Tue 15 Mar 2011
Archived Review: PETE HAMILL – Dirty Laundry.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[5] Comments
PETE HAMILL – Dirty Laundry. Bantam, paperback original, 1978.
Sam Briscoe, 200 pounds of Irish Jew, is not a private eye, but a newspaper reporter — very nearly the next best thing, as I’ve implied before — presently free-lancing, but once a top columnist for a New York paper. (Hamill makes no secret of the fact that he regards this series as an integral part of his imaginary autobiography.)
A one-time girl friend calls on Sam for help, but on her way to him she’s smashed up while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The night is cold, and Sam has no idea that the killer’s trail will soon be leading him into sunny Mexico, and involve him deeply in the affairs of some renegade revolutionaries from Cuba.
And thereby all the ingredients of the traditional hard-boiled paperback novel are here — crime, passion, greed, lust, and revenge; the fire isn’t. And yet, if your taste runs toward the fulfillment of adolescent male fantasies, I think you’ll like it just fine.
Rating: C plus.
[UPDATE] 03-15-11. I had the impression back in 1979, that Sam Briscoe was going to hang around as a character a lot longer than he did, which was only two three books.
Of course with a line like the one below, excerpted from an online biography, you can understand that the writing of PBO mysteries was not going to be a career-changer for him:
“He [Pete Hamill] has been a columnist for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and New York Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. He has served as editor-in-chief of both the Post and the Daily News.
And as they say, there is more, much more. The Sam Briscoe books are not mentioned.
From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:
PETE(r) HAMILL. 1935- .
Dirty Laundry (n.) Bantam 1978 [Sam Briscoe]
The Deadly Piece (n.) Bantam 1979 [Sam Briscoe]
The Guns of Heaven (n.) Bantam 1983. [the third Sam Briscoe adventure; see comments]
March 15th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
C plus was about where I rated this one at the time, and in retrospect may even have been a little high.
I really liked Hamill’s journalism, and he wrote a terrific mainstream novel, but these just didn’t quite make it.
I was surprised too that there were only two books, but in all honesty not terribly disappointed.
Steve
Did you get the feeling reading these that Hamill was ‘slumming’ a bit, not putting his full effort into them? I had the feeling reading them of a gifted writer just throwing them off and not really putting as much effort into them as would be needed to produce a better book.
They felt a little dismissive to me, as if he was cashing in on his name but not really all that into what he was doing.
March 15th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Slumming? Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. His heart just didn’t seem to be there. All the ingredients but no pizzazz.
And in case anyone is wondering, Hamill started working as a journalist in 1960, and by the late 70s, he really did have a name to cash in on. In the first paragraph of the original review, which I deleted, I bemoaned the fact that the book, a paperback, was priced at an exorbitant $2.25. I blamed it on the name and reputation of the author.
March 15th, 2011 at 9:14 pm
The newest (and fourth) Sam Briscoe novel is TABLOID CITY, to be out in May 2011 from Little, Brown. The first hardcover Briscoe!
March 15th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Thanks for this bit of unexpected news, Jiro. I don’t know if I’ll snap up the hardcover when it comes out, unless the reviews are really good, but the paperback that follows is a sure bet.
Your comment also helped me add something to Al Hubin’s CFIV, namely that THE GUNS OF HEAVEN is also a Sam Briscoe novel, the third in the series. He didn’t have that info before, and I’ll send it on to him.
I should have known this, especially since I have it somewhere, and Hard Case Crime reprinted the book not too long ago, in 2006.
March 16th, 2011 at 8:10 am
There were three Briscoe paperbacks, not two, but I see you corrected that. I did read them and liked the “real” New York depicted by a native son, but there is no doubt they are lesser works by Hamill, who has written some terrific books and journalism. His non fiction A DRINKING LIFE: A MEMOIR is one I’d recommend.