Fri 30 Apr 2010
Reviewed by David L. Vineyard: JAMES HADLEY CHASE – I’ll Get You for This.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[31] Comments
JAMES HADLEY CHASE – I’ll Get You For This. Jarrolds, UK, hardcover, 1946. Avon Monthly Novel #18, US, digest-sized paperback, 1951. Filmed as Lucky Nick Cain, 1951, with George Raft, Coleen Gray & Walter Rilla.
That’s Chester Cain, the hero of James Hadley Chase’s novel I’ll Get You For This, a gambler with a fast gun that would make Mike Hammer or Race Williams blink twice and a barely legal reputation. Like pulpster Gordon Young’s Don Everhard from an earlier age, he’s a fast shooting two-fisted professional gambler who is a law unto himself.
In I’ll Get You For This Cain has just arrived in Paradise Palm, a coastal beauty spot where he hopes to spend a little vacation time after a grueling few months of profitable gambling up north. He has a bankroll, and he’s in the mood to enjoy it.
And Paradise Palm seems just the kind of place to enjoy it all. The beaches are stacked with beautiful women if various states of extreme immodesty and even the cops call him sir. In fact, people couldn’t be nicer.
After I’d stared at the flowers, I concentrated on the women, driving in big luxury cars or walking along the sidewalks, or even riding bicycles. It was as good as an Earl Carrol show. There wasn’t a woman who hadn’t stripped down to the bare essentials. My eyes hadn’t overeaten themselves like this in years.
And if they don’t give him the key to the city or roll out the red carpet, they do just about everything short of that. The owner of the local casino, Don Speratza, even calls him up personally when he checks in at the hotel, to invite him for a night of recreational gaming and offer female companionship. Then Ed Killeano, the city administrator* calls up to tell him how glad they are to have him.
By now Cain’s a bit suspicious, but he’s willing to play along and see where all this is going. The only man who acts at all normal is John Herrick, a reform candidate who isn’t excited about trouble like Cain showing up in town.
But Cain doesn’t have long to worry about that when he is introduced to Miss Wonderly:
By the time I’d recovered my breath, she was standing at my side. Her perfume was Essence Imperiale Russe (the perfume that quickened the pulse of kings). I can’t begin to describe what it did to my pulse.
Speratza was looking at me anxiously. “Miss Wonderly,” he said, and raised his eyebrows…
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Speratza go off, and then I gave the whole of my attention to Miss Wonderly. I thought she was terrific. I liked the long wave of her hair, and her curves — particularly her curves. Her breasts were like Cuban pineapples.
“This calls for a drink,” I said, beckoning to the barman. “What part of Paradise did you escape from?”
“I didn’t escape,” she said, laughing, “I’m out on parole…”
That mention of the perfume brand may have been picked up from Peter Cheyney, whose heroes seemed to be hypnotized by the Narcisse Noir his femme fatales always wore. Later James Bond did this sort of brand name thing with a bit more style and flair, Fleming borrowing some of the Americanized elements of Cheyney and Chase for the Bond saga.
But paradise doesn’t remain paradise very long and it is only the next day when a hungover Cain finds himself in a place more familiar to him:
The reception clerk looked like he was going to throw up. His face was pale green.
“Mr. Chester Cain,” he said, in a far-away voice.
That seemed to give the ugly guy a buzz.
“Sure?” The reception clerk nodded.
The guy faced me. His flat puss was loaded with viciousness.
“We know all about you,” he said. “I’m Flaggerty of the Homicide Bureau. You’re in a hell of a jam, Cain.”
I knew I had to talk if it killed me.
“You’re crazy,” I said. “I didn’t do it.”
“When I find a rat with your reputation locked in with a murdered man I don’t have to look all that far to find his killer,” Flaggerty sneered. “You’re under arrest, and you’d better start talking.”
I tried to think, but my mind wasn’t working. I felt like hell, and my head throbbed and pounded.
