Dial "M" for Man

Orrie Hitt is often dismissed as a sleaze fiction author, but I think that’s largely unfair. His paperbacks were certainly packaged as tawdry sex novels, but the first thing a horny reader will notice is the almost complete lack of graphic sex. You’ll also probably notice that he was often an outstanding writer whose plots veered heavily into the moral ambiguity of a femme fatale crime-noir story. Case in point: Dial “M” for Man. The 1962 release has been reprinted by Stark House as a double along with Hitt’s The Cheaters.

Hob Sampson is a TV repairman who is called out for a repair job. The lady of the house is named Doris, and she’s a real dish. Her way-older husband - Mr. Condon - is a crooked real estate developer who also serves on the board of directors at the bank that just rejected Sampson for a loan. He seems to be going out of his way to make Sampson’s life miserable. Upon arrival at the house, the seductive Doris is wearing a skimpy bathing suit, and her husband isn’t home. She’s super flirty, and Sampson is a man who knows what he likes.

You know and I know what eventually happens. Sampson isn’t immediately able to give her the tube she needs, so he agrees to come back to take care of her while Mr. Condon is out of town. There’s a lot of interpersonal stuff between Sampson and his virginal quasi-girlfriend and his deadbeat buddy that rounds the story out and gives Sampson the motivation to have Doris for himself.

If the story of a TV repairman plotting to kill a rich guy for his money and sexy wife sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It was also the plot to Gil Brewer’s paperback The Vengeful Virgin from four years earlier. In all fairness, Brewer’s novel was just a re-working of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, and the femme fatale story structure has been copied countless times since. While Hitt makes the story his own, he still probably should have made the narrator a plumber or a carpenter to make his borrowing of the plot structure more opaque.

As is often the case in Orrie Hitt novels, the reader learns a lot about the main character’s chosen profession. I find this stuff fascinating, and I now feel like I have a Masters Degree in TV retailing, reception and repair. In 1962, Hitt notably predicted that cable TV would be the future of America. (He did not, however, foresee Netflix Streaming.)

Dial “M” for Man was a total blast to read. The first-person narration from Sampson gave the reader a palpable sense of the lust and greed that leads an otherwise honorable man to make some deadly decisions. Hitt’s ending was also pitch perfect. With 148 books in his writing career, this is an author who should be viewed as a master of his lowbrow genre, and I’m happy that there are reprint houses like Stark House keeping his name alive.

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Man Bait

Jack Liston was a pseudonym utilized by Ralph Maloney (1927-1973) for a single Dell paperback in 1960 titled Man Bait. Maloney was a Harvard man who served in the Merchant Marines during World War 2 and in the U.S. Army during the 1950s. His literary output included several highbrow short stories in Atlantic Monthly and six mainstream novels. As such, it wasn’t unusual a guy with his respectable background to employ a pen name when engaged in the disreputable world of pedestrian paperback originals like Man Bait.

Our narrator is Bill Madden and he’s a seaman waylaid by a scorching case of gonorrhea while on vacation in Manhattan. Solid premise. He meets a charismatic and enticing bartender named Marcia immediately after he feels well enough to emerge from his hotel room. Without haste, they become a de facto couple with Marcia showing Bill the hidden nightlife of New York City where boozing, gambling, and sex happen long after the squares have long since gone to sleep.

The prospect of Bill returning to gainful employment on the high seas is remote because of health issues tied to his case of the clap and liver damage caused by booze. Bill needs money because his declining balance of savings is running thin. Enter Sam Brennerman. He’s a mid-level mobster who serves as an intermediary between the various criminal gangs. He’s an affable fellow who knows Marcia from the all-night scene. As Bill’s financial position deteriorates, Sam utilizes Bill as a pawn in a power struggle among old and aspiring crime bosses in New York.

