Book Review: John D. MacDonald, Soft Touch (1958)

When you read piles of noir PBOs (or piles of any fictional genre), many of them do, of course, start to seem the same, but this only heightens your appreciation of the ones that are really good. When the formula has worked its way into your DNA, you can see which writers are innovating and pushing boundaries and which ones are just going through the motions. In the early chapters of any genre novel, it is generally difficult to tell which kind of book you are reading. Is it one whose every move you will be able to predict, or is it one that will surprise you? Suffice it to say, this one surprised me. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

A one-dollar bill has

a humble and homely look.

A five-dollar bill has

a few meek pretensions.

A ten is vigorous and

forthright and honest,

like a scout leader.

A twenty, held to the ear

like a seashell

emits the far-off sound

of nightclub music.

A fifty wears the faint sneer

of the race track.

It has a portly look

needs a shave,

wears a yellow diamond

on the little finger.

And a hundred is

very haughty indeed.

John D. MacDonald

Soft Touch

1958

Book Review: Max Allan Collins, Deadly Beloved (2007)

I could write at great length about the ham-handedness of Max Allan Collins' Deadly Beloved, but instead I choose to look at the bright side: I'm betting that MAC's next contribution to Hard Case Crime, The First Quarry, is going to seem pretty damn great by comparison. Grade: F

Book Review: Akimitsu Takagi, The Tattoo Murder Case (1948)

Dark, enjoyable Japanese whodunnit. The characters are somewhat bland in their polite Japanese way, and the solution to the murder mystery is interesting in the same way that the solution to a crossword puzzle is interesting. Strengths of the narrative are its evocation of post-war Japan and its portrayal of the Japanese art tattoo subculture. On the whole, worth your time if you are interested in things Japanese. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

Let's all

go kill

the scared

old man.

Will Cook

"Let's All Go Kill the Scared Old Man"

1959

Book Review: Cornell Woolrich, Six Times Death [a.k.a. After-Dinner Story] (1944)

Collects six stories: "After-Dinner Story" (1938); "The Night Reveals" (1936); "An Apple a Day" (1944); "Marihuana" (1941); "Rear Window" [original title: "It Had to Be Murder"] (1942); and "Murder-Story" (1937).


This collection ultimately becomes a kind of noir comique. The stories are dark enough, but their premises are so silly that the narratives become as amusing as they are bleak: an eleavator crashes to the basement of an office building, and while its occupants await rescue from the dark, one of them commits murder; an arson investigator for an insurance company discovers that his wife is a pyromaniac; a diamond, stolen and hidden in an apple, is accidentally dropped into a baby carriage that contains four more apples; smoking pot triggers a murder spree; an insomniac, invalid Peeping Tom convinces himself that one of his neighbors is a murderer; a pulp writer somehow manages to describe an actual murder, down to the smallest detail. All of this is fun to read, but it lacks the emotional charge that Woolrich achieves in his better novels. Grade: B-

Pulp Poem of the Week

The Lieutenant flipped a lever
on a desk transmitter.
"Send Spillane in here."

Cornell Woolrich
"Marihuana"
1941

Pulp Poem of the Week

He had greased black hair

parted in the middle

and a wax mustache;

wasn't tall and wasn't short;

and looked more like

his mother's side of the family,

but he didn't want anyone

to forget his father.

I made a bet with myself that

his parents never made it legal.

Earl Norman

Kill Me in Tokyo

1958