Thu 21 Apr 2016
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: MAURICE HELBRANT – Narcotic Agent.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , True crime[8] Comments
MAURICE HELBRANT – Narcotic Agent. Ace Double-15, paperback, abridged, 1953. Originally published in hardcover by Vanguard Press, 1941.
This is one of the most expensive books in my collection, so I read it carefully, but when I finished I had to wonder what all the fuss is about.
Don’t get me wrong; Narcotic Agent is a tough, reasonably well-written book, and as a document from the days when attitudes towards drugs and drug-users were very different, it’s a vivid artifact of its time.
Helbrant was a Federal Narcotics agent for more than 15 years, beginning in the days of Prohibition, and during that time he seems to have carried out his job with admirable professionalism, which comes through very effectively in his account of those days: calm, matter-of-fact, and untinged by that megalomania one finds in the ghost-written memoirs of J. Edgar Hoover. He’s just a guy doing a dangerous job and doing it well.
It’s this professionalism in fact that mitigates against Narcotic Agent as literature. There’s no clear narrative line here, just a simple recounting of case after case (after case, after case…) of him working, usually undercover, with drug addicts and stool pigeons to catch their dealers and thence to the organized gangs of dealers.
Helbrant occasionally stops to reflect on the nature of Narcotics and their effect on Society in his day, but not often; usually just a few lines about why he’s doing all this and then back to the job at hand. One appreciates the competence, and the absence of sanctimony — rare in books about Drugs in those days — but the result is only readable, not entertaining.
All of which left me wondering why Narcotic Agent is such a valuable book. Copies can go for as much as $5,000, which is surprising for a tome as ordinary as this. Perhaps someday I’ll flip it over and see if the other side is any good….
April 21st, 2016 at 7:54 pm
I’d sell my copy to anyone reading this for $5000, that’s for sure. But the going rate these days, now that the Internet has come along, is in the $500 to $1000, for nicer copies. And I’m not sure that my copy is all that nice.
April 21st, 2016 at 8:38 pm
My copy is quite nice, and the flip side is inscribed by the author. Even at that, I doubt that it would bring in $5000.
April 21st, 2016 at 8:44 pm
It’s not NARCOTICS AGENT that makes this Ace Double so valuable, it’s the book on the flip side, JUNKIE. “William Lee” being the pseudonym of William S. Burroughs, author of NAKED LUNCH. Bill C. has himself a nice little gold mine with his inscribed copy of JUNKIE.
April 21st, 2016 at 10:28 pm
I missed a few copies on abebooks when I went looking before. Some dealers list only the “William Lee” half, and Dan, I take it back. There is someone asking $5000 for a signed copy, but there is another signed copy you can have for only $2000. I don’t believe my copy is signed. Since Burroughs died almost 20 years ago, I guess it’s too late now.
April 21st, 2016 at 10:23 pm
Probably not a gold mine but a nice thing to have around.
April 22nd, 2016 at 4:15 am
Just hasd a quick mental flash of someone putting out $5K for a copy of this “signed by the author” and discovering it was signed by Maurice Helbrant.
April 22nd, 2016 at 8:29 am
For the curious:
Other online reviews of NARCOTIC AGENT
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/feb/18/william-burroughs-junky-maurice-helbrant-narcotic-agent
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/maurice-colonel-smokey-helbrant/narcotic-agent/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4625414-narcotic-agent
And here’s the Wikipedia entry for JUNKIE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkie_%28novel%29
in which Ace Books is mentioned disparagingly, NARCOTIC AGENT is referred to as a novel:
“Ace Books primarily catered to New York City subway riders, and competed in the same market as comic book, true crime, and detective fiction publishers. Ace published no hardcover books, only cheap paperbacks, which sold for very little; Burroughs earned less than a cent royalty on each purchase.
“Most libraries at the time did not buy Ace books, considering them trivial and without literary merit, and Ace paperbacks were never reviewed by literary critics. At the time of its publication, the novel was in a two-book (‘dos-Ã -dos’) omnibus edition (known as an ‘Ace Double’) alongside a previously published 1941 novel called Narcotic Agent by Maurice Helbrant.”
April 23rd, 2016 at 6:21 pm
Ace did eventually do doubles with Simenon and a few others of some literary merit, and once in a while a book that had a hardcover incarnation and genuine reviews — Doubles by Will Oursler and a few others, but as said they were mostly PBK originals.
The thing I always hated was when there was something I would have liked to have read only to find it was in tandem with some rare collectable. It happened quite often with comics and pulps when I was collecting.