Book Review: Shepard Rifkin, The Murderer Vine (1970)

Mississippi Burning crossed with a detective novel crossed with a revenge novel crossed with stupidity. North meets South done with a nuance that makes My Cousin Vinny look like Proust. Dumbest of the dumb (spoiler follows!): Our New York private investigator has been hired to infiltrate Mississippi, to get proof that five rednecks have murdered three civil rights workers, and then to execute the rednecks. Our genius p.i. floats on top of an inflatable mattress beneath the swamp-side clubhouse of the rednecks. He has a tape recorder with him. Upon his arrival beneath the clubhouse, the rednecks immediately and spontaneously and unambiguously announce their guilt. They practically get down on their hands and knees and shout their confessions through the chinks in the floor. And then, if that isn't dumb enough, in the novel's final chapter. . . . Sheesh. Grade: D-

Pulp Poem of the Week

"Don't move," he said,

in a voice that was

forty percent gravel and

sixty percent inert materials.

Donald E. Westlake

Somebody Owes Me Money

1969

Book Review: Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule (2007)

The second half of Charlie Huston's dedication for The Shotgun Rule points to the subject of his novel: "To the kids who don't know any better. / The ones with the attitude problems. / What the hell are they thinking? / Man, believe me, they aren't. / That's the point. / We never do." In general, subjects who don't think (and idiot teenagers in particular) are a better subject for sociologists than novelists. And if the "point" of Huston's novel were nothing more than the fact that some kids never think, then it would be a waste of time. But even if the four kids at the center of The Shotgun Rule never really do think, they nevertheless achieve enough depth as characters--especially during the novel's extended climax--to make this a richer story than I had expected. Grade: B

Memo to Charlie Huston or his editor or his publisher or anyone in a position to fix a simple problem: Please fix the botched cultural reference on page 128. Face Dances is an album by The Who, not The Rolling Stones.

Book Review: Bill S. Ballinger, The Wife of the Red-Haired Man (1957)

The Bill S. Ballinger narrative gimmick: first-person chapters alternate with and play off against third-person chapters. This iteration of the gimmick, however, is less than inspired. The third-person chapters tell of the red-haired man and his wife on the run from the police. The first-person chapters are narrated by their police pursuer. Unfortunately (and unlike superior Ballinger novels), these chapters run in near chronological lockstep such that if they had been written as a single third-person narrative, the reader's experience would not be much different. But what really drags down the novel is its clichéd plotting: The police investigation is driven by the cop's unerring hunches, and the red-headed man has a sixth sense that unfailingly alerts him when he is in danger. If you've never read Ballinger before, start with Portrait in Smoke or The Tooth and the Nail instead. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

There was now only

the process of taking away.

He wondered if

it was like that with everyone,

and he decided that

it must be.

And he wondered how

they felt,

and reasoned that

they must feel

about as he.

That was all

there was to life:

a gift that was slowly

taken away from you.

Jim Thompson

Heed the Thunder

1946

Book Review: Jason Starr, Fake I.D. (2000)

I love Jason Starr, but Fake I.D. did not quite work for me. The cover of the Hard Case Crime reprint asks, "How far would you go to get what you want?," but I found it difficult to relate to (or feel sympathy for) the novel's protagonist, Tommy Russo, who is pretty much a pathetic creep right out of the gate. As well, I was not convinced by Tommy's character arc, either as a descent into some kind of psychosis or as the erratic behavior of a man with a metal plate in his head (which Tommy has). In the end, it's easy to see Fake I.D. as a dry run for Starr's far superior Tough Luck (2003). Grade: C+

Book Review: Robert Bloch, Shooting Star (1958) & Spiderweb (1954)

Truly inspired packaging from Hard Case Crime. This two-fer makes me misty-eyed for bygone days that I am too young to remember. Now if only the novels were better. . . . On a micro level, these books are well done. Robert Bloch has writerly chops to spare, and I enjoyed almost every page. But on a macro level, these books are completely forgettable. The protagonist of Shooting Star is Mark Clayburn, a small-time literary agent who, because he works in the true-crime field, also has a private investigator's license. This combination has interesting possibilities, but they go untapped. The literary agent fades mostly from view; the private investigator takes center stage; and Clayburn emerges as a super-low-cal Philip Marlowe wallowing in the muck of Hollywood. Also set in California, Spiderweb traffics at first in the noir-friendly universe of psychic charlatans but then veers into a fairly conventional blackmail story. In this realm, try William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley or Cornell Woolrich's Night Has a Thousand Eyes instead. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

He cursed us in a low,

steady, monotonous voice,

ripping his words

off back-alley fences,

off privy walls.

