Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 49

Episode 49 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast tackles a literary mystery regarding authorship of an obscure series from the 1970s that may have been written by a Catholic priest. We also discuss and review novels by Hammond Innes, Gil Brewer, and Louis Charbonneau. Listen on your favorite podcast app, paperbackwarrior.com, or download directly HERE Listen to "Episode 49: The Search for the D.C. Man" on Spreaker.

Dead Wrong

Lorenz F. Heller (1910-1965) was a New Jersey guy - and eventual Florida transplant - who authored genre books under the names Laura Hale, Larry Heller, Lorenz Heller and Larry Holden as well as TV scripts as George Sims. Black Gat Books has recently re-issued his 1957 paperback Dead Wrong originally published under the Larry Holden pseudonym.

Our narrator, ex-boxer Joe Molone, is planning to host an old friend named Harry Loomis who’s visiting town. As young men, Joe and Harry used to raise hell in the saloons of Newark, but nowadays Malone owns a modest building supply company, and Loomis works on cargo ships. Things take an early head-scratching turn when Harry doesn’t show up for their planned night of debauchery. Instead, Harry’s 24 year-old estranged daughter Claire shows up with a note from her father.

According to the letter, Harry has become fabulously wealthy from a savvy investment and wants to retire to Florida from the cargo ship business. Harry wants his daughter to be with him in Florida while Harry nurses his arthritic bones back to good health. As Joe is wondering why his old friend has stood him up, he learns that Harry has been murdered with a mysterious package missing. If you guessed that this is one of those books where the narrator has to solve a murder to clear his own name with the help of a beautiful girl, you’d be spot-on.

On the road to the truth, there are some excellent action sequences where Joe uses his fists on adversaries as if he was back in the boxing ring. Heller also creates some vivid secondary characters like the street hood with a knack for crafting edge weapons out of anything. Joe’s old flame - a nightclub chanteuse with some real street smarts - is another fantastically-drawn member of the supporting cast. These interesting, well-developed characters propel this rather standard crime-noir plot into something special and unusual. The prose is smooth and there’s no confusion in the storytelling despite many clever twists and turns leading to the tidy ending.

After reading both Dead Wrong and Heller’s A Rage at Sea, I’m beginning to feel that the author may be an unsung hero of 1950s crime fiction deserving greater recognition. Both novels were outstanding, and I’m looking forward to seeking out more of his work. Highly recommended.

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Mac #02 - Every Bet's a Sure Thing

In addition to two excellent stand-alone novels published under the Thomas Brandt pseudonym, Thomas B. Dewey (1915-1981) was the author of three successful and highly-regarded crime-fiction series titles: Singer Batts, Mac, and Pete Schoefield. Conventional wisdom is that the Mac books, which ran for 18 installments from 1947 to 1970, are the strongest of the three. I decided to start with the second book in the series, Every Bet’s a Sure Thing from 1953 - a novel currently available as a $5 ebook.

Mac (his only provided name) is a Chicago ex-cop turned private investigator who is hired to shadow a woman and two kids as they make their way from New York to Los Angeles on a train. What could be easier? You ride the train with her and keep an eye on the dame, right?

The identity of the client is a mystery to Mac, and it’s clear from the outset that this isn’t a simple domestic surveillance job. The target - her name is Harriet - gets off at every stop and uses the payphone, and local hoodlums are milling about every time she disembarks for a few minutes. Most relevantly, an prior operative who had been following Harriett is gunned down in the street as Mac takes over the cross-country surveillance during a Chicago layover. Someone in the shadows is playing for keeps.

Much of the book’s first half takes place on the train, and Mac’s curiosity gets the better of him. He gets to know Harriet and her kids along the journey. And that’s the thing about Mac that separates him from the other hardboiled private eyes from the mid-20th Century: he’s a nice guy with compassion and empathy for others. After reading hundreds of blood-on-the-knuckles mysteries with stoic heroes, having a protagonist narrator who cares about others was a breath of fresh air. Mac is no softy - he’s just human. He can kick ass and take a beating, but he does it because he wants to help others. When the paperback’s action shifts to Los Angeles, the big picture becomes clearer to both Mac and the reader.

By 1953, Dewey has been writing genre fiction professionally for nearly a decade, and his storytelling chops are solid. Mac is a fantastic narrator - self-deprecating and funny - and the reader will want to be his friend. Every Bet’s a Sure Thing is filled with delightful surprises at every turn. Don’t sleep on this one - get yourself a copy and read it ASAP. Highest recommendation.

