DEANNA RAYBOURN – The Dead Travel Fast. Mira, trade paperback, March 2010.

Genre:   Gothic/Suspense. Leading character:   Theodora Lastrange. Setting:   Transylvania-Victorian era/1858.

First Sentence:   All proper stories begin with the words Once upon a time….

   Theodora Lastrange travels to a castle in the Carpathian Mountains at the invitation of her school-days friend, Cosmina. There she finds an old castle, an aristocratic family, and a count to whom she is inexplicably and inexorably attracted. She also finds superstition and dark tales of werewolves and becomes involved in the destruction of an alleged vampire.

   My feelings about this book changed almost page to page, and my rating oscillated from “Good” to “Not Recommended.” My problem wasn’t that this was very different from the author’s Lady Jane Grey series; I was prepared for this to be completely different. I like gothic. When done well, it can be wonderful. When done badly, it crosses over into being melodramatic.

   For much of this book, I found the latter to be true. My problem was the writing itself. Parts of the story are very good; wonderfully written, touching, emotionally and thoroughly engrossing. However, in other parts of the story, I found myself rolling my eyes and wondering what Ms. Raybourn had been thinking.

   It is difficult when you read first for character, and the only character you really feel any affinity for is a secondary character, Charles. I truly disliked that the protagonist was named Theodora Lastrange; how cliché can one possibly be? It may be a small thing, but it was so trite it nearly caused me to stop reading immediately.

   Than rather than Ms. Lastrange being gutsy and independent, there was a wimpishness about her, particularly in her attraction to the Count. Even with my issues with the characters, it was the plot which let me down. The plot was rife with anachronisms, clichés and coincidences.

   However, on the plus side, there were some scenes that were very well done, I personally like the inclusion of references to and the poetry of Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal being a particular favorite of mine, and I particularly appreciate her explanation for some of the ‘supernatural’ events.

   All this being said, this isn’t a terrible book. Unfortunately, it isn’t a good book either. Having read Ms. Raybourn’s other books, I believe much of my disappointment comes from knowing she is a much better writer than The Dead Travel would indicate.

Rating: Okay.

   My apologies for the delay between columns. I was on the road for two and a half weeks, when I wasn’t traveling, proofreading my next book took up all my writing time.

   Cornucopia of Crime, which Ramble House will be doing, will probably run about 450 closely printed pages when the index is finished. It will bring together a ton of long and short pieces I’ve written about mystery writers over the past 40-odd years, including some bits from this column.

   The cover is by New Zealander Gavin O’Keefe, and as anyone can see from the attached image, it’s a knockout.

   Part of my recent week in New York I spent at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where Fred Dannay’s papers are archived, looking into whether Fred had saved anything written to him by Cornell Woolrich that I wasn’t already aware of.

   My most interesting find was a brief undated note that accompanied Woolrich’s last story.”Just consider it on its merits, like you always have all stories,” he wrote. “Don’t feel sorry; I’ve had it better than most guys. I’d like one last publication, before I kiss it off. I’m a writer to the end. And glad I was one.”

   Clearly the story accompanying this note was “New York Blues,” which Fred purchased in May or June of 1967 but didn’t publish in EQMM until the December 1970 issue, more than two years after Woolrich’s death.

   There’s a penciled note on Woolrich’s covering letter which looks to me like Fred’s handwriting and suggests an alternate title for the story, one I actually like more than Woolrich’s: “The Last Hours.”

   In the end, of course, Fred went with Woolrich’s title.

   Stopping off in Cincinnati on the way home from my little odyssey, I happened upon a nice copy of Thieves Fall Out (Gold Medal pb #311, 1953), an obscure paperback original bearing the byline of Cameron Kay, which has never been seen on any other book before or since.

   The true author? Gore Vidal. It’s an ordinary little number, set in Egypt in the days of King Farouk, with minimal action or suspense and not a bit of the satiric wit that enlivened the three whodunits Vidal wrote as Edgar Box during the same time period.

