Benedict #02 - Gift of Death

Edward S. Aarons' most recognized literary work is the 42-book Assignment series starring the globetrotting CIA agent Sam Durell. However, before that series began in 1955, Aarons authored a two-book series of crime-noir novels starring amateur private-eye Jerry Benedict. The first of the two books, No Place to Live (aka Lady, the Guy is Dead), was published in 1947 and introduced Benedict as a New York political cartoonist who is drawn into a murder investigation when he finds a corpse. The second novel, Gift of Death, followed a year later and moves the action south to a rural Connecticut farm. My first and only experience with the Benedict character is Gift of Death.

In the early chapters, Benedict is summoned to the office of Lucius McConaughy, the editor of The Globe newspaper where the two men work. McConaughy praises Benedict's sleuthing skills for solving the murder mystery found in No Place to Live. He explains to Benedict that his Uncle has recently passed away and a $600,000 inheritance is to be divvied up between himself and five cousins. Benedict's role is to determine who is potentially killing off the cousins to grab a bigger slice of the pie. After cousin Amanda's secretary was decapitated at the family's sprawling farm, McConaughy feels that the murderer was targeting Amanda and mistakenly killed her secretary instead. Benedict agrees to assist and the two travel to Connecticut to submerge themselves in a nest of cousinly vipers.

Aarons' narrative includes a Weird Menace sub-plot at the family farm. The old house is rumored to be haunted, a double-suicide occurred in one bedroom and there's a massive tree that was used for hanging in the early 1800s. Moreover, the unknown killer is attacking at night using a razor-sharp scythe as the killing tool. The author's macabre depictions of grizzly decapitation is combined with his trademark signature of sweeping Gothic imagery. Like Terror in the Town (1947) and The Net (1953), Gift of Death features a thick, foreboding sense of dread and doom. Aarons' drapes the story in old swaying oak trees, dark cornfields, moaning winds and positions the characters in eerie, ghost-like places such as hill-top cemeteries and abandoned summer cottages. Needless to say, Aarons' sense of décor and atmosphere is both stylish and effective.

If you like an old-fashioned, dense murder mystery, Gift of Death will surely be a pleasurable reading experience. Despite the spooky ambiance, I found the characters to be a little shallow and stereotypical undermining the core mystery. Benedict plays the proverbial 1940s detective well, interviewing all the parties while gaining liquid courage from mid-shelf bottles. It's a familiar, well-worn formula that doesn't hamper the narrative's momentum. Overall, I was glued to the story and didn't rush the reading just to pull the mask off.

Aarons' is such a masterful storyteller and Gift of Death proves that in spades. Highly recommended.

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Spawn

British horror author Shaun Hutson’s writing career took off in 1982 with the publication of his iconic paperback Slugs (yes, it’s about shell-free killer gastropod mollusks). He found his niche as a great storyteller who can weave a compelling suspense story out of a crazy, gross-out premise. Case in point: his 1983 novel Spawn. Granted, it’s about murderous aborted fetuses, but the novel is also so much more. Read on...

It’s 1946 in Great Britain and Harold - the son of a prostitute - is a seriously messed-up kid. At age 14, he occupies his time giggling as he tortures insects with fire. This harmful diversion leads to the fiery death of Harold’s family leaving the boy grotesquely deformed without a person in the world who cares about him.

We rejoin Harold in 1982 where he has been a resident of a mental institution undergoing intense psychological and physical therapy for over 35 years. He’s sweet, shy, polite and severely scarred. His dilapidated asylum is closing, and it’s time for Harold to rejoin society. He’s hired as a janitor at a local hospital. The facility has basement pathology lab where the giant furnace incinerates the body parts, organic materials, and aborted fetuses from various medical procedures.

The sight of a fetus in the incinerator brings back some awful memories for Harold as he recalls his baby brother’s death by fire. Harold begins swiping the pre-babies and burying them near the hospital, so they don’t suffer the indignity of the consuming fires. The means by which Harold’s fetus friends are eventually reanimated wasn’t particularly realistic, but I can’t imagine a situation where that result would seem reasonable.

Meanwhile, a violent murderer named Harvey has escaped from a rural prison where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. Two smart police inspectors are heading up the manhunt in hopes of catching the maniac before the body count mounts. This subplot was interesting enough, but the eventual link to Harold and his fetus gang was fairly inconsequential.

Spawn is a fun and bloody bit of escapism, but there’s also some interesting themes running through the narrative. The first is that the human monsters who walk among us are made through childhood abuse and neglect.

The author also seems to be saying something about the personhood of the unborn, but Spawn never feels like a political or religious pro-life parable. Upon reflection, I’m not sure that either side of the debate wants to claim Harold’s zombie abortions as their own. Still, it’s hard not to notice.

As a novel, Spawn is an entertaining gross-out paperback. You’ll cringe and squirm, but it’s unlikely you’ll actually be frightened. However, you’re also unlikely to put the paperback down because it’s well-written and compelling as Hell. You’ll want to see what Huston is going to do next. By now, you probably know if you like this type of thing. If so, you’re certain to enjoy this bloody ride. 

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 64

Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 64 explores the legacy of author David Goodis. Also discussed: Black Berets! Eric leaves his house! Used Bookstore haul! Funeral home field trip! Antique store tirade! Wade Miller's Devil May Care! And more! Listen on your favorite podcast app, paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE

Listen to "Episode 64: David Goodis" on Spreaker.

The Pace That Kills

William Fuller was a merchant seaman, an infantryman and a drifter before becoming a full-time novelist in the 1950s. His claim to fame is the six-book series of crime-noir novels starring a Miami playboy named Brad Dolan who drifts along the Florida coast in a houseboat. Shell Scott author Richard Prather describes Fuller as “literate, hard-paced violence, remindful of James. M. Cain.” Aside from the Dolan series, Fuller wrote one stand-alone novel, The Pace That Kills (1956). 

The novel is set northwest of the Florida Everglades, just shy of a rural, dense area known as 10,000 Islands. It's this swampy area where Danny Rivers escapes two cops in route to prison. His fugitive trail leads back to his small hometown. Ducking police surveillance, hounds and road blocks, Fuller's narrative incorporates Rivers' attempts to commandeer vehicles, rob people and murder on his way back home. While this is the most exciting portion of the novel, the author spends a great deal of time creating characters and small town life for the reader.

Through various subplots, readers are introduced to a motel and restaurant owner named Harry and his alcoholic wife Marge. There's also Harry's brand new waitress, a beautiful drifter named June, who quickly becomes the talk of the town. There's also the town's most wealthy citizen, his mistresses and cheating wife. There's a host of other supporting characters that are vividly collected in current and past time lines. All of the town's citizens have a common thread – they have all been touched in one way or another by Danny Rivers. As the news broadcasts about Rivers' escape increases, the town begins to brace for Rivers' imminent return home.

William Fuller's The Pace That Kills is a southern Gothic that mixes Paul Cain and Erskine Caldwell into a warped version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. I didn't find much of it particularly interesting, but I appreciated Fuller's southern-fried style. It works as a small town scandal story or as a "heated, adulterous bedroom community with secrets" novel. If that's your sort of thing, then this is a recommended title. I was hoping Fuller would further develop Rivers' actual crime and the heist money that was tucked away in a secret place unbeknownst to the town. While that plot thread eventually comes to fruition, it's too late in the book to have a sizable impact. The end result is just another crime-noir novel that's written well, but is devoid of any real substance. Readers may want to just stick with Fuller's Brad Dolan series.

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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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