A Double Dosage of Dan J. Marlowe

Dan J. Marlowe.  The name alone brings an echo of the hardboiled—

“I’ll be leaving one of these days, and the day I do they’ll never forget it.” 

He wrote in the heyday of the paperback original.  His best work was published by Gold Medal, and his novels stand above most of his contemporaries as hard, uncompromising masterpieces of hardboiled crime and suspense. 

His life was as strange as his fiction: he is likely the plainest womanizer exported by Massachusetts; he gambled professionally for several years; he befriended, lived with, and co-wrote several short stories with the notorious bank robber Al Nussbaum; and late in life he developed memory loss and something called aphasia—“partial or total inability to write and understand words.”     

And all that is only the beginning.  Not to mention it was parroted from the introduction, written by Marlowe’s biographer Charles Kelly, to the new trade paperback double published by Stark House Press.  It features two of Marlowe’s best novels, which really, are two halves a single story: The Name of the Game is Death (Gold Medal 1962), and One Endless Hour (Gold Medal 1969). 

The novels tell the genesis story of Marlowe’s Earl Drake series character.  Drake is not a likable man.  He is a bank robber with a predilection for killing people.  He doesn’t kill simply to kill, but kill he does.  The Name of the Game is Death opens at the scene of a botched bank robbery with Drake shot in the escape.  He and his partner split up, and Drake finds a doctor and a dark place to hide until he is recuperated and the heat is off, which is when the story really begins.  His partner went missing with the money, and Drake is broke.  The rest of Name of the Game is Drake’s search for his partner, and the money, and One Endless Hour is the fallout.

The two novels merge into one complete and engrossing story, which is not to say either is dependent on the other; both are complete with beginning, middle, and end.  However the plot in One Endless Hour is built directly from Name of the Game.  In fact, the final chapter of Name of the Game is included, with a few adjustments as the Prologue to One Endless Hour.  

Name of the Game is the stronger of the two novels.  It includes an exposition of Drake’s childhood, explaining (without apologizing) for Drake’s seeming amoral character.  Its backstory emphasis and character development is reminiscent of John D. MacDonald, but only just.  Its prose is raw and hardboiled—

“I swear both his feet were off the ground when he fired at me.  The odds must have been sixty thousand to one, but he took me in the left upper arm.  It smashed me back against the car.  I steadied myself with a hand on the roof and put two a yard behind each other right through his belt buckle.  If they had their windows open they could have heard him across town.”

—and it is more thematically related to Jim Thompson than John D.

One Endless Hour is more of a straight caper novel.  It lacks Name of the Game’s character development, and backstory, but it flashes pure action.  And, if you consider the two novels as one story, it is the climactic resolution.  The differences in pacing and plotting act to strengthen the two novels’ impact rather than diminish it, and the new Stark House edition is the perfect way to experience the story arc.  

OPERATION NIGHTFALL by John Miles (Jack M. Bickham) & Tom Morris

Berkley Medallion Edition

Operation Nightfall is the final of four suspense novels Jack Bickham wrote for Bobbs-Merrill’s Black Bat Mystery imprint.  It was published as by John Miles with a coauthor named Tom Morris.  I’m not familiar with Mr Morris, and to my knowledge this is Bickham’s only coauthored novel.  It was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1975, and reissued as a mass market in April 1976 by Berkley Medallion (K3087).

Operation Nightfall is a caper novel.  It features six men—three pilots and three crew—who plan a high jacking of Atlanta International Airport.  Not an airplane departing AIA, but the entire airport.  The novel opens as a minor scam ends, and while the getaway is flawless Tom Keel is less than satisfied with the take.  It netted only a few thousand, and he wants a big score.  The kind of haul that will allow him to disappear, which is how he gets from small time crook to big time criminal.

The novel is developed in three acts, and it is executed so concisely it could easily, and should be, translated as a screenplay.  The first act is measured in days, and it slowly develops the scene, setting, and characters.  Each is introduced, with an emphasis on the three pilots, and the audience is ushered quickly to the point where the protagonists, pushed by Keel’s sense of alienation and inequity, encounter the catalyst of story—the team will either be successful in its attempt to highjack the airport, or it will fail.