It looks bad, especially since the dead man in question is Herrick — the one man in town who hadn’t offered Cain a glad hand and the key to the city. Killeano, the city administrator offers to help, but somehow Cain doesn’t trust him or his motives. Luckily for Cain they didn’t count on Clair Wonderly falling for him — she refuses to play the game even when the cops get rough.
Killeano looked at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears. His fat face went yellow with rage. “You bitch!” he said, and slapped her hard across her face.
And Cain lets them know he isn’t finished with them:
Cain ends up teaming with the Feds in the form of a G-Man name Hoskiss, and he and Clair bring down Killeano and Paradise Palms and the dirty racket they are running. (Hoskiss should be a T-Man since the scheme involves counterfeiting, but I suppose we have to give Brit Chase a pass on that mistake.)
But that’s not the end of it. As the gang are awaiting trial, Cain and Clair know they are in danger and try to go to ground, but the gang goes after them, and Cain has to resort to his old skills with a gun to protect them both while he hunts down Bat Thompson, the hood who killed Herrick and is now hunting Clair and him.
I pulled out my electric torch*. The beam lit up a nightmare scene. The girl lay on her side, bent back, half her face was shattered by the heavy bullet from Bat’s gun. Bat lay near her, his hand touched her naked foot. Blood seeped out of him like water from over-boiled cabbage I turned him over. He moved, blinked his eyes, snarled at me.
“So long, Bat,” I said, put the gun to his ear.
And Cain goes home to Clair confident that their reign of fear has ended:
I’ll Get You For This is mid-level Chase, violent and derivative, but compulsively readable and entertaining. Chase still has a following, with many of his books available as free e-books from various sources and his numerous books collectable. He even had his champions in George Orwell, who wrote about him in his famous article “Miss Blandish and Raffles,” and Chase’s friend Graham Greene, who included one of his works in a famous anthology of thrillers.
This despite the fact that Chase was twice accused of plagiarism — notably for his debut No Orchids For Miss Blandish, that sailed a bit too close to William Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary, and later having to apologize to Raymond Chandler for lifting whole passages from one of his books.
But then as Chase is recreating an entire world that existed only in books and films for him he may be forgiven if he sometimes recreated that world too closely.
That said, even in this one you know he lifted the name Wonderly from The Maltese Falcon. It was just a habit he couldn’t — or wouldn’t bother to — break.
Chase only visited the United States twice, but in general made good use of maps and a dictionary of slang in recreating a sort of fractured version of the hardboiled country of James M. Cain, Hammett, and Chandler. His work lacks the surrealism of Peter Cheyney’s Lemme Caution tales, despite which — or maybe because of which — Chase is great fun to read.
His best works sometimes read like a pastiche of a Gold Medal original or noir film.
His novels were great favorites (along with Peter Cheyney) in the famous French serie noir paperback series, and truthfully both he and Cheyney’s fractured Americanisms translated to French are a unique reading experience. Like Jerry Lewis, something may be lost in the translation back into English.
Chase wrote under several names, but other than Chase, was probably best known as Raymond Marshall.
For the most part his plots are clever if not surprising. They move fast, and at their best manage to recreate the kind of doomed noirish atmosphere of the James M. Cain book that first inspired him (The Postman Always Rings Twice) without achieving a single moment of authenticity.
In some ways you could call them the British crime equivalent of spaghetti westerns, the pulp formula boiled down to its purest elements by an eye that experienced it only through books and films.
I’ll Get You For This was made into a forgettable but mildly entertaining film, Lucky Nick Cain, with George Raft and filmed in Italy. It was relatively faithful to the basics of Chase’s plot, and was one of Raft’s better fifties outings.
___
(*) Careful readers will notice certain Anglicisms like city administrator instead of city manager or supervisor or electric torch for flashlight, and colours for colors creep in.
Previously reviewed on this blog:
No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by Bill Crider (1001 Midnights).
Hit and Run, by Steve Lewis.
