$5 SALE at STARK HOUSE PRESS!

It's true! Stark House is having a Warehouse Sale, and selected titles (these and about ten others) are now available for only FIVE BUCKS, with shipping included. Check 'em out HERE. 

Forgotten Books: WAR OF THE DONS by Peter Rabe (1972)

Some years back I read a fine Stark House duo by this guy, Kill the Boss Good-by and Mission for Vengeance, and talked about one of them HERE. I was an instant Peter Rabe fan. Then came the Manny DeWitt trilogy, Girl in a Big Brass Bed, The Spy Who was Three Feet Tall and Code Name: Gadget, all of which failed to float my boat. And I was no longer so sure. 

Now comes War of the Dons, back from the dead in another Stark House volume, and I'm a Rabe fan again. This one originally appeared in 1972, sixteen years after Kill the Boss Good-by and five to seven years after the DeWitt stuff, and shows a mature, truly accomplished writer at the top of his form. Unfortunately, as Rick Ollerman's Intro tells us, this book and it's Stark House mate Black Mafia were the last two published under Rabe's own name, and in his own style. Now I'm bummed again. 

War of the Dons was published (and apparently written) in the wake of the Godfather frenzy. Whether Rabe was at influence by Puzo is doubtful, but the connection probably helped sell a few more copies, which is a good thing. 

There are two real Dons here, one current and one retired, along with a sort of mini-Don and three mini-Don wannabes. The current Don is a pragmagtic guy, willing to work with just about anyone who can keep his money machine operating smoothly. The retired Don cherishes the old traditions, misses the action, and wants back in. The min-Don gets lazy, ceding too much authority to mini-Don wannabes, and pays the price, setting up an intricate battle for control of his regime. 

Though this is an ensemble cast, the characters we spend the most time with are the wannabes, the Guarda brothers Marco, Nuncio and Pepe. Marco, the most level-headed, is the natural leader, while Nuncio is a semi-competent weasel and Pepe is a brutal, ignorant dope. As the story plays out, we find them working sometimes together, sometimes at cross-purposes and sometimes in direct oppostion as they strive to hold on to their crumbling regime. 

The plot is intricate, the characters are complex, the dialogue is tough and the prose is everything you could ask for. There are a lot of good lines, but one of my favorites tells of a Los Angeles neighborhood has "all the charm of greasy dishes." 

How many of the tough guys in this book will come out alive? Not many. But you'll have to read it yourself to sort the living from the dead. 

Forgotten Books: BILL CRIDER'S Intro to The Body Looks Familiar / The Late Mrs.Five by Richard Wormser

I've been reading this book, and it's mighty damn good. Bill Crider said pretty much the same thing (far more eruditely, and with a lot more words) in the Introduction he wrote last September for this new Stark House edition. So I'm going to shut up and let Bill tell you about it. (The fingers in these pics belong to my wife Irene, and if they're dirty it's because I interrupted her gardening to hold the book.) 

Stark House does it again: THE BROKEN ANGEL / BACKFIRE by Floyd Mahanna

Once again, Stark House makes me feel dumb by reprinting classic noir fiction by a writer I don't know. I did see the old Pocket Book cover once on Bill Crider's blog, though. No surprise there. Bill knew tons of stuff I don't and never will. Anyway, It's nice to finally meet this Mahannah guy.

A New/Old One from Stark House: FRENZY OF EVIL by Henry Kane

Here's a good-lookin' new entry in the Black Gat line from Stark House Press, originally published in 1963. I'm ashamed to admit I never got around to reading Henry Kane, or Frank Kane, either. Looks like it's time I did. Thanks once again to Greg Shephard at Stark House for keeping the classic noir flame burning.  

Forgotten Books: FLIGHT TO DARKNESS by Gil Brewer (1952)

Programming Note: Our ongoing extravaganza, BILL CRIDER goes to BOUCHERCON will continue tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can catch up on the first 9 installments (bringing us up to 2005) HERE.

Gil Brewer is one of those '50s noir guys (like Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Orrie Hitt and others) who've been highly recommended to me for years, but I never got around to reading. I have handfuls of musty paperbacks by each buried somewhere in my storage unit. 

