Thrift Shop Book Covers: Just Before Dark

Just Before Dark is the fifth (of five) horror novels written by Bill Crider and published as by Jack MacLane.  It was published by Zebra in November 1990, and the cover art is terrific in a disturbing if tongue-in-cheek sort of way.  It is dark—a purple smudge for sky—and features a cold metallic junkyard piled high.  It reminds me of the first thirty minutes of the film “Wall-E” with the added appeal of skeletons strewn throughout.  The artist is uncredited.

The opening paragraph:

“Frank Castella remembered dying.”   

I haven’t read any of the “Jack MacLane” novels, but knowing the general high quality of Mr Crider’s work I plan to remedy that very soon.  All five of the MacLane novels are currently available as ebooks.

This is the fifth in a new series of posts featuring cover and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the coer art as for the story or author. 

SCREAM QUEEN AND OTHER TALES OF MENACE by Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman is one of the top writers of genre short stories.  His most recent collection of short fiction, Scream Queen and Other Tales of Menace, features the Gorman short story at its best.  It includes 14 stories published between 1989 and 2014.  The stories range from science fiction to straight crime, but each has the commonality of the outsider perspective, and a certain discomforting velvet darkness.

The collection opens with the 1999 story “Angie” (originally published in the anthology 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense).  Angie has goals.  She wants the best life has to offer.  As a girl she heard the term “kept woman” and has spent her life aiming toward that destination; somehow she ended up the live-in of a bigoted small time criminal, with his son, in a dilapidated trailer.  The story builds quickly, and in unexpected ways—not once, but twice—and the ending is a perfectly dark shadow of humanity.

Scream Queen is a rich collection of stories; none are weak and each is entertaining and even provocative.  The best of the group—first among equals, in a sense—is the 1994 science fiction story “Cages” (originally published in the anthology Earth Strikes Back.  It is written in third person from the perspective of a young boy whose father is a “dreamduster” (read drug addict).  There is strife between the boy’s mother and father, mostly due to lack of money, and he has the dream of a perfect life.  A new car.  A sunlit afternoon.  And peace.  He thinks the key is money, and he has a plan to get it for his mother.

“Cages” is truly a masterpiece.  It is set in an undefined place and time; a futuristic (in a bad way) place to be sure.  A gray world with bitter gray people.  The boy’s plan is executed, but not quite revealed until the final paragraphs of the story, and its revelation is stunning.  It is reminiscent of Richard Matheson’s early science fiction stories—it particularly reminded me of his “Dance of the Dead”—but it is wholly Ed Gorman from its sympathetic treatment of the boy to the pity of the denouement.

The collection includes many of Mr Gorman’s classic dark suspense stories, including “Out There in the Darkness” (basis for the novel The Poker Club), “Stalker,” “Render Unto Caesar,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” “The Brasher Girl” (basis for the novel Cage of Night), and the powerful vampire story “Duty”.  It also includes a few of his more recent offerings, including the terrific title story “Scream Queen” and “Calculated Risk”.  

Scream Queen and Other Tales of Menace is published by Perfect Crime Books, and it includes a very nice Introduction by Tom Piccirilli, an Afterword, which is a brief interview with Ed Gorman, and there are editorial notes at the end of a few of the stories.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE ISLAND by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins)

The Dark Side of the Island is the eighth novel published by Harry Patterson.  It was released as a hardcover by John Long in 1964, and it is the first novel, of many, Mr Patterson set (at least partly) during World War 2.

Hugh Lomax is a working screenwriter, and recent widower.  He is English, but makes his home in California.  As the novel opens Lomax is steaming to the small Greek Island of Kyros.  He was briefly on Kyros seventeen years earlier with British Intelligence to destroy a high tech radar installation.  He is returning for an elusive reason; something unfinished, nostalgia, or simply to see the island in the warmth of peacetime.

Unfortunately his welcome is less than cordial.  A man he considers an old friend threatens to kill him, another actually tries to kill him, and the local constabulary politely asks him to leave.  The locals blame Lomax for snitching out the islanders who helped him to the Germans and nearly all of them hold a grudge.  For good reason.  Nearly everyone was sent to a concentration camp at Fonchi, and more than 20 never returned.

