James Hadley Chase’s Lay Her Among the Lilies

Lay Her Among the Lilies, published in 1950, was the third of James Hadley Chase’s thrillers featuring private detective Vic Malloy.

James Hadley Chase (1906-1985) was an immensely successful English writer of crime thrillers. He wrote around 90 novels. Most were set in the United States although Chase only ever made two brief visits to that country. He relied on maps and dictionaries of American slang to achieve the desired flavour.

The setting is Orchid City, a fictional city in southern California.

Vic Malloy (along with his partners Paula Bensinger and Jack Kerman) runs an agency called Universal Services. It’s basically a private detective agency but they will take all kinds of other assorted jobs.

Vic’s latest client is dead. She’s been dead for quite a while. In the pocket of a trench coat he hasn’t worn for a long time he finds a letter that he had received but had forgotten to open, and in fact he had forgotten that the letter existed. The letter is from a rich young woman named Janet Crosby. She wants Malloy to find out if someone is blackmailing her sister Maureen. She has enclosed five hundred dollars as a retainer. The letter was sent fourteen months ago. The difficulty is that Janet Crosby died on the very day the letter was sent.

Vic could simply return the money to her estate. He has a better idea. He will earn the money. He will take the case. His motivation is not greed. His business is thriving. He feels guilty about mislaying the letter and now he feels that the least he can do for Janet Crosby is to carry out her instructions.

Right from the start Vic senses that there’s something fishy going on. Janet’s death certificate was signed by a doddery old doctor who should have given up practising medicine twenty hears earlier and he wasn’t even her treating physician. Her treating physician was Dr Salzer and he isn’t a qualified medical practitioner. Janet died of a heart disease that would have produced debilitating symptoms long before her death, but two days before she died she was playing tennis.

Her sister Maureen is now ill and confined to bed, but the nurse caring for her tells Vic some very strange things that don’t add up at all. And then there’s the strange will left by the girls’ father, and the father’s death seems like it might be worth looking into as well. In fact there’s a whole bunch of stuff that Vic would like to look into. He has no idea what he is dealing with or looking for but he’s a sufficiently experienced investigator to know that there are almost certainly some serious cries involved. Possibly murder. Possibly more than one murder.

Vic gradually puts the pieces of the puzzle together and it makes a plausible picture but he is sure that there is something really big that he has overlooked. And he’s right about that.

It’s an outrageously complicated but entertaining plot with as many twists as any reader’s heart could desire. There’s murder, kidnapping, arson, gambling, medical malpractice, fraud - pretty much a full house of serious crimes.

And there’s a goodly amount of action, and some decent suspense. Our hero finds himself in plenty of danger, as do no less than three young women. Or maybe four.

Vic Malley is an honest private eye and in this instance he has that guilt about the forgotten letter to drive him on to uncover the truth. He’s a pretty tough guy and he’s pretty smart.

I have no doubt that an American reader at the time would have spotted plenty of minor local details that Chase got wrong but as a non-American reader seventy years later I wasn’t too bothered about stuff like that. It feels nicely hardboiled and that’s enough for me.

Lay Her Among the Lilies is a thoroughly enjoyable crime yarn and it’s highly recommended.

I also enjoyed, and reviewed, Chase’s 1941 novel The Doll’s Bad News.

Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man

Michael Crichton’s science fiction techno-thriller The Terminal Man was published in 1972.

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) had broken through as a bestselling author with The Andromeda Strain in 1969. The Terminal Man sees Crichton once again drawing on his medical training (he qualified as a doctor but never practised). The Terminal Man is also the sort of thing Crichton really enjoyed doing - dealing with science and technology that already existed or was very very likely to exist in the near future.

Harry Benson suffers from psychomotor epilepsy. He has seizures but they affect his behaviour rather than having physical manifestations. He has blackouts lasting several hours and during those times he becomes extreme violent. He has already been in trouble with the police and now he has committed a brutal assault that could land him in prison. The University Hospital Neuro-Psychiatric Service (NPS) has offered him experimental brain surgery that will probably prevent these seizures.

The team at NPS believe that it’s the seizures that lead Benson, an otherwise peaceable man, to commit acts of extreme violence.

Benson will be the first human to undergo the procedure. The head surgeon, Dr Ellis, is very confident.

