Barry Ergang's FFB Review: Fast One by Paul Cain

From the massive archive…

 

I can enthusiastically recommend Fast One to any reader who loves the hardboiled school—especially from the pulp era—but don’t ask me for a detailed plot summary. That’s next to impossible. Suffice it to say that a tough character named Gerry Kells, who is visiting L.A. from New York and who seems to know every major racket boss in southern California, is in the first chapter framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and who spends the remainder of the book either dodging or deliberately confronting cops and hoods with words, fists, and firearms. Along the way he considers trying to take over L.A.‘s rackets himself.

 

It’s an aptly titled book because the story roars along at a hectic pace. The pace is aided in no small measure by Cain's staccato prose style, which almost redefines “lean and mean.” But the pace and the story’s complexity are the book’s undoing because there is no characterization for readers to relate to. Most of the players—including the principal female—are referred to only by their last names. The absence of character definition reduces them to mere names on the page. It’s frequently an effort trying to recall from one chapter to another who's who and who's done what to whom.

 

Fast One has long been hailed as the ne plus ultra of hardboiled gangster tales by the likes of Bill Pronzini, E.R. Hagemann, and Raymond Chandler. David A. Bowman, in his introductory essay to the 1987 Black Lizard edition I have, writes: “Cain took the hardboiled style as far as anyone would want to. Fast One is the Antarctica of hardboiled writing. There is nowhere else to go.”

 

Forget about any insights into the human condition or any other sorts of profound meanings. Just buckle up and go along on the wild ride.

 

For more on this novel or the Golden Age of Detection follow the link to the GA Detection wiki. http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Fast-One

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4aX3gnK

 

Barry Ergang © 2007, 2014, 2024

Some of Derringer Award winner Barry Ergang’s work can be found at Amazon and Smashwords.

Barry Ergang's FFB Review: THE JUGGER (1965) by Richard Stark

 

The late Donald E. Westlake was a versatile writer whose output ranged over a number of fields. But it is crime fiction for which he is most famous, for which he was deservedly acknowledged by the Mystery Writers of America as a Grand Master, and in which he wrote under his own name and under a variety of pseudonyms. Under his own name he will always be remembered as one of the greatest exponents of the comic crime novel with titles that include The Hot Rock, God Save the Mark, I Gave at the Office, What's the Worst That Could Happen?, and Two Much.

 

As Richard Stark, probably his best-known pseudonym, he produced a very successful series of ultra-hardboiled novels, several of which were filmed—see The Thrilling Detective website for more information. The books starred Parker, a professional thief: "Once or twice a year, Parker was in on an institutional robbery...It wasn't out of humanity that he limited himself to organizations, it was just that organizations had more money than individuals....

 

"Parker wasn't a single-o. He always worked with a pickup group gathered for that single specific job. Every man was a specialist, and Parker's specialties were two; planning and violence. Other men were specialists in opening safes or scaling walls or making up blueprints from nothing more than observation, but Parker was a specialist at planning an operation so it run smoothly, and at stopping any outsider who might be thinking of lousing things up."

 

The premise of The Jugger, the sixth book in a series which does not necessarily have to be read in order, is fairly simple. Joe Sheer is a jugger, a safecracker, living in the small town of Sagamore, Nebraska under the name Joseph Shardin. Now retired, he sometimes acts as an intermediary between Parker and others in his particular line of work. He writes to Parker who, when not pulling heists, lives in Miami under the name Charles Willis, an identity he has painstakingly constructed over a period of years. Sheer's first letter indicates that he's in some kind of trouble, that he'll handle it, but that Parker shouldn't try to contact him until the matter is settled. A month later a second letter arrives, this one asking for Parker's help. Parker packs a bag and, as Charles Willis, goes to Sagamore. He does so not out of loyalty or friendship toward Sheer—there is nothing noble about him; he does so for the sake of self-preservation. "Joe Sheer could crucify Parker, he could nail him to the wall with a hundred nails...He knew him by his old face...He knew Parker's cover name, he knew twenty or twenty-five jobs Parker had been connected with, he knew enough about Parker to skin him alive."

 

Simple premise, right? All Parker has to do is find out what kind of jam Sheer is in and either help him out of it or kill him to protect himself. But not long after he arrives in Sagamore, things quickly become complicated. Sheer is dead, but nobody will level with Parker about how he died. A man named Tiftus, who "claimed to be a lock man" whom "Parker had never worked with...because he was too unreliable" shows up at Parker's hotel room, wanting to partner to find something valuable he's certain Sheer had hidden somewhere.

