JOHN D. MacDONALD – The Executioners. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1958. Crest s295, reprint paperback, May 1959. Reprinted many times. Film: Universal International, 1962, as Cape Fear (with Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, Polly Bergen; director J. Lee Thompson). Also: Universal, 1991, as Cape Fear (with Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange; director: Martin Scorsese).

   Suppose you’re a lawyer in a small Florida town, happily married, with an attractive fourteen-year-old daughter and two younger sons. Suppose some fifteen years ago you witnessed the brutal rape of a teenager and subsequently gave testimony that put the rapist, Max Cady, behind bars.

   Suppose Max Cady finally gets out of prison and comes back to your town — and suppose he begins making veiled threats and following you and your family, paying special attention to your fourteen-year-old daughter, Suppose you know Cady is a dangerous psychopath, that sooner or later he intends to rape your daughter and harm you and your other loved ones.

   What do you do?

   This is the dilemma that faces Sam Bowden, and this is the stuff of one of MacDonald’s finest suspense novels. The tension mounts to an almost unbearable pitch as Bowden suffers frustration after frustration and Cady moves inexorably toward explosive violence.

   The climax is MacDonald at his most compelling. A must-read for anyone who enjoys expertly written, beautifully plotted suspense fiction.

   Surprisingly enough, considering what Hollywood has done to quality novels in the past, the film version — Cape Fear (1962) — is every bit as tense and powerful, and features a bravura performance by Robert Mitchum; he literally radiates evil in the role of Max Cady.

   Almost as good are Gregory Peck and Polly Bergen as the Bowdens. Don’t miss it when it appears on the Late Show.

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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.

Editorial Comment: This will be John D. MacDonald week here on this blog, at least for the next couple of days. Besides the three JDM reviews posted today, coming up soon will be two more: The Good Old Stuff and The Green Ripper, by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller respectively; then two by David Vineyard: The Only Girl in the Game and A Deadly Shade of Gold.

JOHN D. MacDONALD – Darker than Amber. Gold Medal d1674, paperback original, 1966. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1970. Reprinted many times. Film: National General, 1970 (with Rod Taylor as Travis McGee, Theodore Bikel as Meyer, and Suzy Kendall as Vangie.)

   The Travis McGee series, with its color-coded titles, is one of the phenomenally popular successes of the mystery genre, and it’s easy to see why. McGee, who refers to himself as a “salvage consultant” (in actuality, he gets folks out of trouble the police can’t help them with), has many of those larger-than-life qualities contemporary readers seem to favor.

   He’s big, rawboned, handsome in a rugged way. A former minor pro-football player, he now lives an enviable life-style in retirement aboard his “sybaritic” houseboat, the Busted Flush, in Fort Lauderdale. It is a retirement from which he periodically emerges whenever the cash reserves are getting low, and he’s fond of saying he likes taking it in installments rather than all at sixty-five when he won’t be able to enjoy it much anyway.

   But McGee’s life is not all girls and glitter; there’s a dark, broody side of him, a part of his mind that tells him he’s capable of being a better man than he thinks he is. And he proves this, time and time again, as he fights the forces of corruption that have victimized his friends and clients.

   McGee is no cool professional; he takes on every case as if it were a personal crusade. And it’s there that his true charm lies: He is an emotional man who realizes he’s fallible and constantly strives to overcome it, knowing all the while that he never can.

   McGee also has his irritating points, however. He is constantly editorializing, and in the later entries in the series these asides become overly long and predictable. (Eventually one says, “Oh, Travis, not again!” and skips a page.)

   He also has a bad habit of indulging in therapeutic sex: A woman character has been traumatized; Travis takes her on a cruise on the Flush, makes love to her, and she is as good as new. And the women characters, while generally likable, all talk alike-a bright, sophisticated patter that makes them fairly difficult to tell apart.

   Darker than Amber begins with a unique introduction to one of these women: As Travis explains it in the classic first sentence, “We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.”

   The girl, whom McGee narrowly rescues from drowning, is Vangie Bellemer, a “dead-eyed cookie” who has been working as a high-priced call girl. Unlike many of MacDonald’s women characters, she is not very pleasant, nor is she understandable until McGee’s best friend, economist Meyer, breaks through her tough shell.

   What he finds is a frightened woman involved in something way over her head, something that concerns money taken from “dead ones.” Vangie’s associates have tried to kill her once, and she knows they will try again. They do — and succeed.

