Fletcher Flora’s Park Avenue Tramp

Fletcher Flora’s Park Avenue Tramp was published in 1958.

Charity is a pretty blonde with a problem. She doesn’t know where she is or how she got there. That’s not an unusual event in Charity’s life so she isn’t particularly worried. If a girl worried every time she had a blackout she’d spend her whole life worrying. She imagines she’s been to a night-club. Possibly several night-clubs. Possibly with Milton. She knows she was with Milton earlier in the evening but he was being tiresome. He wanted to sleep with her but she doesn’t like him very much. She left the night-club and everything after that is just a blank space.

She figures she needs to talk to someone wise about her problem. In her experience the wisest people in the world are bartenders. She finds a bar and as luck would have it the bartender is a very wise man indeed.

There’s a piano player there, named Joe Doyle. He’s battered and ugly and seedy-looking but Charity thinks he’s the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. She decides she wants to sleep with him. Which she does.

The next morning she has another problem. She will have to explain to her husband Oliver why she didn’t come home the previous night. Her husband is very rich (which is good) but he can be tiresome about such things (which is bad).

Charity has had lots of one night stands with no unpleasant consequences. She has had a couple of actual affairs and in each case the man ended up getting a very severe beating. It has crossed Charity’s mind that her husband might have had something to do with this but that thought was too disturbing so she instantly dismissed it from her mind.

Oliver Farnese lives his life to a rigid schedule. His father left him a vast fortune but ensured that Oliver would never have to make a single business decision. The truth is that Oliver is incapable of doing anything useful. He goes to the office every day and does no work at all. His entire life is a series of empty rituals.

There’s more to Oliver Farnese than this. There’s something very dark inside him, something cruel and twisted.

The fourth character in this drama is private eye Bertram Sweeney. Even by private eye standards Sweeney is seedy and sleazy. Sweeney dislikes everybody but he especially dislikes Bertram Sweeney. He dislikes Oliver Farnese intensely. He has fantasies about Charity Farnese.

These four people are all, in their different ways, twisted up inside. These are not normal healthy people. They’re either self-destructive or destructive of others or both. Not one of them could be considered to be totally in touch with reality. And not one of them could be considered to be in control of his or her life. They all do things with no clear understanding of the own motives.

They are all players in a game but they’re not necessarily all playing the same game.

Joe Doyle isn’t stupid. He knows he should have nothing to do with Charity but he can’t help himself and in any case it doesn’t really matter. He has a very bad heart condition and has maybe a year to live. He has nothing to lose. His affair with Charity becomes more serious.

You can see where this plot setup is likely to go, and you can see where other writers would have taken it. Flora takes it in a slightly less expected direction. But more interesting than the plot twists are the character twists. If you’re a reader of noir fiction you will have decided roughly where these characters should go as noir fiction characters. In fact they don’t do quite what you expect them to do. At the same time you end up realising that their actions are entirely consistent with everything we’ve learnt about them. They behave in the kinds of irrational frustrating ways that real people behave, rather than in the ways that genre fiction types usually behave. They don’t do things just because those things would be convenient in plot terms.

Charity is difficult to predict because she’s not a conventional victim or a villainess or a conventional noir protagonist or a standard femme fatale. She’s a woman who has found her own way of dealing with her situation and it’s not a very good way to deal with it but it’s the only way she knows, it makes sense to her, and it makes sense in terms of everything we know about her. Much the same could be said about the other characters. They do what they feel compelled to do.

The ending is entirely right and entirely satisfactory but it still manages to be not quite what we expected.

Fletcher Flora achieved no more than modest success during his lifetime and after his death he was largely forgotten. He is still to achieve the recognition he deserved.

In its own low-key unobtrusive way Park Avenue Tramp ignores the accepted genre conventions. This is an offbeat neglected gem. Very highly recommended.

This novel is one of three in the Stark House Noir Classics paperback A Trio of Gold Medals, along with Dan J. Marlowe’s The Vengeance Man and Charles Runyon’s The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed. All were originally Fawcett Gold Medal paperback originals.

I’ve reviewed a couple of other Fletcher Flora titles - Leave Her To Hell and Killing Cousins.

Rog Phillips’ Secret of the Flaming Ring

Rog Phillips’ novella Secret of the Flaming Ring (written under the name P.F. Costello) was published in Fantastic Adventures in March 1951. Rog Phillips (1909-1960) was a prolific American writer of mostly short fiction who enjoyed modest success during his lifetime.

In 1951 the idea that other planets in our solar system might be habitable, and might even be inhabited, still had just enough scientific plausibility to allow science fiction writers to use Mars and Venus as settings. By the mid-60s unmanned space probes had reached both planets and we knew the bad news, that both planets were hostile and uninhabitable. Science fiction writers therefore switched their attention to interstellar spaceflight.

This novella assumes that by the early 21st century we will have colonies on Venus (I miss the starry-eyed technological optimism of 1950s science fiction). That’s where this story takes place. Joe Grimm runs a casino on Venus.

Joe had suffered horrific injuries in a spacecraft accident. He now has a huge metal plate on his forehead with one artificial eye. He can see just fine but his problem is that no-one can bear to see him - he is now a partial cyborg and looks monstrous.

That’s why he doesn’t dare to tell Diana that he loves her. Diana is one of the strippers working in his joint.

