Scott C.S. Stone's The Dragon’s Eye

The Dragon’s Eye is a 1969 spy thriller by Scott C.S. Stone published by Fawcett in their Gold Medal series. I’m afraid I know nothing about the author other than that he had certainly spent time in the Far East.

This is an amateur spy tale. Michael Hawkins is a reporter covering the war in Vietnam. When his best friend, a fellow war correspondent, is killed in the fighting Hawkins decides he has had enough. He’s getting out of Asia and he’s going home. He gets as far as Hawaii and falls in love with the place. He’s going to settle down and write a book. And maybe get his chaotic love life in some sort of order.

Then an old buddy, Leslie Trent, shows up. Trent is now a spook. The mysterious intelligence agency for which he works wants Hawkins to do a job for them. Hawkins is informed that he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

An English journalist, Malcolm Leigh, has become rather a big wheel in the Red Chinese hierarchy. He’s an intelligence analyst but he’s highly placed politically. Now he’s considering defecting to the West. And he won’t negotiate with anyone but Michael Hawkins.

Leigh’s defection is not going to be a simple matter. The Chinese don’t know that he plans to defect but they do know that something is up, and they know that Leslie Trent and Michael Hawkins are involved. Hawkins’ cover is blown right from the start. And the Chinese do not entirely trust Malcolm Leigh and they never have.

A further complication is that Leigh wants to bring his Chinese girlfriend Choy-Lin with him to the West. Getting two people out will be more difficult than just getting one out.

And then Trent’s contacts start getting killed. What’s worse is the strong probability that at leas one of them talked before being killed. The Chinese intelligence services do not know the exact plan that Trent and Hawkins have in mind but they’re now in a position to make some shrewd guesses.

Most of the book is taken up by an extended chase through South-East Asia. Trent, Hawkins, Leigh and Choy-Lin are never more than a short step ahead of their pursuers. It’s also the middle of the monsoon season. And everything that could go wrong seems to go wrong.

There’s a fair amount of action and suspense.

The plot is really a fairly standard defector plot. It’s handled with some skill and there is one extra complication (which I can’t reveal for fear of spoilers) that adds a slight touch of originality.

Hawkins is a typical amateur spy. He doesn’t want to be killed and he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He just wants to go back to Honolulu and resume work on his book. He’s moderately brave and moderately resourceful. He’s not cut out to be a spy but he does his best. He’s likeable enough. He’s just a regular guy.

There’s no one particular villain who stands out. The bad guys are rather anonymous which is probably a lot more realistic.

Malcolm Leigh is the most interesting character because he has complex and contradictory motivations.

The author offers us some background on the workings of the Chinese intelligence services although whether any of this stuff is accurate is a question I can’t answer.

The Dragon’s Eye makes good use of exotic settings and captures the severely paranoid flavour of the Cold War, and the paranoid treacherous world of espionage, pretty well.

The Dragon’s Eye is a solid pulp spy thriller. Recommended.

The House of Invisible Bondage

Between 1912 and 1934 American authors J. U. Giesy (1877-1947) and Junius B. Smith (1883-1945) wrote a whole series of novels, short stories and novellas featuring the exploits of occult detective Semi Dual. These were serialised in various pulp magazines. The House of Invisible Bondage was serialised in Argosy in 1926.

Semi Dual is a physician but he is also a student of various forms of esoteric knowledge including astrology. He has some limited telepathic abilities. He is a rich man who lives in luxurious and tasteful seclusion in a penthouse above the 20th floor of an apartment house. He has a passionate devotion to the righting of wrongs and a keen interest in crime-solving. He does not operate directly as a private detective but he has persuaded two trusted associates, Glace and Bryce, to set up a private detective agency. When a case interests Semi Dual he allows Glace and Bryce to do the legwork and the routine investigation while he directs things from the background, making use not just of his knowledge of esoteric lore but also his keen understanding of human psychology.

Semi Dual knows that Marya Harding is about to ask for his help. He has no way of knowing this, but he knows it nonetheless. Sure enough a few hours later she shows up seeking help. The help is actually for her friend Moira. Moira’s fiancé Imer Lamb has just been arrested for launching a murderous attack on his valet. It makes no sense. Imer is a healthy, outgoing thoroughly cheerful and good-natured young man. He has no serious vices. His valet is devoted to him and relations between master and servant have always been easy-going and cordial.

