KIM NEWMAN – The Man from the Diogenes Club.

MonkeyBrain Books. Trade paperback original, June 2006.

   Richard Jeperson, a member of the little-known Diogenes Club and investigator of peculiar crimes, often in collaboration with the exotically beautiful Vanessa and commonsensical former policeman Fred Regent, was created by Newman in his pre-professional days, then revived in the 1990s in a series of stories (often of novella length) that have now been collected by an enterprising American small press publisher.

   I would like to have been able to greet this bizarre collection with some warmth, but I must report that it took me several months to make my way through Newman’s elaborate prose that, at times, brought me to the point of tossing the book in a box of discards, unfinished and unloved. Or at least by me.

   I’ve a high tolerance for the outré, to which several shelves of occult fiction mutely testify, but Kim’s ornate descriptions tended to make my progress slower than that of the proverbial snail and undercut much of the pleasure I might have taken in the fanciful tales of mummies, zombies, and a wayward golem, all of them preserved in intractable amber-like prose.

   >>>

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   The book Walter reviews is now out of print, and commands a premium price on the secondary market. (I always wanted to say that.)

  Contents:

      End of the Pier Show
      You Don’t Have to Be Mad
      Tomorrow Town
      Egyptian Avenue
      Soho Golem
      The Serial Murders
      The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train
      Swellhead

I was a reader of the Sexton Blake Library from the age of eight or nine. The first title I read was The Case of the Crooked Skipper by John Hunter. [3rd series, Issue 249, October 1951]

I liked the changes made by editor Bill Baker in 1956 and became an advocate in fan circles, making contributions while still at school to Herbert Leckenby’s Collector’s Digest.

Mid-1961, on the departure of Mike Moorcock from Fleetway, I was offered the chance to become the SBL’s editorial assistant. I jumped at it and enjoyed the first year or so of my working life reading manuscripts and proofs, creating book and chapter titles and blurbs, running the readers’ letters section, keeping editorial ledgers and liaising with the accounts department over payments to contributors. It was an eye-opening experience that quickly gave me a firm grounding for a career in editing and writing.

By the time Fleetway had abandoned the SBL, I was established at Micron Publications Ltd of Mitcham, Surrey, as the editor for a wide range of 64-page comic books of the type popularly known in Britain as picture libraries. In between these duties and writing scripts for the war and western titles, I persuaded the company’s principals that a market existed for a new British text magazine in the mystery field.

This allowed me to approach the Wallace family and their UK literary agents, A. P. Watt, for permission to use the Edgar Wallace name, then still prominently associated with thriller fiction, particularly through the Anglo-Amalgamated B-movie series.

The rights were granted for a fairly nominal sum, and each monthly issue contained a reprint of an otherwise unavailable Wallace novelette or story, backed up with other, all-new fiction by contemporary crime writers, true crime articles, book reviews and readers’ letters. Many of the contributors were ex-SBL. One of the several who wasn’t was Nigel Morland, who professed to be a friend of the Wallace family.

In hindsight, it was a mistake to have involved the Micron company. The firm was in financial difficulties with its publications, stemming largely from a failure to secure adequate distribution and possibly to have re-invested more of their earlier profits. In debt to its printers, Micron handed over the comics business to them on the basis that various series should continue, but only as English-rights reprints of material from a Spanish publisher.

This terminated my employment, but I was to continue to run EWMM for them as a freelance editor. Responding to sudden employment separation, I quickly adapted to the new circumstances and focused on preserving the magazine’s future. In a very short time, Micron decided to axe the magazine altogether and I began a battle to save it, negotiating alternative distribution, while Edgar Wallace Ltd stepped into the breach to act as publishers and meet printing and editorial costs.

I have letters on file from Nigel Morland ostensibly offering me support, telling me how “impressed” he was, how it was “first-class” and “excellent”. But many were written at a time when he must at least have had an eye on taking over my role.