So lately I've been reading a lot of historical fiction (Swords from the West by Harold Lamb, Sharpe's Fury by Bernard Cornwell, The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott, Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and Manassas and Shiloh by General James Reasoner) and was in the mood for something different when a review copy of a new Stark House book, featuring two Brewer novels, appeared in my mailbox. So I read the first, and this is it.

Gotta say, I'm impressed with Brewer's prose. His descriptions of Leda--this book's evil babe--were so good I took notes, and here are some of the results:

She came up to me and her eyes were full of hell.

She was an orgy of loveliness.

Sometimes when she talked and moved she kissed you with her whole body.

She was the type you might wonder about having a knife sheathed in the rim of her stocking. 

She was a complete savage, bursting with passion, lustful, wanton, wild. At first, it was like drinking hot red wine. Then the whole world shuddered and rock, with the trees thick and mingled with her hair and the smell of it with the shade, a dark blinding explosion. 

She managed to wiggle into what was left of her shorts. They made her look like something highly delectable out of Dogpatch. 

(She) was like having warm syrup poured over your head, hot down your sides, flowing along the veins. 

Feeling her was like touching a living flame. 

As you'll see on the back cover of this new Stark House edition, both Cullen Gallagher and James Reasoner had nice things to say about the book. Bill Crider liked it too, saying: Leda is as bad as they come, and Eric is just as driven as he is. When it comes to depicting people like this, all rough edges and raw emotion, Brewer comes close to his friend Harry Whittington.  Both can grab a reader on the first page and wring him out for a couple of hundred more.  If you like the old paperbacks with their fast action and blue-collar desperation, grab this new edition and give Brewer a try.

Now, I have the highest regard for the opinions of those three gents, and if they all liked it, odds are you will too. But it just ain't for me. I like my protagonists, whether good guys or bad, to be strong-willed and intelligent. Our hero in this one, Eric Garth, may or may not be crazy (he dreams of bashing his brother's head in with a mallet), and spends much of the book in a sanitarium. He's a mental and emotional weakling, and just gets weaker as the story plods on. 

A hero needs a fistful of trouble, of course, but I want to see him trying to battle his way out. Instead, this guy gets crapped on, crapped on some more, and keeps on getting crapped on until he's buried in it. He whines a little and blusters a lot, but just keeps on taking it, and I found him to be just as stupid and spineless after 130 pages as he was on page 1. 

There are still 25 pages left to go, so maybe Eric Garth will grow a pair and redeem himself, but for me, it's too late. I don't like anything about him, don't feel sorry for him, and don't care if he lives or dies.  

To clear my palate, I think I'll read another story in that Harold Lamb book. Hopefully 77 Rue Paradis will be more to my taste. 

Forgotten Books: A NOOSE FOR THE DESPERADO by Clifton Adams (1951)

In Desperado (reviewed HERE) (no relation to the song I don't like), we saw how "Tall" Cameron ran afoul of the scallywags and carpetbaggers ruling his Texas home town, rode the owlhoot trail under the expert tutelage of notorious outlaw Pappy Garret, and had his hopes of returning to his old life and love shattered.

It's now a month later. Tall is on his own now, and resigned to his fate. He hardly ever thinks of that little gal and that little Texas town anymore, except when he's forced to. 

In the first book, Tall was riding all over creation, learning things and regretting things and killing people dead. But this time, except for a few forays into the desert, takes place in the little border town of Ocotillo, Texas, where all the habitants, aside from the ruling class of gringo outlaws, appears to be Mexican (or, in today's jargon, undocumented aliens). 

The Boss of Ocotillo has a sweet racket. Granting refuge to wanted badmen (hence the presence of Tall Cameron) gets him a large and vicious gang ready to do his bidding - which is to ambush, rob and murder smugglers bringing stuff up from Mexico.

Tall, being a basically good guy, doesn't like it much, but has little choice. To make things tougher on him, he meets a rundown drunk who serves as his conscience, and a wide-eyed young Texan who idolizes him. Unlike Tall, this kid still has a chance to return to his gal and his law-abiding life. 