 

Parker goes to Sheer's house to look around for himself and is knocked unconscious by someone wearing a burlap bag for a mask. Not long afterward, Tiftus is found dead—in Parker's hotel room. Now Parker must deal with the corrupt Captain Younger, local head of the police department, and the honest, earnest state police investigator Regan—while trying to tie up loose ends, absolve himself of a connection to Tiftus's murder, find the actual killer, and ditch an unwanted new associate. 

 

 

To say anything more would be to spoil the excitement in this taut short novel. The Jugger is as hardboiled as anything Mickey Spillane ever wrote, but without the posturing. Parker is cold, efficient, and ruthless, the complete anti-hero. He lets nothing and no one stand in his way when he's trying to accomplish something. Even readers who think they're inured to fictional criminal activities might be surprised by  some of Parker's. Although he's repellent to anyone with moral sensibilities, he's so intriguing that readers who go for noir fiction will want to follow his adventures, a testament to Westlake's authorial skill.

 

As the quoted passages demonstrate, the author doesn't waste words, doesn't indulge in the kind of verbal pyrotechnics that can dilute and obstruct a narrative. Thus, the story's relentless pace infuses it with a raw power. The no-nonsense style reflects Parker's no-nonsense approach. A further testament to the author's skill is his ability to portray breathing, individualized characters—this despite the fact that the reader is given background information only about Parker and Captain Younger.

 

The Jugger will not appeal to readers who only like stories about heroes with noble codes of honor and conduct, nor will it appeal to readers who dislike onstage violence. Fans of rapid-fire hardboiled fiction will greatly enjoy and possibly even love it. To them I highly recommend it.

 

 

Barry Ergang ©2012, 2023

 

Derringer Award winner Barry Ergang’s own fiction can be found at Amazon and Smashwords.

Barry Ergang's FFB Review: BANK SHOT (1972) by Donald E. Westlake

From the massively magnificent archive… 

“A man had to stay alive somehow while waiting for a big score to develop, and there was nothing better for that than an encyclopedia con. In the spring and fall, that is; winter was too cold for house-to-house work and summer was too hot. But given the right time of year, the old encyclopedia scam was unbeatable.”

 

Or so the hapless Dortmunder thinks until, after his prospect leaves the room, he hears 9-1-1 being dialed followed by sirens, and makes a fast exit from her home. 

One of his criminous colleagues, Kelp, has a score in view: “I swear and I have the goods. This time I have a guaranteed winner.” Although Dortmunder is skeptical, Kelp persuades him to listen to the proposed caper, a bank robbery his nephew Victor has concocted. Victor was formerly with the FBI, which fact instantly puts Dortmunder on his guard. 

The target is the temporary headquarters—a converted mobile home/trailer—across the street from the original building of Capitalists & Immigrants Trusts. The old building is being torn down and rebuilt. The plan is to steal the bank. No, not just the money within—a standard robbery effort would be far too risky—but instead to steal the trailer, transport it to a remote location that would give the robbers time to loot the safe, and then depart unseen. 

Besides the aforementioned Kelp and Victor, Dortmunder’s crew consists of his chain-smoking girlfriend May, a lockman (safecracker) who goes by the name Herman X, driver Stan Murch, and Murch’s mother, who has been resentfully wearing, when necessary, a neck brace to scam an insurance policy. 

Bank Shot recounts a Dortmunder caper, folks, so you know things won’t go smoothly. Its author being Donald Westlake, you’ll likely anticipate a lot of laughs, as I did. Unfortunately, they weren’t forthcoming. The book is entertaining, to be sure, but unlike some of the other Dortmunder titles I’ve read, I found this one sorely lacking in chuckle- or guffaw-out-loud moments. In fact, it wasn’t until about three-quarters of the way through or so that I came upon moments that had me smiling even a little. Consequently, although I can recommend it as a fast, pleasant read, it’s a disappointment in terms of the wonderful wackiness found in other Dortmunder and standalone comic novels by mystery Grand Master Westlake.

 

 

Barry Ergang ©2019, 2023 

Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in eBook formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com

Barry Ergang's FFB Review: A CHAIN OF EVIDENCE (1912) by Carolyn Wells

 

From the massively magnificent archive…

Attorney Otis Landon and his widowed sister, Mrs. Laura Mulford, live together in the Hammersleigh, “one of the most attractive of the moderate-priced apartment houses in New York City.” At thirty-two, Otis expects never to marry, although, as he tells his sister, “I rather fancy that if I ever fall in love, it will be at first sight, and very desperately.”

