ICEBERG SLIM – Mama Black Widow. Holloway House, paperback, 1969, as by Robert Beck. Also published as by Iceberg Slim: Holloway House, UK, hardcover, 1992, and Holloway House, US, paperback, 1996, as well as several later printings. (Anything published by Holloway House has a complicated printing history; corrections gratefully accepted.)

   The nightmare life story of Otis Tilson, a Black drag queen born on a Mississippi plantation in the 20’s, living until the end of the 60’s in the Chicago ghettos.

   In the intro, Iceberg Slim claims that the book is a transcript of a 1969 tape recording of the flamboyant drag queen Otis Tilson (Tillie). Now normally I don’t care if something is ‘true’ or ‘fiction’ as long as it’s good. And, to me, the difference between non-fiction and fiction is blurrier than we’d like to admit. But whatever. The only reason I bring it up is that if it is a work of fiction, one really can question what the point of it is. Oscar Wilde says: “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.” So what to make of something both unadmirable and useless?

   On the other hand, if it’s just a life story, you might say, ‘it is what it is’. I disagree. One’s life is capable of interpretation just like anything else. Schopenhauer says somewhere that the main difference between the ‘great lives’ we read about in books and the boring lives we live are that we experience our lives in mediocre ways. That were we to experience our lives with great exuberance, verve, desire and will, our lives too would be of magnificent import. And in our life stories magnificent import we’d impart. Cf the films Birdman, Toto le héros, Kiss of the Spider Woman, or even The Secret Life of Walter Mitty or Harvey to see the ways that a crappy life can be redeemed with a bit of imagination.

   Anywho. This one is unredeemable.

   Otis’s father Frank makes his living as a cotton sharecropper and part-time preacher. His father ‘saves’ and marries the beautiful Sedelia, seducing her with the words of Jesus Christ, stealing her away from the brothel life in which she lived with her older cousin Bunny. The father is a strong, proud man, muscular and moral.

   Sedelia’s beguiled by tales of indoor plumbing in the jewel bedazzled city of Chicago from cousin Bunny, who has moved there to strut her wares. Sedelia begs and begs then threatens and begs some more til her husband agrees to cash out the farm for $37, leaving the only life he’d ever known, and they move to Chicago.

   In Chicago it’s just one disaster after the other. It’s the depression and Frank can’t find work. The trade unions are all whites-only. Praying to Christ for work to support his family, Frank fails. Sedelia starts sleeping with the rich preacher of the local church who drives a Cadillac and showers her with furs. Sedilia flaunts her infidelity in her husband’s face, driving him to drink, diabetes and death.

   Meanwhile Otis, at age 9, is molested by a church deacon who promises him that any of his wishes will come true if only he brings tears of joy to his ‘magic wand’. Otis says: “Really? Can your magic wand give my father a job and make my parents stop fighting?” “Absolutely!” exclaims the deacon. But let’s keep it a secret just us two.

   Otis’s sister Carol falls in love with a white chubby baker. But Sedelia has promised Carol to the local numbers shark in exchange for corned beef, jewels and hard cold cash. So when Mama Black Widow (i.e. Sedelia) finds out that 17 year old Carol is planning to elope with the baker and bear his child, Sedelia kicks her in the belly til she miscarries, cuts out the fetus with a razor blade, and throws it in the garbage can. Carol keeps crying ‘why’d you kill my baby’, gets up in the night to retrieve it from the trash, and bleeds to death in the bed clutching her dead fetus to her breast.

   It only gets worse from there. Carol’s twin sister Bertha turns to whoring and is immolated by a john, and Frank Jr. avenges her death by killing Bertha’s white pimp, getting sentenced to life without parole.

   Otis is only attracted to men. He dresses in drag, and he is quite beautiful. He picks men up at bars, and gets sodomized and beaten. Over and over again.

         (SPOILER ALERT)

   Then he kills himself.

   Then End.

   Good lord. Surely one of the bleakest books of all time. And as the title shows, he blames it all on his mother: The Black Widow.

   Avoid at all costs unless you’re into self-flagellation. In which case: highly recommended. Also recommended anyone who believes that things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

JACK DAVIES – Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer. Allen, UK, hardcover, 1979. Also published as North Sea Hijack (Star, UK, paperback, 1980). US title: Atlantic Incident (Jove, paperback, 1980).

Film: Universal, 1980, as North Sea Hijack; released in the US as ffolkes; also released as Assault Force. Roger Moore, James Mason, Anthony Perkins, Michael Parks, David Hedison, Lea Brodie, Dana Wynter. Screenplay by Jack Davies based on his novel. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen.