He also meets a hellcat in the form of a hot young senorita. This femme fatale situation seems to be the typical Gold Medal temptress who leads the protagonist to his doom, but Adams twist expectations by giving Tall the determination to fend her off and use her for his own purposes.

While I enjoyed Desperado, I liked this one even better. That's likely because all the coming-of-age and apprentice-outlaw business was out of the way, and Tall could get right down to the tough stuff. It's also more cinematic. I felt like I was reading a movie. Desperado was made into a film, so why not this one? Attention filmmakers: It ain't too late!

This book is full of great hard-boiled lines. Some samples:

His lips were red and raw-looking, like an incision in a piece of liver.

Anger swarmed all over me like a prairie fire.

Looking into his eyes were like looking into the windows of a deserted house.

Bama's eyes were twin, silent screams for whisky. 

Their heads turned toward the door as if they had been jerked on a string.

He looked about as excited as a dead armadillo.

His eyes popped out as if they had been punched from behind with a pool cue.

He was traveling the road to hell on a fast horse.

Somebody had gone to Austin and brought the capitol building to Arizona and tied it on my back.

He couldn't have been more pleased if I had handed him Texas with a fence around it.

Made me wish Adams had written more adventures of Tall Cameron. But he didn't. There are only these two, and they're available now from Stark House.

Forgotten Books: THE SPY WHO WAS 3 FEET TALL by Peter Rabe

There's a good novelette in here somewhere. Trouble is, it's smothered in a lot of extra words meant to market it as a novel. That's what happened back in 1966, when it was published by Gold Medal, and it will be happening again this month in a Manny deWitt Omnibus from Stark House Press. 

When I read the first deWitt novel, Girl in a Big Brass Bed (discussed HERE), it took me a long time to settle in and appreciate Rabe's slow pace and odd sense of humor. This time I was ready for it, and the first thirty pages went pretty well. 

DeWitt is sent by his quirky international multi-industrialist boss, Hans Lobbe, to handle legal details for the building of a road in the fresh new African nation of Motana. But he soon learns there are people who don't want him to get there, let alone get that road built. And that's where, for me, the story bogged down in a lot of nicely written but pointless captures and escapes.

Bored, I had to start another book, Steward Edward White's The Long Rifle, which begins the saga of Andy Burnett (you'll hear more about that anon), and slog through this one a few pages at a time until it caught my interest again. 

That happened about forty pages from the end, when deWitt finally gets an inkling of what's going on, and who the real players are in the story. 

DeWitt stumbling around in the dark seems to be the point of this series. His boss, Lobbe, won't tell him why he's there, or who his enemies might be, or what the implications of his success or failure are. All this, I guess, is meant to be the mystery, as deWitt (and the hapless reader) struggle to figure it out. Near the end, things finally started popping, and came to a reasonably satisfying finish. But it was a rocky trip.

I was expecting good things, being there was a Spy in the title. But he was a letdown. Yeah, we meet an annoying little 3-foot Motanian, but he's not really a spy. He's just there for the occasional not-quite-funny joke, and to participate in some of the pointless captures and escapes. The book would have been better without him.  

The novelette I referred to reminded me of one of the wartime stories Richard Sale wrote for The Saturday Evening Post. And Rabe's cockeyed portrayal of corrupt Motana reminded me of Norbert Davis's Mexico in The Mouse in the Mountain. But Sale was more compelling, and Davis much funnier.

I have it on reliable authority that the third and last Manny deWitt novel, Code Name Gadget, goes easy on the attempted humor and gets down to business. I'm hoping that's so.

Forgotten Books: GIRL IN A BIG BRASS BED by Peter Rabe (1956)

Confession time. I didn’t really read the 1965 Gold Medal edition shown here. I read the first novel in the review copy of the Manny deWitt Omnibus (containing Girl in a Big Brass Bed, The Spy Who was 3 Feet Tall, and Code Name Gadget), due to be published next month by Stark House Press (and shown way down below).

I didn’t know what to think at first. The Peter Rabe books I’d read before were crime novels. They were tough and fast moving. Girl in the Big Brass Bed is about a lawyer involved into the world of international big business. It tries to be funny, and the humor slows the pace. So at first, I wasn’t liking it much.

