Double Indemnity

James M. Cain hit a homerun with his femme fatale crime-fiction novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. The bestselling novel was adapted to film seven times, converted into an opera, a radio drama and a play. It is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. So, how would Cain ever top it? Well, he really never did, but he came really close with Double Indemnity. This novel was originally published in Liberty in 1936. The book was later published in 1943 in the collection Three of a Kind, an omnibus containing Double Indemnity as well as two additional works by Cain, Career in C Major and The Embezzler. 

Like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity is told in the first-person as a sort of “if you are reading this then I'm in the deathhouse” kind of book. The protagonist is Walter Huff, an insurance agent in Beverly Hills. Like Cain's character Frank Chambers, Huff is a strategist who helps plot a murder when he falls for a young seductress named Phyllis. The problem is that Phyllis is married to a wealthy guy named Nirdlinger, one of Huff's clients. After Huff falls for Phyllis, the two collaborate on knocking Nirdlinger off to cash in on an accident policy. 

Like most of the femme fatale novels, which Cain perfected for similar novelists like Gil Brewer and Orrie Hitt, the murder plan develops into treachery, jealousy, lust, greed, and plain 'ole lyin' and cheatin'. The murder hits a major snag when Huff learns that Phyllis may have played him for a fool in hopes to run away with another guy. But, Huff gains some insight through Phyllis's gorgeous stepdaughter, whom he ultimately falls in love with. 

This book is rather short, but packs a punch. The gauntlet that Huff runs from A to Z in hopes to successfully murder for love, then backtrack to kill for vengeance is clever, compelling, and masterfully written. It's a tug-of-war as Huff clamors with the concept of murder, the ultimate sin. There's a deep mystery centralized as the narrative rotates different characters off the playing field. Who is truly innocent is one of the book's most perplexing questions. But, thankfully Cain keeps the characters to a minimum, keeping the plot development tight as the story expands outward into a brisk “man on the run” concept. 

Double Indemnity was adapted to film in 1944 by mystery powerhouse novelist Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder. It was filmed again in 1973 and staged as a play in 2011. It's a prevalent bookend that butts up nicely with The Postman Always Rings Twice. While inferior to that masterpiece, Double Indemnity is still a mandatory read for any crime-fiction fan worth his salt. Highly recommended! 

Buy a copy of the book HERE.

Conan - The Road of the Eagles (aka Way of the Swords, Conan Man of Destiny)

The December, 1955 Fantastic Universe issue featured an L. Sprague de Camp Conan story called “Conan, Man of Destiny”. This story was taken from a Robert E. Howard manuscript, originally titled “The Road of the Eagles”, discovered by Glenn Lord, about the Ottoman Empire featuring a hero named Ivan Sablianka. Howard's original version was edited by Lord and published in the Donald Grant collection Road of Azrael as “The Way of the Swords”. de Camp changed the title “Conan, Man of Destiny” to “The Road of the Eagles”. That story – de Camp's version – was later published in Lancer's 1968 collection Conan the Freebooter as by both de Camp and Howard. The comic adaptation appears in The Savage Sword of Conan #38. 

“The Road of the Eagles” continues where “Shadows in the Moonlight” leaves off. Conan and his pirates, now referred to as the Red Brotherhood, are attacked by Yildiz, the king of Turan and his General Artaban. Meanwhile, a young woman named Roxana escapes the ransacking and destruction of her village by a man named Kurusk Khan. Roxana, and a small army of Hyrkanians, runs into Artaban and he explains to her that he was in debt to Yildiz and basically attacked Conan's pirate crew to just pay off debt. Now, he is sort of rethinking his decision to serve Yildiz and wants to go independent and do his own thing with his army. 

With Artaban's change of heart, Roxana also reveals that the chief rival to Yildiz is Prince Teyaspa, her lover. She tells Artaban that Teyaspa is in a dungeon jail and he agrees to assist her with liberating him. While this is happening, Conan, nearly playing a bit part by this point, is running around with his surviving pirates trying to find and kill Yildiz. Here is where the story becomes very complicated and rather convoluted. Which, seems to be a pattern now with de Camp's reworking of Howard's stories that were never meant to feature Conan or The Hyborian Age. 

