Review: "Make with the Brains, Pierre" by Dana Wilson

 

Make with the Brains, Pierre by Dana Wilson Black Gat, 2025   The only bad thing about this 1946 psychological thriller from Dana Wilson—it is her only mystery novel—is the clunker of a title: Make with the Brains, Pierre. A title more apt for a Hollywood farce than a bleak ride into tinsel town’s darker side. In fact, Bill Pronzini, in 1001 Midnights, compared Make with the Brains, Pierre with the work of Cornell Woolrich and the New York Times wrote, “[it] presents a convincing picture of a troubled mind struggling with problems beyond its power.” Pierre Bernet is a French film editor, or what they call a cutter, lured to Hollywood in the years before France was defeated by Nazi Germany. But now he is 34, unemployed, living in a tiny apartment, and in love with a woman far too young for him: Eleanor Marr. Eleanor works as an onscreen extra and while she is fond of Pierre, she loves the very married owner of a film company, Joe Sherman. As a kindness to Pierre, Eleanor convinces Joe to hire Pierre. The job is less than a week’s work, but it pays eight times what M-G-M, when Pierre last had gainful employment, paid. While working, Pierre meets Joe’s dreadful wife, who refuses to grant a divorce to her husband, and the guy bankrolling the job. A shifty and well-connected lawyer named Frank Marshall. Of course, the film cutting job is for an audio splice that is used in a fraud and no matter how Pierre tries to play things, it always ends up with him hanging from the branch. Make with the Brains, Pierre, is a solid thriller—it opens with Pierre self-destructing in his tiny apartment, water dripping on something awful in his bathtub, while he awaits to be killed by the two men outside his building. Then the narrative goes into flashback to answer, How did Pierre get here? and What the hell is in the bathtub? It is told with sly humor and a sharp commentary of both Hollywood and post-WW2 America. The suspense is ratcheted slowly from chapter to chapter until, in the last pages, there is no doubt where it is going and the full horror of Pierre’s situation is starkly written into nightmare. Make with the Brains, Pierre—bad title and all—is a damn good book. *             *             * This new Black Gat edition includes an excellent introduction by Randal S. Brandt, “The Original Bond Girl,” detailing Dana Wilson’s life. She was an actress whose second husband was Albert R. Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond film franchise, and so much more.

Check out Make with the Brains, Pierre at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback. Or at the Stark House website here.

Review: "Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini"

 

Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories by Bill Pronzini Stark House, 2024   Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini is the story collection I’ve been waiting for—without realizing it until now. Included are 26 of Pronzini’s best stories, selected by the author himself (and who am to argue?), originally published in magazines like Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and New Black Mask between 1967 and 2023. Which is to say, these tales are representative of Pronzini’s entire criminous career from his Nameless Detective, featured in 10 of the stories, his standalone work, which total 15, and a solitary tale in the Quincannon & Carpenter historical private eye series. My usual reading modus operandi is a preference for standalone tales—shorts, novels, and everything in between—and this collection is no different. The standalones are my favorites. A good example is “Opportunity”—which is the earliest tale in the collection from 1967—about an honest cop facing an expensive medical treatment and a moral dilemma when a chance to siphon more off the streets than his salary arises. “Proof of Guilt,” published in 1973, is a nifty variation on an impossible crime that left me with a smile. “Smuggler’s Island”—published in 1977—is one of my favorite stories because it beautifully intertwines a past crime with a present crime. There is an uninhabited island and a murder, too. “Liar’s Dice,” from 1992, is a brilliantly conceived psychological thriller with a dark bent about a dice game and deciphering truth from lies. And those are only a few of the standouts! Now for the Nameless tales, and despite my preference for standalones, each of these is a gem of serial private detection. You see, I really do like Nameless a bunch because Pronzini has an ability to keep the character fresh with intriguing plots and expanding characterization. “Thin Air,” which was published in 1979, is a great old school detective story about a scorned wife, a thief, and a cheating husband. A murder happens, too, and while it is close to an impossible murder, Nameless takes care of it with pulpy pizazz. “Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern,” from 1988, is a little different because the crime—a tavern is held up—happens while Nameless is drinking a beer and chatting with the friendly barkeep. But that’s only the start and it ends somewhere else entirely. “Stakeout” finds Nameless doing a skip-trace on a deadbeat dad that turns into a waiting game that goes sideways and takes all of Nameless’ deductive prowess to find the truth. And the rest are just as good. Cream of the Crop is a marvelous collection you’ll want to rush through, but it is best read slowly to better experience its savory taste. Afterall, it took Bill Pronzini parts of seven decades to write these stories and just because they finally arrived in a single package is no reason to gorge yourself, no matter how much you’d like to. Get it. Read it. You’ll like it, I promise.