Everyone on Venus knows that Venus was once inhabited. Huge hoards of coins and artifacts have been found. It is obvious that the planet was once home to an advanced technological civilisation. No trace remains of that civilisation. The artifacts are now just ruined pieces of junk. The native Venusians are extinct. At least that’s what everybody assumes.

What intrigues Joe is that some guy named Murdock has been passing Venusian coins in his casino. They are obviously genuine but there is something wrong. Joe has had them analysed and they’re just not old enough.

Venus has very little to offer its colonists but it does hold out one tantalising promise. If a person could find intact Venusian technology it would mean fame and riches for that person. And finding evidence of actual living Venusians would mean even greater fame and fortune. Joe Grimm is wondering if these coins might lead him to such a discovery.

Then Diana disappears, without any explanation. Now Joe has two things for which to search - Diana and evidence that living Venusians exist.

What we finds is not what he expected. It’s much stranger. And it has extraordinary implications for our understanding of the whole of human history and mythology. Has he discovered Venusians or gods?

And what of Diana? She fits into this picture somehow but Joe is not sure how.

Joe has a part to play in a cosmic power struggle. He doesn’t fully understand it. The risks are great. But the rewards are tempting.

The ideas in this story are crazy and far-fetched but they’re certainly intriguing. This is more science fantasy than hard science fiction. The author has zero interest in scientific plausibility. I have no problems with that. I can enjoy science fiction that aims for scientific plausibility and I can enjoy science fiction that simply ignores such things.

The plot would have benefited from a few more twists and a greater sense of urgency.

Secret of the Flaming Ring is competent pulp sci-fi and it’s moderately enjoyable. Worth a look.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novella with Jack Sharkey’s The Secret Martians in a two-novel paperback edition.

I’ve reviewed another Rog Phillips novel, World of If, which is OK with some interesting ideas but suffers from heavy-handed messaging.

Philip Atlee's The Irish Beauty Contract

The Irish Beauty Contract is a 1966 Joe Gall spy thriller by Philip Atlee.

Atlee wrote twenty-three Joe Gall spy thrillers between 1951 and 1976. It should be noted that there was a twelve-year gap between the first book, Pagoda, and the second book. It seems that Pagoda was not a true spy thriller but when Atlee decided to write a spy thriller series he revived the hero of that first novel.

Philip Atlee was actually Texas-born James Atlee Phillips (1915-1991). Fascinatingly his brother was a senior CIA operative responsible for a number of CIA fiascos and played a major part in bringing about the Bay of Pigs disaster. This might explain why Joe Gall has a slightly cynical attitude towards the CIA and is exceptionally bitter about the Bay of Pigs. Joe Gall had been a CIA agent until he was fired for suggesting that the Bay of Pigs operation was going to end in humiliating failure. Which might explain why he has little respect for anyone in the U.S. intelligence establishment.

He now does a few jobs for the CIA as a freelancer. He is an assassin. Essentially he is a hitman for the US Government.

Joe is in the tiny South American republic of New Granada. His job is to keep a close watch on an American named Bonner, but not to kill him. There is a great deal of concern about a shipment of explosives which may be intended for South American revolutionaries.

Joe is having an affair with a married woman. Kathleen is a fabulously rich Irish noblewoman.

There are disturbances in New Granada, there is a mysterious American named Stripling who may be involved in nefarious activities and there is more to Bonner than meets the eye. Bonner and Stripling may or may not have some connection with that shipment of explosives. There’s also a guy named Macedo who seems to have his own private principality within New Granada. Whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy depends on your point of view. He’s a bandit chieftain on a large scale. He is however a powerful man who cannot be ignored.

Very early on Joe manages to get himself shot twice and knifed twice. For a crack intelligence agent he seems to be a bit accident-prone.

The part of the story dealing with Macedo’s private kingdom is quite interesting. There’s quite a bit of political intrigue in New Granada with several strongmen whose real agendas are not always clear.

The setting for the action finale is good but the action scenes themselves are rather uninspired.

The final revelation is very silly and also incorporates a plot device that was ludicrously overused in spy fiction of this era.

Joe Gall acts as first-person narrator and right from the start he possesses crucial information which he conceals from the reader. How you feel about such a narrative technique is a matter of taste. It can be used effectively. Alistair MacLean used it more than once, but MacLean was a far better writer than Atlee and used that technique with a lot more finesse.

The Irish Beauty Contract never really develops a huge amount of energy or excitement.

Overall it’s a routine spy thriller.

The Saint and Mr Teal (Once more The Saint)

The Saint and Mr Teal is a 1933 collection of three Saint novellas by Leslie Charteris. Two of these stories had had previous magazine publication. It was originally published as Once More The Saint. Charteris wrote great novels and short stories but it always seemed to me that the novella was the format that suited him most.

By this stage in the Saint’s evolution he no longer has his little band of followers but he still has his live-in girlfriend Patrica Holm.

The early Saint stories were not always straightforward crime thrillers. There were often hints of espionage and international intrigue. Some are out-and-out spy thrillers. They are also often quite outrageous. There are even occasional hints of science fiction with high-tech gadgets and new scientific inventions driving some of the plots.

The Man from St Louis deals with a subject of some concern in Britain at the time, the fear that American-style gangsterism might take root in the British underworld.

In this novella an American gangster named Tex Goldman has found his home city of St Louis a bit too hot for him. He thinks London would be safer and would also offer more opportunities. In St Louis he was a fairly big fish in a fairly small pond. In London he’s confident he can become a really big fish in a really big pond.