“Dear Keith, I had the new issue, and really do think you are doing it well. You’ve set a standard, and that is a high one. So far you seem to better it a little with each issue, which, after all, is the heart of all really good editing. Congratulations. Every good wish, Yours, Nigel.”

Two months later, in late 1964, after expending a huge amount of time and energy on what had been “my baby” from the outset, I was bluntly informed by agent Peter Watt that Messrs. Edgar Wallace Ltd had appointed a new editor for the magazine and that after issue number six I should no longer be connected with its publication. I should receive an “ex gratia payment of ?50 when the final corrected proofs of No. 6 go to the printer.”

The new editor was to be Morland, whom I was told by Penelope Wallace and her husband, George Halcrow, was older and more experienced than me, and therefore would make a better job of the magazine.

In a reaction typical of the many I received, T.C.H. Jacobs (Jacques Pendower), then a recent chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, wrote to me: “Their choice of an editor astonishes me. I have known Morland for many years and am unaware he has ever had editorial experience. But I do know that he has always claimed some connection with the Wallace family. Maybe it is true. I don’t know. He is certainly older than you, sixty.”

I was then aged 21, had done a heap of work in the three and a half years since I’d left school and acquired something of a track record in Fleet-street and backstreet offices. Nevertheless, I was very disillusioned and deeply disappointed. Morland took the magazine in what I suppose was intended to be a more literary direction, eschewing the thriller, slightly pulpish tradition that I felt was truer to the Wallace oeuvre.

And it didn’t last.

   A fascinating thread! As has been observed, Edgar Wallace was a very big name in thriller fiction in the 1920s and ’30s, but he was not, of course, part of the Golden Age of Detection, which makes comparisons with Christie — even Symons — in many ways inappropriate. Wallace was still a big name after the Second World War and right up to the 1960s, when I founded and edited the Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine. At that time, his books and stories were already regarded as having a quaint flavor, which a daughter, Penelope Wallace, was largely responsible for trying to remove by supplying publishers with revised versions.

   Such revisions are, of course, an ultimately futile exercise and may even remove future points of appeal — something I realized even then though I was only 21 years of age. For the short time I ran the magazine, I concentrated on the “action” end of the mystery field, running the kind of stories Americans would have called “pulp fiction” and which I believe were written by authors who were worthy successors of Wallace himself. I also used full-color, vigorous pictorial covers that reflected this content.

   Ultimately, the publishing company running the magazine — and employing me as the editor of it and a raft of digest-size “pocket libraries” — ran into financial difficulties and the Wallace family took over the magazine. I was replaced by a “more experienced” editor: elderly writer Nigel Morland who was said to be a family friend, and as a contributor to the magazine had previously flattered me with consistently favorable comment on my editorial work and policies.

   The illustrated covers were replaced by wholly typographical, two-color covers that at best were a poor imitation of Ellery Queen’s. The content changed, too, certainly abandoning what I considered the true Wallace tradition in preference for material that had more of a “whodunit,” intellectual slant.

   From the online FictionMags Index:

Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine

Publishers
      Aug-1964 – Nov-1964: Micron Publications, Micron House, Gorringe Park Avenue, Mitcham
      Dec-1964 – Jun-1967: Edgar Wallace Magazines Ltd., 4 Bradmore Road, Oxford
      1969? – 1970?: Edgar Wallace Magazines Ltd., 50 Alexandra Road, London SW19

Editors
      Aug-1964 – Nov-1964: Keith Chapman
      Dec-1964 – Jun-1967: Nigel Morland
      1969? – 1970?: Leonard Holdsworth, Kurt Mueller & James Hughes

THE MAN I LOVE. Warner Brothers, 1947. Ida Lupino, Robert Alda, Andrea King, Martha Vickers, Bruce Bennett, Alan Hale, Dolores Moran. Based on the novel Night Shift, by Maritta Woolf. Screenplay by Jo Pagano, Catherine Turney & W. R. Burnett (the latter uncredited). Director: Raoul Walsh.

