The Mob Says Murder

Albert Conroy was one of the cadre of pseudonyms employed by Philadelphia native Marvin H. Albert (1924-1996) to flood the market with his innovative crime and western novels of the mid-20th century. As far as I can tell, he wrote 14 paperbacks as Albert Conroy/Al Conroy between the years 1952 and 1972, including a stand-alone crime-noir paperback from 1958 titled The Mob Says Murder.

Eddie Driscoll is six years into his state prison life sentence for a fatal bank robbery he didn’t commit. In his day, he did plenty of bank holdup jobs, just not the one that landed him in the pen. Driscoll spends his days pining away for his wife who left him and remarried a year into his sentence. Nevertheless, he remains infatuated and in love with the memory of her soft flesh against him.

One day, Driscoll gets an unexpected visitor in prison. It’s a spicy Mexican dame is pretending to be his cousin delivering a cryptic message that Driscoll interprets as an invitation to bust out of the prison with the help of unknown friends on the outside. This evolves into an early-novel breakout that's about as good as any pulp fiction jailbreak I’ve ever read. Before you know it, Driscoll goes from lonely and horny inmate to a most-wanted fugitive.

The person pulling the strings to orchestrate Driscoll’s shaky freedom is a mobster named Bruno Hauser who runs a nightclub and illegal gambling joint called The Ocean Club. Hauser has a problem - the anti-crime governor has been sending state law enforcement goons to Hauser’s joint to bust up the place and interrupt business. Hauser’s solution? The governor must go. Interestingly, the same governor was once the prosecutor who wrongfully put Driscoll away for life. After his guilty verdict six years ago, Driscoll swore revenge on the prosecutor, and Hauser is hoping to utilize Driscoll as an assassin to remove their shared enemy from office permanently. After all, busting a guy out of prison means he owes you a big favor, right?

Albert has crafted another crime-noir masterpiece here. I thought I knew where the plot was headed based on the cover art spoiler, but it quickly became clear that the artist and copywriter had never read the book themselves. The novel’s characters are vivid and the dilemmas - both practical and moral - are taken seriously by the author. The relationships between the characters are especially well-drawn and add a dose of humanity to this ultra-violent and sexy 141-page lost classic. The plot is perfectly constructed and the dialogue is crisp. There’s really nothing to dislike about this novel.

The Mob Says Murder is another work of pulp literary greatness by Albert. The more I read from him, the more I’ve come to believe that he was a uniquely excellent writer of his era and a step above his peers. For reasons unclear to me, I don't believe this one has ever been reprinted since it hit the spinner racks in 1958. Maybe someone will read this review and do something about that. It’s really something special. Get a copy HERE

Paperback Warrior Primer - Clifton Adams

Clifton Adams was a wine connoisseur that loved jazz music and Oklahoma history. He also wrote a bunch of violent, gritty novels about heroes and outlaws. He won two coveted Spur Awards and was admired by many of his contemporaries. Popular crime-noir author Donald Westlake cited Adams as an influence on his beloved Parker series of heist novels. We've reviewed many of Clifton Adams' novels and we hope today's Paperback Warrior Primer will prompt you to explore his robust bibliography. 

Clifton Adams was born in Comanche, Oklahoma in 1919. He began writing at an early age. However, his writing development paused when he joined Hell on Wheels, officially known as the U.S. Army's Second Armored Division. During WW2 he served as a tank commander in both Africa and Europe. 

After WW2, he utilized the G.I. Bill to attend University of Oklahoma to study professional writing - a degree that focused on making a living as a writer. It was there that he won the “Oklahoma Writer of the Year” award. In his acceptance speech he said, “There’s only one way to approach the kind of writing I do - and that’s as a business. I’m not selling art. I’m selling entertainment.”

And with that idea as his North Star, he succeeded. In his career, he wrote 50 full-length novels and 125 short stories the magazines and digests. His first professional sale was the short story "Champions Wear Purple", published in Adventure in January 1947. His first novel, Desperado, is often cited as his finest work. It was originally released as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback in 1950. It was a monster hit and spawned a sequel in 1953 called A Noose for the Desperado. Both books remain available as reprints from Stark House Press. 