He has acquired a couple of English stick-up men. Ted Orping likes the idea of becoming a proper Chicago-style hoodlum. He’s naturally vicious. Clem is less vicious but he has aspirations to being a tough guy as well. They’ve carried out a series of daring robberies on Tex’s behalf. The robberies have involved quite a few shootings, some of them fatal.

Chief Inspector Teal is aware of this situation but of course he’s hampered by silly annoyances like the need to find evidence. Simon Templar is also aware of this new criminal trend, he is determined to nip it in the bud and he is not the least bit constrained by the need to follow proper procedures. The Saint has already foiled one of the gang’s robberies. The contest between Simon and Tex has begun and each is determined to destroy the other.

Also involved in some way in Tex’s activities is Ronald Nilder. Nilder is mixed up in white slavery. The Saint has already marked Ronald Nilder for destruction.

Tex has decided that Simon Templar has to be eliminated but Ted proves to be over-confident and Simon too devious.

Typically for a Saint story there is a rather neat and very Saintly ending, and Simon Templar displays his taste for methods that are as ruthless as they are devious.

The Man from St Louis was adapted by Paddy Manning O’Brine (and renamed The Set-Up) as episode fifteen of season three of The Saint TV series which screened in January 1965.

The Gold Standard begins with Simon Templar being a witness to a murder in Paris. A dissolute young man named Brian Quell has been shot and before dying mutters something about gold.

Simon has meanwhile returned to London where he is outraged to discover that a burglar has left the Saint’s stick-figure trademark at the scene of the crime. Simon assures Chief Inspector Teal of his innocence and in fact he has an alibi.

Simon then finds that a Mr Jones is taking an interest in him. Not a very friendly interest. Mr Jones is also taking a distinctly unfriendly interest in Patricia Holm. The Saint is slowly starting to piece a picture together. The murder of Brian Quell, the disappearance of Quell’s eminent scientist brother and the unpleasant Mr Jones all fit into this picture somehow. As does poor Brian Quell’s dying statement.

The Saint will encounter both temptation and a moral dilemma and will need all his cunning and ruthlessness this time. The stakes turn out to be much higher than he’d imagined. He also has reason to think he may have dangerously underestimated Chief Inspector Teal.

The Gold Standard was adapted (with a title change to The Abductors) for the TV series by Brian Degas. It went to air in July 1965.

The Death Penalty is set on the Scilly Isles, off the coast of Cornwall. Simon Templar is drawn into his latest adventure when he saves a pretty girl, Laura Berwick, from drowning. The Saint becomes really interested by the fact that her stepfather, a man named Stride, seems to have an unsavoury history. He is even more interested by the presence of Abdul Osman. He is encountered Osman before. That encounter ended very unpleasantly for Osman. Osman controls a vast criminal empire in the East, based on white slavery and drug trafficking. It appears that Laura’s stepfather is in the same line of work as Osman.

Osman has blackmailed Stride into retiring, thus leaving him in control of an even vaster criminal network. He is prepared to allow Stride to live but only if Stride gives him something he wants. What he wants is Laura. No decent human being would sell his own stepdaughter into white slavery but Stride is happy to do so.

Osman certainly wants Laura but what Osman mostly wants from life is the opportunity to humiliate those against him he has grudges. Men like his secretary Clements. Osman had been unlucky enough to attend one of England’s great public schools. At school Clements taunted him mercilessly for being an Asiatic. Osman has since taken a terrible revenge on Clements.

Templar feels that he ought to do something about this whole situation. Laura is a charming girl who knows nothing of her stepfather’s criminal activities. Simon will have to rescue her, because that’s the sort of thing he does.

The situation comes to a head on board Osman’s yacht. It ends with a man dead from a gunshot wound.

What’s interesting about this novella is that the plot is resolved satisfactorily, and then we discover that what we thought happened was not what happened at all.

The Gold Standard was adapted (with a title change to The Abductors) for the TV series by Brian Degas. It went to air in July 1965.

The Death Penalty was adapted by Ian Stuart Black as the ninth episode in the third season of The Saint TV series. It aired in December 1964.

Al three novellas have the rather devious sting-in-the-tail endings that Charteris did so well. The Saint and Mr Teal is fine entertainment. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the TV adaptations of all three novellas.

G.G. Fickling's Dig a Dead Doll

Before Cathy Gale, before Emma Peel, before Modesty Blaise, there was Honey West. Honey West was the original tough cookie action heroine. She made her debut in 1957 and featured in eleven novels by the husband and wife writing team Gloria and Forest Fickling, writing under the name G.G. Fickling. Dig a Dead Doll, published in 1960, is the seventh of the Honey West private eye thrillers.

Honey West’s father was a private eye, until a case went wrong and he was murdered. Honey took over the running of the West Detective Agency. That doesn’t mean she took over the business side. She is the Honey West Detective Agency. She handles the cases herself. Her father taught her the ropes. She has a private investigator’s licence. She has a gun and she knows how to use it. She has been taught how to handle herself in unarmed combat. Honey is tough, resourceful and very stubborn. She’s a good PI.

Honey is also all woman. She is young, blonde, very pretty and very feminine.

The Honey West private eye thrillers are hardboiled, with touches of humour, they’re fairly violent and quite sleazy. In other words they’re everything that PI thrillers should be.

The book begins with a very large very mean guy trying to kill Honey. He has something else in mind for her before he kills her. Honey is half-naked and fighting for her life and her virtue. Things are looking grim, until she remembers the bull. Thank goodness for the bull. The guy attacking her is big and mean but he’s not as big and mean as that bull.

