WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – The Hundred-Dollar Girl. PI Joe Puma #6. Dutton, hardcover, 1961. Signet S2205, paperback, 1962.

   Sports — in particular football, boxing, and golf — play strong roles in many of Gault’s mysteries. Ex-jock Brock Callahan solves pro-football-related crimes in Day of the Ram and Dead Hero (1963). One non-series book, Fair Prey (1956), published under the pseudonym Will Duke, has a golfing background; another, The Canvas Coffin (1953), deals with the fight game and has a boxer protagonist. The Hundred-Dollar Girl likewise deals with the seedy world of professional prizefighting.

   This novel is also the seventh and last to feature Gault’s other series character — and second private eye -Joe Puma. Puma is tougher than Callahan, more of a loner, but imbued with the same human qualities; Anthony Boucher wrote of him, “He is big and muscular and can give and take punishment; he drinks and wenches and has his own ideas about professional ethics. But Gault has created him so firmly and skillfully that he is a man and not a pornographic puppet … an understandable and not too happy man, sometimes likable, sometimes exasperating and always real.”

   Puma made his first appearance in a pseudonymous book — Shakedown (1953), as by Roney Scott — but it wasn’t until 1958 that he emerged in full style; his first two major cases, End of a Call Girl and Night Lady, were published that year by Fawcett Crest, and three others followed in 1959-60. The Hundred-Dollar Girl is Puma’s only hardcover appearance.

   Hired by Terry Lopez to keep her young boxer husband from being forced by his unscrupulous manager, Gus Galbini, to throw a fight, Puma is almost immediately plunged into a murder investigation when Galbini turns up dead. Galbini’s wife also hires him: She has special reasons for wanting to find out who killed her meal ticket.

   A variety of hoodlums and beautiful women complicate matters and lead Puma on a perilous course to the (surprising) identity of Galbini’s killer. The Dutton edition’s dust jacket blurb calls this “a story of violence and death at ringside, replete with action and color and full of the authentic atmosphere of life in the ring and life in the underworld.” For once, dust jacket blurb is not only accurate but justified in its praise.

   Gault also brought Joe Puma back in The Cana Diversion,but he brought him back dead: The central premise of that novel is Brock Callahan’s search for Puma’s murderer. Those of us who liked Big Joe as well as we like Callahan, if not more so, may never quite forgive Bill Gault for so cold-bloodedly knocking him off.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

M. E. CHABER – The Flaming Man. Milo March #18. Holt Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1969. Paperback Library, paperback, June 1970; cover art by Robert McGinnis. Steeger Books, softcover, 2021.

   Milo March isn’t quite a private eye, but as an freelance insurance investigator, he’s the next best thing. He’s hired in this case to handle a building fire in L.A. that occurred soon after the riots there. Worse, three bodies are found in the ashes, all three burnt beyond identification. Since the owner of the building has disappeared, it is assumed he is one of three.

   As long time mystery readers, we know better than that, don’t we?

   On a hardboiled scale ranging from 1 to 10, the best I can offer is 2.5, and at that, I think I’m stretching it. The pace is leisurely. Nothing much happens until it does and the book is over. Milo can be a little tough when he needs to be, but it doesn’t happen often enough. He does do a lot of drinking, and I mean a lot. He has a bottle or glass of liquid spirits in hand that averages out to nearly every other page. He is at one time forced to drink Cokes steadily over several pages. Never again, he says.

   This is a book that at least one reader found entertaining enough to keep reading, but taking two months to do so is another long stretch of time that I thought maybe I should tell you about. You can take it from there.

THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES “A Message from the Deep Sea.” 19 September 1971 (Season 1, Episode 1.) Thames Television, UK. John Neville (Dr. Thorndyke), James Cossins, Bernard Archard, Terence Rigby, Eve Pearce. Based on the story by R. Austin Freeman. Director: James Goddard. Currently streaming on PBS/Masterpiece.

   The title of the overall two-season British series will tell you most of what might need to know, even if it’s managed to miss your attention all of the time since it first appeared. The stories presented were based on various detective stories written at the time Sherlock Holmes was around and solving mysteries, penned  by various authors who were Conan Doyle’s contemporaries, mostly forgotten or not, justified or not. Comparatively speaking, I hasten to add.

   This one’s by R. Austin Freeman, whose books are still generally available, and to the extent that they’re still being reprinted today. In this first episode of the series, Dr. Thorndyke, his most well-known detective, solves a case of young woman who’s found murdered in her room in a semi-reputable rooming house, her throat cut.

   The setting of the tale is sumptuous, as is almost always the case in British TV productions such as this, while Dr. Thorndyke – who is much younger and more handsome than I have ever pictured him – continually rags on the police as constant tramplers of the evidence, saying that it is the facts that matter, not preconceived and half-cocked ideas that count for nothing.

