CRY DANGER. RKO, 1951. Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Erdman, William Conrad, Regis Toomey, Jean Porter and Jay Adler. Written by William Bowers and Jerome Cady. Directed by Robert Parrish.

   A tight, fast-moving and witty noir, done by folks who knew how to do it.

   Dick Powell stars as Rocky Mulloy, just released after five years in prison for an armed robbery he didn’t do, freed when his alibi is belatedly substantiated by the rather suspect testimony of ex-Marine Delong (Erdman.) Actually, Delong thinks he’s guilty, but he’s angling to cut himself in for a share of the $100,000 still missing from the robbery.

   Also involved, in ascending order of importance, are Regis Toomey as Cobb, a dull cop who still thinks Rocky’s guilty but figures he can shake things up by tailing him around town; Castro (William Conrad) the Gang Boss who engineered the heist but kept his hands clean, and Rhonda Fleming as Nancy, an ex-love of Rocky’s now married to his buddy Danny, who is still serving time for the caper.

   Now that he’s out, Rocky hopes to clear his own name and that of his friend Danny, and maybe even get a cut of the loot to repay himself for the five years in stir. To this end, he and his new friend Delong move into a trailer court — a wonderful blend of location and studio work that seems really tacky in the way only a 1950s trailer court could — as a base for their operations while Rocky begins following up the loose ends left dangling for five years: the widow of the Security Guard who identified him, Castro’s involvement, and just how innocent his old buddy Danny really was.

   By this time in his career, Powell had mastered the cool, hard-boiled, faintly mocking persona that had been his stock-in-Spade since Murder My Sweet (1944) and Writer Bowers (Criss-Cross, The Web, The Law and Jake Wade, etc.) gives him plenty of laconic dialogue to deal out, which he does with perfect deadpan comic timing.

   There’s some debate over whether this was directed by Parrish or Powell — both have some fine films to their credit — but whoever did it captured a nice feel for that post-war early 1950s ambiance, evoking atmosphere without letting the pace flag for a minute. Additionally, Cry Danger achieves a moment of some depth and emotional complexity, which I’ll preface with a

SPOILER ALERT! It will come as small surprise to noir buffs that Nancy turns out to be playing a double game, hoping to keep the loot and get Rocky back into her larcenous arms, but we get a nifty spin on it here when Rocky uses her love for him to get her to betray herself. All through the scene we can see him leading her on and hating himself for it, see him crushing his feelings under his own heel, and finally walking away, officially innocent, free and very alone. A fine and unusual moment, written and played to perfection. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

   Along the way to this remarkable ending we get a full quota of twists, turns, rough stuff and the kind of tough guys and deadly dames they just don’t make anymore — if they ever did.

TWENTY PLUS TWO. Allied Artists, 1961. David Janssen, Jeanne Crain, Dina Merrill, Brad Dexter, Jacques Aubachon, Robert Strauss, Agnes Moorehead, William Demarest. Screenplay by Frank Gruber, based on his novel. Directed by Joseph M. Newman.

   Julia Joliet, who runs a clipping service in Hollywood whose chief client is movie star Leroy Dane (Brad Dexter), is brutally murdered and her offices searched. It seems like a pointless crime, but among her clippings is one on Doris Delaney, a debutante who went missing over a decade earlier from her exclusive school and wealthy home in New York, and that catches the eye of Tom Alder (David Janssen) who makes his living finding missing people, and for whom the Delaney case is a sort of obsession.

   When Alder casually arranges to run into Dane at a bar he also coincidentally is spotted by Linda Foster (Jeanne Crain), the girl who sent him a Dear John letter while he was in the service in Tokyo recovering from a wound that has healed better than his heart. Linda is there with her latest fiancé, but not averse to reopening the relationship with Tom, and also accompanied by her friend Nikki Kovacs (Dina Merrill) and her wealthy fiancé.

   When Alder finds a clue that was meaningless to the police in Joliet’s place it puts him on a plane to New York, surprisingly along with Nikki Kovacs who is getting off in Chicago to see family. There is something about her Alder can’t quiet shake, but he hasn’t time to pursue it. He is also, unknown to him, being followed by a mysterious cultured fat man who he saw outside Joliet’s apartment.