Honey is in a bullfighting arena in Mexico. It all started with a telephone call from Pete. Honey and Pete had been childhood sweethearts. Then Pete moved away. He moved to Mexico, to pursue his dream of becoming a matador. Now he wants Honey’s help. When the first boy who kissed you asks for help you don’t hesitate. Honey heads for Tijuana.

It looks like that dream might have cost Pete his life. Honey saw him gored by the bull. No-one could survive that. But there are things that don’t add up.

The bull-fighting business in Tijuana involves more than just bull-fighting. Drugs, for instance. And then there’s Vicaro, the impresario. He has a reputation for taking quite an interest in handsome young matadors. An interest that is not strictly professional.

Honey also discovers some of the more colourful night spots, where pretty girls dance. The dancing involves a lot of high kicks. The girls don’t bother with panties. It’s a night spot that caters for those with exotic sexual tastes.

As I said earlier the Honey West books are very sleazy. Honey is a nice girl but she has a lot of bad luck with clothing. Her clothes just seem to come off at the most opportune moments. She is also not a great believer in brassieres, which is rather daring for a girl with a 38-inch bust. In this adventure her clothes come off a lot. A girl does feel undignified hanging naked upside-down from a tree, but it’s all in a day’s work for a lady PI.

Honey has reason to believe that a man known as Zingo is the leader of some kind of criminal conspiracy but while everyone knows of Zingo no-one knows his identity. The conspiracy may concern drugs but it may also involve corrupt practices in the bull-fighting arena. Mexico’s leading matador, Rafael, may know something. Pete’s young protégé Carlos may know something. Quite a few people may know certain things but Honey has no idea which of them she can trust. And she has people in aeroplanes firing machine-guns at her. In fact she has machine-guns fired at her from all directions.

There’s plenty of action, not always involving guns. Action at sea and in seedy night-clubs and in the bull ring. Honey loses her clothing on several further occasions.

The plot is solid with some decent twists although it does at one point make use of a certain plot device that I have always found unconvincing. That’s a minor nit-pick. On the whole the plot works just fine.

The style is lively (Honey acts as first-person narrator) and there’s lots of fairly hardboiled dialogue. The pacing is pleasingly frenetic.

Honey is a delightful heroine. She’s not an unrealistic wish-fulfilment super-woman. She’s just quick-thinking and very determined and she keeps her head in a crisis and people like to help her because she’s cute and bubbly.

The Honey West books are enormous amounts of stylish sleazy action-packed fun. They’re essential reading for anyone who loves sexy lady private eyes, and what right-thinking doesn’t? Dig a Dead Doll is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Honey West novels - This Girl For Hire, Girl on the Loose, A Gun for Honey, Honey in the Flesh and Kiss for a Killer.

I’ve also reviewed the excellent 1965-66 Honey West TV series that starred Anne Francis.

Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell is a 1989-90 cyberpunk manga (Japanese comic-book) by Masamune Shirow. This is very much a manga for grown-ups.

Cyberpunk emerged as a science fiction sub-genre in the 80s, with the movie Blade Runner in 1982 establishing the aesthetic and William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer and the Bruce Sterling-edited anthology Mirrorshades establishing the thematic framework. Cyberpunk was science fiction focused on the effects of computer technology on human society on Earth rather than on spaceships, photon cannons and aliens.

By the end of the 80s the Japanese were embracing this new sub-genre. In Japan cyberpunk made its appearance in manga and anime rather than in novels and live-action films. This made sense. The Japanese did not have the western prejudice against comic-book and animated movies aimed at adult. And manga and anime were the ideal formats for cyberpunk. There were not particularly restricted by technological or budgetary concerns. The only limitation was the creator’s imagination and the creators of manga and anime had plenty of that.

The anima OVA Cyber City Oedo 808 in 1991 was fully-fledged cyberpunk. The Ghost in the Shell manga was most definitely fully-fledged cyberpunk and would spawn further mangas, several anime feature films (including Mamoru Oshii’s superb 1995 Ghost in the Shell) and an excellent anime TV series.

Major Motoko Kusanagi works for Public Security, Section 9. She leads a top-secret elite squad. Their main brief is counter-terrorist work but in this future world terrorism has become very high-tech and tends to involve hackers, cyborgs, robots and AIs.

The Major herself is a cyborg. She has a human brain and spinal column but everything else is prosthetic. She looks like a normal woman. In this cyberpunk world humans, cyborgs and robots all look human.

Are cyborgs still human? Do robots have rights? Can an AI be alive? These are themes that run right through this manga. These questions are of some personal concern to the Major. Is she a woman or a machine? She feels that she is a woman. She has a woman’s emotions and a woman’s sexual urges. Her body is entirely prosthetic (although it’s fully functional sexually). What matters is the ghost. The body (human or prosthetic) is the shell. The ghost is what makes us alive and makes human.

One of my favourite things about this manga is that Masamune Shirow has provided copious footnotes. Some give fascinating background technical details of this future world. Some provide philosophical musings (this is a manga with a heavy philosophical content). The most interesting offer insight what how the author sees the ghost. The ghost is not quite the soul, at least not in the way we conceive of the soul in countries with a tradition of Christianity. But it’s somewhat akin to a soul. Major Kusanagi is human because she has a ghost. But can an AI have a ghost?

