Sat 8 Aug 2009
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf:
American Gothic (1974) about a series of murders-for-profit set in Chicago of 1893, is supposedly true, but that don’t make it much good. The characters and cliff-hangings are all fairly standard, and the ending looks to have been swiped from Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Pretty disappointing from the Master of Menace.
It was a younger, hungrier and harder-working Bloch who turned out Shooting Star / Terror in the Night (Ace Double, 1958). Night collects Bloch stories, mostly from Manhunt and other mystery mags from the 1950s, dealing with creepy crime and poetic justice, and if the poetry is usually just doggerel, the crime is creepy enough.
Shooting Star is a more memorable effort, a standard PI yarn, maybe, but done with shrewd insight into the vagaries of Hollywood deal-making and the marketing of fame.
The protagonist, Sam Clayburn, is a once-successful agent, now down on his luck, eking out a living writing True Crime stories, who gets hired to investigate the scandalous case of a murdered cowboy star (this was written in 1958, remember) whose old movies can’t be sold to TV because his death was linked to Marijuana (1958, remember).
There’s nothing very remarkable here, nor very creepy either, but Bloch deals the hard-boiled cards very ably, turning up the requisite hands of mysterious warnings, dangerous blondes, shots in the dark, beatings, cops, et al, set in a milieu of nervous celebrities and phony glamour (as opposed to real glamour, I guess).
Lines like “Keep your nose clean — before someone taps it with a spade.” and “Her pajamas tended to gape. So did I.” — help things along to their predestined end, and left me wishing Bloch had done more in the standard PI line
Bibliographic Data:
American Gothic. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1974. Paperback reprints: Fawcett Crest P2391, 1975; Tor, 1987; I Books, 2004.
Shooting Star. Ace Double D-265, paperback original, 1958. Hard Case Crime, pb reprint, 2008, bound with Spiderweb.
Terror in the Night and Other Stories. Ace Double D-265, paperback original, 1958. Story collection:
● A Good Imagination. Suspect Detective Stories, January 1956.
● Luck Is No Lady. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, August 1957.
● Man with a Hobby. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March 1957.
● The Real Bad Friend. Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, February 1957.
● String of Pearls. The Saint Detective Magazine, August 1956.
● Terror in the Night. Manhunt, February 1956.
● Water’s Edge. Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, September 1956.
August 9th, 2009 at 4:03 am
I liked American Gothic a bit more than this, but largely for the reasons Dan lists as what he didn’t like. But it’s hardly major Bloch in either case. I’m not a big fan of his at novel length anyway, not even Psycho.
His real forte was the short story, and Terror sounds like a good collection. Of course his masterpiece is probably “Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper,” but he had a way with a twist in the tail even in his lesser works.
I’ll have to look for Shooting Star. A p.i. novel by Bloch is something I should experience, and it sounds as if it is sprinkled with the famous Bloch wit.
August 9th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
This is perhaps the most useful of my internet bookmarks.
I have run down literally dozens of books and films reviewed here at the L.A. Public Library, used bookstores, and sellers of old DVDs and VHS tapes.
What a joy this website is to read….
August 9th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
David
If you don’t mind not reading the first edition from Ace, the easier (and far cheaper) alternative to getting a copy of SHOOTING STAR is to buy the Hard Case Crime reprint. The Ace Double will set you back something close to forty dollars in decent condition.
Unless of course you want the TERROR IN THE NIGHT collection, too. I think there’s a gold mine to be had in those old digest mystery magazines from the 1950s — and the 1960s also — for any reader or reprint publisher who doesn’t mind digging a little.
Rick
Thanks for the compliment! But I know you’re not the only one whose want list grows and grows because of this blog. The reason I’m so sure about that because I’m another one…
— Steve
August 9th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
I knew that title seemed familiar. I’ll gladly buy the Hard Case. Something in my character balks at paying $40 for a paperback.
Actually I have a pretty good collection of the old digests the stories in Terror in the Night appeared in, and since most of them tended to reprint stories by writers like Bloch I probably have many of them. Manhunt in particular often reprinted stories and I could probably find the AHHM’s and Shayne’s if I dig around. They are indeed a great source for much short fiction in the genre.