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Kelly Carvel #01 - The Rape of a Town

Earlier this year, I read a novel called The Captive by Norman Daniels (real name: Norman Danberg, 1905-1995). I enjoyed it so much that I've upset my bank account by acquiring all the Norman Daniels books I can find. It's no easy task considering the price of these vintage titles and the abundance of his books written under various pseudonyms. My most recent acquisition is his 1970 novel, The Rape of a Town, published by Pyramid Books.

The book stars a former L.A. Police Captain named Kelly who recently quit the force due to the city's flawed justice system. In the opening chapter, Kelly is invited to a swanky Beverly Hills party hoping to find an employment connection. It's here where his life takes a drastic turn when he is introduced to a woman named Merryl Atwill.

Merryl's brother Carl was involved in a large investment firm with a partner named Mander. After a long-term partnership, Mander murdered Carl and explained to the authorities that Carl was sleeping with his wife. After Mander was tried, the case was thrown out over a legal bumble. Now, Merryl wants her brother's killer brought to justice. But instead of thrusting this one case at Kelly, she introduces the idea of having Kelly serve a team of backers looking to right the wrongs of the legal justice system. With a panel consisting of attorneys, U.S. Senators, police chiefs and other high-ranking professionals, Kelly will seek out the cases that were thrown out of court and determine how to avoid these failures in the future. It's a unique concept that the author will expand upon in the book's two sequels. 

The entire narrative consists of Kelly becoming the police chief in a tiny town called Vineland, an hour north of his old stomping ground in Los Angeles. But once he arrives, the entire police force quits. Kelly's investigation into Carl's murder, the company the two founded and Mander himself quickly become dead weight in the watery narrative. As the town's Fourth of July celebration commences, Kelly learns the reasoning behind the police force's departure. An entire criminal army has invaded Vineland and the police were all paid to leave. It's up to Kelly to solely defend the town in a climactic finale that helped compensate for the book's rather lackluster narrative.

Norman Daniels is a great writer and The Rape of a Town introduced some clever ideas. Unfortunately, it appeared that the author had three distinct novel ideas and just needed a reason to combine them. The idea of a “vigilante” task force is sadly never really developed in this novel.  The initial idea of Carl's murder investigation is minimal but thankfully resolved by the book's end. The best concept is the lone police officer facing a mob of criminals, but the author only dedicates the last few chapters to it.

Overall, The Rape of a Town was a satisfying read but definitely requires some patience from the reader. Despite it's psychedelic artwork, Daniels provides a gritty, violent crescendo to please men's action-adventure readers. The book had two sequels - One Angry Man (1971) and License to Kill (1972). 

Note – This novel was featured as a book bonus called “The Town that Battled a Hoodlum Army” in the April 1971 issue of MEN with illustrations by the great Samson Pollen.

Running Blind

Along with Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean, British author Desmond Bagley (1923-1983) helped create the basic conventions of high-altitude storytelling within men's action-adventure fiction. His first novel, The Golden Keel, was published in 1963 and propelled a literary career that featured a total of 16 novels, five of which were turned into feature films. As a fan of frosty fiction, I decided to read Bagley's 1970 novel Running Blind, which is set in Iceland. The novel was later adapted for British television in 1979.

In the Scottish highlands, retired British spy Stewart is visited by his former boss Slade (who also appears in Bagley's The Freedom Trap). Slade's pitch is for Stewart to deliver an important package to a gentleman in Iceland. Stewart's experience in the country and his fluency in the Icelandic language make him the perfect operative for the job. Stewart is hesitant to take the assignment post-retirement but agrees in favor of visiting the country again.

The clandestine task of deliveryman for British intelligence evolves into a deadly cat-and-mouse game when Stewart is attacked and the package is stolen. Further, Slade's dismissal of Stewart's account of what happened to the missing package leads him to believe that the whole assignment was a crafty set-up. While Stewart is still in Iceland, he learns that Slade has aligned with a Russian nemesis named Kenniken, a man Stewart shot and hoped to kill earlier in his career. As the net descends, Stewart and his lover must flee into the rural landscape of Iceland, complete with volcanoes and rivers created from melting glaciers. Once there, the two are hunted by Slade's British operatives who are unaware that their leader has defected to Russia. The whole thing makes sense at the end, but some of the finer plot points are "blind" to the protagonist and reader. That's the enjoyment.

