Sat 13 Feb 2016
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: C. J. HENDERSON – No Free Lunch.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
C. J. HENDERSON – No Free Lunch. Jack Hagee #1. Diamond, paperback original, 1992.
Jack Hagee had his genesis in Wayne Dundee’s Hardboiled, and the short stories were collcted by Gary Lovisi under the title What You Pay For (Gryphon Publications, 1990). I’ve seen them in neither form. Hagee is an ex-cop from Pittsburgh, and his home now is New York City. It’s a Big Apple decayed as that of Vachss and Solamita, and the first few pages are as grim, angst-ridden, and overwritten as anything you are likely to see.
Hagee is visited by a singularly unappetizing fat man from Pennsylvania, whose fianceé has disappeared. The would-be client fears she has fallen with bad company at home and come with them to NYC, and wants Hagee to find her. Hagee, reluctant but broke, accepts the case.
A trip to the Pennsylvania hometown reveals that the lady was a tramp and the client not as harmless as he appeared. Hagee returns to the city and begins hunting down the players. When he starts finding them people begin to die.
This got some nice advance notices, including one by Richard Prather likening the thrill he got from it to the one he had upon reading Raymond Chandler. I’m not sure about Prather; maybe his memory failed him, or could be he mistook indigestion for a thrill. Something, anyway.
Prose sample describing a woman’s red hair: “It jumped in long, fierce waves whenever she turned her head, crashing against her bare shoulders like the tide against white sand. It teased the blood with sparkling shocks — flaming crackles, the kind of look men kill their best friends over.” It all sounds painful.
The writing gets in the way of the story. In some places it’s pretty good writing, in some places abysmally bad. but it gets in the way of the story. The whole thing was suggestive to me of an attempt by Mickey Spillane to imitate Raymond Chandler. There’s enough mindless violence and brutality to make up five modern PI novels. If you liked Spillane and Mike Hammer, you might like Henderson and Jack Hagee. I did (sort of), but I don’t.
The Jack Hagee novels —
No Free Lunch (1992)
Something For Nothing (1993)
Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)
Jack Hagee has also appeared in short stories and graphic novels. For more information, please consult the Thrilling Detective website.
February 13th, 2016 at 8:12 pm
I know Henderson had quite a few fans — he died a couple of years ago — but I think Barry nailed it in this review.
This is the book that helped convince me that I didn’t HAVE to collect every PI novel ever written.
February 13th, 2016 at 8:28 pm
I hate to say anything about a fellow graduate of HARDBOILED, but no, no thanks.
February 14th, 2016 at 7:50 am
C.J. Henderson cornered me a couple times at book conventions telling me about his latest plot for a PI to fight and defeat Cthulhu. As we all know Lovecraft’s mythology made it clear that you did not want to fool around with the great god. I started to avoid Henderson because I simply did not like his fiction.
The last few years he didn’t make things easier by often announcing in the dealer’s room “Welcome to the wonderful world of Me”.