The Red Lamp

Often called the American Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) wrote over 50 novels, most of which are considered traditional murder mysteries. She's often credited with inventing the “Had I but Known” mystery style where the chief protagonist conducts behavior that is connected with a crime, thus prolonging the action of the story. She's also noted for the phrase “The butler did it” from her 1930 mystery, The Door. My first experience with the author is her 1925 novel called The Red Lamp, also known as The Mystery Lamp.

Presented as a rather lengthy journal, The Red Lamp's premise is the haunting of an enormous mansion called Twin Hollows. The journal's author, William Porter, inherits this sprawling mansion in a rather mysterious way. His uncle Horace was found dead inside the mansion apparently in mid-sentence of a letter he was penning to someone. His death is suspected to be an accidental fall, but there's a sense that foul play could have been involved. William and his wife Jane decide to spend the summer residing in the mansion's guest house. They later rent the mansion to an elderly man named Bethel and his steward named Gordon.

This kick-starts a supernatural whirlwind of murder, intrigue, and deception.

During the initial weeks of both William and Jane living in the guest house, there is a mysterious outbreak of sheep murders. Later, strange signs are found painted around the house and surrounding areas depicting a circle with an inner triangle. The first deaths begin with a local cop investigating the slayings followed by more people with close ties to Porter. As the deaths, attacks and strange occurrences continue, the common denominator is the house itself. Porter and various caretakers and staff experience ghostly apparitions and noises that seem to be transfixed on a red lamp that casts a bloody hue on the house. Are these apparitions of a supernatural origin? Or, is this town and it's inhabitants spiraling into madness?

The Red Lamp is a hybrid of horror and mystery, never consuming either genre but lying somewhere in the fringes. The claustrophobic, paranoia aspects of Porter's mind saturates the narrative, again simply a diary in its presentation. Like Lovecraft, this cold, unsettling fear erodes the sanity of the book's central character. The unnatural nightly noises and the lamp's omnipresence captures the essence of a truly disturbing horror novel. However, Rinehart attempts to lighten the mood occasionally with Porter's sarcasm and self-parody of his own situation.

Whether the book is a dense, slowly evolving mystery or a horror tale is in the eye of the beholder. While I found the book longer than need be, I still found myself drawn to this eerie, freakishly compelling novel. At 250-pages of smaller print, it's a good workout for committed readers. My first Rinehart experience was rewarding enough to warrant the purchase of three more of her books – The Circular Staircase (1908), The Window at the White Cat (1910) and The After House (1914). In other words...look for more reviews of her work in the coming months.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
or reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×

Mercy Island

Author Theodore Pratt (1901-1969) was born in Minnesota and later moved to New York, where he worked as a play reader and a writer for the The New Yorker and The New York Sun. He developed his writing skills into a full-time career that included more than 30 novels, some of which were written under the pen name of Timothy Brace. In 1941 his first novel, Mercy Island, was published in hardcover. The film was also adapted for cinema the same year by Republic Pictures. In 1956 the book was published in paperback format by Dell with attractive artwork by Verne Tossy.

Pratt was known to present most of his novels in Florida and the surrounding region. This trope is heavily used with Mercy Island with its Florida Keys tropical location. In the book's opening pages, readers learn that Ramsey, his wife Leslie and an acquaintance named Foster have hired a fishing charter. In an act of reckless abandonment, Ramsey demands that the boat's captain takes the three of them into a choppy stretch of water in a rural portion of the Keys. After catching a big fish, Ramsey's stubbornness with the captain and his companion Wiccy leads to the boat becoming grounded on an isolated tropical island.

Mercy Island's first act is similar to a Burno Fischer short story called "Hostesses in Hell", originally written under the name Russell Grey and published in the March-April 1939 issue of Terror Tales. In the story, a sailor and seven women arrive on a tropical island to escape a devastating storm. Fischer wrote his story like a complete horror tale where Pratt only bypasses the edges of terror. In Mercy Island, the five characters venture onto the island and finds a small house nestled in the dense foliage. There are signs of a turtle that's been disemboweled and eaten as well as indications that more than one person lives in the house. As Ramsey, Leslie and Foster travel further into the house, they begin to realize that the captain and his mate share a secret about the island.

