FLASHPOINT by Ed Gorman

Severn House Hardcover Edition

Flashpoint is the fourth novel to feature Dev Conrad.  Conrad is a former Army Intelligence operative, and current political consultant.  He has a cynical political view.  The only thing he likes less than politicians are political consultants, but he loves the game.  This time Dev is in Illinois where a client is accused of murder.  Not so much by the police, at least not publicly, but definitely by the news media.  Or, as Dev Conrad puts it—

“Sex.  A senator.  A murder.  An international orgasm.”    

The novel opens with Dev Conrad driving from his Chicago office to Senator Logan’s rural upstate cabin.  The senator telephoned Dev with some unidentified trouble, and Conrad, in a state of confusion and dread, is on his way to help.  The trouble is a beautiful women lying dead in a pool of her own blood on the porch of Senator Logan’s cabin.  The senator has a history with the woman.  She was seen at several of his campaign events in recent weeks, and the senator admits to everything but sleeping with her.

The election is a few weeks away, and the story captures the 24 hour cable news cycle, and one of the networks is aligning Senator Logan with the devil.  Conrad quickly retains Ben Zuckerman, a top-notch Chicago criminal lawyer, but Logan is holding something back.  Conrad doesn’t know what, or why, Logan isn’t forthcoming, but he is certain Logan didn’t kill the woman.

The cast of characters includes Senator Logan’s strong daughter, delicate wife, and manipulative brother.  A less than ethical operative from the other side, a beautiful local attorney, a detective, and a somewhat disconcerting federal investigator.  It is a dark story, almost cynical, without Mr Gorman’s usual wary hope.  It casts the political system in a stark, and corrupt light.  Dev Conrad compares current elected pols with the openly corrupt senators of the late 1800s, which were referred to by the industry each represented rather than their respective home states.

The mystery is top-notch.  The murderer isn’t revealed until the final pages, and I was genuinely surprised, but Flashpoint is more than a mystery.  It is social commentary on the state of the current American political environment from popular sentiment to its elected officials.  It takes a whack at the news media, specifically the cable news networks, and the hatred and misinformation disseminated by certain fringe elements, which have garnered mainstream credentials in recent years.    

Flashpoint is a serious and stark novel; however it is told with a wry sense of humor.  There are a handful of lines, which made me laugh aloud, and more than a few places where I smiled.  Not to mention it isn’t every novel that can make mention of Thomas Eagleton, communists, George W. Bush, conspiracy, and The Manchurian Candidate without devolving into something less than it is.  And what it is, is a very fine novel, but be warned Dev Conrad’s cynicism is catching.

KILLER'S WAKE by Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell is best known as a writer of historical novels, but between 1988 and 1992 he published five contemporary suspense novels with sailing settings.  The novels are all very good, and are adventure driven.  They are very much in the scheme of Desmond Bagley—men without special abilities placed in impossible situations, and must rely on their wits to survive.  To my knowledge these are the only non-historical novels Mr Cornwell has written, which is a shame, and they are likely the only he ever will write.  On his website Mr Cornwell explains:

“I enjoyed writing the thrillers, but suspect I am happier writing historical novels. I’m always delighted when people want more of the sailing books, but I’m not planning on writing any more, at least not now – but who knows? perhaps when I retire.”

I recently reread Mr Cornwell’s 1989 novel Killer’s Wake—published as Sea Lord in the United Kingdom—and I enjoyed it as much the second time as the first.  John Rossendale, the 28^th Earl of Stowey, is a vagabond sailor who is called home for his mother’s impending death.  He left England four years earlier on his sailing yacht Sunflower, and vowed never to return.  He left under a cloud—he was accused of stealing a Van Gogh painting from his family trust, and while no one could prove his guilt, everyone is certain of it.

Upon his arrival in England his boat is immediately broken in to, he is approached by a millionaire tycoon who wants to purchase the Van Gogh with no questions asked, he is assaulted by a pair of hired toughs, and his twin sister accuses him outright, and very nastily, of stealing the Van Gogh.  Rossendale doesn’t want to be in England, and by appearances England doesn’t want Rossendale. 

