The Naked and the Deadly: Lawrence Block in Men's Adventure Magazines

The Naked and the Deadly: Lawrence Block in Men's Adventure Magazines, edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, collects assorted fiction and non-fiction written by Lawrence Block (sometimes using pseudonyms) for men’s adventure magazines between 1958 and 1974.

During his time writing for such magazines in the very early stages of his career Lawrence Block wrote a number of stories featuring private eye Ed London. This collection includes three Ed London stories.

The Ed London stories are moderately hardboiled with a dash of sleaze. The violence is fairly restrained and there’s no graphic sex. Just the implication of unmarried people having sex was titillating at the time.

Ed London is an honest and fairly ethical private eye although he’s not too fussy about the cases he takes. He’ll do things like divorce work. A job is a job, money is money, and Ed likes money as much as the next guy. Ed does however have a habit of sleeping with his female clients which is definitely not very ethical. Ed can handle himself reasonably well but he’s not a conventional two-fisted tough guy.

The Naked and the Deadly was first published in Man’s Magazine in October 1962. Ed London thought this was a simple case. All he had to do was, on behalf of his client, to hand over five grand to a blackmailer. Not an unusual job for a PI, but this time it ended in a hail of machine-gun fire.

In the light of this Ed starts to wonder if his client was being strictly honest with him. Rhona Blake is very young and very pretty but she seems strangely evasive when Ed suggests that they need to meet and talk. She’s even evasive about giving him her telephone number.

Since Ed doesn’t believe her first story she comes up with another one. Ed likes this story a whole lot better. He believes her. She’s young and pretty and, as he’s already discovered, very good in bed. He really wants to believe her. Even when three punks try to kill him he still believes her story.

What we find out about Ed London in this story is that he isn’t pedantic about following the letter of the law but he’s basically honest and he plays square with his clients. We also discover that he’s a bit of a sucker for beautiful women.

Stag Party Girl appeared in Man’s Magazine in February 1963. Mark Donahue is about to marry society girl Lynn Farwell but he has a problem. His former mistress Karen Price has been making threats. Mark hires Ed London as a bodyguard until the wedding is safely over.

There’s a stag party on the night before the wedding. The highlight is to be a naked girl popping out of a wedding cake. The evening ends in murder, but Mark is not the victim. Mark is however a potential suspect.

There are plenty of other possible suspects. Ed figures that for his client’s sake it would be a good idea to find the actual murderer. Motive is what worries Ed. He’s sure that concentrating on motive is the best way to solve this case.

He also has several women to deal with and they seem more than willing to go to bed with which could complicate matters.

It’s a solid PI story and it’s pretty enjoyable.

Twin Call Girls was first published in Man’s Magazine in August 1963. Ed’s latest client is very pretty, very blonde and very dead. Then she turns up on his doorstep. There were two of them, sisters. Not twins but almost identical in appearance. Now someone wants them both dead.

Jackie is the one who was killed. Jill is the survivor. There’s no obvious motive but since both are (or were) call girls Ed figures their profession might supply a motive. Maybe Jackie was trying her hand at blackmail?

Ed decides to search the girls’ apartment and gets clobbered by some guy. Now he’s at least had a brief look at the killer. He figures the killer was looking for something and he also figures that he didn’t find it. Ed has a pretty good idea where that something really is.

There are some decent plot twists here. A pretty good story.

All three Ed London stories are clever, fast-paced and enjoyable.

The Great Istanbul Gold Grab appeared in For Men Only in March 1967. An America named Evan Tanner has been arrested in Turkey. Tanner is a member of countless subversive organisations but has no actual interest in politics. The Turks suspect he’s CIA. He isn’t. What he’s interested in is gold.

He had a plan but getting arrested threw a spanner in the works. He wanted to go to Turkey but ends up being pursued across Europe by various police forces. It has something to do with a bundle of documents. All Tanner knows about the documents is that they’re important and a lot of people want them.

This story is a wild tongue-in-cheek romp. It’s a spoof of both spy fiction and caper stories. Tanner seems to speak almost every European and most Middle Eastern languages and knows a great deal about obscure revolutionary groups. He also seems to be remarkably formidable when it comes to unarmed combat. He has the kind of impossibly diverse skillset that one associates with fictional spies.

He leaves a trail of chaos behind him and he beds lots of beautiful girls. It’s a crazy story but it’s huge amounts of fun.