   Among all the TV private eye series of the Fifties and Sixties that never caught on and were quickly cancelled, perhaps the finest was Johnny Staccato (NBC, 1959-60), starring John Cassavetes as a jazz pianist who makes ends meet by working as an apparently unlicensed PI.

   Even in my late teens the music of my life was classical music, but I was still very fond of this series in first run and watched it from the first episode to the 27th and last.

   Half a century later I’ve found the complete series on DVD and it’s still first-rate: evocative streets-of-New-York photography, fine performances (guests included Michael Landon, Martin Landau, Gena Rowlands, Elizabeth Montgomery, Elisha Cook and Mary Tyler Moore), excellent direction (with five episodes helmed by Cassavetes himself), offbeat scripts (including some by Fifties PI novelist Henry Kane), and of course tons of jazz, with a young hepcat then known as Johnny and later as John Williams—like yeah, man, that John Williams— doing the honors on piano.

   The series must have been planned as a sort of Peter Gunn clone but turned out quite different, mainly, I think, because the cool-jazz sound of Gunn was replaced by a hotter, more passionate music style.

   Something I read recently (I won’t say where) suggested to me that there ought to be an annual award for most eye-popping boner in or about mystery fiction. My first candidate for this honor, who shall remain nameless, wrote of Nero Wolfe that he “tended a rose garden on his roof….”

   Ouch! That’s a thorn from one of those roses.

RAYBURN CROWLEY – The Valley of Creeping Men. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1930. Hardcover reprint: Grosset & Dunlap, no date.

   This is a book that any lover of high adventure, goofy science, and lost-race novels won’t be able to put down.

   Somewhere in Africa, protected from the outside world by a forbidding mountain lies a valley in which — legend has it — dwells a race of golden gorillas, somewhere on the evolutionary scale between ape and man:

   The murder in London of the brilliant but loony scientist Marakoff — the discoverer of the gorilla — sets off an international pursuit that includes more murders, treachery and relentless peril.

There’s some colorful writing here, the kind that always sets my pulse to pounding:

   And away we go. The women are seductively beautiful, the men strong and intense, and the landscapes are painted with a skill that’s a cut above some of the plotting:

   Edgar Rice Burroughs, eat your heart out!

   In an appendix at the end of Chattering Gods, the sequel to Valley, published by Harper in 1931, the publisher poses the question “Who IS Rayburn Crawley?”

   In an accompanying letter, Crawley defends his anonymity by claiming that: “Any author worth reading can be known, and very fully known, by his books.”

   The publisher calls this a challenge and, listing several questions that might be asked about the reclusive author, offers autographed copies of the two books to “the persons who answer these questions correctly.”

   Laura Spencer Portor Hope and Dorothy Giles are identified in the current version of Hubin as the authors hiding behind the Crawley pseudonym, and Victor Berch has added that their identity was known as early as July 7, 1958, when the copyright on the book was renewed.

   Now if only somebody could find out the names of the winners of the Harper contest. It’s intriguing, to say the least, that autographed copies, in dust jacket, of the two books may be in some collector’s private library.

Editorial Comments:   Walter sent me this review after he spotted this book in Victor Berch’s “Checklist of Harper’s Sealed Mysteries,” announced on this blog not too long ago. This is a revised version of a review he wrote some 20 odd years ago, and he admits that he’s been wondering about the author’s identity ever since.

   As good as Walter says this book is, why it should have been published as a Sealed Mystery, along with the John Dickson Carr’s, Hulbert Footner’s and others is another mystery that’s lost in the mists of time.

    This particular list of motion pictures was prompted by Walter Albert’s recent review of De Luxe Annie (1915), in which all of the heroine’s difficulties stem from being knocked unconscious early on and suffering from amnesia for the rest of the movie, or almost.

    In a comment that he left soon after the review appeared, David Vineyard wondered “where would suspense fiction and movies be without it?”

    “It” referring to the concept of amnesia, as practiced in the movies and crime fiction. Which of course triggered the obvious question from me to David. The rest of this post is his reply. Thanks, David!