Go here for the Kindle version and here for the paperback edition at Amazon. Go here to purchase a copy at the Stark House website.

Review: "The Stark House Anthology" edited by Rick Ollerman & Gregory Shepard

 

The Stark House Anthology edited by Rick Ollerman & Gregory Shepard Stark House, 2024   The Stark House Anthology, edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard, celebrates Stark House Press’s silver jubilee. And oh boy is it a worthy gift to readers! Its 30 stories, all from authors previously published by Stark House except for Gregory Shepard—but he’s the publisher so some leeway is easily given here—are exceptional. The most interesting work is Jada M. Davis’s not-quite-noir “So Curse the Day” because it is a previously unpublished novel with a Gold Medal vibe, a rotten protagonist hitting a new town with big dreams—dreams the reader knows from the first page will fall to ruin. All because no matter the breaks Dun Lattner gets, a kind and generous old landlady, a beautiful girlfriend, a good job, a business of his own, he will make the wrong choices and mess everything up. Every time…but the book’s ending makes “So Curse the Day” a little different than the general noir fare. It works, too, and it is worth the entry fee all by itself. Charles Runyon’s “Hangover” is a dark and disturbing look at marital misery, cheating spouses, alcohol, and bad behavior. “Art for Money’s Sake,” by Dan J. Marlowe, is a clever and surprising tale about art forgery—with a forger too smart for his own good. Sleaze king Orrie Hitt’s “Nothing in My Way,” is a tricky and surprising riff on the old fake-my-death-for-the-insurance gag. The climactic twist, dripping with irony, made me smile because, in a phrase, it was perfect. “Angie,” by Ed Gorman—another story loaded with irony—is a literate and dark tale about a woman dreaming of a sugar daddy, but somewhere along the way she hooked-up with a sleazy and poor bank robber named Roy. Worse, Roy talked her into having his named tattooed on her perfect breasts. And wow does it end with a beautiful surprise. Fredric Brown’s short and wicked “Beware the Dog,” is an ironic cautionary tale about murder and making friends. “Hit Me”—by the co-editor of the anthology, Rick Ollerman—is a pitch-perfect murder-for-hire story told from the perspective of a greedy husband. The climactic twist is smile-inducing and just right. “Axe,” by the other co-editor and owner of Stark House, Gregory Shepard, is a smart and troubling tale about a guy with a legal problem. The narrator is unreliable, but by the end it is clear to everyone, including the reader, what happened. There are other excellent stories by Wade Miller, Lionel White, Stephen Marlowe—a Chester Drum tale no less—Frank Kane, Harry Whittington, Day Keene, Helen Nielsen, Bill Pronzini, Fredric Brown, Robert Silverberg, Bruno Fischer and many, many others. The Stark House Anthology is as close to a perfect hardboiled story collection as I have read. Every tale is a smash, every writer is worth reading. My only gripe: its 30 stories and 458 pages just whetted my appetite. I want more.

Click here to purchase the Kindle edition or here for the paperback at Amazon. Click here to purchase this book at Stark House’s website—to celebrate its 25th anniversary, every book at Stark House’s website is 25% off during the month of June.