The author was a fine writer but his plotting is pretty bad. This book is painfully slow, and by the time it becomes a crime fiction story, I was past the point of caring much about the fate of the characters. Oregon publisher Armchair Fiction lovingly reprinted Man Bait in 2020, and you should definitely buy the paperback for the alluring cover art. However, I can’t recommend actually opening the book or reading it for anything other than a sleep aid. 

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A Great Day for Dying

While very little is known about author Jack Dillon, it appears that he worked advertising creating a series of commercials for Polaroid. This advertising-executive experience was the catalyst for Dillon's 1972 dark fiction novel The Advertising Man. My only experience with the author is his men's adventure novel A Great Day for Dying, published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1968.

The book's protagonist is Jimmy O’Neil, a boat captain who illegally runs arms from San Juan to Cuba. When readers first meet him, he's down on his luck and making ends meet while attempting to fix his boat. As the opening chapters unfold, it's disclosed that O’Neil used to work for a mid-tier mobster named Red. Their partnership ended, but their friendship persevered. In fact, O’Neil still shares a lover with Red and occasionally works side-jobs for the mob if it doesn't involve drugs.

When Red double-crosses his mob boss to the tune of $500K, he initiates an elaborate plan to smuggle heroin within a large camera shipment. But to make the delivery, he needs a fast boat and an experienced operator like O’Neil. Together, the two take on the tough assignment despite the U.S. Navy's presence and the mob's far-reaching influence.

I really enjoyed Dillon's writing style but it doesn't come with some distractions. While O’Neil's portions of the narrative are presented in the first-person, the chapters dedicated to the  mob are in the third-person. It's a unique effort by the author to keep readers more intimately connected to the protagonist, but also left me a little seasick with the choppy narrative flow. The cover's tag of comparing the story to Hemingway is pure marketing hyperbole. Dillon's characterization of O’Neil doesn't have any deeper meaning (that I could find) to the story beyond what was presented in the dialogue and action sequences.

Overall, A Great Day for Dying was a fun, entertaining nautical adventure with a subplot of compelling mob-related activities. According to my research, it has never been reprinted. It is definitely worth your money if you can locate a used copy.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 63

Today’s Paperback Warrior Podcast explores the life and work of sleaze-fiction author Orrie Hitt. Also this week: Chiefland, Florida! Quilting Babes! Andre Norton! Dean R. Koontz! Dial M for Man! Edward S. Aarons! The Net! And much more! Listen on your favorite podcast app or www.paperbackwarrior.com, or download directly HERE 

Listen to "Episode 63: Orrie Hitt" on Spreaker.

The Dark Brand

Wisconsin native Henry Andrew DeRosso (1916-1960) should have been a bigger superstar in the world of American Western fiction. His lean and readable novels have one foot firmly planted in the world of hardboiled noir fiction while never forsaking the tropes and traditions of a fast-moving western page-turner. Case in point: DeRosso’s 1963 book, The Dark Brand, a novel that - for reasons unclear to me - never saw a paperback release until 1998.

As the novel opens, cattle thief Dave Driscoll is sitting in jail when he befriends Tenant, the bank robber in the next cell. It’s a short-lived friendship because Tenant is about to be hanged by his neck the following morning. Sheriff Longstreet is visibly frustrated because no one but Tenant knows where the bank robbery proceeds are stashed, and the Sheriff would like to feather his own nest with that money.

Tenant is hanged, and we rejoin Driscoll three years later. He’s rehabilitated and done with his life of crime. On the trail, Driscoll is braced by some hardcases who are convinced that he knows where Tenant stashed the $30,000. Inconveniently, it does not appear that Tenant ever shared his secret with Driscoll. Nevertheless, old friends and new foes are convinced Driscoll is riding with the secret, and everybody wants a taste. Circumstances eventually lead to Driscoll joining the money hunt for his own benevolent reasons.