   Every collector has those books you look for over a period of years and somehow never come across a copy that is available and you can afford, and then when you do find it, it arrives in the mail, and you complete the anticipatory act of opening your acquisition when the inevitable doubt grips you.

   Is it any good?

   You have spent forty years or more looking for a copy having never read the book, having never read so much as a review of the book, and now it is in your trembling hands, and you face that dilemma; was it worth all this?

   In the case of Jack Davies’ Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer, the answer was a resounding, and relieved, yes.

   Granted in this case there was a very entertaining action film starring Roger Moore taking a break between Bond outings (Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only) and the screenplay for that was by the novelist, and that writer had written numerous great screenplays, and several good novels, but still, that timorous nagging fear lay heavily on my too often disappointed collectors soul.

   Was Esther, Ruth and Jennifer going to be a tremendous let down?

   Book and film have the same simple premise. Jennifer and Ruth, the largest of the North Sea Oil platforms have been mined by terrorists who are demanding £25 million or they will be blown-up, crippling North Sea oil production for decades. The hijackers have taken Esther, the state of the art supply ship commanded by Captain Olaffsen, and is holding his crew hostage.

   Harold Shulman embezzled from his own company and was sent to prison. There he met psychotic Lew Kramer and they decided to team up, ruthlessness and brutality. The only trick then was to find a target worthy of their ambition.

   Anyone who lived through the Seventies probably remembers just how much oil production and prices were on everyone’s mind. Those North Sea Oil Rigs were a lifeline for all of Europe and particularly for the United Kingdom and Norway. I worked on an industrial espionage case involving British Petroleum and the North Sea platforms and the pressure from several governments was intense.

   Enter our hero, Rufus Excalibur ffolkes, ex Royal Navy, and eccentric cat loving, woman hating, whiskey (and in kilt-wearing ffolkes’ case that should be ‘whuskey’) swigging, motorcycle enthusiast, and sewing aficionado who has trained his own team of tough sea going privateers for just this sort of thing. Both the British government and the company approach him despite the fact he is almost impossible to work with.

   After all, he predicted exactly how the rigs might be hijacked so he has the best chance of saving them.

   ffolkes’ plan involves his going aboard Jennifer with part of the team assigned to negotiate the ransom, Admiral Brinken of the Royal Navy and Mr. King from the oil company, but things go awry. Then too the Navy and the company are wary ffolkes’ plan which begins with convincing the hijackers that they have made a mistake and Ruth, out of their line of sight, has blown up because of them.

   Little can ffolkes expect things will go wrong between rough seas and human error and he will find himself aboard the Esther with one healthy ally he can rely on, Sanna, a female crew member ffolkes mistakenly thinks is a young man at first, as the deadline grows closer.

   In the film released in the UK as North Sea Hijack and here as ffolkes it is all in the acting, Moore having great fun as ffolkes, Anthony Perkins as Shulman, Michael Parks as Kramer, James Mason the Admiral, and David Hedison the company representative. On the printed page it is a cleverly and richly told take that, considering the author’s history in film, is a well crafted and often humorous thriller that at times reads as if P. G. Wodehouse was collaborating with Alistair MacLean. The action may be cinematic, but the book compares well with many of the better adventure thrillers of the era by legends in the genre like Canning, Innes, and Bagley.

   You never feel as if you are reading a scenario for a film though the film follows the book scene by scene.

   If you love British comedy of the late fifties into the sixties Jack Davies name should be familiar to you from the credits. Jack (John Bernard Leslie) Davies was a British screenwriter whose films include Laughter in Paradise, Doctor at Sea, An Alligator Named Daisy, Gambit, It Started in Naples, The Poppy is Also a Flower, Monte Carlo or Bust (aka Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies based on his novel), Paper Tiger (with David Niven and Toshiro Mifune also based on his novel) and the Oscar nominated best original screenplay for Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines. His lines read by a veritable who’s who of Hollywood stars including Clark Gable, Sophia Loren, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLane, Alex Guinness, Tony Curtis, David Niven, Yul Brynner, Rita Hayworth, and more.

   Three of his four novels were made into films unsurprisingly.

   Whether in novel or film form this is simply an entertaining romp, but I have to say with great relief, after years of looking for it, the book is everything I wanted, and packs far more into less that three hundred pages of smallish print than most of today’s bestselling high concept thrillers bloated out to doorstop size.

   Davies knows when to be terse and when to be expansive, when to draw to his heroes eccentricities and when it is too much, which is the key to this kind of character working.