"Mrs. Homicide / Naked Fury / Murder on the Side" by Day Keene

 

Mrs. Homicide / Naked Fury /
Murder on the Side
by Day Keene
Stark House Press, 2024

Stark House’s latest Day Keene compilation is available in bookstores everywhere. It is a good one, too. Even better—for me, not for the readers since Keene’s novels are the draw—it includes my essay, “The Name is Day Keene,” as an Introduction. My name is even on the cover. How about that? I highly recommend Day Keene’s writing, and if you like mid-century hardboiled crime fiction you will love Mrs. Homicide / Naked Fury / Murder on the Side.
   Retreats from Oblivion reviewed Mrs. Homicide / Naked Fury / Murder on the Side here. I’m even mentioned!
      Here is the publisher’s description:

Mrs. Homicide

Everyone in the homicide squad knows that Herman Stone’s wife Connie is cheating on him. They’d all seen her with Lyle Cary. So when she is arrested in Cary’s apartment, drunk and nude, with his murdered body on the bed they had obviously just shared, they all assume she’s guilty. Except, of course for Stone. The husband may be the last to know, but Connie claims she is innocent. She’s never even met Cary, much less killed him. It’s almost more than Stone can believe. But in trying to prove her innocence, he soon finds himself up against not only the witnesses, but the entire police force!

Naked Fury

There’s been a fatal hit-and-run in the poor part of town. And now the only witness has been beaten to death as well. Big Dan Malloy runs this part of town and makes it his business to take care of his people. So he starts to investigate the deaths. It all points to a man in a large, dark blue car. But the official police report is now saying it was a red coupe driven by a woman—which can only mean that someone has fingered Katie, Malloy’s girl. Meanwhile, Malloy is working hard on an election that should bring some real change to his part of town. But with so much on the line, who can he really trust?

Murder On The Side

Larry Hanson should have been a successful engineer instead of the glorified accountant he is. Now in his mid-40s, he has grown bored with his job, his wife. Then his secretary Wanda calls one evening and asks for his help. Her ex-boyfriend, just released from prison, had been trying to drunkenly rape her. She hit him with a lamp, and thinks she killed him. Hanson finds the young man unconscious and takes him away, dropping him at a nearby park. Grateful, Wanda offers herself to Hanson. The next morning, he feels like a new man. Then he reads the morning paper—Wanda’s boyfriend was found dead in the park… murdered. And Holden is the most likely suspect!

Click here to purchase the Kindle edition or here for the paperback.
Click here to purchase this book at Stark House’s website.

From Ed Gorman's Desk: Richard Neely

from ED GORMAN’S Desk

Richard Neely
Nov. 10, 2005

 

The first time I ever spoke to Richard Neely, suspense novelist extraordinaire, he kept trying to place my name. “It’s so damned familiar—wait a minute, you’re the guy who called me the de Sade of crime fiction.”
    Loose lips sink ships. So can old reviews. I figured that our business would sink if he ever remembered that long ago review. But he laughed. “I think I was just ahead of my time.”
     Actually, I’d meant that remark as a compliment because I was pointing out that Neely, despite the Irish name, took a very French approach to the psychological machinations of sex in his books. Two of his books became French movies. Somebody apparently agreed with me.
     Neely, a very sleek and successful advertising man, is gone now and so, undeservedly, are his books. The Walter Syndrome, his bestselling suspense novel, was almost ruined for me when I guessed the ending on page two, something I never do. But I pressed on and it was well worth it. This was a take on Psycho set in Thirties and the storytelling is spellbinding. The voice is worth of Fredric Brown at his best.
     I was thinking of Neely last night because I was finishing up his novel The Plastic Nightmare, which became an incomprehensible movie called Shattered. Neely loved tricks as much as Woolrich did and Plastic is a field of land mines. He even manages to spin some fresh variations on the amnesia theme. It’s as noir as noir can be but mysteriously, I’ve never seen Neely referred to on any noir list. My theory is that his books, for the most part, were presented in such tony packages, they were bypassed by mystery fans.
     The Damned Innocents became a fair French flick. What it missed was the sorrow. Neely always caught the sorrow of sexual betrayal with a kind of suicidal wisdom. While his books aren’t kinky by today’s measure, they’re dark in the way only sexual themes can be. Love kills, baby.
     Not that he didn’t have a sudsy side. He wrote a couple of big sexy workplace novels that I could never plow through but he also wrote The Ridgeway Women which was SUPPOSED to be a big sexy workplace book that was undermined in a good way by the riveting neuroses and desperation of all his best books.
     A Madness of the Heart suffers from a style Neely seemed to have invented from scratch for this particular novel. It’s another dazzler—a really convincing story about a rapist and the human debris he leaves in his wake—but the cadence of the prose gets in my way every once in awhile. It isn’t that it’s fancy-schmancy, it’s just that it gets in the way sometimes and seems to fall short of its purpose.
     I liked Neely, man and writer, and I liked his books, too. Somebody should bring him back. He’s my kind of noir writer—down and out in the dark underbelly of the success-driven American middle class, like non-Trav John D. MacDonald only doomed without hope of salvation. 