   In New York he begins to piece together the pieces of the Delaney case with the help of a drunken reporter (William Demarest), a private eye buddy (Robert Strauss), and Mrs. Delaney (Agnes Moorehead) who suspects he is nothing but another opportunist until he makes the first real break in the case in over a decade. Meanwhile things are moving along on other fronts.

   The mysterious fat man is Jacques “Big Frenchy” Pleschette (Jacques Aubachon), a former con man who has spent most of his adult life in prison, and who is willing to pay $10,000 to find his estranged younger brother Auguste who he has not seen since the war. Linda Foster has shown up too, concerned about Nikki Kovacs, who has gone missing and it turns out has no family in Chicago, and also looking to renew romantic relations with Alder. Even Leroy Dane shows up on a publicity tour.

   With the pressure on Alder recalls in flashback a girl he met in Tokyo, Lily Brown, while he was recovering from his wound, and fell for.

   And as he pieces together all the diverse bits of information he gathers in his investigation it all begins to dovetail together in dangerous ways.

   I won’t go any farther, you probably have figured it out anyway. Despite the noirish elements Twenty Plus Two is really just a pretty good little mystery and not film noir. Alder is only mildly haunted and obsessed, and everything falls together a bit too neatly. The film plays mostly as a made for television movie and not a feature, a fact enhanced by the kind of guest stars and cast you would expect on television in the period.

   That said, this film, produced by Frank Gruber, from his own novel and screenplay, is still pretty good in a low key way, and notable in that much of the sub plot is borrowed from Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios, which became a film, Mask for Dimitrios, with a screenplay by Frank Gruber. Big Frenchy Pleschette is Mr. Peters, the character played by Sidney Greenstreet in the film, and his brother Auguste the Dimitrios figure he wants to find — and blackmail.

   Many of the plot elements were updated and moved from Hollywood and New York to Hong Kong, for The Gold Gap (reviewed here ) another Gruber novel from late in his career, and the missing heir who has changed their life also appears as a key element in Gruber’s Bridge of Sand.

   Pulp writers never let anything go unused.

   Twenty Plus Two was a better book than film; it plays too much like a two-part episode of a television anthology series to ever really gel as a feature, and noirish elements don’t make noir, but it is professionally done all around, attractive, well written, cogent, and all the elements do tie together neatly even explaining why Julia Joliet had to be killed.

   There is nothing exciting about it, but it is a satisfying little mystery film that crosses and dots all the right letters, thanks to Gruber’s expertise in the field, even if the long arm of coincidence in this one at times seems to belong to Plastic Man.

  THOMAS B. DEWEY – Don’t Cry for Long. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1964. Pocket, paperback; 1st printing, March 1966.

   I posted a review here last October of one of Dewey’s Pete Schofield books, and it was not a very positive one, I’m sorry to say. The good news is that Don’t Cry for Me, the 10th of 17 books in his Chicago-based PI “Mac” series, is as far on the plus side as Nude in Nevada was on the minus side.

   There’s no long buildup to the case that Mac is by default given to handle. The murder of a young girl’s bodyguard occurs on page 9 (in reality the third page of the story) and all of the ensuing action takes place in no more than two or three day’s time.

   The girl’s father is a Congressman, which means he and therefore his daughter has many enemies. but Mac suspects that the killing is more personal than that.

   Along the way Mac meets a woman, the girl’s no-nonsense chaperon who does not flinch an inch in her duties along those lines, and who may become the woman in Mac’s life. One of the threads of concern to the reader is whether or not she will still be that woman by the time the book ends.

   Dewey’s prose in this book is terse and hard-boiled, more like Hammett than Chandler, in my opinion, but as a person Mac cares more, and in so doing resembles some of the characters in Chandler’s books more than he does any of the leading characters in Hammett’s. The fact that I’m doing any such comparisons with either author means that really enjoyed this one. If PI fiction is a substantial portion of your usual reading fare, I think you may, too.

ROBERT L. FISH – The Green Hell Treasure. Putnam’s, hardcover, 1971. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition. No paperback edition found.

   Though the Edgar-winning Fugitive (1962) was the first of ten mystery novels Robert Fish wrote about Jose Da Silva, The Green Hell Treasure is far more typical of the series. Because The Fugitive is about an escaped Nazi war criminal in South America, it is, of necessity, more serious than its successors.