That’s a question that becomes important when she encounters the Puppeteer. It’s not clear what the Puppeteer is but it seems to be a rogue AI. It may have a ghost. This becomes important for Section 9 when it claims political asylum.

The Puppeteer is not confined to a particular body (or shell). But then nor is the Major. She has several spare bodies. Her closest friend and professional colleague Batou has spare bodies as well.

AIs of course are confined to a particular location or body. The Tachikomas, the combat robots used in large numbers by Section 9, are a single AI. Which does not have a ghost. Or at least that’s been the assumption.

Shirow has little or no interest in politics as such but he is interested in power relationships, and politics in this future world is all about power. Mostly however he is interested in philosophical questions (this is a very cerebral manga) which can have a spiritual dimension. In particular he’s fascinated by the philosophical dilemmas that will inevitably arise if and when AIs become self-aware.

The cases Section 9 deals with (the structure of the manga is episodic) mostly hinge on the need to resolve such dilemmas.

It might be cerebral but there’s plenty of action and excitement as well. The Japanese have no problems with the idea of combining big ideas with enjoyable mayhem.

The Major is also interesting because unlike most kickass action heroines she is in a command position. If she makes an incorrect decision people die. Being an action heroine is not a game for her.

Ghost in the Shell really is great stuff - intelligent, provocative, mind-bending, sexy and fun. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell movie elsewhere, as well as the first season of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex TV series.

Peter O’Donnell’s The Impossible Virgin

The Impossible Virgin was published in 1971. It was the fifth of Peter O’Donnell’s eleven Modesty Blaise novels. The Modesty Blaise comic-strip debuted in the London Evening Standard in 1963. The comic-strip adventures are excellent and I recommend them but the novels have more depth and psychological complexity and were able to deal more openly with adult themes.

People unfamiliar with either the comic strip or the novels sometimes make the mistake of thinking of Modesty Blaise as a female James Bond. Nothing could be further from the truth. She is almost the exact opposite of Bond in every way. Bond is British to his bootstraps and fiercely patriotic. He has a naval background and is accustomed to obeying orders. He has never questioned authority. He is a professional spy working for the British Government. He is a straightforward old-fashioned kind of guy.

Modesty is British only by marriage (a marriage of convenience). She has no idea what her own nationality or ethnicity might be - she’s probably southern European or Slavic. Modesty’s background is entirely criminal - she ran an organised crime gang. She has never obeyed an order in her life. She often does jobs for the British Government but strictly as a freelancer and she feels under no moral obligation to accept such jobs. She also does jobs for the French intelligence services.

Modesty is really a female Simon Templar - a retired criminal who is now a crimefighter and part-time spy. She is a female version of the gentlemen rogues who thrived in British popular fiction in the 1930s. Like the Saint she gets involved in capers for the adventure, or because she thinks a particular villain needs to be destroyed or occasionally for motives of personal revenge.

This caper begins when a low-level Soviet intelligence analyst makes an interesting discovery. It has no military significance but it could make him rich. It doesn’t turn out that way. A few months later he staggers into a bush hospital in Tanzania and promptly dies. He gives the appearance of having been tortured. The hospital’s only doctor is Giles Pennyfeather, a disreputable shabby socially inept eccentric Englishman. To look at him you wouldn’t trust him to operate on a stray dog, but the weird thing is that his patients do surprisingly well.

As it happens Dr Pennyfeather has at this moment acquired a kind of temporary nurse and assistant, a striking young woman who literally fell from the sky when she had to make a forced landing in her aeroplane. She has no medical training but she’s a quick learner. Her name is Modesty Blaise. She is in Tanzania purely by accident.

There is no way such a beautiful young woman would be interested in such a poor specimen of manhood as Giles Pennyfeather but Modesty thinks he’s rather adorable and she is soon sharing his bed.

Then two thugs arrive and starting beating up Dr Pennyfeather. They seem to be convinced he has some information they want. Modesty takes exception to their behaviour and deals with them accordingly but without knowing it she has become involved with some very dangerous very evil people.

There is an impossible virgin in this story, of a sort. There’s also Lisa, who is no virgin but is certainly very dangerous. The gorilla might also be a problem - he’s a real gorilla and he’s bad-tempered and being locked in a cage with him isn’t very reassuring.

Modesty will have to face most of these dangers alone, when the faithful Willie Garvin makes a sudden departure. Modesty will also need a certain special ability that she has - she can shut herself down mentally so that she is unaware of what is being done to her, and some rather nasty things are done to her in this caper.

Finding out why the impossible virgin’s virginity remains inviolate will be crucial.

There’s enough action here to satisfy fans and there’s plenty of suspense as Modesty’s position becomes seemingly hopeless.

The Impossible Virgin is a fine action/adventure novel and is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the earlier Modesty Blaise novels, Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death and I, Lucifer, which are all excellent. I’ve also reviewed several of the earlier volumes of the collected Modesty Blaise comics, The Gabriel Set-Up, The Black Pearl and The Hell-Makers which I also highly recommend.

Dr Death: The Gray Creatures

Dr Death: The Gray Creatures is a 1935 crime/supernatural horror pulp novel written by Harold Ward under the pseudonym Zorro.

Dr Death had made his first appearance a year earlier in the pulp magazine All Detective Magazine. He figured in four stories in that magazine. In 1935 All Detective Magazine was renamed Dr Death. Each issue would feature a Dr Death novel. The Gray Creatures was the second such novel, appearing in the March 1935 issue. In the event only three issues of the Doctor Death magazine were published although two further novels were written.