             >>>

   Movies with an amnesia theme. This one could get pretty long fast, but I’ll try to restrain myself:

Street of Chance — Burgess Meredith. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s Black Curtain about a man with short term amnesia who thinks he may have committed a murder.

Female Fiends — Lex Barker. A writer and producer who wakes up with no memory and in the middle of a murderous plot; based on Q. Patrick’s Puzzle for Fiends.

Stage Fright — With Jane Wyman. Richard Todd’s character suffers partial amnesia involving the murder the police want him for.

No Man of Her Own — Barbara Stanwyck claims partial amnesia to cover lapses in her memory in pretending to be another woman; based on Woolrich’s I Married a Dead Man.

Mister Buddwing — James Garner. Based on the novel Buddwing by Even Hunter a man with amnesia stumbles from one woman in his life to the next trying to put together who he is.

36 Hours —James Garner again. German doctor Rod Taylor uses drugs to induce amnesia in order to get Garner to reveal the true site of the D-Day landings.

The Third Day — George Peppard. An obnoxious millionaire struggles to remember who is trying to kill him; based on Joseph Hayes’ novel.

Power of the Whistler — Richard Dix. An amnesiac tries to clear himself by regaining his memory.

The Manchurian Candidate — Frank Sinatra. An Army officer tries to combat drug induced memories implanted as part of a Chinese plot from Richard Condon’s novel.

Fear in the Night — Deforest Kelly. Jazz musician gets help from his cop brother-in-law Paul Kelly to recover marijuana induced memory loss and clear his name; based on Cornell Woolrich short ‘Marijuana’ and remade with Kevin McClory and Edward G. Robinson as Nightmare.

Phantom Lady — Alan Curtis man’s drink induced memory loss means his friends have to follow abstract clues from his flawed memory to save him from execution based on Cornell Woolrich novel.

Memento — Man who loses his memory every time he goes to sleep tries to solve the murder of his wife by leaving clues behind to follow each day.

Dark City — Rufus Sewell. A man with amnesia struggles to recall reality in clever noirish sf film based on a graphic novel.

The Matrix — Keanu Reeves. Man begins to see through the illusion he lives in.

Two in the Dark — Walter Abel . Female cabbie helps a man recall his memory as they race to solve a murder, remade with Tom Conway and Ann Rutherford and directed by Anthony Mann as Two O’Clock Courage.

Mirage — Gregory Peck. A city-wide blackout triggers a crisis for a businessman whose life begins to unravel when nothing he remembers is real.

Blindfolded — Rock Hudson. A psychiatrist tries to help agent suffering from trauma induced memory loss but finds himself in a spy plot.

Who? — Elliot Gould. Investigators try to understand what happened to man with robot head; based on Algis Budrys’s novel.

Random Harvest — Ronald Colman. The granddaddy of them all, based on James Hilton’s novel.

Somewhere in the Night — John Hodiak. A private eye returns from the war with memory loss.

The Long Wait — Anthony Quinn. A man returns home with memory loss; based on Mickey Spillane novel.

Singapore — Fred MacMurray. A woman loses her memory and can’t remember the man who loved her. Remade as Istanbul with Errol Flynn.

As You Desire Me — Greta Garbo. A woman with amnesia returns to husband she doesn’t remember, from the Pirandello play.

Spellbound — Gregory Peck. Am amnesiac poses as a psychiatrist but becomes the patient; based on Francis Beeding’s The House of Dr. Edwards.

The Woman With No Name — Phyllis Calvert. A woman sufferis from amnesia.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes — Robert Stephens. A woman claims to have lost her memory and seeks help from Sherlock Holmes.

The Seven Percent Solution — Nicol Williamson. Sigmund Freud helps Sherlock Holmes recover repressed childhood memories so he can solve a case and cure himself of cocaine addiction.

Love Letters — Joseph Cotton. GI Cotton comes to England to meet Jennifer Jones whom he corresponded with who has lost her memory and may be in danger, with a screenplay by Ayn Rand.

I Love You Again — William Powell. Con man regains his memory and tries to save his new respectable life with wife Myrna Loy from his old pals in this screwball comedy.