Robert Bloch

Spiderweb

1954

Book Review: Marvin H. Albert, The Chiselers (1953)

Detective Jerry Stone has taped evidence that will expose government ties to the mob in the anytown of Murbank, but he is gunned down in his driveway before he can deliver that evidence to the governor's special prosecutor. Soon thereafter, Stone's partner, Morgan Diamond, is beaten almost to death. Why is he left alive? The mob has plans for him--but then again, Diamond also has plans for the mob. Solid, fast-paced Gold Medal fare. Grade: B+

Book Review: John Lange [Michael Crichton], Zero Cool (1969)

Michael Crichton, posing as John Lange, novelizes a nonexistent Nicholas Cage movie. Grade: C

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, One Monday We Killed Them All (1961)

For me, a major disappointment. Perhaps my expectations were too high, as I have seen this novel raved about in several notable places, but I really had to work to get through it. I found its first half slow and ponderous, weighed down by lectures on American law enforcement . . . and our judicial system . . . and our penal system . . . and so on . . . lectures of the sort that I would expect to hear in a bland freshman-level sociology class. But the crowning disappointment, once the narrative quickens, is that the novel's title, One Monday We Killed Them All, is not an accurate description of the Monday in question, no matter how you interpret it. Ah, John D. MacDonald. At least we'll always have Soft Touch. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

The lights were coming on,

twinkling in Glendale,

flickering over Forest Lawn,

sparkling along San Fernando Road.

Los Angeles, that gaudy old

whore of a city was putting on

her jewels for a big night.

Robert Bloch

Shooting Star

1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

His knuckles hurt,

but the rest of him felt good.

It was strange how much misery

a man could unload

with one hard punch.

Marvin H. Albert

The Chiselers

1953

Book Review: Seicho Matsumoto, Points and Lines (1958)

I may never be able to fully untangle the degree to which the woodeness of some Japanese mystery novels is a function of (1) poor translations, (2) the Japanese language itself, (3) Japanese cultural norms (in particular, those governing politeness in speech), and/or (4) the conventions of the Japanese mystery novel (including the conventions of serial publication). In any case, I am learning to take this woodeness as a given, and it interferes less and less with my enjoyment of Japanese mysteries. Points and Lines is an enjoyable though fairly wooden (surprise!) police procedural centering on one man's alibi that he has built, in part, on being seen on trains and in train stations. Was it possible for him to have been at the scene of an alleged "love suicide" while also traveling as he appears to have traveled? According to the note on Seicho Matsumoto's life, the tremendous success of Points and Lines set off a "Matsumoto boom" in Japan. This fact perhaps says less about Points and Lines than it does about Japanese readers and their love of railroad timetables. Grade: B-

Book Review: Paul Tremblay, The Little Sleep (2009)

The Little Sleep might as well come with a questionnaire stapled to its cover asking you to compare it to The Big Sleep, so I will oblige the marketing campaign by looking for connections: The settings have little in common (1930s Los Angeles vs. 2000s Boston), and there is a superficial plot connection (a daughter or two with a powerful father, pornography, and blackmail figure in the events of both books). But when you come to the novels' protagonists, things get interesting. The most obvious connection between Philip Marlowe and Mark Genevich is their preferred mode of communication: sarcasm. In general, the writing style of author Paul Tremblay is almost a parody of Raymond Chandler's hardboiled voice: the world-weary wisecracks and noir metaphors (categories that sometimes overlap) come in an unrelenting stream. There are so many of these touches in The Little Sleep that some are bound to fall flat, but the novel's strategy is to overwhelm: Readers will barely have time to smile or roll their eyes at a writerly flourish before the next one comes along.

The important thing, though, is that The Little Sleep deals with more than solving a mystery and cracking wise, as did The Big Sleep before it. As a writer of mysteries, Raymond Chandler was plain awful. Critics excuse (and sometimes even praise) his convoluted plot lines because the critics are dazzled by the creation of Philip Marlowe, who ranks as perhaps the most fascinating character in the history of the detective genre (Sherlock Holmes notwithstanding). Similarly, the real attraction of The Little Sleep is Mark Genevich. Paul Tremblay's plot is mercifully simple compared to the messes that Raymond Chandler cooked up, but what kept me turning the pages of The Little Sleep was "Mark Genevich, narcoleptic detective" (as he is billed on the back of the book). I had expected that his narcolepsy would be played for laughs, but The Little Sleep is too smart for that. Genevich's struggles with his condition are of a piece with his Marlowesque voice: Like his hardboiled predecessor, Genevich is a damaged man with an arsenal of (mostly sarcastic) defense mechanisms, and he does not give up his secrets easily. So I will read the next Mark Genevich mystery for the same reason that I read the Philip Marlowe mysteries: not because I want to read a mystery but because I want to spend time with a fascinating character. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

Everything goes to sleep

if you wait long enough.