Stark House Press has recently released The Plastic Nightmare, in a collection with Neely’s While Love Lay Sleeping. Click here to see Stark House’s Richard Neely collection on Amazon, or click here to see it at Stark House’s website.

This article originally appeared on Ed Gorman’s blog, Ed Gorman Rambles, Nov. 10, 2005. It is reprinted here by permission. Ed wrote dozens of novels in a variety of genres, but his most popular work (and my favorite of his work) was in the crime and western genres. His ten Sam McCain mysteries—set in the fictional Iowa town of Black River Falls during the 1950s, ’60, and ’70s—are suspenseful, mysterious, and often funny excursions into small town America. The New York Times called Sam McCain, “The kind of hero any small town could take to its heart” and The Seattle Times called McCain “an intriguing mix of knight errant and realist…” But Ed was also a tireless reader and promoter of other writers’ work. His blogs—there were three, none of them operating at the same time—are treasure troves for readers of crime, horror, and western fiction both old and new. Ed died Oct. 14, 2016.   Click here to check out Ed Gorman’s Sam McCain novels on Amazon.

 

Review: "The Sleeping City" by Marty Holland

 

The Sleeping City
by Marty Holland
Stark House, 2023

 

 

The Sleeping City is a hardboiled novella-length crime tale by Marty Holland originally published in the Fall 1952 issue of Thrilling Detective. Holland, born as the very feminine Mary Hauenstein, has a knack for capturing the post-World War 2 male tough guy persona; which is on steady display in this nicely executed undercover cop / heist story. Wade is a sergeant with the Gangster Squad in an unidentified, but likely LAPD, police force. When Jim Cox, an habitual criminal from Chicago, is nabbed by the police and admits he is in town to participate in a heist, Wade’s boss, Captain Roberts, assigns him to go undercover as Cox.
     All Cox knows about the job—since his partner Les Ties, who was murdered days earlier in Chicago, set it up—is how to contact the crew pulling the job. So Wade says goodbye to his fiancé, takes a deep breath, and heads to meet Cox’s contact at the White Lion Club. Wade finds is an over-the-hill gangster, Louie Thompson, and a handful of toughs planning a risky armored car heist worth a cool million. What Wade doesn’t count on is falling for Thompson’s beautiful and hard-as-nails girl, Madge.
     The Sleeping City has all the best elements of mid-century crime fiction: concise, tight plotting, bitter and desperate criminals, a hard-tongued and beautiful moll, and a hero with a dilemma. And what a dilemma! $200,000 and a gorgeous and poison dame or Wade’s settled and quiet life. A dilemma that could easily twist into noir, as is foreshadowed by an early passage where Wade is wondering about moths and flames: “…what screwy quirk of nature attracted them [moths] to light—to the point that it killed them.”
     The heist is revealed slowly, as slowly as Wade’s dilemma tightens around his guts, and those last dozen pages pop and sizzle with action. The Sleeping City is an above average pulp story featuring some fine writing. A couple passages that really crackled:

“But then I knew that we both realized that last night couldn’t be repeated. To go on meant hanging on to a straw in mid-ocean.”

“Everybody in the world should be a cop, I thought wildly! Everybody should know the elation of turning some poor weak bastard over to the law! Or a dame—a dame that somehow had crawled into your blood stream, a dame that was afraid of the dark.”

     If you enjoy these old crime stories, you will like The Sleeping City.
 

The Sleeping City is the second half of Stark House Press’ The Glass Heart / The Sleeping City, by Marty Holland (2023).

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon.
Click here to purchase The Glass Heart / The Sleeping City and other titles by Marty Holland at Stark House’s website.

