Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Cornell Woolrich’s Rendezvous in Black

Cornell Woolrich’s Rendezvous in Black was published in 1948. Woolrich’s particular genius is that his stories were so perfectly adapted to film adaptation. Very few writers have had more stories adapted for film and TV and that made him a crucial figure in the history of pop culture. And it turned out to be almost impossible to make a bad movie from a Cornell Woolrich story.

He wasn’t a great prose stylist, not even close to being in the same league as a Raymond Chandler, but Woolrich had a knack for coming up with really nasty gut-punch plots.

This book starts with a guy named Johnny Marr, a very ordinary guy, waiting to meet his girl at a drugstore. They’ve been planning to get married for a long time and pretty soon it’s going to be possible. The guy has come into some money, more than enough for them to get married. But he is destined never to marry Dorothy. She is killed in an accident.

That sets in train a series of bizarre and inexplicable murders. Very complicated murders.

The detective investigating the first murder has a problem. He is the only one who believes it is murder. There is however not the slightest chance of proving it.

Two more strange murders occur, apparently totally unconnected except for one tiny detail. That tiny detail detail convinces the cop he’s on to something but he has no idea what it is that he’s on to. He just fears that there will be more murders.

This is a kind of suspense story in five parts, with the detective’s investigation hovering in the background.

It’s a suspense novel but there’s a mystery as well. The solution to the mystery is so clearly signposted that one must assume that Woolrich intends the reader to figure it out without any difficulty. The detective however simply does not have the vital pieces of the puzzle that would allow him to solve the case.

There’s some very fine suspense. Woolrich is generally regarded as a noir writer and to a considerable extent he is, but he’s not quite a typical noir writer. And Rendezvous in Black is not quite typical noir fiction. You expect a noir protagonist to be at least partially responsible for the mess he gets himself into. He’s usually a slightly ambiguous figure, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. In this case there’s no character flaw. It’s just pure dumb bad luck - the remorseless working of impersonal and indifferent fate.

You also expect a femme fatale to play a major part in the protagonist’s downfall. There’s no femme fatale here.

There is the classic noir feature of impending and inescapable doom. Mostly this is a suspense novel but there’s more to it than that. This is perhaps an existentialist crime novel, or an absurdist crime novel. That sets it apart from noir where you have the feeling that no matter how tragic the story it does have a kind of logical inevitability. In Rendezvous in Black there’s nothing logical about life - it’s as if the universe has played a horrible trick on Johnny Marr for no reason whatsoever except that that’s how the universe works. And most of the characters in this novel are in the same position - it is impossible to see any reason why such things should happen to them. So overall I think absurdism is closer to the mark here than noir.

The plot is also more satisfying if considered from that perspective. Sometimes we’re the victims of bizarre crazy coincidences that can never be understood in rational terms. The plot here is outlandish because that’s the way Woolrich wanted it to feel.

It doesn’t matter whether the characters in this book are good people or bad people. Some of them are very good people. Some are very bad. Some are neither particularly good or bad. It doesn’t matter. The universe will stomp you anyway. Noir is pessimist but this is a different kind of pessimism.

Rendezvous in Black is very Woolrichian and it’s powerful stuff. Highly recommended.

Like so many of Woolrich’s books this one has been filmed - Rendezvous in Black was the source material for Umberto Lenzi’s excellent 1972 krimi-giallo hybrid Seven Blood-Stained Orchids

I’ve also reviewed Woolrich’s 1942 Black Alibi.

Sunday, February 9, 2025

Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor

Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor was the third of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost In The Shell mangas to be published (in 2003) but should be read before Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface (published in 2001).

Human-Error Processor is not so much a graphic novel as a group of short stories, but with some connecting tissue.

Fat Cat dates from 1991. Dead people are being used as cyber-zombies, manipulated by remote control. A young woman fears this fate may have befallen her father although she cannot (or will not) believe he is really dead.

Drive Slave dates from 1992. Azuma and Togusa have to keep a witness alive. The witness’s brain may have been infiltrated by micro-machines. This could be linked to a push to allow prefectural governments access to the very top secret data stored in Pandora. Not everyone is happy with this plan which has the potential to be a major security risk.

The Major has another priority - rescuing the kidnapped girlfriend of a top scientist.