Conveniently both for Otis and the plot, he does. The object of his affection is one Janet Pembroke, who lives in an apartment across the hall with her wealthy but miserly, temperamental, and somewhat reclusive great-uncle, Robert Pembroke. Although they’ve only lived in the Hammersleigh for two weeks, Otis and his sister have both heard Pembroke’s “voice raised in tones of vituperation and abuse.”

Not long after, Robert Pembroke is found dead. Otis and Laura Mulford are drawn into what turns out to be a case of murder, Pembroke slain by what is described as a woman’s method. When the crime was committed, the door to the apartment was locked, the windows were fastened tight, and a night-chain was in place, which suggests that only one or both of two others within it, Janet Pembroke and her maid, Charlotte, could have done the deed. Fully smitten, Otis is ready to do whatever it takes to protect the woman he (irrationally?) loves.

Thus begins the essence of a mystery novel by an author seminal to the genre who predates “the Golden Age.” It is a novel that demands of modern readers patience, tolerance and, above all, a sense of humor.

Patience is essential for several reasons. The author’s narrative style is that of an older, more formal era, and will likely seem stilted and verbose to a modern audience. The dialogue is equally stilted. I sincerely doubt Americans in the early 20th Century spoke the way Carolyn Wells’ middle- and upper-class characters do. Jane Austen’s English characters from the early 19th Century spoke less “literarily.” For example, consider this exchange between Laura Mulford and Otis Landon regarding whether Janet Pembroke merits her uncle’s berating:—

                        “Yes, but how do I know what she may do to deserve it? Those dark eyes show a smouldering fire that seems to me quite capable of breaking into flame. I rather fancy Miss Pembroke can hold her own against any verbal onslaught of her uncle.”

                        “Then I’m glad she can,” I declared; “as she has to stand such unjust tyranny, I hope she has sufficient self-assertion to resent it. I’d rather like to see that girl in a towering rage; she must look stunning!”

The book could be shorter by a third to a half if Otis Landon’s first-person narrative didn’t contain multiple repetitions of the facts of the case and, especially, incessant lengthy passages in which he moons about the enigmatic and volatile Janet Pembroke, his love for her, his anxieties about her possible love for other men in the story, and angst about her possible guilt.

Tolerance is essential because of snobbishly demeaning, disparaging and racist attitudes toward “menials”—e.g., an elevator operator whose language suggests a substandard education, and Charlotte, the African-American maid, with her stereotyped dialect. Here’s Charlotte talking about forgetting to remove the night-chain before opening the apartment door:—

                        “Laws!” exclaimed what was unmistakably a negro (sic) girl’s voice, “I nebber can ’member dat chain!”

A sense of humor is essential—make that vital—when reading this novel. Thoroughly non-existent is police procedure as we’ve come to know it nowadays. Landon and others are given license to explore and tramp all over the crime scene as they see fit. A prominent lawyer, very much a suspect, who represented Robert Pembroke and who visited him the day before his death, is presently out of town on business. Rather than locate and bring him in for immediate questioning, the police and D.A. decide to delay official proceedings until his return. Otis Landon fancies himself possessed of a detective’s instincts, and manages to find physical clues and talk to people connected to the victim who might have reasons for wanting him dead while the police do almost nothing investigative. But despite his efforts, he can’t resolve the locked-apartment puzzle, so he ultimately consults Carolyn Wells’ incarnation of the Great Detective, Fleming Stone. A Chain of Evidence contains twenty-four chapters. Fleming Stone doesn’t appear until the twenty-first (or, according to my Kindle, until eighty percent of the novel was behind me). As soon as Landon explains the circumstances of the case to Stone, the latter announces that he knows who the murderer is. In order to solve the locked-room problem, however, he must visit the apartment. Once he does, it takes him no time at all to figure out the answer to that riddle.

The fact that the solution is a complete cheat is apparently inconsequential to the author. Much earlier in the story the reader is given several crucial details concerning the impossibility of entrance to the apartment with the night-chain in place. What is revealed in Stone’s explanation contradicts much of it and points up something the reader should have been told but wasn’t, thus underscoring that the reader has been unfairly duped.

Except to mystery historians and purists, I must conclude that A Chain of Evidence is nothing more than a (vaguely) entertaining curio.