Nonetheless Imer is now behind bars. And it’s worse than that. The police surgeon has decided that he is an incurable homicidal maniac. Imer Lamb is likely to spend the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum. In the short term his brother has managed to get him admitted to a private psychiatric clinic.

Semi Dual agrees that this is extremely curious and once he has cast the young man’s horoscope he perceives that the case is much more complex and much more devious. He does not yet know what is behind it all but he does know that Imer Lamb is not a murderous madman.

There are family dramas involved, a has-been Hollywood starlet comes into the picture, there are questions of inheritance, there are various financial entanglements of a dubious nature and there is also the screaming woman at the clinic. On top of this there is another inexplicable outburst of violence, not on the part of Imer Lamb but involving someone closely connected to him.

Semi Dual is a patient man. He may not know the identity of the guilty party but he is weaving a web and that guilty party will inevitably become entangled in it. Semi Dual’s patience is matched by his confidence.

It’s a solid enough plot. The paranormal and occult elements are important and add some spice and flavour but they don’t overwhelm the story. Good old-fashioned detective skills are still required. And the story doesn’t rely on supernatural evil - this is a tale of very human evils such as greed and jealousy.

Semi Dual makes a fascinating hero. In his speech and behaviour he comes across like some kind of medieval wizard. He seems out of place in the world of the 1920s but in fact he is also a man of science and reason.

Bryce is a fun character - a hardboiled ex-cop who is nonetheless a true believer in Semi Dual’s mysterious powers. Moira is a likeable heroine who is determined to stand by the man she loves. There are several villains but they’re not necessarily motivated by pure evil. In this story it’s human weakness that drives people to act badly.

It’s all very entertaining and if (like me) you love occult detective stories you should be well satisfied. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed The Complete Cabalistic Cases of Semi Dual, volume 1, which contains the first three Semi Dual novellas. Most of the Semi Dual stories have now been reprinted in paperback by Steeger Books in their Argosy Library series.

Peter Rabe’s The Box

Peter Rabe’s The Box is a 1962 hardboiled crime novel with a tropical setting and maybe a dash of noir.

Peter Rabe (1921-1990) was an American pulp crime writer who deserves to be better remembered.

The Box begins with a man in a box. It’s a packing crate to be precise. His name is Quinn. He’s a lawyer and a racketeer. The box is a punishment. The idea is you put a guy in a packing crate in New York. The crate is put on a freighter. The guy has plenty of food and water but he’s in the box in complete darkness lying in his own filth. After going right around the world the crate arrives back in New York. By that time the guy has learnt his lesson and he’ll be a good boy in future.

Quinn only gets as far as a small city in North Africa, a city named Okar. Someone has noticed that the box doesn’t smell so good so it gets opened. And there’s Quinn. Alive, but not very happy.

Quinn recovers but he has two problems. He has no papers, and he has no money.

Okar is run by Remal. Remal is the mayor and controls every other public office. This is his town. He has some nice rackets going, small-time smuggling mostly but profitable. He doesn’t want anyone around who might make waves. He likes Quinn and he has no wish to do him any harm. He just wants him to leave.

Leaving would be sensible but Quinn is stubborn, and then there’s Beatrice. She’s Remal’s woman but there’s a definite attraction between Quinn and Beatrice. If Quinn stays he’ll need to earn a living and the only way he knows how to make a living is dishonestly. That means muscling in on Remal’s rackets. That could cause problems, and it does.

While there’s a good plot here the main focus is on Quinn’s psychology. When he got out of the box he found he’d lost his touch. His edge. All the habits that had made him such a smoother operator. He wants to get those things back, so he can go back to being the man he was. But there’s a niggling doubt. Maybe the man he was wasn’t so great. Maybe he’d been in a box his whole life, a box of his own making. Maybe he needs to get out of that box.

It’s important to note that Quinn has choices. Unlike most noir protagonists he is not trapped. What he has to do is to decide which choices to make.

There are no clear-cut heroes and villains. Quinn is a gangster but he’s not such a bad guy and he prefers to avoid violence. Remal is equally amoral but he’s a likeable rogue. Even the Sicilian gangsters who get involved at one stage are quite pleasant. Sure, they have to have guys rubbed out sometimes but it’s nothing personal, it’s just business. Whitfield, the shipping clerk who plays a key role in Okar and in the story, just wants to avoid anything unpleasant. He just goes with the flow. He’s the kind of character who would have been played by Wilfred Hyde-White had this story been filmed in the 60s.

