Port Angelique

Richard Jessup authored over 60 novels over his three decades as a published novelist. His most popular literary contribution is the five-book spy-fiction series Monty Nash and his western novel The Cincinnati Kid, which was adapted to a film starring Steve McQueen. Stark House Press published the author's Night Boat to Paris as a Black Gat Book in 2025, and they followed with this twofer containing two of Jessup's 1961 novels, Wolf Cop and Port Angelique. I reviewed the former already (here), so this review addresses Port Angelique. 

Jessup's Port Angelique is an ambitious effort that features a variety of plots and over a dozen characters that fight for the reader's attention. Unlike Wolf Cop, or many of Jessup's fast-paced plot-propelled narratives, there isn't a main character or protagonist. Instead, this is an ensemble cast of islanders that each have their own life obstacles, challenges, and goals that share in the responsibility of maintaining the island and village.

The character I felt a closeness with is Stanley Fowler, the police commissioner of Port Angelique, a small fictitious Caribbean island in possession of the United States. Fowler's nemesis is a career criminal named Sabo de Chine, an islander that Fowler ran off years ago. However, Sabo has been spotted once again in Port Angelique and rumors abound that he's back with a new gang of criminals Hellbent on retrieving millions that Sabo left behind on his earlier departure. 

I'm convinced Jessup's goal was to make Port Angelique a sweeping epic, yet was bound by Fawcett's limitation on a thinner page count. If Jessup were to attempt the novel 15 years later, I can foresee a brick book swelling at 350+ pages. When Hemingway was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 (The Old Man and the Sea), his contemporary style affected a number of writers. He defined a new, unique place in adventure fiction that focused on the subtle nuances of foreign locales and a careful character study of the inhabitants. 

Jessup's conjuring of Hemingway, albeit with lesser poetic synergy, is a valiant effort to present this exotic culture rich with traditions, rituals, and customs. The author creates a fictional history of an Aztec adventurer named Xochimilco (named after the Aztec canal system) that battled Cortes in the early 1500s. Providing cultural texture to the region, Jessup includes narration on the island's fishing development, laborers, barkeeps, prostitutes, dime-store criminals, drug running, and political strife dominating the region. 

Port Angelique is a challenging narrative with many moving parts. There's a bit of dedication involved in remembering the alliances and characters involved in the crafty development. While it doesn't require a Game of Thrones org chart, you do need to read this in one or two sittings for full effect. As a character study, the novel simply wins. It doesn't pretend to be a high-octane treasure-hunting adventure novel, but part of me was still hopeful it would transition into that for the third act. 

Get the book HERE.

Embrace the Wind

Embrace the Wind is a 1985 paperback by Harry Whittington (1915–1989), published in the United Kingdom under the pseudonym Ashley Carter and in the United States as Blaine Stevens. Both editions were packaged with generic romance-style cover art, even though the novel is actually a historical adventure centered on a covert mission into Spanish-controlled Florida ordered by U.S. President James Monroe in 1817.

The novel opens strongly. Our hero, Jeremiah Locke, rides from his Virginia plantation to the White House to meet with President Monroe. It’s three years after the War of 1812, and General Andrew Jackson is agitating for war against Spain, which still controls Florida as part of its sovereign territory. Monroe distrusts Jackson and sends Locke south to befriend him and uncover his intentions. Is Jackson plotting to seize Florida for himself and declare it his own nation? Whittington presents Monroe’s suspicions as entirely reasonable and ominous.

Let me pause the review here: This first chapter is fantastic. There is not a single other review of Embrace the Wind anywhere that I can find, and it has never been reprinted. Frankly, I’d be shocked if many 1985 reader lured in by the Harlequin knock-off cover made it past Chapter One. There’s virtually no overlap between the audience for dense geopolitical intrigue and the audience for bodice-ripper romance art. Whittington never stood a chance.

Back to the story: Locke accepts Monroe’s assignment in part because of troubles at home. He is accompanied by his clever enslaved servant, Cato, implied to be the mixed-race, unacknowledged son of Thomas Jefferson. Cato is a smart-mouthed, quick-thinking sidekick who often sees situations more clearly than Locke.

It takes Locke an exasperatingly long time to reach Florida, and when he finally arrives, he is immediately pulled into a power struggle on Amelia Island off Florida’s northeast coast. There he meets the beautiful Yolanda, daughter of the Spanish governor. She persuades him to escort her to Pensacola, the second center of Spanish authority in Florida. Together they essentially a horseback journey through the Florida panhandle along what would one day become Interstate 10.