   Believe it or not, the book this movie is based on is still in print (Scribner, trade paperback, 2006). From the Amazon description:

   Night Shift is not included in Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, but Whistle Stop is, although only marginally:

WOLFF, MARITTA M(artin). 1918-2002.
      -Whistle Stop (Random, 1941, hc) [Michigan] Film: United Artists, 1946 (scw: Philip Yordan; dir: Leonide Moguy).

   Whistle Stop the movie starred Ava Gardner and George Raft – now there’s a combination, for you – and IMDB describes the plot thusly:

   This latter film is available on DVD, most easily by means of one the various box sets of Noir Films that everybody seems to be packaging together these days.

   Both Jo Pagano and Catherine Turney have one book each in CFIV. For the former, it’s The Condemned, filmed in 1951 as Try and Get Me; for the latter, it’s The Other One, filmed in 1957 as Back from the Dead. Everybody reading this knows W. R. Burnett, or should, and of course in our circle director Raoul Walsh is even more well known, the circle being, of course, the extended realm of crime, mystery and adventure fiction.

   Which is a long, long introduction to convince myself, first of all, then maybe you, that The Man I Love actually belongs and should come up for discussion in a mystery-oriented blog.

   I’ll keep writing, and later on, I’ll ask what you think.

   The basic synopsis of the story as being the same as the book, as stated above. Ida Lupino is Petey Brown (not Braun; that was changed, for obvious reasons), the nightclub singer from New York who comes to visit her family in California and decides that their problems might as well be hers for a while. Robert Alda plays Nicky Toresca, the slick-talking nightclub owner she goes to work for, a man who’s hot for every woman he knows and meets, including Petey’s married sister, until the former puts an end to that.

   Not mentioned in the Amazon description is former jazz pianist San Thomas, played in solid if not stolid brooding fashion by Bruce Bennett (formerly Herman Brix, but who turned out to be an actor after all). Petey has been dallying around with her boss on a strictly hands-off basis – perhaps the only woman who’s been able to handle him that way – but when she meets San, it is lust at first sight, movie code or no.

   Turns out, though, that San has baggage of his own. He’s divorced but still loves his wife who dumped him, and he’s currently but only temporarily AWOL from the Merchant Marine. There’s more. The woman living across the hall from Petey’s sister is bored with her marriage and her small twin babies, and she’s cheating on her husband, who’s a naively nice guy that Petey’s younger sister has eyes for.

   I think you have the picture by now. There is way too much plot to be covered adequately in one ninety minute movie, but what this is is obviously drama of the soap opera variety, gussied up a bit for the night time audience. Is it also a crime movie, as IMDB says it is? Not a bit of it.

   But is it Noir, as IMDB also suggests? Yes, absolutely, not completely, but yes. It’s the lighting. It’s the location. (Outside of the drab apartment where the Otis family lives, nightclubs and after-hours jazz spots predominate, with the opening scene worth 100% of the price of admission. Even though Ida Lupino is only lip-synching the words, the music is terrific).

   It’s also the sense of quiet desperation that exists in these people’s existences. It’s the ray of hope that exists and blooms in one area of their lives, only to diminish in another.

   So noir, yes. A crime film, no. I wish I could find a longer clip, but this one will have to do. It’s about the only scene of almost actual violence in the movie, and in it Petey stops the husband next door from committing a real act of violence on Nicky, the nightclub owner. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve never seen anything like it, and even if you have, you still haven’t seen anything like it.

   Are you back? To get back to the question I told you I was going to ask later, what do you think?

   Algis Budrys, best known as a science fiction writer and critic, died on June 9th. For an overview of his career in that field, I can do no better than send you to Todd Mason’s blog, thanks to a tip from Bill Crider, from whom I borrowed the cover image below.

   Most of the other websites and blogs covering his passing will talk about his SF. He does have, however, one work cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, an artifact of sorts of the Cold War:

BUDRYS, ALGIS. Working name of Algirdas Jonas Budrys, 1931-2008.

