Thu 19 Mar 2020
Archived Mystery Review: ROBERT SILVERMAN – The Cumberland Decision.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[13] Comments
ROBERT SILVERMAN – The Cumberland Decision. Manor, paperback original, 1977.
You may have noticed that from time to time I take up valuable space by delving into the publishing phenomenon in the field of mysteries that produced the flood of paperback originals from Gold Medal/Fawcett Publications all during the 1950s. I’m firmly convinced that these novels, all easy to find for the most part, and mostly in the hard-boiled genre as linear descendants o the pulp magazines, are unjustly neglected.
You may tire of me telling you so, but for characters involved in down-to-earth situations and for sheer story-telling ability, the authors in the Gold Medal group are not easily surpassed. (Outstripped?)
Even in their heyday, however, these novels were all too easily panned by snobbish reviewers, if not totally ignored. There were the indiscriminate pitchforks dispensed by the anonymous reviewer for The Saint Magazine, for example, but there also was Anthony Boucher, in the New York Times, as one reviewer who did not automatically subscribe to the “paperback equals junk†theory.
It occurs to me that 20 years from now, retrospective reviewers may find that today’s Manor paperbacks are also exceptional examples of neglected writing, and in reality saying a great deal about American society and culture of [the 1970s].
It’s possible, but I found ex-cop-turned-mystery-writer Johnny Otto crude and semi-literate, a macho chauvinist who seems utterly incapable of writing a coherent sentence, let along a best-selling novel, or having an intelligent lady friend as a girl friend. His method of ending an argument is slipping his hand inside her blouse and leading her to bad. “Yeah, baby.â€
As I say, it’s possible that Johnny Otto describes a definitive figure in American life, but he is most definitely a flop as a detective. The true villain behind the death of his former partner on the police force and the huge shipment of heroin about to be smuggled into San Francisco is obvious at first meeting, and I think I found comical overtones in the climactic rescue and capture that were not wholly intended.
Redeeming social value? Ask me in 20 years.
Rating: D
Note: Robert M. Silverman has one other entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, that being The Colombian Connection, also a paperback original from Manor, also in 1977.
March 19th, 2020 at 4:13 pm
So twenty years ago, no one asked, and here we are twenty years after that. I don’t remember any other details about this book, other than than the review above, but no, I’m sorry to say that the book has fallen into all but utter obscurity.
There are three copies available on abebooks.com, two of them from overseas dealers. The one that’s offered by a seller in the US is in Good condition and will set you back $3.50.
March 19th, 2020 at 7:46 pm
I suspect your overall assessment of Manor Books will stand for the next few generations. Unless everything ever printed by anyone else disappears first I seriously doubt Manor Books will get much in the way of a positive reassessment.
March 19th, 2020 at 8:31 pm
At time I toyed with the idea of putting together a complete set of Manor mysteries to match the one I had of Gold Medal’s, but I never got around to it. And in those pre-Internet days, it wouldn’t have been easy.
March 19th, 2020 at 8:33 pm
I just noticed a typo that wasn’t there in the original review. It isn’t easy to see because you might think it fits as it is and that I might have meant it that way. But I didn’t.
Can you spot it?
March 20th, 2020 at 9:22 am
Manor published my first novel and Steve Mertz’s first novel, but I can’t think of anybody else who broke in with them and is still around. They did some decent reprints of authors such as Edward S. Aarons and Day Keene (probably because they bought the inventory of Macfadden-Bartell when M-B went out of business and those books already were scheduled there). They also published some late-career Westerns by good writers such as Peter Germano and Archie Joscelyn, as well as reprinting some of Joscelyn’s early books, but I haven’t read any of those so I can’t say how good they are.
March 20th, 2020 at 9:51 am
James
You’re right. Any publisher who gave both you and Stephen Mertz your starts can’t have been all bad.
Nor would I have even considered putting a complete set together if that were the case.
March 20th, 2020 at 9:56 am
This is off the top of my head, so it’s subject to change, and I’ve probably left out some obvious ones, but in the 1970s, I’d rank the paperback spublishers below thusly:
Top rank:
Bantam, Dell, Signet, Fawcett (Gold Medal/Crest), Ace, Berkley
Second tier:
Lancer, Award, Playboy, Pinnacle
Others:
Macfadden, Manor, Belmont, Tower.
March 20th, 2020 at 11:33 am
That ranking looks pretty accurate to me.
March 20th, 2020 at 2:41 pm
That top tier is the “respctable” tier for sure. Bantam never got much of my consumer dollar. I went to Dell for Mike Shayne, Signet for Mickey & Carter Brown but really, my first look & most of my discretionary income, now that I think about it, went to Pinnacle, Lancer & Award. At twenty-something I was the defintely demographic profile they were looking for. And you’re right about Manor being at the bottom of the barrel though quality did manage to creep in occasionally. Ralph Hayes was a good writer on their list.
March 21st, 2020 at 12:17 am
Obviously James Reasoner, Steven Mertz, and others are exceptions, major ones, but Manor like many of the “lower tier” were uneven. Wasn’t W. T. Ballard’s excellent MURDER IN LAS VEGAS a Belmont title?
I know quite a few young SF writers had luck at Belmont.
March 21st, 2020 at 11:11 am
Yeah, MURDER IN LAS VEGAS was published by Belmont, although the edition I read ‘way back when was one of those pirated Uni Book editions. That one used to be a lot more common than the original.
March 21st, 2020 at 3:12 pm
My records show the Ballard book as having been published by Tower, but that may be in error. And Belmont and Tower eventually merged anyway.
Here’s another:
Frank Gruber’s Swing Low Swing Dead was published as a PBO from Belmont in 1964 ten years after the previous entry in his Johnny Fletcher-Sam Cragg series.
March 21st, 2020 at 3:19 pm
You’re right, it was Tower, not Belmont, on that Ballard book.