May 1st, 2010 at 6:33 am
I’m afraid I bought a lot of Chase’s books because of the catchy 2nd-person titles. The books themselves were uniformly routine.
May 1st, 2010 at 11:06 am
Thanks for the wonderful review. Chase doesn’t get much press these days, and when he does it is usually in reference to his first and most notorious book, No Orchids for Miss Blandish. This is a real shame, as he wrote some terrific thrillers with some nice noir tones.
I have read I’ll Get You For This, and agree that it is entertaining, if not Chase’s best. His pre-1950 output was more hard edged than his later books, probably due in large part to the obscenity trials he and his publishers faced in the 1940s. Most of today’s available copies of No Orchids are the edited and revised versions that were the result of those trials. If someone wants to read it, they should search out the original edition.
I have to respectfully disagree with Dan’s take that JHC’s books are uniformly routine. While Chase seldom breaks new ground, his plotting is strong and will have you wanting to know what is going to happen next. There is no “filler” in his plots, but rather a story that comes at you pretty fast. If many of the stories sound “familiar,” keep in mind most were written forty to sixty years ago, and need to be approached with that awareness. The reader who enjoys a quick read (his books are under 200 pages), with a hardboiled and/or noir flavor, will find much to like in James Hadley Chase.
As noted in David’s review, many of Chase’s stories do echo James Cain’s classic books. Shock Treatment is the story of a TV repairman who is enticed by a good looking femme fatale into killing her husband. But, Chase puts his own twist on the ending. And the journey to that ending is quite fun to read. Come Easy – Go Easy transports Cain’s Postman Always Rings Twice diner triangle set-up to a desert gas station, and pits an escaped con against a terrifically written femme fatale. The story plays out quite differently than Cain’s. In a Vain Shadow is another triangle relationship story with murder and money at its heart. A hard to find title, but worth seeking out. Unlike most of Chase’s stories, this one takes place in England and i found it a heckuva read.
While Chase did work a “theme and variation” on his plots, he also wrote some titles that broke his own pattern. The World in My Pocket reads like a Lionel White caper story. It focuses on a group of guys and one gal who heist an armored car. Their getting the payload and what happens to the group afterwards provides a hard-edged and spellbinding story, and the ending is one you won’t forget.
IMO, what Chase did well is create interesting characters, put them in difficult and compromising situations, and let them run with it. I believe he wrote something like eighty books. I’ve read over thirty and enjoyed every one, and I have another dozen on my TBR pile. So many books, so little time.
May 1st, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Chase is an interesting writer because reading him we are willing to forgive a good many flaws. His books are a bit like the rather shop worn blonde who starts to look better as the bar thins out and your choices narrow. By the time you get home with them they seem more attractive than they probably are, but at that point you have likely blunted your critical faculties anyway in choosing to bring them home in the first place and you’re just grateful they are there (sorry, Chase brings out my tawdry side).
I agree with Frank, despite his borrowings, despite his weaknesses, and despite his pretense Chase is a highly entertaining writer. He’s capable of well handled plot twists and once in a while approaches that doom laden sense of inevitable inexorable fate that we associate with noir and particularly with James M. Cain’s books. Sadly, in Chase’s case even when he comes close his voice seems borrowed and less than authentic.
At the same time Dan’s point about the routine quality of the books is neither unfair nor untrue. Frank may well be right that the obscenity trials blunted Chase’s voice in later books, and even among the later ones there are some nice efforts including several caper novels such as the African adventure THE VULTURE IS A PATIENT BIRD and HAVE A NICE KNIGHT, a carefully choreographed Grand Hotel caper novel in which three different sets of crooks and a policeman are maneuvered into a violent climax.
But even then Chase doesn’t quite equal his best instincts in his delivery.
Oh, and I do need to correct myself. In a moment of authorial dyslexia I reversed the title of George Orwell’s famous essay. It’s “Raffles and Miss Blandish” — I guess I put the heiress before the rogue. Though I don’t agree with Orwell (or Graham Greene) about Chase (Chase is a pretender, not a true original voice in the hard boiled school)it’s well worth reading and you can find it easily on-line or in print most recently as the preface to a collection of all of E.W. Hornung’s Raffles short story collections. Much of the championing of Chase was simply because he was English, a case of cultural jingoism trumping critical judgment.
