Between 1972 and 1985, Ritchie Perry (born 1942) wrote a 13-book series starring a British Intelligence agent named Philis (a dude) battling international criminals who pose a national security threat to Great Britain. In the U.S., the paperbacks were published by Ballantine, but many of them have been released as ebooks which should save you some time hunting them down. Start with the 1972 opening installment, The Fall Guy.
The British Intelligence arm in the series is SR(2) with the initials standing for “Special Responsibilities.” The group is designed to do things the police are not able to - namely assassinate threats without the blessing of a judge or jury. In this series debut, Scotland Yard wants SR(2)’s help in neutralizing the South American end of a cocaine trafficking operation, while the cops handle the domestic arm in the U.K. After an SR(2) sleeper agent in Brazil goes missing during the investigation of a drug exporter, a new operative is needed in the region. Enter Philis.
The Fall Guy serves as an origin story for Agent Philis - the hero of the 13 book series. When we meet him, he is a small-time British smuggler of booze and cigarettes working a beach town in Brazil. After a lengthy prologue giving the readers a third-person view of the intel agency’s mission and its challenges, the narrative abruptly switches to first person with charming and humorous Philis telling the story.
Philis is a wisecracking playboy who is kidnapped by SR(2) operatives who convince him to search for the missing SR(2) agent in a Brazilian beach town. Nearly the entire paperback takes place on the Brazilian coastline, and the author, who has also written a non-fiction book about Brazil, makes the culture and topography come alive. It’s a great setting for a thrilling adventure. As Philis gets closer to the truth about the missing spy, the author ratchets up the intensity and extreme violence. Consider yourself warned.
Where does the Super Secret Agent Philis series fall among its spy-fiction cohorts? It’s not as dense as a Robert Ludlum novel, but it’s way smarter and better-written than a Nick Carter: Killmaster volume. The cheeky first-person narration reminds me of Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm series, and the well-written Britishness of the whole affair recalls Adam Hall’s Quiller books. In any case, it’s a way smarter book than the illustration on the paperback cover would have you believe.
In short, I haven’t been this excited to start a new espionage series in a long time. Hopefully, the later installments keep up the same level of high quality on display in The Fall Guy.
Series Order:
As is often the case, the American publisher renumbered the series differently for the domestic reprints. However, with the exception of the first installment, I’m told that adhering to strict series order is not required. The series order below is the best that the Spy Guys and Gals website could discern given the available data:
1. The Fall Guy (1972)
2. A Hard Man to Kill / Nowhere Man (1973)
3. Ticket to Ride (1973)
4. Holiday with a Vengeance (1974)
5. Your Money and Your Wife (1975)
6. One Good Death Deserves Another (1976)
7. Dead End (1977)
8. Dutch Courage (1978)
9. Bishop’s Pawn (1979)
10. Grand Slam (1980)
11. Fool’s Mate (1981)
12. Foul Up (1982)
13. Kolwezi (1985)
The author also published a 1991 novel called Comeback that many sources list as the 14th book in the Super Secret Agent Philis series. My research shows that the book stars an entirely different lead character who may or may not exist in the same universe.
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Stuart Friedman (1913-1993) was a multi-genre author of the mid-20th century whose books often promised wild and abandoned sexuality but were, in reality, rather tame affairs. Many of his titles have found new life as modern reprints including his 1954 crime fiction novel, Ex-Con (original title: Free are the Dead), now available as a $3 ebook or $10 paperback from Wildside Press.
As the paperback opens, Charles Garrell is bummed that his devoted wife isn’t there to meet his train upon his arrival home. Charles has spent over three years in prison for a liquor store robbery motivated by extreme poverty, and Nora promised that she’d be there for him upon his release. He walks to their low-rent apartment to find Nora missing, but the table set for a welcome home meal. A thorough search of the place reveals no sign or Nora, but an inconveniently-placed corpse of a man in the bedroom closet. So much for a romantic homecoming.
The cops who locked up Charles for the robbery are hyper-aggressive and don’t take kindly to parolees in their town. As such, turning to the police for help on the missing wife problem or the dead guy in the closet problem is out of the question. Instead, he turns to underworld contacts he met during his stay in prison.
