Sun 2 Oct 2022
Archived PI Mystery Review: BRUNO FISCHER – The Flesh Was Cold.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
BRUNO FISCHER – The Flesh Was Cold. Ben Helm #4, Signet $833; paperback, January 1951. Previously published as The Angels Fell (Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1950).
When Flagg finds the body of his ex-wife’s new husband in his closet, he doesn’t know if she’s trying to frame him or if she’s in even worse trouble. But what is troublesome is a missing briefcase, one important to too many people, including both gangsters and congressmen.
Private eye Ben Helm has a bit part that almost steals the show, but it’s Flagg’s own perverse nature that most impresses. He hates ambitious women, but he may be falling in love with another. He refuses bribes, and refuses political pull in his behalf. Martha, his boss, loves him, and he tolerates it.
A most· frustrating character and some unusual developments, to say the least, add immensely to an otherwise ordinary detective story.
Rating: B plus.
October 3rd, 2022 at 6:08 am
The crime fiction back-book is so large I wonder what all the fuss is about new releases.
So much to read and so little time. Thank you for the review.
October 3rd, 2022 at 8:33 pm
Fischer seemed to be trying something more ambitious with the hardcover Helm novels, a nod to Hammett, and he does succeed to some extent, though the plots don’t quite come up to his ambition.
It’s an uneasy balance between his sometimes over the top pulp fiction and his later reputation as the king of the kinky GM original (though that was more often the covers than the content).
October 3rd, 2022 at 9:16 pm
Thanks, David! Nicely put. I have been trying to explain to myself (and who better?) the appeal that Fischer’s books have for me, while his pulp fiction doesn’t, or at least not as much. I don’t think I need try any longer. You just summed it up for me.