Lionel White (1905-1985) was a crime fiction writer with a specialty in heist novels. However, his work never achieved the commercial success or historical longevity of Richard Stark’s heist fiction. My theory is that because White never gravitated towards a series character (a’la ‘Parker’), readers never developed any particular brand loyalty toward his writing despite its sustained excellence. The upside of a stand-alone paperback is that the stakes are way higher for the main character. In any novel, the hero could live or die or be imprisoned because the author has no use for him after the final page.
“Operation - Murder” is a 1956 Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original by Lionel White that has been re-released by Stark House as a double packaged with “Coffin for a Hood.” The new collection also features an introduction by talented Utah author Ben Boulden who does some remarkable detective work uncovering details of White’s shadowy life.
The novel opens with Tina Scudder riding in a bus through the Rocky Mountains to the sleepy town of Twin Valley. She’s come a long way to rendezvous with the man she married ten days earlier after meeting the enigmatic charmer on the ski slopes. Her new husband, Frank, told her to meet him in the frozen hamlet, so they can be together at last on a never-ending honeymoon.
Meanwhile, we learn that there’s been a bank robbery - with shots fired and a deputy hit - in a nearby town. If you’ve never read a vintage crime novel before, you might be surprised to learn that newlywed Frank is connected to the robbery crew - the leader, in fact.
We also learn that there is a money train coming through the mountains replenishing banks with cash along its 600-mile route. There’s a couple guards on board keeping the $6 million safe, but an approaching snowstorm runs the risk of stopping the train right around Twin Valley. Could the relatively modest bank robbery have been just a warm up for the big score of knocking over the money train? You betcha. The planning and execution of a train robbery 100 years after such crimes had gone out of fashion was a great pleasure of “Operation - Murder.”
White keeps things moving for the reader with a compelling ensemble cast and regular third-person perspective changes. The setting of a snowed-in mountain town brimming with the potential for extreme violence makes for a suitably claustrophobic backdrop for this compelling heist paperback. The inclusion of the innocent Tina into the snowy shitstorm of violence and mayhem makes for a nice twist.
Overall “Operation - Murder” is a by-the-numbers 1950s heist paperback written by an author who had the formula mastered by this point of his career. The paperback doesn’t especially break new ground in the genre, but it’s extremely well-executed and worth your time. Mostly, I’m just glad that the novels of Lionel White are being kept alive over 60 years later. He was a master of the genre and “Operation - Murder” is a fine entry into his body of work.
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Daniel Streib (1928-1996) was a heavy contributor to the men's action-adventure genre in the 70s and 80s. After authoring a 'Nick Carter: Killmaster' novel, “The Night of the Avenger” (1973), Streib wrote a two-book series entitled 'Grant Fowler' (1971-1973) along with stand-alone titles like “Operation Countdown” (1970) and “House of Silence.” The 80s proved to be the author's most productive era with the 14-book series 'Hawk' (1980-1981), the 9-book run of 'Counter Force' (1983-1985), and two installments of 'Phoenix Force.” My first experience with Streib is a sleaze-vendetta paperback entitled “Brannon!” published by Pinnacle in 1973.
The book introduces readers to the small town of Timberland. It's a dying, rural community built from the lumbering industry by Alan Ward. The opening chapter (which is also detailed on the book's back cover) is set in 1952 and begins with four poorly-educated men that are sexually frustrated, all nearly fondling themselves in sheer boredom. The group of men, including the more mentally challenged Alfie, have a carnal desire for Alfie's hot sister Catherine. While she rejects their advances repeatedly, a new opportunity arrives.
A young American soldier named Brannon steps off the train and asks the men for directions. The group of men convince Brannon to seduce Catherine, so they can spy and masturbate from the bushes. The handsome, uniformed Brannon has no problems seducing Catherine and escorts her to a nearby lake to do the deed. However, it turns out Catherine is Alan Ward's daughter. To enhance the evening's activities, one of the men runs and tells Ward and his men that Brannon is raping Catherine at the lake. When the men arrive to assault Brannon, Catherine saves face by screaming, “RAPE!” After beating Brannon's brains out, one of the men whips out a knife and...cuts off Brannon's genitalia making “Brannon!” the first novel I've experienced where the male hero literally has no penis.