At a crooked casino run by a con-man, Charles runs into his wife’s Neitzsche-loving cousin-in-law, Sylvia. Because this is a Stuart Friedman novel, she’s also an S&M nymphomaniac with an eye on Charles, but he feels nothing but revulsion for her. She claims to know something about Nora’s disappearance, and the price for her help is sex. Meanwhile, Charles feels the need to pursue logical leads to find his missing bride and resolve the small issue of the dead corpse decomposing in his closet at home. The trajectory of the relationship between Charles and Sylvia was bizarre and not completely credible.
Charles also meets a hot little cocktail waitress named Cleo with an eye on Charles. Having been locked up for three years, Charles is understandably starved for a woman, and sweet Cleo is hot to trot. She’s presented as a kindhearted seductress without an agenda - completely the opposite of Sylvia. The quandary of Sexy Cleo vs. Missing Wife was set-up to be the central moral dilemma Charles must navigate while also solving the novel’s vexing mysteries. However, not much came of it.
The search for Nora and the truth about the murdered man in the closet was pretty satisfying, but the ultimate solution left me cold. Can you enjoy a sexy mystery and dislike the punch line? If so, then you might enjoy Con-Man. It was a nice ride, but the destination just wasn’t to my taste.
Ovid Demaris (1919-1998) authored a number of crime-fiction novels that were based on his research into real-life organized crime. The author’s most successful books were his non-fiction accounts of actual Mafia operations. As such, it's no surprise that his novels including Hoods Take Over, Candyleg and The Organization revolve around the Syndicate's drug, gambling and prostitution rackets on the American West Coast. While I wasn't fond of Demaris' The Enforcer, I wanted to sample another of his mob novels. I chose The Long Night, originally published in 1959 and recently reprinted as an affordable ebook by NY Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg's Cutting Edge imprint. It's the first of two books starring quasi-private investigator Vince Slader, the other being 1960's The Gold Plated Sewer.
The Long Night features protagonist Vince Slader, a hard-nosed guy who works as a debt collector. Now, Slader isn't a debt collector that sits behind the phones and dials for dollars. Instead, really bad guys call on the really tough Slader to retrieve gambling debts and derogatory installment payments. In Beverly Hills, it's a business that is booming. Armed with an address and a .45, Slader's track record in the debt collection business is very good. He runs the operation under his license of private-investigator, and that business has now become scrutinized by two California Senators who are wise to Slader's violent business practices.
Despite being the target of a committee investigation, Slader takes on a new assignment of tracking down a gambling debtor named Russell. To retrieve him, he starts with questioning Russell's voluptuous wife Cindy. The intense question and answer session eventually leads to Slader getting laid, but it doesn't get him any closer to Russell or his dough. After digging in a little further, Russell is traced to a couple of beefy hit-men who want to protect the man for their own purposes.
The narrative takes an unexpected twist when Cindy dumps Slader on a rural stretch of California highway. It is there that Slader apparently is run over by a car belonging to Russell. But here's the mystery: Slader awakens at the bottom of a ravine behind the wheel of Russell's car. He is in possession of Russell's wallet and driver's license with no idea how he got there. After hearing a radio bulletin about Russell being carjacked, Slader realizes he's been set-up for armed robbery. The book's climactic second-half is a riveting narrative that follows Slader's investigation to clear his own name and find this mysterious Russell character.
My previous experience with Demaris was the soapy, teenage delinquent novel The Enforcer (1960). It was disguised as a gritty crime-fiction novel about a Mafia stranglehold but was really a uninspired episode of Melrose Place. The Long Night is a far more compelling story, one that is legitimately a gritty crime-fiction novel. Demaris inserts loud-mouthed, gambling kingpins into the narrative and saturates the prose with gunplay, fast cars and sexy women. The criminals are edgy, but the hero is a valid, uncompromising tough guy who serves as the perfect crime combatant. While Slader's goal is to recoup the money, the author weaves in a romantic side story as well as an interesting revelation of Slader's ex-wife who became a prostitute.
