Peter Cheyney’s Dangerous Curves

Dangerous Curves, published in 1939, was the second of Peter Cheyney’s Slim Callahan private eye thrillers.

Peter Cheyney (1896-1951) was an Englishman who had a very successful career writing pulp thrillers in the American style, starting in 1936. He is best remembered for his terrific crime/spy thrillers involving FBI agent Lemmy Caution. Cheyney also wrote a popular series of novels featuring a home-grown pulp hero, private eye Slim Callaghan, set in the seedier sleazier underside of London.

Obviously with an English PI in an English setting the mayhem had to be toned down. You can’t have guys leaning out of cars blasting people with machine-guns or cops giving suspects the Third Degree. Slim Callaghan is tough enough but his toughness is more psychological than physical. And there’s just enough mayhem to make things exciting without seeming implausible in 1930s London.

Slim is working on the Riverton case. It’s a big case but it’s tricky and it gets very tricky indeed. Wilfred Riverton is a wealthy young man who will be a very wealthy young man indeed when his father dies, and that’s likely to happen soon. Wilfred is also a very foolish young man. He has fallen in with a bad crowd (in fact they’re out-and-out criminals) and they’re fleecing him. Gambling, dope, women - these are Wilfred’s vices. He is universally referred to as the Mug because that’s what he is.

His stepmother has hired Callahan Investigations to find out who is fleecing Wilfred and to get the young man out of their clutches while there’s still some of the family fortune left.

Wilfred’s stepmother is not much older than he is. She is very beautiful and very glamorous. The type of woman who might be no good but is dangerous anyway.

There are lots of dangerous no-good dames in this story. And lots of crooks some of whom are very tough and some of whom are just sleazy punks. It’s a situation that could end very badly, and it does. It ends with a shooting. The circumstances are slightly ambiguous but what really happened soon becomes clear. Only maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. There’s a fine mystery plot here with an abundance of neat little plot twists.

Slim Callahan likes to keep on the right side of the police but he has his own methods and if Detective Inspector Gringall knew what he was up to he might disapprove. Slim likes Gringall. He doesn’t want Gringall to know things that would just worry him.

Slim is a bit of a rogue but he’s a charming rogue. He’s very clever and there’s always the danger he’ll try to get too clever. He takes a lot of risks. But where’s the fun in life if you don’t take risks?

Slim drinks quite a bit but it seems to have no effect on him. Tough guys can handle their liquor. He likes fast cars and he likes women. And women like him.

The setting is London but it’s the seedy, sleazy, exciting London of night-clubs, gambling clubs, con-men, hoods and girls with flexible morals.

Cheyney does a fine job of capturing the hardboiled style but with an English flavour. And the man knew how to tell a story with energy and flair. This is pulp fiction with (thankfully) no literary aspirations.

Dangerous Curves is hugely enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the first Slim Callahan thriller, The Urgent Hangman, and several of the Lemmy Caution books including Poison Ivy, Dames Don’t Care, I’ll Say She Does! and Never a Dull Moment. And I’ve reviewed his excellent 1942 spy thriller Dark Duet.

Frank Belknap Long’s Space Station #1

Frank Belknap Long’s science fiction novel Space Station #1 was published in 1957.

American science fiction/weird fiction writer Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994) was a close friend of H.P. Lovecraft.

Space Station #1 is by far the biggest space station ever constructed. This is the 2020s by which time Mars has been colonised. But all is not well on Mars. A fabulously wealthy man named Ramsey now runs the planet and the original colonists are impoverished and disaffected. They believe (correctly) that he has cheated them.

The protagonist of the novel is Lieutenant Corristan, a young officer on a space liner on its way to the station. He meets a charming young lady. She is accompanied by her bodyguard. Corristan finds out that she is Ramsey’s daughter Helen. Which makes it a very big deal when she vanishes. And then her bodyguard is murdered. The killer flees. Corristan gives chase, unsuccessfully.