After these events, the book flash-forwards to 1973 and Brannon has become a tycoon in the paper industry despite stiff competition. Suave, wealthy and powerful, Brannon is frustrated with his...lack of a penis. He later says it's “the end of his immortality” and describes his sexual experiences as gazing at whores through windows. However, the thing that raises Brannon's interest is Timberland. Not only does he want to enact revenge on the town, but he's still madly desiring Catherine. His one encounter with the woman 21-years ago keeps him up (read that as sleepless) at night. Determined to have his revenge, Brannon erects a plan to cut off Ward's resources while also locating the group that castrated him.
It's hard to appreciate Streib's writing considering the dumbed down material the author was working with. Timberland's men are neanderthals, seemingly spending their days pondering sex. Catherine is a shallow idol, Ward's character isn't convincing and Streib seems to focus a lot of his creative direction on Alfie's sexual escapades with himself. Brannon is the only hero, but he's a racist multimillionaire that I hated.
“Brannon!” is a sleazy endeavor, yet lacks any graphic sex. It's like taking a blind man to an aquarium. Where's the enjoyment if we can't see it? “Brannon!” isn't even the bitter revenge yarn it aspires to be. Instead, it's just a limp effort that never peaked my interest. Slice this one from your reading list.
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In this episode, things get sleazy with a discussion on the hot genre of vintage sleaze fiction along with a review of Orrie Hitt’s 1959 classic, “The Widow.” Meanwhile Eric tells us about Ed Lacy’s “Room to Swing,” and we look back on the best books we covered during month of November. Stream below or download directly HERE. You can also stream the show anywhere that offers good podcasts.
Listen to "Episode 21: Sleaze" on Spreaker.
“East of Desolation” was Jack Higgins' (real name: Henry Patterson) 22nd novel, published in 1968 by Berkley and then reprinted dozens of times using different cover art. The book arrived seven years prior to Higgins becoming a mega-bestseller and household name with his 1975 novel “The Eagle Has Landed”. While booming sales never supported the material, the 1960s produced some of Higgins' finest literary work, evident with this ice-capped adventure starring brush pilot Joe Martin.
Martin is a Korean War veteran living on the coast of Godthaab, Greenland, a mere 200 hundred miles below the frigid Arctic Circle. Martin works as an independent pilot, flying supplies and passengers to various ships, hunting parties and whaling factories. It's a quiet life that allows Martin enough income to slowly pay off his aircraft. One of Martin's best clients is Jack Desforge, a Hollywood movie director that spends long holidays hunting polar bear. When we are first introduced to Martin, it is on a flight to Jack's boat to deliver a veteran movie actress to the director. There are some early sparks between Martin and the beautiful actress, a chemistry that Higgins utilizes throughout the narrative.
After returning back home, Martin is solicited by a group of people led by a woman named Sarah Kelso. Her husband's plane went missing a year ago near the polar ice-caps. On a recent university expedition, the wreckage was located and two men were found dead inside the cabin. Due to the horrific weather, the site was left untouched, and Sarah was notified. Now, Sarah has a number of reasons to find the wreckage and wants Martin's help.
The plane wreckage revealed an ID for a passenger named Martin Gaunt. Who is he? Second, her husband's body wasn't found in the plane, instead the pilot's seat was occupied by a man identified as Harrison. Again, who is he? Sarah's insurance reps, who accompanied Sarah to Greenland, want answers. They paid out a sizable amount for the death of Sarah's husband, who may or may not have died in the crash. With Martin's experience as a pilot in harsh conditions, the group want to examine the crash site and find answers.