May 1st, 2010 at 2:28 pm
As in all fiction — books and movies — a willing suspension of disbelief is required to engage in and enjoy the story being told. As we all know, it is through this that we are able to relate to, and care about people we know don’t really exist. Likewise, i think certain flaws in a writer’s style or story can be overlooked if the story is strong enough, or the character is interesting enough. The degree to which flaws can be overlooked, it seems to me, depends on the individual. Do Chase’s books have the authentic feel of America in them? No, but for me, I don’t care because the story is enough to carry me along.
Another faux American crime series “suffers” from the same malady as Chase. Carter Brown’s books about American PI Danny Boyd and police detective Al Wheeler were tremendously successful and popular (great McGinnis covers helped, I’m sure!). Carter Brown, as I am sure you know, was the byline for a Brit living in Australia after WWII — Allan Geoffrey Yates. These books were written first and primarily for Australian readers to fill the appetite that Aussies had for American pulp and crime fiction after a ban on American books in 1939. Then the books crossed the Atlantic and were hugely popular here for decades.
But reading them, one has to overlook language and expressions that “ring a bit hollow” to American ears. Still, they are great fun if approached with the proper understanding of what they are — light hearted, expendable fiction.
I’m glad both these guys wrote the books they did. I enjoy the heck out of them. A friend of mine would classify them as “sorbets” – something light for the reading palate between more substantial efforts.
May 1st, 2010 at 4:41 pm
As regards Orwell’s championing of Chase, in the article mentioned he starts off by describing Hornung’s RAFFLES stories and then begins his review of NO ORCHIDS…with the words ‘And now for a header into the cesspool’.He obviously admired Chase’s skill as a writer, but despised that book in particular, and Chase’s output in general (you do sometimes get the impression that Orwell hated popular culture).
George McDonald Fraser was a fan of Chase, and considered NO ORCHIDS as influential as any of the serious books of the period. Given the obscenity trials, and the worries about what the public was reading, I suppose that they were.
I don’t suppose that there are that many points of contact between Chase and Arthur Conan Doyle, but it’s interesting to consider that Doyle began writing his Sherlock Holmes stories with almost no knowledge of London. It’s not really the same as Chase’s English version of the USA, but you do wonder if our view of Victorian London is Doyle’s rather than the real one.
May 1st, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Bradstreet
Granted Conan Doyle knew little about London. Even I knew he had the trains leaving Victoria Station going the wrong direction (for that matter, Watson, an army surgeon, can’t tell rabbit bones from human ones in “The Norwood Builder”). As Vincent Starrett pointed out Doyle and Holmes London isn’t London, but a fantasy world where it is always 1895. But my problem with Chase isn’t the American setting anymore than I mind Elizabeth George or Martha Grimes writing books with British settings. Frankly, even with his slips Chase usually does a damn good job of it.
The problem with Chase is that his borrowed voice is phony, and quite a few critics, Orwell and Greene included, embraced Chase to some extent based on that voice as if, despite his flaws, he was somehow the British equivalent of Cain, Hammett, Chandler, and others. He wasn’t. Frank’s analogy with Carter Brown is much closer to Chase’s place in literature.
Many of British writers grasping at Chase did so to try to claim for a British writer the energy and power of the American school — but Chase didn’t deserve the accolades or the credit. Compared to even some of the minor authentic hard boiled voices just how much of a pretender he was is painfully evident.
And that isn’t a knock. I enjoy Chase as I enjoy Carter Brown and Hank Janson (I like some of the westerns written by British writers too — some that capture that world better than Chase or Brown do the American setting). I think Peter Cheyney is a bit better over all, if only because he did attempt a genuine Brit hard boiled voice and his spy stories in the Dark series achieved something new in that sort of tale. But you wouldn’t find Orwell or Greene embracing Cheyney both because of his politics and because he was a self promoting character they no doubt found distasteful.