It’s interesting to note that the western setting of The Dark Brand is pretty incidental. It’s a crime-noir theme that’s been done dozens of times: “Where’s the stolen money stashed?” It just happens to take place in the Wild West, but the dirty cops and duplicitous dames are all rather familiar. And that’s the brilliance of H.A. DeRosso. He’s a western writer for people who may or may not like westerns. His appeal is pretty universal, so I can’t imagine anyone failing to enjoy The Dark Brand. 

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God's Back was Turned

Here at Paperback Warrior, we continue to delve into the literary works of Harry Whittington. While some of his books have been reprinted by the likes of Stark House Press, Black Lizard and Prologue Crime, many of his published works remain completely out of print decades after their original publication date. I recently acquired God's Back was Turned, a 1961 Fawcett Gold Medal paperback written under Whittington's real name (not one of his many pseudonyms). The paperback has yet to be reprinted, so I needed to know if it’s a lost treasure. I quickly tugged the book out of it's sleeved home and began reading.

The book's setting should be a familiar one to Harry Whittington fans – central Florida. It's in this rural stretch of farm country where the backwoods, uneducated family of Cooks live. The father is a stern redneck farmer named Shack. His bone-headed family is a myriad of assorted personalities, each of them remaining close to a neanderthal state of grace.

There's the obese Sister Helen, a character that is described as the “fattest woman ever seen outside of a circus.” She plays the part of cook, maid and mother-figure to the family. Brother Calvin is a replica of his father Shack, a stubborn farm-hand who possesses the most rudimentary approach to life. Brother Jaime is mute, a disability that theoretically stems from his mother dying during his delivery. His inability to speak is linked to his guilt of “killing her by being born.” And then there's Brother Walter.

Brother Walter left home 12-years ago to become a traveling preacher. At the pinnacle of his success, Walter's various congregations reached into the tens of thousands. His pulpit soapbox testimony was the proud voice of a sinner who's reached a state of immortality (and immense wealth) due to God's good graces. To reinforce that Holy stature, Walter uses the old poisonous snake-handling trick. In doing so, he “faith heals” thousands of afflicted attendees. However, with every well-funded ministry crusade, there's a deep rooted scandal. After a Miami newspaper, backed by a committee on evangelical validity, condemns Walter's mission as a scam, the once wealthy religious superstar returns home. That's where the novel begins.

Brother Walter's reunion with the family doesn't go as expected. Instead, the newspaper declaring Walter's fall from grace is shown to his  father and siblings. Caught up in the joy of having Walter home in his shiny Cadillac, the family is awe-struck by Walter's picture in the paper. They are oblivious (or illiterate) to the fact that the entire article has waylaid their Brother Walter into financial distress and forced obscurity. Instead, they throw a grand party and declare that Walter has returned home to heal Jaime the mute. That's right, sham artist Walter is going to make his brother speak using the devout word of God. Walter, who fails to convince the family that his road show was a ruse for rubes, is forced to watch hundreds of cars descend onto the farm to witness the Greatest Miracle of their Lifetime.

While all of this is happening with the Cook family, Whittington also introduces two other characters that consume large portions of the narrative. The first is Tom Balscom, an old farmer who’s close friends with the Cooks. In fact, Tom's prior wife (wife number two for the box-score) was Sister Hazel, the oldest Cook daughter who ran away from Tom and disappeared forever. After frequenting a truck stop diner, Tom falls in love with a young waitress named Willie Ruth. In layman terms: Old farmer Tom falls in love with the hot, apron-wearing, very young waitress vixen named Willie Ruth. He brings Willie Ruth to the Cooks to show her off and is immediately scolded by Shack for marrying this sultry Goddess. While Willie Ruth prepares for her inevitable date with destiny – a marriage consummation on a creaky old bed with Old Farmer Tom – she starts making eyes with Jaime.