There’s a nice atmosphere of tropical sleaze. There’s the quiet desperation and moral corruption of expatriates gone to seed.

Every character in the novel is corrupt but not evil. They’ve made easy soft choices.

There’s not much action but there is a little and there’s some decent suspense at the end.

Is it noir fiction? Perhaps, if you define noir fiction broadly enough. I’d prefer to think of it as hardboiled crime. Either way it’s a very good entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this one with Rabe’s 1957 novel Journey Into Terror in a two-novel paperback edition.

I’ve also reviewed Peter Rabe’s excellent 1955 hardboiled thriller Stop This Man!

Robert Moore Williams' The Bees of Death

The Bees of Death by Robert Moore Williams is a 1949 pulp science fiction novel.

Robert Moore Williams (1907-77) was a prolific American writer, mostly of science fiction.

There are no bees in this novel. There is however plenty of fun strange stuff. It starts with an old cannonball, found where no cannonball could possibly be. But it turns out not to be a cannonball. It falls into the possession of Professor Featherstone.

Professor Featherstone is a phoney psychic, charlatan and con-man. Now he possesses something very important.

The story also begins with a nervous client seeking help from a private detective named Graham. Graham specialises in exposing fraudulent psychics and other tricksters. He and Featherstone have crossed swords before. The client is Mildred Whittaker, the daughter of a fabulously wealthy tycoon. She is very frightened. She brings with her a rabbit. A rabbit that will never hop again. There’s something very strange and disturbing about the rabbit, and about the circumstances under which Mildred found it.

Graham gets really interested in the case when he confronts Professor Featherstone. Featherstone is frightened. Featherstone does not frighten easily. If he’s afraid then it’s likely there is something to be afraid of.

The bees are something to be afraid of. They’re not bees. Whether or not they’re alive could be debated. They’re not invisible but they cannot be seen. No barrier can stop them. And they’re not friendly.

They’re called dreth. There is also the draal. The draal is both less scary and more scary.

Where these entities come from is a mystery. Whatever the answer to that question they must be stopped. A very unlikely alliance is formed to do just that but the odds seem unfavourable. It’s not easy to fight an enemy that you don’t understand.

It’s all very pulpy but there are some reasonably cool ideas here. There’s a sense of menace which is more effective since no-one knows the exact nature of the menace.

In their own ways Graham and Featherstone are both colourful characters. Featherstone is a rogue but perhaps a bit more than a conventional villain. Mildred Whittaker is a fine feisty heroine.

It’s a short novel and as with many pulp novels that proves to be an asset. There’s no time for extraneous subplots. The plot moves along briskly.

There’s some action and a fairly exciting climax with a fight against impossible odds.

There’s no attempt to make the science plausible but the book does deal with some genuine science fiction concepts.

There’s potential for silliness here but it’s kept under control pretty well. It’s just silly enough to be enjoyable, but also just serious enough to work as science fiction.

The Bees of Death is no masterpiece but it’s an intriguing moderately scary alien invasion tale that doesn’t make the mistake of trying to over-explain things. Recommended.

This one is paired with Frederick Pohl’s A Plague of Pythons in an Armchair Fiction double-header paperback.

Ogden Fox’s Hamburg After Dark

In the 60s McFadden books put out a whole series of non-fiction sex and sin exposés focusing on the raunchy night-life of various European cities. This was their After Dark series and it included Ogden Fox’s Hamburg After Dark, published in 1968.

Of course with such books there is no way of knowing how much was fiction and how much (if any) was fact. It is however quite true that Hamburg was rather notorious for its sleazy night-life in the 60s. So while there’s undoubtedly a fair amount of gossip and rumour (and completely made-up stuff or wishful thinking) there’s a possibility that quite a bit of it was true, or at least had a basis in fact.

The book purports to be written by an American, fluent in German, who lives in Hamburg and spends his free time sampling the erotic delights the city has to offer. The book is presented as a kind of guided tour of the city’s sexual night-life. What it has to say about Hamburg’s red light district is consistent with other accounts I’ve read so I’m inclined to give the publishers the benefit of the doubt and accept that the author has at least visited the city.

