MICHAEL GILBERT “The Unstoppable Man.” Short story. Inspector Hazelrigg. First US publication in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 1954. First published in John Bull, UK, 19 November 1949, as “Amateur in Violence.” First collected in Amateur in Violence (Davis, US, paperback, 1973). Reprinted many times. Film: The Unstoppable Man (Argo, UK, 1960), reviewed here.

   Those are the final words of Michael Gilbert’s Inspector Hazelrigg in this tale, and if you have ever read this oft anthologized story, you will have little trouble recalling them. In fact, they likely have the same impact now as you recall them they did when you first read them in one of the best known stories in Gilbert’s long career.

   I suppose there are some who think of Gilbert as primarily a quiet writer, a British solicitor who wrote a certain kind of story, a far cry from his more violent American contemporaries. Of course that isn’t true. The truth is, Gilbert always wrote with a quiet savagery that belied his civilized settings and background. He had a fine eye for the darker, hidden side beneath the civilized soul of his fellow Brits, whether they were spies, solicitors, school masters, actors, prisoners of war, or policemen.

   Gilbert not only produced fine puzzles and character studies, but when he wanted to, he could chill to the bone, producing nerve wracking suspense and high adventure. Think of some of those icy Calder and Behrens stories, some of the adventures of Patrick Petrella, and no few of the novels, that could suddenly go as dark and violent as any of their American cousins.

   This was the first story of Gilbert’s I ever read, and I was a devout follower ever after.

   â€œThe Unstoppable Man” first appeared in this country in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in February 1954 in an issue that touted it contained no reprints. Among the all-new material were an Anthony Boucher story, one by Victor Canning, and others by Roy Vickers, Zelda Popkin, Phyllis Bentley, and Youngman Carter. Even in that company, though, Gilbert’s tale sticks out.

   It’s a simple story. It opens with the Inspector describing the sort of man who would frighten him as a pursuer.

   The amateur in question is Mr. Collet, managing director of a shipping firm who son has been kidnapped and wants to know whether or not kidnappers can be trusted to return their victim alive. Mr. Collet is in troublem and the kidnappers have his son.

   The kidnapper is Joe Keller with his gang. Keller is a man who has kidnapped and tortured children before. He is holding Mr. Collet’s son and the police dare not rush the place for fear they will kill the child.

   Mr. Collet has one request of the police, get him and his kit into the bedroom with his son before they rush the house. He will take care of the rest, though he doesn’t let on how, since he doesn’t want a gun. The police agree and get Collet into the room with his son. Their chances are slim as Keller and his gang will go for the child as soon as the police move in. There is no reason for them not to kill father and son at that point.

   All that stands between the child and death is Hazelrigg’s “amateur in violence,” the quiet but strangely assured Mr. Collet.

   I won’t spoil if for you if somehow you have missed this little gem from Mr. Gilbert from his Inspector Hazelrigg series. It’s such a good ending that Gilbert used variations on it in a couple of books, including a crossover novella with Calder, Behrens, and Patrick Petrella, and one of his early novels. I should point out that every time Gilbert delivers the goods, but perhaps never with quite the impact of this version.

   I can only say without giving it away, that the ending is a corker, savage, shocking, and memorable.

   You may never read Michael Gilbert quite the same way again. Whatever else you won’t forget Gilbert’s “amateur in violence.” You may even find you feel a little pity for Joe Keller and his gang … they never had a chance.

BRIAN GARFIELD – Death Wish. McKay, hardcover, 1972. Fawcett Crest, paperback, August 1974. Mysterious Press, paperback, 1985. Other reprint editions exist. Film: Paramount Pictures, 1974.

   Brian Garfield is a highly versatile writer at any number of story types and forms. He began his career in the western field,where he published dozens of novels, including at least five of outstanding quality. In 1970 he shifted his sights to the contemporary novels with criminous themes that have earned him wide acclaim in this country ans best0seller status in England.

   These, published under his own name and the pseudonym John Ives, cover most of the criminous spectrum: action/adventure, political intrigue, comic farce, historical suspense, espionage, and urban crime. More recently, he has published a nonfiction book on western films, written screenplays, and formed his own Hollywood production company.

   Death Wish is probably Garfield’s most famous (some might say infamous) novel, not so much by its own virtue but as a result of the 1974 film version with Charles Bronson. It is certainly the work that catapulted him into national prominence, at least in part of his violent reaction to the film.

