precious time reading this. 

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The Cooler

George Markstein (1926-1987) was a Canadian-born British journalist and television writer best known for his work scripting the TV show The Prisoner. He was also an author of espionage thrillers, including his first novel, The Cooler, from 1974.

The Cooler takes place during World War 2 in 1944 England. The British employ an obscure spy agency known as the Inter Services Research Bureau for incursions into Nazi territory - mostly France - for assassinations and sabotage. The novel follows three spies - two Brits and one German. Here are the players:

James Loach is a seasoned spy in London. The day before he is to embark on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France, he learns that his team, already there, has largely disappeared. The last message that London receives from the team’s radio operator instructs Loach not to join them because of the imminent danger. As such, Loach is sidelined in London awaiting word on the fate of his team, and he gets into some trouble at home. Weird trouble. Kinky trouble. Sending a violent sex maniac like Loach on another mission in France just isn’t an option.

We also meet Claire. She’s a sexy trainee in the secret agent saboteur program learning how to infiltrate, fight and kill Germans with Ninja-like skills. Her training sequences were among the best I’ve read in adventure fiction. The problem is that maybe Claire is just a little too violent and unsuitable for the subtle work of spy tradecraft. Until the agency figures out how to use her, she is also benched. That’s where she meets Loach - in a remote holding facility for wayward spies called The Cooler.

Finally, we meet a German spy named Grau operating in London with false identity papers. His mission in London — I won’t spoil it here — is really, really clever. Any reader of spy fiction will be able to appreciate the ingenuity of the author’s inclusion of this storyline.

Markstein takes his sweet time introducing the principals and putting them in their places before the plot takes shape. That’s the problem. It takes forever for a storyline to develop. For what it’s worth, I was never bored because the characters were all vividly-drawn, seriously-flawed intel officers. But at some point, all these great characters need to actually do something, and that doesn’t happen until the very end.

It turns out there is someone spying for Germany from inside The Cooler, and the book quickly becomes a whodunnit. None of this really worked very well despite some fine writing. The ending felt rushed, and the solution was anticlimactic. I’m not giving up on Markstein as an author, but this debut needed some serious reworking before it was released for public consumption.

Bottom Line: Time is a precious commodity. Don’t bother with this one. 

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