Besides the two Desperado books, his only other recurring character was Amos Flagg, a western series written under the pseudonym of Clay Randal. The series ran from 1964 to 1969 for seven installments. He also wrote five stand-alone novels under the Clay Randal name between 1953 and 1963. He also wrote six westerns between 1958 and 1963 under the name of Matt Kinkaid. Celebrating his western writing, he won two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America - 1969 for Tragg’s Choice and 1970 for The Last Days of Wolf Garnett.  

While most of his literary work falls into the western genre, he also wrote crime-fiction. Whom Gods Destroy and Death's Sweet Song were both published in 1953 by Fawcett Gold Medal. His 1956 crime-noir, Never Say No to a Killer, was published by Ace under the pseudonym Jonathan Gant. All three of these books have been reprinted by Stark House Press. He also used the Gant name to author The Long Vendetta, published in 1963 by Avalon. Under the name Nick Hudson he authored The Very Wicked, published in 1960 by Berkley. 

Clifton Adams died from a heart attack in 1971 in Comanche, Oklahoma. According to our research, the author's papers are kept at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. For more information, listen to the Paperback Warrior Podcast episode about Clifton Adams HERE.

Come Closer

Sara Gran is a contemporary crime fiction author and creator of the acclaimed Claire DeWitt private eye series. However, at the beginning of her writing career, she wrote a terrifying little horror novel called Come Closer that genre fans haven’t stopped talking about since its 2003 release.

Our narrator is a yuppie architect named Amanda, and weird things are starting to happen. A written proposal she hands to her boss has a cruel, vulgar, and insulting sentence at the top that Amanda didn’t write or doesn’t recall writing. She’s also hearing scratching noises throughout the urban residential loft she shares with her doting husband.

Of course, things escalate. Plates start flying from the cabinets and car keys begin to disappear from their home. All of this is definitely slow-burn creepy, but the true first nail in Amanda’s mental coffin is when her imaginary childhood friend Pansy begins visiting again in her sleep. Anyone who reads horror fiction or watches scary movies knows that imaginary friends are Never A Good Thing.

Astute readers will also recognize at this point that this is not a haunted urban condo story. It’s a haunted (or worse - possessed) Amanda story. And, man-oh-man, does it get scary. With each unnumbered mini-chapter vignette, the tension escalates. This is underscored by the fact that Amanda is telling us the story of her own possession. Like a heroin user sliding into addiction, all she feels at first are the addictive good vibes while the people around her are forced to bear witness to a woman becoming irrevocably unhinged.

It’s been a long time since a work of fiction rattled me as much as Come Closer did. The way the insanity/possession gently escalates over the course of the novel’s 176 pages was masterful and the pages fly by as the author ratchets up the intensity. Some segments were tough to read, but I defy you to look away. I haven’t read Gran’s mystery fiction, but if it’s half as good as her horror, she’s a unique talent to watch. Highest horror recommendation. 

Get a copy HERE

87th Precinct #11 - Give the Boys a Great Big Hand

The 87th Precinct series of police procedural mysteries were the crowning achievement of author Ed McBain (1926-2005, birth name: Salvatore Lombino, adopted name: Evan Hunter). The books star a rotating cast of cop characters dealing with the ins-and-outs of big-city policing and the crimes that keep them busy at the intersection of Dragnet and Hill Street Blues. The 11th paperback in the series is Give the Boys a Great Big Hand from 1960.

It’s a rainy day in the urban environs of Isola, McBain’s thinly-veiled fictional analog to Manhattan. A foot patrol officer spots a distant figure with an overcoat, hat and umbrella boarding a city bus while leaving an airline overnight bag behind at the bus stop. The vigilant beat cop makes his way to the bus stop, opens the bag, and finds a severed human hand inside. This is the Chapter One spark that ignites the action in this lean, 200-page mystery.

The patrolman brings the bag and the detached hand to the detective bureau at the 87th Precinct for further investigation, and we get reacquainted with all our chatty old friends chewing the fat in the squad area. The dialogue among the unflappable cops is often some of the best - and most authentic-sounding - parts of any McBain novel. For the reader, the funny conversations are really an opportunity to witness a master writer at work.