Review: "In at the Kill" by Emmett McDowell

 

In at the Kill
by Emmett McDowell
Stark House Press, 2023*

 

In at the Kill—which began life as one-half of an Ace Double in 1960 (paired with McDowell’s own Bloodline to Murder)—is a medium-boiled mystery with a touch of humor, an unscrupulous amateur sleuth, and a rip-roaring plot. Jonathan Knox is the proprietor of the Green Barn. A Louisville, Kentucky, auction house “that flourished like the proverbial green bay tree.” While checking the day’s mail and suffering the results of a late-night Halloween party, Jonathan is interrupted by his pal, Lieutenant Ben Harden Helm.
     Ben tells Knox a whacky story about a construction crew tearing up the sidewalk in front of city hall, digging a hole underneath, removing ten bundles of wastepaper, and then repairing everything good as new. When the construction company bills the city for the work, no one in public works knows anything about the job. But Knox, who has a photographic memory, recalls a tale about a batch of rare stamps being buried under city hall’s sidewalk at the turn of the twentieth century. With haste, Knox purchases the salvage rights to the wastepaper, which was taken away from the site by a phony city inspector, and he drops everything to track down the stamps. What starts out as a simple fraud, or so Knox believes, quickly turns into blackmail and murder with Knox stuck in the middle of the whole ugly affair.
     In at the Kill is a sharp, funny, and entertaining post-World War 2 crime novel. Knox is marvelously shady. He floats bits and pieces of truths, half-truths, and outright lies to every character in the book, and when he gets so deep in the mud that it begins sticking to him, he is willing to do almost anything to escape; except be labeled as a blackmailer. There are red herrings and a twisty plot that never feels overly busy. In at the Kill is a riot, in a very good way.
       

*In at the Kill is the second book (of three) in Stark House Press’ Three Aces. The other titles are: The Gilded Hideaway, by Peter Twist (1955), and Heat Lightning by Wilene Shaw (1954).

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon.
Click here to purchase Three Aces at Stark House’s website.

Stark House's February Newsletter

The February Stark House Press newsletter is live at their website:

“The lead title—the book that Crime Club members will receive automatically—is another double volume from one of our favorite authors, Jean Potts. The two books are Home is the Prisoner and The Little Lie.

“Booklist has already posted a thumbs-up review that perfectly describes the two plots: ‘In 1960’s Home Is the Prisoner, a man convicted of manslaughter returns to the scene of the crime years later, determined to clear his name, no matter the cost; in 1968’s The Little Lie, a woman lies about her boyfriend because she’s embarrassed that he broke up with her, only to find that one little lie leads to a bigger one, and then an even bigger one, until there is no end to the deceptions.’”

Click here to read the entire newsletter.

ONE FOR HELL by Jada M. Davis

Stark House Press released a reprint of a 1952 Fawcett Red Seal original titled One for Hell written by Jada M. Davis back in 2010. Davis is a writer I wasn’t familiar with and after reading it, I really don’t know why. It is terrific and one of the best hardboiled noir tales I’ve read. It resembles the work of two pulp writers, W. L. Heath—particularly Violent Saturday—and Jim Thompson. It has the violence and dark shadows of Thompson and the sociology of secrets that Heath did so well.

Willa Ree is a drifter and a petty criminal riding the rails toward a small Texas boomtown. His plan is simple: fleece the town and move on. What happens is beyond Ree’s expectations. The town is a gold mine, and he just may stick around for a big score. 

One for Hell is pure entertainment. There isn’t a protagonist. The supporting cast, Willa Ree is the main player (and he’s pure bastard), come and go like visitors to an amusement park. One by one they ratchet the pressure on Ree until he is ready to break. And one by one Ree pushes them aside until he no longer can.

The plot is tight and woven with a sophistication of character, morality and corruption. The town has secrets—everyone has something to hide and Ree uses this underlying human weakness to his advantage. He culls his enemies from the herd and eliminates them. He has a girlfriend who is an arch-type of the flawed woman. She possesses strengths and the weaknesses alike, but she is mostly good.

The action is developed with an audacity that separates this novel from so many others of its type. There is a scene in the middle part of the novel that covers 18 pages that changed my view of what can be done with both violence and action in a prose story. It rolled like a freight train and changed Ree from a smalltime hoodlum to a big time psychopath. It was the crux of the story, the beginning of the end for Willa Ree, and the push that leads the reader into his twisted mind.