   And, the ending of the book, as the ending of the film did, hits just the right note, a smile and not a laugh relieving considerable tension.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Shapely Shadow. Perry Mason #63. William Morrow, hardcover, 1960. Pocket 4507, paperback, 1962. Ballantine, paperback, 1982. Reprinted many times.

   There are a number of intriguing elements in this Perry Mason novel from Gardner’s final period, but like so many other late Masons, the finished product is a mess.

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   The story begins when a beautiful secretary who deliberately makes her-self look unattractive dumps a suitcase full of twenty do1lar bills and an ethical problem in the lawyer’s lap, thereby entangling him in the murder of her boss and the machinations of the three women in the corpse’s life.

   The background material on railroad-station lockers and Mason’s savage courtroom deflation of a hostile medical witness are beautifully handled, but there are countless logical holes left unplugged,  the motivation becomes ludicrous at crucial points,  the plot depends on a chain of multiple coincidences,and the Least Likely Suspect is about as obvious as a leper in a nudist camp.

JOHN MURPHY – Pay on the Way Out. Scribner, hardcover, 1975. Ballantine, paperback, 1976.

   As if the CIA didn’t have enough trouble after Watergate. Young trainee James Hagen is assigned to investigate the strange assassination of a bullfighter in Spain, and all his clues lead straight to a plot inside the Agency, and worse, by his immediate superiors.

   Good detective work early on, but both it and Hagen are caught up in the wheels of intrigue as they grind slowly but surely down. His choice is to run for cover until he can make a stand. A tale put nicely together, but the twists take it away subtly from the reader, who feels nearly as helpless as Hagen does, before the dawn.

Rating:  B

UPDATE. John Murphy was the pen name of R. C. Grady, Jr. As Murphy he was the author of three other titles in Hubin, all of which also appear to be thrillers of one form or another.

RICK DeMARINIS – A Clod of Wayward Marl. Dennis McMillan, hardcover, 2001. Introduction By James Crumley.

   Guido Tarkenen is a crime writer. He writes what his agent calls ‘trash for cash’. But he does alright. He’s having a bit of writer’s block lately, though. So to pay the bills he takes a job as ‘visiting writer in residence’ in the English department at La Siberia Tech (apparently a nod to University of Texas–El Paso). The remaindered hardcover edition I read had a beautiful gold embossed La Siberia Tech emblem on its cover page.

   The students are terrible, and he hates the job. But he needs it while he comes up with an idea for his next book. So he drinks a lot to make it through the day, filling his office fridge with bottles of Tsingtao bought by the case.

   His wife just left him, contributing to the general malaise. But there’s a decent looking older student, Doris, that he hooks up with, to assuage his bruised and shattered libido.

   Doris’s hubbie owns a tech company affiliated with the university. Some of the professors, working with the company, have invented these amazing virtual reality body suits that you can wear and make your dreams real. He and Doris have amazing VR sex on the wings of a jet as it flies thru the skies, the passengers’ mouths agape to see such sport.

   Thing is, this VR invention is going to be HUGE. And professor inventions are, by contract, owned by La Siberia Tech unless in the public domain.

   So a multinational tech company based in Singapore decides to buy La Siberia Tech to get the patents to the VR technology and make a fortune.

   They’ve decided to scrap accreditation and get rid of the English department—replacing it with a Department of Dream Architecture to serve Cybertopia:
   

   
   “Interact with the world as you never would have dreamed possible! Want to know what it feels like to fly into outer space? Want to feel moon dust under your feet? Would you like to speak, face to face, with famous figures in history? Imagine yourself taking tea with Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, or, in our era, Gandhi, Einstein, or Marilyn Monroe! Do your tastes lean toward the dark side? Imagine confronting a mugger, disarming him, and giving him the beating of his life! Think how it must feel to electrocute, hang, or lethally inject a murderer! Perhaps, because you have always wanted to know what really goes on in the mind of a criminal, you might even temporarily adopt his psyche. How does one bring oneself to do heinous deeds? Where does the impulse come from to commit murder, torture, rape, cannibalism? In the private confines of Cybertopia, you can discover this terra incognita first-hand. Of course, you may just want to create your own world, safe and secure from all the woes and terrors of contemporary society. Be the king or queen of your own country, then populate it with adoring subjects! Would you ever want to disengage from such a paradise? Cybertopia can give you all this, and much more. Its possibilities are limited only by your imagination. And in that regard, our machines will come with software designed by “Dream Architects”—writers and artists—who will create worlds and situations within those worlds that all but the most jaded will find exciting and rewarding.”
   