Killer’s Wake is written in first person, and while a few of the plot twists are seemingly juvenile (Rossendale determines to give the painting, estimated to be worth 20 million pounds, to an unpleasant millionaire to impress the millionaire’s step daughter) it is an immensely entertaining novel.  The prose smoothly shows the story through Rossendale’s easy going perspective, who is a likable, if stubborn and at times even maddening (think about giving away 20 million pounds when you can’t purchase your own dinner), protagonist.  The sailing descriptions are vibrant and even beguiling, and are really what separate this novel from many of its contemporary, and current thrillers—

“It was nighttime and the wind was rising.  It was England’s homecoming wind, a southwesterly, but there was nothing welcoming about in this malevolent cold force.  At dusk the wind had been force three or four, by midnight it was five and rising, by three in the morning it I’d taken in the first reef, and now, an hour before dawn, Sunflower was riding a hard force seven.”

The mystery is competently executed, but it is the pure adventure of the story, which makes it as entertaining and enjoyable as it is.  If you enjoy the older style suspense novels.  The sort where the hero doesn’t save the world, but rather only saves his world.  The sort Desmond Bagley, Alistair MacLean, Gavin Lyall, and even an early Jack Higgins, wrote you will really enjoy Killer’s Wake.  It is a throwback, even for something written and published in the late 1980s, and it is a damn good throwback.                   

Book Trailer: Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell

KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

HCC Edition, 2009

A few months ago I purchased a large lot of original mass market Hard Case Crime novels online.  The lot included a bunch of titles I missed when they were issued and I have been slowly making my way down the stack.  I recently read Killing Castro by Lawrence Block, and while it wasn’t what I expected, it certainly wasn’t a disappointment.

The story centers around five American men who are hired to kill Fidel Castro.  The plan is to split the men up to take multiple attempts on Castro’s life.  The novel opens in Ybor City, Florida—Tampa’s Latin district—where the men are brought together for a briefing; each is promised $20,000 if Fidel Castro is killed. 

The novel spends time in the perspective of each of the men, including back stories, and motivating factors.  The men range from outright criminals to anti-Castro zealots to adventure seekers.  The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, and there is much less action than expected.  Instead it builds more as a character piece (in a very genre manner), focusing on each of the assassins and their reasons for taking the job.  One is a dying bank clerk, another is running from the law, and another is avenging the murder of his brother. 

The novel is divided into 11 chapters, and every other one is devoted to Castro’s rise to power.  The segments documenting Castro’s political ascendency are seemingly accurate, and Mr Block takes some effort to explain the psychology of political dissidence, revolution and power.  The novel has an atmosphere of weariness.  A weariness of this is how the world has always worked, and this is how it always will work.  Castro could be exchanged for a thousand different tyrants and nothing would change.

Killing Castro is a dark story, but it doesn’t fit very well into a specific category.  The opening line of the novel is both misleading, and indicative, of the novel:

“The taxi, one headlight out and one fender crimped, cut through downtown Tampa and headed into Ybor City.”

It is a precursor for the atmosphere and tone of the novel, but it is misleading because it sets the stage for a very straight forward 1960s suspense novel, which it isn’t, exactly.  What it is, is a very good, and very entertaining story, with just enough action and suspense to keep it interesting, and a bevy of detail about Cuba in the middle Twentieth Century.

Killing Castro was published in 1961 with the title Fidel Castro Assassinated as by Lee Duncan.  A nom de plume Mr Block used only once.           

THE QUIET AMERICAN by Graham Greene

Penguin Trade Paperback Edition

I haven’t read much Graham Greene, but the few novels I have read—generally with years in between—I have enjoyed.  And with every novel I read, without fail, I wonder why I don’t read more of his work.  I recently read his Vietnam novel, The Quiet American.  It was originally published in 1955 and it literarily documents, through the actions of a young American agent, the seeds of the United States’ entry, as combatants, into Vietnam.

The Quiet American is told in first person by an aging British newspaper journalist named Thomas Fowler.  The novel’s opening scene has the arrival of a French policeman with news of the murder of one of Fowler’s friends.  A young American named Alden Pyle.  Pyle worked for the U. S. Economic Aid Mission in Saigon.  He is an idealist who believes it is both possible the U. S. can foster democracy in Vietnam.