   As his series progressed, Fish would make increased use of Brazil, where Da Silva, a police captain, acts as liaison between the Brazilian police and Interpol. The subject matter of his books became more exotic, and humor played a greater role.

   Robert L. Fish knew Brazil intimately, having spent more than ten years there as a consulting engineer with a Brazilian vinyl plastics firm. Fish always preferred to use places in which he had lived or traveled as background for his work. Brazil, a combination of virtually impenetrable jungle and modern cities and resorts, is ideal for a man like Da Silva who is at home in any of these settings.

   Early books such as Isle of the Snakes (1963) and The Shrunken Head (1963) emphasize the primitive, especially the exotic and dangerous fauna and Indian headshrinkers. Though on the surface detective stories, they are as much thrillers. By the time of The Green Hell Treasure, the series had become a satisfying blend of sophistication and adventure.

   Throughout the series, Wilson, an undercover agent at the American Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, plays “Watson”to Da Silva. If their byplay is not quite in the Wolfe-Goodwin class, it is still very witty indeed. In The Green Hell Treasure, they start out in Brazil, as usual, but then travel to Barbados in pursuit of half a million dollars in stolen jewels, the titular treasure.

   In an extremely amusing scene, the intrepid Da Silva is transformed into a nervous wreck due to his fear of flying. If the solution is somewhat obvious, the book is resolved in an exciting climax told in almost cinematic language. This is not surprising when one remembers that Fish, under his Robert Pike pseudonym, wrote Mute Witness (1963), which wasadapted to the screen as the very exciting Steve McQueen film Bullitt (1968).

   Nor should the humor in The Green Hell Treasure amaze us when one thinks of Fish as the author of The Incredible Schlock Homes and, under another ichthyological pen name. A. C. Lamprey, an amusing series of comic definitions in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine called “Gumshoe Glossary.”

   Fish’s other books under his own name are equally diverse. The novels The Hochmann Miniatures (1967), Whirligig (1970), The Tricks of the Trade (1972), and The Wager (1974), and the short-story collection Kek Huuygens, Smuggler (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.

  KARL KRAMER – Fair Game. Popular Library #650, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1955.

   Karl Kramer was the pen name of Edward A. Morris, (1912?-1996?), about whom little more seems to be known, not even the exact dates of his birth and death. He had one story published in the December 1958 issue of Manhunt, “Wait for Death,” and four paperback crime novels published by Monarch Books between 1959 and 1961.

   If Gold Medal was the pinnacle of hard-boiled paperback crime novels in the 1950s, and Monarch was way down on the bottom rung of the latter, that leaves Popular Library as (obviously) somewhere in between. The covers were generally very racy, but whether the stories matched up, I’d say it was doubtful, save for one scene in each and every book that the cover artist was always able to take full advantage of.

   On the average I would say that the Popular Library offerings along these lines was higher than those of Ace and the Ace Double line, but that was before I read Fair Game, which no matter what scale you might care to use, most definitely brings that average down.

   It starts slow, stays slow for a long time, then ends in a blaze of action that left me slightly bewildered as to who was on what side and why. It didn’t matter all that much: only one of the characters is mildly interesting.

   The story is told by Steve Conney, a pilot-for-hire who works exclusively for glamorous magazine publisher Helen Abbott, who uses his services not only in the air but in the bedroom — when it serves her needs. Their present assignment: to track down a mysterious Dr. York. Conney does not know why, nor does Helen deign to tell him — but for the first time, she has brought a gun along with her.

   The trail has led them to an isolated resort on lake two-and-a-half hours out of New York City. The place is owned by an old man but managed by his beautiful blonde and widowed daughter-in-law, Eve. Conney’s job as directed by Helen: to get close to her and pump her for information. And eventually that he does — get close to her, I mean, and Helen does not react well.

   More: nothing is what it seems, and Conney is the kind of lunkhead who thinks he knows women but in reality doesn’t have a clue. He might be portrayed well by Charlton Heston. Helen, perhaps someone like Ida Lupino — icy when she wants to be and passionate at other times. The initially cold and aloof Eve, why not Grace Kelly, as long as my make-believe budget can handle it.

   I hope I didn’t make this story more interesting than it is. It isn’t. It’s slow and tedious, but the author, whoever he was, had a passion for flying that carries over to the reader for a brief couple of pages; this partially outweighs all of the story’s other shortcomings.

CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN. United Artists, 1958. Richard Anderson, Elaine Edwards, Adele Mara, Luis Van Rooten, Gar Moore, Felix Locher. Screenplay: Jerome Bixby. Director: Edward L. Cahn.

   There are two primary ways of looking at Curse of the Faceless Man. Either it’s a hodgepodge of horror film tropes with more than a smidgen of themes generously, um…. borrowed from Karl Freund’s The Mummy (1932). Or it’s a loving, living homage to Universal’s entire Mummy series, modified to a Southern Italian setting in which the mystical Etruscan and Roman past loom large over the scientific present.

   As an admirer of director Edward L. Cahn’s ability to make the most out of what are admittedly low-budget productions, I’m more akin to give the film the benefit of the doubt and call it an homage, albeit one clearly designed to exploit interest in the mummy film sub-genre and to make a quick buck off of it. To paraphrase the famous saying from Seinfeld: not that there’s anything wrong with that.

   Richard Anderson, who went on to feature in The Six Million Dollar Man, portrays Dr. Paul Mallon. He, along with his fiancée, Tina Enright (Elaine Edwards), is residing in modern day Italy in the outskirts of the town that was once the Roman city of Pompeii.

   After an archaeological dig discovers the remains of a faceless mummy-like man in the ruins, strange things begin happening. First, the driver tasked with transporting the mummy is mysteriously killed. Second, and more significantly for the story, Tina begins to have visions of the faceless mummy, as if she has some unexplainable connection to him and to the distant past (shades of The Mummy).

   But what could it be? Is she the reincarnated descendant of a Roman elite family? And who is this faceless man and what does he want? Dr. Carlo Fiorello (Luis Van Rooten) and his daughter, Maria (Adele Mara) are both on the case. Working at the local museum, they’re determined to unravel the mystery of the faceless man once and for all!

   Here it is about a week later after the convention, and I’m still limping around with back and leg pains. How did I survive another voyage? I’ve been asked by friends and relatives why do I sign up each year for another 14 hour drive to Chicago? I guess you have to be a collector to understand. Flying would be more convenient but then I would be limited in what I could buy and carry back. The rental van is quite large and roomy enough for all of us, dealers and collectors alike.

   My life has revolved around my book and pulp collection now for 60 years. I cannot imagine not attending Windy City and Pulpfest. One of these days I physically will not be able to make the trip, but hopefully that time is still off in the future somewhere. Attending these conventions is important not only because of the books and artwork available, but also because of the friendships that I value. These friendship lead to more books and art!

   This trip I did find some books I needed but not a single pulp magazine. I’ve been to so many conventions that there is not much I need, just a few scattered issues. But I did talk to two friends about possible deals involving large numbers of pulps. If these plans work out I’ll be able to continue one of my favorite occupations, the comparing of two issues of the same pulp, same date.

   However I did find eight pieces of original art from the pulps, paperbacks and digest SF magazines. The biggest find was a beautiful 1929 cover painting used for Western Story. The art is by George Wert and titled “Come Out With Your Hands Up.” It shows three hardboiled bank robbers caught in the act. These guys look tough as hell.

   Arriving home I immediately took down a Rafael Desoto painting and hung the Western Story in the family room. Unfortunately my wife did not appreciate it as much as I did, and when I went upstairs to read a book, she actually had the nerve to move The Three Tough Guys to a less conspicuous spot. Since she replaced it with a Walter Baumhofer painting, I managed to control myself. At least she did not replace it with a Walmart decoration, which has been known to happen.

   Actually when I first entered the dealer’s room I found an Earle Bergey painting within one minute. True it’s not from Startling or Thrilling Wonder, but it’s an early cover from a 1929 Popular Biography. Later on a found a weird drawing by one of my favorites, Lee Brown Coye. Then two drawings from Galaxy by Emsh.

   Another big art find was my discovery of not one, but three cover paintings for Raymond Chandler paperbacks. You can’t go wrong with anything connected with Chandler, and they were not expensive. The artist is Richard Waldrep.

   Speaking of art, Windy City is known for it emphasis on original art. There must of been a dozen dealers with art for sale, and as usual there was the large room devoted to an art exhibit. Mostly SF cover paintings, but also on display was the art of Jon Arfstrom. I met and talked to this fine artist at last year’s Pulpfest, but since then he unfortunately passed away. He was the last of the Weird Tales artists.