The Long Night is an enjoyable 1950s crime-fiction novel that retains most of the flavor of the genre's mid-century pioneers. If you are a fan of authors like Frank Kane and Mickey Spillane, The Long Night is sure to please.
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Richard Wormser (1908-1977) is another one of those authors who transitioned seamlessly from writing fiction for the pulp magazines to authoring page-turning novels at the advent of the paperback originals in the 1950s. Under his own name, crime and mystery was his primary bread-and-butter, but he also wrote Westerns under the pen name Ed Friend. Today, the focus is on his 1963 Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel Perfect Pigeon, which remains available as a $4 ebook - free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.
As the novel opens, our narrator Mark Daniels has just completed a six-year stretch in the penitentiary for bank embezzlement. Daniels is a smart guy and the law never recovered the $250,000 he stole from the bank. His nonsense story was that the money was stolen from Mark after he fell asleep on a bus and no one could prove otherwise. Now a free man, Mark could sure use to get his hands on the stash of stolen dough. After all, he served six years for the right to enjoy that money, right? The problem is that Mark promised himself he’d wait three years before tapping into his cache of cash. Let the heat die down. Let the world forget.
Mark meets a hot chick named Columba (it’s Latin for pigeon) and beds her down to get back in the swing of things. He falls hard for her, but she’s gone like Cinderella after their motel date is over. Mark makes plans to find her again once he has some working capital. When she reappears later in the novel, it’s pure gold.
The job prospects for an ex-con are limited, and it’s not like Mark can go back to work as a bank teller. As such, he needs to support himself as a con-artist wracking up enough scores to keep food on the table and a roof over his head until he can access his hidden embezzlement proceeds. If you enjoy con-game stories, you’ll find the grifts in Perfect Pigeon to be quite satisfying.
Mark also falls in with a crew of ex-cons looking to score some cash by orchestrating some low-level scams. The problem is that these guys are hard-cases, and Mark is a white-collar kind of thief. The bigger problem is that the crew - and everyone else - believes that Mark has a quarter-million bucks squirreled away somewhere, and this molds the decisions that people make throughout the novel when interacting with Mark.
I wasn’t expecting Perfect Pigeon to be funny, but Mark - and, I can only assume, the author - are often hilarious. Moreover, Wormser is an all-around excellent writer who plotted this story like a roller coaster ride. The ending was a great twist that I should have seen coming but failed to recognize the clues.
Perfect Pigeon is one of the finest con-man novels I’ve read in ages. There are some slow parts, but it was an overall satisfying read at a nice price. Recommended.
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We don’t do by-lines here at Paperback Warrior. Your writers, Eric and Tom, generally speak with one voice in our articles and reviews. We edit each other’s work and rarely read the same books, so there’s little opportunity to disagree on a particular review.
Until now.
Eric read Death of a Citizen, the first book in the popular Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton and had an opinion that shocked and appalled Tom. Rather than disbanding the Paperback Warrior Empire or fist -fighting after school near the bike rack, we decided to emerge behind our curtain of anonymity and air our grievances publicly.
May the best man win.
Non-Spoiler Plot Synopsis:
Donald Hamilton (1916-2006) was a popular mid-20th Century author whose greatest success was in the genre of spy fiction. In the 1940s and 1950s, the author wrote a number of stand-alone crime-fiction novels and westerns. His most prolific work is the successful Matt Helm series of spy-fiction novels that ran 27 published novels from 1960-1993. The series was loosely adapted into four comical films starring Dean Martin in the title role that no one should ever watch because they are awful and bear no resemblance to the book series. Having enjoyed Hamilton's stand-alone novels, it was time to finally check out Matt Helm's first adventure in Death of a Citizen, the series debut.
The novel introduces Matt Helm as a suburban husband and father living a quiet life in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1958. Helm has gained a bit of notoriety as a popular author of western novels (paralleling Hamilton's own career). It's at a neighborhood dinner party when Helm sees a fellow guest named Tina, creating the perfect moment for the author to add some backstory into this rather complex character.
