Wed 1 Dec 2021
A PI Mystery Review: JOHN SPAIN (CLEVE F. ADAMS) – Death Is Like That.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
JOHN SPAIN – Death Is Like That. Bill Rye #2. Dutton, hardcover, 1943. Detective Novel Classic #35, digest-sized paperback, 1945. Popular Library #178, paperback, circa 1948-49.
Bill Rye would be the perfect name for a hardboiled, hard-drinking PI, except that he’s not really a PI. He’s more of a troubleshooter for a political boss named Callahan and his extended family, and boy is there trouble to shoot. Callahan is pulling all the strings he can to get his man into office as the governor, and he can’t afford any scandal to cause the campaign to come crashing down.
And of incipient scandal, how about either of these? Callahan’s wife has just spent a night in jail after being picked up on a drunk and disorderly charge, and his son’s new wife was a close friend, shall we say, of a notorious gangster, and she’s about to be accused of taking a shot at him.
The book starts slowly, step by step identifying all the players, which takes more time than usual since it’s a very close continuation of Dig Me a Grave (Dutton, 1942), and there’s plenty of backstory to fill in. But once Rye has Callahan’s wife convinced to accept a divorce, along with a big payoff, and ensconced in a secret sanctuary to dry out, the story bursts into action like gangbusters.
Lots of violence and plenty of murders, in other words, so many that you’ll need a scorecard to keep track of them all. John Spain, who in real life was the pen name of veteran pulp writer Cleve Adams, not only pulls out all the stops but includes plenty of well-turned phrases in the telling. Not as many as a Raymond Chandler, of course, but well-turned phrases do add to one’s enjoyment to a hard-boiled detective story such as this one.
And yes, it is a detective story, too, and a decent one at that.
December 1st, 2021 at 10:08 pm
I’m a big fan of Adams, not exactly first rate in the sense of Hammett and Chandler, but he had a great sense of the classic hardboiled form and voice and wrote with real impact.
His heroes tend to be not only hardboiled, but realistic in the sense they are no better than the real thing not unlike Jonathan Latimer who sometimes is criticized because his working-class detectives talk the way the real thing talked in that era unfortunate warts and all.
Adams did have a reputation for borrowing plots a bit freely, which he admitted to, especially from Hammett and Chandler (mentioned in his entry in 20th CENTURY CRIME AND MYSTERY WRITERS I think and he wrote two or three versions of RED HARVEST and this one owes more than a little to THE GLASS KEY), but he also penned fast moving, hard hitting, mystery novels with some genuine detective work in them and interesting if not always likable leads (Rex McBride one of his series detectives is the one who infamously says, “What this country needs is an American Gestapo,” in one book, but is still Adams best tec creation, tough lean, wolf like, smart, and ruthless).
His characters rough edges or not, Adams is well worth reading for lovers of the classic form of the hardboiled novel, and for some has been a bit lost in the mix not having that one classic book like a Whitfield or Paul Cain that kept him in the public eye or major characters like Nebel’s Kennedy and McBride and Cardigan from the pulp era.
This and several of Adams titles are worth finding. I would recommend PRIVATE EYE (John Shannon if I recall right) UP JUMPED THE DEVIL, and SABOTAGE (the last two both Rex McBride and the latter available from Altus Press) as the best examples of Adams gifts.
If I recall Adams was associated with Robert Leslie Bellem and W.T. Ballard. He falls easily in the second rank of the big names in the field from that era which is pretty good company.
December 1st, 2021 at 11:37 pm
What I think, and I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this, is that Cleve Adams stories should be back in print again.
Maybe not the one with the “American Gestapo” comment in it, that one may be a lost cause, but some of the others, surely?
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:31 pm
If I’m recalling correctly, Bellem actually wrote a couple of the late novels published under Adams’ name, expanding them from some of Adams’ pulp stories after Adams passed away.
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:50 pm
You’re quite right, James, but it may have been only one: No Wings on a Cop (Handi-Books, 1950). Bellem took an Adams story from the pulps and worked it up as a novel, but which story, I’d have to do some more research. And yes, I seem to remember another instance such as this, but if so, it’s escaping me at the moment.
December 3rd, 2021 at 7:54 pm
That didn’t take long. Adams and Bellem “collaborated” on writing THE VICE CAR MURDERS (Funk, 1941) as Franklin Charles.
December 3rd, 2021 at 10:06 pm
Steve,
In fairness to the Gestapo line Adams isn’t airing his prejudice, he’s showing us Rex McBride is a bit of an ass, a point he makes several times in the books. McBride is a good private detective, but Adams doesn’t pretend that makes him terribly smart at anything else. A fact his rich girl friend in several of the books despairs of.
Adams, Latimer, Reeves, Kurt Steel, and to some extent Hammett made no bones about the relative qualities of the private eye. They might be good at their job, but they aren’t anyone you would invite to your house for dinner with your family.
December 4th, 2021 at 9:09 am
Ah, here’s the whole story, from 12 years ago on this very blog:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1596
The short version: Bellem expanded pulp novellas by Adams into THE VICE CZAR MURDERS and CONTRABAND, and Bellem and Ballard both worked on NO WINGS FOR A COP and SHADY LADY.
December 4th, 2021 at 10:29 am
Ah, yes. So it is, and from only 12 years ago. Thanks, James. Add SHADY LADY to the list of Adams’s books that others worked on to expand into novel form. In his comment to that earlier post, Steve Mertz said he talked to Adams’s widow about all this, so what he said there is as definitive as it’s ever going to get.