The team’s head psychiatrist, Dr Janet Ross, is not so sure. Benson has other problems. He has delusions. He is a brilliant but unstable computer technician and he believes that the machines are taking over. He is borderline psychotic. Dr Ross fear that as a result the results of the operation will be unpredictable. It might make Benson worse.

The operation involves planting electrodes in the brain, then later monitoring the brain waves to find out which electrodes will prevent seizures. When a seizure is coming on the electrode stimulates the appropriate area of the brain and the seizure is halted in its tracks.

The doctors overlooked a couple of things. These electrical stimulations can be pleasant. Very pleasant. Like an orgasm. And they overlooked the possibility that Benson could learn to provoke those stimulations. Which would mean he could just go on continually giving himself these stimuli. Which would in turn lead to a kind of brain overload which would provoke a seizure. And those seizures cause Benson to become uncontrollably and brutally violent. The NPS computer experts are confident none of these things can actually happen. Then they look at Benson’s brain waves and realise it is already happening.

And then Benson escapes from the hospital. Another thing that was overlooked was that Benson is a very very smart guy.

Now it’s a race against time. The computer predicts that within six hours Benson will reach that tip-over point and have a major seizure. Somebody could get very seriously hurt. The police will almost certainly become involved. There will be a public outcry about irresponsible scientists playing around with mind control. Dr Ellis’s career will be in ruins. The NPS may be shut down.

And Benson is psychotic. He has paranoid delusions about machines taking over the world. It is impossible to predict where he might go and what he might do. And he’s smart enough to cover his tracks.

This is not a mad scientist tale or even a warning about scientists playing God. Crichton was certainly not anti-science. It’s more a warning that the future can be predicted only up to a point. Society is too complex and human beings are too complex to allow accurate predictions. Any complex system is inherently unpredictable. Crichton isn’t suggesting that scientific and technological progress is bad but he is suggesting that a considerable degree of caution is required.

There’s also some fascinating and remarkably prescient speculation about machine intelligence being a dead end. It might turn out that genuine artificial intelligence will have to be biologically based rather than electronic. That’s one of the themes of the book - enhancing or modifying the brain has more potential than mere machines. That’s what Benson has done - he has learnt to modify his own brain function. Unfortunately he’s done in a chaotic manner that may lead to disaster.

This is classic Crichton - lots of fascinating technical stuff presented in an understandable manner, some ethical quandaries and a tense fast-moving thriller plot. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Scratch One.

Michael Crichton's Scratch One

Michael Crichton is best remembered for his novels in the science fiction/techno-thriller genres but early in his career he wrote quite a few straightforward thrillers using the pseudonym John Lange. Scratch One, published in 1967, was his second novel.

The basic concept, a poor innocent schmuck who gets drawn into a web of espionage and has no idea what is going on, has been used often but here it’s done with real style and energy. In this case it begins with a case of mistaken identity.

Roger Carr is an American lawyer who is in Nice to buy a villa for a client. He really is just a lawyer. And he really is in France to be a villa. Unfortunately he looks just enough like Morgan to be mistaken for him by someone making an identification solely from a photograph. And he’s arrived on the plane on which Morgan was expected to be travelling. Who is Morgan? Morgan is an assassin employed by the US Government. By the CIA in fact.

Morgan had been assigned by the CIA to kill every member of an Arab organisation known as the Associates. The five members of the Associates have found out about an arms deal involving Israel. It’s an arms deal that the Americans wanted kept secret. There were various options for dealing with the Associates but in order to avoid embarrassing publicity the CIA felt the best method was simply to kill them all.

The Associates know about Morgan. They want him dealt with and they have mistaken Roger Carr for the assassin. The local CIA people are also under the impression that Roger Carr is Morgan.

Roger Carr isn’t a great lawyer but he’s rather a success with the ladies. And then Anne comes along. Anne is an Australian model. He really likes her and he starts to fall for her, hard.

Anne gets captured. Poor old Roger gets captured and tortured by the Associates. He gets arrested by the French cops as well. And interrogated by the CIA. Nobody believes anything he says. This is the world of espionage. There are endless layers of deception. He could be a simple lawyer pretending to be an assassin pretending o be a regular lawyer. Everyone assumes that everyone else is lying. The most confusing thing you can do is tell the truth. If you genuinely seem to be telling the truth then you must be lying.