Pyle’s knowledge of Vietnam is based on the work of a journalist named York Harding who has written several works about communism in Asia.  Harding wrote of a “Third Force”—something like the partisans in Nazi-occupied Europe in World War Two—that could rally the people into a popular rising for democracy.  The only problem, Vietnam is not Europe and the world is never as simple as we would like it.

The Quiet American is a prescient novel.  It was published 10 years prior to the first major U. S. battle in Vietnam, Ia Drang, but it deftly and accurately defines many of the problems the United States faced in Vietnam.  It explores the gung-ho naïveté with which the U. S. Government entered the country.  It foretells the debacle U. S. intelligence services would create with their secret wars and covert operations.  But the most interesting is its view of America and Americans as innocents unfamiliar with the world beyond its own borders.

It is rich with both historical perspective and its contemporary world.  The author obviously loved Vietnam; it is painted with a tapestry of vivid description and loving detail.  It is a literary thriller—in the best sense of that term.  It is a story first, but Graham Greene expertly weaves ideas, characters and truths into the narrative in a manner that they become an intricate and necessary part of the story.

The Quiet American is also a metaphor for the end of the British Empire and the rise of America as a superpower, and essentially an empire.  Pyle is the new—he is young, strong and full of ideas and ideals.  Fowler is the old—he is cynical, knowledgeable and somewhat world weary and frightened.  He is scared of age, but mostly he is frightened of losing his status and potency as a man.

The Quiet American is a wonderful novel.  The writing is smooth with a certain antiseptic feel—the reader views the events very much as a spectator, but the performance is so compelling it envelopes the reader with its dark and cynical view of how things are.  Its view of America is rough, but it is done in a way that is forgiving and understanding; almost as a parent disapproving the actions of a child.

The Quiet American is the best Vietnam novel I have read.  It is appealing as both a suspense novel and literature.  Its themes are as relevant today as they were in the 1950s and the story (the plotting, the description and setting) is brilliantly executed.  If you haven’t read this novel you should.

After Thought.  The Quiet American has been translated into film two times.  The first was Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1958 film starring Audie Murphy and Michael Redgrave as Pyle and Fowler.  The second was Phillip Noyce’s 2002 version starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser as Fowler and Pyle.  Michael Caine was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Thomas Fowler.

I haven’t seen the original film, but the Noyce version is surprisingly good.  It captures the spirit and atmosphere of the novel very well.    

This review originally appeared on the now defunct blog Dark City Underground August 11, 2010 in slightly different form.  I will be moving a few other reviews from DCU to Gravetapping over the next several weeks.  I will also be posting some original content very soon.

Hubble Images: Sombrero Galaxy (M104)

Every so often I find an image so beautiful and thought provoking I want, almost need, to share it.  This image of the Sombrero Galaxy taken with the Hubble Space Telescope is one of those images.  It is listed as M104, and this image, which is actually a composite of six images, was taken May to June 2003.

The Sombrero Galaxy is visible from the surface of Earth with a small telescope—although nothing so vivid as the Hubble image.  It is 28 million light years from Earth, and 50,000 light years across.  Its beautiful shimmer is a reminder of the majesty, and magic, of our universe. 

THE FLY ON THE WALL by Tony Hillerman

Avon Paperback

Tony Hillerman is a writer who nearly slipped past me.  He was a bestseller in my teenage years and I have always had a slight bias against the big sellers because I thought, and rightly so in many cases, their fiction was overstuffed and vapid.  But Tony Hillerman’s fiction certainly does not fall in that category.  It is both lively and interesting.  His work deserves its bestseller status because he was a damn fine writer, which should be a requirement to finding a place on the lists.

I recently read one of his early novels, The Fly on the Wall, originally published in 1971 by Harper & Row.  It is the first Hillerman novel I have read that didn’t star either (or both) Jim Chee or Joe Leaphorn and I really enjoyed it.  The protagonist is a political writer for the Tribune named John Cotton.  The location is never fully identified, but the descriptions and climate make it seem like an Eastern state; probably, a place like Virginia.