   The dealers’ room was amazing. Over 100 tables with at least 465 attendees in a large room. On sale were books, pulps, digests, vintage paperbacks, slicks, reprints, new pulp fiction, DVDs, and many pieces of original art. The hospitality room had plenty of beer and snacks.

   Ed Hulse put on his usual excellent film program, this time the theme was SF from the pulps. There also were three panels: paperback art collector Robert Wiener discussed The Art of Jeff Jones; artist David Saunders discussed The Art of Frank R. Paul; and I participated in a panel about Argosy‘s 120th Pulp Anniversary. Also on this panel were Ed Hulse, publisher of Blood n Thunder magazine, and Tom Roberts and Gene Christie from Black Dog Books. Somehow, in 45 minutes we managed to talk about a magazine that lasted over 2,000 issues and almost a hundred years. Several people told me they enjoyed the discussion, which is great because there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about the old back issues of the pulps!

   Tom Roberts must be congratulated for once again editing Windy City Pulp Stories. In 182 pages there are several excellent articles including Bob Weinberg talking about his 1979 tribute to Astounding project. I remember Bob telling me about this back then, and part of it actually did see the light of day. Mike Ashley’s index to Astounding was published but the book of essays never came out. Now finally after all these years we get to see two interviews with A.E. Van Vogt and Poul Anderson plus some other material.

   I also found two other articles to be of interest: The Story of the Argosy and The Making and Marketing of Munsey’s Magazine by Frank Munsey. This book is available from Black Dog Books.

   The auction is always a highlight of the convention and was held on Friday and Saturday nights. For many years I have listened to John Gunnison as the auctioneer, and I have to say he is excellent and keeps things moving with a sense of humor. This year will be the last year of the items from the Jerry Weist Estate Auction, and there was a nice booklet listing the auction items. There were hundreds of lots ranging from SF digests to Weird Tales. There plenty of SF pulps, Argosy‘s, and men’s adventure magazines. I’ve never seen so many Nazis menacing damsels in distress… After WW II the returning vets loved these covers. I still can’t read the “articles,” however, but I’m trying!

   Several books made their debut at the show including Ed Hulse’s second volume on the silent serials, Handsome Heroes and Vicious Vilains. If you love the old movies this book and Distressed Damsels and Masked Marauders are must buys. This new volume is 400 pages large size crammed with rare movie stills. and photos. You can get copies from amazon or Ed’s website, Murania Press.

   Also new at this show were the latest books from the big pulp reprint firms: Altus Press and Black Dog Books. Matt Moring and Tom Roberts are doing excellent work and I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true.

   Finally, I would like to thank Doug Ellis and Debbie and John Gunnison and Maureen for another great convention, the 16th! What’s next? We have to rent another van! Here comes Pulpfest in Columbus, Ohio July 21 through 24. Collectors and Readers, I’ll see you there!

Editorial Thanks:   Both Walker and I would like to thank Sai Shanker for allowing the use of all of the photos above taken at the convention. A fine job, indeed!

LONELY ARE THE BRAVE. Universal Pictures, 1962. Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, Carroll O’Connor, William Schallert, George Kennedy. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, based on the novel The Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey. Director: David Miller

   Although the film languished in relative obscurity for decades, the 2009 DVD release of Lonely are the Brave likely introduced a new generation to this remarkably effective modern Western.

   With a screenplay adapted from Edward Abbey’s novel, The Brave Cowboy (1956) and penned by Dalton Trumbo, the movie stars Kirk Douglas as Jack Burns, a cowboy trying to make his way in modern industrial society. Burns is a charming anachronism, a rugged individualist who eschews automobiles for his horse and hates barbed wire fences and artificial borders.

   The crux of the story is two-fold. When Burns learns that his friend, Paul Bondi (Michael Kane) has been detained for helping illegal immigrants cross the border into New Mexico, he decides to ride – literally – to the rescue.

   Complicating matters slightly are his feelings for Bondi’s wife, Jerri (Gena Rowlands in an early film role). But what really gets the story moving is when Burns hatches a plan to break into jail so as to meet up with his friend Paul and help him escape. Needless to say, the plan falls apart and Jack ends up alone with his horse, a fugitive from the law.