My understanding is that the castle where Teyaspa is imprisoned is simultaneously attacked by the Hyrkanians wanting revenge for their village destruction and Conan and his Red Brotherhood that want to find and kill Artaban before they seek Yildiz. Then, you have Artaban and Roxana attempting the prison break for Teyaspa. Honestly, this is like Game of Thrones on drugs that just leads to a Shakespeare-styled tragic ending. But, before the suicides (yes, they happen) the best part of the story reveals itself. Conan vs vampires!

Inside the dark cavernous tunnel system below the castle are ravenous hairy cave creatures called brylukas. They are vampiric in nature and attack Conan and his crew. This portion of the narrative is just brimming over with intense action-adventure as the titular hero attempts to climb through the cave's passageways while fighting off these savage monsters. This is more of what I want from Conan – brawn versus monsters, evil men, and sorcerers. Unfortunately, this exhilarating story within the story of Conan's escape from the creatures comes at the very end and is very short-lived. 

“The Road of the Eagles” is an okay read, but requires patience and pen on paper (or a handy phone notepad) just to keep up with who is chasing whom and for what reason – revenge, power, loot, women, etc. If you can dedicate 45 mins of heavy concentration, then the story totally works. If you are looking for just casual escapism, look elsewhere.

Rosemary's Baby

American author Ira Levin (1929-2007) struck gold in 1967 with his second novel, Rosemary’s Baby, selling four-million copies and counting. The novel’s iconic standing was solidified by the 1968 film adaptation by Roman Polanski (Full Disclosure: I’ve never seen it). The novel remains in-print today in every format imaginable. 

Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse are upgrading their Manhattan apartment to an exclusive, in-demand building called The Bramford. After signing the lease, the couple learns that the building has a dark past. Historic residents were accused of cannibalism, child murder and witchcraft. Decades ago, the building was thought to be cursed.

Despite these warnings, Guy and Rosemary move into Apartment 7B. Rosemary quickly makes a friend who promptly commits suicide. This brings her directly into the orbit of her busybody neighbors who all seem very interested in Rosemary’s fertility. 

Rosemary’s husband Guy is a struggling actor, but something about The Bramford has him acting quite different than normal. One night Rosemary has a vivid dream that her neighbors and Guy were involved in a dark ritual of sorts. When Rosemary awakens, she’s covered in scratches and soon learns that she’s pregnant. 

Levin does a great job of writing Rosemary as a naive ingenue from Nebraska, and she seems to be the only character willfully blind to the subtle manipulation of all the other characters and what may be growing in her womb. The novel is a slow burn to be sure, but the creeping dread that rises in the reader displays some really adept horror writing with a gentle touch. Scary? A little. Unnerving? Bullseye! Recommended? Definitely. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Harry Stoner #01 - The Lime Pit

Jonathan Valin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1947. He graduated from University of Chicago, and now works for Fi, a music criticism magazine he helped create. In the middle of his career were 11 mystery novels starring a Cincinnati detective named Harry Stoner. As a fan of 1980s crime-fiction, I decided to begin the series with the very first novel, The Lime Pit, published in 1980 as a hardcover by Dodd Mead.

Throughout the course of The Lime Pit, readers gain tidbits about Harry Stoner's life. The first thing we learn is that he served in the U.S. military as an M.P. during the Vietnam War. He has killed people before, and at one point he worked in Cincinnati's District Attorney's office. Now, Stoner is a private detective making ends meet taking on cases in America's mid-western heartland. As the book begins, Stoner is responding to an inquiry made by a Cincinnati man named Hugo Cratz.

Cratz is an elderly man living in the average community of North Clifton. He advises Stoner that a young woman he befriended, Cindy Ann, has gone missing. After the police dismiss the case, Cratz wants to hire Stoner to find her. The problem is that Cratz can barely rub two nickels together, so Stoner realizes he's probably working the case pro brono. The last place Cindy Ann was seen was with the controversial neighborhood couple. When Stoner interviews the couple, they tell him that Cratz is just hurt that his girl has run off with a biker. But, there isn't enough conviction in their story to fully satisfy Stoner. Combining this with Cratz's account that the weird couple are actually human sex traffickers peddling young women to Cincinnati's upper-crust thrusts Stoner into the investigation.

