It may seem harsh, but it's the only way I know of to quiet a roomful of men.
We have another new name for the website today, French illustrator Jean Sidobre, who put together this piece for Robert Tachet's 1952 novel Les morts sont toujours collants and signed it at bottom right. The title means “the dead are always sticky,” which is a typical title from that particular paperback industry—i.e. a bit baffling. But we get the idea we think. We've seen Tachet before. Have a look here.
Symons reflects on exactly how bad a man's life can be.
Looking for a bit more depth in your murder mysteries? 1957's The Color of Murder by British author Julian Symons takes a literary approach to the genre, examining the torturous existence of sad sack office drone John Wilkins, who hates his wife, covets the neighborhood librarian, and suffers from blackouts at times of stress (uh oh). Symons divides the novel roughly in half. In the first, Wilkins explains in first person to a psychologist how he came to be mired in a terrible life and loveless marriage, his account stopping before the murder (which if he actually committed, he'd presumably have blacked out anyway). The second half follows in third person the course of Wilkins' trial, with assorted twists, and there's an epilogue providing final focus. Whether or not Wilkins is a killer, he's a pitiable human. If you think you have an unsatisfactory life, read The Color of Murder to learn how well-off you really are. The cover art on this Dell edition is by Robert Maguire.
Sleaze with cheese and Mayo.
The 1962 Midwood Books sexploitation novel Scandal was written by Dallas Mayo, aka Gilbert Fox, and has uncredited cover art. Some of Midwood's offerings were tamer than others. Scandal falls on the mild side, with a story set in the fictive burg of Sedgemoor, where a set of local bros are about to throw a big stag party around the same time a Hollywood producer rolls anonymously through scouting for a possible movie location. The tale is told round robin style, with a name mentioned at the end of each chapter preceding the next chapter told from that person's point of view. In this way Mayo keeps cycling through about eight characters. By the end, the Hollywood producer loves one of the stag party strippers, another stripper finds lesbian love, a married couple rekindle their sex life, and so forth. It's cheesy stuff, but Scandal is interesting for the social attitudes on display, even it isn't very hot. Get extra Mayo here.
In order to solve a murder sometimes it's best to proceed theologically.
We'd never heard of the 1964 murder mystery Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, nor its author Harry Kemelman, therefore we should be forgiven for letting the title make us think the rabbi would be the victim. He wasn't. In fact, this was the first of a dozen popular mysteries starring Kemelman's franchise holy man Rabbi David Small, and we'd never heard of the books because we live part-time in a cave. What happens is a murder victim is dumped on synagogue grounds, making the rabbi a suspect, at least among the general public. The cops don't seriously consider him one, though, and the rabbi's friendship with the investigating lieutenant grows to a point where they're working together on the case. We get to see that a rabbi's duties are wide-ranging, and for those who don't know much about Judaism, there's plenty of information along those lines too. Friday the Rabbi Slept Late is a good book with a good central mystery, and it's written well, so it's no surprise that a series resulted from its unusual premise and unique hero. We'll probably try number two if we can find it. The art on this Fawcett edition is uncredited.
I came to the bar to have a double—and look. They're about to come over here now.
1955's Sweet and Low-Down was originally published as 17 and Black in 1954. The copy we bought is very worn. We looked for a better scan online to use, as we'll sometimes do, but every example we saw was equally abraded until we found one on Amazon, which you see above. It's a pretty nice cover, though uncredited. Is all the wear and tear on copies of this book an indication that it's read and re-read often, and therefore is good? That's certainly what we hoped.
The story, written by Polish born author Alexander Warchiwker writing as Jack Waer, is about Jim Foster, who runs an illegal casino in Hollywood but flees south of the border after taking a rap for his partners. They later ask him to open another casino in Mexico City. He's willing to oblige—for a bigger percentage—but during the opening gala the murder of a local one percenter spoils the party. It's an intriguing set-up for a novel, although it starts slowly. Luckily Waer's writing style maintains interest. For example: The first time I called, the bim with the sultry voice let on she didn't have any idea who I wanted—said I had the wrong number. When I dialed back her memory was better. His nibs came to the phone. I found out that the vicers were off on a fresh trail. They were out for a pair of Internal Revs who were suspected of collecting a split from the top wigs in the commie crowd. I was as stale as a warmed over soufflé.
Strong approach there. A book this slang heavy goes in for a lot of off-color language, unsurprisingly, and being set in Mexico means there's racist invective. We could not in any way blame you for deciding to take a pass. There are plenty of vintage crime novels that visit Mexico without donning a Klan hood. We're not put off by a smidgen of salty language, but there's a limit—we don't think Foster ever used a non-slur to refer to a Mexican character, even when speaking of his so-called friends.
In any case, he needs to solve the murder, and he does precisely that, and solves another couple of mysteries too. Much of the book takes place within the casino, which would be fine if Waer managed to keep the stew at a hard boil, but his narrative cools considerably toward the finale, and the story drags. The end makes clear that the book was supposed to be a launching point for more novels, and the fact that it wasn't says everything you need to know. But if you find it cheap and don't mind the language, sure, what the hell, give it a read.
A little moisture makes love even better.
Rarely—as in today—we come across a book cover for which we can dig up no information. Averse de printemps, or “spring shower,” is credited to Claude Jerly, about whom we found nothing, came from a publishing company we can't pinpoint, and bears a cover by an artist we can't identify. Nice work, though, right? Maybe some nice person out there with more knowledge will send us a bit of info.