      Who? (Pyramid, 1958, pb) Badger (U.K.), 1960. Film: British Lion 1974, released in the U.S. as Man Without a Face; also released as Man in the Steel Mask; and as Prisoner of the Skull (scw: John Gould; dir: Jack Gold).

   From wikipedia comes a detailed synopsis of the tale:

    “A Soviet team abducts Dr. Lucas Martino, a leading Allied physicist in charge of a secret, high-priority project called K-88.

    “Several months later, under American pressure, the Communist officials finally hand over an individual, claiming that he is Dr. Martino. The man has undergone extensive surgery for his injuries. He has a mechanical arm advanced beyond any produced in the West. More importantly, his face and head have been dramatically rebuilt, now resembling a near-featureless metal mask. A medical evaluation reveals that several of the man’s internal organs are also artificial. The Allies are suspicious that the Soviets have sent them a spy and are holding the real Martino for further interrogation.

    “The struggle to determine the man’s true identity is the novel’s central conflict.”

   But the book is much more than a Cold War espionage caper. Extracted from a review at www.trashfiction.co.uk/who.html is the following:

    “It’s a philosophical piece about the nature of human identity, and how bound up it is in the existence of a face. Does a man lose his past if he (literally) loses face? Can you trust such a man? Is human interaction possible if one party can’t read the facial expressions of the other?”

   Among these entries in Part 26 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, are two I’d especially like point out to you.

   First of all, the entry for Michael E. Knerr has been completely revised. New data had been spread out over several parts of the Addenda; it’s now combined in one spot in Part 26, with one newly discovered book also included. That book also makes Mike Travis a series character, and this fact is now noted.

   Secondly, I have been in touch with the family of Jon Messmann, and I talked to his son Alan for about 45 minutes late last week. As a consequence, the autobiographical portion of his entry has been rewritten, and a newly revealed pen name is made known for the first time.

JOSEPH, ALAN. Add: Pseudonym of Jon (Joseph) Messman, 1920-2004. Under this pen name, the author of two books included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Series character: Logan, in both:
       Killers at Sea. Belmont, pb, 1970. Setting: South Carolina. “Logan finds a dead man on the beach [leading] to danger, diamonds and death.”
       Logan. Belmont, pb, 1970. Setting: Ship. [Mystery and adventure aboard the Sea Urchin.]

KNERR, MICHAEL E. 1936-1999. (Corrected dates.) For a lengthy discussion of the author’s mystery fiction, see a review of his private eye novel Travis posted earlier here on the Mystery*File blog. A biographical reminiscence of his life by John F. Carr can be found in this follow-up post. Below is a completely revised entry for the author; add the books indicated with a (*).
       * Heavy Weather. Tower, pb, 1979. Setting: Ship. “On the Mexico run the Pandora carried a cargo of drugs, danger and death!”

       Operation: Lust, as by M. E. Knerr. Epic, pb, 1962.
      * Port of Passion, as by M. E. Knerr. Imperial, pb, 1965. Series character: Mike Travis. Setting: Mexico. [Travis tries to discover who killed a Mexican deep-sea diver.]
       * Travis, as by M. E. Knerr. Series character: MikeTravis. Pike, pb, 1962. Setting: California. [Travis is hired as a PI to stop the drug trade coming up from Mexico.]

       The Violent Lady. Monarch, pb, 1963.

MESSMANN, JON (JOSEPH). 1920-2004. Pseudonyms: Alan Joseph, q.v., Claude Nicole & Claudette Nicole (add the former). House pseudonyms: Nick Carter & Paul Richards. In the 1940s and early 50s, the author of many comic book stories for Fawcett Publications. (See this webpage for more information, noting however that in this short biography of him, his name is incorrectly given as Eric Jon Messmann.) Under his own name, the author of 18 crime and suspense novels cited in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, including seven about men’s adventure series hero Jefferson Boone, The Handyman, and six with Ben Martin, aka The Revenger. As a writer of adult westerns, Jon Messman was better known as Jon Sharpe, author of many of the early adventures of The Trailsman books, including the first one, as well as most of the Canyon O’Grady books.

