Wed 23 Mar 2016
FRANK GRUBER – The Gold Gap. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1968. Pyramid N2558, paperback, October 1971.
Frank Gruber was a prolific pulp writer in the 30s who went full force with the future of publishing in the 40s, spending more and more of his time at the typewriter churning out hardcover novels, both mysteries and westerns, beginning with Peace Marshal, a western, in 1939, followed by The French Key, a Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg mystery, in 1940.
As time went on, he also became a movie and TV screenwriter, creating in fact (according to Wikipedia) three TV series: Tales of Wells Fargo, The Texan and Shotgun Slade.
I’ve never been a big fan of his writing, though, and while I give his books a try every once in a while, I often end up disappointed, more often than not. The Gold Gap came toward the end of his career, and while it has a few moments, they come too far and in between. As a pulp fiction writer, a Hammett or Chandler, Gruber was not, nor does he seem to have improved as time went on.
Or in other words, tight and taut his fiction wasn’t. In the case at hand, the plot meanders all over the place until it reaches an ending that I defy anyone to explain, or care. There are two also long accounts of pool games in progress, a game better watched in person than read about in a tale in which they have no purpose being there in the first place.
The story has something to do with a fortune in gold coins being found in Dien Bien Phu in 1954 by a ragtag group of three French Legionnaires. That’s the prologue. The tale itself begins in 1967, thirteen years later, in Beverly Hills with an ex-Navy commander named Sargent, a recent escapee from the Viet Cong, being treated to a free suit by a Hong Kong tailor. Then, with no qualifications for the job whatsoever, he is hired by a multi-millionaire to investigate the background of the girl he is engaged to marry. There has to be a catch, the reader thinks. Who knows what Sargent thinks. For a long while, irrelevant to the plot, he seems to take the job seriously.
Add to the mix another fellow who says he works for the CIA and manages to offer Sargent taxi rides at opportune times, and in other hands, you would have the beginnings of what sounds like a decent tale. But none of the characters comes to life, and à propos de rien Sargent suddenly has the deftness with a pool cue to beat the champion of Cleveland’s upper society at the game, as described above. A poorly planned attempt to rescue the girl involved, otherwise a complete non-entity, ends the book with a dull fizz.
March 23rd, 2016 at 3:04 pm
That this is largely an earlier Gruber novel, TWENTY PLUS TWO (1961), rehashed is part of the problem. The previous one was filmed with David Janssen. This is much too close for comfort, more a cannibalization than a new book.
Gruber did write some much better thrillers though. I recommend THE LAST DOORBELL as John K. Vedder, and under his own name THE BROTHERS OF SILENCE and BRIDGE OF SAND are all excellent, as well as one late one THE SPANISH PRISONER. SILENCE and SAND are first rate in the Eric Ambler tradition the first about the lost tomb of Attila the Hun and the second the lost Gospel of Jesus.
March 23rd, 2016 at 4:16 pm
All ones I’ve missed, except for SPANISH PRISONER, which was so long ago, I don’t remember it. Maybe I ought to give Gruber another try, but without making better choices, every time I do, I’ve been disappointed.
March 23rd, 2016 at 7:17 pm
I like his Fletcher and Cragg and Otis Beagle books, maybe because of the humor and inside information on how to con people out of suits, meals, etc. I must have low tastes!
March 23rd, 2016 at 8:46 pm
I’ve always enjoyed Gruber’s Western novels more than his mysteries.
March 23rd, 2016 at 11:42 pm
I loved BRASS KNUCKLES, the collection of Gruber’s Oliver Quade stories from the pulps. It also has a long introduction about his early days as a writer that served as the basis for his memoir THE PULP JUNGLE.
March 24th, 2016 at 3:30 am
Some Frank Gruber mystery novels I enjoyed:
Fletcher and Cragg:
The Laughing Fox (1940)
The Mighty Blockhead (1941-1942)
Non-series:
The Fourth Letter (1947)
Admittedly, none of these is at the high level of Hammett or Chandler.
March 24th, 2016 at 12:54 pm
I’ve always had the same ambivalence toward Gruber’s work. Bridge of Sand certainly sounds interesting, and I’ll track it down. His lasting contribution is The Pulp Jungle, which is a first rate memoir of the writing life in Gruber’s heyday.
March 24th, 2016 at 2:17 pm
The original TWENTY PLUS TWO is a variation on THE MALTESE FALCON plot to some extent with the private detective hero involved in a case dating back to his service in Vietnam. It isn’t bad really, and while the film isn’t much more than a made for television piece in terms of quality and cast, I recall it favorably.