   The plot is simple and gut-wrenching. Paul Benjamin, a happily married cliff dweller on New York’s Upper West Side, receives a call from his son-in-law one hot, ordinary summer afternoon. Three young hoodlums have broken into his apartment (the building was supposedly secure) and brutally beaten his wife and daughter — attacks of such violence that neither woman survives.

   The police are helpless: they have no clear description of the youths, no way to track them down. Paul’s grief, frustration, and rage finally lead him to take action himself — to buy a gun and go hunting the three kids in their world: the deserted alleys and streets and byways of the city after dark. But his mission of vengeance soon assumes a much larger scope: It becomes a vendetta against all the criminals who prey on helpless victims, a one-man vigilante committee bent on destroying as many of the enemy as possible before he himself is caught.

   As the jacket blurb says, this “is the story of a society having a nervous breakdown. It is about something that causes a a secret uneasiness far back in the conscious minds of many people. What would happen to a man who is unable to keep to the narrow line that stands between being a victim or executioner?”

   Garfield does not glorify or advocate vigilantism: his is the story of Paul Benjamin’s descent into hell. The film version, however, does glorify Paul’s actions. Its makers misinterpreted the novel’s ambiguous ending and produced a paean to violence, an ultra-right-wing fantasy that ends with Bronson winking at the camera and silently promising more carnage to come.

   Garfield was so appalled at the film’s distortion of his novel that he ought — unsuccessfully, foe thr most part — to keep t from being shown on national television.

   In a sequel, Death Sentence (1975), Garfield completes Paul’s story, reaffirms the original intent of Death Wish, and makes a strong anti-violence statement. This novel, however, did not have the commercial success of Death Wish ad unfortunately seems to be one of Garfield’s least-known works. This reviewer, at least, accords it considerable respect.

     ———
   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.

         February 5.

DEATH WISH. Paramount Pictures, 1974. Charles Bronson, Hope Lange, Vincent Gardenia, Steven Keats, William Redfield, Stuart Margolin, Stephen Elliott, Kathleen Tolan. Based on the book by Brian Garfield. Director: Michael Winner. [Watched on HBO.]

   Since I’ve never read Brian Garfield’s book, I can’t hope to compare the two. It’s my opinion that movies taken from other sources have to stand on their own anyway, and in its fashion, this one definitely does.

   There is one change I know was made. In the book the nae of Charles Bronson’s character is Paul Benjamin, but in the film it’s been changed to something-Polish-sounding-that-starts-with-K [Kersey] (I don’t takes notes, and I’m not going to, so bear with me once in a while.)

   Otherwise the basic outline of the story is the same, although the message is not. A mild-mannered architect loses his wife to a muggers’ attack, and his daughter retreats into a catatonic shell. In retaliation he becomes a deadly sharp-hooting vigilante haunting the streets and subways of New York City. As he does so, he attracts a considerable amount of press coverage, and the police end up not daring to catch and arrest him if they could.

   Incidentally, and this is the only flaw in what otherwise is an ultra-realistic portrayal of a New York City no one knows — simply because they’re all huddled together behind triple-locked doors — I’ve never seen subway trains as clean as they are in this movie.

   The film is excellently done, and I have to say this even though the message rubs me the wrong way intellectually, not emotionally. It’s a movie perfectly tailored for audiences fed up with crime-on-the-streets. The NRA would love it.

   Rated R, of all the obvious reasons.

STEPHEN HUMPHREY BOGART – Play It Again. R. J.Brooks #1. Forge, hardcover, 1995; paperback, June 1996.

   R. J. Brooks is a Manhattan PI, and if he isn’t sleazy, it isn’t because he doesn’t do sleazy work. He’s also the son of a couple of movie stars; his father’s dead, but his mother, the glamorous if aging Belle Fontaine, is still around.

   He doesn’t have much to do with her, though, and thinks she was a pretty lousy mother, all things told. But there’s a murder that changes all sorts of things, and R. J. has to face part of a past he turned away from long ago.

   This isn’t quite a two-smiley, but it’s a solid smiley-plus. Bogart has a flair for dialog, and tells a pretty good story. His characters are well done, too, and Brooks comes across as a surprisingly real person for the most part.