Paul Tremblay

The Little Sleep

2009

Book Review: Cornell Woolrich, Rendezvous in Black (1948)

The saddest revenge story ever written? Johnny Marr, an almost anonymous young man in middle America (think Our Town), must find the man who killed his fiancée and make the killer suffer as he has suffered. But there are five possible killers, so they must all suffer. The plots that Johnny executes against them require near-omniscience on his part. Never mind that Johnny could have identified the actual killer much more easily--for better or for worse, Woolrich demands that you grant him absurdities. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

What did it matter

where you lay

once you were dead?

In a dirty sump

or in a marble tower

on top of a high hill?

You were dead,

you were sleeping

the big sleep,

you were not bothered

by things like that.

Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep

1939

Book Review: Bruno Fischer, Fools Walk In (1951)

Generally, noir plots are not particularly believable, so the noir writer must be skillful enough either to make you believe in spite of it all or to make you not care whether you believe in the first place. (Jim Thompson specializes in the former; Cornell Woolrich specializes in the latter.) This time, Bruno Fischer did not quite succeed in making me believe. Fools Walk In is an example of transgressive noir, the subgenre in which the protagonist, presumably someone not much different from the reader, crosses over to the noir side. Usually the protagonist is driven by financial temptation, but in Fools Walk In, Larry Knight is motivated by the simple desire to escape his miserably unexciting life.

When the novel begins, Larry is driving home to New York from Kentucky, where he has been visiting his brother, George. Larry lives with his sister--a shrill, self-pitying, dominating old maid--and he had hoped to convince George to take her. Of course, he had no such luck. Add to this the fact that Larry is toiling in the world's most pathetic job--he's a high school English teacher, for God's sake!--and he is ripe to transgress when he picks up a gangster's moll who is on the run with $20,000. Larry soon finds himself in hiding with gangsters of the sort who talk earnestly about "capers," and, for a high school English teacher, he proves to be unaccountably attractive to gangster women. If only all English teachers had such latent powers! Grade: C

Book Review: Asa Nonami, Now You're One of Us (1993)

I file this one under noir because it is the story of a helpless soul not unlike what one might find in Gil Brewer or Cornell Woolrich. But rather than a weak man against an Evil Woman (as in Brewer) or a powerless man (or woman) against Implacable Fate (as in Woolrich), here we have a woman (a new bride) against a traditional, multigenerational Japanese family, and it is this added cultural dimension that makes this book more than just another trip around the same old block (Rosemary's Baby, Rebecca, etc). Appreciation of this novel requires at least a bit of knowledge about the history of the Ie system of families in Japan; otherwise readers may find the apprehensions and behaviors of the protagonist more inscrutable than they ought to be. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

"Cheapskate," said the cowboy.

Then he frowned, thinking.

"Of course, perhaps he intended

to let you keep it."

Michael Crichton

Zero Cool

1969

Book Note: The Best American Crime Reporting 2008, edited by Jonathan Kellerman

The guest editor changes from year to year, but the book stays pretty much the same: Consistently entertaining nonfiction crime essays from The New Yorker (always), plus nods to the likes of The Atlantic Monthly and Esquire, but also to more obscure publications--this time, The Cleveland Free Times and OC Weekly make the cut--just to keep things a little bit honest. Most years, I find that once particular essay makes the book worth its price of admission. This time, it's Malcolm Gladwell's "Dangerous Minds" (fromThe New Yorker, natch), which argues that John Douglas and other FBI criminal profilers are charlatans who operate like cold-reading psychics. For anyone who has ever enjoyed Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs or true crime in a similar vein, it should be required reading.

Pulp Poem of the Week

It was a very short distance

from where I sat on the bed,

and he stood at the foot of it

with his face turned from me.

Seven bullets couldn't miss him.

Some of them didn't.

Bruno Fischer

Fools Walk In

1951

Book Review: Kenzo Kitakata, The Cage (1983)

The story of Takino, an ex-Yakuza who has settled into straight life running a supermarket and a coffee shop with his wife. Six years have passed since Takino left the gangster world, but when he squares off against a punk who has caused trouble in his store, Takino feels "a strange rush of something close to happiness." The old Takino has emerged from his cage--one of several metaphorical "cages" in the novel--and he knows at once that he does not want to go back inside. An interesting psychological study of both Takino and Takagi, the grizzled, decorated police veteran who pursues him. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

Want me to squeeze

the blood out?