Corristan expects to be regarded not perhaps as a hero but at least given credit for effort. He is mystified and dismayed when no-one believes a word of his account of the event. Helen Ramsey was not aboard the spaceship. The dead man was not her bodyguard.

When they reach the station Corristan finds himself diagnosed as another tragic case of space shock. He must have been hallucinating. Perhaps in time he will recover.

Corristan isn’t giving up. He escapes from custody and then he makes some truly puzzling and bizarre discoveries. These discoveries seem impossible, but Corristan is convinced that he is not mad.

It seems that things aboard the spaceship are not what they seem to be.

Corristan hasn’t just stumbled into a fight between two factions. There are three factions involved. There are multiple conspiracies.

And lots of paranoia.

What Corristan cares about is the girl. He’s only exchanged a dozen words with Helen Ramsey but he knows that he’s in love with her. He doesn’t even know if she’s still alive. He has no idea where she is.

And he’s soon in the middle of a space battle. A space battle that is not as wildly unrealistic as most science fiction space battles.

And the author doesn’t forget the thin atmosphere on Mars, and the implications of that. And he remembers to at least mention the low gravity. The space station spins to provide artificial gravity through centrifugal fore. This is not quite hard science fiction but at least the author makes an effort to keep things science fictional rather than just being an adventure in space.

There’s more drama when Corristan arrives on Mars. And a major battle seems likely, with no clear indication as to which groups belong to which factions and what their objectives are.

Corristan is a fine hero. His love for Helen Ramsey provides him with plenty of motivation. He’s gutsy and determined.

The plot has some very nice twists and there are enough hints of weird stuff to keep things interesting. There are conflicted characters and betrayals and suspicions.

This is a decent fairly grown-up and entertaining science fiction tale and I’m going to highly recommend it.

I’ve also reviewed Frank Belknap Long's Mission to a Distant Star, which is a good story ruined by a catastrophically bad ending.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with William P. McGivern’s The Galaxy Raiders in a two-novel edition.

T. T. Flynn’s The Complete Cases of Val Easton

The Complete Cases of Val Easton is a collection of spy novellas by T. T. Flynn (1902-1978). They were originally published in the Dime Detective pulp magazine between 1932 and 1935.

Flynn wrote pulp crime stories and westerns as well, his best-known being The Man from Laramie (filmed by Anthony Mann in 1955).

There’s a certain amount of continuity in the five novellas in this collection. The hero is facing the same bad guys each time.

Val Easton is an American Secret Service agent. He’s a fairly typical square-jawed pulp hero. Nancy Fraser is a highly capable American lady spy with a talent for disguise.

These are very pulpy stories and the plots do not contain any real surprises although they are enlivened by some lurid crazy details and some colourful settings. And fine larger-than-life villains. There’s a very obvious Sax Rohmer influence.

The best thing in the stories is the beautiful but deadly Tai Shin, the daughter of one of the chief villains. Sax Rohmer’s 1931 Fu Manchu thriller The Daughter of Fu Manchu had introduced Fu Manchu’s wicked daughter, the Lady Fah Lo Sue. She was played by Myrna Loy in the terrific 1932 movie The Mask of Fu Manchu and Loy gave us one of the coolest, sexiest, wickedest and most depraved bad girls in cinema history. Tai Shin is very obviously inspired by Fah Lo Sue but she’s made interesting by being made slightly ambiguous. She’s a bad girl but she seems to have fallen in love with Val Easton so she can be either an enemy or an ally, or sometimes both.

In the first story, The Black Doctor (written in 1932), Val is aboard a passenger liner when he meets a pretty young woman named Nancy Fraser. He soon finds out that she is a fellow agent. There may be a British agent aboard as well. And soon there are a couple of corpses.

They don’t know it yet but Val and Nancy are up against international spy Carl Zaken, the infamous Black Doctor.

In a hotel in New York there are more corpses. Whatever the foreign agents are after is important enough to kill for.