For more information about Carolyn Wells, see mystery connoisseur and analyst Michael E. Grost’s A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection: http://mikegrost.com/classics.htm.  For more on Fleming Stone, see The Thrilling Detective website: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/fleming_stone.html.

 

Barry Ergang ©2016, 2023

Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in eBook formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com

Barry Ergang's FFB Review: BLUE CHIPPER (1993) by Geoffrey Norman

 

From the magnificently massive archive…

 

A good student as well as a spectacular basketball player, William Coleman is, in the words of sheriff's lieutenant Tom Pine to his friend Morgan Hunt, "a blue chipper" as far as college recruiters are concerned. When Hunt asks what he means, Pine says, "A solid bet. He's the kind of kid who, if you get him, won't steal cars, burn the library down, or flunk out of school. And if you give him four other players who aren't just warm bodies, then he'll win you a championship."

 

Morgan Hunt, a man with a past that includes prison time for killing a man, for which he received a governor's pardon obtained by attorney Nat Semmes, now works as a private investigator, usually on behalf of Semmes. As it turns out, Semmes has done some work for William Coleman's mother: getting probation for William's brother Jackson, a man with a history of trouble whom Semmes is certain is "doomed" and likely to end up in prison.  

 

It's not long before his prediction comes true. Jackson is jailed for the murder of another man in a drug deal gone haywire. The day after, as Hunt learns when Tom Pine takes him to meet William's and Jackson's mother, a man showed up at her door claiming to be a friend of Jackson's. He told her that he could get the prosecutor to charge Jackson with manslaughter or possibly even self-defense instead of first-degree murder, which could land him in the electric chair, if William would agree to play basketball for the state university.

 

It's not long after Hunt goes looking for the man that murder occurs and that his own life and the life of Jessie Beaudreaux, the woman he's involved with, are imperiled. While trying to track down the person who is behind the scheme, he encounters a radio sports reporter, a successful coach, hired thugs, some wealthy "boosters," and learns how extensive, extreme, callous and cutthroat boosterism can be.

 

Morgan Hunt's first-person narrative shows him to be an intelligent, sensitive, and literate man who is nevertheless street-savvy, street-crude, and tough when he has to be. Author Geoffrey Norman has an excellent sense of pace and character, and his prose sparkles with vivid descriptions and colorful turns of phrase. Several blurbs on the paperback edition I read imply comparisons between Morgan Hunt and John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee. Although I think Hunt is very much his own man and needn't be compared to anyone, if I had to choose someone he's reminiscent of, it would be James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux more than McGee.

 

Not for readers who dislike raw language or onstage violence, Blue Chipper is recommended to fans of top-shelf hardboiled detective fiction. 

 

Barry Ergang ©2012, 2023

Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in eBook formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com

Barry Ergang's FFB Review: DEATH KNELL (1945) by Baynard Kendrick

 

From the magnificently massive archive…

 

Successful novelist and gun collector Larmar Jordan lives in a lavish fourteenth floor Arday Apartments suite with his wife Lucia, his live-in secretary Paul Hirst, a cocker spaniel named Winnie, and domestic servants. In attendance at a cocktail party in the suite are Larmar’s literary agent Sarah Hanley, newspaper reporter Bob Morse, and Sybella Ford, accompanied by her fiancée Captain Duncan Maclain.

 

Having attained his rank twenty years earlier during World War I while an intelligence officer, and blinded during that conflict, Maclain overcame his handicap—and benefited from it by heightening his other senses—to take on the unlikely profession, along with partner Spud Savage, of private investigator.

 

When Troy Singleton, a woman with whom Jordan has been intimately involved, is shot to death in the author’s study with one of the firearms from his esoteric collection, Jordan is the immediate and arrested suspect. Although New York Homicide detectives Inspector Davis and Sergeant Archer, with whom Maclain has contended before, consider it an open-and-shut case, not least because of a neighboring witness, Mrs. Oliver, Maclain agrees to undertake Lucia’s investigation of her husband’s predicament. What he unearths reveals a great deal more than the police have suspected.

 

In addition to some of the aforementioned people, Maclain has to deal with as sources of information and/or as suspects Ellis Brown Mitchell, firearms expert who is cataloguing Jordan’s collection; Jess Ferguson, Jordan’s attorney; a menacing and motivated individual named Martin Gallagher; and very successful aircraft manufacturer Daniel Pine.

