Thu 31 Mar 2022
A GOLD MEDAL Mystery Review: DAY KEENE – Passage to Samoa.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
DAY KEENE – Passage to Samoa. Gold Medal #823, paperback original; 1st printing, November 1958. MacFadden Book #50-384, paperback reprint, 1967.
A non-stop reading adventure taking place in the South Pacific, complete with beautiful women, a deep-sea diver with all of his equipment, a sleepy lagoon, a sunken ship with safe reportedly full of money, and bodies piling up a regular intervals throughout the book, starting from page three on. What more could you ask for?
One wonders how Day Keene knew so much about diving, boats and islands in the South Pacific, because that’s all that this book is about. Well, besides the usual human emotions of greed, jealousy, and lust, which were what all of Day Keene’s books were about. Matt Kelly is the diver, and rich spoiled brat of a woman named Sylvia Ryan is the stepdaughter of the man who died on the small ship now sitting om the bottom of over a hundred feet of water.
Is it any surprise that they are in bed together soon after the first murder occurs? This is the kind of stuff that was so enticing to teenagers sneaking peeks in Gold Medal paperbacks on every spinner rack in every drugstore in the country back in the late 1950s. What they learned from them is rather tame now, over sixty years later, even on network TV, and you can tell me if that’s a good thing or not.
As for the story itself, I found Keene neatly finessing his way a couple of the weaker spots of the overall tale, but as for otherwise being a compulsive non-stop reading adventure, as I said at the top of this review, you’d better believe me. It is.
March 31st, 2022 at 11:17 am
I remember buying this after Bill Crider gave it a very strong review on his blog. It’s still on a shelf, unread.
April 1st, 2022 at 12:32 pm
Rick
I may have missed it, but I couldn’t find Bill’s review of it.
I’m wondering if you’re thinking of James Reasoner’s review of it on his blog:
https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2010/12/forgotten-books-passage-to-samoa-day.html
Bill did do an overview of Day Keene and the books he wrote for Gold Medal on the main M*F website:
https://mysteryfile.com/GM_Keene/Keene.html
which as a big bonus also comes with lots of other information about Keene as well as a complete bibliography for him.
I wouldn’t call this one one of Keene’s best, but if you’ve not read it and you can get to it easily, I think you’ll have a good time with it.
March 31st, 2022 at 8:59 pm
I always enjoy when Keene, Whittington, Lacy, Rabe, or any of the better paperback original writers test themselves a little and go astray from the usual mean streets for more exotic ports of call.
It isn’t surprising considering Keene’s history in the pulps. In order to work in that market a writer had to be able to take on any setting that might guarantee a sale.
Those guys were pros pros. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them wrote a seemingly well researched book on raising sheep or rocket science.
The storytelling hardly needs to be mentioned in Keene’s case. He seldom fails to deliver.
April 1st, 2022 at 12:37 pm
If Keene was ever in the South Pacific or on a deep-sea diving expedition, he certainly made good use of the experience. And if he never was, he cetainly convinced me he had.