This book is pretty much the previous book, gutted, and rearranged, re packaged as an international thriller rather than a pi novel, but with far too many elements just lifted for my taste. It doesn’t say anywhere it is a reprint of the previous novel, or reference it at all, but it doesn’t take much to see the comparisons.
My guess is Gruber had a deadline, a book way out of print and a movie mostly forgotten in those pre-VCR days save for showing up at midnight on television, and decided to run with the plot and repackaging and rewriting more along international thriller lines. He wouldn’t be the first writer to gut one of his own books and cannibalize it to fill a contract.
Stephen, James,
I’ll second that about THE PULP JUNGLE, one of the essential books to read about writing for the pulps. Also BRASS KNUCKLES. I first encountered Oliver Quade in Ron Goulart’s anthology and knew then I had to read the rest of the stories.
Much of Gruber’s pulp work is lost, whole issues of OPERATOR #5 (other than the main novel) were penned by Gruber, his specialty the gimmick — like one where the hero is a track and field star now a spy whose case requires his skill as a pole vaulter.
I also appreciated Gruber’s formula, both the extended 11 point one, and the shortened one which was, if memory serves, get the hero in trouble as near as possible to line one of page one, keep adding complications until it is nearly impossible for the hero to win, and then extricate him as close to the last word of the last line as you can.
March 24th, 2016 at 3:54 pm
Lynne Overman played Oliver Quade in 1939’s DEATH OF A CHAMPION, a Paramount ‘B’ directed by Robert Florey, with a screenplay by Stuart Palmer. I saw the film once on TV back in the ’60s and remember liking it. Been hoping to catch it again ever since.
March 24th, 2016 at 11:17 pm
As luck or synchronicity would have it, Jon and I were watching the second episode of LAWMAN tonight. In this one Dan Troop had a tough time getting the getting the town council to back him up in doing his job. When it was over, I said to Jon, that was a neat little morality play wasn’t it? He agreed, and when we waited to see the credits, we were both surprised to see that Frank Gruber wrote the screenplay, the only one he did for that series.
March 25th, 2016 at 4:23 pm
I’ve read quite a few of the Fletcher/Cragg titles, at least one each of the Otis Beagle and Simon Lash series, as well as BRASS KNUCKLES and THE PULP JUNGLE. I’ve never read any of his westerns, but I saw “Shotgun Slade” occasionally when I was a kid and, in adulthood, have watched many episodes thanks to the Internet.
I’ve never thought of Gruber as a top-shelf pulpster, but rather as one of the many grinders (some would say “hacks”) who regularly churned out entertaining, if ephemeral, short stories, novelettes and novels to earn a living.
March 28th, 2016 at 1:51 pm
Barry,
Far from a hack, Gruber was one of the great success stories of the pulps having worked at BLACK MASK and being one of Street and Smith’s top writers then graduating to hardcovers, to Hollywood where not only did they make movies based on his books but where he wrote films including the Sherlock Holmes series, THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS, and NORTHERN PURSUIT for Errol Flynn, finally graduating to television and producing at least one major hit series in TALES OF WELLS FARGO and several other less successful ones like SHOTGUN SLADE while writing top selling novels at the same time.
Whole issues of pulps like the SHADOW, DOC SAVAGE, and OPERATOR #5 were written by Gruber save for the main novel under various names. If he wasn’t quite in the class of Bedford-Jones or Erle Stanley Gardner he was close. For a better idea of his pulp career try reading his THE PULP JUNGLE, one of the best memoirs ever written about writing for the pulps, especially Street and Smith, the Cadillac of pulp publishers. Gruber is one of the most successful writers to ever come out of the pulps.
Truthfully Gruber is a far greater success story than the better known names like Lester Dent or Norvel Page. They never came anywhere near the success Gruber saw. He is probably closest to Richard Sale and Erle Stanley Gardner in his career track though he didn’t veer off into directing films or have the success Perry Mason brought Gardner. Certainly if you were to name the most successful pulp writers Gruber would rank pretty high beside names like Steve Fisher and Cornell Woolrich in terms of recognition and surpassing them in terms of money made.
I’ll grant the pulps were a stepping stone to him, and his greatest success didn’t come writing there. He didn’t write any of the great series, the Oliver Quade stories are his best series, but his name on the cover sold magazines and eventually books.
It may come down to the definition of hack. I always think of the term in relation to writers who barely scratch by churning out second rate material for second rate publications and never really aspiring to or achieving much more. Gruber falls into the category I think of as professionals writing good stories of the kind magazine editors rely on, a featured player but not always the star, though his success with Hollywood and in hardcover eventually changed even that.
But by any standard Gruber became a star and one of the true success stories to come out of the pulps.