Mines of Mind starts with a series of brutal murders. Several of the victims have tattoos, which seem to be military tattoos. There’s some link to a military prison, and to arms dealing.

Section 9 will have to work with military intelligence on this case. One thing that crops up again and again in the Ghost in the Shell universe is that when you have multiple intelligence agencies they are more likely to work against each other than with each other. There is no trust or goodwill between these agencies.

There’s an added factor - the military has assigned a guy named Kim to the case. Kim and Batou know each other and they do not like each other one little bit.

Lost Past is a hunt for a sniper. It would help if Section 9 knew the identity of the target, but they don’t.

These stories were written in between the publication of the two major Ghost in the Shell mangas and they are much less ambitious. These are routine Section 9 cases, although of course nothing that Section 9 does can really be described as routine.

Public Security Section 9 is a mythical counter-intelligence counter-terrorism unit. It tends to be a bit of a law unto itself. Mr Aramaki, who runs Section 9, doesn’t really take orders from anyone other than the prime minister.

In the original manga the focus was very much on Major Motoko Kusanagi, the female cyborg in charge of Section 9’s field operations. The Major makes appearances in Human-Error Processor but she’s a bit more in the background. Perhaps the intention was to flesh out the other members of the team a bit more, to show that guys like Togusa and Azuma are quite capable of handling routine assignments without need the Major to hold their hands.

There’s also a bit more of a police procedural feel, with an interesting mix of cyberpunk tech and old-fashioned police work (footprint evidence, interviewing witnesses).

They’re good solid stories and they have plenty of the paranoia that is so much a feature of the Ghost in the Shell universe.

I always love Masamune Shirow’s footnotes - they’re full of esoteric technical stuff but they’re also chatty and whimsical.

Don’t expect Ghost In The Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor to be quite on the level of the first manga. It’s just a lot less ambitious and low-key, but this is still top-grade cyberpunk. Highly recommended.

Kodansha have published this manga in an English translation (in the original right-to-left format).

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Malko 3: Man from Kabul

Malko 3: Man from Kabul is one of the handful of Malko spy thrillers by Gerard de Villiers that have been translated into English. It was the 25th of his 200 Malko novels and was originally published in French as L'Homme de Kabul in 1972.

The hero of the Malko series is His Serene Highness Prince Malko Ligne, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Black Eagle, Knight of the Order of Landgrave Seraphim of Kletgaus, Knight of the Order of Malta. He needs money to maintain his castle, and his women. He is not on the C.I.A. payroll but he does jobs for them, jobs too awkward for the C.I.A. to handle directly. Malko is a loyal employee although he regards the C.I.A. with a certain amount of distaste. He is an aristocrat and a gentleman. His ethical standards are flexible but unlike the C.I.A. he does have some morals.

The first thing to bear in mind is that when the novel was written in 1971 Afghanistan was still a kingdom, trying to maintain friendly relations with both sides in the Cold War.

An Australian freelance spy has some important information he wants to sell to the C.I.A. but he is killed trying to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. His information does reach the C.I.A. and causes great excitement. An aircraft en route from China crash-landed in a very remote spot. There was something (or someone) aboard that aircraft that the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians all want very much. The Afghans want it too. They could exchange it with any of those powers in return for important diplomatic advantages.

The Americans want that person but they cannot act officially. They employ Malko to get it for them.

His plan is fairly simple although it will involve a great deal of mayhem.

Malko’s assignments always bring him into contact with beautiful, morally ambiguous, fascinating and dangerous women. This case is no exception. There’s a gorgeous Afghan girl. She’s dangerous because her uncle runs the Afghan security service, and her cousin will kill any man who tries to persuade her into bed. That’s awkward because Malko would very much like to bed her.

There’s also the bald German girl, Birgitta. She’s bald but stunningly beautiful and very sexy. She’s the mistress of a colonel in the Afghan intelligence agency. He’s German as well. He’s also very jealous and very very dangerous. Withy a definite cruel streak.

Of course there are attempted double-crosses. With four players in the game (the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese and the Afghans) there’s plenty of potential for really complicated double-crosses. Especially when it’s not clear that all four players are have totally different objectives.

What makes the Malko books so interesting is that they are written by a Frenchman who views the Cold War from a neutral outsiders’ perspective. You cannot assume that the author thinks of the Americans as the good guys or the Russians and Chinese as the bad guys. Espionage is a grubby vicious game whoever plays it and all sides play dirty. There’s no morality at all in the world of espionage.

