If you haven’t read the first dozen books in Donald Hamilton’s ‘Matt Helm’ series, drop everything and please do so. When you’ve completed this mission, you’ll have fallen in love with Hamilton’s writing and will undoubtedly begin exploring his stand-alone novels. This will eventually lead you to 1950’s “Murder Twice Told” and presumably this review. We’re glad you’ve made it this far.
“Murder Twice Told” is actually two novellas by Hamilton that originally appeared in magazines during the 1940s before they were compiled into one paperback. I’ll address each story individually.
“Deadfall”
“Deadfall” originally appeared in “Collier’s
Magazine” in 1949 and is about a chemist named Paul Weston who works for a Chicago-based petroleum corporation. One day, two FBI agents come to see Weston at work to ask him about a missing woman named Marilyn who vanished two years earlier. After denying any knowledge about the woman’s disappearance, Weston is fired from laboratory job.
It turns out that Weston knew Marilyn when he worked at a government lab and Marilyn was on the clerical staff at a nearby office. They struck up a relationship until Marilyn disappeared. Now, it’s suspected that she was spying for foreign powers and collecting boyfriends who’d spill government secrets to her. Weston claims he didn’t give Marilyn any secrets, but the benign relationship has formed a black cloud of suspicion over Weston’s head for the past two years while making steady employment a real challenge.
After swearing to the FBI that he hasn’t seen Marilyn in years, she suddenly resurfaces in his life, and things get very interesting. This is a serviceable spy/murder story, and it’s fun to read early Hamilton during his humble beginnings. The author’s knowledge of guns, women, and great dialogue are on full display, and fans of the author will feel right at home reading this mini-novel. This isn’t top-tier Hamilton - more comparable to his “Assassins Have Starry Eyes” novel - but mediocre Hamilton is still better than most of the stuff I read and review here. Therefore, I can endorse “Deadfall” without reservations.
“The Black Cross”
Although it’s the second of the two stories in the paperback, “The Black Cross” was released first in “The American Magazine” during 1947. It’s also also the longer of the two novellas in “Murder Twice Told.”
The story opens with a car accident on a windy road between Washington and Annapolis sparked by a disabled truck on the road. After awakening in a hospital room, Hugh Phillips recounts to the police that he was trapped in the overturned car and witnessed his wife stumble over to the truck driver blocking the road. Hugh claims the mysterious trucker abruptly struck her twice with what appears to be a “black cross” before driving his rig driving away. Now, his wife is dead and the police don’t seem to believe a word of Hugh’s story.
With this odd setup, the reader hooked. Nothing about Hugh’s story makes sense. Why would a broken-down trucker murder an innocent woman? And what’s with this black cross? Why are the police so hell-bent on making sure Hugh’s version of events goes no further than his own hospital room? And what’s the agenda of a witness who surfaces to corroborate key parts of Hugh’s unlikely story?
While dealing with the grief of his deceased bride, Hugh begins to go through her belongings at home and learns some unsettling - and undisclosed - things about her. These clues deepen the mystery of her death and make him wonder how much he really knew about his own wife. Could these secrets provide any insight into the bizarre circumstances of her spontaneous murder?
In “The Black Cross,” Hamilton does a remarkable job of doling out information to the reader a little at a time as a mosaic forms regarding the circumstances of an unusual homicide. It’s the superior of the two stories in this paperback, and I found myself surprised that it was never adapted for the screen as it was the type of story Alfred Hitchcock often used as the basis for his films. Moreover, “The Black Cross” has the kind of twisty ending that Hitchcock would have loved. I know I sure did.
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Author John D. MacDonald penned over 50 thrillers, including his long-running salvage-consultant series Travis McGee. He's widely considered one of the greatest crime-fiction writers of all-time. This 1954 novel, Death Trap, was his 18th stand-alone crime novel, an astounding number considering it was written 10-years before the successful Travis McGee debut.