Dr Death is actually a brilliant but insane scientist, Rance Mandarin. He believes he has been chosen by the Almighty to restore the world to its proper order. This will require the destruction of modern civilisation. Dr Death’s first step was to be the assassination of the world’s top scientists. To Dr Death science is an evil that must be eradicated.

Jimmy Holm is the one man who may be able to stop Dr Death. Jimmy is a millionaire criminologist and a police detective whose speciality is cases involving the occult.

Dr Death’s chief assistant has been a beautiful young woman, Nina Ferrera. Nina turned against Dr Death and joined forces with Jimmy Holm. In fact they were to be married. Now Dr Death wants Nina back.

The most terrifying weapon in Dr Death’s arsenal is his ability to create zombies, or at least dead men brought back to life in a way that resembles zombies.

Dr Death’s latest target is a mysterious Egyptian named Harmachis. It appears that Dr Death thinks that Harmachis has access to the occult knowledge of Ancient Egypt.

Dr Death is now headed for Egypt to find a hidden tomb and Jimmy has to find a way to follow him without his presence being suspected. He also has to rescue Nina. Dr Death would never physically harm Nina. The worry is that he will manipulate her into serving evil purposes.

The voyage to that tomb in Egypt is by air, by yacht, by submarine and by truck. With lots of explosions and mayhem on the way.

There will be epic battles against supernatural forces.

There are monsters of various kinds. The monsters are genuinely weird and scary. There’s plenty of out-and-horror in this tale and it gets very creepy and grisly at times.

Of course there has to be a beautiful queen in such a story, and there is.

The action is relentless, the hazards are many and the body count is high. You are very unlikely to be bored by this novel.

Dr Death is an evil mad scientist rather than a sorcerer so while he appears to command supernatural forces some of those forces might in fact be scientifically created. There are however quite a few elements in the story that are difficult to explain away as anything other than supernatural.

The lines between the supernatural, the paranormal and the scientific are constantly blurred in this story which gives it a rather interesting flavour.

It’s also a story in which the evil genius has something more interesting in mind than a straightforward plan for world domination.

It’s all very pulpy and very exciting. This is great stuff and it’s a mystery to me that the Doctor Death magazine wasn’t a success. Dr Death: The Gray Creatures is highly recommended.

Leigh Brackett's The Ginger Star

The Ginger Star is a 1974 science fiction novel by Leigh Brackett. It is the first volume in a loose trilogy featuring her hero Eric John Stark.

Eric John Stark had actually made his first appearance back in 1949 in Brackett’s novellas Queen of the Martian Catacombs, Enchantress of Venus and Black Amazon of Mars. They were sword-and-planet tales set on various planets within the solar system. By the 1970s using Mars and Venus as settings was no longer plausible so Brackett relocated her hero’s adventures to a distant planet orbiting a distant star.

The overall background was also changed slightly. These 1970s stories take place within a vast Galactic Union. Eric John Stark’s background remains more or less the same. He was born on Mercury and raised as a barbarian. He is both a civilised man and a barbarian.

The Ginger Star begins with the disappearance of Simon Ashton. Simon was a kind of mentor, substitute father and best friend to Stark. Simon was on a diplomatic mission to the planet Skaith. Skaith is a newly discovered world, not yet part of the Galactic Union, and very backward. In fact it was once an advanced technological society but the technology has been lost and it is becoming more and more backward.

There is now a spaceport in the south, in the city of Skeg. Relations between the representative of the Galactic Union and the authorities on Skaith are uneasy, a problem exacerbated by the fact that it’s not entirely clear who is really in charge on Skaith. The Galactic Union is really not all that interested in Skaith. It’s not a priority. If Stark wants to find Simon Ashton he’s going to be on his own.

Stark just wants to find Simon Ashton (assuming he is still alive), rescue him and get out. It turns out not to be so simple. Simon may be in the Citadel. No-one is sure where the Citadel is. It is probably in or near Worldheart, but no-one is sure where that is. It is probably in the north. The Citadel is where the Lords Protector are to be found, although very little is known about the nature of the Lords Protector. The inhabitants of Skaith regard them as somewhat akin to gods.

Another complication for Stark is the prophecy made by the wise woman Gerrith. It is assumed that Stark is the Dark Man mentioned in the prophecy. That prophecy brought about Gerrith’s death. To some the Dark Man is a symbol of hope. To others he represents a threat. Or an opportunity. Everybody seems to want to get hold of Eric John Stark, for their own purposes.

It’s a quest story of a sort, with the true nature of the quest only gradually revealed. It’s a quest that involves many dangers, a great deal of bloodshed and many betrayals. The only person Stark is confident of being able to trust is Gerrith, the beautiful daughter of the deceased prophetess. The younger Gerrith has gifts as well, but her powers of prophecy are strictly limited.

There’s a fine adventure plot here but it’s fair to say that Brackett is more interested in the motivations of those who either wish to assist Stark or to oppose him.

The arrival of starships on Skaith provoked mixed reactions. To some the stars represent a possibility of escape from a decaying stultifying world. To others the starships represent a hope for the rebirth of Skaith. And to others again the starships are a threat. They are something to be feared. Fear is a major driving force in this novel. Those who have wealth fear losing that wealth as a result of the starships’ arrival. Those who have fear fear losing their power. Many people simply fear the unknown. Since the starships arrived the future has become unpredictable.