The final two acts are measured in minutes beginning with the team’s arrival at AIA.  The meat of the action is in these final two acts, which makes up slightly less than 2/3^rds of the novel.  The original question—succeed or fail—is in doubt throughout the climax.  And, while the structure of the novel is simple and straight forward, it doesn’t harm the story a bit.  In fact it is the purity of the plot and the targeted character development, particularly motive, which elevates Operation Nightfall from the generic to the excellent.

Although everything else works, too.  The prose is simple and sparse, which lends credibility to a plot on the outside edge of believability.  The dialogue is concise and surprisingly believable.  The characters interact with each other with a believable ease; the underlying distrust, fear, and anger shimmers with each word, but so does the reliance of each on the other.  The flying sequences tingle with a sense of reality:

“Easing over on the yoke and rudder, he cleared the tower on yet another pass and hurled the Cherokee east and then southeast.  He could see Keel out in front of him, turning over the far runway.  A little close.  Abercrombie touched the power, easing off perhaps 50 rpm; no time to look at gauges; it had to be all feel.” 

Operation Nightfall is the real deal.  It is a tightly spun suspense novel, which is entertaining and thrilling all at once.  It is an example of Jack Bickham’s best work, and it is a shame it, and much of Bickham’s other work, never obtained a larger audience.  And if there are any filmmakers in the ether, it would make a terrific film. 

A listing of Jack Bickham's Black Bat titles are here.

MIDNIGHT NEVER COMES by Jack Higgins

This is the fifth part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled “Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story”.  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first four segments of the essay here and here and here and here to put this post in context.

Midnight Never Comes made its debut in 1966.  It was published by John Long in the United Kingdom, and it was a 1974 paperback original published by Fawcett Gold Medal (M3190) in the United States in a pre The Eagle Has Landed edition.  It has been one of the more difficult Paul Chavasse titles to find in the U. S., and large segments of the novel were used, word for word, in Higgins’ On Dangerous Ground published in 1995.  I wrote more about this here.  It, however, has since been republished as an ebook and in trade paperback by Open Road Integrated Media.

Paul Chavasse is a shadow of the man he was before he was stabbed and nearly killed in Albania.  He is weak, tired, and prone to error.  The novel opens with Chavasse running a training course.  He is stalked by one of the Bureau’s top agents, and it goes less than well.  The opening paragraph acts, as opening paragraphs should, as a thematic harbinger.

“The moment he pushed open the door and paused on the edge of darkness, Chavasse knew that he had made a bad mistake.  Somewhere deep inside, a primitive instinct, that slightly mystical element common to all ancient races and inherited from his Breton ancestors, combined with the experience that came from ten hard years of working for the Bureau touched him coldly, sending a wave of greyness moving through him.”

It touches on Chavasse’s history, his Breton roots, his present—his broken psyche—and the mysticism ties his past and present to the future.  It is a brilliantly constructed opening paragraph.  It foreshadows the entire story in 70 words, which does not mean the novel is a serious study of mysticism, human frailty, or anything else of the kind, because it’s not.  Rather it is a straight up, straight forward, linearly plotted mid-1960s suspense novel.  It is entirely plot driven.  It is adventure in its purest form:  the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everything else exits to serve the story.

Midnight Never Comes is really two novels masquerading as one.  The first several chapters deal in the rehabilitation of Chavasse from broken super hero, with the help of an obese Chinese master of ch’i—a martial art that focuses on the mental and spiritual power over the physical power—named Yuan Tao.  The novel then shifts gears when Chavasse is approached by The Bureau and offered a mission to the Hebrides Coast of Scotland where a Soviet scheme to steal a newly developed British missile is unfolding with alarming speed.

 

The setting is reminiscent of Alistair MacLean’s When Eight Bells Toll.  The main action of the novel is on the Western coast of Scotland.  It is harsh, and gray with a very sparse population.  The climax of the novel shifts to a fictitious island in the Outer Hebrides called Fhada, which interestingly, means island in Gaelic.