To share anything beyond this premise would be an injustice to prospective readers. Pratt's characters display a number of immoral sins ranging from desire to arrogance. Ramsey's dispute with Foster is adjacent to his battles with the only resident of the island. This is a highly effective melting pot of suspense throughout the first half of the book. The second half was rather slow with a story that seemed to concentrate on island survival, hunting and fishing. As interesting as the characters were, the story itself just fizzled out. I found myself jumping through pages just to escape the boredom of this lackluster island. Mercy Island isn't a tropical destination anyone needs to visit. Read at your own risk.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

The Executioner #213 - Blood Harvest

California native Mel Odom (b. 1957) was a prolific contributor to the Mack Bolan universe, penning almost 30 titles collectively in the Executioner, Super Bolan and Stony Man series. In addition, Odom has also authored a number of television and film tie-in novels such as Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Roswell and Blade. But, my experience with Odom is strictly the Mack Bolan titles, in particular the Executioner #213 Blood Harvest, published in 1996. Why? The synopsis indicates that Mack Bolan is fighting zombies in New Orleans. 

In the 1990s, one of the urban legends for young people on the bar scene was that a potential one-night stand could end up with one of you waking in a bathtub of ice and realizing that an organ had been cut from you by black marketers. This premise is used to its full potential in Blood Harvest as readers immerse themselves in this horror story in the book's prologue.

Posing as an F.B.I. agent named Fox, Bolan infiltrates a New Orleans homicide investigation to learn more about the organ harvesting ring. Most of the book's narrative features firefights every other chapter as Bolan targets key players in the organ heist. Eventually, Bolan teams up with a female investigator as the two follow the cohorts involved.

The zombie portion of the premise is somewhat accurate. The problem with the harvesting ring obtaining these organs by torturous methods is the timing. Because of the short lifetime of the organs, removing them and transporting them to the rich buyer provides a real sense of urgency. To resolve the problem, criminals use a voodoo priest named Papa Glapion to cast spells on the victims. By placing them in an "undead" hibernation - not breathing, but still technically alive - the bodies can be easily moved to different locations and then harvested to preserve the goods. 

Those of you who know Odom's writing understand that he is a gun porn enthusiast by describing each make, model and caliber of the weapons used by the fighters. I don't typically like this style and feel that it takes me out of the scene completely. I want to feel what the characters feel, not the well oiled South African automatic shotgun with dual magazines. But Odom's writing is serviceable and Blood Harvest is high on action and short on plot. One doesn't confuse these high-numbered men's action-adventure entries for literary masterpieces. If you want Bolan executing baddies (and the undead) in bars, cemeteries, bayous and oil rigs you've come to the right place.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Tears for Jessie Hewitt

Edna Solomon Sherry (1885-1967) began writing short stories and serials for the pulp magazines in the early 1920s. She collaborated with both Charles K. Harris and Milton Gropper before authoring her debut novel, Sudden Fear, in 1948. The book was adapted into the eponymous 1952 film starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. My first introduction to Sherry's work is Tears for Jessie Hewitt from 1958. It was originally published by Dodd Mead under their Red Badge Detective brand and then later reprinted by Dell as She Asked for Murder (with an attractive cover by Robert McGinnis). Thankfully, Stark House Press has reprinted the novel under its original title as a Black Gat Book.  

In this crime-noir novel, Sherry plunges readers into the criminal mindset of Francis Edwards. He is a career criminal that focuses on robbing horse racing gamblers after they strike it rich on large payouts. His motif is to case the tracks locating the big winners. Once he chooses his target, he carefully follows the winner back to their home and steals thousands of dollars from them.

In the opening chapters, Edwards accidentally kills his target during an attempted theft. Fleeing California, Edwards begins to call himself Victor Clyde when he meets a distressed young woman named Jessie Hewitt in a cafe. He learns that Jessie was a budding actress who did not find employment. After working as a typist for a plumbing company, Jessie finds herself at a crossroads. She receives an invitation from her father's lawyer to return to her small New York town of Crawfey. Her father is dying and this will be the last chance to reconcile their bad relationship. After Victor learns that Crawfey is a very rural town that rejects any modern progress or intrusions, he conveniently volunteers to take Jessie there.

Like a Charles Runyon character, Victor's treatment by Sherry is an evolution from a smooth operator to a paranoid psychopath. It is this transformation that makes the story extremely entertaining. It's a perfect personality storm – the criminal influence on the young, innocent and righteous Jessie. Sherry cleverly asks the reader to judge the morality of Jessie's actions when faced with Victor's true nature. Tears for Jessie Hewitt is an outstanding character study. But, fans of mid-20th century crime-fiction should find a great deal to love. 