Readers learn that Helm was in the U.S. Army during WW2 and was recruited into the government's counter-agent program. Think of an assassin killing enemy assassins, spies killing spies. Helm and Tina were both knee deep in dead enemies for a five-year period in war-torn Europe. As co-workers and lovers, the two went their separate ways after the war - Helm disappeared into everyday citizenship and Tina just disappeared. Until now.
After a brief exchange with a young, aspiring novelist named Barbara, Helm departs the party only to find Barbara dead in his writing studio the next morning. Seemingly set up as the murderer, Helm is re-introduced to Tina who explains that Helm's atomic-scientist neighbor is the target of some sort of criminal conspiracy or communist nation. Tina and her new partner are in town to stop the would-be assassin – Barbara, the dead girl. Caught up in the crime and the old trade of killing, Helm is thrust back into his former life as ally and partner to Tina.
Eric’s Take:
Despite the novel's immense success and critical acclaim, I found Death of a Citizen to be an average spy-thriller. At 140-pages, nothing substantial happens during the novel's first-half. The narrative is presented as more of a road trip as Helm and Tina drive to Texas and rekindle that loving feeling (note - Helm is happily married to Beth and the father of three small children). With all the mileage, the story never really gains momentum once readers and the hero arrive at their destination. Aside from a few deaths, Helm isn't involved in much gunplay. I was a bit befuddled by the big reveal – the enemy is within – and Helm's dismissal of the most relevant portion of his life in the book's closing pages.
I would assume the series gains quality with quantity and maybe the Helm character becomes a little more menacing in an international setting. The end result is an average beginning to what is widely considered an enjoyable series of spy-adventures. I'm anxious to read the series' next installment, The Wrecking Crew, to analyze series' improvements.
Tom’s Take:
I think Eric misses the point in his review of Death of a Citizen, one of my favorite all-time novels that debuts my favorite series ever.
I will grant that it’s not a balls-out action spectacular like Don Pendleton’s War Against the Mafia. There’s plenty of that to enjoy later in the series. Instead, Hamilton is giving us the story of a man who is an amoral killer by his very nature who can no longer wear the costume of a suburban family man. The circumstances of the novel force Helm’s hand into deciding who he wants to be – a meek husband and father or a trained killer. You can guess which way he swings. Matt Helm is the citizen in Death of a Citizen.
Death of Citizen is a brilliant novel because it explores the nature of a violent man who is done conforming with polite society’s expectations. Helm is a great narrator who presents his acts of violence and his slide back into his old life in an offhand and cavalier fashion. For instance, the most shocking scene in the book happens off-page and is revealed to the reader as an offhand remark in a single sentence. Donald Hamilton was a genius who knew when to throw his punches but also knew when the reader’s imagination could do the job better than his tightly-wound prose.
I hope Eric continues with the series – at least the first dozen books or so. The other paperbacks are more traditional spy-assassin books with more traditional plotting. Book two is called The Wrecking Crew, and I thought it was a masterpiece. The third book in the Matt Helm series, The Removers, ties up the loose ends from Death of a Citizen regarding Matt’s family. The Removers was not amazing, but I suspect that Hamilton needed to resolve the unresolved family issues from the debut.
Bottom line for Eric: Don’t give up on Matt Helm.
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Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series of crime-fiction novels began in 1976 with the successful The Sins of the Fathers. Over a 44-year span, the author has written 17 novels, a short-story collection and a novella starring the ex-New York City detective. Scudder is a tragically flawed staple of New York's Hell's Kitchen, an alcoholic nice guy performing good deeds for average citizens. Despite being released after 1976's In the Midst of Death, Block considers the 1977 novel Time to Murder and Create as the second installment in the Matthew Scudder series.
The book begins by introducing readers to a charismatic informant named Spinner. During Scudder's career in law-enforcement, Spinner often supplied details closely related to a crime or criminal suspect. Through that relationship, Spinner formed a trust for Scudder that is evident through Block's opening pages. In it, Spinner presents Scudder an envelope with an ominous set of directions to only open the package if Spinner ends up dead. Shortly thereafter, Spinner's corpse is fished out of the river and Scudder opens the envelope.