Roger is a bumbling amateur. But the truth is that the Associates are bumbling amateurs as well. They make a mess of even the simplest assassinations. And the CIA guys are bunglers as well. The guys who take all this espionage stuff most seriously and think of themselves as professionals are the worst bunglers of all. Roger really is a compete amateur but he’s not as foolish and incompetent as the professionals.

The French cops actually do know what they’re doing but they’re hamstrung by their reluctance to get embroiled in a major CIA fiasco.

The Associates are the bad guys but the whole CIA operation is sleazy and immoral. There aren’t really any straightforward bad guys. The arms deal is essentially a MacGuffin. Crichton isn’t interested in the politics. He’s interested in the amount of mayhem that can be caused by spy agencies and spy rings who are nowhere near as smart as they think they are, and he’s interested in the duplicity of the entire word of espionage. He handles this subject with style and wit.

And he gives some fine action and suspense and thrills as well.

This may seem odd but this book reminds me a bit of John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War, a great novel (probably le Carré’s finest) about a hopelessly bungled British intelligence operation. Both le Carré’s novel and Scratch One have more than a touch of absurdism. The le Carré book is darker but both have touches of black comedy.

I enjoyed Scratch One so much that I’m now anxious to read all of Crichton’s early thrillers. Highly recommended.

Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain

During the 1960s Michael Crichton had written several thrillers under pseudonyms. The Andromeda Strain, which appeared in 1969, was his first novel published under his own name and was his first foray into science fiction. It is perhaps better considered as a techno-thriller since the technology in the story is cutting-edge present-day tech rather than futuristic tech.

The Andromeda Strain was made into an excellent 1971 movie.

It all begins when the Scoop VII satellite returns to Earth. There is something important about that Scoop satellite which is revealed early in the novel but is kept under wraps until very late in the movie. It doesn’t come down where it was supposed to. It comes down near Piedmont which is a tiny town, more a hamlet really, in Arizona. A couple of Air Force guys are sent to retrieve it. They don’t come back, but they do transmit a disturbing message. Everybody in the town is dead. A flyover by a reconnaissance jet confirms that disaster has struck Piedmont. There are bodies everywhere. Including the bodies of the two Air Force guys.

This means a Wildfire Alert has to be activated.

Project Wildfire was set up to deal with the possibility that a spacecraft might one day return to Earth carrying an extraterrestrial organism. This is most likely to be a micro-organism. The possibility that such an organism could be dangerous has been considered. Wildfire can deal with this. They have an incredibly well-equipped underground laboratory in Nevada with layer upon layer of security. There is no chance at all of a micro-organism getting loose once it’s been isolated at the Wildfire lab. When a Wildfire Alert is called a team of five crack scientists will be assembled at the Wildfire lab. If these guys can’t figure out what makes an extraterrestrial organism tick and how to deal with the possible dangers then no-one can.

And there’s one final absolutely foolproof safeguard. If something goes wrong the lab will self-destruct. There’s a nuclear warhead there to take care of this. And of course if a spaceship returns to Earth carrying alien organisms the landing site will be nuked.

If there’s a theme to this book it’s that no matter how much thought you put into preparing for possible disaster, no matter how many levels of security you have, some minor unpredictable thing will always go wrong. And even the most brilliant scientists can make very simple mistakes.

There’s obviously a deadly micro-organism. It is given the name the Andromeda Strain. But it seems to work in bizarre ways. It kills with breathtaking speed. Except when it doesn’t. Then it kills slowly. And there were two survivors. They seem totally unaffected. But they have nothing in common.

And then there’s the crash of the Phantom jet. Something very very strange caused that crash. Something that cannot be connected to the extraterrestrial organism. And yet it must be connected. The Phantom crashed immediately after flying over Piedmont.

Crichton goes to great lengths to give the impression that this is some kind of semi-official account. He gives us printouts of scientific test results. We’e not expected to read them. They’re there to make it seem like the author had access to official documents. The style is very brisk and matter-of-fact. It all works. We feel like this could all have really happened.

Crichton doesn’t get distracted by character stuff. That would ruin the illusion that this is an historical account of real events. And science fiction doesn’t need characterisation. It gets in the way. Crichton keeps his story moving along very briskly. We don’t want the book slowed down by the internal emotional agonising of the characters. We just want the facts.