The Dark Side of the Island is told in three acts.  The first and third are set in the early 1960s, and the middle is set during World War 2.  Lomax is lost in the mystery of who talked to the Germans, and why.  He knows it wasn’t him, but no one on the island seemingly had a motive—or anything to gain—from the betrayal. 

Lomax is a classic Jack Higgins’ protagonist; brilliant, principled, and something less (at least in the world’s eyes) than he could be.  The storyline is familiar to Mr Patterson’s regular readers, but the foray into the past is something rare.  It isn’t perfectly executed.  There is some confusion on character names.  There are two with the name “Yanni”; one a young boy in the modern sections and another a shepherd during World War 2.  The plot is relatively complicated and it would benefit from more flesh (i. e. development), but like all of Mr Patterson’s novels it is sleek, fast, and entertaining.

There is an interesting piece of dialogue, which will likely resound with most writers.  When Lomax tells an English writer, who lives on Kyros, one of his men borrowed a book of poetry from his bookshelf, the writer says—

“You know, Lomax, for some strange reason, most people seem to think writers ought to distribute their books free.”

An element that separates Mr Patterson’s work—particularly his early novels—from most of its competitors is the small and accurate detail.  In the opening pages Lomax discusses his work with the E.O.K. in Crete during the war; a right of center partisan group organized by British Intelligence to act as a competitor to the communist underground.  

Thrift Shop Book Covers: Utah Blaine

Utah Blaine is the second of three Louis L’Amour novels published by Ace.  It was originally published as by Jim Mayo and made its debut as one half of an Ace Double (D-48) in 1954. The artwork of the original paperback isn’t bad, but getting a copy could set your retirement back.

The edition that caught my eye was an early 1970s Ace reprint.  It has an alarmingly orange cover—something close to post-apocalyptic as it seems to devour the town in the background—a gunman on an angry horse firing at someone offstage.  It appears there is something close to artillery kicking up dirt geysers (actually rifle slug impacts, I’m sure).  It is a scene straight from a comic book, and I love it.  The artist is uncredited.      

The opening paragraph:

“He was asleep and then he was awake. His eyes flared wide and he held himself still, staring staring into the darkness, his ears reaching for sound.”

I read this title as a teenager and I can barely remember the plot, but I do remember I enjoyed it. I know the edition I read was issued by Bantam in the 1980s.  The thing I really like about this old Ace paperback.  It informs the customer it is Louis L’Amour “writing under the pen-name ‘Jim Mayo’”. 

This is the fourth in a new series of posts featuring cover and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the cover art as for the story or the author.

SLAMMER by Allan Guthrie

Nick Glass is a rookie prison guard in a Scottish prison.  He has been on the job six weeks with mixed results—the other guards mock and make trouble for him and the inmates don’t respect him.  At home he has a five-year old daughter and wife.  His wife tends to drink too much, and is just on the backside of an affair.  To say Nick has a little stress is an understatement.

To make things worse Nick is approached by one of the inmates and asked to mule drugs inside.  The inmate gives him two choices: 1) make an easy buck; or 2) his little family gets hurt in a big way.  Nick is in big trouble as he desperately tries to protect his family at home and his own life at work.

Slammer is the sort of novel that creeps up on you in about three pages.  It starts hard and strong and never lets up.  Glass is a regular guy caught in a nasty and impossible situation.  He doesn’t belong in the prison.  He is a nice guy, both weak and sincere.  He, much like his name, is prone to fracture.  And Guthrie makes sure Glass does just that.

The novel opens with Glass in the office of the prison psychiatrist.  It is a mandatory visit and Nick is less than pleased to be there.  The psychiatrist is an instrument Mr Guthrie uses to foreshadow and then define the undoing of Nick.  He is a skewed sentiment of sanity in a dark and insane world.  A world that envelopes Nick and threatens to destroy him.  And Nick is the perfect object—he is prone to fantasy, and as the novel progresses, he begins to mistake his fantasy for reality.  It is a trip into hell.  A trip the reader knows is coming with each progressive sentence, paragraph and page, but is helpless to stop.

Slammer is a wonderfully executed novel.  It is reminiscent of Guthrie’s first novel Two-Way Split, but its execution is better (amazingly).  It is short, 263 pages, but it does not lack meaning or story.  The prose is hardboiled, lean and smart.  The dialogue is crisp, and the atmosphere is weighty and oppressive.  It is a fine example of the new noir: a hopeless, distraught and shameless (in a good way) vision of the human condition.

