Gil Brewer’s “Nude on thin Ice” was published in 1960 and is narrated by Ken McCall, who isn’t the kind of guy you’d want dating your sister. He’s a player who enjoys no-strings attached female companionship before he inevitably casts the woman aside for a better offer. The novel has been reprinted by Stark House along with Brewer’s “Memory of Passion” and an informative introduction by academic David Rachels.
We meet Ken on a Key West vacation, where he’s ready to dump his recent sex-partner after she’s served her purpose of providing him with wild coupling and plenty of bikini time. Ken receives a letter notifying him that his close friend from New Mexico is dead, and his friend’s wife is now sitting on a fortune. The letter asks Ken to look after the grieving Nanette in her time of need. The Florida chick is quickly cast aside, and Ken is on the road headed for New Mexico, a place of new possibilities with a recent widow and her millions.
Ken is an anti-hero who isn’t bogged down in rationalizations for his behavior. He’s a heel who loves babes and money and will do anything to get them. Growing up dirt poor, he’s certain that cash is the elixir for all of life’s suffering. Ken doesn’t ever want to feel that cold, empty-stomach longing again and knows that his dead friend’s wife might be his golden ticket away from a life of sticking up filling stations for dough.
Upon arrival at Nanette’s house, it becomes apparent that Ken isn’t the only one with his eye on her fortune. It seems a cast of characters has gathered around Nanette in her time of grief. Each of the visiting eccentrics seems to have their own agenda, and not all of them pure of heart - most notably a horny, female relative with her eye on Ken. The scenes between Ken and this young nymph are sexy as hell until they take a dark and perverse turn - be warned.
If “The Vengeful Virgin” was the high-mark of Brewer’s writing career, “Nude on thin Ice” might be a close second. The scenes of sex and violence are a notch more intense than most 1960 paperbacks, and the story didn’t meander much at all. It’s a cautionary tale of the pitfalls of greed and lust, and it’s a damn fine noir paperback. Recommended.
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From 1989 through 1991, Berkley released a six-book science-fiction series under their Action-Adventure line. The series was stamped with the house name of Keith William Andrews. The novels were actually written by brothers William H. Keith and J. Andrew Keith. How does a time-traveling series gain valuable shelf-space in the men's action-adventure aisles? Gun porn. Lots of gun porn. And compelling covers.
Beginning with the series' eponymous debut, the familiar narrative of the US falling to invading Soviet forces begins. The idea is that the Soviet Union won the Cold War and thus took command of Europe using the guise of “U.N. Forces”. By 2008, the Soviet-Russian control has reached the U.S., gobbling up all of the major cities. Like a “Red Dawn” concept, there are pockets of resistance in rural places. The headquarters is Free American Central Command at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Freedom Rangers utilize a top secret time-travel base to thwart the Soviet Union through the annals of time...because the Reds have a time travel device as well. Seriously.
While I don't completely know the debut mission, my paperback collection features books two and three. The second entry, “Raiders of the Revolution”, contained a backstory for new beginners. Lieutenant Travis Hunter leads a small group of time-traveling Rangers, which is ultimately the cast of characters featured in the series. Each book features a new location in time with this novel's setting being the Battle of Brandywine in the Revolutionary War. The mission is to stop the K.G.B. from assassinating George Washington!
With all that being said, the book was a real blast to read. As I mentioned in my introduction, the Keiths inject copious amounts of firearm lingo into the narrative. It's one of those writing styles where every gun in the room is described in detail. Because the Rangers can't risk leaving, say an Uzi or AK-47, in the 1700s, they must fight the Soviets and then retrieve any firearms to carry back to the future. Interesting enough, they leave thousands upon thousands of brass rounds lying everywhere. Bonkers. Why wouldn't people just pick up these brass artifacts and reverse engineer a .223 round? Regardless, it's a fun concept.
Unfortunately, J. Andrew Keith passed away in 2009 but his brother runs a detailed author site explaining many of his own science-fiction novels including some info on this series. You can check it out here.
In 2016, Hard Case Crime re-released a lost Lawrence Block novel titled “Sinner Man” that was written in the late 1950s and rejected by paperback houses until it was published in 1968 as “Savage Lover” under his Sheldon Lord pseudonym. The story behind this lost work is pretty interesting and is addressed by Block in the afterward to the recent reprint.
The paperback opens with insurance salesman Donald Barshter inadvertently killing his wife during a domestic squabble fueled by alcohol and high emotions. Instead of calling the police and rolling the dice on a likely manslaughter charge, he decides to run away. Barshter splits to Buffalo and creates a new identity for himself as “Nat Crowley,” an enigmatic wise guy from Miami.