   Guido becomes more and more unsure if the experiences he’s having are real or whether he’s still got the VR suit on. The reader has the same Philip K. Dickensian disorientation.

   Many of the professors don’t like the idea of scrapping liberal arts and accreditation, so they plot to sabotage the corporate takeover by putting their research into the public domain before the deal is done.

   But this VR technology is projected to be a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. And the tech multinational will stop at nothing to keep the intellectual property in their hands—even murder.

   Guido, sodden with drink, gets sucked into a role as de facto detective when the professorial murders get too close for comfort. He sloppily traverses this minefield to hilarious satisfaction.

   If you’re a fan of Crumley, this is a must read. I immediately went out and bought a bunch more of Demarinis and other Dennis McMillan stuff I hadn’t heard of before. A Clod of Wayward Marl is really great. It gave me hope that there’s other great relatively recent stuff out there bringing the hardboiled imagination into the 21st century. That there’s a way to think and live in the contemporary world that traverses the general shitty-ness with anarchic aplomb and joy. My favorite thing I’ve read in as long as I can remember.

JACK WEBB – The Gilded Witch. Father Shanley & Det. Sgt. Sammy Golden #9. Regency Books, paperback original, 1963.

   My first meeting with Father Joseph Shanley and Detective Sergeant Sammy Golden, and I must admit that I’m quite impressed. Both detectives are interesting and thoughtful men and the problem they face is the death of Gil Barta, author of a blockbuster novel that has drawn perhaps too vivid a picture of the local township.

   More deaths follow, Golden travels to Phoenix in search of Barta’s past life and Father Shanley goes down with a virus infection. The lady of the title turns out to be Betty Ames Angelo, and it is her connection with Barta and his past that eventually helps unlock the mystery.  Golden is quite smitten with the lady but there is more to her than meets the eye.

   Another good novel and yet another failure in the Adey clear-out-the-shelves campaign.

TOM MEAD – Death and the Conjurer. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 2022.

   This homage to John Dickson Carr (and co-dedicated to the acknowledged master of the locked room, impossible mystery) takes place in 1930s London, right in the heart of the so-called Golden Age of Detection, and if it doesn’t quite measure up to the best of the mysteries written at the time, it’s an attempt well worthy of your attention.

   If you’re a fan of the form, that is. Aficionados of private eye stories and/or grim noir or more hardboiled fare need not read any further. (Though of course you may.)

   There are in all three impossible crimes in this tale: (1) the death of a noted emigre psychiatrist in his London home office, locked on the inside of course; (2) the theft of a valuable painting during a party during a party where all attendees are searched or closely watched; and (3) the murder of someone in an elevator with no access to it except by a watched door.

   In what follows I won’t go into details. I’ll try to be as general as I can while at the same time describing what I thought were shortcomings, some more serious than others. May I say first, though, that I found the book well-written, with both good characters and even better dialogue. I really wish I could say the same about what’s – dare I say – even more important in a detective story, the plot itself.

   To wit. The first chapter begins at a theater where a new play is about to open. Acting as a consultant is Joseph Spector, an illusionist of some note (part of the play’s apparatus is a trap door which is to be used for especial effect). But. Much of the focus is on an actress who is looking for a missing earring. The actress is mentioned only once more, and the earring never again.

   Much later on, a Challenge to the Reader is provided. (This is a Good Thing.) I failed, but there’s no surprise there. I had no more success at it than I’ve had with any of Ellery Queen’s, to take the most obvious example. But. I found Spector’s followup explanation to be, in a single word, glib. Allow me to explain further. Tom Mead provides footnotes during the lengthy explanation to all three impossible events, each referring to the page where such and such previous observation or factual description was made.

   All very well and good. Excellent, in fact. But. None of the footnotes led to an observation or description was “clueworthy,” a word invented by my brother to describe a fact that yes, it was there, and it came up earlier, but there was no way a detective could take that fact and connect it up to the solution he was in the end expounding upon. He was too glib. Too much “this happened, then this, and he did this.”

   There was not enough explanation as to what his deductions were, where, when and how. I think this important. (It is also extremely difficult to do.)

   Continuing. You cannot in a locked room mystery leave the setting so carefully and yet so vaguely described, both inside the room and out, so as to make impossible to visualize where the killer was where and how. (A map would have been exceedingly useful.)

   Saying more would be boring to those who haven’t yet read the book, and of course I’d be totally at risk of spoiling it completely. For those of you who have, I hope it’s enough so I’m clear as to what I am saying.

