Wed 20 May 2015
FRANK KANE – Time to Prey. Dell 1st Edition B159, paperback original; 1st printing, November 1960. Cover art by Harry Bennett. Reprinted as Dell 8924, paperback, 1966.
Back in the day, circa 1958-1963, I polished down books like this at the rate of one a day. It was certainly helpful, then, that publishers put them out at very nearly the same rate, and a lot of them were Johnny Liddell private eye novels, just like this one.
This isn’t one I remember reading, but don’t count on my lack of memory meaning anything. There isn’t anything in this one that stands out now, and I doubt if it would have back then. It starts out being a little different, with Johnny apparently getting caught up with a gang smuggling Communist Chinese agents into the country, but without a lot of notice, the story gradually converts itself into a run-of-the-mill tale of a longshoremen’s racket along the New York City waterfront.
The villain makes himself known early on, so this is no detective story. Liddell does a good job using his brain as well as his fist, though, working members of the mob against each other, one at at time. He doesn’t even have a client. It’s personal, with the deaths of two young women having occurred because of him, one incidentally, but the other he’s directly responsible for.
The story’s pure puffery, all the more so by the ineptitude of his primary adversary, who [spoiler alert] sets up a frame for Johnny for one of the girl’s deaths, but does not bother to be sure that the latter has no alibi for the time of the killing.
If Kane ever describes Johnny in detail, I missed it, at least in this book. Based on his actions and the way people react to him, I picture him as a Robert Ryan type. Ruggedly good-looking but tough as nails when he needs to be.
May 21st, 2015 at 4:29 pm
Kane gave great generic pi when that was what you wanted, and in the day it was often what I did want. Early on Liddell was an agency tec not unlike the Op in appearance or behavior though not a first person narrator and never depicted as looking like the Op (I don’t know if Dell changed the descriptions from the early books that came out in hardcover or not), but when he moved to paperback he became more handsome and tougher. The few descriptions look a lot like the cover illos, Black Irish, tall, slender, broad shouldered, I think gray eyed, and handsome as well as tough — not a bad description of Robert Ryan, though I saw Johnny as more a television eye than a movie one.
His big fall down is redheads who he regularly encounters in states of semi undress. He does get around more than Michael Shayne did though with adventures in Paris at least though as the review says even spies tended to turn into standard gangster stuff in the Spillane manner.
Some of the later Liddell’s went to another publisher and while I have never read them I had the impression they were soft porn like some of Henry Kane’s Peter Chambers books.
I could read one of these and a Carter Brown or Michael Shayne a day, and at 25 cents a book it was no problem. You could buy four of these a day and still only be out $7 a week.
May 21st, 2015 at 4:50 pm
You’re right, I think, about Liddell being a television PI, or at least is stories were, but I can’t think of a TV star of that era who was tough enough to play him. Of course, they let Darren McGavin play Mike Hammer. Even though I enjoyed the stories, what a laugh that was.
I don’t remember the Liddell books becoming soft porn much less totally X-rated, as the Peter Chambers by Henry Kane did. I don’t think Frank Kane lived long enough. He died in 1968, only 56 years old, and his last Liddell novel was MARGIN FOR TERROR in 1967, still for Dell.
The first Peter Chambers book published by Lancer DON’T CALL ME MADAME in 1969, with quite a few more coming out in the early 1970s. Fairly awful stuff, or so I thought them, and still do today.
May 21st, 2015 at 8:13 pm
Steve,
I think what happened was the later publisher (which I think was Lancer also) marketed non soft porn Liddell novels as if they were soft porn. This was around 1968 or 69 because I was in college when I saw them.
Oddly, though I usually pictured an actor as the main character in these type books, my only vision of Liddell was the books covers. I can’t think of any actor other than maybe John Hodiak that really fit my vision of Liddell.
Though that said, John Hamm of MAD MEN looked a bit like my idea of Johnny Liddell the first few seasons.
May 21st, 2015 at 8:43 pm
I found this in Hubin:
The Perfect Crime (n.) Boardman 1961; See: My Darlin’ Evangeline (Dell 1961) Revised and published in the U.S. under the British title: Belmont, 1967.
So, Belmont instead of Lancer? I can easily imagine Belmont putting a lurid cover on it.
There is one bookseller on abebooks who is offering a copy. Nothing else for sale online by Frank Kane from Belmont, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t do others.
May 22nd, 2015 at 7:59 am
Like David, I read the Johnny Liddells, Mike Shaynes, and Carter Browns in volume. Sadly, the covers on those Frank Kane DELL paperbacks were better than what was between the covers.
May 22nd, 2015 at 12:44 pm
Nice covers, though. Wish I had a bigger look.
May 22nd, 2015 at 1:32 pm
Let’s try this:
http://bookscans.com/Publishers/dell/Images-1sted/dell1stB159.jpg
and
http://bookscans.com/Publishers/dell/Images-later/dell8924.jpg
May 22nd, 2015 at 9:31 pm
Always wanted to like Kane more than I could, though some of the early Liddells (BULLET PRPPF, POISONS UNKNOWN)
May 22nd, 2015 at 9:35 pm
…are pretty good. The non-Dell Kane titles are JOHNNY STACCATO (Gold Medal) and THE FLESH PEDDLERS (Monarch), both as by Frank Boyd, and LIZ (Award Books), published under Kane’s own name. None of these is part of the Liddell series, which was published solely by Dell.