Fri 27 Jul 2018
HANK JANSON – The Accused. Hank Janson Crime Book #6. Telos Publishing Ltd., paperback reprint, 2004; also published in a Kindle format. Introduction by Steve Holland. Originally published by New Fiction, UK, paperback, 1952. (Hank Janson is a house name, in this case one used by Stephen D. Francis.)
Once upon a time when the Second World War had just ended and shortages of paper still hampered British publishing, a young man named Stephen D. Frances found himself with paper and a press and a contract for a twenty four page copybook, and no copy.
Taking a hand from writers like James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney he churned out a quick brutal tale of crime and sex set in the States and with a rough tough hero with an eye for a dame. He named the character Hank Janson (pronounced Yanson) and took the name as his pseudonym as well.
Over the years Janson made some changes, by the time the novels appeared he was a rough tough reporter for the Daily Chronicle (he sold ladies stockings in the first story) and he operated out of Des Moines (which British pulp expert Steve Holland has to remind British readers is pronounced de moyne). He remained tough, honorable, and as fascinated by the charms of female anatomy as Robert Leslie Bellem’s Dan Turner, if not as colorful in describing them.
Like Cheyney before him Janson’s ideas of American slang could be iffy at best, but also like Cheyney and Chase he was an original voice, if not always original in his ideas, full of energy and bright brittle bursts of violent images.
That imagery was what eventually got Frances and Janson in trouble with British obscenity laws. Seven of the Janson books were taken to court as obscene, and the one quoted most often by the prosecution is the little gem we have here, Accused.
Accused is one of the books published under the Janson byline, but not featuring Janson as a character. Instead the hero is a fellow named Farran who works in a diner for a fat obnoxious fellow named Friedman (His arms were thick and fleshy, his skin white and clammy, and his grimy, sweaty shirt gaped open down to his navel. His shirt was heavy with the smell of sweat and his face was damp and shiny, glistening with fresh perspiration a few seconds after he wiped the back of his arm across his forehead.) who has a younger beautiful wife he mistreats and keeps as a virtual sex slave … and yes, it is just as well this one wasn’t published here where James M. Cain might have objected to lifting the plot of The Postman Always Rings Twice whole cloth only with more heavy breathing.
We open with a graphic description of the most brutal third degree ever given in fiction as Farran recalls the events that lead up to him murdering Friedman in reveries between the beatings. Friedman’s wife, never given a name or much of a personality beyond victim and sex bomb, is the subject of no small amount of heavy breathing on the hero’s part.
Even now, it was still hot in that kitchen. During the heat of the afternoon, it musta been an oven. And she hadn’t had time to cool off. Her face was shiny and damp, sweat patches blotched her armpits, and her youthful breasts seemed weary, sagged heavily against the damp bodice of the worn dress.
Farran lets us know in no uncertain terms Friedman keeps his wife a slave in nothing but that one dress (She was wearing the same black dress, and in the light of day I could see more clearly how thin and faded it was. I could see even more. It clung to her youthful contours faithfully, outlining her youthful breasts and the curves of her flanks with a faithfulness that was strangely stirring, almost as though she wore nothing beneath that dress.), no underwear, and noshoes, and more than hints, however obliquely, about what goes on behind the closed doors of the matrimonial bedroom door:
I stood there in a cold sweat. It was Freidman who was with his wife. What could I do about it? He was a guy twice the size of me, and his wife hadn’t yet started screaming for help.
The real obscenity in the Janson books lies in what he implies but never actually says. The man had a real gift for innuendo in epic proportions. Over the course of about 50,000 words we get quite a bit of this kind of sweaty damp semi-masturbatory prose as Farran proceeds from victim of the brutal Freidman to his killer and eventually finds himself on trial for murder, his life on the line.
Certainly not obscene, that first paragraph is as far as anything goes, stopping well before the bedroom door. Ian Fleming and Mickey Spillane were writing much racier scenes when this was prosecuted, but this was sold as sleaze, replete with those brilliant Reginald Heade covers, and, well, it just felt obscene.
Steve Holland has also penned The Trials of Hank Janson about the obscenity trials and of equal interest, but Telos Press has brought these long lost classics of British pulp back into print in paperback and ebook form at low enough prices to indulge your taste for the long lost tales.
Frances wrote under several house names, and as Frances wrote the popular John Gail spy novels from the sixties and seventies, many published here; he also wrote as Dave Steel and Duke Linton, and God knows what else. Like most pulp writers he writes too fast and at times too sloppily, but the stories have great energy and at their best are fun once you get past the more painful attempts at American slang.