   In that regard, I confess to being guilty of following the facts well enough, as presented, but having little idea what to do with them. No matter. It is still a pleasure to follow a tale that has the right idea, done more than well enough.
   

LIA MATERA – Where Lawyers Fear to Tread. Willa Jansson #1. Bantam, paperback original, 1987. Fawcett, paperback, 1991.

   When Susan Green, editor-in-chief of the Malhousie Law Review, is found murdered in her office, there is no shortage of suspects. Besides other various editors. There are all of the faculty, of course, and numerous spouses, lovers, distinguished alumni,and so on.

   Willa Jansson, former senior articles editor, unwillingly pressed into service as Susan’s replacement, also turns detective. Almost everyone is suspected in turn, and many of them are guilty (of something). An intense sort of story, in a cluttered sort of way.

      The Willa Jansson series —

Where Lawyers Fear to Tread, Bantam, 1987.
A Radical Departure, Bantam, 1988.
Hidden Agenda, Bantam, 1988.
Prior Convictions, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Last Chants, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Star Witness, Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Havana Twist, Simon & Schuster, 1998.

L. J. WASHBURN – Wild Night. Lucas Hallam #1. Tor, paperback; 1st printing, November 1987. Five Star, hardcover, 1998. Rough Edges Press, softcover, 2022.

   Lucas Hallam is a former western lawman, now a part-time movie actor as well as a 1920s private detective. In this case, he’s hired by a charismatic new Hollywood evangelist who is also apparently ripe for blackmail. (Nothing ever changes.)

   What I didn’t particularly care for was the use of a fortuitous tornado as a plot device, nor the scene where Hallam outshoots three men with tommy guns. His long bouts of reminiscing (though a bit repetitious) did give the man some character, however.

      The Lucas Hallam series —

1. Wild Night (1987)
2. Dead-Stick (1989)
3. Dog Heavies (1990)
4. Hallam (story collection, 2022)

PIGSKIN PARADE. 20th Century Fox, 1936. Stuart Erwin, Patsy Kelly, Jack Haley, The Yacht Club Boys, Betty Grable, Judy Garland, Tony Martin, Elisha Cook Jr., Lynn Bari, Alan Ladd. Director: David Butler.

   When Yale mistakenly challenges a small Texas college in a game of football, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. It is, that is, until the school with an enrollment of only 700 recruits a hillbilly with an arm like a rifle, straight from a melon patch.

   Lots of singing and dancing, Although he doesn’t appear until the second half of the movie, Stu Erwin manages to get star billing as the team’s new quarterback. Judy Garland, who plays his sister, makes a smash movie debut – stealing the show as a 15-year-old.

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – Don’t Cry for Me. Dutton, hardcover, 1952. Edgar Award winner for Best First Novel. Dell #672, paperback; cover art by James Meese.

   Don’t Cry for Me is Gault’s first novel, and one of several non-series mysteries he wrote in the 1950s. His fellow crime novelist Fredric Brown  had this to say about it: “(lt] is not only a beautiful chunk of story but, refreshingly, it’s about people instead of characters, people so real and vivid that you’ll think you know them personally. Even more important, this boy Gault can write, never badly and sometimes like an angel.” Gault’s other peers, the members of the Mystery Writers of America, felt the same: They voted Don’t Cry for Me a Best First Novel Edgar.

   This novel (and many of Gault’s subsequent books) beautifully evokes the southern California underworld of drug dealers, addicts, hoodlums, racetrack touts, second-rate boxers, and tough-minded women with larcenous and/or homicidal proclivities. Its narrator, Pete Worden, is anything but a hero; he lives a disorganized and unconventional life, walking a thin line between respectability and corruption, searching for purpose and identity.

   His girlfriend, Ellen, wants him to be one thing; his brother John — who controls the family purse strings — wants him to be another; and some of his “friends” want him to be a third. What finally puts an end to Worden’s aimless lifestyle is the discovery of a murdered man in his apartment, a hood named Al Calvano whom Pete slugged at a party the night before. Hounded by police and by underworld types, Worden is not only forced into his own hunt for the killer but forced to resolve his personal ambivalence along the way.

   Don’t Cry for Me is first-rate — tough, uncompromising, insightful, opinionated, occasionally annoying, and altogether satisfying. An added bonus is a fascinating glimpse of the death of the pulp magazines (the primary market for Gault’s fiction for the previous sixteen years), as seen through the eyes of Worden’s neighbor and friend, pulp writer Tommy Lister.

   Of Gault’ s other non-series books, the best is probably The Bloody Bokhara ( 1952), which is set in Milwaukee and has as its background the unique world of Oriental rugs and carpets. Also noteworthy are Blood on the Boards ( 1953), which has a little-theater setting; and Death Out of Focus ( 1959), about Hollywood film-making and script-writing.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

MARC BEHM – Eye of the Beholder. Dial Press, hardcover, 1980. Ballantine, softcover, 1981, 1999. Film #1: Produced in France in 1983 as Mortelle Randonnée, and released in the US as Deadly Circuit. Film #2: Released in 1999, with Ewan McGregor & Ashley Judd.