There’s an intriguing scientific mystery to be solved and there’s plenty of suspense. The reader knows things that the Wildfire scientists don’t know, and we know that this really is a race against time.

The Andromeda Strain is top-notch stuff. Highly recommended.

James Hadley Chase's The Doll’s Bad News

The Doll’s Bad News (AKA Twelve Chinks and a Woman AKA Twelve Chinamen and a Woman) is a 1941 James Hadley Chase crime thriller. It was his third published novel.

James Hadley Chase (1906-1985) is an interesting figure in pulp fiction history. There was a time when paperback editions of his books were absolutely everywhere. Anywhere that paperbacks were sold his books would be there. He wrote ninety-odd novels which sold by the truckload. He is now almost entirely forgotten.

Chase was English but at the end of the 1930s he figured out that the formula for success was to write American-style hardboiled gangster stories with American settings. He had never been to America but he gave himself a crash course in American slang and the geography of American cities. He got some details wrong but his books were fast-moving, exciting and entertaining. They were also violent and had an appealingly lurid style.

The Doll’s Bad News starts with New York private eye Fenner getting a new client. She wants him to find her sister. Then some unknown guy phones and tries to convince Fenner that the girl is an escaped lunatic. Fenner isn’t buying that. He tells his secretary to stash the frail away in a hotel somewhere but the girl does a vanishing act.

Then things turn nasty and the case becomes personal for Fenner.

Fenner has a lead that takes him to Florida, to Key West. He poses as a gangster. There are two major gang bosses, Carlos and Noolen. Either one might perhaps lead him to that missing sister and to the solution to a murder. Carlos is mixed up in an illegal immigration racket. There are lots of unsavoury characters. There’s a rich guy named Thayler who owns a yacht. The nature of Thayler’s involvement isn’t clear. There are a couple of dangerous dames. Glorie is Thayler’s woman although it’s probably more complicated than that. There’s also Nightingale, who runs the funeral parlour. He has connection with both gangs.

Fenner’s idea is to play the chief gangsters off against each other. It’s a dangerous game but at least it will make things happen.

Things do indeed happen. A full-scale gang war erupts. It doesn’t erupt spontaneously - Fenner makes it erupt. There are epic gun battles on land and sea and lots of explosions. Chase figures his readers want plenty of mayhem and that’s what he’s going to give them.

Although there is some lurid subject matter there is curiously a total lack of actual sleaze content. Glorie makes it clear she’s up for some bedroom hijinks but Fenner isn’t buying. The reason for this may be Paula. Paula is Fenner’s secretary and there are hints that they’re in love with each other.

Fenner is also smart enough to know that when a case involves dangerous females a private eye who starts hopping into bed with said females can find himself in a whole world of hurt. He already has quite enough on his plate.

Fenner is a fairly typical private eye hero although perhaps more inclined to co-operate with the cops than most. He doesn’t want to bring the cops into this case because he has personal grudges to settle but he is careful not to alienate the cops. There is a definite streak of ruthlessness to Fenner. He’s one of the good guys but he’s not averse to exacting some private justice.

Chase keeps things moving along at a very brisk pace. There’s plenty of hardboiled dialogue and atmosphere. There’s a complicated but effective plot. It’s all nicely pulpy.

There’s plenty to enjoy in The Doll’s Bad News. I’ll definitely be checking out more of James Hadley Case’s work. Highly recommended.

Victor Canning's The House of the Seven Flies

Victor Canning (1911-1986) was a very popular English thriller writer who had a 50-year career. His thriller The House of the Seven Flies was published in 1952.

After leaving the army Furse had bought a boat. He earns his living from it. Mostly legally, but not always. A Dutchman mamed Sluiter offers him fifty pounds for a cruise along the English east coast but Sluiter changes his mind. He wants Furst to take him to the Netherlands. It’s an odd way to return to his own country but money is money so Furse is happy enough to oblige.

This short sea voyage has momentous consequences. The corpse is not likely to cause much trouble with the Dutch authorities. A death from natural causes - a small amount of paperwork. Of course it turns out not to be so simple. It was an ingenious murder.

The other consequence is that Furse now has a clue that could lead him to a quarter of a millions pounds’ worth of diamonds. Diamonds that were originally obtained by methods not strictly legal. In fact not even slightly legal.