Higgins builds a gripping, intense narrative ripe with adventure and intrigue. Like other high-adventure novels, the remote location is like a character itself, slowly imposing its will on the story. But, the narrative has a multitude of mysteries, each evolving as readers learn more about the characters and their history. Just when I thought I had the place mats aligned...the author resets the table. Needless to say, there's a lot of moving pieces...and targets.
“East of Desolation” is another exceptional novel from an author that seemingly can do no wrong. While this one avoids the author's stereotypical World War 2 connection, it still maintains a “battle” prose between warring factions. It's fun, clever and altogether a terrific read that delivers a satisfying payout. This one is recommended.
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James Earl McKimmey (1923-2011) achieved creative success as an author of crime novels, science-fiction and the Ki-Gor series of Tarzanish pulp stories. His hadboiled novels were mostly published by Dell, and a handful of them have been reprinted by Stark House, including McKimmey’s 1961 novel The Long Ride packed as a double along with Cornered! and an introduction by Bill Crider.
McKimmey was influenced by the early stand-alone work of John D. MacDonald, and this shines brightly in The Long Ride. The paperback features a diverse cast of characters thrust together under dramatic circumstances where mayhem and violence unfold - MacDonald’s basic template. In this case, McKimmey came up with a completely original gambit to bring together the cast of characters.
Before Uber, ridesharing was often organized through newspaper classified ads like this:
“Wanted: To share a ride to San Francisco with widowed lady. Call Mrs. Landry. Walnut seven five nine one.”
In The Long Ride, a group of seven travelers rideshare from fictional Loma City to San Francisco over several days brought together by the classified ad. The long-distance carpoolers are:
- Mrs. Landry, our vehicular hostess and driver of the station wagon
- A stone cold murderous bank robber posing as a benign retired soldier
- An unstable, one-armed, hard-luck case with $100,000 in found bank robbery proceeds
- The typist bride of the one-armed man
- A handsome, enigmatic widower with a secret reason for joining the road trip
- The beautiful divorced woman with an eye on the mystery man
- The obligatory, horny, spinster librarian
The opening chapters set the scene with a violent bank robbery and $100,000 in lost cash recovered by the one-armed innocent bystander. The idea that the bank robber and the dude who found the cash happen to answer the same classified ad confining them in the same station wagon seems to be an unbelievable coincidence that’s reasonably explained later in the narrative.
The Long Ride has a setup that Alfred Hitchcock would have found appealing, and I’m surprised it was never adapted for the screen. More than one passenger in the car is not who they claim to be, and those reveals make for the most satisfying elements of the paperback. Moreover, the alliances that form over the long car ride - both real and manipulative - kept me turning the pages long after normal employed people should have gone to bed.
To be sure, there are plot holes big enough to accommodate a 1950s station wagon. There’s so much about this book I’d like to say, but it would spoil the great surprises - some already ruined by the plot synopsis and introduction. Best to go into this one cold, having read nothing more than this spoiler-free, Paperback Warrior review. However you do it, please check out The Long Ride. It’s a totally original premise that was nothing short of spectacular.
British author Peter Leslie (1922-2007) authored five novels in the television tie-in paperback series 'Man from U.N.C.L.E.' as well as 12 books starring popular action hero Mack Bolan. In 1981, Leslie was hired to author a series of action-adventures for Signet with a mercenary theme. Using house name Peter Buck, Leslie wrote all nine installments of the ‘Marc Dean: Mercenary' series beginning with the debut, “Thirteen for the Kill”.
The novel begins with a crew of 40 armed mercenaries attempting to beach a small warship on a West African coast. Due to the violent storm, tide and rip-current, 20 of them perish and all of the weapons sink. Thankfully, series hero Marc Dean survives to lead the men into the jungle. After this opening segment, a flashback scene helps explain these confusing events.