A romance develops between Locke and Yolanda, including sex scenes that are slightly less explicit than those in a typical Longarm western. Along their route, they encounter detachments of Jackson’s troops operating deep inside Spanish territory. Whittington portrays these soldiers as brutal, redneck thugs who must be kept in check by Locke and his party.

The Spanish, by contrast, particularly their governor, are depicted as pragmatic and reasonable. After the British withdrew from Florida in 1815, they abandoned a fort on the Apalachicola River along with an enormous stockpile of weapons and ammunition. The fort quickly became a sanctuary for escaped slaves who, now fully armed, had no intention of returning to bondage in Georgia or elsewhere. Jackson demands that the Spanish dismantle the fort and force the refugees back into slavery. Or Jackson will invade and do it himself, international borders be damned.

From there, Jackson continues his consolidation of personal power into Spanish Pensacola. By the time Locke reaches the American camp, Jackson commands a force of 3,000 men. Whittington paints Jackson as a maniacal racist bent on crushing both Native Americans and escaped slaves with maximum cruelty while driving the Spanish out of Florida altogether.

Locke’s journey to confront Jackson carries shades of Apocalypse Now (1979), with Jackson as a rogue military leader who may have slipped the leash entirely. The scenes in which Locke and Jackson verbally spar are among the best dialogue Whittington ever wrote, and Locke’s undercover maneuvering within Jackson’s ranks provides genuine tension and excitement.

In the end, Embrace the Wind is a sweeping, often gripping, piece of historical fiction that deserved a better chance in the paperback fiction marketplace. The book does drag in places and would have been stronger at 244 pages instead of 344, but I still finished it feeling smarter and thoroughly entertained by this flawed but fascinating lost novel. Get the book HERE or HERE

Wolf Cop

I enjoyed my experience with Richard Jessup's Monty Nash series of hard-hitting spy-fiction novels, a five-book run he published under the pseudonym Richard Telfair for Fawcett Gold Medal. In reading up on Jessup, he had a remarkable literary career that spanned three decades and more than 60 books. The Savannah, Georgia native spent his early years as a merchant seaman before transitioning into a career as a full-time novelist. Jessup wrote across many genres, including western, espionage, action-adventure, young adult, and crime-fiction.

Jessup has gained the attention of Stark House Press recently, with the stellar publishing company reprinting his 1956 novel Night Boat to Paris (Dell) as a Black Gat Book in 2025, and they followed a few months later with a beautiful twofer containing the author's 1961 offerings Wolf Cop and Port Angelique (Fawcett Gold Medal). This review focuses on Wolf Cop.

Unlike most mid-20th-century police procedurals, Jessup places Wolf Cop in an unnamed midwestern town, probably Cleveland, based on places featured in the narrative. The protagonist is Tony Serella, a police sergeant who has recently transitioned from robberies to homicide. This promotion opens up new cases for Serella, but also requires that he complete the remaining 14 robbery cases. It's a lot of work, but Serella prefers it that way. He's a career cop, focused on nothing more than the next case. He's single, void of any social pipelines, and has few aspirations for anything beyond the badge. 

Jessup's narrative is a winding plethora of unrelated cases, propelled by three rigorous crimes that compete for Serella's time. There's a case of three homicides that may feature the same killer, a narcotics bust that may stop an impending bank vault heist, and a large turf showdown of prime-time players that may bathe the city in blood. With the enormous pressure of working these investigations comes a complex judicial hearing regarding Serella's physical confrontation with a young assailant. Serella's emotional defense ties into his relationships with department heads – those supporting his decorated servitude and the bullheaded powerhouses wanting failure. The sprinkling of Serella's relationship with a young woman provides a unique look at a career investment plagued by loneliness.

While I haven't read many of Jessup's novels, I can't imagine any of his novels dethroning Wolf Cop as his best work. This is a powerhouse police procedural that presents so many facets of the job, some that are somewhat ignored by other notable authors dedicated to the procedural craft. The transition from departments is an elementary yet pivotal plot device that thrives under Jessup's clever imagination. With these cases comes an ensemble cast of pushers, users, tramps, and nefarious wiseguys all looking for deals to either bypass the law or simply upend it. Through these tense scenes, the bullets start to fly, elevating the narrative's most dramatic moments into a frenzy of violence. 

Wolf Cop is a stirring police novel that easily competes with the best of the business, Ed McBain's 87th Precinct and Frank E. Smith's Pete Selby. Highest possible recommendation. Get it HERE.