The clue unfortunately is exasperating elusive. The Seven Flies - what on earth could this mean? There does not appear to be a single village, house, restaurant or anything else of that name in the entire country.

Furse has a couple of things to worry about. First, other people are interested in those diamonds. Rohner is very interested. Rohner isn’t a major crime lord but his criminal activities are extensive and varied. Secondly, there’s also a Dutch cop, Molenaar. He knows about the diamonds as well. He’s not a brilliant cop, but he’s competent and thorough. He’s an honest cop, although of course where a huge amount of money is at stake it’s unwise to assume that anyone is entirely honest.

The situation for Furse is complicated by Constanta. She’s not involved in anything criminal. She’s just a very pretty and charming young woman who happened to know Sluiter. She owns and runs a struggling tugboat operation. She’s a lovely girl, Furse has become very fond of her and she seems to have a definite romantic interest in him. Furse doesn’t want to become involved with her because he doesn’t want her dragged into anything illegal. But he is aware that he is falling in love with her.

There are other people mixed up in this business as well. There’s Rohner’s wife Elsa, who turns out to be his mistress rather than his wife. Elsa is attractive and seductive but she’s the sort of woman who double-cross her own mother. There’s Rohner’s henchman, Dekker, who might consider double-crossing his boss.There’s an old Dutch farmer and his wife, who may know more about the diamonds than they should. And there’s Furse’s pal Charlie, a very likeable crook.

Canning does a fine job of keeping us uncertain as to the exact parts these people are going to play in the game that is unfolding, and exactly which way they might jump.

Furse is an extremely interesting protagonist. He doesn’t think of himself as a criminal, but he’s a smuggler so the authorities would certainly consider him to be a crook. He has managed to rationalise his smuggling. When times are tough it isn’t really wrong to step outside the law, is it? And he has rationalised his plan to steal those diamonds. They were stolen during the war but they were insured and the insurance claim was paid. So if he finds and keeps the diamonds, it’s not really stealing is it? It’s not like anybody will be hurt. He thinks of himself as a decent law-abiding citizen who just happens to get drawn into crime by financial necessity. His rationalisations have been only partly successful. He isn’t entirely happy with himself.

In fact most of the characters in this story have the same kinds of flexible moral standards. They have all founds way to justify their actions. This is spite of the fact that the saga of the diamonds has already led to murder.

The cop Molenaar is interesting. His attitude towards the law is just slightly unconventional, in ways that would upset his superiors if they knew what he was actually up to.

This is old school British thriller fiction. No graphic violence, no sex, but excellent plotting and suspense and characters who are genuinely intriguing and a solid romance sub-plot. A fine intelligent thriller. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Canning’s excellent 1948 thriller Panther’s Moon.

Victor Canning's The Golden Salamander

Victor Canning (1911-1986) was a very popular English thriller writer who had a 50-year career. His thriller The Golden Salamander was published in 1949.

David Redfern is one of those Englishmen left somewhat adrift after wartime military service although in David’s case it was the death of his wife Julie after his return from the war that hit him harder. He blames himself (wrongly) for her death.

Now he’s in a little town named Kabarta, in Algeria, doing a job for an English university at which he was once a fellow. The job is to take charge of a huge shipment of Etruscan antiquities and arrange their shipping to England. What are Etruscan antiquities doing in Algeria? They were sent there for safekeeping during the war. They belonged to a wealthy Frenchman. He has now bequeathed them to David’s university. The man, a rich guy named Serafis, in whose house they are being stored is anxious to see them gone.

Etruscan civilisation is one of David’s subjects so he’s the ideal man for this job.

On his way to Kabarta he encounters a mudslide and has to abandon his rented car and finish his journey on foot. He comes across a lorry that has been stranded. He is curious enough to look inside one of the crates that has fallen from the lorry. It contains guns. He realises he has stumbled across a gun-running operation. He isn’t interested. It’s not his business. The war left him with a total lack of interest in causes and patriotic duty.

He meets a likeable American named Joe. Joe is an artist. He knows there’s something missing in his painting. He came to Kabarta in the hopes of finding it. There’s also a young Frenchman named Max. His paintings have what Joe’s lack but Max is looking for something else that’s missing in his life.

This is true of many of the characters in this book. They’re looking for something. David is certainly looking for something. Maybe he had it once. Maybe he never had it. But he needs to find it.