The author gives us some supposedly factual background on various aspects of Hamburg’s night-life interspersed with his reminiscences of his own sexual adventures there. One assumes that these personal reminiscences are largely or possibly entirely fictional. This was of course 1968, with the Sexual Revolution in full swing, and the book deals with a very large sophisticated European city rather than small-town America, so these reminiscences would have sounded quite plausible and there may even be some genuine adventures mixed in with the fantasies.

At this time there was a whole sleaze sub-genre of books masquerading as serious sociological/sexological non-fiction claiming to have been written by eminent psychiatrists. These books were in fact pure fiction churned out by various sleaze novelists. McFadden’s After Dark books would seem to be representative of a closely related sub-genre, with the difference that Hamburg After Dark presents itself as having been written by an amateur aficionado rather than a psychiatrist or sociologist.

Since the author’s sexual interests are confined to the female of the species (both prostitutes and non-prostitutes) he adds some stories told to him by others with differing sexual interests. These provide the material for the accounts of call-boy rings and bars catering to girls who like girls.

Firstly we’re introduced to the Widows’ Club. This is a bit like an internet hook-up site but done entirely with good old-fashioned analog telephones. Gentlemen and ladies who want a sex partner for the night can arrange a meet. If the man and the woman like the looks of each other they spend the night together. No questions are asked, no money changes hands. They never see each other again.

We’re taken to the red light district in the St Pauli district. To the Herbertstrasse, where the prostitutes display themselves in windows (as they apparently still do to this day). And to the Reeperbahn. In the dance cafes professional and amateur prostitutes contact prospective clients by means of telephones connecting the tables.

There’s also the street that within a single city block boasts no less than nineteen strip clubs.

We are also treated to accounts of the wild sex lives of the young women of Hamburg. Some of whom apparently indulge in kinks I had never heard of before (the girl with the kink that involves watching television is a new one on me).

The author finds out what a kinki session entails (it entails whips) and that such sessions are available for ladies as well as gentlemen. He also samples a few blue movies and watches one being filmed. And discovers that lonely ladies in Hamburg in need of male company (either in the bedroom or out of it) need only pick up a telephone to have their requirements fully satisfied.

While the various anecdotes thrown in by the author are doubtless pure fiction much of the essential background is probably fairly accurate. While there might be plenty of fiction mixed into this book it is a fascinating glimpse into the free-and-easy mindset of the heyday of the Sexual Revolution.

And it is definitely entertaining. Highly recommended for those seeking to explore the more intriguing corners of the world of 60s literary sleaze.

Desmond Cory’s Trieste (AKA Intrigue)

Trieste (originally published as Intrigue) was published in 1954 and is the fourth of Desmond Cory’s Johnny Fedora spy thrillers.

Englishman Shaun Lloyd McCarthy (1928-2001) was quite a prolific author, writing under the name Desmond Cory. If you’re new to the Johnny Fedora books you might make the mistake of thinking that they’re Bond imitations. In fact the first of the Johnny Fedora books pre-dates the first Bond novel.

Trieste begins with the British arresting a Communist agitator named Panagos. They believe that he’s the head of a major subversive organisation which is planning an operation in Trieste, backed by the Soviets. The ultimate objective would be to secure Trieste for the Soviets as a naval base. The problem is that the British have zero evidence against Panagos. Then comes a surprise - the Soviets want to exchange two captured British agents for Panagos. The British are willing to make the exchange, but only if they can first put a spoke in the wheels of Panagos’s Trieste operation.

Johnny Fedora has no official standing. He’s a freelancer but for various reasons British Intelligence think he’s the right man to send to Trieste to find out what Panagos was planning. And Johnny has a personal stake in the case - one of the captured agents the Soviets are willing to exchange is his girlfriend, who also seems to be a freelance spy.

Johnny has a professional British spy, Sebastian Trout, to help him on the case.

There just don’t seem to be any leads to follow up. Johnny and Trout have an uneasy relationship with the local authorities. Johnny has a hunch there’s a woman involved somewhere but a hunch is all he has. The prisoner exchange is coming up on the 30th of the month so there’s a race against time aspect.

Once things start happening they happen quickly and there’s plenty of action. People get shot, Johnny gets arrested and somehow he has to keep a key informant alive. He was right about the woman - there is one, her name is Gisella, and she’s Panagos’s girlfriend, or maybe she isn’t really. There are some further clues but it takes a surprisingly long time for Johnny to spot their real significance. There’s a deadly marksman hunting both Johnny and the girl.