Each of the 87th Precinct series installments stand well on their own and feature different combinations of the detectives who solve the cases. The case of the severed hand is assigned to two of the strongest characters in the series: Steve Carella and Cotton Hawes. Carella is a smart, tough and hard-working steel-jawed hero, and Hawes is a redhead ladies' man. We also get a liberal dose of Meyer Meyer, a cop with the mannerisms of a Jewish borscht-belt comedian. It’s like a perfectly-cast buddy cop movie.

Most murder mysteries find the investigators searching for the identity of the killer, but Give the Boys a Great Big Hand turns the formula on its head because the detectives need to find the identity of the victim first. They begin with reports of missing persons and find themselves in a web of strippers, prostitutes, drummers, cheating husbands, and other colorful citizens. All of this leads to a rather gruesome ending that will test your gag reflex and satisfy your search for a logical solution.

Where does Give the Boys a Great Big Hand fall on the McBain-o-Meter? It’s definitely top-tier, but maybe not the absolute tops. It’s certainly worth reading and remains in print today. You shouldn’t have a problem finding a copy. You can get it HERE.

Chase

Using the pseudonym K.R. Dwyer, future horror-fiction superstar Dean Koontz wrote his first suspense novel, Chase (1971), when he was 25 years old. It’s a stalker-serial killer, cat-and-mouse book with no supernatural elements. In 1995, Koontz overhauled and re-released the book for modern audiences to enjoy under his own name.

Our hero is 25 year-old Ben Chase, a legitimate hero freshly returned from Vietnam where an act of bravery won him the Congressional Medal of Honor and made him a local celebrity in his suburban hometown. However, Ben wants nothing to do with fame or awards. He is suffering from severe PTSD and prefers to spend his time in isolation, locked in his rented room drinking whiskey and watching old movies.

One evening, Ben drives his Mustang alone to ruminate at the local lovers lane where teens are copulating in their cars. Ben spots a creepy stalker lurking in the woods watching the teens get busy. Eventually the stalker rips open the door to a vehicle and attacks a teen couple inside with a knife. Ben snaps into action and grabs the stalker in a choke hold. Unfortunately, the stalker killed one of the teens and traumatized the other, and Ben sustains a knife wound that allows the maniac to escape the scene. No one, including Ben, was able to get a good look at the stalker.

Ben’s most recent act of heroism catapults him to the front pages of the local newspaper again as a local hero when all the young vet wants is to be left alone. This leads to Ben receiving phone calls at home from the stalker who explains his motives and tells Ben he’s a marked man. The authorities are no help, so Ben must decide if he wants to wait for the stalker to attack or go on the offensive to eliminate this shadowy enemy.

Having read many of Koontz’s horror novels when he was at the top of his game in the 1980s, it’s cool to read one of his early works. Chase is a pretty basic suspense novel, but it’s also an important rumination on the psychological costs of war and the way we treated our vets returning from Vietnam. The reader cares about Ben’s physical and mental well-being and quickly becomes invested in his success as he matches wits and might against the stalker through the novel’s nightmarish, violent and climactic conclusion.

Chase is a quick read - practically a novella. Koontz eliminated about 25% of the fat from the original K.R. Dwyer manuscript and overhauled the dialog for the 1995 re-release available today. As such, it’s a completely fat-free reading experience, and a pretty great page-turner. It’s admittedly a pretty formulaic suspense story, but it’s a formula that has always worked for me and an easy recommendation for you. Check it out HERE

You Find Him - I'll Fix Him

James Hadley Chase was a popular pseudonym of U.K. Author Rene Raymond (1906-1985) for over 90 thrillers. You Find Him - I’ll Fix Him was a 1956 novel originally released under his Raymond Marshall pen name and later re-released as a Chase title. The lean noir paperback was also adapted into the French film Les Canailles in 1960.

Our narrator is Ed Dawson, an American newspaper bureau chief working in Rome. He’s appropriately terrified of his boss, Mr. Chalmers, who is back at the home office in New York. One day Mr. Chalmers calls the trembling Dawson to ask a favor. The boss’ college-age daughter Helen will be arriving in Rome tomorrow and needs a ride from the airport to her hotel. At this point I thought, “I bet the daughter is a real dish, and this airport pickup is about to get way more complicated.”

Not so fast! Helen is a bookish, Plain Jane, and the hotel drop off was uneventful. However, weeks later when Ed runs into her at a party, the ugly duckling has become a swan. She’s wearing a slinky backless cocktail dress with hair and makeup eliciting a 1956 va-va-va-voom from our horny hero. They begin dating and planning a one-month secret getaway to a remote Italian villa in Sorrento. As long as the boss back home in New York doesn’t find out that Ed is banging his barely-legal daughter, everything is cool, right?

Upon arriving at the villa, Ed finds Helen floating face-first in the water at the bottom of a cliff and very, very dead. The whole thing looks like foul play causing Ed to face an early-novel predicament: Call the cops or not? A police report might make him a suspect, ruin his reputation and cost him his job. As they say in Italy, “Non buono.” The other option is to hightail it back to Rome and hope that no one ever finds out he was there in the first place. Ed chooses the coward’s route and skedaddles back to his urban bachelor pad.

The author does a fabulous job dissecting the ways we rationalize our bad behavior. The character of Ed is a rationalization gold medalist riding the Bad-Choice Express all the way to Noirville. Of course, Helen’s body is found. Of course, it turns out she was murdered. And of course, Ed’s lies land him deeper and deeper in hot water until he has no choice but to solve the murder himself to save his own hide. As a mystery, the novel works marvelously as clues pile up to a logical conclusion and climactic finish.

As usual, Chase is a good writer who knows how to move a story forward with his economical, no-frills prose. It’s always interesting to read a Brit author writing American dialogue because he can’t help but slip U.K. idioms into the prose that Americans would never use. Some readers find these “mistakes” annoying, but I’m always charmed by them. I’ve read several of his novels, and You Find Him - I’ll Fix Him is by far my favorite of his work. It’s a paperback that would have fit in nicely with Fawcett Gold Medal 1950s releases like Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin and other works in the femme fatale hit parade.

Bottom line: We have a winner. If you can scare up a copy of this one, buy it and read it.

Binary

Before he became one of the bestselling authors on Earth, Michael Crichton (1942-2008) was a medical student writing short paperback thrillers under the name John Lange. The good people at Hard Case Crime landed the reprint rights to his early works and repackaged them with their trademark alluring covers. Binary was a 1972 beat-the-clock domestic terrorism thriller and Crichton’s final novel using the Lange name.

The book begins with a daring heist of two canisters of deadly nerve gas ingredients being transported on a U.S. Government train through Utah. The heist crew is mafia guns-for-hire who are unsure exactly what they are stealing or for whom. The theft happens directly before the kick-off of the Republican National Convention in San Diego, and astute paperback original readers will quickly come to the conclusion that the timing of this heist was probably no coincidence.

We then meet U.S. State Department Intelligence Bureau Special Agent John Graves, who will be playing the role of Jack Bauer on this Very Special Episode of 24. He’s a polymath genius who is conveniently good at everything. Graves is the case agent in the investigation of a politically-radical billionaire named John Wright, who is clearly up to no good. Graves tails Wright as he purchases empty scuba tanks and other stuff that might help in weaponizing stolen nerve gas components. Before the heist, the routing and the contents of the train were obtained by a computer-hacker-for-hire who admits under questioning that Wright paid him for the information. Even more nerve-wracking, Wright also paid for the hacker to obtain Graves’ government personnel file. Has the hunter become the hunted?

The idea of "Binary” things carries a lot of weight as a metaphor in the paperback. The gas, posing the central threat of the book is inert unless mixed with a complementary gas to form the nightmarish chemical weapon. Meanwhile, the two Johns - Graves the hero and Wright the villain - are also two sides of the same coin. Both are highly-intelligent chess and poker enthusiasts squaring off in a battle of wits with millions of lives in the balance.

Binary is an exciting and simple paperback that ticks down the minutes over a rather short period of time with little opportunity to ever get boring. Is it a masterpiece of the genre? Hell, no. It’s about as good as the post-Pendleton Executioner books of the 1970s. Moreover, the novel has plot holes you could drive a freight train through, but why quibble? It’s a blast to read if you’re looking to kill a couple hours. If this is your kind of thing, you’ll like this one just fine. Buy a copy HERE