Midnight Never Comes is a cool little thriller.  Chavasse is, as usual, smooth, competent and tough as nails.  The bad guys are exactly what the thriller gods meant them to be—hard, destructive, remorseless, and single minded in their mission.  The setting is stark and exotic.  And there is just enough humor laced throughout to keep the outlandish plot firmly in cheek.  The best moment is when a street tough albino, who is pretty good with his heavy boots, makes an appearance in the opening chapters.

"The Plunge" by David Goodis

I recently read Dark Passage by David Goodis and really enjoyed it.  It is a novel where everything works.  It is plot controlled, but the characters are given just enough room to be interesting, and the atmosphere vibrates between something close to despair and almost, but not quite, hope.  When I finished I had the sharp desire to flip back to page one and start again.  Instead I dug out a David Goodis’ short story I read a few years ago titled “The Plunge” and reread it.  It was better this time than the last, and rather than satisfy my urge to reread Dark Passage, it made the itch more demanding.   

The following review originally appeared in 2009, and be warned it is a spoiler.

David Goodis is a writer that every hardboiled reader should know.  His work is dark—about as dark as you will ever read—heavy and literate.  It is often difficult to differentiate between the good and the bad, and the tales are drenched with a self-loathing that gives the stories a deep and sinister glimpse into the darkness of the human condition.

His short story “The Plunge” is one of his best, and a perfect example of what Goodis did well—create men who are, for the most part, good and then twist their world just enough to push them out of bounds into waiting darkness.

Roy Childers is a clean cop in a corrupt department.  He has risen through the ranks quickly; he is a homicide lieutenant with a bright future.  He has four children and another on the way.  His wife loves him and he seemingly loves his wife, but that isn’t enough for Roy.  He doesn’t consciously understand that he wants more, but he does.

His world begins its slow descent when a warehouse is taken down for $15,000.  The robber killed one security guard and blinded the other. It is a trademark Dice Nolan score.  Dice is a man whom Childers has a special connection; they grew up on the same street and Roy has put him behind bars more than once.  Now Childers wants to take Nolan down one last time, but he isn’t ready for what happens.  Nolan has something Roy wants and it will be his undoing.

“The Plunge” is a brutal story.  It chronicles the unwinding of a man.  A man who seemingly has everything.  A man who is better than his end.  And a man who should know better. It is literate and the prose is pitch-perfect:

“Seven out of ten are slobs; he was thinking.  There was no malice or disdain in the thought.  It was more a mixture of pity and regret.  And that made it somewhat sickening, for he was referring specifically to the other men who wore badges, he fellow-policemen.  More specifically he was thinking of the nine plainclothesmen attached to the Vice Squad.  Only yesterday they’d been caught with their palms out, hauled in before the Commissioner, and called all sorts of names before they were suspended.”

The story opens in normal enough fashion.  The protagonist is a cop who wants to find a murderer.  There is even something special and personal about this particular criminal, but Mr Goodis takes the premise and smudges it with his own recipe.  He marks it with weakness and greed.  He takes a good and strong man and chops him down with life, fear, and hunger.

The best part is, he does it all without ever losing his grip on the story or its impact on the reader.  He makes it interesting and entertaining from beginning to end.  He builds a path into darkness and then shows the reader the way out—a cleansing, but a rather messy and permanent one.

“The Plunge” originally appeared in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine October 1958. I read it in A Century of Noir edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins.

An Interesting BBC Interview with Jack Higgins

I found a television interview aired on BBC in 2010 for the publication of The Judas Gate.  It runs nearly six minutes and it is really an interesting short piece.  It touches on his early years in Belfast, his love of writing (he describes it as a compulsion), and he said, regarding books and his writing, “books are everything.”

He named The Great Gatsby as one of the books that influenced him the most as writer: “The sheer grace of the writing, absolutely.  The wit of it.  The use of words. The haunting descriptions.” 

The video is here.