Everything works in One for Hell. From the plot to the characters to the psychology to the prose and it wraps itself together in a tight weave. Willa Ree spends much of his time trying to guess the actions and motives of other people and the internal dialogue is simple and interesting:

“Maybe the old woman knew. Or maybe she found it, though not likely. Baldy wasn’t a trusting sort of person, and she wouldn’t have guessed he had money in the first place. He sat on the trunk and surveyed the room. Pictures? Too simple.”

One for Hell is solid proof that Stark House is the best publishers of classic crime fiction going. 

This review was written in the long ago, and this is a slightly altered version.

Stark House Press: Black Gat Books

I’m a big fan of Stark House Press, and I have been meaning to write a post about its latest publishing venture, Black Gat Books, for a several weeks. Black Gat is a mass market line dedicated to reprinting great crime novels of the past. Stark House’s website identifies Black Gat’s mission statement—  

“This is a single-title line of books, uniformly priced at $9.99, offering additional reprint titles from past masters of mystery fiction. Each book will be numbered. Some will have new introductions, some will not.”

There are three titles currently available:

No. 1.  A Haven for the Damned by Harry Whittington. This is one of Mr. Whittington’s Gold Medal books originally published in 1962. The Black Gat edition includes an excellent Introduction by David Laurence Wilson.

No. 2.  Eddie’s World by Charlie Stella. This is Charlie Stella’s first novel. It was originally published in 2001, and received critical raves. Stark House published its sequel, Rough Riders, in 2012, which was reviewed here at Gravetapping.  

No. 3.  Stranger at Home by Leigh Brackett. This title was originally published as by George Sanders—the English actor—in 1946. It was written by the great Leigh Brackett, and it is thankfully available again.

There are two additional titles that have been announced, but not yet released:

No. 4.  The Persian Cat by John Flagg. This is one of the earliest Gold Medal titles. It features agent Gil Denby, and is set in Tehran. Its release date is August 2015.

No. 5.  Only the Wicked by Gary Phillips. This is an Ivan Monk mystery set in Los Angeles. Its release date is November 2015.  

The Black Gat titles are available directly through the publisher, and most online bookstores. If you click on the titles above you will be whisked to the Amazon page for each.

Stark House Press: The Autumn Dead / The Night Remembers by Ed Gorman

Stark House Press has released a two-fer of Ed Gorman’s private eye fiction. The titles are two of Mr Gorman’s best: The Autumn Dead and The Night Remembers.

Jack Dwyer is Mr Gorman’s first private eye. The series ran five novels and The Autumn Dead is the best of the group. It is also one of Ed’s best novels. It is a thoughtful, melancholy journey that is heavy on working class angst. The Autumn Dead originally appeared in 1987. The legendary critic and crime writer Dorothy B. Hughes said:

“The Autumn Dead, with its depth, its heartbreak, and its melancholy hope, is a new and important kind of American mystery.”  

Scotland on Sunday added:

“Ever since I read The Autumn Dead, I’ve rated Gorman as highly as Crumley, Ellroy and Burke.”

The Night Remembers is a standalone. It features time weary and nostalgic retired police officer Jack Walsh. A man who has problems younger than his age—a young son with a woman nearly half his age—and a character I wish had seen one more case. It first appeared in 1991. Andrew Vachss said:

“Takes crime detection to the dark edge of man-made horror.”

San Diego Union added:

“The Night Remembers is a gem [and] an ingenious story.”

The best part the Stark House Press edition, aside from the two brilliant novels, are the two introductions. The first is from Stark House regular Rick Ollerman—who is an excellent critic and writer on his own merits—and the other from the relative newcomer Benjamin Boulden, which is actually me.

The Autumn Dead / The Night Remembers is available at most of the online retailers—Amazon—and also at Stark House’s website. It is a very nice trade paperback, and book purchase you will not regret.

ONE FOR HELL by Jada M. Davis

Stark House Press released a reprint of a 1952 Fawcett Red Seal original titled One for Hell written by Jada M. Davis back in 2010.  Davis is a writer I wasn’t familiar with and after reading it, I really don’t know why.  It is terrific and one of the best hardboiled noir tales I’ve read.  It resembles the work of two pulp writers, W. L. Heath—particularly Violent Saturday—and Jim Thompson.  It has the violence and dark shadows of Thompson and the sociology of secrets that Heath did so well.