 

A generally well-written detective story with a good sense of character, Death Knell has occasional arguable stylistic lapses wherein descriptions of Maclain’s abilities are reminiscent of descriptions of pulp “super” heroes like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and others of that ilk. The novel combines the qualities of the traditional whodunit with some of the action and suspense of the hardboiled school.

 

Those old enough to remember the short-lived TV series Longstreet might recall its blind insurance investigator portrayed by James Franciscus. Mike Longstreet wasn’t Duncan Maclain, but the program—and thus his character—was credited to Kendrick as creator. In 1938 and the early1940s, there were several movies starring the miscast Edward Arnold (miscast physically, that is, based upon descriptions in the books) as Maclain, among them “Eyes in the Night” which, as of this writing, is available at YouTube.

 

Although my teenage reading about mystery series informed me of the Duncan Maclain novels, it wasn’t until paperback editions were reissued following the advent of the Longstreet program in 1971 that I actually got to read several of them. It is a worthwhile series of detective novels which merits resurrection for 21st Century readers. 

 

 

Barry Ergang ©2018, 2023 

Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in eBook formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com

Barry Ergang's FFB Review: TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1947) by Roy Huggins

From the massive archive….

TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1947) by Roy Huggins

 

 

Although best known as a television writer and producer responsible for such hit programs as “Maverick,” “77 Sunset Strip,” “Cheyenne,” “The Fugitive” and “The Rockford Files,“ among many others, Roy Huggins started out by writing novels. His first, The Double Take, is a Chandleresque hardboiled private eye tale. Under consideration here is his second, Too Late for Tears, a psychological crime/suspense novel very much in the noir vein. 

 

Call it what you will¾destiny, chance, serendipity, or accident¾noir fiction seems to have its share. It's certainly the case in Too Late for Tears. Jane Palmer, formerly Blanchard, nee Petry, is a study in discontent, a woman driven by a longing for the dubious kind of respectability that is predicated on money alone and the opulent lifestyle it affords one. When the story opens, she's brooding over what she deems a mundane, middle-class lifestyle and yet another vacuous visit to some of her husband Alan's friends. She tells him to turn the top-down Buick convertible around and drive back to their apartment in Hollywood. He complies reluctantly, wanting to discuss matters, but discussion quickly turns to argument. Alan begins driving wildly until another car, headed toward them, appears suddenly, requiring him to pull over to the side of the road. “The car was big and dark and it hurtled by and the Buick rocked with the impact of the wind¾and something else. Jane saw it. She had thought it a shadow. But she had felt the jar behind her.”

 

What they find in the back seat of the car is a leather traveling bag full of money¾a great deal of it. When they hear another car approaching, they realize instinctively that it’s the one for which the money was intended. They drive off and, after a chase, eventually elude their pursuer.

 

Jane is ecstatic at the transformational prospect of having all this money, but Alan is worried that it might be stolen and that he and his career in banking would be ruined if it were discovered that he possesses it. He wants to turn it into the police, but Jane badgers him about keeping it. He finally compromises by checking the bag at Union Station so they can watch the news for reports of stolen money before deciding what to ultimately do with it.

 

While Alan is at work one day, a man named Danny Fuller shows up at the Chateau Michel, flashing a badge at Jane and wanting to look around her apartment. It soon becomes apparent that he's not a cop but rather the man for whom the money was intended, and he plans to collect it. Jane knows how to work her wiles on men, and eventually persuades Fuller to share the loot with her¾and to help her commit murder.

 

Do things go off as planned? This is noir fiction, remember, so some things do and others don't, to the reader's surprise and delight, if not to all of the characters'. Jane finds herself having to contend with Alan's sister Kathy, who lives in an apartment across the hall from hers, and with a man named Don Blake¾another of noir's "chancy" conveniences¾who appears rather abruptly and manages to ingratiate himself with Kathy but not as well with Jane. He maintains that he's an old friend of Alan's, a fellow pilot who was stationed with Alan in England during the war.

 

I found Too Late for Tears to be an absorbing and frequently suspenseful read, if not always lacking in uneven, opportune, and stilted moments. Some of the dialogue, although accurate in its description, doesn't come off as terribly realistic¾e.g.: "When you're up against Jane, you're faced with all the precision efficiency and built-in contempt of a slot-machine." The novel contains some narrative passages that are sheer schmaltzy melodrama and others that unduly attempt to be perceived as "literary." If you don't take them seriously, you'll have a fun ride.

 

 Barry Ergang © 2014 

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/