It opens with Cotton writing his column, an hour or so before deadline, when a jubilantly drunk colleague interrupts him with the news that he has a huge story about the state governor’s office.  Cotton doesn’t pay much attention, but a few minutes later the man falls to his death in the state capitol building.  He doesn’t really make any connections there either, except that his reporter’s instinct makes him curious about the big story his colleague spoke of.  Then things start to happen that make Cotton more and more curious.

The Fly on the Wall is a whodunit with enough intrigue and action to make it more akin to an American-style crime novel than the old British Agatha Christie-style mystery.  It is plotted with a precision that only solid and professional whodunits are, but it is also filled with suspense and, in a few scenes, violence—not just the hint of violence, but actual violence.  There is one scene in particular that lifts this novel above most in the category; a scene just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico (in the only chapter of the novel the protagonist is outside the bleak wintery locale of his newspaper job) that is a beautifully rendered chase scene.  It is a scene that could have been lifted from an early David Morrell novel, but at the same time it is all Tony Hillerman.

The novel has a sense of reality to it.  Mr Hillerman was a newspaperman, and the book acts as a guide to what the industry must have been like in the 1960s and 70s, particularly what it must have been like to be a political reporter: the deals and counter-deals; trying to report factually while also not angering the politicians enough to freeze you out; the jaded cynicism matched against the idealistic sentiment of the job.

The Fly on the Wall was, according the Wikipedia, Hillerman’s second novel, but it doesn’t feel like the work of a man learning his trade.  It is full-bodied and has the sense of importance.  It is as fresh today as it was when it was first published.  In fact as I read it, it felt as though it was written yesterday, and I bet the same will be true in ten years and then again in another ten.

Do yourself a favor and read this one.

This review originally appeared on the now defunct blog Dark City Underground July 18, 2010 in slightly different form.  I will be moving a few other reviews from DCU to Gravetapping over the next several weeks.  I will also be posting some original content very soon.

THE RED MOON by Warren Murphy

Warren Murphy is best known for his The Destroyer series (he co-created it with the late Richard Sapir), but his body of work is impressively diverse.  He has authored everything from horror to mystery to suspense to fantasy.  He won two Edgar Awards and two Shamus Awards in the 1980s and, while he has been silent for nearly two decades, he is a giant in the field (at least on my bookshelf).

I pretty much enjoy all of his work, but I am particularly fond of his suspense novels.  I recently read his 1982 novel The Red Moon and it is as exciting, vibrant and interesting today as it must have been when it was published more than thirty years ago.  And the book itself seemingly has an interesting history—a history I am only guessing at.  It appears to have been written as a novelization for a film, which was never released.  The copyright holders are Davis/Panzer Productions (a production company that produced the “Highlander” television series) and Stan Corwin Productions.

While the genesis for the novel is somewhat shadowy, the novel is wonderfully shadowy.  It chronicles the story of one Christopher Caldwell—a former CIA agent who dropped off the radar when his wife and child were murdered in a car bombing.  He is reluctantly pulled back into the clandestine world of murder and betrayal when his father-in-law is found dead in what is ruled a fishing accident.  The canvas of the story is broad and it includes a World War 2 art theft, oil, Iran—it was published a mere three years after the Shah was deposed—greed, secrets and betrayal.

The Red Moon was a paperback original published by Fawcett Gold Medal and it is very much a novel of its time.  The plot is straight out of the 1980s: Nazi hunters, big oil, Mideast plotting, sinister corporations and corrupt politicians.  The style is different from many of Warren Murphy’s suspense novels—there is less humor, although he does have some fun with two Israeli Mossad agents who tend to speak with British accents, and it reads something like a contemporary Robert Ludlum novel, less the exclamation marks!

While The Red Moon is different than some of Mr Murphy’s work it is no less entertaining.  It is sharply plotted; the story unwinds with enough surprises to keep the reader wondering.  The bad guys are introduced as the story moves forward, and a few are genuinely surprising.  The prose is simple and effective and the dialogue is used expertly to explain the characters motives and quicken the pace from crisis to crisis.

The Red Moon is an entertaining suspense novel.  It is large and complicated (376 pages in mass market), but it reads better and more swiftly than many of the genres’ novels.  And while its style is just a shade different than most of Mr Murphy’s suspense novels it is also one of his better, which is a big statement since much of his work is pretty awesome.  