The second story, Torture Tavern, dates from 1933. That earlier case is not quite over after all. There are loose ends remaining, dangerous ones. There’s more shipboard action. There’s a dead cop by the dockside. There’s a link to an extraordinary potential catastrophic discovery made at a Philadelphia chemical plant. The French secret service is involved. And there’s a new and terrifying enemy, Chang Ch’ien, a one-time associate of the Black Doctor.

There are three women in this story. Two will find themselves in deadly danger. The third is Tai Shin - beautiful and seductive but very dangerous indeed.

The Jade Joss, from 1933, has a very Sax Rohmer feel to it. The bad guys have stolen a jade mask belonging to a long-dead Chinese warrior emperor. The idea is that anyone who possesses that mask could set the whole of Asia aflame. It’s a good story.

In The Evil Brand, published in 1934, Val’s nefarious opponents are trying to gain control of a Chinese secret society, which will in turn give them almost unlimited power.

The Dragons of Chang Ch’ien, dating from 1935, concerns a mysterious Chinese named Li Hung. He may be a businessman, a Chinese government agent, a member of a sinister secret society or something else entirely. Whatever he is he is clearly an important man and it seems that someone is out to get him. And there’s a connection with the upcoming marriage of a wealthy American munitions manufacturer.

The Val Easton stories are fun if you like pulp crime with a Sax Rohmer-ish flavour. Recommended.

Sax Rohmer's The Green Eyes of Bâst

The Green Eyes of Bâst is a 1920 potboiler by Sax Rohmer. It’s a lurid mystery which may or may not deal with supernatural happenings.

It begins with a policeman receiving an odd instruction to visit the Red House to check that the garage has been locked properly. What’s odd is that everyone knows that the Red House has lain empty for some considerable time. Inside the garage is a large packing case marked with the design of a cat-like figure.

The narrator, a journalist named Addison, had accompanied the constable on his strange errand. And on that same night he had the impression of being followed by a figure that seemed both female and perhaps slight feline. What struck him most were the startling green eyes.

Shortly afterwards the body of Sir Marcus Coverly is found at the docks, in that very packing case.

A short time before Addison had been involved in a romantic triangle involving a pretty actress named Isobel and Eric Coverly, brother of the late Sir Marcus.

It will soon become apparent that another romantic triangle had formed, involving Isobel and the two brothers. Also, Eric Coverly has now inherited the baronetcy.

Inspector Gatton of Scotland Yard being an old friend our narrator is asked to consult, unofficially, on the case.

A significant clue appears to be a cat figurine. It is fact a representation of the Egyptian cat-goddess Bâst. There are other possible connections to Egypt. There’s a second rather striking and mysterious woman mixed up in the case. There’s a possibly sinister doctor, who seems to have an interest in things Egyptian.

There was a third Coverly brother, Roger, now deceased. His mother has possession of the family estate which will now eventually pass to Eric Coverly.

Quite a few of the characters have some connection to Egypt.

There’s a sprawling ancient house, once an abbey, now inhabited by Roger Coverly’s mother. And perhaps by a mysterious doctor. He may be a mad scientist but he is a student of the occult as well as being a student of science and those two interests can overlap in disturbing ways.

Madness of various kinds might be involved.

This could be simply a story of a family feud over an inheritance, but it could be something much stranger. There is evidence that points to unimaginable horrors and creatures that are neither human nor non-human. With Sax Rohmer you never know. You might get an entirely rational explanation at the end. Or you might get an explanation that challenges our entire understanding of the natural world. And in this case the weirdness might not necessarily be the kind of weirdness we’re expecting.

In this tale he demonstrates great skill in feeding us just enough hints of serious weirdness to keep us interested but he has no intention of revealing the truth until the end.

This is Sax Rohmer at the top of his game. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed many of Sax Rohmer’s books. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are fine mid-period Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is a terrific collection of clever occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces us to his final creation, the glamorous sexy female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru is a diabolical criminal mastermind with a genuinely objective in mind.