Crossroads — William Powell. French diplomat must regain his memory to save himself.

Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? — Doris Day tries to remember what happened the night of the blackout when she had too much to drink.

The Witches — Joan Fontaine. A woman’s loss of memory puts her in danger from a coven of witches.

Carnival of Souls — Candace Hilligloss. A woman wanders around in weird haze.

Portrait of Jennie — Jennifer Jones. A young woman doesn’t know she is a ghost.

The Mummy’s Curse — Lon Chaney Jr. Young woman doesn’t recall she is 3000 years old; basically the plot of Blood on the Mummy’s Tomb and The Awakening; based on Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars.

The Black Angel — Dan Duryea. A man plays detective to help a woman clear her husband with surprising results; based on the Cornell Woolrich novel.

The Haunted Strangler — Boris Karloff. In retrospect mystery writer Boris should never have opened up the twenty year old murder case …

Hangover Square — Laird Cregar. A pianist and composer doesn’t quite remember what he gets up to when the music compels him; based on Patrick Hamilton’s play.

Suddenly Last Summer — Elizabeth Taylor. A psychiatrist tries to help young woman recall traumatic event while battling her over protective mother-in-law.

Landslide — Anthony Edwards. A man suffers selective memory loss after an accident.

The Bourne Identity — Matt Damon. A spy is hunted on all sides and doesn’t recall why.

The October Man — John Mills. A man with mental problems has to clear himself of murder and prove to himself he didn’t do it. Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay.

Knock on Wood — Danny Kaye. A ventriloquist who believes is dummy is talking to him suffers memory loss and personality changes as a result of plot by his analyst to use him in spy plot.

Highly Dangerous — Margaret Lockwood. A scientist on mission for the Secret Service is tortured and afterward thinks she is a famous radio secret agent from a popular children’s show. Screenplay by Eric Ambler.

Bewitched — Phyllis Thaxter. An early variation on multiple personalities as woman committed murder in her other persona.

Three Faces of Eve — Joanne Woodward. A woman doesn’t recall what she does in alternate personalities.

   Others?

THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Radio Pictures, 1935. Walter Abel (D’Artagnan), Ian Keith (Count de Rochefort), Margot Grahame (Milady de Winter), Paul Lukas (Athos), Moroni Olsen (Porthos), Onslow Stevens (Aramis), Heather Angel (Constance), Rosamond Pinchot (Queen Anne), John Qualen (Planchet). Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas père. Director & co-screenwriter: Rowland V. Lee.

   When I sat down to watch this, I was taken a bit by surprise. I thought I’d taped the 1948 version. The one with Lana Turner and Gene Kelly? In color? And this one was in black and white and starred Walter Abel.

   Walter Abel? Much better a young Walter Cronkite, I thought, than Walter Abel. But even though he was already 37, this was essentially Walter Abel’s screen debut, and as D’Artagnan, the young man who joins the other three musketeers to foil a plot against Queen Anne of France in the 1600s, he shows just enough zeal and wild abandon to carry the day. (He’s the one on the right in the photo above.)

   Or so I thought. The general opinion of this movie appears to be rather low, so I may be in the minority on this.

   It doesn’t help that none of the other leading players of this movie were big box office stars, then or now. Not that they were unknowns. Paul Lucas, for one, was in numerous films and won an Oscar for Watch on the Rhine, and Margot Grahame was still making movies or on TV through 1959, but neither name, I’m sure, would be recognized in many homes today.

   It also doesn’t help that 1600s France and who was King and who was Queen and who in their court and retinue was plotting against whom are some of things that most people no longer know very much about. I suspect that most high school history courses covered that material much more thoroughly in 1935 than I’m sure they do today.

   It also doesn’t help that except for Walter Abel, all of the musketeers look alike, and so do most of the other male players, all in proper garb, it is assumed, but nonetheless all but interchangeable.

   But there is a good sense of humor that comes along with this version, though, and of course lots and lots of swordplay. (Not many muskets, however, if any.) The story line follows that of the book well enough, as I recall, and you can never go wrong with that, making it about half way through, again as I recall, before wrapping things up, and rather tidily, too.

