Sun 22 Jul 2018
ROBERT DIETRICH – End of a Stripper. Steve Bentley #3. Dell First Edition A197, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1960.
Last issue when I mentioned that I could think of only a couple of PI’s working the Washington DC area, I didn’t include Steve Bentley, the reason being that Bentley is not a PI. He’s an accountant. The cases of murder he runs into, though, are straight private eye fare.
Such as this one, in which Bentley also shows his true colors, dropping his current lady friend in nothing flat in order to chase a high-class stripper who later turns up dead in her bathroom. This is a story that’s crudely told, with a strong homophobic sense of what’s wrong with the world.
[FOOTNOTE.] As most of you probably know, but perhaps not everyone, Robert Dietrich was one of several pen names that the notorious E. Howard Hunt wrote under. It’s no reason to run out to ransack your local used paperback bookstore to obtain a copy for this particular one, but at least if you didn’t know before, now you do.
July 23rd, 2018 at 6:02 am
I haven’t read this – or, as far as I can remember, any of the others in this series – but I have read several of Hunt’s other books, mainly in his David St. John series about spy Peter Ward. Not bad.
July 23rd, 2018 at 4:22 pm
There were 10 Steve Bentley books, nine as by Dietrich, one under his own name, plus another 10 Peter Ward books. I read one or two when they came out, but it was so long ago, I don’t even remember whether I liked it or not. I certainly hadn’t heard of Howard Hunt at the time.
Hunt had another series character, a former DEA agent named Jack Novak, who still works undercover for them from time to time. There were eight of these, but they came along much later, in the 1980s and 90s, and I’ve never even seen any of them.
July 23rd, 2018 at 5:07 pm
Some of the Peter Ward books are decent sub-Bondian stuff, with quite a few actual details from Hunt’s CIA career, like where most agents live in Virginia and how they get mail from the Agency.
I missed this one, but a couple of the Bentley books were decent sub-PI fare.
The thing to read both series for is the details about life in and around D.C. and Langley and bits of tradecraft, small telling details and the like. It’s a bit of authenticity in a field rife with the lack of it.
Hunt wrote a couple of decent titles as Gordon Douglas for Gold Medal including HOUSE DICK.
Nothing great, but readable despite the attitudes of the period. No worse than most and better than some sums up Hunt for me.
July 23rd, 2018 at 6:54 pm
I don’t remember reading this one, but nobody could forget the cover, and I haven’t either.
But I have read a few of Hunt’s other books, The stories themselves I don’t recall, but you’re quite right about the amount of “tradecraft” that’s in them.
I’ll try another one sometime soon. Maybe one of the Peter Ward books for the next one.
July 24th, 2018 at 8:35 am
The Signet Ward books are all very much in the Bondian mode. The later ones published by Dell wander off into Dennis Wheatley territory mixing the occult with spies. The first, ON HAZARDOUS DUTY, is probably the best.
Hunt’s authenticity made him one of the better American Bond imitators. I would rank the Ward books below the best of the Aarons, Hamilton, or Atlee (another ex-agent) titles, but in line with those writers at mid level., which is still far ahead of most American Bond imitations.
Hunt is a relatively minor voice, probably more important for who he was than what he wrote, but some of the books do entertain, and that was what they were supposed to do.