But it grew on me. The trick, as Rick Ollerman reveals in the Introduction, is to slow down and take it as it comes. Once I curbed my impatience, I began to enjoy the story, get into Rabe’s style, and appreciate some of the humor. So it ended up a very enjoyable read, and I’m looking forward to the next in the series.

The plot involves a Vermeer painting called “Apple Girl,” stolen during the war by Hermann Goering. (This is not the same Vermeer you’ll find online as “Apple Girl with a Pearl Earring,” and is probably fictional.) Manny deWitt’s eccentric and somewhat crazy boss sends him to Munich to bring it back, under extremely secretive and unusual circumstances. Once there, deWitt starts behaving more like a secret agent than a lawyer, which is surely a good thing, and the story moves on to Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

Several mysterious individuals in and out of the art world, and representing (or acting in spite) of various governmental agencies, are after the painting, which may or may not be genuine. This results in murder, mayhem and assorted other crimes, with a little time on the side for romance.

DeWitt develops into an intriguing character, often at odds with his boss, but plowing ahead and getting to the truth anyway. And the truth turns out to be pretty cool.

The title, I’m guessing, was wholly the invention of the publisher, and leaves me wondering what Rabe's title was. There’s a brass bed mentioned, and a girl who sleeps in it, but if there was any sex I don’t remember it (and I finished it yesterday), and certainly no nudity or provocative behavior. It was more on the chaste side. It’s sort of a shock that Gold Medal published it anyway.

My takes on deWitt’s follow-up adventures will be coming soon.

Forgotten Books: BIG RED'S DAUGHTER and TOKYO DOLL by John McPartland

Somehow, John McPartland slipped under my radar. He wrote thirteen novels back in the ‘50s, and I’d never heard of him until I got this book. But Jeez, it was worth the wait. This guy was a hell of a writer.

These two novels are extremely different in cast in setting, but have several things in common. Both are narrated by first-person tough guys, and the prose is top notch. Both narrators are good with their fists and enjoy using them, even when they lose. And each encounters a babe who immediately becomes THE woman, the only woman who matters and who could ever matter. And both novels are of the grab the reader by the throat and drag him all the way to the end variety I’ve come to expect in Stark House’s line of Crime Classics.

Big Red’s Daughter, from 1953, plays out against the bohemian jazz scene in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Our hero Jim Work is fresh out of the navy and looking to start college. But his life takes a crazy turn when his car smacks into an MG driven by a world class asshole called Buddy Brown. After a brutal fist fight, he meets—and falls for—Buddy’s girl, a tall long-legged blonde named Wild Kearney. Yep, “Wild” is her real name, as well as her demeanor.

Jim is instantly sucked into Wild’s world of spoiled twenty-somethings rebelling with whatever methods are at hand—in this case drugs, booze, jazz and sex. That wouldn’t be so bad if not for the presence of Buddy Brown, a sadistic psychopath who is addictive to all women, and Wild in particular.

Next thing he knows, Jim is dodging the cops who want him first for one murder, then another. Buddy’s evil aura looms over the whole landscape, while Jim’s obsession with Wild colors his every move. 

When he’s caught, this exchange sums it up:

     “Quite a week end for you, Work,” said the policeman next to me in the back of the car. “Kill a girl. Kill a guy. Escape from jail. Almost beat a man to death in front of his mother. Shoot another man.”

     “It’s been quite a week end,” I agreed.

And there’s more to come. Read it and see.

Tokyo Doll, also first published in 1953, is a high octane thriller set—you guessed it—in Tokyo. It’s 1949, and the U.S. Occupation is about to end. The commies are chomping at the bit. That’s when ex-serviceman Mate Buchanan is recruited by an unnamed agency to save the world. Or so he’s told. 

A Japanese scientist, the story goes, created a virus that healed radiation on a test subjects after the bomb hit Hiroshima. Mate’s job is to get that virus, by any means necessary, before the Reds get it, and before the old guy has a chance to destroy it. The plan is for Mate to seduce the scientist’s daughter, in hopes of ferreting out his hiding place.