   Hot on Jack’s trail is cynical world-weary Sheriff Johnson, portrayed by future Academy Award winner Walter Matthau. It’s a near perfect role for him, one accentuated by little personality quirks and tics that simultaneously give his character both an everyman and a larger-than-life persona. Johnson has the modern world at his disposal: a plane, a helicopter, and police radio. But as it turns out, they are simply of no real use when they clash with Jack’s stubborn nineteenth-century values of individualism and self-sufficiency.

   At times surprisingly humorous, Lonely are the Brave is also achingly sad. Douglas was exceptionally well cast; indeed, after watching the movie, it’s very difficult to imagine any other actor playing the part of Jack Burns. In many ways, it’s a very non-traditional role for Douglas, an actor who has specialized in playing angry and intense men. His character in this film is surprisingly laid back, even more so in the face of nearly insurmountable challenges.

   There is, however, one pivotal scene in which Douglas’s intensity shines through; namely, a well choreographed bar fight in which Jack Burns fights with a one-armed man. (As recounted in one of the extras on the DVD: apparently, the scene made a vivid impression one a young Steven Spielberg!)

   While Lonely are the Brave will never likely achieve the same sort of canonical status as the work of auteur directors such as Budd Boetticher, John Ford, and Anthony Mann, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthy of such high aesthetic consideration. Indeed, the film holds up exceedingly well over fifty years after its initial cinematic release. Some may find the theme of the anachronistic cowboy to be overdone and trite, but in my estimation this generally unheralded film is able to both utilize, and build upon, this theme without falling into either pathos or cliché.
   

   While browsing through the folk LPs offered for sale in a retro music shop in Magnolia Park yesterday, I came across quite a few names from the past that I hadn’t thought of in years, such as Fred Neil, Judy Henske, Phil Ochs, and Carolyn Hester, but also several that I’d don’t remember at all. Such a one is Kay Huntington, who seems to have released one LP, that in 1970, before she seems to have disappeared from the music business forever.

   The LP is entitled What’s Happening to Over World? It was released in 1970, and it has never been reissued on CD. But most of the songs on it are on YouTube. Here’s the title track:

   And as a bonus, one other song on it, “Right to Poverty,” that has caught my ear:

LINWOOD BARCLAY – A Tap on the Window. New American Library, hardcover, 2013. Signet, paperback, July 2014.

   Here’s how the book begins. For lovers of PI and/or noir fiction, it’s a beginning that’s hard to resist, nor should they:

   The girl taps on the automobile window, and PI Cal Weaver lets her in, a good deed that does hardly anyone any favors, once the remaining 450 pages are done. It’s a quick read, though. Lincoln Barclay tells a fast-paced story, intricately woven but but laid out in clear, crisp prose.

   It turns out that the girl was a schoolmate of Weaver’s son, and there is a story behind the story there. Scott is dead, having jumped off a four-story building to his death until the influence of pharmaceuticals, and Weaver has been harassing any would-be drug dealers to find out which one of them sold Scott the deadly dose. But because of his obsession and his wife’s own misery, their marriage is teetering on the rocks.

   But getting back to the girl, as we should, her story leads Weaver into another direction altogether. He becomes part of her plan to throw someone off her trail, but the girl she makes a switch with ends up dead. Complicating matters is a feud between the police chief, Weaver’s brother-in-law, and the mayor, who has secrets of his own, but who is also the father of the girl Weaver picked up and who has now disappeared.

   There are also some cops on the small town police department in the upstate New York area who are more inclined to use force than they should be in keeping undesirables out; the proximity of Niagara Falls as a good way of disposing of bodies; and in the interspersed sections in italics, separate from Weaver’s own narrative, a family crime and subsequent conspiracy of some sort is obviously the key that connects all of the above together.

   There is plenty of gritty behind-the-scenes small town atmosphere in this novel. Not everything is cheery and bright in non-urban America. The book does not end well, by which I mean for the characters, but it does appear that Cal Weaver escapes well enough that he may have other adventures. It’s a gripping story for the reader, except for the sections in italics, which personally I could done without, with no harm done, and perhaps even to the betterment of the book.

Bibliographic Update: Cal Weaver has subsequently appeared in book two and three of Barclay’s “Promised Land” trilogy: Broken Promise (2015) and Far from True (2016). I may hunt them down, eventually, but I think I will wait for the fallout left behind this novel to die down first.