Barshter finds it liberating to shed his skin and don a a new personality with a more brash attitude than the insurance industry would permit. As Crowley, he fights, gets laid (fairly graphically, thank heavens) and begins to attract the attention of the local mafia and the Buffalo Police. After he falls in with a crime boss, he becomes enmeshed in regional mob rivalries and makes some difficult choices along the way. Inevitably, things get increasingly murderous as Barshter goes all-in with his new persona.
Reading Block’s earliest writing is such a pleasure because it’s so recognizably him. The dialogue is crisp and realistic and the narrator’s thought process is logical and well-reasoned - even when you need to suspend disbelief that a suburban insurance man can segue so seamlessly into the Syndicate or that his desire to do so is wise under the circumstances.
Block has become a better writer over the past 60 years as you’d expect, but the guy was never a hack. Fans know he’s got real gifts, and he had them back in the day, as well. “Sinner Man” is a stand-alone winner, and you won’t regret the time spent reading this thin rediscovered paperback. Highly recommended.
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With over 19 pseudonyms and over 350 novels, few have rivaled James Reasoner's blueprint on men's adventure fiction. Along with penning a number of adult western titles like 'Longarm' and 'Trailsman', Reasoner wrote a number of short stories for magazines and compilations. One of those, “Down in the Valley”, first appeared in “Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine” in September, 1979. In 1997 the story was included in the “American Pulp” compilation edited by Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini and Martin Greenberg.
“Forty-three men huddled in the back of the truck, cold and afraid. There was no moon and the canvas flaps on the side cut out what little starlight there was. It was pitch black inside and none of the men knew where they were headed.”
Beginning any literary work with that opening paragraph just demands that your audience sit up and pay attention. I was actually thumbing through this compilation and was immediately roped in by simply glancing at those few lines. Who are the men? Where are they headed?
Reasoner's story features a truck driver named Flood driving a truckload of illegal aliens from Mexico to San Antonio. The backstory has Flood, a bitter blue collar laborer, leaving his wife and newborn baby to pursue better money, fancy women and tasty whiskey. While his illegal pipeline work as a human trafficker is lucrative, he's found the women are harder to come by.
The story's second character displays the same determination, yet reaches for a different goal – working anywhere other than hot fields. Ramon has a lover in Mexico named Elena and he's pursing the American dream – regardless of which color the collar is. Exhausted from laboring in the hot sun, Ramon wants to escape to America to achieve his own goals and has paid Flood hard-earned money to deliver him to San Antonio.
The night-time dash across the boarder evolves into hot-pursuit. Reasoner conveniently places a sting operation into the mix with state patrol officers coordinating a roadblock. Flood's off road driving will be put to the test as Ramon simply awaits his fate. As the story reaches a crescendo, we realize just how closely paralleled the two characters are and how far they will go to achieve success.
At under 10-pages, Reasoner orchestrates a quick and overly entertaining short story. “Down in the Valley” should appeal to action fans but the heart of the story is providing insight on both Flood and Ramon. The author proves that we all may be headed to the same destination, sometimes on the same path, but the measures we use to reach success varies substantially.
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“The Floater” is a police procedural novella by Jonathan Craig (real name: Frank E. Smith) that first appeared in the January 1955 issue of “Manhunt Magazine” and predates Craig’s similar ‘Police File’ and ‘Sixth Precinct/Pete Selby’ series titles from the same era. The novella has been reprinted by Black Cat Mysteries (a Wildside Press imprint) as a 99-cent eBook.
The story is told by NYPD homicide detective Jim Coren who, along with his partner, Paul Brader, is assigned the case of an 18 year-old female who washed ashore near Manhattan’s Pier 90. The author includes all sorts of interesting forensic science trivia about floaters that seems credible enough to me. The evidence convinces the fictional detectives that the girl was murdered before she was dumped in the water.
The officers follow a logical trail to determine if any missing persons match the demographics of the young floater. There’s something about a “Jonathan Craig” police procedural that’s so pure and logical that they’re always a pleasure to read. The detectives don’t have the colorful, fully-formed personalities of Ed McBain’s detectives of the 87th Precinct, but that approach places the evidence, procedures and suspects front-and-center. You can also count on the female victim of his stories to be involved in deviant or promiscuous sexual activity, and “The Floater” is no exception.
I’d be interested to know why the author was writing NYPD police procedurals during the same era for the ‘Police File’ series, the ‘Sixth Precinct/Pete Selby’ series and stand-alone stories like this one? Wouldn’t it have been better branding to pick one hero and ride him until he drops? It’s not like all these NYPD protagonists were differentiated in any meaningful way.