This is an encore post.  It originally went live on November 23,2009.

New Sam McCain Novel: Riders on the Storm

There is good news on the private eye front.  Ed Gorman’s new Sam McCain novel is scheduled for release October 15, 2014.  It is titled Riders on the Storm, which is a Doors song, and based solely on the title (and rock band who made it famous), it may be a little darker than the previous McCain titles.  The publisher is Pegasus.  The description at Amazon (slightly edited because it seemingly has a spoiler) reads:

“Veteran Steve Donovan brutally belittles and finally savagely beats his old friend Will Cullen when Cullen announces he's joined the anti-war group. 

“When Cullen is found murdered, the obvious suspect is Steve Donovan, but Sam has serious doubts about the man’s guilt.  At least three people had reasons to murder Cullen, and Sam begins to suspect he’ll discover even more as his investigation heats up,in this dynamic new politically charged novel by a veteran of the form.”

TROTSKY'S RUN by Richard Hoyt

Trotsky’s Run is my first experience with the work of Richard Hoyt.  It was published in 1982 by William Morrow, and I ran across the mass market edition released by TOR in 1983.  It is an espionage novel with a cleverly devised plot, humor, a little tradecraft, a bunch of history—both now and then—and a somewhat satirical view of cold war paranoia.

Two of the major players in the novel are historical figures.  Leon Trotsky and Kim Philby.  Trotsky’s role in the novel develops slowly as the novel unfolds, but Philby’s role is central and obvious.  Philby wants out of the Soviet Union—where he defected in 1963—and he has information to trade with the United States for safe passage. 

Philby’s claim is bombastic.  The likely victor of the upcoming presidential election is an officer of the KGB.  The information is received a few weeks before the election, and the CIA is in a quagmire.  Is Philby’s intelligence factual, or is it nothing more than Soviet disinformation.  A quick and dirty plan is hatched; two CIA officers will extract Philby from Yalta, where he is vacationing, and interrogate him to determine the validity of the evidence.

Trotsky’s Run is as smooth an espionage novel as you will read.  The prose is sparse and economical.  It is long on narrative and short on dialogue.  The plot is crisp, complicated, and at times outlandish—although not in bad way, but rather in a mildly satirical manner that feeds off extreme cold war paranoia. 

Kim Philby’s historical narrative is interesting and, what I know about his activities before he defected, even accurate.  His role in the capture and execution of dozens of agents in communist Albania, and in the capture of Soviet defector Konstantin Volkov are two of the more interesting, but also detailed—if briefly—Philby’s early marriage to a young Austrian communist in Vienna, and his later pro-fascist stint as a journalist in the Spanish Civil War.

Trotsky’s Run is an excellent novel.  It is witty and humorous—in the manner a suspense novel should be humorous, through the dialogue.  It is both intelligent and entertaining, and while the overarching plot is somewhat fantastical Mr Hoyt is able to make it seem believable by infusing the storyline with historical events and peoples—think Trotsky and Philby—that give it a certain plausibility.  

NEW, IMPROVED MURDER by Ed Gorman

New, Improved Murder is the second novel published by Ed Gorman, and the first (of five) in his Jack Dwyer private eye series.  It was originally published by St. Martin’s Press in hardcover, and it is currently available in a Ramble House Double with Rough Cut.  The edition to the right is the 1986 Ballantine paperback.

Jack Dwyer is a former cop who got the acting bug after he was cast in a local public safety commercial.  He started acting lessons, quit his job, and applied for his private investigator’s license (in very nearly that order).  He also took a security guard job to keep the wolves away.  The novel opens with Dwyer on a riverside park murder site.  He was called there by a panicked former girlfriend.  A girlfriend who left him for another man, and a girlfriend Dwyer isn’t quite over.

The woman is nearly comatose when Dwyer arrives.  She is distraught with grief and fear.  The man who replaced Dwyer in her life is dead in the grass, and the gun that killed him is in her hand.  The police arrive and everything fits neatly into a little package.  No real investigation, other than into Jane Branigan—the girlfriend—and the case seems open and shut, but something about it bothers Dwyer.  That something may be nothing more than his feelings for Jane, but Dwyer doesn’t think she did it.