   And Travis, feeling guilty because he didn’t prevent Vangie’s death, interested because there is money involved, and curious because of the seeming magnitude of whatever is going on, starts on his crusade. He finds other high-priced call girls, a setup involving Caribbean cruises, luxury, and death.

   And when he and Meyer close in on the truth of the matter, through a series of elaborate machinations that are fun to watch, they find it is of even greater magnitude than they supposed.

   Darker than Amber is among the best in this entertaining series.

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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.

[UPDATE] Later the same day. David Vineyard’s comment about the movie made with Rod Taylor (#1), reminded me that I hadn’t included the film in the opening credits above. So I’ve added that, the photo image below, and regardless of the overall entertainment value of the rest of the movie, here’s a link to one of the greatest one-on-one fight scenes you might ever see on film.

JOHN D. MacDONALD – The Brass Cupcake. Gold Medal #124, paperback original, 1950. Reprinted many times.

   The career of John D. MacDonald has been a long and varied one, beginning with the publication of this excellent first novel. His books have ranged from modest paperback originals to the immensely popular Travis McGee series, as well as fat best sellers such as Condominium (1977) and the recent One More Sunday (1984).

   Likewise, the quality of his work has varied, from the truly terrible Weep for Me (a 1951 original that MacDonald himself refuses to allow to be reprinted) and the boring small-town drama Contrary Pleasure (1954), to such outstanding novels of suspense as The Damned (1952), Murder in the Wind (1956), and The Last One Left (1967).

   The recurring theme in MacDonald’s work is corruption — personal, corporate, societal-and his heroes are men and women who pit themselves against it. MacDonald draws heavily upon his knowledge of finance, land development, and Florida politics in constructing intricate plots, and his novels, particularly the later ones, are filled with editorial tirades about the abuse of the environment, corporate greed, personal greed, or whatever else happens to have been bothering him at the time of writing.

   In the earlier novels, these statements of position seem a natural outgrowth of the narrators’ personalities, but in later books they become long-winded and intrusive.

   In The Brass Cupcake, the evil is police corruption. The hero, Cliff Bartells, now an insurance adjuster, was once on the Florence City, Florida, force, but lost his badge for not going along with the local “arrangements” between the police and gambling establishments.

   That badge — fancy and gold — is Bartells’ brass cupcake: “Anything you got by guile … was called a cupcake So when they took it away from me, it wasn’t even a badge any more. Just a cupcake. Something I chiseled and then got chiseled out of. A brass cupcake. Something of no importance.”

   The murder with which the story opens — the death of a wealthy old woman in the process of a jewel theft — pits Bartells against the police force he used to belong to. They want him to keep out of it; he wants to follow the insurance agency’s usual procedure of attempting to buy back the jewels.

   His motives are not so pure, however — there is a fat bonus for him if he manages this. But Bartells is up against more than he bargains for: The dead woman has a lovely niece, someone Bartells can’t look at in a purely professional way; the niece has a boyfriend who is little more than a gigolo; a pair of servants seem to know more about the theft than they claim to the police.

   By the time Bartells has sorted through the evidence — as well as his personal feelings on a number of issues — a second murder has occurred, shots have been fired at him, and he knows his future in Florence City is not promising. Unless …

   Cliff Bartells is an early version of MacDonald’s later male characters: a complex man who wants to do the right thing and worries about it, because he knows he himself is not incorruptible.

   And in the niece, Melody Chance, we see many of the same qualities that appear in later women characters: strength, independence, and straightforwardness, a woman just a trifle weary of life who would like a good man to occasionally lean on.

   MacDonald’s depiction of secondary and even incidental characters is also excellent.

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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.

       Previously on this blog —

April Evil (reviewed by Steve Lewis)
Linda, film and novella (reviewed by Steve Lewis)

LENORE GLEN OFFORD – The Glass Mask. Duell Sloan & Pearce, hardcover, 1944. Paperback reprint: Dell #198, mapback edition, 1947.

   Lenore Glen Offord is one of the truly underrated writers of the World War II and postwar periods. Her characters are engaging and true to their times and environments.

   Her heroine, Georgine Wyeth, is the forerunner of today’s feminists — a single mother supporting her daughter with short-term jobs, forcing herself to deal with her fears, to stand up for herself, insisting all the time that she’s tired of being saved.

   Most of Offord’s books are set in Berkeley or other areas of northern California. She excels in portraying the uniqueness of the university town and the wartime atmosphere — the paranoia as well as the desperate excitement.