But before finding the daughter, Mate foils an assassination attempt on the Tokyo Doll—a lovely American babe who sings to GIs on Armed Forces Radio—and falls hard. The Doll, another tall leggy blonde (methinks McPartland has a type), claims to fall for him too, but she’s messing around with a wealthy Japanese dude, and Army Intelligence suspects her of being a Red. 

Meanwhile, the scientist’s daughter, also a beauty, dims Mate’s ardor by chopping off her current boyfriend’s manhood. Seems the guy—a U.S. Army officer--was dumping her and returning to his wife. Now Mate has to hide her from both the police and the army while he makes unwilling love to her, all the while pining for the Tokyo Doll.

More trouble: The police suspect him of murder, a guy twice his size want to murder him, and the Army thinks he’s a traitor. They’re convinced the virus is a weapon rather a cure, and are frantic to destroy it before the Reds get it. And the Tokyo Doll? She’s still professing her love, while messing around with Mate’s arch enemy and acting Redder than ever. 

What to believe? Who to believe? And what the heck to do about it? If Mate completes his mission, will he be saving the world or dooming it? Yikes!

Two great reads, one great writer. You can’t lose on this one.

A MR. MAC duo from Gary Lovisi: "The Affair of Lady Westcott's Lost Ruby" & "The Case of the Unseen Assassin"

I’ve read a lot of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and Gary Lovisi has apparently written quite a few, but these are the first I’ve met.

In the two tales in this new Stark House Black Gat book (both appearing for first time, I believe), Lovisi focuses half his energies on the Doyle character Alec MacDonald, a young Scotland Yard Inspector who earned Holmes’ regard in The Valley of Fear, and the other half on Holmes and Watson.

In “The Affair of Lady Wescott’s Lost Ruby,” MacDonald is embroiled in a mystery that grows swiftly more bizarre, until he’s compelled to request the assistance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. We’re then treated to some nice scenes as Holmes goes undercover as a rat catcher to investigate the case—and avoid a calamity that could shake the foundations of the realm.

Does Holmes solve the mystery and save the day? Doesn’t he always? But how he does it makes for some good Sherlockian fun, with a bit of speculative history as a bonus.

The second tale, “The Case of the Unseen Assassin,” concerns the hunt for a serial killer. While Inspector Lestrade is busy bungling the first two cases, and refusing to consider they may be related, Mr. Mac (as Holmes calls him) draws the third, and enlists the help of Holmes and Watson.

This one springs indirectly from a reference in the Doyle story “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez,” to Huret the Boulevard Assassin, a man executed in Paris two years before the events of the tale in this book. A killer called the Unseen Assassin is now operating in London, and the multiple murder investigations keep our heroes hopping.

These two novellas are good Sherlockian entertainment, and comfortable visits with two old friends as seen from a slightly different perspective. Mr. Mac is a nice addition to the family, and I'd be pleased to see more of him. 

FREE James Hadley Chase books (Yep, REAL Books)

UPDATE (6:26am):

I got a taker. The books are gone. 

Thanks for looking!

These two unread trade paperbacks are looking for a good home -- with someone willing to review them (anywhere you like). That's it. Free shipping, too.

I have only one copy of each. First responder is welcome to either or both. Comment here or email me at delewis1@hotmail.com. I'll revise this post when the books are gone, so until then, fire away.

Forgotten Books: TWELVE "CHINAMEN" and a WOMAN (1940)

Yeah, I know the real title of this book, and so do you, but the copy I read said “Chinamen,” so I have a valid excuse (other than a creeping case of pc-itis) for calling it this.

Published in 1940, this one finds Dave Fenner, the extra-hardboiled detective introduced in No Orchids for Miss Blandish (reviewed HERE), having moved his office from Kansas all the way to New York City, and taken his office assistant/secretary Paula Dolan with him. His work on the Blandish case brought him plenty of jack, and his name is known far and wide, but there still isn’t much business coming through the door.

So Fenner and Paula are pleased to get a visit from a good-looking dame who gives them $6,000 to save her sister, who is somehow mixed up with 12 Chinamen. The opening scene is loaded with overtones of the opening chapter of The Maltese Falcon, making it one of the best in the book. Then a defunct Chinaman with a slit throat appears in Fenner’s office, and when he goes looking for his client, he finds only a severed arm and a female torso missing legs and head. In between there somewhere, a couple of Cubans show up to search his office, bringing shades of Joel Cairo.

