Sun 13 Mar 2022
FRANK KANE – Red Hot Ice. Johnny Liddell #9. Ives Washburn, hardcover, 1955. Dell 901, paperback, 1956, Cover by Victor Kalin.
Johnny Liddell is hired by the long-suffering agent of a luscious former star who’s become an uncontrollable lush, and as a result, she now owes $12,000 to the owner of an traveling airborne casino (which is quite an opening gimmick in its own right). To that end she agrees to pay him off using a small fortune in uncut diamonds she’s hidden from the IRS over the years.
When Johnny hires a guy to monitor the transfer, both the guy and the blonde end up dead. The cops think Johnny’s buddy couldn’t resist temptation, and things went bad when he did. Johnny naturally sees things differently, but it’s up to him to prove it.
Kane’s prose is smooth and easy in this one. There are no highs, à la Raymond Chandler — I found no particular lines or longer passages worth quoting, as on occasion I do do – but there are no lows, either. What follows is a lengthy and straightforward murder investigation, in which Frank Kane, the author, is quite good in describing rundown if not out-and-out squalid settings in the city (Manhattan) and environs (New Jersey and Long Island). The latter in fact is where in fact Johnny is at one point taken for a ride – a fairly standard cliché in these kinds of stories, but Kane somehow manages to make it seem fresh again.
Even better is that not only is Red Hot Ice a pretty good PI novel, it is also a detective story, complete with fair play alibis and other clues – well almost. If the New Jersey police had done their job thoroughly, and not just a one-sided one, the case would have been solved all that more quickly – the only semi-sour note I found in this one. Not a classic, in other words, but you can do a lot worse.
March 13th, 2022 at 2:34 pm
Great minds work alike! I’m reading this now and plan to review it later this week.
March 13th, 2022 at 9:38 pm
I don’t think of things like this as coincidences any more. They happen way too often. At least to me, they do. I think something spooky is going on.
March 13th, 2022 at 4:28 pm
I’ve read all of Frank Kane’s novels. I really like his prose. I consider Liddell THE generic PI which may be why I like him. Though the series continued into 1967, it starts petering out not long after this one. The Liddells I’ve saved for re-reading: the 2 short story collections: Johnny Liddell’s Morgue & Johnny Liddell’s Stacked Deck. The 1st is superb, the 2nd is ‘ol Frank paying the rent. Best novels: Bullet Proof, Dead Weigh, Poisons Unknown. The Mourning After is a classic later in that Liddell is investigating homicide on the set of a PI TV series while in real life Frank Kane was scripting episodes of the Darren McvGavin Mike Hammer TV show. Notable stand-alones:
Key Winess & Syndicate Girl.
March 13th, 2022 at 5:37 pm
I’m a great fan of Kane and the Liddell books. When I call them “generic Private Eye” I don’t mean it as an insult or a knock against them, they were what I wanted them to be, readable, and entertaining.
I liken them to episodes of the best of the Private Eye series on television in the era though Johnny is a bit more ruthless than television usually allowed for.
I came to the genre through PETER GUNN, 77 SUNSET STRIP, RICHARD DIAMOND, and the like much as I came to the Western through television Westerns. I was looking for the literary equivalent of that and found it in Frank Kane, Carter Brown, and Henry Kane before “discovering” Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, Macdonald, Prather, Halliday, Marlowe etc..
I still enjoy Kane and Liddell. He wrote vivid fast moving books with decent mystery plots and well drawn characters. You knew what you were getting, and with Kane you were unlikely to be disappointed.
I don’t hold these in contempt because I could polish one off in forty five minutes. I like popcorn, hot dogs, and cheezeburgers, and these were the literary version of fast food.
March 13th, 2022 at 9:46 pm
Stephen & David
Truth be told, I was going to use the phrase “generic PI” in my review, but at the last minute I decided to take it out. I thought it sounded too pejorative and like you two gents, I didn’t mean it to be. It does fit him perfectly, though, doesn’t it? and I say that with absolutely no sense of mean-spiritedness when I do.
The books did tail off as time went on, but in his prime they were very very good, and this one is a prime example. (Neatly said, don’t you think?)
March 21st, 2022 at 5:40 pm
For those of you who may be curious, here’s the link to James Reasoner’s review of this very same Johnny Lindell novel:
https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2022/03/red-hot-ice-frank-kane.html