   Although she deals more with innocent romantic situations than is stylish now, every seeming digression into a character’s personal life is relevant to the plot.

   In The Glass Mask, the chief responsibility for detection shifts from Georgine Wyeth to pulp writer Todd McKinnon, though the story is told from Georgine’s viewpoint. Todd, Georgine, and Georgine’s eight-year-old daughter stop off in a Sacramento Valley town to satisfy his curiosity about a family mystery: Did Gilbert Peabody hasten the death of his ailing grandmother in order to inherit her house and thus be able to afford to marry?

   There is no proof, only verdict by rumor. Unable to face the innuendo, Gilbert has enlisted in the army and gone, leaving his wife to deal with the townsfolk and the more unpleasant relatives.

   By varying means, she tricks and inveigles the McKinnon-Wyeth menage into staying on day after day to investigate the nocturnal footsteps in the attic, the family patriarch who rants and feigns seizures, and the mystery of what the old lady got from the bank the day she died and where she hid iit.

   This is an entertaining tale, and one of Offord’s best. Georgine Wyeth is also at her most appealing in Skeleton Key (1943), in which she investigates the murder of a wartime air-raid warden during an unexpected blackout.

   Unfortunately, Offord’s output was not great: merely eight mysteries, four other adult books, and a juvenile. Especially good among the other mysteries are Murder on Russian Hill (1938), The 9 Dark Hours (1941), and The Smiling Tiger (1951).

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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.

Editorial Comment:   Some additional bio-bibliographical information on Lenore Glen Offord follows the review preceding this one, that of The Smiling Tiger, written by Bill Deeck.

  PETER CHEYNEY – The Stars Are Dark. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1943. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1943. Reprinted in paperback several times, including as The London Spy Murders, Avon #49, 1944.

   Cheyney’s best work is his series of espionage novels generally referred to as the “Dark Series,” of which The Stars Are Dark is the second. Here, the breakneck pace of the Caution books is slowed by a genuine interest in character, which makes the story stronger.

   Quayle, the master of a British spy ring in World War II, is faced with the task of dealing with a man who has come from Morocco with what he says is important information about German troops there. Is this man what he seems?

   Quayle puts his agents into action, not hesitating to risk their lives to discover the answer, but it is Quayle who does the most work and takes the most risks.

   Cheyney does an excellent job of conveying the world of spying, with all its twists and double crosses. No one is what he seems, and everyone knows that; but no one is sure just what anyone else really is. Quayle tells his people no more than they need to know. Readers of John Le Carre and William Haggard would recognize Cheyney’s world at once.

   Not all Cheyney’s books with “Dark” in the title belong to his spy series, but another good one is Dark Duet (1942), first published in US paperback as The Counter Spy Murders (Avon, 1944). The Stars Are Dark was retitled The London Spy Murders (Avon, 1944).

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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.

   
PETER CHEYNEY – This Man Is Dangerous. Coward McCann, US, hardcover, 1938. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1936. Reprinted many times in paperback. Film: Sonofilm, 1954, as Cet Homme Est Dangeureux (This Man Is Dangerous) (with Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution; director: Jean Sacha). Released in the US as Dangerous Agent.

   Peter Cheyney (1896-1951) never visited the United States in his life and knew next to nothing about Americans, but in the late 1930s be became an instant success in his native England and in Europe, especially France, as a writer of fake-American hard-boiled novels.

   In This Man Is Dangerous and ten subsequent titles, he chronicled the adventures of rootin’ -tootin’ two-gun-shootin’ Lemmy Caution, an indestructible FBI agent who downs liquor by the quart, laughs at bullets flying his way, romances every dame in sight, and blasts away at greasy ethnic-named racketeers – and (in the later novels) Nazi spies.

   Americans, of course, saw these ridiculous exercises for what they were, and only the first few were ever published here. Certainly no one would read Lemmy Cautions for their plots, which are uniform from book to book — all the nasties double-crossing each other over the McGuffin — nor for their characterizations, which are pure comic strip.

   But mystery fans with a taste for lunacy may be attracted by Cheyney’s self-created idiom. Lemmy narrates his cases in first person and present tense, a wild-and-crazy stylistic smorgasbord concocted from Grade Z western films, the stories of Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon, eyeballpoppers apparently of Cheyney’s own invention (like “He blew the bezuzus” for “He spilled the beans”), and a steady stream of British spellings and locutions.