Good News for Ed Gorman Readers

I have good news for fans of Ed Gorman and his series character Dev Conrad.  Severn House has scheduled the release of the fourth novel in the Dev Conrad series.  It is titled Flashpoint, and the release date is August 1, 2013.  The cover art looks great and the description at Amazon is even better:

“Political Consultant Devlin Conrad had the feeling that his very married client Senator Robert Logan was a lot more involved with the beautiful and mysterious Tracy Cabot than he wanted to admit. But he learned too late that the Cabot woman was a spy working for a shadowy right-wing organization – too late because by then she'd been found murdered in Senator Logan’s fishing cabin, and the police are certain that he killed her. But Conrad finds numerous suspects in the Senator's mansion and in the somewhat comic but dangerous figure of political saboteur Howie Ruskin. He must find the real killer if he is to win the election for a client whose vanity and arrogance make him right at home in the United States Senate.”

The Conrad novels are really quite good, and each of the first three is better than its predecessor.  And judging by the description of Flashpoint I suspect this trend will continue.  The first three titles are: Sleeping Dogs, Stranglehold, and Blindside.

I reviewed Sleeping Dogs in 2008 here, and Stranglehold more recently here.  

"Revenge is Bitter-Sweet" by H. A. DeRosso

I have been collecting and reading the old "Alfred Hitchcock's" anthologies published in the 1960s and 1970s for years.  When I see one in a used bookstore or thriftshop I snap it up so quickly I developed carpal tunnel, but wow is it worth it.  These old anthologies are loaded with top-notch stories from the best author's of the early paperback pulp era.  I read my first Robert Colby, Dan J. Marlowe, and, at worst, a few dozen more terrific writers in the pages of these anthologies.  I also read "Revenge is Bitter-Sweet" by one of my favorite unheralded writers, H. A. DeRosso, a few years ago in Alfred Hitchcock's Death Bag.  The following review went live at my blog Dark City Underground August 21, 2010, and I still really like the story.  

H. A. DeRosso is best known for his dark Westerns.  His better work is unusual—it tends toward dark, but it has vibrant and visceral settings and descriptions.  His protagonists tend to be indecisive and lost. His work is frequently, and correctly, compared with Cornell Woolrich’s bleak and violent noir.

His Westerns are amazing.  They were original in an era when the genre was cluttered with stereotypes and cheese, but he was also an accomplished writer of pulp crime.  His crime stories vary from readable to damn good; an example of the later is his 1960 story “The Hired Man”.  I recently found a crime story he wrote in the collection Alfred Hitchcock’s Death Bag.  It is titled “Revenge is Bitter-Sweet” and, while it isn’t as nearly as good as “The Hired Man,” it is an entertaining and well developed story.

Will Owen is bitter and angry.  Another man caused his father’s death and the woman he loves is lost to him.  The story opens with a late night appointment in the woods.  Will is anxious, but it’s not from pleasant expectation.  He is anxious because he is he is going to get some long awaited revenge for his father’s death.

“Revenge is Bitter-Sweet” is a twisty story with a surprise ending—it opens rushing down one avenue and quickly turns down another. The climax, and the twist, is planted early in the story.  The author didn’t cheat.  Unfortunately it was also quite easy to guess the surprise before it was revealed.  A situation that would destroy most stories, but it didn’t matter much with this one. It was the journey and the writing that made it work.

The protagonist is a believable character that displays emotions relevant to us all—sorrow, anger and guilt in shifting shades.  The setting is brilliantly conceived and executed to support the thematic emotions of the story.  It is a dark and gloomy rural wilderness that matches the internal sufferings of the protagonist.  A place that is likely very much like Mr DeRosso’s native Wisconsin.

The prose isn’t exactly hardboiled, but it is far from delicate.  There are passages that feel like a dark and masculine poetry—

“The car stopped. The lights winked out. The night shadows dwelt in unruffled peace again.”

“Revenge is Bitter-Sweet” was originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, which is one of the more mainstream magazines that published Mr DeRosso’s work.  And it is easy to identify the difference between this story—aimed at the fat part of the market—and his Westerns, which tended to be published in smaller, edgier magazines.  The elements are all there, but it is muted just enough that it loses the gritty power of his best work.