I read some online reviews about Valin's writing style and tend to agree with all of them. First and foremost, the guy can write his ass off. Second, his dialogue is convincing – this is how real people talk. So much that Valin even analyzes his own work by mentioning characters in other books fail to possess enough validity. He encourages his readers that his work is the real deal. I like that element and it reminded me of the great horror writer Brian Keene and his real-world presentation of average blue-collar people behaving in ways that genuinely seem valid and real. 

The Lime Pit drags readers through some really dark places within sex trafficking, politics, sports, and the lifestyles of the rich and richer. It's gritty, often disturbing, and very violent. Stoner is the capable protagonist guiding the readers through this seedy underworld. He doesn't necessarily break the law in an attempt to punish the lawbreakers, but he skirts the edges in a captivating way. I found comparisons to Loren Estleman's Amos Walker mysteries, with both detectives stalking their way through blue-collar towns to obtain justice. In fact, the first Amos Walker installment, Motor City Blue, has a similar plot to The Lime Pit, and was published the same year.

If you enjoy a great mystery filled with diverse characters, the The Lime Pit is sure to please. I loved this book and I'm anxious to read more Harry Stoner novels. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Two Truths and a Lie

Sarah Pinkster is a contemporary fantasy and science-fiction author currently living in Baltimore. In 2020, Tor Books released her 34-page creepy novella called “Two Truths and a Lie” that won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards for Best Novelette. It’s available for two-bucks as an ebook. 

Marco and Stella were friends back in high school who lost touch over the years. When Marco’s unpopular older brother Denny dies, Stella resurfaces in Marco’s life to attend the funeral and pay her respects. Stella even offers to help Marco clean out Denny’s house. 

Denny was a hoarder, so going through his house with her old friend isn’t a pleasant task. The upside is that the manual labor of filling trash bags with Denny’s detritus gives Stella and Marco a chance to catch up with one another. 

As the two are cleaning and chatting, Stella asks Marco if he remembers a local children’s TV show from their childhood called “The Uncle Bob Show.“ Marco answers that he does recall the show and that his deceased brother had been in the studio audience for at least one episode decades ago. Their shared vague recollection was that the low-budget kid’s program was a sinister turn on "Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood."

In the heaps of junk in Dennis’ home, they find a VHS tape from "The Uncle Bob Show" and pop it into the VCR. The show’s format is bizarre, and the stories told by Uncle Bob to his youthful audience are unnerving. I’ll let you read the novella yourself to get the gist. This leads to Stella conducting her own investigation into the show’s history from back in the 1980s and things get seriously creepy. 

"Two Truths and a Lie" is a story playing with the vague and largely repressed memories we all have from our childhoods. Pinkster’s writing is solid throughout. The ending didn’t really work for me, but I love the concept enough to recommend the novella without reservations. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Conan - The Hand of Nergal

The Conan paperback published by Lancer in 1967 is a treasure trove of excellent short stories starring Robert E. Howard's brawny hero Conan the Cimmerian. Along with Howard shorts like “Rogues in the House”, “Tower of the Elephant”, and “The God in the Bowl”, the book also features stories outlined or half-completed by Howard and finished by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. One of the second to last stories in Conan is “The Hand of Nergal”. It was originally a fragmented story authored by Howard  in the 1930s. Lin Carter completed the story and titled it. Along with appearances in Conan, “The Hand of Nergal” was also featured in The Conan Chronicles (1989) and Beyond the Gates of Dream (1969). 

What I really enjoy about Conan stories and novels is that the environment and time period is variable. Conan could be a thief, soldier, gladiator, or royalty. In this story, Conan is a mercenary warrior fighting in Turan's civil war. Serving Turan, Conan is thrust into a planned battle to defeat rebellious forces led by a guy named Khan. In the heat of the fight, an army of large, demonic bats swoops down to the battlefield and begin to attack the Turan forces. 