MIKE BARRY – The Lone Wolf #14: Philadelphia Blowup. Berkley, paperback original, 1975.

   The success of Don Pendleton’s Executioner series in the early 1970s naturally spawned a host of imitators. Like Mack Bolan, the Executioner, these other rough, tough, and lethal heroes are one-man armies embarked on a personal crusade to destroy the Mafia, the “Communist conspiracy,” or similar organizations/ideologies in the name of justice and/or democracy, and by whatever means necessary.

   The Lone Wolf series is one such imitation, and on the surface is solidly in the conventional action/slaughter mold. The lone wolf of the title, ex-New York narcotics cop Burt Wulff, embarks on his one-man vendetta against organized drug traffic in the United States when his girlfriend, Marie Calvante, is found dead of an overdose in a Manhattan brownstone.

   His savage quest carries him through fourteen novels — each one set in a different U.S. city, each one dealing with a different arm of the vast drug network — and culminates in a bloodbath in the City of Brotherly Love.

   But there is much more to this series than meets the casual eye. “Mike Barry” is a pseudonym of Barry N. Malzberg, a writer of no small talent who specializes in stream-of-consciousness science fiction. Indeed, the Lone Wolf books are essentially plotless, make extensive use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, and are jam-packed with idiosyncratic prose much more suited to a mainstream literary novel than to a paperback paean to violence:

   And Burt Wulff is anything but your standard macho hero; he is, in fact, a raving lunatic who, by the last three books in the series — Philadelphia Blowup, in particular — is knocking off people for the sheer soaring pleasure of it: a serial killer as psychotic as Gilles de Rais or Son of Sam. In this respect, then, his saga is both a mockery and a condemnation of the whole Executioner subgenre.

   The Lone Wolf novels are not without their flaws, certainly. They were written rapidly and show it; there are any number of factual and geographical errors, and the lack of cohesive plotting makes for a great deal of repetition. Nevertheless, as amazing hybrids of the literary novel and the potboiler, as a saga of one man’s breakdown into psychosis, as an implacable send-up of the Executioner and his ilk, these fourteen books are quite remarkable.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

JOSEPH ROSENBERGER – Death Merchant #20: Hell in Hindu Land. Pinnacle, paperback original, 1976.

   The remarkable success of Don Pendleton’s Executioner series (several million copies sold) naturally spawned the usual bunch of imitators, some of whom enjoyed no small success of their own. The most literate of these is Mike Barry’s Lone Wolf saga; the least literate (and funniest) is Joseph Rosenberger’s ongoing adventures of Richard Camellion (a.k.a. the Death Merchant).

   Camellion is a sort of lunatic James Bond in that he is primarily occupied in eradicating threats to the free world arranged by Communist forces or members of a SMERSH-like organization called Spider. He, too, travels all over the world; the main difference between him and Bond is that 007 accomplishes his missions with wit and intelligence as well as violence, while the Death Merchant displays as much wit and intelligence as a “Goju-Ryu karate ball-of-the-foot koga geri groin kick,” which he uses whenever he is engaged in hand-to-hand (or hand-to-foot) combat.

   Rosenberger takes the same jovial pleasure in describing breaking bones and teeth (spurting blood, too) as Camellion does in knocking off foreign “boobs.”

   There are plenty of broken bones and teeth, and oceans of blood, in Hell in Hindu Land, number twenty in the series. It seems the CIA has been receiving reports that a mysterious secret room in a Buddhist monastery in India contains “secrets from the stars e.g., plans for a “bio-plasm” force that can defy gravity and a “psychotronic generator” that can harness the energy of the human mind — which were allegedly brought to earth by ancient astronauts from another planet.

   Camellion is dispatched to India to check out this bizarre report and, if there is any truth in it, to gain control of the plans before his old KGB nemesis, Major Kondrashev, can claim them for Mother Russia. All of which is pure nonsense, of course — but no more so than Camellion’s antics on Indian soil, which are principally comprised of feverish battles with the Russians and/or the deadly tribesmen of Rajmahal.