Sadly, Frank E. Smith died in 1984, so I’ll never get the chance to ask him about his career and the literary choices he made. It doesn’t seem as if he granted many interviews during his life or that anyone has made an exhaustive study of his writing. He was probably just one of those hard-working Florida authors at the time grinding out stories to feed his family. Anyway, the bottom line is that “The Floater” was a great story, and you should read it. Recommended.
A feature on Jonathan Craig is included in the third episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast.
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Frank O'Rourke (1916-1989) was a Denver native who received his call for writing during WW2. His first novel, “E Company”, was released in 1945. He went on to write over 60 novels, three of which were adapted for film - “The Bravados”, “A Mule for the Marquesa” (film name “The Professionals”) and “The Great Bank Robbery”. My first sampling of his work is the 1958 Signet paperback “A Texan Came Riding”.
A hired gun named John Kearney arrives in the southwestern border town of Taos with a stack of letters. He presents these letters, some written by attorneys, judges and even a governor, to town sheriff Adolfo Montez. Kearney is searching for a criminal named Charles Malcolm, who's chosen Taos as a place to park all of his wealth. As the owner of the mine and half of the area farms, Malcolm is a significant citizen. While never fully explained to the reader, apparently Malcolm raped a woman in the mid-west and cheated hundreds of God fearing farmers out of land and stock.
We are introduced to Charles Malcolm and quickly realize he's a lunatic. Further, he keeps a witch by his side to cast spells and curses on his enemies. Malcolm has laid over half of the women in town, some carrying his offspring over to Mexico, others...well he doesn't even know about. His most prized possession is Rachel Perez, who's he most recently knocked up and placed at a nearby ranch.
Kearney aligns with a sheep herder named Ed Shaffer, Rachel and sheriff Montez to uncover Malcolm's corruption in the town. Discovering an important upcoming transaction between Malcolm and businessman Don Roberto proves to be the key to uncovering Malcolm's corruption. The book's finale has Malcolm on the run as Kearney and his allies hone in.
Despite its mere 128-pages, “A Texan Came Riding” is an exhaustive effort to digest. The narrative is just implausible. Kearny has authoritative letters from various branches of jurisdiction citing Malcolm is a criminal. Why isn't he apprehended by the law? Why would Kearney, a rancher from Nebraska by trade, even be involved in this whole debacle? There's pages and pages of dialogue – displayed in lengthy paragraphs – between Malcolm, his witch and Don Roberto. Further, Kearney doesn't display any heroic traits whatsoever. Did I mention there is a damn witch in this book?
“A Texan Came Riding” is terrible. I weep for the cover artist that designed this reprint. The contents doesn't match the impressive cover.
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The short fiction of Kansas native Fletcher Flora (1914-1968) was a regular fixture in “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine” in the 1950s and 1960s as well as dozens of Hitchcock-branded anthologies. Wildside Press has compiled many of Flora’s greatest hits in two eBook compilations for the ridiculously low price of a buck-a-pop. “For Money Received” is a 31-page novelette that originally appeared in the October 1964 issue of AHMM. It was also included in the Hitchcock anthologies “Meet Death at Night” (1964) and “Murderer’s Row” (1975) and most recently in “The Second Fletcher Flora Megapack” from Wildside Press.
The story is narrated by cut-rate private investigator Percy Hand whose business is so slow that his receptionist is an electric buzzer. One day he’s visited by new client with an unusual request. Mrs. Coon believes her husband is being blackmailed by his mistress. The fact that her husband is straying doesn’t pose much of a problem, but the wife won’t settle for blackmail and hires Percy to get to the bottom of the matter.
An easy job soon becomes complicated after the secret lovers somehow spot Percy and give him the slip. Percy needs the money and must figure out a way to salvage this engagement and get to the bottom of the blackmail scheme that becomes a murder case. Percy is a great main character because he’s unusually focused on his own professional ethics - a challenge when engaging in the dirty business of tailing a cheating spouse. He’s also a legitimately funny and sarcastic narrator with a great self-deprecating nature, and I found myself laughing aloud several times over the course of this single-sitting mystery.
Flora is a fun author, and I suspect that shorter fiction plays to his strengths. “For Money Received” is a clever bit of short fiction that won’t change your life but serves as a great introduction to this largely-forgotten author’s body of work. It’s an easy recommendation and a breezy way to spend an hour. I also learned that Percy is the main character in other short stories and Flora’s full-length novel called “Leave Her to Hell” from 1958 that’s been reprinted by Stark House. I intend to check that one out soon.
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