As criminal behavior intensifies in a frenetic chain of events, the narrative shifts perspective to a New York City police lieutenant named Lance. I really enjoyed this change of direction when Sherry switched to a police procedural that was reminiscent of an Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel. The author also introduces two surprises that really solidified the story. While I felt the book's finale was underwhelming, I was still impressed by Sherry's storytelling skills. If you love suspenseful crime-noir then you'll love Tears for Jessie Hewitt. I'm already searching online retailers for more of this author's work.

Edna Sherry Bibliography:

Sudden Fear (1952)
No Questions Asked (1949)
Backfire (1956), US paperback title: Murder at Nightfall
The Defense Does Not Rest (1959)
The Survival of the Fittest (1960)
Call the Witness (1961)
Girl Missing (1962)
Strictly a Loser (1965)

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Meg

At the beginning of his writing career, Robert Silverberg wrote several sleaze paperbacks for Midwood using the pseudonym Loren Beauchamp. Stark House Press has reprinted two of these early classics in one volume including his 1960 paperback, Meg.

As the novel opens, teenage Meg Tandler is losing her virginity in the backseat of a car with a sexually unremarkable local boy who plied her with beer before going all the way. Meg is a bombshell with full breasts and sensuous hips - a Marilyn Monroe type - and she knows she wants more from life than Idaho could ever offer. So, it’s off to New York to find her fortune in show business.

On Broadway, Meg visits a low-end theatrical agent named Max Bonaventura seeking representation. Max talks a good game and Meg signs with him in exchange for 25% of her future earnings. You see exactly where this is headed when Max has Meg get stark naked at their first meeting, so he can inspect the merchandise. After seeing what she has to offer, Max lays it out like this:

"I'll tell you what to dress and how to look. I'll teach you to sing and act and dance. I’ll tell you when to take your clothes off and when to put them on. I'll tell you when to go to bed with people. You're going to have to do some sleeping around, get me? Nobody gets to the top without paying for it. But you don't let anybody touch you who can’t do you some good."

Driven by ambition, Meg makes peace with Max’s plan to leverage her sex appeal and sleep her way into show business and up the ladder of fame. Despite his cynical amorality, Max is a delightfully colorful character and the main reason I kept turning the pages in this unlikely compelling paperback. The novel’s plot pretty much follows the ups and downs (and ins and outs) of Meg’s career as a sexpot. Because it’s a 1960 paperback, the sex scenes aren’t graphic at all, but Silverberg treats the reader to pages and pages on the allures of Meg’s impossible-to-ignore rack. The writing is predictably solid and Silverberg really knows how to make breasts come alive as central characters of a novel.

Meg rises through the ranks of show business thanks to Max’s never ending supply of publicity stunts, and this makes for a fun and quick read. It’s a predictable cautionary tale about the cost of uninhibited ambition and a pleasant way to kill a couple hours in the summer sun.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Machine (aka Do It to Me)

Fire/Machine is a new reprint from Stark House Press featuring two novels by Barry N. Malzberg. The two were first printed by Midwood under the pseudonym Mel Johnson. Along with Beacon, Midwood was one of the largest publishers of sleazy books and often featured prominent authors like Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block. Fire was originally known as Instant Sex (1968) and Machine as Do It to Me (1969). Since I love pinball machines, I decided to read Machine. Its premise of a lowly pinball arcade owner struggling with an impending crackdown spoke to me more than the invite to porn fiction.

Malzberg introduces Machine in a conversational fashion. Similar to Stephen King's Colorado Kid, the narrative is basically a guy named Mike Jennings sitting with you, the reader, over drinks. You're in the smoky bar buying drinks for Jennings as he explains his turbulent life over a three-day period in Syracuse, N.Y. While there are signs that Jennings has a criminal history, he advises that none of this is essential to his story. Just the 3 days.

Jennings borrows ten-thousand dollars and takes over the rights to a pinball arcade. Jennings rents the building and these machines, some of which are the smoothest and most difficult games east of Chicago. With a location near the University of Syracuse (Malzberg's alma-mater), the likelihood of students slipping nickels into the machines at a steady pace is fairly high. However, it is 1969 and arcade machines are still considered the work of the devil.

