LIA MATERA – Where Lawyers Fear to Tread. Willa Jansson #1. Bantam, paperback original, 1987. Fawcett, paperback, 1991.

   When Susan Green, editor-in-chief of the Malhousie Law Review, is found murdered in her office, there is no shortage of suspects. Besides other various editors. There are all of the faculty, of course, and numerous spouses, lovers, distinguished alumni,and so on.

   Willa Jansson, former senior articles editor, unwillingly pressed into service as Susan’s replacement, also turns detective. Almost everyone is suspected in turn, and many of them are guilty (of something). An intense sort of story, in a cluttered sort of way.

      The Willa Jansson series —

Where Lawyers Fear to Tread, Bantam, 1987.
A Radical Departure, Bantam, 1988.
Hidden Agenda, Bantam, 1988.
Prior Convictions, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Last Chants, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Star Witness, Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Havana Twist, Simon & Schuster, 1998.

PIERS ANTHONY – Sos the Rope. Pyramid X-1890. Paperback original; 1st printing, October 1968. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Serialized earlier in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-Aug-Sept 1968, Collected in Battle Circle (Avon, paperback, 1978).

   A strange triangle formed between two men and a woman becomes the key to the future of a post-war semi-feudal society, There are the warriors whose problems are solved by the force of arms, by trial by combat. And there are the crazies, who supply the traditions of learning and the past.

   Any form of unifying leadership is discouraged by the secret underground manufacturers of all supplies, and it is Sos’ friend Sol who threatens to provide that leadership, with the help of Sos, which would upset the balance of this precarious society. Sola is the wife of Sol, who bears the daughter of Sos. And it is Sos who is sent to end Sol’s leadership, and who then becomes the one who must be destroyed, What he has built, he must also destroy.

   A dilemma, unresolved. To strive for the benefits of civilization again, or to maintain the present because with it civilization brings destruction? What to do with an empire that cannot withstand those who have the power and wish to keep it for themselves?

   Much much more than for Lin Carter’s “swords and sorcery.”

Rating: *****

STEVEN POPKES “The Ice.” Novella. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2003. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 21st Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (St. Martin’s, trade paperback, July 2004).

   Phil Berger was a high school hockey player in the Boston area, and a pretty good one, when a local reporter files a story about him that changes his life forever.  As the story goes, he is the cloned son of Gordie Howe. [Sidebar here: Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player of all time, playing for the pros from 1946 to 1971, one Wayne Gretsky notwithstanding. We could argue about that. I saw him play twice, once in Detroit and once here in Hartford. Gordie Howe, that is.]

   The circumstances are vague, but one does not argue with DNA testing. It is a lot of pressure on a young boy. He makes it to playing in college, but it doesn’t last long. It also turns out that he was not the only result of whatever experiments somebody was running. The other boy, Phil’s age, was not as successful.

   This is a long story, full of small highlights and lots of valleys. He moves to the American southwest, gets a job barkeeping, then a better one. He gets married, has a son, and lives his life the best he can. This is barely science fiction, until the end, when the story finally makes it rounds and comes around to the point, which is a significant one. But while it is being told, it is one you cannot put down, even if you are not a hockey fan.

   I have not read anything else by Steven Popkes, who seems to have made a living doing real jobs, not depending on writing SF for a living. He wrote a couple of novels in the late 1980s/early 90s, then a dozen or so more from 2016 to now. These appear to be mostly self-published.

   He did continue writing shorter work all through this period. This not an uncommon career path for many SF writers. Based on this sample of size one, though, he seems to have done fine, but in my opinion, he could have been a real contender.

L. J. WASHBURN – Wild Night. Lucas Hallam #1. Tor, paperback; 1st printing, November 1987. Five Star, hardcover, 1998. Rough Edges Press, softcover, 2022.

   Lucas Hallam is a former western lawman, now a part-time movie actor as well as a 1920s private detective. In this case, he’s hired by a charismatic new Hollywood evangelist who is also apparently ripe for blackmail. (Nothing ever changes.)

   What I didn’t particularly care for was the use of a fortuitous tornado as a plot device, nor the scene where Hallam outshoots three men with tommy guns. His long bouts of reminiscing (though a bit repetitious) did give the man some character, however.

      The Lucas Hallam series —

1. Wild Night (1987)
2. Dead-Stick (1989)
3. Dog Heavies (1990)
4. Hallam (story collection, 2022)

PIGSKIN PARADE. 20th Century Fox, 1936. Stuart Erwin, Patsy Kelly, Jack Haley, The Yacht Club Boys, Betty Grable, Judy Garland, Tony Martin, Elisha Cook Jr., Lynn Bari, Alan Ladd. Director: David Butler.