But Cheyney for all his many flaws (the Michael Harrison bio isn’t subtitled PRINCE OF HOKUM for nothing)is the one thing Chase, Brown, and Janson can never hope to be — he is authentic — even the sometimes surreal Lemme Caution, an American G-man whose style of narration has to be read to be believed, is a genuine voice that Chase, Brown, and Janson never come near to producing.
Chase’s writing is capable and pleasant, his plots are occasionally clever, and before the obscenity trials he once in a while managed to approach something like the noirish atmosphere of James M. Cain. But entertaining as he was, his voice, far from being the British Cain, is nothing more than the second hand borrowings of a talented mimic, not an originator or creative literary innovator.
Nothing wrong with that, but I do think it is important to point out that Chase was both unfairly branded as trash by some and undeservedly suggested as something more than he was. I think it ought to be enough that he as a talented storyteller who spun some damn good yarns. Anything more than that is gilding the lily.
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:34 am
I bought a copy of his “Twelve Chinks and a Woman,” simply because I simply couldn’t resist that massively un-PC title/
May 2nd, 2010 at 6:35 am
Excuse the two simplys!
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:57 am
David … Your last paragraph sums up Chase nicely, I think. Regarding Hank Jansen, (Stephen Francis), I think his stand-alone books come closer to rising above merely copying American pulp and noir authors than his Hank Jansen series did. But, even then, as exemplified in Accused which i think is his strongest book, he was copying American plots and style. In this case, Cain’s Postman. Still, I found Accused to be one intense read. When dealing with pain, Francis seemed to come closest to finding his own voice. Obscenity trials impacted him, too.
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Curt
Chase and Peter Cheyney both had a talent for titles, and Chase certainly made the most of it, but even there he isn’t an innovator — he was copying Cheyney.
Frank
I agree about the stand alone Janson books by Francis. Like Chase he is great fun to read most of the time. I have no problem with fans arguing how much fun they are to read — but I think they are on shaky grounds when they try to place him on the same level of a Cain or Chandler.
That said his and Cheyney’s influence on French fiction and film has been great. The notorious I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is not only a Chase style novel, it’s a Chase title. And you can argue you would not have the films of Melville and Chabrol without Chase, Cheyney, and their success in serie noir. Rififi, Bob Flambeur, and Borsalino & CO. owe as much to Chase and Cheyney in series noir form as to American hardboiled fiction and films. In fact August LeBreton’s novel RIFIFI reads a good deal like Chase.
Everything from San Antonio and Jean Bruce’s OSS 117 to Leo Malet’s Nestor Burma and Delacorta’s Serge Gorosh and Alba owe a good deal to Chase and Cheyney — in many cases as much as they do to American fiction.
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Chandler’s British publisher forced a public apology from Chase for plagiarizing The Big Sleep in his Requiem for a Blonde, as I recall. Graham Greene liked him though!
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Curt, I believe the exact title is Blonde’s Requiem and it is one of two Chase books that are near impossible to find. (at least, judging by my fruitless efforts.) The other being: Miss Callaghan Comes to Grief. Both are 1940s titles and as such, more violent i would think, than his post 1950s output. I’d love to read them, but alas …
David, I am not familiar with Rififi. Are copies readily available? Guess i need to check the usual outlets.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I see on Amazon that many copies of Rififi are out there. Is the book worth reading? I know, calls for subjective opinion.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Frank
The film is a classic, and the book good. The book isn’t as easy to find, but the film, as you point out, should be easy enough to find.
LeBreton also wrote a sequel, RIFIFI IN NEW YORK that was filmed with Alain Delon and Jean Gabin as THE SICILIAN CLAN,the book published here in paperback by Avon under the original title.