The best non-Janson entries, like this one, are no worse than the majority of male-oriented fiction of the type published in the States, and the better ones rise at least to the level of minor Gold Medal books in a similar vein (no few of them sailed a bit close to Cain as well).
The Janson books are usually better, if only because Frances set himself the task of keeping his hero more or less honorable, meaning the innuendo is much more controlled:
‘You fancied Freidman’s dame, didn’t you?’ he snarled.
I didn’t see him, but I sensed the gesture he made to the others, and as they moved in on me, I was smiling to myself, the white mist was gathering me up, gathering me into its embrace, cradling me, rocking me to sleep.
They couldn’t hurt me now.
Maybe it’s not authentic, but it’s pretty fair noir by any accounting, and for all the sleaze and innuendo it’s entertaining. It’s not that they don’t write them like this anymore, it’s just that they can’t replicate that paperback original voice of the era.
July 28th, 2018 at 6:52 am
Great review.
It is curious the fascination that exists to emulate the American pulp literature, with American characters and places. That happened not only in Britain, but in Europe and Latin America. Even the authors took American pseudonyms. In Spain it was very usual.
July 28th, 2018 at 1:22 pm
I did not know that Janson is pronounced Yanson. That is jarring. I will do my best to forget it!
July 28th, 2018 at 3:46 pm
Johny Malone
A friend of mine in France once said to me, totally oblivious of the import, that Peter Cheyney and James Hadley Chase read much better in the original French.
The number of tough Americans romping through European fiction has decreased in recent years, but from the 19th Century through the 60’s they ran rampant.
The first serial ever made was likely a Nick Carter made in France, and following Jules Verne’s lead American heroes became a staple with characters like Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes of the French pulps. Even Arsene Lupin had an American nom de guerre, private detective Jim Barnett.
After the war American secret agents were popular in European pulps, Paul Kenny’s Coplan, Jean Bruce’s OSS 117 (reinvented as French in the popular Jean Dujardin movies), Bert Island’s Joe Walker Kommisar X, and Otto Johns FBI agent Jerry Cotton being just a few.
British post war popular fiction featured numerous American heroes as well as American influenced heroes like Gerard Fairlie’s Johnny McCall, John Bentley’s Dick Marlow, Peter Cheyney’s Slim Callaghan, and Hank Janson. Virtually all the companion writers to Hank Hanson like Roland Vane, Spike Morelli, and Duke Linton were writing pseudo-American tough guy gangster fiction set in the States.
For that matter Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Adam Hall, Victor Canning, and Dick Francis all read and learned from American writers and voices blending them into their narrative. Even the very English John Creasey eventually studied American crime fiction in order to crack the lucrative American markets, not unlike Edgar Wallace who likely would have Americanized his work if he had lived longer, George’s Simenon, who brought Maigret and himself to the US and wrote several “American” novels (BOTTOM OF THE BOTTLE, THE BROTHERS RICO), and Ted Lewis, whose very British gangster fiction is right out of American crime novels and films.
American films and popular fiction dominated 20th Century popular fiction to the point even anti-American writers like Graham Greene adopted the voice associated with American writers in the wake of Hemingway. Even today when you read writers like Perez Reverte, Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Pablo Ignacio Taiban, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and Jorge Semprun you can hear echoes of American crime fiction.
July 28th, 2018 at 4:06 pm
In the early ’60s, when I was working at Fleetway Publications on the Sexton Blake thrillers as a junior editor, and Frances was one of the contributors, I never heard anyone pronounce Janson as “Yanson”. The Sexton Blake stories Frances wrote were published mostly under the “Richard Williams” house name. They had the benefit that any shortomings which could be attributed to fast or sloppy writing were corrected by editorial rewrite (I hope!), and, not being set in the US, they didn’t have “painful attempts at American slang”. Worth seeking out are Vendetta!, Somebody Wants Me Dead, Torment Was a Redhead and High Summer Homicide.
July 28th, 2018 at 9:11 pm
I wonder how many collectors who’ve paid big money (*) for the original edition have actually read this book. I suspect very few. The cover has to be a big part of the attraction.
(*) There’s only one copy offered for sale online right now. The price suggested is either $107 or in the $140 range, depending on the sales venue. It’s in VG condition.
July 28th, 2018 at 9:24 pm
3. Great comment, David but I think you meant Paco Ignacio Taibo II. PIT is one of my favorites. I always wanted to learn Spanish just to read FOUR HANDS and THE UNCOMFORTABLE DEAD in their original language.