The book is written in the crime noir format of first-person. Our protagonist is Hugh, a former war veteran who's on a much-needed vacation from his engineering job in Spain. While planning to fish in California, he takes a detour after reading some disparaging news in a national newspaper. The brother of his former lover, Vicky, is about to be executed for murdering a teen girl in a small college town in Illinois. Hugh, feeling the man is innocent, vows to uncover the truth.
After a tearful reunion with Vicky, Hugh begins to understand the layout of this sleepy college town. The citizens are declaring murder, the verdict was guilty and the torches are well-lit. With just 10-days before the date with the chair, Hugh begins to uncover the town's corruption in a riveting whodunit. All signs point to Vicky's brother, convincing me that the kid should fry. Surprisingly, Hugh discovers a mysterious rape and drowning at a lakeside cabin years before the crime. This mystery is tantalizing, but the connection is blurred. Can Hugh put the two time-frames together? If he can, how does he convince the frenzied town?
John D. MacDonald's literary sales are over 70-million for a reason. The prolific writer spins the typical murder – tramp killed on a lonely backstretch, but this ordinary event is catapulted into a myriad of violence, blackmail, intrigue and ultimately...entertainment. The author keeps us turning the pages, surveying the clues and coming to our own conclusions before swaying us with another exciting chapter of “unveil the next surprise”. I can't say enough good things about Death Trap. I've loved every book MacDonald has written and this one is no exception. Get the book HERE.
James Hadley Chase was the thriller fiction pen name of British writer Rene Raymond (1906-1985) who authored around 90 novels under the Chase pseudonym with a career spanning from 1939 to 1984. He’s a European author whose books primarily take place in the U.S., and his paperbacks usually feature cheesy covers with uninspired photos of sexy 70s babes. Is it possible that the quality of the story inside surpasses the nondescript cover?
“Goldfish Have No Hiding Place” is a 1974 novel taking place in the upscale suburb of Eastlake. Steve Manson is a 38 year-old magazine editor with an anti-corruption mandate who is married to Linda, a glamorous social climber with expensive tastes. He’s spread thin financially largely because Linda has no sense of money or how much shopping one can justify on a $30,000 per year salary. As the novel opens, he has a $3,000 overdraft in his checking account and a wife who won’t stop spending.
Steve’s personal problems go from bad to worse when he is visited by the owner of a local boutique. It seems that the store’s new security system recorded a video of Linda shoplifting a bottle of perfume. The proprietor threatens to go to the cops unless Steve pays the man $20,000 in cash the next day. Normally, Steve would go to the police to report the blackmailing, but he’s in the process of exposing the chief of police for suspected corruption in his magazine. He rightfully fears that his complaint may not have a sympathetic audience with the suburban police.
The book’s title is a metaphor used early in the novel by Steve’s boss. The idea is that if Steve is going to attack the corrupt and dishonest in his magazine, he will be like a goldfish in a glass bowl and must live with unimpeachable ethics and total transparency regarding his personal behavior. Needless to say, Steve and his wife have trouble living up to this ideal, and Steve’s problems compound considerably as the story unfolds.
Giving away any of the twists and turns in “Goldfish Have No Hiding Place” wouldn’t be fair, but there are plenty of great surprises along the way - particularly when the blackmail story becomes a murder mystery. Although this was a 1974 paperback, it was written in the exact same style and plot structure as a 1950s Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this tidy suburban noir written with competence and confidence by an author who has done this before. Put this one in the win column. Highly recommended. Buy this book HERE.
Kenneth Millar (1915-1983) is a popular crime novelist better known as Ross Macdonald. The author wrote the highly regarded ‘Lew Archer’ detective series for three decades. To break the constraints of the detective model, he wrote a stand-alone novel entitled “Experience with Evil” in 1954, later reprinted as “Meet Me at the Morgue”.