If you like film noir and hard boiled caper movies you’ll love RIFIFI, which inspired a whole school of French crime films, and it’s directed by Jules Dassin, who later took a comic look at the genre in TOPKAPI.
If you like RIFIFI check out BOB LEFLAMBEUR, LE CIRCLE ROUGE, THE SICILIAN CLAN, THE BURGLARS, GRAND SLAM, SEVEN GOLDEN MEN, and several other good European caper films that followed in RIFIFI’s wake. and some American and International films influenced in turn such as SEVEN THIEVES and the original THE ITALIAN JOB. I think all of them are available save perhaps THE BURGLARS.
But RIFIFI is the grandfather of them all, and has seldom been equaled and never surpassed.
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Thanks, David, I’ll check out the films. Re the book, I mistook Rififi in NY for the book you mentioned, not knowing it was a sequel. (thought the American translation may have created a title change). Lots of copies of Rififi in NY out there. Rififi – not so.
Thanks, again for the review of the Chase book. This thread ended up going a bit off track from that, but hey, that’s part of what makes all this fun and interesting!
May 2nd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
BTW, if you really like heist stories, JHC’s The World in My Pocket is terrific.
May 2nd, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Frank
Thanks, I’ll check out THE WORLD IN MY POCKET. I’ve read several of Chase’s caper novels and enjoyed them, he had some talent for choreographing the elements, and while he falls short of Lionel White, Donald Westlake, Dan Marlowe, W. R. Burnett, or Newton Thornberg at that he wasn’t bad.
Truthfully, I thought THE ANDERSON TAPES was derivative of Chase. You almost wish he had for once abandoned the phony Americanisms and written a straight tough caper novel. The promise was there. The pity about Chase was that there are hints he could have done more if he had been willing to abandon the easy way.
What he did write is well worth reading though.
May 2nd, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Is “Miss Callaghan Comes to Grief” about white slavery? Wasn’t it accused of being “obscene”? I have to admit, it piques my interest, especially with its being so hard to find.
“Twelve Chinks and a Woman” may or may not be any good, for all I know, but the title is a classic of cultural insensitivity! I’m always fascinated by such nuggets of social history.
Yeah, Blonde’s Requiem, I remembered it right after I posted. Chandler didn’t have a high opinion of Chase, though admittedly he didn’t have a high opinion of a lot of people! But Chase’s plagiarizing him surely didn’t help.
May 2nd, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Chandler was usually pretty easy going about his influence on other writers — he praised both Leigh Brackett and Roy Huggins, but he saw Chase as a poseur even before the plagiarism came up.
Ironically the other writer Chandler wanted to take to court was Ross Macdonald for THE MOVING TARGET. Even when he was persuaded that he didn’t have a case he remained a vocal critic of the Archer books, but that is fairly obviously a case of professional jealousy. Chandler knew a rival when he saw one, though some of what he said about Macdonald was valid.
TWELVE CHINKS AND A WOMAN is good fun, and almost as politically incorrect as the title. I haven’t read MISS CALLAGHAN COMES TO GRIEF, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was about white slavery. That’s the least of what Chase got up to.
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Chandler had tough things to say as I recall about not only Ross Macdonald (who certainly didn’t appreciate them when they came to light!), but James M. Cain (who returned this disfavor in regard to the hardboiled school, which he considered himself above), George Harmon Coxe and Erle Stanly Gardner (sometimes he said nice things about the latter too, however). I think Chandler could get pretty cranky during those late night letter writing sessions. Of course his outspokenness makes him fun to read.
It’s often stated he hated all classical British mystery writers, but most of his specific critical comments seem directed against the Crime Queens. He actually liked R. Austin Freeman (quite a bit) and Freeman Wills Crofts. Of course, RAF was safely dead by that time!
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Chandler claimed that he learned to write for BLACK MASK by rewriting a 10,000 word Gardner story and then being disappointed he couldn’t submit it. About the worst thing he said about him was that Gardner had ruined the quality of his voice with all his dictation.