Malko himself views the Cold War from an outsider’s perspective. He works for the C.I.A. because they pay well and he needs the money. He has no ideological agenda. He regards all sides with aristocratic disdain. He is often sickened by the things he finds himself doing. Malko is mercenary and he’s loyal to his employer but he dislikes his work. He has a taste for danger and adventure but he would have been more at home in an earlier era when a gentleman could indulge such tastes without compromising his sense of honour.

In this book Malko is appalled by the C.I.A.’s casual use of torture.

The cynicism of de Villiers goes beyond anything you will find in British or American spy writers such as Len Deighton. Malko cannot console himself with the thought that our side might do bad things but the other side is worse. He cannot console himself with the thought that he is doing bad things for a good cause. He knows that he is doing bad things for money. He is a kind of anti-hero. He is determined not to abandon his sense of honour completely but in his heart he knows he has morally compromised himself. He feels dirty.

And in Malko’s world nice people get hurt very very badly. In this novel a very nice people suffers an appalling fate.

This is intelligent provocative spy fiction. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the slightly earlier Malko: West of Jerusalem and also Malko 5: Angel of Vengence.

Monday, February 3, 2025

Clifton Adams' Whom Gods Destroy

Clifton Adams (1919-71) was a successful and prolific writer of westerns but he also wrote several noir novels, the first being Whom Gods Destroy in 1953.

Roy Foley is working in a cheap diner when he hears of his father’s death. He’ll have to go back to his home town, Big Prairie. That means he’ll see Lola again. He knows that seeing her again is the worst thing he could do, but he knows that he will.

Roy had been born on the wrong side of the tracks. The rich kids looked down on him. Especially Lola. Lola was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Roy had tried to make something of himself. He became a football star. He figured that now Lola would go out with him. But she laughed in his face.

Fourteen years later Roy can still hear her laughter. His hate just seems to keep getting stronger.

In fact Roy really is a loser. But in Big Prairie he has an idea. Bootlegging is a thing of the past, except in Oklahoma. They still have Prohibition in Oklahoma. The bootleggers spend a lot of money buying politicians to make sure Prohibition stays in place. Prohibition is good for business. They also make sure that prostitution remains illegal. That makes it a profitable sideline.

Roy decides he wants to be a bootlegger. He had dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer, but he wasn’t smart enough. At some level Roy understands that he’s not very smart enough. But you don’t have to be smart to be a successful bootlegger. You just need to be hungry. His old pal Sid is a bootlegger and will teach him the ropes.

Roy soon has bigger plans. Roy comes up with reasonably good plans but he never thinks them through properly. When they blow up in his face he’s always surprised. But he keeps trying. You have to give him credit for that - every time a plan fails he immediately comes up with a new one, just as ingenious and just as flawed. He’s not very bright but he is cunning.

He’s a fairly typical noir fiction protagonist, although not a very sympathetic one. Lola was right to laugh at him. He really is a dumb thug. He’s too vicious and too stupid to make the reader care very much about him. On the other hand we feel some sympathy since we figure that really really bad things are bound to happen to him.

There are two women. One is Lola. The other is Sid’s wife Vida. One or both could turn out to be a femme fatale.

Roy hates Lola but maybe he has never stopped loving her. It’s not clear whether he loves Vida. He doesn’t know himself if he loves her. He certainly desires her.

There’s no ideological grandstanding although the book certainly paints moral reformers in very unfavourable colours. The moral reformers are organised crime’s biggest asset. There’s plenty of cynicism here. There’s not a single politician or public official who isn’t corrupt.

To be honest there’s not a single character who isn’t corrupt in some way. Corrupted by greed, ambition, revenge, the thirst for power, lust or just seething hatred.

Whom Gods Destroy has a nasty edge to it and a stifling atmosphere of hopelessness. Which is what noir fiction is all about. This is a fine entry in the genre and it’s highly recommended.

The Stark House Noir paperback edition also includes another excellent Adams noir novel, Death’s Sweet Song, which I reviewed here a while back. Adams doesn’t have a huge profile as a writer of noir fiction but perhaps he should.