Running Blind is an excellent adventure-espionage hybrid that is presented to readers as a first-person narrative. The author, through Stewart's eyes, explains strategies, experiences, old combat stories and the most minuscule details to aid readers. As a fan of Jack Higgins' Paul Chavasse, a spy hero used in five of the author's novels, I felt that Stewart was of the same caliber and breed – sharp, salty and seasoned. The author also included some of Iceland's history and geographical highlights, a bonus for the average suburbanite who may never venture there. At 220-pages of smaller font, I felt the book could have been shorter. But that's the drawback when you become a massive bestseller – publishers want more. Other than the length, there's isn't anything to not like about Running Blind. Highly recommended.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 48

On the controversial Episode 48 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, we discuss the history of Barry Sadler’s CASCA books and investigate allegations of plagiarism that plague the series today. You don’t want to miss this one. Listen on every podcast platform, stream below or download directly HERE: Listen to "Episode 48 - The Casca Controversy" on Spreaker.

Kiss Me Hard

Thomas B. Dewey was a prolific author that produced 36 crime-fiction novels from 1947-1966. His literary work mostly consisted of three series titles featuring heroes Singer Batts, Pete Schofield, and Mac. However, the author wrote two stand-alone novels under the name Tom Brandt, 1954's Run, Brother, Run! and the subject at hand, 1953's Kiss Me Hard. We reviewed Run, Brother, Run! back in 2018 and haven't had the opportunity to revisit Dewey's catalog until now.

Kiss Me Hard introduces main character Chris Cross as an alcoholic piano player stroking the keys in small-town Ohio. After many songs (and beverages), Cross is seduced by a woman who is escaping from her abusive husband. The woman convinces Cross to join her as she leaves the town and her spouse behind. In a stimulating scene, the woman's husband finds the two making love on the edge of town. Cross, hazy from alcohol and the frantic escalation of the night's festivities, runs away through the forest and hops a train to escape.

On the next stop, Cross hops off and finds himself in a rural stretch of farmland where a carnival is performing. It's here that he runs into a young, troubled woman who asks Cross to help her hop a train. Cross's response is priceless: “I just got off the goddamn thing.” But the decision isn't his to make. Instead, a husky, mountain of a man finds the woman with Cross and begins to become angry and belligerent to the two of them. Cross, overwhelmingly smaller than the man, uses a rock to slow his progress. Cross and this mysterious woman flee to the train and catch it in a fleeting, high-paced conclusion to the opening chapters.

The narrative evolves into a mystery as Cross tries to determine this woman's backstory. Is she a prostitute? A carnival worker? Who's the burly “keeper” of this woman? In an emotional explanation, the woman claims to be Constance Jordan. Upon reading a newspaper clipping she possesses, Cross learns that Constance was abducted at the age of 13 and the world never saw her again. Her wealthy family searched for years through a variety of law-enforcement agencies and private-eye services. The clipping reveals that the Jordan estate is worth millions and that the woman's parents died 8 years ago. The entire fortune went to the family's older daughter Jean. As Cross presses for more information, he begins to doubt the woman's insistence that she is the long lost Constance. Together, the two take a haphazard road-trip to Los Angeles to find some answers.

Chris Cross is so much like David Goodis' fall-from-grace character Eddie Lynn in the 1956 paperback Down There. He's plagued by his alcoholism, and all of his pathways lead to liquor. The booze effects most of his conscious thinking as he is driven to find money to buy booze at the cheapest source. But Cross is painfully embarrassed by his disease, often self-conscious of what others think of his shaky hands and unquenchable thirst. But he's a great piano player who's seemingly wasted his life until now. Constance provides hope and salvation for Cross. Her fortune can buy an endless supply of liquor, but as the novel progresses, Cross finds that his craving for alcohol is somehow rehabilitated by craving this mysterious woman. He wants to be her protector, but the truth behind this mysterious woman is the ultimate mystery.

While not as widely celebrated as his contemporaries, Thomas B. Dewey was a fantastic writer who threads real-world problems into the social context of his stories. Kiss Me Hard could have easily drowned in a romance-on-the-run style novel, but Dewey really turned it into something unique and special. I think you'll really enjoy it. The good news is that you don't to spend a fortune acquiring this vintage paperback. Wildside Press released the Crime and Corruption Megapack in 2016 that features this novel along with A Season for Violence (1966), Run, Brother, Run! (1954) and Empty Saddles (1962).

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