New, Improved Murder is a seriously good private eye novel.  Jack Dwyer is a likable, compassionate, sometimes self-doubting reluctant good guy, who tends to stand on the outside.  He is working class top to bottom, and the world through his eyes is a harsh, troubled place, with just enough hope and romanticism to keep him from the maudlin.         

The story is a straight shot.  It is fast, dirty, and entertaining.  The mystery is fine edged with enough clues for the reader to guess the killer, but nothing is in plain sight and it is doubtful most readers will guess it before the final pages.  The supporting cast is a mixture of blackmailing psychopaths, prostitutes, nasty businessmen, broken children, and everyman scared; scared of life, death, and nearly everything else.  The amazing thing, it is all this and funny, too.  Not the story, or the characters, but rather Dwyer’s take on the world as seen through his semi-smart ass commentary and dialogue.

PAY THE DEVIL by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins)

Pay the Devil is the seventh novel published by Harry Patterson.  It was released as a hardcover by Barrie Rockcliff in 1963, and it languished out of print for nearly four decades until it was reissued in mass market in 1999.  I haven’t been able to corroborate this, but the paperback reissue has the feel of a light reworking; the dialogue, particularly in the opening chapter, has that peculiar light wispy droll of Mr Patterson’s later work—

“‘I’d say so, Josh.  Let me have that spyglass of yours, and I wish you wouldn’t call me general.  I only had one hundred and twenty-three men left in the brigade when General Lee gave me the appointment.  Now it’s more like twenty.’”

There is also the oddity of the protagonist’s man servant—former slave—Joshua who is referred to, both in narrative and dialogue, as “Josh” in the prologue and “Joshua” throughout the rest of the novel.  My guess is Mr Patterson added the prologue for the mass market issue, and (perhaps) lightly touched up the remainder. 

Clay Fitzgerald is a worn out Confederate surgeon and cavalryman.  He has been at war four long years, and as the novel opens he joins General Lee on his march to surrender to Ulysses S. Grant.  General Lee summarily releases Clay and his men from duty, and they quietly slink away before the surrender. 

Clay inherited a family estate in the West of Ireland called Claremont, and he and Joshua make the journey as something like a long overdue vacation. Unfortunately the Ireland they find is less than an idyllic playground.  It is inhabited by a poverty-stricken working class, and an abusive ruling landowner class.  On arrival Clay is disinterested in the politics of the place, but circumstance and conscience prohibits neutrality.  Clay takes the identity of a local folk hero called “Captain Swing,” and metes out a sort of vigilante justice.

Pay the Devil is the longest, and most complexly plotted of Mr Patterson’s early work.  It is something of a gothic with its Irish moors, night rides, and even a forbidden romance.  The setting is beautifully rendered by Mr Patterson with his usual deft, and almost lyrical prose—

“Clouds moved over the face of the sun and a great shadow spilled darkness like a fast-spreading stain across the ground.”

The historical aspect of the novel is also nicely rendered.  The description of General Lee on his march to surrender.  The idea of Irish Home Rule, and even better the names of the secret societies that advanced the idea, “Fenian Brotherhood,” and “Ribbonmen.”  The contempt the landowners had for the working class; primarily protestant vs. Catholic.  The primary antagonist, Sir George Hamilton, summed the gentry’s view of the Irish—

“‘But the standards one would apply in England cannot be applied here.  These people are animals.’”          

However, there are also elements of the novel that are flat.  The narrative is too reliant on dialogue to set up major plot twists, setting, and character development.  The antagonists—land owners—are described as nothing short of the embodiment of evil, while the working class are something close to trodden angels.  A little too black and white even for an adventure novel, but forgivable because of the swift action and the well-developed setting.

Pay the Devil is not an example of Mr Patterson’s better work, but it is an entertaining novel.  It has an abundance of action.  The Captain Swing concoction is something akin to Zorro.  And there are several entertaining vintage slang words, including “lucifer” matches, “moonlighters,” and a wonderful summation of 19^th century cesarean section as “a form of homicidal witchcraft.”

Thrift Shop Book Covers: Panic in Philly

Panic in Philly is the 15^th title in Don Pendleton’s enduring The Executioner men’s adventure series.  It made its debut in a nifty paperback original published by Pinnacle in 1973, but the edition that first caught my eye—in the Shopko Book Department in the late-1980s most probably—as a teenager was Pinnacle’s reissue.  It’s more than a touch corny, but it is so late-1980s from the pastel trimmings to the pastel blue dress to the big hair, and even the Uzi in Bolan’s hand.  All it is missing is an explosion in the background with a couple bad guys being blown in the air. 