   The book isn’t compelling or anything that grand, but it will stand comparison with most of the PI stuff being done these days. There’ll be a lot of speculation as to how much of his real relationship with his parents found its way into the story, as I’m sure he realizes full well; it can’t do anything but sell books.

   It’s blurbed, by the way, by Connie Chung and Liz Smith, if that tells you anything about how Tor/Forge intends to market it.

Bibliographic Note:   There was one follow-up book in a series of only two: As Time Goes By (Forge, hardcover, 1997).

TOMAHAWK TRAIL. United Artists / Bel-Air Productions, 1957. Chuck Connors, John Smith, Susan Cummings, Lisa Montell, George N. Neise, [Harry] Dean Stanton. Director: Lesley Selander.

   Although there’s not much depth in Tomahawk Trail, it’s a rather enjoyable Western programmer that provides a good hour of pure cinematic escapism. With more than a nod to John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy, the plot follows a U.S. Army troop caught in hostile Apache country. Problem is, Lt. Jonathan Davenport (George N. Niese), an arrogant West Point graduate, has gone mad from a head injury and exposure to the desert sun. This forces Sgt. Wade McCoy (Chuck Connors) into action, taking charge of the troop, knowing all too well that this could lead to his Court-martial.

   Along for the journey is a ragtag group of soldiers, including Private Reynolds (John Smith) and Private Miller (a young Harry Dean Stanton) and two women, the white Ellen Carter (Susan Cummings) and the Apache squaw Tula (Lisa Montell). The dialogue written for the women is bland and unconvincing. That’s putting it mildly. Conversations between the two are in a childish stereotypical Native American patois, with exceedingly simple words and phrases. Although it’s grating to the ears, fortunately the bulk of the film’s dramatic moments revolve not around them, but around McCoy as he tries to convince himself that he is doing the best possible thing in the worst possible situation.

   In many ways, there’s not all that much that’s wrong with Tomahawk Trail. It’s nothing exceptional, either. Just another 1950s Western that is neither particularly compelling, nor particularly off-putting. If you’re a Chuck Connors fan and you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth a look.

 MARTIN H. GREENBERG, Editor – Deadly Doings. Ivy, paperback original; 1st printing, 1989.

#5. WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT “Never Marry Murder.” Short story. First published in Dime Mystery Magazine, December 1949, as by Roney Scott. Not collected or reprinted elsewhere.

   Most readers of this blog will recognize William Campbell Gault as the author of two long-running series of private eye novels, eight with a fellow named Joe Puma and fourteen with Brock “The Rock” Callahan, both working cases all over the southern California landscape.

   Less known is the fact that Gault also had a long career writing detective and crime stories for the pulp magazines, well over a hundred of them, starting with “Crime Collection” in the January 1940 issue of 10-Story Detective Magazine.

   Some of them featured PI’s or wanna-be PI’s, but “Never Marry Murder” is not one of them. (That the byline on the story is Roney Scott is due to the fact that Gault had another story in the same issue under his own name, “Slay You in My Freams,” a common practice in those days.)

   No, this one’s a straightforward domestic crime tale, one that would not be out of place in, say, Alfred Hitchcock’s Magazine, back when it started after the success of the TV show; that is t= say, a story that depends on a surprise ending, a unexpected twist, if you will.

   A man who’s made his fortune by killing his first two wives has decided to settle down with the woman of his dreams, until, that is, he finds out that she’s been seeing another man. He doesn’t hesitate a minute. She has to go, victim number three.

   Unfortunately I knew exactly what was coming well before the ending, long before the protagonist did, and you may, too, with only the information I’ve given you. The story’s well told — you could say the same thing about everything Gault ever wrote — but when the story’s as predictable as this one is, I think editor Martin H. Greenberg might have found a better one. He certainly had plenty to choose from.

         —

Previously in this Martin Greenberg anthology: SUE GRAFTON “The Parker Shotgun.”

Question: What is the only James Bond theme song to have reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart?

Answer:

  LOU SAHADI, Editor – An Argosy Special: Science Fiction. One-shot reprint magazine. Popular Publications, 1977.

#2. CHAD OLIVER “The Land of Lost Content.” Short story. First published in Super Science Stories, November 1950. Collected in A Star Above It and Other Stories (NESFA Press, hardcover, 2003).