Help! Somebody! Get my employment agency on the line and tell them I need a new job! Her contract says no windows, laundry, or corpses, so it looks like there's going to be an opening for a new maid. Jonathan's Latimer's Sinners and Shrouds, the Pan Books version of which you see above with art from Samuel Peffer, is a find-the-real-killer novel in which the main character, ace reporter Sam Clay, wakes up in bed with a murdered blonde and needs to figure out how that happened before the police nab him. He's blacked out the entire previous night thanks to some serious imbibing and, though he has few clues, eventually learns that the murder has to do with an enormous sum of money and has roots in the past. In the hands of many authors this would be a standard tale, but Latimer is an upper tier craftsman, and everything from the dialogue to the unusual mystery at the center of the book are a cut above. We won't say it approaches his best—it was his second-to-last novel—but it's still Latimer and that means it's worth a read.
Powell shoots for a comedic mystery but doesn't have Hammett's perfect aim. What is a "hilarious all-action thriller" like? That's the question that went through our minds when we impulsively ordered Richard Powell's 1946 novel All Over but the Shooting, though we were also drawn by the cover. The book was originally published by Popular Library, but the striking version you see above with art that's unfortunately uncredited came from the British imprint Hodder & Stoughton in 1952. Powell weaves a tale set in 1942 about Richard Blake and his danger-magnet wife Arabella—Arab for short—who believes she's stumbled across a spy plot centered around a Washington, D.C. women's boarding house. Determined to delve for answers—and to her husband's chagrin—she pretends to be a single woman, takes a room, and starts poking around. Her suspicions are of course correct. The place is a den of Nazis.
Powell thinks outside the box about every aspect of his story: how the conspiracy is uncovered, how the investigation proceeds, what clues are found, and what leaps of intuition keep the intrepid Arabella moving toward a solution. But the entire story is preposterous. Example: when Arab seems likely to be connected to a raincoat she lost while fleeing for her life, her hubby manages to sneak into the room where it's being kept—while its occupant is just upstairs—and have it altered in five minutes by a conveniently situated maid. That way the coat won't fit Arab when the villain tries to say it's hers.
That and about two dozen other moments are silly. Powell achieved, we think, exactly what he set out to do as an author, but we didn't find the book to be exactly scintillating. It was no Thin Man, for example, Dashiell Hammett's smashingly successful amalgam of humor and danger. But in the same way Arab erodes her husband's disbelief and finally gets him to buy into her wacky ideas, she wore us down too. She's a fun character, and makes the book worth a read. We won't seek out Powell again, but one spin around wartime D.C.? Sure, okay.
Authors like Barbara Hoffman gave sleaze a new twist. How do you make sleaze better? Pass it off as educational. During the 1960s, a time when sexual research was experiencing a bit of a—if you’ll excuse the expression—growth spurt, a subset of the sleaze market arose in which fictional clinical studies were passed off as serious scholarship. Barbara Hoffman was one of the go-to authors for this type of fiction, and wrote analyses such as The Baby Pros (a study of teenaged prostitution), The Adulteress (a report on unfaithful wives), Teenaged Seductress (a report on promiscuity among teenaged girls), and Woman Loves Boy (a study of older women’s relationships with teenaged boys).
Above you see her 1965 book The Youth Lovers from Classics Library, and it purports to document relationships between older men and teenaged girls. While some minimal research may have gone into efforts such as these, people bought them for the steamy details included in the phony case studies. Doctors were quoted to provide a gloss of legitimacy, but they too may have been fictional, and in fact, Barbara Hoffman herself never existed, but was a pen name for veteran sleaze author Russell Trainer, the man who gave the world The Lolita Complex and His Daughter's Friend. He's very collected by the vintage crowd, which means we may never have an opportunity to acquire one of his books. But we'll sure try.
I'd have sex for free, but that would be irresponsible from a business perspective.
The 1962 Signet paperback of The Hundred-Dollar Girl has striking cover art by Jerry Allison, whose nice work we've seen before here, here, and here. William Campbell Gault's tale sees L.A. private dick Joe Puma investigating whether a boxing match was fixed, then finding himself in the middle of murder and an organized crime takeover of the fight racket. This is the second Puma we've read, and as with the previous book, he gets laid a couple of times, gets ko'd a couple of times, and beats up a couple of guys. All this is fine, but we haven't yet read the Gault novel that makes us sit up and go, "Ahh!" Certainly though, he's been good enough to make looking for that special book a pursuit we expect to pay off. We'll keep looking. In the meantime, if you want an L.A. crime read, you can do worse than The Hundred-Dollar Girl.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1951—The Rosenbergs Are Convicted of Espionage
Americans Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage as a result of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. While declassified documents seem to confirm Julius Rosenberg's role as a spy, Ethel Rosenberg's involvement is still a matter of dispute. Both Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953. 1910—First Seaplane Takes Flight
Frenchman Henri Fabre, who had studied airplane and propeller designs and had also patented a system of flotation devices, accomplishes the first take-off from water at Martinque, France, in a plane he called Le Canard, or "the duck." 1953—Jim Thorpe Dies
American athlete Jim Thorpe, who was one of the most prolific sportsmen ever and won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball, dies of a heart attack. 1958—Khrushchev Becomes Premier
Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the Soviet Union. During his time in power he is responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, and presides over the rise of the early Soviet space program, but his many policy failures lead to him being deposed in October 1964. After his removal he is pensioned off and lives quietly the rest of his life, eventually dying of heart disease in 1971.
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