A. S. FLEISCHMAN – Look Behind You Lady

Gold Medal 223; paperback original. First printing, February 1952; 2nd printing, Gold Medal 572, 1956. Hardcover reprint: Herbert Jenkins, UK, 1962, as Chinese Crimson. To be published by Stark House Press in late 2006 as a trade paperback combined with The Venetian Blonde.

   Albert Sidney Fleischman, known to his friends and colleagues as Sid, was born in 1920, and at 86, thankfully he’s still around to see publisher Greg Shepard bring a couple of his old Gold Medal paperbacks back into print.

   His career in the adult mystery field was relatively short, beginning with a couple of Phoenix Press mysteries in 1948 and 1949, then shifting to Gold Medal for five paperback originals between 1951 and 1963, with one from Ace making an appearance in 1954.

   After that he became an author of children’s books, winning the Newberry Medal for The Whipping Boy (1987), and the creator of Bullwhip Griffin – the movie about his adventures was based on the book By The Great Horn Spoon (1963).

   Greg always does a great job in adding material to his books about the authors he publishes, so I won’t try to come up with any more background like this on my own. Nor will I say anything about The Venetian Blonde, one of my favorite mystery titles of all time, and I love the cover as well – they go hand-in-hand together as one truly great match-up.

Blonde

   To introduce you to Look Behind You Lady (no comma, and I’m not sure why), you might pretend that you’re at the newsstand in 1952, or the drug-store spinner rack, and you’d see the cover, designed to catch anyone’s eye, 100% guaranteed. (Truth be told, I was 10 at the time, so it had to have been the 1956 reprint that snagged my attention.)

   Then once in the would-be purchaser’s hand, he would have looked inside the front cover to read the following blurb:

   She dipped the coal of the cigarette in the water and it died with a thin sizzle. Then she rose from the tub like a mermaid, turning her back to me, and held her arms up. I wrapped the towel around her, sarong-like. Her hands closely softly over mine as I tucked in a corner.

   “I was mad at you when you walked out,” she whispered, “but I like the way you walked back in.”

   I turned her around and kissed her lips.

   “You’re getting wet,” she said.

   “Stop talking,” I said.

   Not a word wasted, and if you could pass this up, you’re a better person than I, or your tastes are so different from mine that you should be reading another review anyway.

   But just in case a quarter was all that you had in your pocket, back in 1952, and you needed just that one extra nudge to tip the balance toward paying the storekeeper and on your way with the book, all you would have had to do was to turn two more pages and start reading from the top of Chapter One:

   She said, “May I sit down?”

   I looked up from my vinho e licores at the girl standing beside my table. I was on the marble terrace of the Hotel China Seas in Macao, killing time between shows, and feeling a little surly. Along the hotel wall a Filipino swing band was giving the week-enders from Hong Kong something to dance to.

   “Talking to me?” I muttered.

   “Talking to you,” she said.

   She was wearing a smart white dress, and her dark hair was cut short, with bangs. I didn’t like the bangs. The dress had a mandarin collar, which was a shame, because a plunging neckline would have been something worth plunging for.

   “You can sit down,” I said. “I was just leaving.”

   “Please –”

   I looked at her and smiled only to myself. Sure, I thought, there’s not much paradise left in the Orient, but there’s Macao. Don’t bring your wife unless you’re just interested in the view from the old Portuguese fort on the hill. Macao attracts the finest tramps in the world, its streets are paved with gold, and gambling is a way of life. If you can’t enjoy yourself in Macao, there’s something wrong with you – not Macao. Or you brought your life.

   “Look,” I said. “Is every woman in Macao on the make? Every time I buy myself a drink some girl comes along and wants to muscle in on the act.”

Lady

   Ka-ching! Sold, am I right, or am I right? If you can’t read this story and hear the voices of Humphrey Bogart as rather world-weary stage magician Bruce Flemish and Lauren Bacall as Donna Van Deerlin, the lady above who has both a room number and a proposition for him, you haven’t been watching as many of the movies of the 1940s and early 1950s as is good for you. Something’s been missing from your video diet that you ought to remedy as soon as possible.

   More. The owner of the Hotel China Seas is Senhor Gonsalves, a gentleman who is missing both his thumbs, and he also has a small task for Flemish to perform as part of his act, a task involving the not-so-small sum of $10,000 Hong Kong dollars. Sydney Greenstreet.

   One of Senhor Gonsalves’ many assistants is a mousy sort of fellow named Josef Nakov, who is handy with a gun. Peter Lorre.

   From page 144:

   I was on my feet now and had a cigarette going in my fingers. Gilberto held Donna’s arms behind her. Phebe sat on the edge of the bed, like an outcast, her head buried in her hands. Nakov held a fresh, big gun and looked supremely happy. “O.K.,” I said, “so you’re going to murder us.”

   “We can find another word,” Gonsalves said, his hands stuck in his pockets. “Eliminate. Murder is for your Chicago gangsters. In politics, we eliminate. It is death on a higher social level.”

   “We’ll appreciate the difference,” I said, “but why bother? We’re not very clear on what the hell your game is. You must be getting damned scared to want to murder everyone in sight.”

   Nakov says something about the intelligence of Donna, who had walked back into Gonsalves’ hands after a brief escape.

   I turned on Gonsalves angrily. “Make him shut up,” I said. “If he licks your boots once more in public, I’ll puke.”

   You can cast Gilberto, young punk working for Gonsalves, and Phebe, a somewhat shopworn stripper whose act follows that of Flemish on stage, yourself.

   The plot has something to do with the Communist Reds and/or the opium trade, and it matters not very much in the long run. But there are twists to be had, and thrills of the nature above, and what more could you want of a book of exotic Oriental danger and intrigue like this?

–written in September 2006.