Book Review: Day Keene and Gil Brewer, Love Me--and Die! (1951)

  
A sort of apprentice novel in which Gil Brewer turns a longish Day Keene story (“Marry the Sixth for Murder!,” Detective Tales, May 1948) into something even longer. The original story didn’t make a great deal of sense to begin with, and Brewer stayed true to his source material. He adds a femme fatale and makes his protagonist a bit more hardboiled, but the substance of the plot is the same. If you’re interested, you should stick to the Keene story (which is reprinted in The League of the Grateful Dead: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Volume #1) and save your time to read a better novel. Grade: C-

5 Quick Questions with John Pelan

John Pelan, who is most known as an author and publisher of horror and science fiction, has begun the ambitious project of publishing the complete short fiction of noirboiled writer Day Keene. The first two volumes of Keene stories—League of the Grateful Dead and Other Stories and We Are the Dead and Other Stories—have recently been published by Ramble House.

1. How did you become aware of Day Keene?

My buddy, the late Richard Laymon (tremendous author in his own right) and I were both fans of 1950s noir; and I recall him bringing Keene up as someone that I would likely enjoy. He was spot on!

2. What’s your favorite Day Keene story?

I’m rather fond of “League of the Grateful Dead,” but ask me tomorrow and I’ll likely have a different answer. . . . Keene was very versatile and depending on my mood, my preferences can run from weird menace such as the aforementioned to Doc Egg to a non-series mystery. . . .

3. What’s your least favorite Day Keene story?

I haven’t read everything yet, so I’ll pass on this one.

4. Do you have a favorite Day Keene novel?

Home Is the Sailor was the first novel I read, so I have a special fondness for it.

5. How did you go about about tracking down so many hard-to-find old pulps to collect Keene’s stories?

Well, I’ve been a collector and part-time bookseller for many years and have a lot of connections; that said, it hasn’t been easy!

Pulp Poem of the Week

Ostensibly a lawyer,
he maintained
a luxurious Hollywood office.
He even kept office hours.
But he hadn't appeared
in a courtroom for years.
He didn't have to.
He knew where too many bodies,
male and female,
had spent their lost weekends.
His was a nasty business
but he never had trouble
with his conscience.
He had none.

Day Keene
Framed in Guilt
1949

Book Review: Day Keene, Framed in Guilt (1949)

Day Keene's first novel. Has Hollywood screenwriter Robert Stanton been framed for murder? He is accused of killing a woman he claims he never met to cover up fathering a child with a woman he claims has never met, but there is compelling evidence that he is lying on both counts. Will he be able to prove his innocence? A little bit of noir, a little bit of procedural, a little bit of whodunit, and a whole lot of cheese. Grade: D+

Book Review: Day Keene, This Is Murder, Mr. Herbert and Other Stories (1948)

Collects four stories: "This Is Murder, Mr. Herbert!" (1944); "With Blood in His Eye!" (1945); "Sweet Tooth of Murder" (1944); and "If a Body Met a Body" (1946).

In the evolution of noir, these stories fall somewhere between the silliness of Carroll John Daly's Race Williams stories and the glory days of Gold Medal paperbacks. The middle two stories feature homicide detective Harvey "The Great" Stone, so called because of his ability to pull murderers out of thin air. In his talent for intuiting absurdities, Stone is rather like a hard-boiled Sherlock Holmes, except that Stone is a bland and uninteresting character and Holmes, most readers agree, is not. Grade: D+