   What makes such as this worth reading (marginally so and in small doses) is Rosenberger’s inimitable style. (It has been said that he possesses unappreciated comic talents and that the Death Merchant series is not pastiche but parody; there is no evidence, however, to support such a claim.) The following representative snippet should serve as an indicator of whether or not you would like to become better acquainted with Rosenberger and Camellion:

   Other titles in the series include The Albanian Connection (1973), The Mato Grosso Horror (1975), Armageddon, USA! (1976), and Blueprint Invisibility (1980).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

DON PENDLETON – The Executioner: War Against the Mafia!.   Pinnacle, paperback original, 1969.

   Sergeant Mack Bolan, the ideal sniper in Vietnam, is called home on compassionate leave when his father shoots the other members of the family and then takes his own life. Bolan learns that his father was in debt to a Mafia-controlled loan company and was unable to payoff the debt; as a result, in an attempt to save her father from the loan sharks’ reprisals, Bolan’s young sister, Cindy, had been forced into prostitution.

   After burying his family, Bolan decides to get revenge, having been perfectly trained to do so and being psychologically suited for the job. He begins simply, with a .444 Marlin lever-action rifle, but by the end of the book he is using flares and rockets, leveling houses as well as killing men. (The book’s apt subtitle, on the cover though not the title page, is “War Against the Mafia!”)

   Before his battle is well begun, Bolan realizes that he does not hate his enemy, that vengeance is not the issue, that there is nothing personal involved. It is simply the good guys against the bad guys, and he is the good guy. He isn’t interested in philosophical discussions of good and evil. The Mafia is the enemy, and he will destroy them or die in the attempt.

   When Don Pendleton created the Executioner, he probably didn’t know that he had altered the direction of paperback series fiction. His hero caught the imagination of so many readers that imitations soon flooded the stands (the Butcher, the Marksman, the Sharpshooter, the Assassin, etc.).

   But Mack Bolan was the first, and his simple, hard-boiled philosophy was carefully worked out as the books progressed. To read this series is to watch the development of a real American phenomenon.

   There have been some fifty books in the series to date, all bearing such titles as Miami Massacre (1970), New Orleans Knockout (1974), and Colorado Kill-Zone (1976).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

LIONEL DERRICK – The Penetrator #10: The Hellbomb Project.

Pinnacle, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1975.

   I haven’t double-checked this, but according to one source on the Internet, there were 53 books in this hard-as-nails men’s action-adventure series. While all of them were credited to Lionel Derrick, Mark K. Roberts wrote the odd-numbered entries while Chet Cunningham wrote the even-numbered ones.

   Men’s adventure series were extremely popular in the 1970s and on through the 80s. Only the long-running Destroyer and the Executioner are still going today, but I suspect their sales have plummeted badly. I don’t think publishers think men buy men’s action-adventure fiction any more, and they’re probably right. There aren’t any to buy.

   In any case, I’ve accumulated several hundred books in this particular genre over years, very few of them new, mostly at library sales or from eBay sellers, if I found them in nice enough condition, and it occurred to me last week that maybe I might try reading one or two of them.

   My mistake. I’m sure that The Hellbomb Flight has everything in it that was expected of it, to the person who bought it originally, but the 182 pages of very large print had nothing of interest to me, either major or minor, except possibly very minor, perhaps.

   Mark Hardin is the Penetrator, an ex-Vietnam War veteran who’s come home to fight crime and corruption, and working surreptitiously for a bigwig in the Justice Department, it’s usually on a big scale, given Hellbomb Flight as an example. It seems that a former NASA scientist has cracked up big time and intends to take over a Russian communications satellite he suspects of being secretly armed with a payload of hydrogen bombs.

   Funny thing is, Dr. Orlando Fitzmuller’s right, but the payload is even more deadly, if that’s possible. What he doesn’t know is that his low budget undercover operation has been infiltrated with Mafia types who intend to use his technical expertise to their own ends.

