After serving as a U.S. Marine in the Pacific during World War 2 and storming Iwo Jima, Harold John “Tedd” Thomey (1920-2008) returned to the states to pursue a career as a journalist with the San Francisco Chronicle and the Long Beach Independent with a specialty in restaurant reviews. He also wrote 20 books, including a 1956 Fawcett Gold Medal original titled Killer in White.
Dr. Douglas Webb is a fraud. He pretends to be a chiropractor healing female patients with dubious therapy such as his fancy magno-therapy machine, but it’s all a scam. He doesn’t have a degree in medicine - not even one in chiropractic nonsense. He just makes it up as he goes along. Why bother? Two reasons: 1. For the money, and 2. To have unlimited sex with his unlimited cadre of adoring female patients.
So, our protagonist is a bit of a heel. His fun is interrupted by an investigator from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Federal Security Agency who figures out Dr. Webb is a non-credentialed con-man. The investigator also has reason to believe that the magno-therapy machine forming the centerpiece of Dr. Webb’s practice is also a bunch of hokum. The only way for our fake doctor to get rid of this pesky investigator is to bribe him $15,000.
The bulk of the 144-page paperback is Dr. Webb trying to raise the cash to bribe the federal agent. He does this mostly by bedding down rich ladies and then shaking them down for money while they’re still in an orgasmic haze. There are lots of subplots that the author juggles - some more interesting than others. As Dr. Webb is forced to put out fire after fire to keep his scam afloat, the novel becomes an frantic read with some great moments sprinkled throughout. The final act’s “getting away with murder” story-line was excellent and worth the wait - as was the resolution to a romance that develops throughout the novel.
Despite some minor reservations, I genuinely enjoyed Killer in White. There’s are some pretty nifty plot twists towards the end and some genuinely tense moments involving medical stuff. Thomey’s writing is serviceable and all the plot threads are neatly resolved by the end. I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to acquire a copy, but if you can snag one on the cheap, it’s definitely worth your time.
Former NFL player Don Kingery had only four published novels during his short literary career – Death Must Wait (1956), Swamp Fire (1957), Paula (1959) and Good Time Girl (1960). The rest of his writing was dedicated to print journalism, a career that spanned over 50 years in and around Southwest Louisiana. His novels were of the Erskine Caldwell variety, centering around strong southern roots and a penchant for poverty-ridden family dynamics that make up the blue collar highways of rural America. Nothing expresses that literary sense more than Kingery's Death Must Wait.
Like Caldwell's superior Tobacco Road, Kingery explores criminal behavior, immorality and mental issues throughout the thick narrative of Death Must Wait. Arguably, the book's only protagonist is Jed, a poor working man who hunts and traps in a dense section of Louisiana Bayou called Morganzas Pass. His father is complacent in his family's rags-to-more-rags lifestyle, never rising above the lowest tier of low class. Often Jed's parents lament their decision to marry, breed or even rise to exist. Jed's sister is a prostitute and his brother a drunk. A sense of escapism feeds Jed's desire to flourish in the outdoors, a trade that provides the only honest wage for the family.
Kingery's narrative expands once Jed is provoked into a fistfight with a belligerent bar patron. Jed's social inadequacies, short-temper and neanderthal strength leads to his undoing. When the man Jed scuffles with seemingly dies on the bar’s sawdust floor, Jed runs to the swamps to avoid a demented, corrupt small-town sheriff who wants to secure his bid for reelection. Eventually Jed is captured and arrested, but it is his love for a young woman named Nila that stirs a cause for action. Jed must either escape or prove his innocence before the backwoods lawyer and sheriff condemns him.
Death Must Wait was an intriguing story that displays crime-noir tendencies despite the abstract approach. Jed is the common-man placed into extreme circumstances, but the author's description of this small-town existence – failures, poverty, corruption, greed, despair – is the focal point. While still retaining a crime-fiction element, the book works more as a cynical look at this era of American history and the social degradation that formed so many of the southeastern cities. If you need more crime in your fiction, Death Must Wait may not spin your wheels. But for a solid, intriguing testament about rural America and it's deficiencies, look no further than this.
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Very little is known about author William L. Rohde (1918-2000). Born in Dallas, the author wrote a handful of early Nick Carter: Killmaster installments as well as crime-fiction novels like Help Wanted for Murder (1950), Uneasy Lies the Head (1957) and V.I.P. (1957). He also wrote a number of western short stories as well as one full-length paperback, The Gun-Crasher (1957). My first experience with him is his 1951 novel High Red for Dead published by Fawcett Gold Medal. It was re-printed by Fawcett in 1957 as Murder on the Line with new cover art.
The book introduces readers to Daniels, a detective for the A&N Railroad. His base of operations is the main rail station that runs through the New England lakeside community of Vicksboro. Daniels is a former war veteran and operates a real-estate practice on the side. Due to the railroad's declining profits, the owners have petitioned Washington DC to restructure the shaky company. Daniels' theory is that the owners want to sell off fast and capitalize on obtaining a large one-time sum of millions instead of the dwindling thousands they receive yearly in profit and stock dividends. When one of the railroads lobbyists is found murdered on an incoming train, it's Daniels job to locate the killer and motive.
The book has a robust cast of characters that drained my pen dry when drawing the org-chart. It's a labor to navigate the twists and turns of the railroad industry, technical wire communications and the obligatory gamblers and love interests that saturate the narrative. The author's voice is clearly an experienced train aficionado, evident from his 1940s writings in the old Railroad magazines. High Red for Dead, and its procedural investigation, would have worked better as a western with enough gruff characters, land-barons, gamblers and cheats to host any 1800s shindig. While I liked the characterization of Daniels, I felt that the author used too much technical jargon to drown readers. It was as if Rohde just assumed I knew enough about betting through railroad communication wires. Or, how land development deals works in complex lake establishments. News flash – I don't.
If you love trains and mid-century railroad politics, High Red for Dead is definitely in your lane. For my limited experience with the railroad industry, Rohde derailed me. Buyer beware.
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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.
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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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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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.