   When Yale mistakenly challenges a small Texas college in a game of football, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. It is, that is, until the school with an enrollment of only 700 recruits a hillbilly with an arm like a rifle, straight from a melon patch.

   Lots of singing and dancing, Although he doesn’t appear until the second half of the movie, Stu Erwin manages to get star billing as the team’s new quarterback. Judy Garland, who plays his sister, makes a smash movie debut – stealing the show as a 15-year-old.

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – Don’t Cry for Me. Dutton, hardcover, 1952. Edgar Award winner for Best First Novel. Dell #672, paperback; cover art by James Meese.

   Don’t Cry for Me is Gault’s first novel, and one of several non-series mysteries he wrote in the 1950s. His fellow crime novelist Fredric Brown  had this to say about it: “(lt] is not only a beautiful chunk of story but, refreshingly, it’s about people instead of characters, people so real and vivid that you’ll think you know them personally. Even more important, this boy Gault can write, never badly and sometimes like an angel.” Gault’s other peers, the members of the Mystery Writers of America, felt the same: They voted Don’t Cry for Me a Best First Novel Edgar.

   This novel (and many of Gault’s subsequent books) beautifully evokes the southern California underworld of drug dealers, addicts, hoodlums, racetrack touts, second-rate boxers, and tough-minded women with larcenous and/or homicidal proclivities. Its narrator, Pete Worden, is anything but a hero; he lives a disorganized and unconventional life, walking a thin line between respectability and corruption, searching for purpose and identity.

   His girlfriend, Ellen, wants him to be one thing; his brother John — who controls the family purse strings — wants him to be another; and some of his “friends” want him to be a third. What finally puts an end to Worden’s aimless lifestyle is the discovery of a murdered man in his apartment, a hood named Al Calvano whom Pete slugged at a party the night before. Hounded by police and by underworld types, Worden is not only forced into his own hunt for the killer but forced to resolve his personal ambivalence along the way.

   Don’t Cry for Me is first-rate — tough, uncompromising, insightful, opinionated, occasionally annoying, and altogether satisfying. An added bonus is a fascinating glimpse of the death of the pulp magazines (the primary market for Gault’s fiction for the previous sixteen years), as seen through the eyes of Worden’s neighbor and friend, pulp writer Tommy Lister.

   Of Gault’ s other non-series books, the best is probably The Bloody Bokhara ( 1952), which is set in Milwaukee and has as its background the unique world of Oriental rugs and carpets. Also noteworthy are Blood on the Boards ( 1953), which has a little-theater setting; and Death Out of Focus ( 1959), about Hollywood film-making and script-writing.

         ———
   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.

MARC BEHM – Eye of the Beholder. Dial Press, hardcover, 1980. Ballantine, softcover, 1981, 1999. Film #1: Produced in France in 1983 as Mortelle Randonnée, and released in the US as Deadly Circuit. Film #2: Released in 1999, with Ewan McGregor & Ashley Judd.

   An old, washed up private eye. At an agency. Divorced. Drinks, smokes. Had a daughter: Maggie. Hasn’t seen her in years. All he’s got left is a 1st grade class photo sent from his ex-wife, on the back, saying I bet you don’t even know which one is her, asshole. And he didn’t. He’d think about her though. In the photo, there were a few candidates that could’ve been her. And he’d pick one and create a whole life, graduation, marriage, kids….

   The boss assigns him a case. Rich elderly couple. Their son, Philip, has taken up with some skank, and she’s probably just after his dough. Can you look into her, her background, get some dirt, and watch them, there’s something about her we don’t much trust.

   So the Eye follows them, next day, they get married, she and Philip, elope, and honeymoon in a little cottage upstate. The Eye’s watching. Always watching. She’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning. And about the age of his daughter. Hell, maybe it is his daughter. And he watches. Watches as Philip gets ready for bed, the wedding night. I’ll take a quick shower, he says. And he does. And she makes a couple of cognacs, and empties a vial of poison into Philip’s, and before you know it, he’s dead. She buries him in the yard.

   And the Eye? He just keeps watching. Enthralled.

   The Eye calls his boss, says the happy couple split for Montreal, but don’t worry, tell Philip’s parents the Eye is on their trail.

   So Philip’s parents bankroll the Eye’s voyeurism, as he travels from town to town, trailing this beautiful woman who keeps marrying rich young men and murdering them.

   And that, my friends, is that. He trails her and watches her and her sordid life, fantasizing that she’s his child, looking out for her, helping her where he can, without her ever knowing, even until the end. Which comes for all of us. Some sooner than others.

