Thu 5 Jan 2023
JACK LISTON – Man Bait. Dell First Edition B-158, 1960. Cover art by Robert Maguire.
Not to be confused with the 1952 Hammer film I reviewed here earlier. This is the goods.
Bill Madden starts out the book as a sailor on extended shore leave in New York City. Extended because he contracted a nasty social disease that got complicated by a nastier dose of bad penicillin. A couple chapters later he’s close to recovered and at loose ends, so he hooks up with Marcia, a bar waitress who provides him with companionship and convenient sex.
As Bill waits for an “all-clear†report from his doctor so he can go back to sea, his relationship with Marcia evolves from convenient to committed, marred considerably by her insecurity and his immaturity, a nasty concoction that leads Marcia to take petty revenge when Bill gets spectacularly unfaithful to her.
I’ll warn potential readers from the outset that this relationship business takes up three-fourths of Man Bait. But I’ll add that author Liston (more on him later) makes it a compelling thing, with hints of danger like movement in the shadows, never quite clear or explicit, but out there.
And when the action comes, Liston handles it quite nicely thank you, with bursts of terse conflict and inventive bits of business. And with some surprising and very effective moments as characters we’ve seen amiably chatting just a few pages ago suddenly show a whole ’nother side of themselves.
According to the Paperback Warrior website, “Jack Liston“ was a pseudonym employed by writer Ralph Maloney — a Harvard man, author of “highbrow†novels (whatever those are) and classy stories printed in the slicks — for Man Bait, his one and only paperback original. I assume that he used some influence with publishers to land at the top of the pulp-paper heap at Dell, but looking at that eye-catching cover, I’m glad if he did.
January 5th, 2023 at 10:03 pm
Dell First Editions are just one step behind Gold Medal, though it is a full clear step in most cases save when the same writers are writing for both publishers.
January 6th, 2023 at 12:28 am
When walking home from high school in the late 50s, I always stopped at the local supermarket to check out the latest influx of Gold Medal paperbacks, but I don’t remember ever seeing any of the Dell First Editions published at the same time. I don’t know why. Considering them now, my impression is that they were in general better written and maybe more “literary”, while the gold Medal line was more lurid and earthy. Just what a 16 year old really wanted to read.
I own this one, and have for a long time, but I’ve never read it. My bad.
January 6th, 2023 at 10:01 am
Under his real name, Maloney wrote a comic heist novel, THE NIXON RECESSION CAPER (Norton, 1972), filmed twice, forty years apart, by Wolfgang Petersen with different script writers. Can’t keep a good heist story down, I guess. Maloney’s papers are at Bowling Green State University and includes this bio information:
Ralph Liston Maloney was born in 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1951. In 1955, he married Joan Wilgus and they had three children. He died on November 22, 1973, of a liver ailment in New York City.
Maloney was a member of the Authors Guild, The Mystery Writers of America, and was an honorary member of the American Association of Boxing Managers. He wrote six books and was a contributor of short stories to The Atlantic Monthly and other periodicals. He also wrote documentary film scripts for British television.
Link to the BGSU site: https://lib.bgsu.edu/findingaids/repositories/2/resources/1162
January 6th, 2023 at 10:52 am
Here’s a review of The Nixon Recession Caper. Sounds like a Dortmunder type of novel. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1972/03/the-nixon-recession-caper/662343/
And here’s a trailer of the film version (a remake of a German made for TV movie of the same title by the same director (Wolfgang Peterson of Das Boot fame): “Four Against the Bank”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBwA6xSWeb4
January 6th, 2023 at 10:36 pm
Thanks for all the extra info, guys. I love it!
January 8th, 2023 at 10:16 am
A previous Mystery*File review of this title:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=37520
January 8th, 2023 at 2:14 pm
Steve, in Comment 2 says he has never read it but in the link to the prior review, he has read and reviewed it back in 2015. What is going on?
Reminds me of something that happened 20 or so years ago. My pal, Harry Noble, told me about a vacation in Florida where he bought a western paperback and really enjoyed it. Upon returning to NJ he discovered he had read the novel a couple years before but did not recall a single scene or character when he had reread it in Florida. No memory of reading it at all.
Which then brings up the question, why bother reading at all if we cannot remember the book only a couple years later? Just asking…
January 8th, 2023 at 2:40 pm
“Steve, in Comment 2 says he has never read it but in the link to the prior review, he has read and reviewed it back in 2015. What is going on? ”
Walker, I think maybe you answered your own question.
In my case: Old age. Too many books. Not enough brain storage.
January 8th, 2023 at 6:43 pm
Walker asks: ‘Why bother reading at all if you can’t remember a book 2 years later?’
There was a construction worker who lost his short term memory when a screwdriver got lodged in his brain. You could tell him the same joke over and over again and he’d laugh each time like it was the first time he’d heard it.
To me, that’s kind of a positive.