He meets a girl. Her name is Anna. He had no intention of falling in love again but it seems like it’s going to happen anyway. Maybe he loves her the way he was never able to love Julie. That could be one of things he’s looking for. But he’s looking for something else as well. Perhaps it’s a sense of purpose. Or perhaps it’s a moral strength. He has stumbled upon something illegal and wicked but he does nothing. That will have consequences. In this novel actions have consequences. David will learn this and it’s a hard lesson.

Despite his determination not to get involved in doing anything about the gun-running he does become involved. The problem is that he doesn’t understand the situation. He thinks he’s a world-weary cynic but there’s a touch of naïvete to him. He’s basically a good man and he doesn’t understand evil or corruption. David is a complex and interesting character. He is very much a flawed hero.

Among the Etruscan antiquities he discovers something not listed in the catalogue. It is a golden Etruscan salamander. Something about it haunts David. It’s as if it’s a symbol but he has to figure out what it symbolises for him.

It all builds to a very tense and exciting extended action finale. It’s a kind of hunt, with David as the hunted.

The Golden Salamander is a fine suspense thriller with a bit more substance and psychological depth than you generally expect in this genre. Canning is a writer deserving of rediscovery. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the movie adaptation of this novel, The Golden Salamander (1950), as well as Canning’s excellent 1948 thriller Panther’s Moon.

Karl Tanzler von Cosel's The Secret of Elena’s Tomb

The Secret of Elena’s Tomb was published in Fantastic Adventures in September 1947. It claims to be both a true story and an autobiographical story. And, weirdly enough, it is.

Karl Tanzler von Cosel (1877-1952) was a German-born radiologist who actually did preserve a woman’s corpse and attempt to bring it back to life. This really is his autobiographical account of those events. To say that he was eccentric would be an understatement. He was clearly quite mad, although probably well-intentioned.

The Secret of Elena’s Tomb is partly a true story. A great deal of it is certainly true. He unquestionably believed that all of it was true.

Von Cosel lived for a time in Australia, was interned during the First World and later moved to the United States. In his youth he believed he was visited by the spirit of a long-dead ancestress. While living in Australia he believed he was given a glimpse of his future bride. In Florida he met a young Cuban woman named Elena. She was dying of tuberculosis. He tried to save her life with various treatments, some scientific and some very much in the realm of pseudoscience. He had a kind of mystical belief in the power of electricity.

He also built an aircraft. He intended that he and Elena would fly away in it to some remote South Pacific isle.

Elena died but he refused to believe that her death was final. He stole her body from its tomb and kept it with him for seven years, making various attempts to preserve the body and revivify it. Eventually he was arrested. He was certified as mentally competent to stand trial but no really serious charges could be brought against him and his obviously sincere belief that he had acted for the best counted in his favour and all charges against him were dropped after he had spent a very brief period behind bars. The case became a media sensation at the time. All of this really happened.

All of this is recounted in von Cosel’s story. I’m not giving away spoilers since his story opens with his release from prison so we know how the story is going to end. And the interest in his story is not in the events themselves but in his motivations and in his interpretations of the events.

All of this is pretty much true. But von Cosel truly believed that Elena was not really dead and that she talked with him and sang to him after her death. He also recounts various dreams. It’s clear that he believed that dreams were more than just dreams, that they were in some sense true. Perhaps more true than waking life.

Many years after his own death in 1952 sensational accusations of necrophilia were levelled against him but the evidence is dubious. In his own account it appears that he believed that he and Elena had some kind of real married life after her death but his inability to distinguish between reality, dreams, wishful thinking and his odd mix of pseudoscientific, esoteric and mystical beliefs makes it impossible to know exactly what form this strange imaginary married life took.

It’s obviously a very creepy and disturbing first-person account of madness and obsession but it’s also a weirdly moving love story. For Karl Tanzler von Cosel love really was something that never dies. It’s worth reading just for its historical curiosity value and for its strangeness.

Armchair Fiction have paired this book with Leroy Yerxa’s novella Witch of Blackfen Moor in one of their two-novel paperback editions.

Victor Canning's Castle Minerva

Victor Canning (1911-1986) was an English writer whose first novel was published in 1934, his last in 1985. He wrote historical fiction, children’s books, private eye thrillers and spy fiction. He was very successful but sadly is now largely forgotten. His spy thriller Castle Minerva appeared in 1955.