The author's concept was to create an everyman hero that solved crimes in California, paralleling Madonald's Archer character only this time using a parole officer in lieu of detective. I'm not sure the idea sparked any new ideas for Macdonald. Apparently the publisher couldn't find enough variation to create another series. Hence “Meet Me at the Morgue” is a stand-alone novel that should satisfy the author's fans.
The book places parole officer Howard Cross into the mix of a complex ransom plot involving a wealthy family's son. Cross's client, Fred Miner, is the prime suspect and his last known appearance was with the child. However, Cross primarily wants to defend the man despite Miner's prior conviction of manslaughter. When a ransom note arrives asking for the payout, Cross teams with the FBI and police in trailing the money. When the ransom funds are stolen from the instructed destination, the crime splits into two sections – finding the kidnapper and discovering who stole the ransom money from the kidnapper/family.
At the standard 170ish pages, this crime novel works well despite it's robust cast of characters. It can be dense in spots, provoking me to use a pad and pen to notate how the characters related to each other. I found Cross a capable, well-suited problem solver but there's a messy point in the finale that left me a little bitter. Despite those flaws this is an excellent novel and a great introduction to Macdonald's writing.
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In 1967, Publishers Export Co., Inc., a small San Diego paperback press that specialized in mostly-gay porno novels, tried to broaden its horizons by launching a series of spy novels marketed as “Dan Walker Chillers,” presumably to sell some books to the ‘Nick Carter: Killmaster’ audience. The books were written by someone named Don Gilmore using the pseudonym of Gil Davis, and today they are hard-to-find paperback rarities priced exorbitantly high by used book dealers.
Dan Walker is a businessman and former Naval Intelligence Officer who takes periodic assignments from the CIA where he saves the world and gets laid. In “Missile Island,” Walker is called upon by the U.S. President to investigate reports that Santana Island in the Caribbean is being developed as a commie missile launch site. Bear in mind that this book was written and published when the Cuban missile crisis was still fresh on everyone’s minds.
The Agency provides Walker with a map of the island and a briefcase bomb to destroy as much of the missile facility as possible. His cover is that of a tourist at one of the island’s luxury resorts populated by sunbathing bikini beauties. His search for the missile site brings him into contact with surveillance operatives on bicycles and Voodoo-loving locals. While in the Caribbean, Walker gets laid a lot in graphic detail. But in all fairness, the sex scenes aren’t any more explicit or plentiful than your average ‘Coxeman’ or ‘Baroness’ novel, and it’s important for spies to find a healthy work-sex balance. There are also some scenes of brutal violence - extreme stuff - that serve as a counterbalance to the regular sex scenes.
What we have here is a competent and enjoyable spy thriller with a likable hero on a fun, high-stakes Caribbean adventure filled with regional stereotypes and genre tropes. At times, it got a little “madcap” for my tastes, but your mileage may vary. In other words, this ain’t Robert Ludlum. It’s really the espionage equivalent of a Longarm Western paperback where an enjoyable story takes a break every now and then for the hero’s sexual release and then resumes thereafter as if nothing happened. If you find this book in the wild at a reasonable price, you should buy it and read it. However, it’s probably not worth the $35 tag I recently saw online. I had fun reading “Missile Island,” and as long as you know what you’re getting, you will too. Recommended.
Addendum:
The three Dan Walker Chillers by Gil Davis are:
Valley of the Doles (1967)
Assignment: Tokyo (1967)
Missile Island (1967)
The publisher behind the Dan Walker books also attempted two similar series titles.
The Mark Castle series by Carl Marcus:
Cable Address: Roma (1966)
Cable: Vienna (1967)
The Nails Fenian series by Hal D. Steward
The Spy and the Pirate Queen (1967)
Assassin’s Hide-Away (1967)
Finally, special thanks to the Spy Guys and Gals website for assisting me with the research on this odd corner of the espionage fiction world.