   And that’s it. The whole story right there. There’s a lot of blood that’s shed along the way, but in comparison, Mark Hardin’s love life is rather tame and mild. Lots of arteries blasted away by bullets, skulls split open with the thonk of ripe melons, and rifles and guns and firearms of every shape, make, model and caliber, all lovingly described and I assume correctly, too.

   I’ll sell my copy on Amazon. Or at least I’ll offer it for sale there, but I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of competition.

PostScript. I was wrong. There were only 13 copies offered for sale on Amazon when I went to look, with prices ranging from a penny to ten bucks. The discouraging thing, though, is that the book has no sales ranking, indicating that Amazon has never sold a copy through third party sellers such as myself. Mine’s in Near Fine condition, with remainder lines (I think) across the top edge but otherwise looking unread, even though I’ve obviously read it, but carefully.

   I’m offering my copy at $3.45. If and when it sells, I’ll come back with an Update and let you know.

[UPDATE] 05-18-10. I’ve changed my mind. Thanks to everyone who left comments who helped persuade me, and to Bill Crider and Bill Pronzini, whose reviews from 1001 Midnights of three other men’s action-adventure novels I’ve just posted.

   What I’ve been convinced of is that there may be some small semi-precious gems stored away in these boxes of paperbacks I have, and if you look at them in just the right way, perhaps even a diamond or two. If Bill Crider can say that the Executioner books marked the beginning of a “real American phenomenon,” then I cannot disagree with him.

   Bill Pronzini says there is humor to be found in the Death Merchant books, and from the lengthy quote he provides, I cannot quarrel with that statement either.

   And if the Lone Wolf series was written by “‘Mike Barry’ […] a pseudonym of Barry N. Malzberg, a writer of no small talent,” as Bill Pronzini also points out, and that the entire series is “quite remarkable,” and that there is more to the 14 books “than meets the casual eye,” I cannot doubt him at all — all the more so when the very same sentiment has been shared by several of you who have left comments.

   So I’m keeping all of the men’s action-adventure books I’ve accumulated over the years, as I say several hundred of them. Alas, I was planning on using that space for something else, or I was hoping to. I’ll reclaim the Penetrator book from Amazon’s listings, and admit defeat. I know when I’m licked. Once I own a book, it is difficult to let go of it, no matter how hard I try!

ROBERT B. PARKER – The Godwulf Manuscript. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1973. Reprint paperback: Berkley, 1975. Reprinted many times.

Genre:   Private eye. Series character:   Spenser, 1st in series. Setting:   Boston.

First Sentence: The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse.

   Boston PI Spenser (with an “s” like the poet) has been hired by a university president to recover a 14th century illuminated manuscript.

   He is directed to a SCARE, the Student committee Against Capitalist Exploitation and Terry Orchard, one of the members, whom he finds along with her aggressive boyfriend, Dennis. Spenser receives a 2 a.m. call and finds Terry drugged. Dennis dead and the evidence of a professional hit.

   I’ve not read this book since the 1970s and it is an interesting cultural look back. I am very happy fashions have changed away from white vinyl boots and leisure suits and that technology has advanced from mimeographs and typewriters. But as silly as some of the slang sounds today, at least it wasn’t as profane as today’s speech.

   It is also interesting looking at Spenser in his later 30s. He still thought he was funnier than anyone else did. This is a pre-Hawk, pre-Susan Spencer. As annoying as Susan can be, the one thing she did bring to the series was Spenser’s monogamy.

   What hasn’t changed is his doggedness, determination to see the case through, dedication to the innocent and his cooking. I am always amazed that he has just the right ingredients in his kitchen to make a wonderful meal.

   Those are the little things. What Parker did extremely well was description, dialogue and plot. With a very few words, you knew where you were and the other characters in the scene. He often employed analogies — “The wet wool smelled like a grammar room coatroom.” — which put you right into his scene.

   His dialogue, even with the slang of the period, was always tight, crisp and real. As to plot, the story started a bit light and annoying. However, once it took hold, it hit its stride and I was completely engrossed. Re-reading this very first book makes it clear as to why I have read every other book Parker wrote.

Rating: Very Good.