   Of the many SF writers of his day, Chad Oliver certainly had the credentials for the job. He had a PhD in anthropology from UCLA and was a fixture in that department at the University of Texas for nearly 50 years, including twice being chairman. He didn’t write a lot of science fiction, but as they say, what he did write was choice.

   My favorite of the nine novels he wrote, some of which were westerns, was The Winds of Time (1956), in which a race of aliens who came to Earth thousands of years in past decide to go into suspended animation to wait for a civilized mankind to evolve.

   “The Land of Lost Content” was Oliver’s first published story, and frankly, while certainly quite readable even today, it doesn’t show him at his best. The story line is unfortunately a very familiar one, that of a group of underground survivors of a nuclear and/or germ-based catastrophe on the surface of the Earth deciding generations later to break all of their dying society’s laws and see if they can make it to the land above.

   The last few lines sum it up: “Could they succeed where gods had faltered? He shook his head. Probably, almost certainly they would fail. But they would try. For that was what it meant to be a man.”

       —

Previously from this Lou Sahadi anthology: ROGER DEE “First Life.”

         February 4.

HOW TO BEAT THE HIGH COST OF LIVING. Filmways, 1980. Susan Saint James, Jane Curtin, Jessica Lange, Richard Benjamin, Eddie Albert, Cathryn Damon, Dabney Coleman, Director: Robert Scheerer. [Watched on HBO.]

   Essentially a time-waster, and I’m sorry I did. The only moral to this sad story of three suburban ladies trying to cope with double-digit-inflation seems to be that the only solution is to turn to crime. And of course, that way nobody loses but the insurance company.

   It’s supposed to be a comedy,but we have a problem right there, It’s not very funny. There are a couple of scenes worth laughing at. Unfortunately one of them — as Susan St. James tries to hold up a supermarket at the checkout counter — was spoiled by overexposure: I’d already seen it in the coming attractions.

   (One of my favorite spots on HBO, by the way — the best way tp id out which movies to avoid. It didn’t work this time.)

   Dabney Coleman, who was superb as Dolly Parton’s lecherous boss in Nine to Five, plays a lecherous policeman in this one, and he is superb again. Otherwise the movie is essentially Jane Curtin’s; the others are along solely for the ride.

   Rated PG, for bad language again (although not the ‘F’ word, which may be the difference) and (surprisingly) or a brief look at the conclusion of a topless strip tease act, performed admirably by Jane Curtin. (Since it was headless, too, as I recall, the body may actually have been someone else’s. Since we had already seen a panting Richard Benjamin stripped to his shorts earlier in the movie, we do know it was not his.)

   For reasons which will become clear about halfway through this column, my subject this month is David Goodis. Most of you who are reading this probably know a little about the man, but for the benefit of those who need their recollections refreshed, I’ll begin with a brief sketch of Goodis and his world.

   He was born in Philadelphia on March 2, 1917 and, except for a few years in Hollywood, spent most of his life there. Soon after graduating from Temple University he broke into print with RETREAT FROM OBLIVION (1939), a mainstream novel that made zero impact at the time and hasn’t been reprinted since.

   Rejected for military service in World War II, he spent the war years cranking out an estimated five and a half million words for Battle Birds and a slew of other pulp magazines, mainly tales of air combat with titles like “Death Flies the Coffins of Hitler,” “Death Rides My Cockpit” and “Guns of the Sea Raiders.”

   Almost none of this material has been reprinted either, and probably never will be. His greatest commercial success was his second novel, DARK PASSAGE (1946), a noir thriller about an innocent man convicted of his wife’s murder who escapes from San Quentin, has plastic surgery performed on his face and begins a hunt for the real killer.

   The Saturday Evening Post paid Goodis a huge sum for the right to serialize the book before its hardcover release, which inspired rave reviews including one from Anthony Boucher in the San Francisco Chronicle (October 20, 1946): “[H]ere is the most notable talent to emerge in the field in a long time. Mr. Goodis has an originality of naturalism, a precise feeling for petty lives, a creatively compelling vividness of detail….This is the goods.”

   Very little time passed before Warner Bros. paid Goodis another huge sum of money for the movie rights. DARK PASSAGE (1947) was an excellent film noir directed by Delmer Daves and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Warners offered Goodis a screenwriting contract, but the results were disappointing from both his and the studio’s point of view. In 1950 he returned to Philadelphia and his parents’ house and reinvented himself as a writer of paperback originals.

