Fri 26 Sep 2014
Revewed by J. Randolph Cox: DELL SHANNON – Chance to Kill.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
DELL SHANNON – Chance to Kill. William Morrow, hardcover, 1967. Pyramid T2388, paperback, January 1971.
After reading Marv Lachman’s review of Dell Shannon’s Mark of Murder (and see the comments following), I was prompted to give this one a try again, a book I hadn’t read in over 45 years, Chance to Kill.
As a police procedural it deals with more than a single murder. To quote the dust jacket blurb: “Two heist men wanted for double homicide…the body of a young punk in an alley…the corpse of a girl in a dry riverbed … in fact, everything more or less routine for Lt. Luis Mendoza and his colleagues in the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Then things go really bad because the murdered girl is a policewoman and she is black. (Of course, in 1967 that meant referring to her as Negro.) Interesting characters and situations. So many of them are described as “nice and ordinary.” The quest for another Kipling for Mendoza’s collection comes up from time to time, but seems to serve no purpose except to add a new dimension to his character, along with references to his family when he goes home at the end of the day.
His dialogue is sprinkled with Spanish phrases to show he is Latino. He picks up a handful of Kipling titles and quotes from him (the only thing Kipling means to his co-worker Hackett is the phrase “the white man’s burden”).
I found the prices of things in 1967 interesting. Was everything that affordable in 1967? I didn’t think so at the time. The solution is revealed plausibly and points to a character I hadn’t really noticed. Mendoza ends by going home to his family, his wife, the twins, the cats, and there is a Kipling he has yet to read. Someone told him there was a story in it with a message about doing a good job. He might take the day off and read that.
Not much politics here, but there is a hint of how liberal things are getting, but you find that in a lot of popular fiction in 1967. Linington/Shannon was active in the John Birch Society. Someday I’ll have to look at some of the Mendoza titles on my shelves from the later years.
September 26th, 2014 at 2:26 pm
I don’t know how easily it can be made out, but the cover blurb refers to a “policelady corpse,” which somehow seemed like a strange way of referring to the victim.
I googled “policelady” as a single word, and found a few book references in which it appears in normal text, but it still strikes me as odd.
September 26th, 2014 at 2:47 pm
PS. My wife and I were both still in grad school in 1967 (we met in Ann Arbor as teaching fellows in the math department) and you’re right. Everything really was expensive then.
September 26th, 2014 at 3:19 pm
I graduated high school in 1967, and things were only high because salaries were low even at the top levels. My aunt had a $100K a year job and still lived in Dallas because she could not afford New York — and that was a fabulous salary for anyone in 1967.
Re the politics, 1968 was the year everyone on either political extreme went more than slightly nuts. Up until then the problems had mostly been racial and many conservatives, no matter how strict, still had sympathy for the Civil Rights movement even when it sometimes bubbled over into crime and riots.
In ’68 the sexual revolution kicked in, the big surge of 18 year old Baby Boomers came on the scene, there was that troubled and divisive presidential election, the Kennedy and King assassinations, ‘Nam, and sex drugs and rock and roll. That’s when many of the more extreme conservatives saw an apocalypse coming and became more vocal. Linnington etc was something of a cop junkie and it was a really tough year for people who admired the policeshe was a bit more strident, but hardly a lone voice in the genre.
Fanatics on both sides had the stage and the divide between old and young was palpable. Most people over 35 did not see Chicago the way most of us under 30 did. A lot of people under 30 never did recover their trust of police and many over 35 never regained trust or respect for the young. For anyone who didn’t live through it describing how deep that schism was is impossible.
September 26th, 2014 at 3:19 pm
I suspect everything did seem expensive at the time, but compared to today’s prices we got by cheap. I would gladly go back to paying yesterday’s prices!
September 26th, 2014 at 5:06 pm
“Policelady corpse”? My copy of the hardcover uses the term “policewoman”.
September 26th, 2014 at 8:34 pm
I’ve sometimes wondered. Does anyone think that Elizabeth Linington had any idea who Del Shannon was?