   If you’re a fan of Locked Room mysteries, you should still read this one. Few authors even try to write more than the minimum of “fair play” in their detective stories any more. This is far better than that. What I consider shortcomings may not even bother you. It’s a good attempt. If Tom Mead writes another, I will read it, and gladly.

NOTE: Credit where credit is due. Much of this review was shaped by a long conversation my brother Merwin and I had about the book in Michigan together last weekend.

  GONE ARE THE DAYS. Lionsgate, 2018. Lance Henricksen, Tom Berenger, Billy Lush, Meg Steedle, Steve Railsback and Danny Trejo. Written by Gregory M. Tucker. Directed by Mark Landre Gould.

   A metaphysical western. And not bad at all.

   Lance Henricksen, looking appropriately mummified, plays Taylon, a dying — or possibly already dead — outlaw on a journey to Durango, accompanied by a black-clad former cohort who keeps vanishing at odd moments.

   The ostensible reason for the journey is that old chestnut, the One Last Bank Job, but it turns out Taylon has another motive for going, involving another old chestnut, the daughter he hasn’t seen in years.

   This could have turned out very ordinary, but Writer Tucker and director Gould put a unique spin on it all; there are no answers awaiting Taylon, only more mystery. No dignity in death or aging, only fresh indignities, as he finds that it’s certain we can take nothing out of this world when we go.

   All of which contrasts very effectively with Tom Berenger as an aging but robust ex-partner of Taylon’s, an outlaw turned lawman who finds himself up against an old buddy (another stock situation well-handled) and meets it with grim irony.

   Gone Are the Days  dances at the edge of self-importance like a drunk on roller skates, but manages to remain merely thoughtful — and easy to watch.

PAUL E. WALSH – The Murder Room. Paul Damien #1. Avon #767, paperback original, 1957.

   Paul E. Walsh appears to have written only three detective novels, beginning with KKK (Avon, 1956) and ending with Murder in Baracoa   (Avon, 1958).

   The Murder Room is a low-keyed first-person affair featuring private eye Paul Damian, a former insurance investigator now in business for himself with two other operatives. He is hired here by Mrs. Clarence Standish whose brownstone in Brooklyn Heights has witnessed the death of a hood working for racketeer Vincent Manola.

   She expressly wants him to protect her younger daughter Laura who has been keeping some shady company of late, but it’s her older daughter Iris whom Damian finds more interesting. The Standish chauffeur is found dead in short time as well. and. it all looks very much like a mob affair with the Standish clan as innocent bystanders until the locked family beach home becomes the sight for some interesting activity of its own.

   The role of the “murder room” is kept nicely hidden until the denouement even though ghosts from the past are fairly obvious all along. Damian is just a bit too intuitive and the wrap-up a bit too brusque and pat to be completely satisfying, but the author does have a pleasant style and sets an otherwise nice pace.

   Perhaps you will enjoy, as I did, the nice nostalgic glimpse of the changing face of Brooklyn and sections of Long Island in the late 50’s. I certainly wouldn’t hesitate reading the other two novels after this one.

PETER LOVESEY – Swing, Swing Together. Sgt. Cribb & Constable  Thackery #7. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1976. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1976. Penguin Books, US, paperback, 1978. TV Adaptation: Cribb, 20 April 1980 (Series 1, Episode 2).

   For some reason, I’ve never until now attempted any of Lovesey’s tales of  mystery taking place Victorian England. I’m not sure why. Too much exotic background to detract from the mystery?  Maybe. At any rate they never tempted me.

   I was wrong, I admit it.

   On a dare, a schoolgirl goes midnight bathing in  the Thames, naked. Not only does she have to be rescued downstream by a policeman, but she is also caught: up in a manhunt for three murderers. Nothing surely to help her reputation!

   But she proves herself a most remarkable heroine in helping Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray solve the case, built incidentally about a certain .Jack the Ripper. Told with happy good humor, slightly naughty at times. Lovesey doesn’t let the mystery detract from the background, b it blends the two into a wholly delightful concoction.

Rating:  A

      The Cribb/Thackeray series —

Wobble to Death. Macmillan 1970.
The Detective Wore Silk Drawers. Macmillan 1971.
Abracadaver. Macmillan 1972.
Mad Hatter’s Holiday. Macmillan 1973.
Invitation to a Dynamite Party. Macmillan 1974.
A Case of Spirits. Macmillan 1975.
Swing, Swing Together. Macmillan 1976.
Waxwork. Macmillan 1978.