Among the chaos of death and destruction, Conan locks into a fierce battle with one of the bats. Magically, the bat nearly places Conan into a cold-induced coma, but a strange amulet that the hero picked up days before seems to repel the creature. Later, Conan meets a bloody and battered female and they are ushered to the city of Yaralet to assist with killing the rebel leader Khan. 

Through a sorcerer, Conan learns that Khan controls these bat creatures using a precious stone known as Hand of Nergal. Conan and others eventually find Khan's throne room, deep in the bowels of a cave system hidden under the city, and a final battle ensues. There's a touch of cosmic horror and a lot of magic as Conan's forces eventually break Khan's curse and free Turan (I think). 

I really enjoyed this story and found Carter's stroke of science-fiction and fantasy a great blend with the more “on the nose” carnage that Howard's Conan typically creates. The Carter and Howard chemistry worked well, in my opinion, on the Kull stories, and I got that same sense of adventure, dark sorcery, and utter doom here. The balance of brawn and pure strength contending with magic is a recurring theme in Conan literature, and this story is a showcase of that strong storytelling. 

Many Robert E. Howard readers and fans aren't thrilled with the pastiche authors like Carter and de Sprague, but I'm definitely enjoying my voyage through all of these old paperback collections. It is pure escapism and I'm loving it because of stories like “The Hand of Nergal”.

Catspaw Ordeal

Edward S. Aarons struck gold in 1955 with the first of his successful espionage series starring CIA operative Sam Durell. This is considered the second, more prosperous half of Aarons' writing career. The first half consists of roughly 20 crime-fiction and mystery novels authored under his own name and the pseudonym of Edward Ronns. We've slowly consumed Aarons' crime-fiction work here at Paperback Warrior, and continue that trend with a look at the author's 1950 paperback Catspaw Ordeal, published under the name Edward Ronns. It was published by Fawcett Gold Medal at least twice, once in 1950 as #133 and again in 1958 as #766, both with different cover art. It was also published by Phantom in 1954 and Gaywood Press in 1952, both of these with variations of the 1950 Fawcett cover by William Downes.

Danny Archer is a 29-year old former Navy veteran that has settled down in Southwich, Connecticut on the Long Island Sound. Archer is married to a woman named Roz and the two have reached a complacent part of marriage, void of excitement or interest. Archer is not only tied to Roz via marriage, but he also works for her father, a guy named Stanley, who runs a local factory. All of this normal suburbia boredom is shattered when Archer's old flame shows up.

Secretly, Archer has never really gotten over Della Chambers. When she arrives in town, Roz immediately senses that Archer can't resist Della's magnetic pull. When Roz leaves town for a few days, Archer finds himself in a murder investigation. In his own home, Archer finds a dead guy huddled over his office desk. Della is somehow involved, but also a man named Burke Wiley, Archer's old shipmate that supposedly died when their ship was sunk in WW2. Archer believes either Wiley or Della killed the man, but then things become even more complicated when Wiley explains a counterfeiting plot that could make them all super wealthy. 

Obviously, there is a lot going on in this relatively short 170-page paperback. Archer's marriage complications are front and center, but the moving parts begin to tear away part of the protagonist's own sanity. He begins to question his past, and the how his work at the factory is somehow tied into Roz and this seemingly dead-man-from-the-grave, Wiley. But, the core of Aarons' complex plot is a murder mystery. The cops have targeted Archer as the prime suspect, but he can't quite explain where these other characters tie into his personal ordeals at home. It makes for a fascinating, whirlwind of possibilities as Archer walks a balance beam of right and wrong. 

Like most of Aarons' crime-fiction, he uses the same locale and atmosphere. His novels are typically quiet, rural lakeside or oceanfront cottages and houses draped in a thick fog that is symbolic of the criminality slowly descending on the main character or their close friends and family. These locations are nearly always the American Northeast, which makes sense considering Aarons' grew up in Pennsylvania and lived in Connecticut (also the home of Fawcett Gold Medal). While Catspaw Ordeal isn't the best that Aarons' early crime-fiction has to offer (try 1953's The Net for a must-read), it is more than serviceable and a pure pleasure to read. Recommended. Get Edward S. Aarons books HERE.