Friday, January 31, 2025

The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias)

La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias) is an 1848 novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. Dumas himself adapted it as a stage play shortly thereafter. In 1853 it became the basis for Verdi's opera La traviata. Both the novel and play were highly successful.

Dumas was the son of the immensely popular and famous Alexandre Dumas. The younger Dumas went on to become a major figure in the French literary world.

He was just twenty-three when he wrote The Lady of the Camellias. It is a semi-autobiographical account of his affair with Marie Duplessis, one of the most famous (and expensive) of all 19th century courtesans. Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis in 1847 at the age of twenty-three. The heroine of the novel is renamed Marguerite Gautier.

Given that Dumas’ liaison with Marie Duplessis was well known in Parisian society and that readers of the novel were well aware of Marie’s death in 1847 the author’s decision to begin the novel with her death was probably an unavoidable one, and of course it serves to highlight the tragedy. We know the heroine is doomed, and that the love between these two people is doomed.

A young man named Armand Duval becomes infatuated with the celebrated courtesan Marguerite Gautier.

The problem is that he cannot possibly afford her. Armand is by no means poor but he is far from being a rich man. And only a very rich man indeed could afford a woman like Marguerite.

The complication is that they fall genuinely in love. Marguerite does not mind that Armand has very little money, as long as he is prepared to accept that she is being kept by a wealthy duke and that she is accepting money from other men for her sexual favours. Armand struggles to come to terms with all this. He struggles to understand Marguerite.

Both Armand and Marguerite try to find a solution that will be mutually satisfactory.

Dumas had an assortment of mistresses and kept women. The world of decadent excess, of high-class prostitutes, the world of the demi-monde, was his world. His attitude towards prostitutes was extremely sympathetic. That is not to say that he entirely approved of prostitution. His attitudes to this question were complicated and perhaps contradictory. On the other hand he did not believe that such women should be condemned. Marguerite Gautier is a very sympathetic heroine. Dumas does not sentimentalise her. Marguerite is quite mercenary. She has found that the wages of sin are very generous and she is addicted to a life of luxury and excess. She loves Armand but she doesn’t see any reason to be faithful to him.

Marguerite has her flaws, but her love for Armand is genuine.

The novel can be described as a fictionalised account of the life of Marie Duplessis. Just how fictionalised Dumas’ account is remains uncertain.

Dumas was a big name in France but his plays were considered much too shocking to be performed in England. Reading the novel it is certainly evident that there was a reason that French novels were considered scandalous by respectable opinion in England. The novel makes not the slightest attempt to disguise the fact that its heroine is a prostitute and that the relationship between the two main characters is a sexual one. Nor does it disguise the fact that while living as a kept woman Marguerite turns tricks on the side. Dumas avoids moral judgments. Armand has a mistress before he meets Marguerite and during the course of the story he sleeps with other women. He is not the most admirable of men - he fails to trust Marguerite at a time when she needed him to do so. He lets her down.

The Lady of the Camellias offers an extraordinary glimpse into the world of the demi-monde, written by an insider. It can be considered to be a priceless artifact of social history. It is also a great love story. Highly recommended.

It has been filmed countless times,  the most notable adaptations being the 1921 Camille starring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino, the 1936 Camille starring Greta Garbo and the 1969 Camille 2000.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

The Blazing Affair - The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

Michael Avallone's The Blazing Affair was the second original novel based on the 1966-67 The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. TV series.

It's a competent spy thriller that is most likely to appeal to fans of the series.

It's yet another 60s spy story about yet another attempt to revive the Third Reich. It's set in South Africa so diamonds are of course also involved.

My full review can be found at Cult TV Lounge.

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Vampirella Archives, volume 4

Vampirella Archives volume 4 collects issues 22 to 28 of the Vampirella magazine. These issues were published in 1973. As usual each issue contains a Vampirella story and usually four other stories.

Esteban Maroto’s Tomb of the Gods: Orpheus is a retelling of Orpheus’s descent into the Underworld in search of Eurydice. In The Sentence we find that even the cleverest burglars do not escape justice. Cry of the Dhampir is a reasonably good tale of vampires and those who hunt them. Minra is silly hippie-dippie nonsense about the nature of evil.