Skirting around any potential spoilers, Scudder learns that Spinner was collecting monthly installment payments from three individuals. The first is a wealthy, productive architect, the second is the seductive wife of a rich New York elitist and the third is a wealthy entrepreneur developing a political candidacy. What do the three have in common with Spinner and why are they each paying him money? Scudder's role is to determine which of the three debtors murdered Spinner.
Block's narrative is grossly compelling as Scudder learns the identities of each suspect and assumes Spinner's role as payee. By doing so, he purposefully makes himself a target for the killer. With tight-knuckled suspense, the investigation digs into the mortal turpitude of each debtor. As Scudder begins to understand the payments, he questions his own vulnerability. Again, without spoiling it, there's a brilliant complexity to Scudder's relationship with the architect. Scudder's own personal tragedy closely aligns with that portion of the narrative. The end result is another feather in the hat. Lawrence Block's Time to Murder and Create is a riveting, emotional reading experience with no clear-cut heroes or villains. It's an unbiased look at human behavior and the ultimate costs of our failure. Masterful.
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Hardboiled crime novels reached a new height of popularity in the late 1940s. Many scholars and fans point to Mickey Spillane as a catalyst for this pop-culture phenomenon. His debut novel, I, the Jury, was published in 1947 and became an instant runaway bestseller. The book introduced the world to the iconic Mike Hammer, a fictional private-investigator who pursues bad guys mostly in New York City. Hammer is known for his physical rough 'n tumble, unorthodox style gained from his U.S. Army experience in WWII. Hammer's closest friend is Pat Chambers, the Captain of Homicide in the NYPD. Hammer also has a continuous, flirtatious affair with his secretary Velda throughout the series. While I struggled to fully enjoy I, the Jury and found it rather flat, I wanted to attempt another Mike Hammer novel to see if it produced a different reading experience. My selection is the second installment, My Gun is Quick.
The novel begins with Mike Hammer having coffee at a neighborhood diner. An attractive, yet homely, woman takes a seat beside Hammer and asks if he’d buy her a coffee. Hammer, never turning away female companionship, obliges despite warnings from the diner's owner. After a brief conversation Hammer learns that the unnamed woman, who Hammer later refers to as Red, was probably in the prostitution game and is in a really bad place. Hammer feels a great deal of compassion for the nice woman and offers her some money to set her life on track. Happily, she thanks Hammer and the two go their separate ways. The next morning, Hammer learns that the woman was struck and killed by a drunk driver.
Hoping to help identify the woman, Hammer meets with Pat to examine the body. After finding some bruises and markings on the woman, Hammer suspects that she was actually murdered. Despite Pat's skepticism, Hammer starts investigating the woman's history and the events leading to her death after their chance meeting. The investigation takes Hammer into New York's call girl racket and a millionaire named Berin-Grotin. After Hammer learns about the girl's connection to one of Berin-Grotin's staff members, the wealthy businessman actually hires Hammer to investigate the murder further. Along the way, Hammer falls in love with a reformed call girl named Lola in some of the narrative's most effective scenes.
The first thing to know is that My Gun is Quick is a far superior novel to I, the Jury. While I'm sure Spillane and Hammer fans will disagree, Hammer is just way more dynamic in this novel. With I, the Jury, Mike Hammer is so deadpan. He's a gruff, loudmouthed detective that just came across as abrasive and crude. Further, in the series debut, Hammer really doesn't solve anything. Instead, the clues are nearly served to him on typewritten notes. Spillane's writing in My Gun is Quick provides so much texture to this character. Hammer is drawn to this unnamed woman with his client's voice is speaking to him from the grave. She's pleading for him to learn her identity and provide retribution for her death. The idea that Hammer may have caused her death by putting her back on the streets is just really clever writing. It's a brilliant, multifaceted narrative that has Hammer's pursuit of the killer as his own, personal attempt at forgiving himself.
My Gun is Quick is one of the best novels I've read of any genre. Mickey Spillane's masterful prose is saturated in gritty realism, emotional stress and a thick-laced, impending sense of doom throughout. If you read nothing else, please read this novel. My Gun is Quick is the quintessential masterpiece of hardboiled crime.
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