The other character is a black sharecropper named Lucian Henry. He's married with eight kids and is the proverbial “white hat good guy” of the story. Lucian just wants to whistle and plow fields with his best friend, a mule named Lisse. But, there's Miss Lovely, a gorgeous red-blooded, very white nymph that has a hankering for the help - a theme that Whittington explored later in his plantation sagas. Despite her father's scolding, Miss Lovely refuses to leave the help alone. The author's narrative is like a vice-grip, slowly sucking Lucian into a sexual vortex controlled by Miss Lovely. His path is simple: ignore her advances and keep working or give into his desires and then consequently face the obligatory torture and death by a very white lynch mob.

You can probably tell by this point that God's Back was Turned is a really fun book. It's clear that Harry Whittington's imagination was running buck-wild. The novel combines the author's love for a good love story, his sensual writing style, his experience with the Plantation Gothic genre and his forte of utilizing crime-noir tropes to tell a good story. I want to emphasize that this isn't a traditional crime-noir novel. Nor is it a romance novel. It's an unusual hybrid of styles that made Whittington so unique. Like a good Charles Williams swamp-nymph novel, Whittington's use of the rural landscape and its host of flavorful characters is a winning formula that is just so enjoyable. Harry Whittington was the king of the paperbacks for a reason. While this novel is expensive, it may be worth pursuing as a special treat for yourself. Don't turn your back on this one.

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The Net

While mostly known for his Sam Durell (or Assignment) spy series, Edward Aarons authored over 30 crime-noir novels under pseudonyms including Paul Ayres and Edward Ronns. I've made it my mission to collect the author's work, particularly his crime-fiction paperbacks, but rarely ever read him. After my lukewarm appraisal of his 1947 mystery Terror in the Town, I've ditched the author for over two years now. Fully rehabilitated, I decided to read The Net. It was originally published by Graphic Mystery in 1953 under the name Edward Ronns.

Like the author's prior novels Death in a Lighthouse (1938), The Sinners (1953), Come Back, My Love (1953) and They All Ran Away (1955), The Net has a seaside or lakeside nautical theme. It seems to be a common thread weaving together Aarons' descriptive tales of mystery and murder. Like Terror in the Town (1947), the novel is set in a sleepy New England town where average people begin to do very bad things.

Watching the madness unfold is Barney, a prize fighter who receives a letter from his estranged brother Henry to return to Easterly, the brothers' hometown. It's there where Barney learns that Henry's fishing business is facing financial ruin. The catalyst is a man named Peter Hurd, a wealthy business magnate who has bought out the town's fishermen. As a final holdout, Henry is being bullied and stripped of resources and manpower. Upon Barney's arrival, Henry's ship is struck by an adversarial vessel in the dense fog. The casualties are two of Henry's longtime laborers.

As the narrative deepens, Aarons introduces a number of connecting plot threads. One is Barney's fight manager Gus and a $6K bet that Barney can knock off a top middle-weight contender. Barney's training and conditioning for the fight is mixed into a love triangle with his old flame Jo and a hothouse nymph named Lil. Once the body count reaches a surprising height, Barney is forced into a fugitive role as he digs into the killer's identity while staying ahead of a sheriff that's financially backed by Hurd.

I really enjoyed this tightly woven mystery. Despite having a number of revolving characters and plot devices, the narrative remains consistently plausible. Aarons is such a descriptive writer and paints the portrait of this seaside town incredibly well. The story's soundscape is the crashing of waves and ocean spray on the rocks, the creaking of the old schooners, the blaring of the fog horns and small town chatter of harbors, docks and fish. Visually, it's the foggy coast, the illumination of the lamplight on the dark waters and the sheen of brass locks on old discarded trunks. While it has the makings of a cozy New England mystery, the narrative is a more violent, hardboiled detective story as Barney delves into the town's history to unmask this brutal killer.

Shame on me for discarding Aarons after one subpar novel. I'm thankful I revisited this section of my shelves to discover an entertaining vintage thriller. The Net is an above average mystery that combines all of the crime-noir and hardboiled elements we know and love into a compelling and impressive quick read. There have been numerous reprints of the novel so please go hunt down a used copy. You won't be disappointed.

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