   An old, washed up private eye. At an agency. Divorced. Drinks, smokes. Had a daughter: Maggie. Hasn’t seen her in years. All he’s got left is a 1st grade class photo sent from his ex-wife, on the back, saying I bet you don’t even know which one is her, asshole. And he didn’t. He’d think about her though. In the photo, there were a few candidates that could’ve been her. And he’d pick one and create a whole life, graduation, marriage, kids….

   The boss assigns him a case. Rich elderly couple. Their son, Philip, has taken up with some skank, and she’s probably just after his dough. Can you look into her, her background, get some dirt, and watch them, there’s something about her we don’t much trust.

   So the Eye follows them, next day, they get married, she and Philip, elope, and honeymoon in a little cottage upstate. The Eye’s watching. Always watching. She’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning. And about the age of his daughter. Hell, maybe it is his daughter. And he watches. Watches as Philip gets ready for bed, the wedding night. I’ll take a quick shower, he says. And he does. And she makes a couple of cognacs, and empties a vial of poison into Philip’s, and before you know it, he’s dead. She buries him in the yard.

   And the Eye? He just keeps watching. Enthralled.

   The Eye calls his boss, says the happy couple split for Montreal, but don’t worry, tell Philip’s parents the Eye is on their trail.

   So Philip’s parents bankroll the Eye’s voyeurism, as he travels from town to town, trailing this beautiful woman who keeps marrying rich young men and murdering them.

   And that, my friends, is that. He trails her and watches her and her sordid life, fantasizing that she’s his child, looking out for her, helping her where he can, without her ever knowing, even until the end. Which comes for all of us. Some sooner than others.

   It was fine. But I don’t understand the whole hullabaloo, as the book got lots of hype for being something amazing and unique in pi fiction.

   Me? I don’t see it. PI’s obsessed with femme fatales? Nothing new under the sun. Thinking the femme fatale’s your daughter? Gross and perverted.

   So from me? A meh. It was fine. But it’s not as good as many PI novels, and I don’t see what’s supposed to be so special about it. Behm says he’s not even into the PI genre, doesn’t think much of it. And it shows.

LAINE FISHER – Fare Prey. Ace Double D-387; 1st printing, 1959. Published back to back with The Bikini Bombshell, by Bob McKnight. Cutting Edge Books, softcover, as by James Howard writing as Laine Fisher.

   It starts out in fine fashion. Mike Gavin, deliberately down on his luck, finds a dead man in the stall next to his in the men’s room of LA’s Union Station, Needing a coat, he finds several thousand dollars and a ticket to Denver in the pocket. And more.

   The dead man, he discovers, was a hit man, on his way to work. Who killed him, who was his intended victim, and who are he two women busting out of their clothes for Gavin? It’s formula fiction, and it almost works, but not if you ask the right questions.

WILLIAM HJORTSBERG – Falling Angel. PI Harry Angel #1. Harcourt Brace Jovanovic, hardcover, 1978. Fawcett, paperback, 1982. Warner Books, paperback, 1986. St. Martin’s, paperback, 1996. Film: Released as Angel Heart (Tri-Star, 1987) with Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet).

   It’s the late 1950’s, NYC. A wealthy, corrupt seeming, seamy yet seemly man, Louis Cipher, hires a private dick, Harry Angel, to find a missing person. That missing person is Johnny Favorite, a dime store Sinatra who got big suddenly in the thirties, between the wars.

   Harry Angel is your typical middle aged, hardboiled, drinking smoking detective, who prefers headbutts to subtle inquiry.

   He attacks headlong on the trail, a hefty retainer under his belt.

   Turns out Favorite was catatonic after the war, put in a home, then disappeared. His face was blown to smithereens, with reconstruction to make him presentable, if unrecognizable.

   But every time Angel gets a lead, the lead ends up with a load of lead. The trail gets bloodier and bloodier until Angel finally cracks the case.

   Imagine his surprise.

   Loads of weird satanic rituals abound, as Johnny Favorite seems to have descended into that voodoo that he do so well.

   I liked it. But having seen the ill-aging (and aren’t they all) Alan Parker film in the 80’s, I knew the twist, which kind of messed the impact up for me. It’s the kind of book that if you could avoid the film, first time you read it, would probably blow your socks off. But only the first time. And then afterwards you can appreciate it for what it was and will never be again for you, like a one nite stand you were happy you got away with. You’re slightly embarrassed for getting taken, you smirk at the wit, you envy the idea and the millions of bucks it earned Hjortsberg. Then you salute him and move on to something else.

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NOTE: A second book in the series, entitled Angel’s Inferno, was published in 2020.