The trail then leads to Key West, taking Fenner away from Paula, which is too bad, because their interplay is the best thing about this (and the Blandish) book.

Once in Florida, the story shifts into Red Harvest mode, with Fenner cozying up to two gang leaders in hopes of starting some fireworks. There’s plenty of tough talk, face punching, head kicking and other such mayhem, but almost no humor, as Fenner bulls his way through the Key West underworld.

The title is taken from a line of dialogue, and refers to the preferred racket of one of the gangsters. He smuggles twelve Chinamen at a time into the country, charging them around a thousand apiece for the privilege, then sells them for half that to West Coast employers. On the run Fenner takes part in, a “special” is included, that being a Chinese woman.

Yes, there are at least a dozen Chinamen in this book, but none play major roles. There’s a seemingly endless supply of nasty gun-toting Cubans, none of them named, doing dirty work for the gangsters. And of course there are plenty of gangsters, most of whom end up dead.

The finish offers a nice twist, and is reasonably satisfying, but getting there would have been a lot more fun if Chase had been half the stylist Hammett was, or had half the sense of humor.

The good news is, this is only the second half of the Stark House volume including the finally-published-in-America unexpurgated text of No Orchids for Miss Blandish. Together, these two (of only two) adventures of P.I. Dave Fenner make a nice (if brutal) package.

Forgotten Books: THE SNATCHERS by Lionel White (1953)

I’d say that this book has echoes of Richard Stark’s Parker novels—but I can’t, because it was published seven years before the first Parker book, The Hunter. What’s the opposite of echoes? Beats me, but the feeling was there, the whole way through.

The author doesn’t fool around here. As the story begins, the crime has already taken place, and tensions are rising. The plot is simmering on page 1 and keeps getting hotter until—on the final page—well, you’ll have to read it and see. It’s the kind of thriller that keeps your eyes glued to the page.

Our hero is Cal Dent, the guy who masterminds and bankrolls the kidnapping of a little rich girl. As Parker will do so many times in years to come, Dent chooses the crew, then struggles do deal with their potpourri of personality disorders to keep the job from going off the rails. And while each member of the gang has a skill Dent requires, each has a nasty quirk that worms its way to forefront. By the end of the story all four quirks are quirking full blast, and Dent is battling an unexpected one of his own. I don’t remember Parker ever having it this tough.

Lionel White manages to shift point of view anytime he wants, and gets away with it, immersing us in every scene from multiple angles. We know what each of the Snatchers is thinking and feeling about the situation—and about each other—at every step of the way. Instead of being distracting, it heightens the tension.

As you’d expect, Cal Dent is the clearest thinker of the lot, and the closest to a normal human being. Though a career criminal, he has scruples—even a conscience—and has carefully planned this kidnapping to be his last job, the one that sets him up for life. Commensurate with his management skills, he expects to walk away with half the take, a cool $250,000.

Under Dent’s skin right from the start is Pearl, a hard-edged dame who oozes sex appeal and wields it like a weapon. At the moment, she’s hooked up with a brutal and ignorant thug named Red, who seems to be on hand chiefly as a driver. Hating everyone, and being hated in return, is an even more brutal, bestial and utterly merciless thug named Gino. Aside from Dent, the only member with any brains is Fats, an unkempt, foul-smelling rat who proves too smart for Dent’s own good.

Also on hand, and a major factor in the proceedings, is the kidnapee’s nanny, a hot-but-clean young babe who fires the blood of every Snatcher but Pearl.

The whole bunch are lot are holed up in a beach-front house in a rural area of Long Island (which presumably still existed in 1955), from which they venture out for sustenance and the needs of Dent’s scheme, and where they are bedeviled by a small-town cop who’s a lot smarter than he lets on.

It all comes to a boil with a slam-bang finish, with plenty of surprises along the way. This was White’s first book (with 35 or so more to come), and was filmed in 1968 as The Night of the Following Day, with Marlon Brando, Richard Boone and Rita Moreno.

Published as a Gold Medal original back in 1953, The Snatchers is now back in print as the first half of a twofer from Stark House Press.