The opening paragraph:

“Panic came to Philadelphia on a cool Spring morning and its name was death—purposeful, clad in black as a symbol of utter finality, moving swiftly in its inevitability.”

One of my favorite components of a Mack Bolan novel is the Bolan “quote” featured on the first page.  It is a sort of Rockford telephone message without the intentional humor, and bunches of attitude.  And if you’re lucky there may be more than just one.  The quote in Panic in Philly summarily prepares the reader for the battle to come: “So maybe I can’t win this lousy war.  But I’m going to give it one hell of a try.”

TEK NET by William Shatner and Ron Goulart

Tek Net is the ninth (and final) Tek novel published by William Shatner.  It, like all of the Tek novels, was written by Ron Goulart.  The novels are futuristic detective stories detailing the exploits of Cosmos Detective Agency operatives Jake Cardigan and Sid Gomez.  I read, and really enjoyed, the first four novels in the series back in the 1990s, but somehow lost track of it when the later books were released.  When I stumbled on Tek Net in a thrift shop a few weeks ago I couldn’t help picking it up, and I’m glad I did.

The European Teklords have developed a new delivery method for tek—a digital drug that delivers addictive virtual fantasies.  The new delivery system eliminates the need for chips and headgear.  The new tek will be a boon for the European cartels, and force their American counterparts out of business.  Jill Bernardino, a former tek addict and second wife (of four) of Sid Gomez, becomes a pawn between the American and European Teklords when she learns about the plans.  She is kidnapped in quick order, but not before she makes a call to Sid pleading for help.

Tek Net is less science fiction than action.  It is told in an almost frantic pace—the plot moves like a rocket from scene to scene.  There is no down time.  Every word has the overwhelming purpose of moving the plot forward.  Sid Gomez is the center point of the story, and Jake Cardigan (the usual primary player) is basically in a supporting role.  There is not much mystery about the story’s trajectory (or final destination), but it is populated by a long list of villains who range from frightening to hilarious (in a good way).  Think of a geriatric gangster who paints, and has a flock of virtual sheep in his backyard.

The setting is a future Southern California, which is simply known as Greater Los Angeles.  A place where smog has gotten so bad it is unbreathable in places, and robots do the majority of the dirty work.  There are a surprising number of “attractive” robots, an impressive amount of tek addicts, and even more unscrupulous citizens.  A particularly vivid scene is a dilapidated theme park called Hollywood Starwalk Park.  It is a sort of robotic version of a wax museum where robots made up as Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin recreate classic films—

“When the blonde actress on Gable’s left winked at Jill, her plastiglass eyeball fell out.  It hit the simulated white gravel of the path and bounced once.”

Tek Net is pure fun.  There is not a whit of character development, and the science fiction tends to be less futuristic than simply renaming common items with an often cold and futuristic sound—“vidphone,” “guardbots,” “plastiglass,” “skull-mail,” etc.—but for what the story lacks in literary development it makes up for in brisk, straight-forward action, and a sort of cordial humor.  

HELL IS TOO CROWDED by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins)

Hell is too Crowded is the fifth novel published by Harry Patterson.  It was released as a hardcover by John Long in 1962, and it is the most mature—both stylistically and thematically—of Mr Patterson’s earliest novels.

Matthew Brady is an American structural engineer who is in London after completing a job in Kuwait.  In the early morning hours Brady is on the tail end of a two day jag when a frightened young woman named Marie Duclos stumbles out of the fog.  Marie is returning home from a party, and she tells Brady a man is following her.

Brady accompanies the young woman to her Chelsea flat where everything changes.  He passed out on the couch, and his next conscious moment is the police questioning him for the murder of Marie.  The rest of the novel is Brady’s attempt to discover who framed him for the murder, and why.