   It was fine. But I don’t understand the whole hullabaloo, as the book got lots of hype for being something amazing and unique in pi fiction.

   Me? I don’t see it. PI’s obsessed with femme fatales? Nothing new under the sun. Thinking the femme fatale’s your daughter? Gross and perverted.

   So from me? A meh. It was fine. But it’s not as good as many PI novels, and I don’t see what’s supposed to be so special about it. Behm says he’s not even into the PI genre, doesn’t think much of it. And it shows.

LAINE FISHER – Fare Prey. Ace Double D-387; 1st printing, 1959. Published back to back with The Bikini Bombshell, by Bob McKnight. Cutting Edge Books, softcover, as by James Howard writing as Laine Fisher.

   It starts out in fine fashion. Mike Gavin, deliberately down on his luck, finds a dead man in the stall next to his in the men’s room of LA’s Union Station, Needing a coat, he finds several thousand dollars and a ticket to Denver in the pocket. And more.

   The dead man, he discovers, was a hit man, on his way to work. Who killed him, who was his intended victim, and who are he two women busting out of their clothes for Gavin? It’s formula fiction, and it almost works, but not if you ask the right questions.

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Soda Fountain.” Appeared in The Saint Mystery Magazine,” March 1960. Reprinted from Liberty, October 11, 1930, as “Soda-Fountain Saga.”

   John Spanish is a soda jerk, a description of a job which may not exist anymore, and if it does, it’s a job not nearly as common as it used to be. (I am not as up on things like this as I used to be, either.) He is uncommonly good at this job, or at least he thinks he is, and it’s quite apparent that he really does have an effect on all of the high school girls who come swarming in when school lets out.

   All but one of them, and perhaps she is not really a schoolgirl. She never comes in with books, and she treats Spanish with undisguised non-interest. He tries his best, but, no, the lady is not interested. Then for a couple of days in a row, she meets a man at the counter. A man she knows well, Spanish catches on to that right away. In sort of futile gesture, but he cannot help himself, he fixes the girl’s companion a special drink. A doozy, you might say.

   The next day, the girl comes in, with a suitcase. “What did you do to my husband?” she demands. He gulps, figuratively if not physically.

   And just where is this story going, the reader wonders. I’ll stop here and say no more but only remind you that this is a crime story. A minor one, true, and while it was written early in Woolrich’s career, and somewhat amateurishly phrased now and again, with an ending that needed just a little more punch to it, it has a modicum of a cuteness while not being totally fluff either.

   And while I’m not absolutely positive, and there’s no information provided as a blurb in reprint version I read, but this appears to be Cornell Woolrich’s very first crime story. Not his first published story – there were about a dozen stories he had written before this one, appearing in magazines such as College Humor and the like – but I’m sure happy I came across it late last night, for all of the reasons mentioned above.

WILLIAM HJORTSBERG – Falling Angel. PI Harry Angel #1. Harcourt Brace Jovanovic, hardcover, 1978. Fawcett, paperback, 1982. Warner Books, paperback, 1986. St. Martin’s, paperback, 1996. Film: Released as Angel Heart (Tri-Star, 1987) with Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, Lisa Bonet).

   It’s the late 1950’s, NYC. A wealthy, corrupt seeming, seamy yet seemly man, Louis Cipher, hires a private dick, Harry Angel, to find a missing person. That missing person is Johnny Favorite, a dime store Sinatra who got big suddenly in the thirties, between the wars.

   Harry Angel is your typical middle aged, hardboiled, drinking smoking detective, who prefers headbutts to subtle inquiry.

   He attacks headlong on the trail, a hefty retainer under his belt.

   Turns out Favorite was catatonic after the war, put in a home, then disappeared. His face was blown to smithereens, with reconstruction to make him presentable, if unrecognizable.

   But every time Angel gets a lead, the lead ends up with a load of lead. The trail gets bloodier and bloodier until Angel finally cracks the case.

   Imagine his surprise.

   Loads of weird satanic rituals abound, as Johnny Favorite seems to have descended into that voodoo that he do so well.

   I liked it. But having seen the ill-aging (and aren’t they all) Alan Parker film in the 80’s, I knew the twist, which kind of messed the impact up for me. It’s the kind of book that if you could avoid the film, first time you read it, would probably blow your socks off. But only the first time. And then afterwards you can appreciate it for what it was and will never be again for you, like a one nite stand you were happy you got away with. You’re slightly embarrassed for getting taken, you smirk at the wit, you envy the idea and the millions of bucks it earned Hjortsberg. Then you salute him and move on to something else.

         —

NOTE: A second book in the series, entitled Angel’s Inferno, was published in 2020.