The small town of Gabotomi lies where Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria meet. It's only a few hundred square miles, but it has been infiltrated by a terrorist group calling themselves the Nya Nyerere. Their goal is to create an independent territory free of all three countries. The group is Soviet trained, non-Muslim and heavily-armed on a cliff-dwelling surrounded by dense forest and a scorching desert on each side. Diplomatically, no one really cares that this band of Nomad savages have proclaimed their independence. But peacekeepers have discovered that the area sits on a fortune of diamonds, a resource they can utilize to bring peace to all three nations: divvy up the loot and divide it three (or four) ways. The Nya Nyerere are an obstacle that must be removed, so the bureaucrats meet behind closed doors and come up with a solution – hiring Marc Dean to destroy the Nya Nyerere.
Leslie writes Dean like 'Doc Savage'. He's the most athletic guy on the planet, a sharpshooter, martial arts master and a Vietnam vet. He is also a Yale graduate and plays the harpsichord masterfully. In fact, he's written in the vein of Norman Winski's 'Hitman' character, just less arrogant. He even makes love like Hitman with sex descriptions like “entering deep into her like a sword wound”. It's over-the-top silliness...but is it any good?
Not really.
I enjoy Peter Leslie's literary work on Mack Bolan titles, but “Thirteen for the Kill” was a painful reading adventure that seemed off-kilter and uneven in its presentation. There's 60-pages of Dean and company robbing an armory to gain new firearms. But, this comes after reading about the entire arms negotiation that secured the first weapons...you know the ones that sank in the ocean on page one. There's firefights galore with plenty of gunporn thrown around, but none of it was terribly interesting. The last assault on the terrorist compound involved blowing up a bridge to cut off aid from Nya Nyerere sympathizers. This exciting premise is just botched with a boring jungle fire that alters the whole mission.
Maybe this series just had some early missteps before finding a rhythm, but I'm not tapping any more shoulders to experience the dance again. While this isn't a dismal Hall of Shame contender, its pretty darn close. “Thirteen for the Kill” was an unlucky number for me.
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During his 1950s heyday, mystery author Stanley Ellin (1916-1986) was racking up Edgar Award nominations the way Meryl Streep collects Oscars. He was mostly acclaimed for his short story work, and a handful of his shorts were adapted into episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” including his most famous story, “The Specialty of the House” that originally appeared in a 1948 issue of “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.”
The story takes place at an unpretentious, dismal-looking Manhattan basement restaurant called Sbirro’s. Laffler has invited Costain to this hole-in-the-wall for the meal of a lifetime. The rap is that Sbirro’s refuses to change with the times and modernize, so the cobwebs in the restaurant’s corners have been there for 50 years. It’s also a secret restaurant that operates as a private club open to only a few in-the-know patrons.
Upon being seated at their table, Laffler is informed by the apologetic waiter that the “specialty of the house” - a dish called Lamb Amirstan - is not being served tonight. The restaurant has no menu, and every guest eats the same multi-course meal chosen by the enigmatic owner each evening, a fact the fussy Laffler defends with an air of culinary snobbery. As the food arrives, Costain starts out skeptical but is eventually won over by the quality of the meal despite the utter gastro-weirdness of the establishment.
As the men start dining together at the restaurant nearly every night with Costain packing on the pounds, the reader begins to suspect that there is something truly sinister happening here - otherwise, the story never would have caught the attention of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” The mystery behind the lamb dish and what exactly occurs in Sbirro’s kitchen intensifies throughout the pages of the story. I won’t give away the punchline here, but the secrets of the kitchen are left suitably ambiguous to the reader. There are enough clues along the way that your most ghastly conclusions can be supported by the preceding text.
For his part, Ellin does a fine job of building the mystery and suspense over the course of this short story. His prose is excellent, and it’s not hard to see why he’s regarded as one of the finest purveyors of short suspense from the era. If you want to read “Specialty of the House,” you shouldn’t have a problem finding the tale in any one of several short story collections and anthologies. It’s a more subtle work of fiction that what we normally cover here (the TV adaptation was more explicit), but it’s also a fine example of mid-20th century storytelling in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe. Recommended.
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