Sun 13 Feb 2011
RALPH DENNIS – Deadman’s Game. Berkley Z3003, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1976.
Dennis was previously the author of Popular Library’s “Hardman” series, now apparently defunct. Although not so indicated, this could be the start of a new series. (Can the cover numbering system no longer be a selling point?)
Kane is a cashiered government assassin in Deadman’s Game, with an impaired memory and a new identity, but with the same killer-for-hire instinct, and now working privately. There are those who think him a danger, and so his business puts him in the middle, both hunter and hunted.
In this first adventure he avenges a brother’s death. He’s more on the side of the right than the law would say, but the amount of blood involved is disturbing.
The first chapter or so I found overwritten, but Dennis writes free-flowing dialogue and action from that point on. Funny thing is, I don’t like what Kane does, but I do like him in his underlying innocence. No kidding.
Rating: B minus.
[UPDATE] 02-13-11. I don’t know if you know what an apa (amateur press association) is, or if you’d heard of DAPA-Em, the mystery apa that started up in 1974 or ’75, but I was a member, on and off, over the past 35 years.
The final mailing, #216, arrived at my door this past week, a sad day indeed. For more on this, if you’d care to, including more details about how the apa worked, you could do no worse than to check out George Kelley’s post on the event over on his blog.
Going through a stack of past mailings in my upstairs closet yesterday afternoon, I came across an envelope of zines that comprised mailing #11, which included a copy of Mystery*File #9, which I don’t believe I’ve seen in over 30 years, and this is one of the reviews that was in it.
I hope you don’t mind the small amount of editing I did on the review. I didn’t change any of the ideas. Just a trifle bit of tinkering with the wording, nothing more.
As for the book itself, if it was meant to be the first of a series, the series didn’t happen, for whatever reason. Poor sales, is my guess. There are only two copies offered for sale anywhere on the Internet, both on Amazon, and both for $16.65.
And this means no cover image, unless you or someone else can supply one. I still have my copy, but alas, I don’t have access to it. (But I do know where it is.)
[UPDATE #2] Later the same day. Other members of DAPA-Em, along with one long-time former member (*), who have blogged about the last mailing are (listed alphabetically):
Bill Crider: http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2011/02/dapa-em-r-i-p.html
(*) Evan Lewis: http://davycrockettsalmanack.blogspot.com/2011/02/last-dapa-em.html
Bob Napier: http://capnbob.blogspot.com/2011/02/final-dapa-em.html
Richard Robinson: https://brokenbullhorn.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/an-ending-of-something-great/
If I’ve missed others, let me know!
February 13th, 2011 at 3:34 am
Dennis was a promising writer, but never quite broke out of the men’s action genre despite the good reviews of his Hardman series.
I suspect he had the talent, just never it the right book at the right time.
February 13th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
I was in error, it appears, when I wrote this review. The Hardman series wasn’t defunct when DEADMAN’S GAME came out. That was 1976, and four more Hardman books came out in 1977.
I wonder how well the Hardman books were reviewed while Dennis was writing them. In the fan press, I think quite possibly so, but otherwise? Paperback originals didn’t get a lot of attention back then.
Dennis did write one hardcover crime novel that’s in Hubin, MacTAGGART’S WAR, Holt, 1979. It’s historical fiction, taking place in Canada in 1940, but that’s all I know about it.
February 13th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
The Hardman books did get some critical attention at the time — rare for a men’s action series (though the same thing happened for the Destroyer), but for whatever reason Dennis either didn’t really try to break out of that ghetto or didn’t want to.
I suspect he would have liked to at least move up a step to the level of Donald Hamilton and Richard Prather in the paperback original market, and seemed well positioned to do so, but I guess te right book never came along.
February 14th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Have not read it, but MacTAGGART’S WAR is about six Americans who slip across the Canadian border during WW2 to pinch a fortune in gold that the British government has stored there for safe keeping.
Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
March 12th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Sorry I just found your email Steve inviting my comment on Ralph Dennis.
DEADMAN’S GAME was to be the first in a series and Dennis did write a second novel which was never published. It was one of several unpublished novels Ralph’s sister kindly let me read.
To drop back a bit, I met Ralph Dennis one time when he was working at Oxford Books II in the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center in Atlanta. I recognized him from a picture the Atlanta Constitution ran some years before.
While we chatted about writing, he noticed among the stack of used books I was holding a few of the Parker novels by Westlake. You know, he said, I created a character a lot tougher than Parker. At the time I had not read DEADMAN’S GAME, but I expressed great interest.
The story he briefly told was a common one in publishing. His editor who championed the character left the publisher and “orphaned” the series. The editor newly assigned to Dennis loathed the character and the violence. He rejected the novel and that was that.
I wish now I had gone back there and befriended Ralph and shared a beer at the Stein Club or one of his favorite bars George’s on North Highland Street. I read his obit in the Atlanta Constitution in the mid-1980s. Then I wrote about him a couple of times and since I’ve heard from several old friends of his.
Finally, I tracked down Ralph’s sister and learned much more of his story. I knew he had a BA and a master’s degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but I didn’t know he had another master’s from the Yale School of Drama and was on his way to a PhD when he had a serious falling out with adviser and dropped out.
His sister said he was not very open to editorial comments from his agent or editors. That hurt him.
She was very interested in getting him back into print and we had several conversations about it.
She let me read several of his unpublished novels. Some were ambitious, mainstream novels. Others had criminal/suspense elements but were longer and more ambitious. More like a Stuart Woods.
And there was the shorter novel labeled simply KANE. It featured a breakneck pace and the violence level was higher than most anything around in the 1970s. I thought republishing DEADMAN’S GAME together with the second novel would make an excellent book, a fine reading experience. The second really completed the first. I could see why no publisher coming along later would be interested in this second novel as a stand-alone.
Point Blank press agreed and even drew up a contract. But then Ralph’s sister died. Her children still wanted to move forward but her lawyer said there were technical problems having to do with the rights to unpublished manuscripts. We emailed back and forth for several years. I think he retained a Georgia lawyer to reopen Ralph’s estate. Eventually, I knew nothing was going to happen, and so far, that’s correct.
A shame.
Richard Moore
March 12th, 2011 at 2:29 pm
[…] Game [reviewed here ] was to be the first in a series, and Dennis did write a second novel which was never published. […]
September 9th, 2018 at 2:53 am
I’ve acquired all the rights to Ralph’s published and unpublished boos from his estate. DEAD MAN’S GAME and the unpublished sequel, KANE 2, will be combined into one novel and published by Brash Books, the company I launched five years ago with Joel Goldman (we’ve published close to 100 titles since then). I’ll write any bridging material that’s necessary. We’re also releasing a substantially revised version of MACTAGGART’S WAR, retitled THE WAR HEIST, in 2019. It was his last published title and didn’t do as well as he, or the publisher hoped. I believe i know why… I’ve gone back to his original manuscript, rearranged chapters, deleted chapters, and made other revisions to heighten suspense, sharpen characters, etc… cutting the book by about 35,000 words along the way (it still clocks in at 100K words).