A Review by MIKE TOONEY:


BILL PRONZINI – Gun in Cheek: A Study of Alternative Crime Fiction. Coward McCann & Geoghegan, 1982, hardcover, 1982. Trade paperback: Mysterious Press, 1987.

   Gun in Cheek is Bill Pronzini’s backhanded salute to the “Best of the Worst,” books and stories that pushed the envelope of language to the breaking point and beyond. The blurb on the back says it all:

BILL PRONZINI Gun in Cheek

    Gun in Cheek is … a delightful exploration of what the author refers to as “alternative crime fiction.” Less kindly put, it is a unique crash course in the worst English and American crime fiction of the twentieth century.

    Every category of mystery fiction is represented: the private eye, the stately home, the arch-villain, the gentleman sleuth, the amateur spy, and many others who have blossomed from the genre.

    Within these categories, in what can only be called a labor of love, Bill Pronzini discusses, digests, and shares the best of the worst — adding a wonderfully comprehensive bibliography for advanced and dedicated devotees.

    Gun in Cheek is an amusing and pleasurable reading experience as well as an enlightening guide to hardboiled potboilers.

   But they’re not all hardboiled. Gladys Mitchell is Pronzini’s target in Chapter Five: “…Mitchell’s prose is of the eccentric variety, to put it mildly — something of a cross between Christie and P. G. Wodehouse, with a dollop or two of Saki, or maybe John Collier, thrown in — and, like garlic and rutabagas, is an acquired taste.”

   Of course, Pronzini’s criticism is supported by only one example: The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop. Nevertheless, as Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) says of Pronzini in his Introduction, “He has obviously read and digested everything ever written in the genre by anyone anywhere,” so his judgment in these matters is to be respected.

   Gothic mysteries are examined in Chapter Ten, which begins with a famous Donald Westlake quote: “A gothic is a story about a girl who gets a house”; but the variations rung in on the Gothic theme can go far afield, as Pronzini amply demonstrates.

   Ed McBain feigns injury in the Introduction, wounded by Pronzini’s ignoring some of the bad writing McBain himself was guilty of, and produces examples of his own as proof that even the best writers can nod now and then over their typewriters — and what does this say about editors?

BILL PRONZINI Gun in Cheek

   Pronzini discusses some works at great length, such as (in Chapter Seven) The Dragon Strikes Back by Tom Roan (1936), an extravaganza so over the top that it leaves Pronzini wishing its author had produced more of the same.

   (If Ian Fleming ever denied having cribbed from The Dragon Strikes Back when he wrote Dr. No, he must have been lying, especially with its element of a renegade group trying to initiate a world war among the superpowers — how many times have those drearily formulaic Bond films used that very notion?)

   Chapter Four affectionately deals with Phoenix Press, whose stable of “alternative” authors boggles the mind, and among whom was Harry Stephen Keeler, “the once-popular ‘wild man’ of the mystery, who seems to have been cheerfully daft and whose plots defy logic and the suspension of ANYONE’S disbelief.”

   (Sidebar: Keeler offered his plotting schemes for sale to the public. That’s a lot like you teaching your cat Tiddles to play Chopin’s ‘Piano Concerto in F Minor’ : No matter how good he gets at chording, his feet will never reach the foot pedals — and Keeler’s “feet” never did.)

   You’ll probably enjoy Gun in Cheek, but three cautions:

   ● One (for parents): There is some coarse language.

   ● Two: Spoiler Alerts, for Pronzini happily reveals the endings in a few cases.

   ● Three: Don’t try to read this book in one sitting because it just might make you dizzy — with laughter.