Bring on the Girls was published in Stag in July 1968. This is another Evan Tanner story. He starts when he meets Tuppence, a Kenyan singer. Later he gets a letter from her, from Thailand. She’s there with an American jazz quartet. She mentions jewels. There’s been a huge jewellery robbery in Thailand. Tanner think he should investigate.

He ends up a prisoner in a bamboo cage. He finds an ally of sorts. Dhang is willing to help if Tanner can find a woman for him. Dhang had never had a woman but he’d really really like to.

There are assorted groups of guerrillas, none of them friendly. And plenty of mayhem in the jungle. He finds the jazz quartet, in a way. This story is an enjoyable romp.

This volume contains some non-fiction pieces as well but the three Ed London stories and the two Evan Tanner stories are the reason to buy it. And you should buy it. Highly recommended.

Lawrence Block’s The Girl with the Long Green Heart

Lawrence Block’s writing career has, incredibly, spanned more than sixty years. I’ve read a few of his early sleaze novels (which are pretty good if you enjoy that genre) but the only crime novel of his that I’ve read is Borderline. Borderline is in fact a sleaze/noir hybrid and to be honest it left me a bit cold. A bit too bleak for my tastes. I am aware however that he’s not a writer whose crime fiction I can continue to ignore. Which brings me to his 1965 standalone crime noir novel The Girl with the Long Green Heart.

This is a novel about a con, and I’m inordinately fond of that crime sub-genre. It isn’t easy to pull off really well - the author has to come up with some variation on one of the classic cons and convince the reader that it would actually work. In this instance the con is pretty clever. The con depends not just on exploiting the greed of the mark but on exploiting his shrewdness. As the conman narrator John Hayden explains, this is a con that would never work on a stupid man.

John Hayden served seven years in San Quentin after a grift went sour and for a year he has been strictly a law-abiding citizen. He has no intention of going back inside. He has a poorly paid job as assistant manager in a bowling alley. He has a dream. There’s a roadhouse in Colorado that is being badly mismanaged. It could and should be a gold mine. Hayden could make it a very profitable proposition. He could be a strictly legal businessman. All he needs is thirty thousand dollars to buy the place. It’s just a dream. He’s forty-two and it would take ten years to save thirty grand. By that time he’d be too old to make a fresh start. It will stay a dream.

Then Doug Rance looks him up. Hayden and Rance had worked cons before when Rance was just a fresh-faced kid. Now Rance claims to have come up with what every conman dreams of - a totally fresh variation on one of the classic long cons. Hayden isn’t interested, until Rance tells him his cut would amount to around - thirty thousand dollars.

A few years earlier a small-town real estate tycoon named Wallace Gunderman got taken by a bunch of Canadian grifters and ended up with thousands of acres of worthless land. Rance’s idea is beautiful. Gunderman will get conned a second time over the same land while thinking he’s outsmarted everyone. The first time he got taken for twenty-five thousand dollars but this time he’s going to be bled for a lot more.

What makes the grift fool-proof is the girl. Evvie is Gunderman’s secretary and she has a grudge against him. She’ll be working on Gunderman from the inside, drawing him in to be fleeced.

Of course it would be better for Hayden not to get involved with Evvie but every man has his weakness. Hayden’s weakness is women.

Fortunately the plan really is fool-proof. Everything goes off like clockwork. When it comes to the final stretch, taking Gunderman’s money, it will be smooth sailing. They hope.

When fictional criminals have a plan for a perfect crime you just know something is going to go wrong. And of course it does. For our two grifters it then it becomes a question of trying to at least stay out of prison. They improvise another plan. Whether it will work or not is another matter.

Block describes the grift in great detail and it’s a delight to read. The intricate process of laying out the bait for Gunderman and then playing him along just right is fascinating.

This is definitely noir fiction, or at least fiction with noirish tinges, although the noirness isn’t entirely obvious in the early stages.

Hayden is a professional and he’s an artist when it comes to a con. He’s also a man with a dream. He’s a perfect noir protagonist. He’s a rogue but he’s totally non-violent and he’s likeable and he’s just trying to pull off one last big score and we can’t help wanting him to succeed.

Evvie might be an amateur but seeing her in action is a joy. She’s an astonishingly gifted amateur and she knows all the tricks when it comes to stringing along a man like Gunderman.

I’m not going to tell you anything about the ending except that I liked it a lot.

The Girl with the Long Green Heart is wildly enjoyable and is highly recommended. It's been reprinted by Hard Case Crime.