As for his distaste for the British mystery writers his worst bite was reserved for Christie’s MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (which he claimed only Hercule Poirot or a moron could solve), and Milne’s mystery novel. He had nice things to say about Doyle and Freeman though — calling the latter the best dull writer he knew.
For that matter, in FAREWELL MY LOVELY he managed a sharp cut at Hemingway, as a guy who kept saying the same thing over and over in hope someone would think it was true.
Chandler was never shy about his opinions, but in fairness he couldn’t have expected his letters would ever be collected and printed, though the attacks on Christie and Milne and the comments on Doyle, Crofts, and Freeman were in his famous essay “The Simple Art of Murder”.
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 am
Peter Cheyney is an author I’ve read about, but never actually read. A local university library has about 40 of his novels. Does anybody have a suggestion on where to start? Is there a novel in particular that is fairly representative of Cheyney’s talents?
Thanks.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Dozy
Just to get a taste of Cheyney I’d suggest one of his Slim Callaghan ( a private eye whose motto is “We get there somehow and who the hell cares.”) novels, especially if you like hard boiled tecs in the Sam Spade vein. My personal favorite is IT COULDN’T MATTER LESS. But any of them are worth reading, DANGEROUS CURVES, UNEASY TERMS, THEY NEVER SAY WHEN, FAREWELL TO THE ADMIRAL, URGENT HANGMAN, YOU CAN’T KEEP THE CHANGE, SORRY YOU’VE BEEN TROUBLED are the other titles, and there are a few books of short stories too featuring Slim and Lemmy Caution. UNEASY TERMS was a film with Michael Rennie as Slim, and there were others with Derek deMarny (who also played Slim in a hit show in London’s West End) and Eddie Constantine before being cast as Lemmy Caution.
Of the spy novels DARK BAHAMA (I’LL BRING HER BACK) and DARK STREET (aka THE LONDON SPY MURDERS) are both good and feature Cheyney’s tough spy boss Peter Quayle, and his likable assassin Ernie Guelvada. DARK STREET also features his tough Shaun O’Mara. SINISTER ERRAND was filmed by Henry Hathaway as DIPLOMATIC COURIER with Tyrone Power as Cheyney’s Mike Kells,plus Patrica Neal, and Hildegarde Neff. If they have it THE DARK OMNIBUS features three of the best spy novels with an informative introduction by Anthony Boucher putting them into perspective in regard to their historical importance. Some characters reappear in the spy novels (known as the Dark Series) though not always as leads.
ANOTHER LITTLE DRINK is a good private eye novel in a noirish vein.
And if you are in the mood you might enjoy Cheyney’s most successful creation Lemmy Caution (he of all those Eddie Constantine films), a tough wisecracking American undercover G-Man whose narrative voice has to be read to be believed. THIS MAN IS DANGEROUS, POISON IVY, DAMES DON’T CARE, CAN LADIES KILL, DON’T GET ME WRONG, YOU’D BE SURPRISED, YOUR DEAL MY LOVELY, NEVER A DULL MOMENT, YOU CAN ALWAYS DUCK, I’LL SAY SHE DOES, and G-MAN AT THE YARD are the titles and there are short story collections like MR. CALLAGHAN and MR.CAUTION. Lemmy is very much an acquired taste, but once you get the bug he’s as addictive as peanuts (boy there’s a mixed metaphor).
His Alonzo MacTavish is a pretty good Saint clone in mostly short stories and novellas. His other series character is Johnny Valon, who runs a p.i. agency.
Plot isn’t his strong point, and some types of incident and character reoccur, but his characters are good, and he had a real gift for the atmosphere of West End London night spots, illegal gambling joints, and fashionable hell holes where the elite slum with the low life. He had a tremendous influence in England including Ian Fleming who studied his Cheyney before creating James Bond.
And he has a real gift for writing noirish femme fatales. That said he isn’t politically correct so be warned. Just to begin with I’d go either for a Callaghan or a Dark novel and save Lemmy and the short stories for later.