   Nothing but quotation can convey the Cheyney flavor. From This Man Is Dangerous:

   From Don’t Get Me Wrong (1939):

   From Your Deal, My Lovely (1941):

   Lemmy Caution became so popular on the Continent that Eddie Constantine, an American actor, portrayed him in a series of French films. These films were so successful that Jean Luc Godard used Constantine as Caution in his New Wave film Alphaville.

   Eventually Cheyney launched a second wave of novels, written in a spare ersatz-Hammett style and featuring Slim Callaghan, London’s toughest PI. But for those who love pure absurdity, and appreciate the wild stylistic flights of Robert Leslie Bellem and Henry Kane and Richard S. Prather, a treat of comparable dimensions is in store when they tackle the adventures of Lemmy Caution.

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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.

HILDA LAWRENCE – Blood Upon the Snow. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1944. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition: February 1945. Reprint paperbacks: Pocket 336, February 1946; Avon Classic Crime PN320, 1970.

   Hilda Lawrence wrote three novels featuring the odd investigative trio of private eye Mark East and spinster sleuths Bessie Petty and Beulah Pond. In addition, she published a melodramatic suspense novel, The Pavilion (1949), and two novellas, “Death Has Four Hands” and “This Bleeding House” (both 1950).

   She is best known for the East/Petty/Pond books, and for good reason: They present an interesting juxtaposition of the hard-boiled school versus the little-old-lady sleuth, between the customs and mores of Manhattan and those of a small New England village.

   The characters are well drawn, the setting evocative, and the interplay between Mark East and his elderly “Watsons” is entertaining.

   As this first entry in the series opens, the snow is falling and Mark is arriving at the village of Crestwood. His introduction to Beulah Pond occurs when he stops to ask directions to the house where a prospective client expects him.

   When he eventually arrives, he is told he must wait until morning for his interview; and when he meets with Mr. Stoneman, the old man seems to think he is hiring a private secretary rather than a private detective. Mark, however, senses something is very wrong in the house; the old man seems frightened and has a hurt wrist and bruises on his face.

   He agrees to stay on for a few days, assuming secretarial duties, and makes it his first order of business to revisit Miss Pond, whom he perceives — rightly so — as a woman who knows a great deal about what goes on in the village.

   When he arrives at her home, he is introduced to Bessie Petty, and the unlikely partnership in detection is launched.

   The story that follows is one of slowly rising terror. The people with whom Stoneman is staying, Laura and Jim Morey and their two children, also seem disturbed; Stoneman is reported to have been sleepwalking; the housekeeper, Mrs. Lacey, has handed in her notice and seems upset about this; strange mischief has occurred in the wine cellar; and as the black winter night closes in, Mark remembers something Mrs. Lacey said about this being “good soil for evil.”

   A slow-paced but absorbing chiller, as are the other two in the series — A Time to Die (1945) and Death of a Doll (1947).

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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.

HARRY GREY – The Hoods. Crown, hardcover, 1952. Paperback reprint: Signet Giant S999, 1953; several later printings. Film: 1984, as Once Upon a Time in America. Director: Sergio Leone.

   This sprawling novel chronicles the career of a mob of Jewish gangsters from New York’s Lower East Side, from their beginnings as a kid gang to their rise in the world of big-time organized crime.

   The narrator is Noodles the Shiv, whose intelligence and sensitivity outdistance his compatriots Maxie, Patsy, Dominick, and Cockeye, but whose deeds are every bit as cold-blooded.

   Grey’s novel is exciting, with various heists and gang-war incidents vividly portrayed, and his portraits of mobsters are believable, backing up the author’s claim to be “an ex-hood himself,” as Mickey Spillane’s cover blurb on the 1953 Signet paperback edition puts it. But the episodic nature of the book makes The Hoods a fast-moving novel that lacks narrative drive.

   The Hoods was a paperback best seller, going through several editions and many printings, but its latter-day claim to fame is as the source for Italian director Sergio Leone’s controversial film Once Upon A Time in America, the screenplay of which was largely written by American mystery writer Stuart Kaminsky.

   Leone’s magnificent gangster epic (starring Robert DeNiro as Noodles — released in a restructured, truncated version as well as in its full 277 minutes of running time) seems destined to be the subject of discussion among film buffs for decades to come.

   Inexplicably, the “movie tie-in” edition published by New American Library was a novelization of the film, rather than a reissue of Grey’s original novel.

   Grey’s other two novels, Call Me Duke (1955) and Portrait of a Mobster (1958), are also gangster tales, the latter novel a fictionalized autobiography of Dutch Schultz.

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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.