Hell is too Crowded is a brilliantly plotted novel with a depth of setting and atmosphere not previously accomplished by Harry Patterson.  The storyline—at least the hook—is similar to David Goodis’ Dark Passage, but the execution is purely Jack Higgins’ adventure.  Matthew Brady is a man apart—he is completely isolated from the world around him, and the setting and atmosphere denote this isolation from the first moment.  The fog, the near emptiness of the river, and the sound of a ship’s foghorn combine to create an uneasy tension of separation, which is the underlying theme of the novel—

“A ship moved down the Pool of London sounding its foghorn like the last of the dinosaurs lumbering aimlessly through a primeval swamp, alone in a world that was already alien.”

The plotline is straightforward, but it is developed seamlessly; one scene effortlessly leads to the next, and Mr Patterson doles out clues timely, but with an unhurried pace.  The first clue is in the first paragraph, but it isn’t realized until the last pages of the novel. 

Hell is too Crowded is very nearly a perfect thriller.  It is a mixture of noir and adventure, and is written in Mr Patterson’s unique, almost lyrical, prose—

“There was a taste of fog in the air, that typical London fog that drifts up from the Thames, yellow and menacing, wrapping the city in its shroud.”

There are also a few interesting slang terms in the novel, including “grass,” which basically means snitch, and “doss,” which means easy.  There is also a solid joke in the narrative—if you know Harry Patterson was a school teacher—when an homely assistant to one of the villains, a Hindu Priest named Das, is described as “a school mistress.”

Thrift Shop Book Covers: Berserker Man

Berserker Man is the third Berserker novel (and fourth book) by Fred Saberhagen.  Its debut was a fashionable paperback original by ACE in 1979, which is the exact edition that caught my eye.  The artwork is a Boris Vallejo original, and it is a perfect 1970s science fiction cover.  The colors are vivid (yet somehow muted all the same) with a stark contrast between light and dark.  And, amazingly, it is an image I can look at again and again and see something new; a flash of coral, a uranium splash, an oxidized reflection of fire.

The Berserker stories have been going strong since the 1960s, and even today have a cult following.  A Berserker is a self-replicating war machine, which was design to destroy life.  The name “berserker” was borrowed from Norse legend.  It is defined (in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) as—

“[A]n ancient Scandanavian warrior frenzied in battle and held to be invulnerable.”

The opening paragraph:

“Well, Elly Temesvar thought grayly, we’ve given it a good fight, done better than anyone might have expected, considering how little ship we have to fight it with.”

 

This is the second in a new series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the cover art as for the story or author. 

THE GUNS OF NAVARONE by Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean is a legend of the adventure novel.  His work, especially his first several novels, is the standard all other adventure novels are measured.  And it is a large and uncomfortable fit for nearly every novel and writer in the genre.  Much of his best work is about the daring exploits of men at war, which is interesting because Mr MacLean held antiwar viewpoints.  In an essay he wrote for Companion Book Club, which is included as an introduction to recent editions of his novel The Guns of Navarone, he stated—

“I wanted to write a war story—with the accent on the story.  Only a fool would pretend that there is anything noble or splendid about modern warfare, but there is no denying that it provides a great abundance of material for a writer, provided no attempt is made to glorify it or exploit its worst aspects.”

I have also read Mr MacLean was disappointed in the Where Eagles Dare film, which he developed as a screenplay before writing the novel.  In Chris Willis’s biographical essay for its Alistair MacLean entry in British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1960, Ian Chapman, MacLean’s editor at Collins, quoted Mr MacLean’s reaction to Where Eagles Dare—

“This is terrible!  I didn’t kill as many Germans as this.  I was writing an antiwar film.”

I can only imagine a wry smile, or a half chuckle when Mr MacLean said those words because as a fan of both the film and the novel I can’t possibly see the “anti” part of the war story, but it has been some years since I read the novel; maybe I missed something?

I bring all this up because I recently reread Alistair MacLean’s second novel The Guns of Navarone, and it, somehow, was better than I remembered.  Which is impressive because I remember it being pretty damn good.  Navarone is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea where the Germans built a nearly impervious artillery emplacement deep in its stone cliffs.  The Allies have made every attempt to destroy the guns because with them in place the Germans’ control the passage to the small British held island Kheros where some 1,200 soldiers are stranded.

In a last ditch effort British Intelligence creates a strike force composed of five men.  The men are tasked to infiltrate Navarone and destroy the guns before the Royal Navy attempts its rescue of the men on Kheros.  If they fail, the naval ships will be destroyed by the guns, and the soldiers on Kheros will be captured, or worse.