And if you buy any be careful of alternate titles. Some of the book have as many as three, and the American editions are often different than the Brit title. You can end up with multiple copies of the same title easily.
If you liked Dennis Potter’s THE SINGING DETECTIVE you should like Cheyney and Callaghan, Potter based his fictional eye on Slim.
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:10 pm
David
I just checked my library’s system, and they have about a dozen of the titles you suggested. I’ll give it due thought and pick the one that appeals to me the most.
Your reply–which has given me a lot to work with–was a thorough one. I hope my question did not in any way cause you too much trouble or inconvenience.
Thank you very much for all these suggestions.
(On a related note, I’ll also grab a copy of Chase’s TWELVE CHINKS AND A WOMAN in the near future. The title is both appalling and irresistible.)
May 3rd, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Re: Peter Cheyney, a big thank you from me as well. I’ve read plenty of James Hadley Chase, but not a single book by PC. I don’t think you narrowed the choices down by all that much, David, but putting them in categories helps a lot!
— Steve
May 3rd, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Steve
Dozy
Once you have read a couple of Cheyney’s you’ll understand why picking one book is so hard. There’s not a lot of variation, and it’s almost impossible to pick just one. The best I can do is give you some idea of the categories and the success he had in them. Pick one that sounds your speed and a title that catches your eye and dive in.
If you like one you’ll like most of them, and if you don’t you probably won’t like any of them. I’d read at least two, one Slim and one Dark novel just to cover his best.
But critics will say either a Slim Callaghan book or a Dark series novel are his best work. It isn’t my favorite but a lot of Cheyney fans would pick FAREWELL TO THE ADMIRAL as the best of the Callaghan books, and DARK STREET or DARK BAHAMA his best spy novel.
And I should point out many of Cheyney’s virtues are those of a novelist rather than a genre writer, though there are usually a number of twists and turns in the plot, and once in a while in the Dark series who the villain turns out to be can be a real shock.
I should warn you though, you may need to join AA after reading a Callaghan novel. Slim’s consumption of booze would startle John J. Malone or James Bond. Compared to Slim Jonathan Latimer’s Bill Crane is a casual imbiber. Slim’s bladder must be the size of Lake Erie and his liver a raisin. You wonder at times if London in the Blitz isn’t in greater danger from Slim lighting a cigarette than the fire bombing. Slim is the most pickled P.I. in the genre.
May 3rd, 2010 at 9:01 pm
David
I think I’ll probably pick one of his spy novels. Been a while since I read an espionage book.
Thanks again.
September 19th, 2010 at 5:51 am
Blonde requiem and miss callaghan comes to grief should be reprinted. Can’t forget chase since he is the one who hooked me into reading. After finishing The Goldfish has no hiding place at the age of 15 in a single sitting I became a die hard chase reader. Have 88 titles with me. But no blonde requiem and miss callaghan.
September 28th, 2010 at 12:51 am
With due respect i have to say that James hadley Chase was very popular in parts of world where where Chandler or Hammet where not even known. I have to say this: of all writer chase
wrote the best English.
September 29th, 2010 at 11:17 am
I feel obligated to toss my into into this discussion. I’ve read Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, etc. and in my opinion these guys have nothing on James Hadley Chase. It is precisely the “artificial” quality of Chase’s voice that makes his books so fascinating and turns them into literature. The ruthless, Cartesian logic with which the plot advances is in my opinion unmatched by any other crime/thriller writer I have every read. But that is not what is really important. All I know is that I cannot stop reading his books, not just to pass the time, but for intellectual nourishment as well…
February 8th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
Hello. I see some guys here taking about JHC who happens to be my first and favorite author. I have all the Chase books and would want a scan of the original NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH in return for Miss Callaghan Comes To Grief or Blondes’ Requiem. I have both.
I have a small space in esnips.com (http://www.esnips.com/web/jameshadleychase)
where I have posted some Chase books from my own collection for free. You can download one and find my email on the first page if anybody is interested to make an exchange.