This review originally appeared on the now defunct blog Dark City Underground July 13, 2010 in slightly different form.  I will be moving a few other reviews from DCU to Gravetapping over the next several weeks.

The TOR Novels of Jack M. Bickham

TOR published 10 of Jack M. Bickham’s novels between 1983 and 1994; two novels were reprints in mass market and the remaining eight novels were originals published both in hardcover and mass market paperback editions.  Mr Bickham’s TOR novels represent his best work, and each, including the reprints, are superiorly crafted suspense novels worth seeking out. 

The Regensburg Legacy.  Mr Bickham’s first novel published by TOR, and it is one of the best.  It was a reprint—originally published by Doubleday in 1980—released by TOR in mass market in 1983.  TRL is a swift and entertaining suspense novel in the vein of Robert Ludlum; however it is superior to Ludlum’s work because of its plotting is tight and its prose is lean. 

Ariel.  A mass market reprint.  It was originally published by St. Martin’s Press in 1984, and the TOR reprint was released in 1985.  Ariel is the largest of the titles published by TOR.  It is a technology based tale about a commercial attempt to develop artificial intelligence.  The technology is dated, but the story is still vibrant due to Mr Bickham’s use of plotting and character motive; however, it shows its age more than any of TOR titles.

Miracleworker.  The first original Jack M. Bickham novel published by TOR.  It was released in hardcover in 1987, and mass market in 1988.  It is a sort of medical thriller, and it is heavy on suspense.      

Day Seven.  It was published by TOR as a hardcover in 1988, and mass market in 1989.  It is an exciting technology centered suspense novel.  It features a somewhat farfetched storyline—a mission to Mars is sabotaged by an assortment of bad guys—but it features Mr Bickham’s trademark sharp plotting and character motive development.  This is one of my favorite non Brad Smith novels.  Read the Gravetapping review.

Tiebreaker.  This is the first (of six) novel to feature Brad Smith.  It was published in hardcover in 1989, and mass market in 1990.  I can’t say enough about the Brad Smith novels.  Mr Bickham managed to make each of the titles a very personal affair for Smith without the melodrama, which often bogs down serial character novels. Read the Gravetapping review.   

Dropshot.  The second novel featuring Brad Smith.  It was released in hardcover in 1990, and mass market in 1991.  Smith nemesis Sylvester (a sort of Moriarity) is introduced as more than a shadow to both the reader and Brad Smith. Read the Gravetapping review. 

Overhead.  The third Brad Smith adventure was issued in hardcover in 1991, and mass market in 1992.  This is the weakest of the Smith titles, but it is still a very readable and entertaining novel. Read the Gravetapping review.

Breakfast at Wimbledon.  It is the fourth Brad Smith novel.  It was released in hardcover in 1991, and mass market in 1992.  BAW is the first Jack Bickham title I read, and I can still remember picking it off the bookstore shelf on an overcast, and unusually cool day, in July. Read the Gravetapping review.

Double Fault.  The fifth Brad Smith novel.  It was released in hardcover in 1993, and mass market in 1994.  DF is the best of the Brad Smith novels.  It is the first to move away from the cold war story; it is a Vietnam revenge story, and it is the most personal of the Brad Smith novel. Read the Gravetapping review.

 The Davis Cup Conspiracy.  The sixth, and final Brad Smith (and Jack M. Bickham novel), published by TOR.  In this case it was published by TOR’s imprint Forge.  It was released in hardcover in 1994, and mass market in 1996.  The significant lag between the release of the hardcover and mass market paperback make me think this title didn’t sell as well as the earlier titles.

DAY SEVEN by Jack M. Bickham

TOR Hardcover Edition, 1988

Jack M. Bickham wrote several suspense novels for TOR, and its imprint Forge, over a ten year period between the mid- 1980s and 1990s.  The most commercially successful were his six novels featuring aging tennis player and part time spy Brad Smith.  While the Smith novels were the most popular, the other novels Mr Bickham wrote for TOR were also fine examples of the thriller, and very much worth seeking out.