MILLER, BEN E. Author of two detective novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Series character in each: Cory Barnett, nominally a detective for the Chicago police force.
       Death Deal. Powell, pb, 1969. Setting: Paris, New York City. (Add the former.) [Barnett, acting as a US agent, is assigned to protect a political target in France.]

       The Set-Up, as by Ben Miller. [New: Note the shortened form of his name.] Powell, pb, 1969. [Forced from his position on the Chicago PD, Barnett begins a new career as a PI in New York City.]

SECOND SKIN. 2000. Natasha Henstridge, Angus Macfadyen, Liam Waite, Peter Fonda. Directed by Darrell James Roodt.

   Opening scene: the front of a shabby-looking bookstore, in what is apparently a small Californian beach town. A stunning blonde approaches, enters. From inside, as the owner looks up, her thin white dress is nearly translucent in the sunlight.

   She’s looking for a job, but he – a dissheveled-looking fellow not dissimilar to all of the semi-seedy bookstore owners of every shop you’ve ever been in, right? – he doesn’t know that yet. She browses the shelves. “You’ve got some original editions, here,” she says. “Hammett, Thompson, Cain. That’s a nice collection.

    “Some of the new ones are good, too,” she goes on, having waited in vain for a response more expressive than a shrug. “Ellroy, Block, Kent Harrington.” The bookstore guy doesn’t recognize the last one. “Who’s that?”

    “Dia de Los Muertos,” she murmurs. “The Day of the Dead.”

   What an opening! You won’t be able to see the whole scene without finding a copy of the movie on DVD – not difficult to do – but you can see part of it in the trailer for the film. Go here, but please come back.

   Why there is a trailer made for a movie that was never released to the theaters, I’m not sure, but maybe for cable TV? It’s a pretty good representation of the film, too, although most of the violence that’s in the film is shown in this short teaser – but not all.

   It seems that Crystal Ball – that’s her name, played to icy perfection by former model Natasha Henstridge – is new in town, has no friends, and business is so bad for Sam Kane – that’s his name, played to rumpled perfection by Irish actor Angus Macfadyen – that doesn’t need anybody to work for him. Intrigued, however, he takes her address and phone number …

   … and as she is standing outside his shop as she is leaving, she’s hit by a car, by a hit-and-run driver who doesn’t stop. When she wakes up in the hospital, Sam standing by, she does not remember him, does not remember anything. Amnesia.

   It seems she has some secrets. Visiting her place on the beach, Sam finds a gun under her pillow. Someone is also following her trail, a nasty piece of work named Tommy G (Liam Waite) complete with tattoos and nifty knack with both guns and knives. Meanwhile, Sam has his own problems and his own secrets. Plagued by a blackmailer, he …

   Hold on, hold on. Too much story. If you’ve read this review this far, you’ll want to watch this movie yourself. Beautifully photographed, this neat little neo-noir tale of crime, secrets and surprises sometimes goes over the top, and in general may try just a little too much, but sometimes excesses with the right kind of intentions can be forgiven.

   I did, at least, and I do recommend the movie to you. Most of the people commenting on IMDB didn’t know what to make of the film. Too many cliches, they say, and they may be right, but for me, they’re the right kind of cliches. For me, I might say that the film is a little too violent – and there is one cliche it definitely does not include. Most crime thrillers like this make it seem all too easy to kill someone with only your bare hands and a belt. This one does not.

   Getting back to the people commenting on IMDB. They did not like the ending all that much. Obviously knowing the cliches of neo-noir films like this one sadly does not mean that they know what neo-noir films are all about – what on earth does noir mean? – and the ending of this one is a beauty.

   Some of them also claim that the ending came from nowhere. Obviously they were not watching all the way through, as I certainly knew that something was happening that was not immediately explained – and I readily confess that I did not know exactly what – and the ending, a near perfect one, came as no surprise to me. (Well, just a little.)