The Guns of Navarone is a larger than life war story painted on a small canvas; the action is limited to a single objective with extraordinarily fine plotting, and the perspective is limited to the eyes of the strike force.  The plot and action live up to the old writing adage, “Get your protagonist up a tree.  Throw rocks at him.  Then get him down.”  In this case, the tree is Navarone, and the rocks are more boulders than stones because anything that can go wrong does—from wild weather to an expectant well-trained German occupation force and a nearly impenetrable fortress of stone protecting the guns. 

The action is compressed into four wildly eventful days.  The men are dispatched to Navarone on a dilapidated Greek fishing boat, which miraculously not only gets to the destination, but makes it through a heavy storm and a German patrol boat.  Once on the island it takes everything, including some luck, for the team to reach its destination.  The team is comprised of five men who, save two, have never met or worked together before the mission.  The core of the team is comprised of three men—Keith Mallory, the leader and famous mountaineer before the war, Andrea, a former Colonel in the Greek army, and Dusty Miller, a smart-aleck American who spends a great deal of his time trying to escape duty. 

The characters are built for the story, but there are surprising moments of something more.  One of the men, a young mountaineer named Andy Stevens is driven by fear.  The turmoil he creates, and endures, is quite powerful.  His true fear is the men around him will know he is a coward, and he will do anything to keep his secret.  The characters, for the most part, are simple designs of superhuman composites; Andrea is a killing machine, Miller is the humorist, and Mallory is the responsible leader who thinks his way through trouble.  Interestingly, like much of Mr MacLean’s early novels, there is not a female to be found.

The Guns of Navarone was originally published in 1957 and it is as exciting and relevant today as it was when it was released.  It is a representation of the best of Alistair MacLean’s work.  The plot is tight and tricky—in a good way with both betrayal and surprise—and believable in that over the top manner MacLean was able to do so well.

Veronica Mars - Movie Trailer

It’s official.  Veronica Mars the movie is scheduled for release March 14, 2014.  It looks like it is old school as far as the cast—all the usual suspects show up in the trailer, including Mac, Dick, Logan, Keith (Dad), and Wallace. 

Thrift Shop Book Covers: The Freedom Trap



The Freedom Trap is the eighth novel published by Desmond Bagley.  Its United States debut was a hardcover published by Doubleday in 1971, but it is the Fawcett Crest paperback edition that caught my eye.  The cover art has everything an adventure novel should—a frogman, a bikini clad beauty, an exploding boat in the background, and the tide breaking onshore.  The artist, as far as I know, is unknown, but it is a fine example of a 1970s Fawcett paperback.

The novel itself is pure adventure.  Reardon is a high class criminal who is hired by a man named Mackintosh for a simple job—knock over a postman delivering a shipment of uncut diamonds and hand them over to Mackintosh and get paid.  But like everything, nothing is as simple as it seems and Reardon finds himself in prison serving 20 years.  And all this in only the first 38 pages; and it astonishingly gets better.

It is widely believed The Freedom Trap was inspired by Soviet spy—or more accurately British double agent—George Blake’s October 22, 1966 escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison.  He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 42 years in 1961.  The plot is similar to Jack Higgins’ 1967 Paul Chavasse novel The Dark Side of the Street, which was also likely influenced heavily by the George Blake story (due to the timing of its release) and is an excellent adventure novel in its own right.       

The opening paragraph:

“Mackintosh’s office was, unexpectedly, in the City.  I had difficulty in finding it because it was in that warren of streets between Holborn and Fleet Street, which is a maze to one accustomed to the grid-iron pattern of Johannesburg.  I found it at last in a dingy building; a well-worn brass plate announcing innocuously that this Dickensian structure held the registered office of Anglo-Saxon Holdings, Ltd.”        

The Freedom Trap was translated to film as “The Mackintosh Man” starring Paul Newman as Reardon.  The plot, and it has been several years since I have seen it, follows the novel quite closely.  It was directed by John Huston and written for the screen by Walter Hill.

Although for all excitement, action and even history of the novel, it is the cover on that 1973 Fawcett Crest paperback (M1789) that made me pick it up in the first place.  It’s a shame these lurid covers and well told stories are relics limited to thrift shops and forgotten used books stores. 

This is the first of a new series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the cover art as the story or author.