That’s not to say that Brackett neglects the action side of the story. She spent years writing for pulp magazines. She understood the importance of loading a story with entertainment value and she certainly did not despise the action and adventure aspects of pulp fiction tales. She loved those action and adventure elements and handled them with great skill.

Leigh Brackett had many strengths as a writer but her greatest strength of all was her ability to create the melancholy atmosphere of ruined or decaying civilisations, or once-great civilisations that are now obscure backwaters. Skaith is just the sort of setting at which she excelled.

This can be seen as a sword-and-planet tale with some sword-and-sorcery elements as well. There is magic. Or at least it appears to be magic. On a planet that was once home to an advanced technological society there’s always the possibility that the magic is simply remnants of lost technologies. There are monsters, but they were in all probability created by misguided technological experiments.

Eric John Stark is a fine square-jawed action hero. His barbarian heritage is very useful at times. The barbarian mind can cope with things that would paralyse a civilised mind.

This novel is obviously a species of first contact story but it’s made more interesting by the fact that Skaith comprises lots of very different societies and lots of warring factions.

The Ginger Star is typical Leigh Brackett - well-written, fast-moving, action-packed, atmospheric. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed quite a few other Leigh Brackett books - the short story collection Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories, Enchantress of Venus, Black Amazon of Mars, Last Call from Sector 9G, The Sword of Rhiannon, The Last Days of Shandakor and The Secret of Sinharat.

Robert Silverberg's Killer

Killer is a 1965 sleaze/noir novel by Robert Silverberg which has been reissued by Stark House in their Black Gat Books imprint. In the 50s and 60s there were a lot of novels, most of them paperback originals, that straddled the worlds of sleaze fiction and noir fiction. Some were noir with a side order of sleaze. Some were sleaze with a side order of noir. Killer definitely falls into the latter category.

The fact that the novel was originally called Passion Killer and written under the pseudonym Don Elliott (which Silverberg used for his prolific output of sleaze fiction) and that it was published by Corinth Books tends to support this assumption. It was clearly aimed at the sleaze fiction market.

A rich middle-aged man, Howard Gorman, wants his wife killed. He will then marry his much younger and very hot mistress Marie. He hires hitman Lee Floyd to do the job. It should be a straightforward hit but things get complicated. For one thing Marie is having an affair with her friend Dolores. Lee Floyd picks up a girl. There’s a private eye mixed up somewhere in here as well.

You might think there’d be potential here for double-crosses and you’d be right. You might also think there’d be potential here for various emotional and sexual betrayals and again you’d be correct.

Marie certainly doesn’t love Howard but he’s rich and the idea of marrying money appeals to her. Marie likes money. Of course she enjoys her bedroom romps with her gal pal Dolores too much to have any intention of remaining faithful to Howard.

Most of the novel consists of endless sexual encounters. You have to admire Marie’s stamina. Her sexual appetites are prodigious. Lee Floyd has plenty of energy in the bedroom as well. And Dolores is no slouch either. The sex scenes are lengthy but not at all graphic (in fact they’re a bit tame by 1965 standards).

This doesn’t leave much space for the noir plot. There is definitely a noir plot here. It’s not wildly original and it’s not overly complex but it is there.

The major weakness is Lee Floyd. Silverberg does a fine job letting us know what kind of man he is and what makes him tick. Then suddenly halfway though the novel Floyd starts doing things that are totally and wildly out of character, for no good reason. It doesn’t ring true. Given that Lee Floyd is more or less the noir protagonist here that’s a real problem.

You do have to keep in mind that Silverberg churned these sleaze novels out astonishingly quickly. If you wanted to make money from this sort of writing you needed to be prolific. Silverberg was extremely prolific and he made a very comfortable living from his sleaze novels. Given that this novel would have been written very very quickly it’s no surprise that it feels a bit like a first draft. Essentially it is a first draft. You sit down at your typewriter and write and once you’re finished you put the manuscript in an envelope and post it off. You then wait for your cheque to arrive. You don’t bother revising. You won’t get paid any extra if you spend time polishing and revising.

There is for example the subplot involving the private detective. It just doesn’t go anywhere or serve any purpose but I guess Silverberg figured that there should be a private detective in the story.

There are so many sex scenes that the crime plot never has the chance to develop much momentum or sense of urgency.

On the plus side the novel has a fairly decent femme fatale. It also has a scuzzy cynical vibe. All of the characters are worthless human beings. They’re right at home in the noir universe. There’s the right atmosphere of desperation and sordidness. There is just enough here to indicate that, had he really put his mind to it, Silverberg could have written a fine noir novel.

Sadly Killer just isn’t all that good. As noir it doesn’t quite make it although it has a few good moments. As sleaze fiction it’s OK but Silverberg wrote much better sleaze novels, such as his excellent 1959 Gang Girl. Killer is maybe worth a look but don’t set your expectations too high.

Malko: West of Jerusalem

SAS à l'ouest de Jérusalem was the ninth of the Malko secret agent thrillers written by French former newspaper reporter Gérard de Villiers (1929-2013). It was published in 1967 and was translated into English as Malko: West of Jerusalem in 1969.

The Malko series ran to 200 novels and was hugely popular.

The hero is Malko Linge, an Austrian prince. He does jobs for the CIA but he isn’t actually employed by them. His motivation is money. The family castle needs to be restored and he needs a lot of money. Despite this he has a reputation for honesty and reliability.