Cobra Queen is an OK jungle adventure tale which needed to be developed a bit more. Call It Companionship is about a woman whose boyfriend problems are solved by her cat. You can’t trust men but you can trust your cat. The Accursed concerns a man who seeks revenge on an already dead sorcerer. In Witch’s Promise the daughter of a woman hanged for witchcraft is seduced by a handsome rake, an army officer who uses women for his pleasure. She vows to have her revenge. In Won’t Eddie Ever Learn? a drifter thinks that robbing an old farmer and his blind daughter will be easy.

Middle Am is silly moralising nonsense. Homo Superior is science fiction. A member of a top-secret research assistant has discovered something disturbing - a member of the team is not human at all but could perhaps intend to replace humans. A reasonably good story. The Choice offers an encounter between a werewolf and a vampire, with some twists. Not a bad story. Changes follows an ordinary morning in the life of an ordinary man. The only interesting thing that happens on this morning is that his wife is murdered. It’s at most mildly disturbing, a minor disruption. We soon discover that this is a world in which people are murdered regularly and it’s no big deal. It’s not as if he is actually losing his wife. An odd, unsettling and very good story.

The Haunted Child
is the tale of a husband-and-wife team of psychic researchers and a house haunted by the ghost of a child. An OK story. Cold Calculations takes lace in the frozen wastes of Alaska. Could there really be a yeti in Alaska? Another OK story. Nimrod is about poachers in Africa who stumble upon a strange creature who rescues freaks. A disappointing story ruined even further by a clumsy moral message. Dead Howl at Midnight borrows elements from both The Body Snatchers and Frankenstein. A passable story.

Moonspawn is an intriguing attempt at a science fiction explanation for werewolves. Not a bad story. In Fringe Benefits a murderer thinks that a lucky accident has allowed him to escape justice. An OK story. Demon Child tells of an ageing occult investigator who has dark suspicions about his granddaughter. Another moderately entertaining story. Blood Brothers is the tale of two revolutionaries, a secret hoard of gold and a strange cult. This one is pretty good.

Clash of the Leviathans is a tale of dinosaurs, of one dinosaur in particular whose battle with a strange enemy will have momentous consequences. A clever story. Blind Man’s Guide tells of a boy who was once a guide for an old man. Now the boy is blind and has a dog to guide him. For the boy history will repeat itself. Not too bad a story. The Power and the Glory is the story of a wicked Englishman in colonial times. His rich father protects him from the consequences of his crimes. Nothing can touch the young man. A fairly decent story.

Eye Don’t Want To Die tells of an old tailor with a glass eye. He is reputed to be a rich old miser. There are those who covet his supposed riches. A pretty good story. The Other Side of Heaven is about a fisherman who meets God. Well, maybe not the God but certainly a god. A rather Cthulhu-like god. An interesting story. Old Texas Road shows what can happen when you run out of petrol on a deserted road. A nasty but effective little chiller.

The Vampirella stories

Hell From on High takes Vampirella and the Van Helsings to the Rocky Mountains where they encounter a kindly priest. They also discover that they now face a formidable new threat, the Darkling Disciples.

The Blood Queen of Bayou Parish
takes Vampirella and her friends into swamp country, a setting I always love. And the men discover that finding the woman of your dreams is not necessarily a good thing.

In Into the Inferno and What Price Love Vampirella’s friend Pendragon, a broken-down stage magician, has to confront his past and there are gangsters to deal with as well. Vampirella learns to kill, under the influence of drugs. This is a horrifying experience for her. No matter how strong her craving for blood she has always in the past avoided killing.

In Demons in the Fog Vampirella needs blood. Not for herself. For another reason entirely. Pendragon’s efforts to help backfire, as they so often do, and Vampirella has to battle old enemies, but very deadly enemies.

In Return Trip Vampirella faces a new menace - a man who can control her dreams. He can give dreams of happiness, and force her to do evil.

The Curse of the MacDaemons begins with Vampirella and Pengragon holidaying in Scotland. Vampirella meets a handsome young Scottish laird but Vampirella is not going to get to enjoy the joys of love. There’s an interesting twist to a popular legend and a decidedly perverse atmosphere to this excellent story.

Final Thoughts

These Vampirella Archive reprints really are a must for comic-book enthusiasts. Vampirella is one of the great comic-book heroines and while the non-Vampirella stories are a mixed bag some are very interesting indeed. Highly recommended.