   I do not know why films like this are not shown in theaters anymore – well, actually I do. Nobody would come to see them. There must be money to be made, though, in making them and releasing them only on DVD and cable TV, and relying on the fact that word of mouth will catch up to them and a profitable time will be had by all. I hope so.

   Using a line that I’ve closed many a movie review with before, if this sounds like your kind of movie, it is.

   I posted a review of Robert Crane’s The Sergeant and the Queen here on the Mystery*File blog not too long ago, and I kind of had the idea that it may have been the longest review ever written for either Crane or his real life persona, a writer by the name of Con Sellers. Authors of paperback originals didn’t get much coverage back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, long before the Internet and blogs came along, that’s for sure.

   But if my review was the longest at the time, it certainly isn’t now. The people at the Conelrad website have just uploaded a review of a sleazy piece of cold war fiction called Red Rape, by Con Sellers, that has to be twice as long as the one I did of Crane’s book.

   Excerpted from the second paragraph of the review is the following:  

   You’ll have to read the rest of the review on the Conelrad frequency (follow the second link above) along with a huge image of the cover. Some additional details are given about Sellers’ life, along with a bibliography of some of the work he did that weren’t chronicled here.

   And, for those of you who may be wondering, here is part of the Conelrad mission statement:

   What is CONELRAD? CONELRAD is a site devoted to ATOMIC CULTURE past and present but without all the distracting and pedantic polemics.

   The end-all five-o-clock shadow CONELRAD is the creation of writers who grew up in the shadow of the BOMB and all its attendant pop culture fallout. We wish to share our collected interest, experience and obsession with this strange era and thereby provide as much information as possible to the public.

EDGAR WALLACE – The India-Rubber Men.

Hodder & Stoughton, UK. hc, 1929. Doubleday-Doran Crime Club, US, hc, 1930. UK reprint paperbacks include: Pan 204, UK, 1952; Pan G605, 1964; 3rd Pan printing, 1967. Film: Imperator, 1938, as The Return of the Frog.

   Of the film, the New York Times had this to say: “Following a string of mysterious robberies, Scotland Yard assigns its best detective, Inspector Elk, to bring the crooks to justice. The only clue the villains leave at the crime scene is a rendering of a frog. Still that is enough for intrepid Elk to solve the case, but not after considerable danger, excitement and comedy. This is the sequel to 1937’s The Frog.”

   The latter, according to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, is a film based on:

   The Fellowship of the Frog Ward, UK, hc,1925; Small Maynard, US, hc, 1923. Silent film: Pathe, 1928, as Mark of the Frog. Sound film: Wilcox, 1937, as The Frog.

   But I digress. If the Times is correct in its description of the plot line of the film, it differed in several ways from the book, which I just finished reading. Inspector Elk is in the book, but he’s a relatively minor character, a colleague only of the major player, Inspector John Wade of the London Police, with his general jurisdiction being that of the waterfront area along the Thames.

   See the first Pan cover image for an illustration of that.

   There are also no frogs in The India-Rubber Men, the book, only a powerful gang of burglars, bank-robbers, and thieves plaguing the river district, their distinctive m.o. being their garb: rubber masks, rubber gloves and crêpe rubber shoes.

   See the second Pan cover image (below) for an illustration of them.

   Nor is there much in the way of comedy, but movie-makers (as you know) have never hesitated for a moment to add funny stuff to their films.

   I enjoyed the first half of the book, which in the first Pan edition consists of nearly 200 pages of small print. The writing is picturesque, with the reader traveling with Wade as he makes his way up and down the river looking for clues, and stopping in every so often at the “Mecca,” a disreputable officers’ club and lodging house whose only attraction is the beautiful Lila Smith, a ward of some sort of the proprietress, Mum Oaks.

   The mysterious goings-on in and near the “Mecca” also suggest that a significant amount of criminal activity is going on there as well, as – without revealing anything to you of any great importance – it is.