   The style of DARK PASSAGE and his other novels of the late Forties evoked the naturalism of authors like Hemingway, but his initial impact on suspense fiction approximated that of Cornell Woolrich. Stylistically his paperbacks resembled his hardcovers except that a vital element had been discarded. What makes Woolrich the Hitchcock of the written word is his uncanny genius for making us feel the terror and uncertainty of his menaced protagonists. But we can’t experience true terror or uncertainty unless the outcome is genuinely in doubt, and in fact we can’t tell until the climax of a Woolrich novel or story whether it’s allègre or noir, whether the characters whose nightmares we share will be saved or destroyed.

   In Goodis’s paperbacks, however, there is no basis for even a moment’s hope and thus no real suspense. His people are born losers and victims who try to cheat their fate by living as zombies, shunning all involvement with others and the world, sustained by booze, cigarettes and mechanical sex. What they learn is that there’s no way out of the trap they’re in. Whatever they do or don’t do, life is going to get them.

   Character types, settings and motifs recur in his paperbacks with ritualistic frequency. A run-down old house in a seedy district of Philadelphia. A loud corner tavern, filled at all hours of the night with smoke and sweat, gin fumes and derelicts beyond hope. The docks, with at least one graphically described fistfight every time Goodis takes us there. A frightened, friendless, lonely man, living in the night. A fat sadistic woman, oozing grotesque sexuality. A brilliant creative person defeated by the world so badly that he’s reduced to a passive drunken wisp, muttering mournfully of meaninglessness. Bizarre little philosophic conversations between total strangers. Beaten protagonists dully resuming zombie lives as the novels end.

   It’s typical of Goodis’ world that in THE MOON IN THE GUTTER (Gold Medal pb #348, 1953) the viewpoint character Kerrigan lets go free the parolee whom his wife hired to beat him to death, gives up hunting for the man who raped his sister and caused her suicide, and goes back to live with his vicious wife.

   Or take that gem of noir BLACK FRIDAY (Lion pb #224, 1954). “January cold came in from two rivers, formed four walls around Hart and closed in on him.” The chilly hell that envelops Goodis’s luckless man-on-the-run from this first sentence only becomes more hellish as he stumbles upon a man shot to death in the street, gets away with a wallet containing $12,000 and winds up in a house on the northwest edge of Philadelphia and with, as in Sartre’s play, no exit.

   For housemates he has a beautiful young woman, a fat blonde whore (who has counterparts in other Goodis novels) and four psychotic criminals. When the novel ends, the poor schmuck in whose shoes Goodis has made us live is unspeakably worse off than when it began. “He had no idea where he was going and didn’t care.”

   Soon after the death of his parents with whom he’d lived since his return from Hollywood, Goodis himself died, on January 7, 1967, less than two months before his 50th birthday.

   Goodis, like Poe and Hitchcock and many others, owes a great deal of his recognition as a major figure to the French. The only biography of him to date is GOODIS: LA VIE EN NOIR ET BLANC (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984) by Philippe Garnier, who took great pains to interview everyone he could find who knew that haunted man.

   Although I and many others tried unsuccessfully for years to find a U.S. publisher for this book, it was no thanks to me that almost thirty years after its original publication some brave soul made the commitment. GOODIS: A LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE (Black Pool Productions, 2013) is required reading for anyone who loves Goodis but is not at home in French.

   Until quite recently there was no book exploring the Goodis world, not even in French, but now we have Jay A. Gertzman’s PULP ACCORDING TO DAVID GOODIS (Down & Out Books, 2018). Gertzman, a retired professor of literature who knows Philadelphia very well indeed, doesn’t take us through the Goodis novels chronologically and developmentally — mainly, I suppose, because there are so many family resemblances among them — but opts to cover the history and sociology of the rundown Philly communities that Goodis before him knew just as well, and stresses his connections with literary and cultural icons like Hemingway, Faulkner, Freud and, first and foremost, Kafka. (The title of one of his chapters is “The Pulp Kafka of Philadelphia.”)

   Other approaches are possible, and I hope I live to see at least a few of them, but to Gertzman belongs the honor that with respect to Woolrich is mine. He was there first.