July 28th, 2018 at 9:46 pm
Keith Chapman,
The Yanson pronunciation is reported by Steve Holland as coming from Frances in the introduction to the first book in the Janson series. I don’t know where he got it, and I’m mot surprised no one used it, but that’s what the man wrote.
I should have said “sometimes” painful attempts at American slang since Frances wasn’t the offender Cheyney was in the Lemmy Caution titles, but I enjoyed both series so it never bothered me much. Frances John Gail series was entertaining minor spy fare without that flaw since it features a British hero, and I likely read one or two of his Sexton Blake’s in the day though I can’t recall. I’ll have to check and see if any of the “Richard Williams” titles are available among the numerous SEXTON BLAKE LIBRARY titles available on line. I’ll look for those titles particularly. Though I didn’t mention it in the draft of this review that I submitted I actually felt Frances did better by the American slang in general that Cheyney did, though perhaps because of that not quite as surreal a reading experience as the Caution books.
When I refer to “sloppy writing” I’m tarring most pulp writing with the same brush. The genre did not encourage rewriting, and often called for one draft output that did indeed rely heavily on editors for corrections. Pulp writing covers a wide area ranging from Hammett and Chandler to Walter Gibson and Norvel Page, and by the nature of the work Frances falls more in the second than the first category. Edgar Wallace is a favorite of mine, but no one would accuse him of being too fastidious when he sometimes changes character description within a single paragraph. Max Brand and Edgar Rice Burroughs have their flaws too, but are among my favorite writers, and I might point out I am a devoted John Creasey fan.
Many of my favorite writers wrote pulp fiction churned out for mass audiences at often brutal rates for much less reward than they deserved. I’m not attacking them to point out the facts behind the work they produced, indeed the fact that so many wrote so much entertaining fiction is a tribute to them.
I am sure American attempts to sound British jar on the ear on that side of the Atlantic with just as much impact.
Sixty or more thousand words a month is a killing schedule I can’t imagine emulating, and I stand in awe of the writers who managed it (and more) while producing entertaining fiction, but it is also limiting in its own way, and I don’t think it does them any disservice to mention that they still produced so much entertaining fiction despite the flaws imposed by the medium and the market.
In any case in the earliest days Hank Janson was a bit of a fly by night operation compared to Fleetway’s decades of experience and there is no indication that in it’s earliest incarnation there was anything like the editorial support available for the Sexton Blake saga, all the more credit to Frances for creating something of a literary phenomena virtually on his own.
July 28th, 2018 at 11:59 pm
Steve, For collectors who are also readers Telos still have their nicely produced trade paperback reprint (complete with cover!) listed at £9.99. Like all the Telos Jansons it purports to leave “the original narrative absolutely intact”. I have several of the early Jansons as fine Telos reprints; others as ebooks. But strangely the vintage Janson I like the most is the only one I have in the original printing: Lady Toll the Bell (“Published by: S. D. Frances. Sole Distributors: Gaywood Press Ltd, London, S.E.1”). Maybe, along with “that paperback original voice of the era”, it’s just that the look, feel, and smell add up to something else that isn’t being replicated. And as David mentions, some writers do still “write them like this” … even, dare I say, achieve the “paperback original voice of the era”. But alas, where are the publishers of what were once known as “mass market” paperback originals? Genre/category fiction appears to have had its day as popular entertainment.
July 29th, 2018 at 7:39 am
You’ve packed a lot of wisdom into that comment, Keith.
July 29th, 2018 at 6:21 pm
Steve, Keith Chapman,
The irony here is that that “paperback original voice” is highly sought after in reprints, with many writers we thought of as relatively obscure sought out in trade paperback and ebook reprints. I’m often shocked how easy it is to find new editions of many of the writers that back in the day were difficult to find no matter how many second hand stores and book catalogs you scoured. Even “lesser” lights like Day Keene and Gil Brewer are being reprinted.
Of course many writers works aren’t readily available, and the better known work tends to be easier to access, but there is a genuine interest in at least one segment of the reading public and publishers who cater to them.
But, no, save for Hard Case no one is publishing much in the way of new work in this genre. While quite a bit of past work is available, there doesn’t seem to be a modern equivalent and the last attempt, the Gabriel Hunt series from Hard Case failed big time.
I suspect television and comic books have replaced this genre much as paperbacks killed the pulps and the pulps killed the Dime Novel. Whether it comes back in some form or not is a question I won’t wager on, but these stories will get told somehow, just in ways we might not recognize at first.