Willa Ree is a drifter and a petty criminal.  The novel opens with Ree riding the rails toward a small Texas boomtown. His plan is simple: fleece the town and move on.  What happens is beyond Ree’s expectations and the town looks better to him by the minute.

One for Hell is pure entertainment.  There isn’t a protagonist.  The supporting cast, Willa Ree is the main player, come and go like visitors to an amusement park.  One by one they ratchet the pressure on Ree until he is ready to break.  And one by one Ree pushes them aside until he no longer has the ability.

The plot is tight and woven with a sophistication of character, morality and corruption.  The town has secrets—everyone has something to hide and Ree uses this underlying human weakness to his advantage.  He culls his enemies, the weaker ones first, from the herd and eliminates them. He has a girlfriend who is an arch-type, flawed at that, of woman.  She has all the strengths and the weaknesses and most are both—a desire to trust, to love and believe.  She is the light of the story and the hope.

The action is developed with a solidity and audacity that separates this novel from so many others of its type.  There is a scene in the middle part of the novel that covers 18 pages that changed my view of what can be done with both violence and action in a prose story.  It rolled like a freight train in the dark hard night.  It changed Ree from a smalltime hoodlum to a big time psychopath. It was the crux of the story, the beginning of the end for Willa Ree, and the push that leads the reader into his twisted mind.

There really isn’t anything flat in One for Hell.  Everything works.  From the plot to the characters to the psychology to the prose and it wraps itself together without the reader really knowing that it is happening.  Willa Ree spends much of his time trying to guess the actions and motives of other people and the internal dialogue is simple and interesting:

“Maybe the old woman knew. Or maybe she found it, though not likely. Baldy wasn’t a trusting sort of person, and she wouldn’t have guessed he had money in the first place. He sat on the trunk and surveyed the room. Pictures? Too simple.”

One for Hell is proof that Stark House is one of the best publishers of classic crime fiction.  This, like all of its releases, is still fresh and vibrant all these years later and it is going to be on my bookshelf for a very long time.

Stark House Press Super Christmas Sale

I received this nice piece of good news from Stark House.  Take my advice and buy a few of the titles. 

 

Happy Holidays from Stark House Press!

Earlier in the season we offered our first ever Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale to our newsletter subscribers. In an effort to reach out to all our readers, however, we're now making a similar buy 2 get 1 free sale on all in-stock titles from now until midnight on Christmas Day, 2012. And did we mention the FREE SHIPPING?

Details and a complete book listing are available here. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Stark House Press

It’s no surprise to the conscious reader that we’re smack in the middle of a crime noir revival. The old stuff is new again, and there is a whole lot of the old stuff that is pretty damn good. Hard Case Crime is a big time New York house that is publishing old titles and new in the hardboiled tradition, and there are also several smaller houses focusing on classic crime fiction.

One of the better—at least that I’m familiar with—is Stark House Press. Stark House has been bringing older titles back into print over the past few years in high quality and handsome trade paperback editions. All of the Stark House editions have at least two novels, and every so often there will be a bonus third novel.

Stark House has released titles from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. A few of the classic authors are: Malcolm Braly—Shake Him Til He Rattles / It’s Cold Out There; Gil Brewer—Wild to Possess / A Taste for Sin and A Devil for O’Shaugnessy / The Three-Way Split; Day Keene—Framed in Guilt / My Flesh is Sweet; Stephen Marlowe—Violence is My Business / Turn Left for Murder; Peter Rabe—there are five titles here with two novels per. There are also several contemporary authors including early novels by two of my favorite writers: Bill Pronzini and Robert J. Randisi.

The titles are modestly priced; ranging from $14.95 to $19.95 and each is introduced by someone who knows a helluvalot more than I do about the subject. And the fiction. It’s absolutely top-notch—

—this is sounding like a commercial. I don’t mean it to, but I’ve read a few of the Stark House titles and I have been impressed. If you haven’t sought a title or two out, you should. The books are sold on Amazon.com as well as the publisher’s website...

…end commercial.

But really, these books are great.