   But with no great progress ever being made in coming upon the trail of the India-Rubber Men, eventually the investigation becomes tedious, if not outright stagnant. The telling of the tale is episodic, with major small crises (my words are deliberately chosen here) followed by lulls in which the coppers regroup and head their investigation off in yet another direction, while the bad guys seem directionless – but still very dangerous and deadly – in return.

   It is as if the tale were originally told in serial installments, and perhaps it was, although I have no evidence in this regard, but the lack of any forward progress in the case, except in very small increments – three steps ahead to two back – is what contributes so greatly to the lack of thrills in the overall affair, at least from one reader’s point of view.

   Let me be more specific. In spite of Inspector Wade’s being gassed in his own home, nearly drowned in a secret cellar under the “Mecca,” and being shot at from ambush, there is never any great sense of urgency on his part – even, mind you, when Lila is kidnapped from under his very eyes, figuratively speaking. He doesn’t blink an eye. A milder reaction could hardly be imagined.

   Nor none on her part either. Nor, in fact, on the part of the titular gang of crooks and thieves, who are — when it comes down to it — little more than a squabbling bunch of incompetents, hardly worthy, as it turns out, of being called a gang.

   But here’s what it is that’s missing. It’s any sign of intellectual curiosity on the part of the characters. Except for mere sparkles here and there, they’re as dull as ditch water, even the villains. Nor is there any great ingenuity or cleverness in the twists and turns of the plot. This is a deadly combination. There’s nothing much left in the telling of The India-Rubber Men to grab or hook the reader’s interest, at least not this one’s.

   I no longer assign stars or letter grades to books anymore, but if I were to tell you that I skimmed the last third of the book, that may tell you all you need to know.

   But for the record, Edgar Wallace published on the order of 24 novels or story collections in the same year, 1929. While perhaps known today to only a small coterie of fans, his reading public at the time was enormous. On that basis, I’m willing to call his writing an acquired taste, one that I’ve haven’t acquired myself — or perhaps it’s one that I’ve lost and haven’t yet re-acquired. On the basis of the first half of this book, while not making promises I cannot keep, it’s possible — just maybe — there’s a chance that I’ll try again.

STEVE MONROE – ’57, Chicago

Miramax/Hyperion; hardcover; First Edition, 2001; trade paperback, August 2002.

   Boxing and organized crime, unfortunately, go hand in hand. And when you think of organized crime in this country, mid-20th century, you probably think of Chicago. (Unless you’re a born-and-bred New Jerseyite, of course, and then all bets are off.)

   There is very little detective work in this solidly constructed pulp novel — when there’s a murder done, and there’s big money involved, it’s the mob that did it, whether on the direct orders of Sam Giancana or not. Otherwise, the crimes are generally minor: illegal gambling, extortion, dope-peddling, prostitution and the like.

   Ex-convict Robert (The Lip) Lipranski is trying to work his way into big league fight promotion; he has a black heavyweight who could go all the way, but Junior (Hammer) Hamilton has a recent history of mental problems.

   And Al Kelly has been a successful bookie for nearly 30 years; why all of a sudden are things going wrong — unable to lay off bets, unable to access his safety deposit box?

   Their paths, not unexpectedly, converge and collide. The book starts slowly and builds to a crunching finale, led along the way by dialogue that takes both vulgarity and the internal workings of the mob for granted, and punctuated by moments of intense violence.

   Meant for the movies, you say? Absolutely. There is no doubt.

   [UPDATE] 06-06-08. In spite of that final upbeat statement, I was wrong. As far as I’ve been able to determine, no movie has ever been made of this book. Some Googling suggests that for a while one was in the works, but for whatever reason, it never happened.

   Steve Monroe has written but one other book, ’46, Chicago (Miramax, 2002), and I’ve never seen it. But posting this review has reminded me that I do want a copy, and I’ll be ordering one as soon as I sign off from here.