David Fraser had done espionage work during the war but has settled down into a contented life as a schoolmaster. On a climbing holiday in Wales he runs into his old commanding officer, Colonel Drexel. Drexel saved David’s life during the war so when Drexel asks him to take on a cloak-and-dagger job he cannot refuse.

It seems simple. He has to babysit a young Arab prince named Jamal, in a villa in the south of France near the Spanish border.

David has a bit of a thing for aquariums and in the local aquarium he spots a pretty young woman. Being an ex-spy David knows when he’s under surveillance and this girl definitely seems to be watching him. Then she drops her handbag, and it’s obvious that she has done this deliberately. She is trying to attract his attention. She certainly has no trouble doing that. They meet again later. Her name is Sophie. David is hopelessly in love with her.

By this time alarm bells should be ringing in David’s head. It’s not just the meeting with the girl. It’s also her two male friends, very unsavoury types to be friends of such a nice girl. And there’s the missing key. And the ’phone call about the motor launch. And the dogs that don’t bark when they should. Those alarms bells don’t ring because David is too busy daydreaming about his future life with Sophie. They will of course get married. He’s not sure how many children they will have. Sophie certainly reciprocates his romantic feelings.

David has also made the acquaintance of Dunwoody, a genial eccentric middle-aged Englishman who always just happens to be on hand when something interesting happens.

Then David’s world collapses about his ears. The job he’s doing for Drexel goes very wrong. Jamal is gone. David is under police suspicion. He realises that Drexel thinks his protégé has turned traitor. David is held prisoner, but not by the police. He knows that Sophie cannot be involved in anything underhand. She is after all the girl he’s going to marry. But David is in a lot of trouble and things just keep getting worse.

There has been betrayal but there are quite a few suspects.

An interesting aspect to this novel is Canning’s brutally realistic, even cynical, view of the worlds of espionage and government. The background to David’s adventure is a power struggle in the tiny Arab principality of Ramaut. There are several players in this power struggle, one of them being the British Government. The British Government isn’t interested in freedom and democracy, or high moral principles, or the welfare of the people of Ramaut or even for that matter the welfare of the British people. Ramaut has zero strategic importance. But there is oil in Ramaut. The British Government is serving the commercial interests of a British oil company. The only consideration is money.

There is plenty of moral murkiness in this story. The bad guys don’t do bad things because they’re evil. They’re not actually evil. They do bad things for comprehensible motives. The good guys aren’t exactly paragons of virtue. Even David is no knight in shining armour. He doesn’t give a damn about freedom and democracy or Queen and Country or the people of Ramaut. His motivations are entirely personal. He doesn’t like being betrayed, he wants revenge for wrongs he has suffered and he wants the girl. He is a decent man and a likeable hero but he’s no saint.

Sophie is complicated as well. There are things about her that David needs to know but doesn’t. She could of course be the femme fatale here but she could just as easily be a victim or an innocent bystander.

This is very much a psychological spy novel. It’s more in the gritty realist tradition of Graham Greene, Eric Ambler and (later) Len Deighton than in the action-adventure Bond tradition. There is plenty of moral complexity. But it’s also very entertaining. The plotting is tight and clever, Canning pulls off some superb suspense sequences and some fine action scenes. There’s nothing dull about this novel.

Castle Minerva is superb spy fiction. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Canning’s excellent 1948 spy thriller Panther’s Moon (which really does involve panthers and oddly enough there are real tigers involved in Castle Minerva).

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.

Hal Clement's The Lunar Lichen

The Lunar Lichen is a science fiction novella (or possibly novelette) by Hal Clement. It was originally published in Future Science Fiction in February 1960.

Hal Clement (1922-2003) was an American science fiction writer. He had a real science background and tended towards the hard science fiction end of the spectrum.

A geologist named Ingersoll has made a curious discovery on the Moon. He’s one of ten members of a lunar expedition. The Moon has not yet been colonised. When their research projects are completed the expedition members will return to Earth in their spaceship.

Ingersoll has discovered lichens on the Moon. They couldn’t possible exist there, but they do. Or at least Ingersoll claims to have discovered them. Dr Imbriano is sceptical. He suspects that Ingersoll is perpetrating a scientific fraud and that the lichens are terrestrial, brought to the Moon by Ingersoll. The expedition leader, Kinchen, isn’t so sure. Fraud is a possibility but he’s not about to leap to conclusions.