There’s action at sea, which is always fun.

The plot has a few twists, including a major one that makes Johnny realise he’d been groping in the dark.

Johnny Fedora, in this story at least, has an ambiguous official status. That gives him a certain freedom of action. It’s not specifically stated that he has a licence to kill but it’s understood that if he feels the need to do so that’s OK with the British Government. And as we will find out Johnny is very good at killing and it doesn’t bother him. He’s not particularly good at following rules, but that makes him more useful in some ways.

He’s only a part-time secret agent. He has a day job. He’s a piano player, and a pretty good one.

Trieste is a kind of transitional spy thriller. It still has some of the feel of the pre-Bond British spy fiction of the 40s and early 50s, but it also has some of the toughness of the new breed of Cold War spy novels (the later Johnny Fedora books become a bit more Bond-like). The violence is only moderately graphic. There’s no actual sex, but there’s a degree of sexual frankness in regard to Gisella’s relations with men.

Trieste is a good solid Cold War spy thriller. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed two of the later Johnny Fedora novels, Hammerhead and Undertow. They’re both pretty good.

Don Tracy’s Criss-Cross

Criss-Cross is a 1934 noir novel by Don Tracy, an American writer who seems to have been overshadowed by Hammett, Cain et al.

I confess that I know little about Don Tracy (1905-76) other than the fact that he wrote quite a few noir novels, some historical novels and some TV and movie novelisations.

Noir fiction had not yet been given a name and at the time this would have been thought of as hardboiled crime. But noir fiction already existed and Criss-Cross is the real deal. It’s also a heist story.

The protagonist-narrator is a washed-up boxer who goes by the name of Johnny Thompson. Johnny is a total loser and he’s as dumb as a rock but he thinks he’s pretty smart, which is of course very noir.

He does admit that he’s not smart when it comes to Anna. He’s crazy in love with her. Anna goes out with him when he has money. When he doesn’t have money he can forget about it. They have a good time together but Anna’s idea of a good time with a guy always involves money. And even when he has money she won’t go to bed with him. There’s clearly no future in this for Johnny but he’s obsessed with this dame.

Johnny has a rival for Anna’s affections, Slim. Slim always has plenty of cash. Johnny can’t figure out where Slim gets all this money.

Johnny works as a security guard in an armoured car. It pays OK, but not enough if he hopes to get Anna. He also has a kid brother to worry about.

Then Johnny is offered a chance to make some real money. It’s highly illegal and it involves that armoured car but the plan is fool-proof. This story is full of guys who are dumb but think they’re smart.

You know that in a heist story the heist will not go off the way it’s supposed to but in this case things go off the rails in an interesting and devious manner.

The Anna situation gets complicated. She gets married to Slim but as soon as she’s married she starts sleeping with Johnny. Johnny convinces himself that this means she’s starting to love him. The Anna situation is definitely going to complicate the heist.

Johnny is not really evil, he’s not even by nature criminally inclined, but he just can’t think straight where Anna is involved. And he keeps thinking he’s got things all figured out.

There’s only one decent character in this tale. Bertha is a whore but she’s a really nice girl and she’s crazy about Johnny. She’s decent and honest but Johnny doesn’t want her.

Anna is of course the femme fatale. The femme fatale had not yet been given a name but she definitely existed. In movies she was called the vamp. The most interesting femmes fatales are always the ones that the reader can’t be sure of. They might turn out to be evil spider women or they might turn out to have valid reasons for their actions or they might turn out to be good girls who have landed themselves in a jam. Anna is one of the ones with this touch of ambiguity. She appears to be heartless and scheming but you just never know what she might do.

There’s a bit of action and a bit of violence but mostly this is a twisted tale of unhealthy love and lust, and betrayal. And double crosses. With a nicely twisted ending.

There’s also plenty of noir desperation, delusionalism and typical noir bad decision-making and poor judgment.

Criss-Cross was filmed in 1949 by the great Robert Siodmak. Obviously some changes were made but it’s a superb example of film noir.

Criss-Cross is top-notch noir fiction. Highly recommended.

Stark House have re-issued this novel paired with another Don Tracy title, Road Trip, under their Staccato imprint in their Jazz Age Noir series.