Prior to the mid-1970s, most cities had strict ordinances that denounced pinball machines as illegal gambling devices that corrupted the youth of America. Often illegal machines were seized by law-enforcement and destroyed. To protect himself from any grief, Jennings buys a low-level protection ring that provides some protection from the city. When two cops come in and threaten Jennings with the crackdown, he makes an appeal to his protection plan. They warn him that he is safe, but Jennings begins to suspect that his arcade empire is on the brink of collapse. 

Machine is laced with sex as Jennings is pleasured by a college co-ed named Sandra. As expected, there are graphic scenes that generally consume three to four pages. Jennings is struggling with his relationship with Sandra - she desires commitment. Hindering relations is the appearance of Jennings’ ex-wife Barbara, which obviously translates into more sex pages. Malzberg has a unique ability to compare passionate sex with pinball players fascinated by the sweet rhythm of the machine. While I skipped out on most of the sex, I enjoyed the comparison. 

By and large, Barry Malzberg's presentation is cumbersome. His signature is extremely long paragraphs with very little line breaks throughout. Stark House, and the author himself, agree that the machine is not the best portrayal of Malzberg's work. Many point to his sci-fi novels as real highlights while others suggest his action-adventure men's series Lone Wolf is the best. Machine wasn't particularly brilliant, but I enjoyed the elements of crime fiction enough for it to be worth it. You owe it to yourself to try out a novel by Malzberg. He's a truly unique voice. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Back Alley Jungle

Leo Margulies (1900-1975) is a familiar name in the world of pulps, MAMs and digests. Originally from New York, he started as a researcher for 20th Century Fox before becoming the editor of Ned Pines' Standard Magazines. Along with magazines like Mike Shayne, Popular Detective and Thrilling Detective, Margulies also compiled and edited a number of anthology collections including Back Alley Jungle. This 1960 collection of short stories was initially published by Fawcett Gold Medal under the Crest brand name. Here’s some highlights:

Ed McBain (written under the name of Richard Marsten) is the author of the 1952 story entitled “Carrera’s Woman”. In it, a man named Jeff has been working the oil fields in Mexico. After many hard years, Jeff amassed $10,000 in savings. Before returning to America to start a new life he was robbed by a co-worker named Carrera and his girlfriend Linda. When the story starts, Jeff takes Linda hostage behind big rocks. Carrera is across the dry gulch firing futilely into the rocks hoping to kill Jeff and reclaim Linda. During the night, the three parties are at each other's throats with both sides taking potshots across the gap. But the story changes fast as Linda starts to seduce Jeff. Is this an escape strategy or is she sincere in her sexual advances? This is the ultimate question McBain is asking, and it's such a tempting one. I really liked this story and it's a key part of the collection. 

In Steve Frazee's 1953 "Graveyard Shift" story, the close narration focuses on a busy police dispatcher on a late night shift. When a woman holding a gun enters the police station, this lone dispatcher is ordered to place all of the city's patrol cars in one section of the city. The woman's motive becomes clear when the dispatcher locates the pattern - she's purposefully maneuvering the police away from the local casino. Involved in this complex case, it is up to the dispatcher to use code words so that officers redirect efforts to the casino. This is a really unique story that presents a rare, but deserving hero - the police dispatcher.

The longest and most enjoyable story is Richard Deming's 1955 short "The War". This starts with a woman named Janice entering the Rotunda Club, a posh casino owned by Clancy Ross. After a talk and a call upstairs, Clancy greets Janice in his office. In short, Janice is the widow of Clancy's old Army buddy from the Korean War. She explains to Clancy that her husband witnessed a mob slaying and was later gunned down by killers working for a syndicate kingpin named Lawson. During the exchange, the Mob framed Janice so that she would appear as a frustrated wife who shot her husband during a heated argument. After the arrest, the Mob posted bail for her in an effort to then kill her in a way that would resemble suicide. With no friends or allies, Janice fled to Clancy hoping he will keep her safe. This violent and explosive story features Clancy at odds with Lawson over the woman's safety. But is there some secret about her? Deming was a great storyteller and “The War” is absolutely awesome. I can't say enough good things about it.

Other authors appearing in this compilation are Jonathan Craig (Frank E. Smith), Dan Sontup, Mann Rubin, Charles Boeckman, Robert Turner and Don Stanford. There's an additional Ed McBain story titled "Clean Break" that's listed under the pseudonym Hunt Collins.

At 150-pages and 10 solid short-stories, Back Alley Jungle is an absolute joy to read and a fairly affordable used paperback considering the era and publisher. Highly recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE