Secret of Canfield House

Florence Hurd (1919-2008) was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago. According to her obituary, she moved to San Diego, California and became a social worker. Later, she married, raised two children, and enjoyed a successful career as a gothic romance writer. My first experience with Hurd's writing is her beloved novel Secret of Canfield House. It was published in 1966 by Fawcett Gold Medal. 

The novel stars a young, vulnerable, and attractive woman named Emeline. After moving from Vermont to New York, Emeline discovers that she was never cut out for the big city. When her father dies, Emeline returns to Vermont to pick up the pieces while discovering new employment. She settles on interviewing for a housekeeper job with a snooty woman named Mrs. Canfield. The gig is that she will temporarily live at the vast Vermont manor aptly titled Canfield House. The pay is good but the job is a rather lonely one. Mrs. Canfield and her son Miles only use the house on occasional weekends. But, they want the silver polished and the pillows fluffed – a housekeeper ritual left to Emeline. 

Settling into her new employment and residence, Emeline attempts to befriend the house's groundskeeper. He lives in the barn, drinks a lot, and is a mute – not the best company for a lonely woman. After failing to make small talk in the quaint New England village, Emeline finally finds companionship with the family's weekend cook. Through this relationship, Emeline discovers that Miles was married once, but his bride ran away with another man. Oddly, their bedroom remains closed off from the rest of the house, a dusty tribute to lost love...or maybe death?

Emeline's new job becomes a terrifying ordeal when she's forced to contend with an arsonist, her poisoned dog and what could be an “unholy” haunted bedroom. Like something out of Amityville Horror, she hears noises in the cellar, footsteps through the empty house, slamming doors and monstrous faces in the window. Does the “secret” of Canfield House concern a demonic doorway to Hell or a home invasion nightmare? 

While Secret of Canfield House possesses all of the genre tropes of a fine New England gothic, Hurd cleverly skirts the edges of a traditional old fashioned suspense tale. The story's sweeping finale comes during an onslaught of howling winds and rain. During a power outage, Emeline explores the house by candlelight determined to solve the mystery. Skeletons in the wall, missing pearls, a hidden diamond bracelet, and a smoking gun smoothly enhances this moody 160-page thriller. I was firmly glued to every page in a white-knuckle race to find the answers. You will be too. Highly recommended!

Toll for the Brave

Before Jack Higgins (real name: Harry Patterson, born 1929) became a massive bestselling author of thick, high-adventure novels, he wrote exciting 180-page paperbacks for guys like us. Case in point: His 29th novel, Toll for the Brave (1971), which remains in print today. 

The protagonist and narrator is Ellis Jackson, a British citizen who enlists in the U.S. Army to fight in the Vietnam War as a paratrooper in 1966. Evidently this was a real thing - highly unusual - but it happened. Despite serving with valor, he is captured by the Viet Cong and thrown into a tortuous prisoner-of-war camp administered by the sadistic Chinese. This segment of the paperback was vivid, violent and compelling as Ellis is brought to the physical and the psychological breaking point.

Inside the camp, an African-American U.S. Army Brigadier General with a fantastic backstory named Max Sinclair is also housed as a prisoner of war. Black Max, as he was called, was a U.S. military legend who fought in World War 2, Korea, and now Vietnam where he was caught by the commies while venturing beyond the confines of his command post. Black Max teaches young Ellis how to handle the confinement and torture with a Zen equanimity that preserves Ellis’ sanity and life. Meanwhile, a sexy Chinese psychologist at the camp named Madame Ny is assigned to be Ellis’ chief interrogator while using sensuality and mental manipulation to break the young Britton down. The POW camp scenes comprising the book’s first act were among the best I’ve read this year.

Eventually, Ellis wins his freedom and begins a new life in a marshy village 50-miles outside of London called Foulness. This setting change comprises a new section of the novel, and Ellis is dealing with what appears to be severe PTSD. It’s so bad that when he goes to walk his dog, he thinks he sees Viet Cong lurking in the swamp trying to kill his pet. It’s during one of these dreamlike episodes that a suspicious murder occurs (the novel’s back-cover spoils it, but I won’t), and it’s then incumbent upon Ellis to prove his own innocence and solve the murder. The innocent man being forced to solve a murder to clear his own name has got to be the plot of darn near half the novels we review here at Paperback Warrior. To his credit, Higgins does a good job with this tired storyline, but it has nowhere near the edge-of-your-seat emotional impact of the POW camp scenes. 

There are plenty of great action sequences that will please readers - including some particularly well-crafted martial arts fights. The climactic ending has a giant twist you won’t see coming, but that comes with a cost. The “solution” to the novel’s central mystery is truly moronic and illogical. It’s safe to say that the paperback’s resolution would only please fans who have received frontal lobotomies. Can you enjoy a good book with a bad ending?  That’s the real question here. Is it the ride or the destination that matters? It’s your call. 

Buy your copy HERE

The Girl from Addis

Ted Allbeury (1917-2005) served as a U.K. Intel officer from 1940 to 1947. During WW2, he infiltrated Nazi Germany via parachute and later was caught - and tortured by commies - smuggling spies between East and West Germany. He began writing espionage fiction with a heavy dose of realism at age 55 and went on to publish 40 novels in the genre. My introduction to his work was his 1984 stand-alone paperback, The Girl from Addis.

The story is narrated by our hero, Johnny Grant, a British MI6 operative during WW 2. Back in 1941, Johnny was stationed in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The country had just been liberated from Italian rule and the Ethiopians were organizing themselves as a nation under the leadership of their own emperor. The Brits were providing transitional help to the emperor, and Johnny was serving as the chief’s British Military Liaison. Of course, what he was really doing was spying. His main target was a wealthy Armenian named Jonnet who was supplying the Japanese with fuel and arms during the war. Before he could get the job done, Johnny’s cover is blown and he has 48 hours to leave Ethiopia or be killed.

Anyway, that’s the background. Johnny left MI6 in 1947 and embarked on a far more interesting career as a photographer of swimsuit models. Every now and then he uses this as cover to take freelance spy assignments from his old employer. We rejoin him decades later in the 1970s. The emperor of Ethiopia has been overthrown and imprisoned in a military coup, and the new government seems to be getting cozy with the Soviets. The U.K. fears that the Eithiopians aspire to overrun the other nations of East Africa - starting with Somalia -  to form one big Soviet client state. Even worse, Johnny’s old target Jonnet seems to be helping the Soviets achieve this goal from his trusted perch advising the new Ethiopian regime. The Brits want Johnny to return to Ethiopia to finish the job he started 25 years ago - neutralize Jonnet and the Soviet plans before someone gets hurt.

As you may have gathered, this isn’t the “death-ray from the sky” espionage fiction of Nick Carter: Killmaster or a gadget-heavy spy story like a James Bond movie. Instead, Allbeury crafted a more cerebral - and presumably realistic - paperback where old adversaries and allies meet at diplomatic cocktail parties and plot against one another with a greater subtlety than we normally see in pulp fiction. Despite being rather smart, it’s never boring. The brinkmanship was fascinating, thanks to the fact that Allbeury’s writing is staggeringly good. He explains the geopolitics of Ethiopia with a clarity that makes even the dumbest reader (i.e. me) feel like an expert. And, yes, you’ll get your spy action set-pieces at the paperback’s climax.

While back in Ethiopia, Johnny quickly becomes beguiled and infatuated with a mixed-race woman sharing Greek and Somali backgrounds. The problem is that she’s the kept woman of the local KGB colonel, a truly loathsome villain.. The introduction of the titular girl also introduces sex and violence into the thoughtful plotting as well as a pretty sweet love story and insightful observations about western culture.

This was a fantastic novel - weighty and thought-provoking with a lot of substance squeezed into 191 paperback pages. Ted Allbeury was a genius writer who deserves to be rediscovered. Five of his novels have been reprinted by an outfit called Dover Publications but not The Girl From Addis. You’ll need to seek out an old paperback to enjoy it. If you like smart and realistic spy stories, you won’t regret it.

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.