Or maybe I could stop

the bleeding?

Cauterize it with my

cigarette.

Kenzo Kitakata

The Cage

1983

(translated by Paul Warham)

Book Review: Christa Faust, Money Shot (2008)

Ordinarily, I don't complain about noir clichés; instead, I refer to them as "conventions" and I keep moving. This time, however, I have to complain. One common noir cliché/convention is this: Our innocent protagonist finds herself wanted by the law, and she quickly decides, "There is no way that the cops will ever believe my story. I have no choice but to run." So she runs and, noir being noir, things go from bad to worse. But if ever there were a noir innocent who had no sane reason to run from the law, it is Money Shot's Angel Dare. She finds herself framed for a murder in the most unconvincing way, and she also finds herself in constant danger of being murdered herself. If ever there were a noir innocent who should run to the cops, it is Angel Dare. But no. Instead, she embarks on a campaign of . . . revenge! . . . thereby ensuring that when the cops do catch up with her, they actually will have caught a murderer. As a noir devotee, I usually have a fairly high tolerance for stupid, self-destructive behavior, but not this time. Grade: C-

Book Review: Bill S. Ballinger, The Tooth and the Nail (1955)

It's the gimmick that keeps on giving. As I described in my review of Bill S. Ballinger's Portrait in Smoke, the author's narrative method is deceptively simple: First-person chapters alternate with third-person chapters with each narrative line raising questions about the other until the plot elements fuse at the end of the book. This time out, the first-person story of magician Lew Mountain alternates with the third-person story of a murder trial--but who is on trial for killing whom? And how exactly does Lew Mountain figure into the court case? The answers are great fun to discover. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

In the magician's land of make-believe and illusion

what one doesn't see is always there . . .

only one doesn't see it

until the conjurer is ready to show it.

The silks are stuffed within the hollow egg,

the flowers collapsed within the palm of his hand,

the card concealed on the back of his fingers.

But death is the greatest necromancer of all;

in a moment of inattention,

he makes his sleight and palms a life,

and one does not realize

that the breathing figure is gone.

Bill S. Ballinger

The Tooth and the Nail

1955

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, Piercing (1997)

Spoiler alert: The following review does not tell how Piercing ends, but it may tell more about the set-up for the ending than you want to know.

Kawashima Masayuki is, without a doubt, mentally ill. He stands above the crib of his baby girl each night brandishing an ice pick, telling himself that no, of course not, he would never stab her with it. But he soon realizes that he must stab someone with an ice pick, and, as long as he's at it, he really wants to know what it sounds like when you cut someone's Achilles tendons. Thus, he sets out to find someone to torture and kill. To this point, Piercing is engrossing and disturbing. Once Masayuki finds his victim, however, the book falls apart for the simple reason that she turns out to be mentally ill, too. In the context of his family, Masayuki was an interesting and frightening character: Will he stab his daughter? Is his wife any danger? Why can his wife not see that Masayuki is deeply disturbed? But when Masayuki's wife and daughter are replaced by a woman who may be as disturbed as he is, the situation becomes oddly boring. We might as well be watching two asylum inmates in a padded room together, as their actions no longer seem to have any relationship to the real world. Grade C+

Book Review: Lawrence Block, A Diet of Treacle (1961)

This is the fourth Lawrence Block novel that Hard Case Crime has rescued from oblivion, and the second that they have pulled from the morass of sleaze paperback publisher Beacon Books. The first three titles, Grifter's Game (1961; originally Mona), The Girl with the Long Green Heart (1965), and Lucky at Cards (1964; originally The Sex Shuffle) were well worth saving. Unforunately, A Diet of Treacle (1961; originally Pads Are for Passion) is a much inferior work. The early stages of the novel, which deal largely with beat ennui, are predictably tedious; the character arc of good girl Anita Carbone is not particularly believable; and the book's quick ending all but screams, "Hey, I've almost made my word count! Time to wrap this one up!" Memo to Hard Case Crime: This well appears to have run dry. Is it too late for you to un-publish Killing Castro and give some other writer a chance? Grade: D

Pulp Poem of the Week

The Good Humor man passed,

his wagon full of ice cream.

Maybe an ice cream

would taste good,

Joe mused.

Then again

maybe it wouldn't.

Go to hell,

Good Humor Man.

Lawrence Block

Pads Are for Passion

1961

Pulp Poem of the Week

She went along the sidewalk in the sun

looking like something the censors

had cut out of a sailor's dream.

Charles Williams

A Touch of Death

1954