The book opens with the Director of the CIA, Foster Hillman, jumping out of a window to his death. This causes a major crisis. He had no health or money problems and no entanglements with women. Is it possible he killed himself because he had turned traitor and was about to be exposed? This seems impossible. Hillman was an all-American patriot and all-round great guy. But it would be a plausible explanation for his suicide. There’s also the possibility he was being blackmailed.

The CIA decides to keep his death a secret and Malko is given the job of impersonating Hillman on the telephone, using a high-tech gizmo that can copy anybody’s speech patterns exactly.

After receiving a mysterious phone call from a woman Malko sets up a meeting with her but it all goes horribly wrong. He does however now have a lead, a lead that points to the Middle East. Soon there’s another lead - a woman’s amputated finger. There’s been a kidnapping and it is connected in some way with Foster Hillman.

Malko ends up in Sardinia, infiltrating the vast estate owned by a lecherous Middle Eastern emir. Malko knows he’s on to something when somebody tries to kill him.

It was 1964 when de Villiers started writing the Malko novels so there’s an obvious Bond influence. There are exotic settings and rich powerful men with evil plans, there are glamorous women.There’s that slight hint of sadism that is often associated with Bond. There’s also plenty of sex.

It takes a while for the action to kick in but when it does it’s pretty good. There are speedboat chases and helicopters, the occasional explosion and an abundance of gunplay.

There’s a cool scene with crocodiles.

There are also some rather dark and even grim moments.

The decadence of the Jet Set plays a major part in the story and there’s even an orgy.

Malko is a standard Bond-style secret agent hero - he’s debonair, always exquisitely dressed, he’s sophisticated and he’s tough. He definitely has an eye for the ladies and they find him very attractive.

Mercifully de Villiers doesn’t get heavily into politics. The Middle Eastern background adds an air of mystery and intrigue and an excuse for a solid espionage plot. That plot isn’t overly complex but it works.

There are clear-cut bad guys and they’re suitably sinister and vicious. And colourful.

Reading a book in translation obviously makes it impossible to say anything about the prose. It is however obvious that de Villiers knew how to handle action and suspense.

This is a very competent spy thriller and definitely belongs to the high adventure school of spy fiction rather than the dark and gritty and cynical school. Highly recommended.

Berkeley Livingston’s Queen of the Panther World

Berkeley Livingston’s science fiction novel Queen of the Panther World was published in Fantastic Adventures in July 1948.


It starts with a guy named Berkeley Livingston (yes the author has made himself a character in the book) visiting the zoo with his buddy Hank. They’re looking at the panthers. One of the panthers is much bigger than the others and seems different somehow. Hank has the crazy idea that the panther is communicating with him.

There’s a woman named Luria and Hank thinks she can communicate with him by some sort of telepathy. Luria decides to take Hank on a journey and Berk agrees to tag along. She’s going to take them to her world. Berk naturally thinks it’s all crazy talk, until suddenly the three of them are not in Chicago any more. They’re on a strange planet and there are giant lizard-like creatures with human riders.

The idea of transporting a story’s hero to another planet by simply hand-waving it away as “mind over matter” had already been used many times. It’s not a satisfying solution if you’re trying to write hard science fiction but if you’re writing what is essentially a fantasy novel it’s an acceptable technique and at least you don’t have to bother with a lot of unconvincing techno-babble. It’s basically magic but it does the job.

This strange planet is very strange indeed. The sun never sets. There are other odd things about it. Everybody falls asleep at exactly the same moment.

Luria’s society is a society run by women. The men do the housework and obey orders. The problem is that there’s a villain named Loko planning to establish his rule over the whole planet by force. While Luria’s amazons are brave enough she’s not convinced that they can stand up to Loko’s army. The men of Luria’s tribe are passive and helpless but they will have to be persuaded to fight against Loko. Things will have to change. The men will have to regain their self-respect. In reality you’d expect such a social revolution to be difficult to achieve but in this book it just happens overnight because the plot demands it.

Berk and Hank have various narrow escapes from danger. They get captured by Loko’s minions, as does Luria. There are various battles between the opposing forces. It’s all basic fantasy adventure stuff.

There’s also a bird. A parrot. But he’s no ordinary parrot.

Naturally Hank and Luria fall in love, and Berk falls in love with one of Luri’s amazon warriors.

Although we’re told that the inhabitants of this planet once had advanced technology this novel does not really qualify as a sword-and-planet story. It just doesn’t have quite the right feel, even though there are obvious Edgar Rice Burroughs influences. It doesn’t quite have a sword-and-sorcery feel either.

The tone is something of a problem. At times it seems to be veering towards a tongue-in-cheek approach but it lacks the lightness of touch needed to pull it off, and at other times it seems to be playing things rather straight.

It all seems like a rehashing of ideas culled from better stories by better writers. The world-building is not overly impressive. The interestingly strange things about this world are never explored in depth or explained in any way.

The social and psychological implications of a society having to undergo a total social revolution are not explored at all.

There’s also a lack of any emotional depth. We feel that the romances between the two heroes and their amazon girlfriends are necessary for the plot so they just happen without any real emotional tension ever being developed.

This is the kind of story that I usually enjoy but in this case it’s not handled well and the book is rather shoddily written. It all falls rather flat. I really cannot recommend this novel.

This novella has been paired with Jack Williamson’s truly excellent novella Hocus-Pocus Universe in an Armchair Fiction two-novel paperback edition. Hocus-Pocus Universe is so good that the paperback is worth buying for that reason alone.