The 1988 novel Day Seven is one of the better non Brad Smith novels published by TOR.  It seamlessly joins science fiction, suspense, and mystery into an entertaining yarn.  The year is 1994, and the United States and Soviet Union are in a race to Mars.  The goal is to reach Mars and find the source of a radio signal broadcasting from its surface.  The storyline is large, and it could have taken countless directions, but Mr Bickham chose to play small ball with it.  Instead of creating high level political and diplomatic hijinks he keeps the action close to the field, which allows the story to generate a much more personal and believable tension.

The majority of the action is in Houston, Texas, with several scenes set in space, and even a few in Dallas.  The protagonist is a successful psychologist who discovers the U. S. mission has been sabotaged, and the story plays out as a clock race, first attempting to convince NASA something is wrong and then doing the hard work of solving the case himself.  It is as much a mystery as anything, but the plot is very much dependent on the technological aspect of the space mission.

Day Seven is a template for plotting.  It is plotted and structured precisely as Mr Bickham teaches in his writing book Scene and Structure.  The action builds perfectly from one scene to the next; every action has a reaction, and the pacing of the story builds slowly and steadily.  It doesn’t scream out of the blocks with nowhere to go but back to the bookshelf.  It pulls the reader along from one scene to the next, the protagonist’s situation getting worse with each page until it seems everything is lost, which is exactly how a suspense novel should be. 

The characters’ motivations are perfectly revealed.  There is never a doubt why a character does one thing rather than another, and it is not just the main players whose motivations are explored.  An example is a character stealing computer code from NASA.  His role is not large (although it is essential to the climax), but his motivations are explained well, and fit Donald Cressey’s fraud triangle perfectly: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization:

“‘You don’t understand!  I had no choice!  Nothing I’ve copied is of any significance!  My wife—my financial situation—you don’t understand the pressure I’ve been under—please!’”

Day Seven is exactly what a suspense novel should be—exciting, tense, and interesting enough to keep the reader turning the pages. 

TESTAMENT by David Morrell

I have been reading the work of David Morrell since I was a teenager.  The first novel I read was Brotherhood of the Rose and then I quickly read its two succeeding, loosely related novels, The Fraternity of the Stone and The League of Night and Fog.  It is a trilogy that is related by theme rather than character, although one character does appear in two of the three novels.  If you haven’t read them, you should.

The point?  Other than David Morrell is a terrific writer?  I recently reread Mr. Morrell’s second novel, Testament, and really had a good time.  It is a suspense novel with a stark and brutal plot and even better writing.  It is similar to First Blood in that both are essentially chase novels.  The difference between the two are the characters—John Rambo is a major league tough guy with not much to lose, and Reuben Bourne (the protagonist in Testament) is a family man with everything to lose.

The novel opens with Bourne and his family—his wife, his young daughter and his infant son—enjoying the morning meal, but everything is about to fall apart.  He is a writer and several months earlier he wrote an unflattering article about a Militia leader.  When it was published the subject of the article threatened Bourne and his family, but Bourne didn’t think much about it until the final morning with his family; a morning that left Bourne a shattered, scared and a nearly broken man.

Testament opens with a flash.  The opening line reads:

“It was the last morning the four of them would ever be together: the man and his wife, his daughter and his son.”

And it never lets up.  The chase begins in Bourne’s house, but it quickly moves to a small cabin in a rural town.  Then it moves into the wilderness where Bourne is drawn to his limit.  It is written in a starkly realistic style.  The action is quick, hard and believable.  There is a scene in a ghost town—a town that isn’t marked on any maps, a town that is nearly intact, the buildings upright, whiskey still on shelves, glasses and plates set at tables and blankets and beds—where a battle ensues between Bourne and his pursuers that is as well written and suspenseful as anything I have read.

I came across Testament late.  I read it for the first time in 2005, but it has become my favorite of David Morrell’s novels for the simple reason that it terrifies me.  The situation is frightening—a man against real, solid bogeymen who also must battle the harsh reality of winter in a wilderness without provisions.  It is something of a mix between Jack London and Geoffrey Household; particularly Household's Rogue Male.  It is reminiscent of these older tales, but it also still fresh and invigorating nearly forty years after its first publication.

This review, in slightly different form, first went live at Dark City Underground on July 29, 2010. 

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

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 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, and nervous. He is waiting in the dark night to get a 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. I guessed the surprise before it was revealed, but it didn’t bother me. The writing was good enough to make 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.”