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Author John Hersey (1914-1993) wrote 25 books in his lifetime and was considered one of the first writers to incorporate story-telling techniques into a non-fiction novel. Working as a war journalist for prominent news magazines like Time and Life, Hersey was able to write bold, non-fiction “novels” based on his experiences. In 1959, Dell published “Into the Valley”, a harrowing account of Hersey's time with the US marines on Guadalcanal Island during WW2. The paperback features poignant illustrations by USMC Major Donald Dickson.
Billed as “A Skirmish of the Marines”, Hersey's “Into the Valley” is a vivid account of a three-day battle between US Marines and Japanese troops on the Matanikau River. This isn't a historically important struggle and Heresy admits it was really just another battle, another week, another moment for these veteran fighters. But the sense of realism, the sweaty, exhausting, all-consuming effort, is a time capsule of just how difficult fighting in the Pacific Theater.
The book is written first-person, placing Hersey onto the jungle trek with American soldiers. While often detailing the battle plans, Hersey introduces a solid half-dozen characters that make up this endeavor. The journey is well-documented, offering first-hand accounts of preparation and design while still creating an entertaining war novel. Once the troops hit the river, the war-torn horror is a thick fog enveloping Hersey and the reader.
Being raised in a military family myself, I've always been drawn to non-fiction books on US history, especially WW2 and Vietnam. While “Into the Valley” isn't an exceptional literary work, it is a short, vivid read on the tropical battles that made up the war on the Pacific. It provided enough details and descriptions of battle to keep me actively engaged and anticipating the inevitable retreat (or defeat). Does anyone really ever win? Vintage art aficionados should enjoy the illustrations immensely. Dickson defied trends by offering more realistic looks at the life of the American soldier. The spit 'n polish look is replaced with a more genuine approach. Later, Dickson would illustrate a national comic strip entitled “Sgt Stoney Craig”.
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Harry Whittington’s “Drawn to Evil” first appeared in 1952 as half of an Ace Double packaged with “The Scarlet Spade” by Eaton K. Goldthwaite. The Whittington half has been reprinted as an eBook from Simon & Schuster’s Prologue Books imprint and is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
“Drawn to Evil” is narrated by a Tampa Police homicide detective named Marty Carter who was passed up for the position of division chief because he was just too brutal. A beloved and respected state senator is murdered in cold blood, and Marty vows to catch the killer. In the aftermath of the senator’s murder, Marty meets Liza, the deceased’s grieving wife, and immediately becomes infatuated with her. Because this is a Harry Whittington novel, Liza’s a sultry, young looker. And because this is 1952, Marty has to slap her around a bit to get her attention after they first meet. Times do change.
Marty’s plan is that he’ll be the detective who solves the murder, and the Liza will be his prize. The problem is that Marty’s boss wants his help on the investigative team but has banned Marty from using his usual rubber hose tactics. So the cop who is normally a powder keg of violence races to solve the murder using pretty standard police procedures. Of course, a promise of restraint like that only can last so long. Marty is a fun character to ride along with because he is so filled with menace while trying (and failing) to do the right thing. He is pure id - fueled by lust and ambition.
The mystery takes Marty into the details of the senator’s personal life and into the bowels of Tampa’s crime syndicate. The action moves fast, and there are plenty of dysfunctional and twisted characters to gawk at along the way. More so than Whittington’s later crime novels, “Drawn to Evil” is a pretty conventional mystery - with a murder, clues, suspects, motives and a solution. However, things take a very dark and Whittington turn with about 30 pages left in the paperback when we leave Mike Shayne territory and go to a perverse and violent place at last.
As I wind my way through Harry Whittington’s body of work, I’d put “Drawn to Evil” in the top-tier of his crime fiction writing. It had the requisite amount of sex, violence, amorality and darkness to declare this one a true noir fiction classic. The fact that it’s basically free as an eBook makes this a no-brainer must-read for fans of this type of thing. Highly recommended.
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