The expedition soon has other problems to worry about, such as getting back to Earth. That may not be easy, and it may not be easy staying alive on the lunar surface.

There’s a chase, of a sort, across a gigantic lunar crater.

There’s also a possibility that Ingersoll discovered something much more startling and unlikely than lunar lichen.

This is not a shoot ’em up space opera. There’s no real action as such. There is however some suspense, with survival hanging in the balance for the spaceship crew. There’s a touch of paranoia as well.

This novella was published very early in 1960, only a few months after the first unmanned space probe (the Soviet Luna 2) had reached the Moon. The Moon was still somewhat mysterious. The possibility of any form of life existing on the Moon seemed very remote but nothing could be entirely ruled out.

There’s plenty of technobabble here but given Clement’s preference for hard SF it’s possible that much of it really is scientifically at least vaguely plausible. Clement does go to great lengths to demonstrate just how harsh an environment the lunar surface really is, and to point out just how alien a world without an atmosphere is. With low gravity, a hard vacuum and incredibly extreme transitions in temperature you just can’t assume that anything will work the way it works on Earth. When your lunar tractor runs short on fuel the refuelling process isn’t straightforward. Storing anything from water to food to fuel requires considerable care.

There’s also the problem that when you get to the Moon you have only so much fuel for expeditions in those lunar tractors. Use up too much fuel and you’re never going to be going back to Earth.

It’s also nice to encounter a lunar adventure that makes use of the very limited horizon on the Moon. Something can be quite close and yet quite invisible.

The Lunar Lichen is an intriguing attempt to treat lunar exploration fairly seriously whilst still telling a tense and exciting story. It’s an attempt that succeeds quite well. My preference is for outrageous fun science fiction that doesn’t worry too much about realism so this is a bit outside my comfort zone but I enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novella with Henry Kuttner’s novel The Time Trap in a two-novel paperback edition.

The Sea Trap - Nick Carter Killmaster 44

The Sea Trap, published in 1969, was the 44th of the Nick Carter Killmaster novels.

Nick Carter as American as super-spy Agent N3 was the last of the radical re-inventions of a character dating back to the 19th century, with each new re-invention having zero connection to earlier versions.

This particular title was written by Jon Messmann. It begins with sleaze and sadism, and there will be more of both to come.

This time Nick is once again up against Judas, a villain who makes many appearances in the series. Judas has had major plastic surgery. His face has been reconstructed and he has a mechanical hand which is also a singe-shot pistol. He has acquired two very creepy henchmen. Harold is a scientific genius. He is also impotent and gets his jollies from torturing women. The Tartar is a huge Mongolian with the mind of a child but with insatiable sexual urges.

To keep Harold happy Judas has arranged a supply of women for him. The women are fooled into thinking they’re applying for a job looking after an elderly recluse who owns a private island in the Caribbean.

Judas has other things on his mind. His latest master plan involves stealing submarines from the navies of various powers, for the purposes of high-stakes international blackmail. He has now stolen a top-secret US research submarine, the X-88.

Nick has five days to get the X-88 back. AXE, the shadowy US intelligence agency that employs Nick, is convinced that Judas’s secret headquarters must be in the Caribbean (although I confess I still don’t understand how they came to that conclusion). Nick is off to the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, his cover story being that he is part of a marine biological expedition.

Despite having only five days to accomplish his mission Nick finds time on the way to the Lesser Antilles to have sex with Betty Lou, a cute girl he met on the plane. She then disappears in circumstances that should have started alarm bells ringing in Nick’s heads, but he shrugs it off.

The leader of the marine biological expedition is of course a young beautiful lady scientist. Nick immediately sets out to seduce her.

Nick takes the expedition’s seaplane out to look for traces of the missing submarines. He encounters a rather battered ketch being sailed solo by a young woman named Joyce. Joyce’s sister vanished in circumstances eerily reminiscent of the disappearance of Betty Lou. Nick has picked up an important lead from Joyce. Naturally, despite being on a very tight schedule, he finds time to seduce her.

Joyce has also given Nick an idea as to how those submarines were hijacked. It’s a crazy idea and he has no evidence for it but he assumes it’s the correct explanation and of course it is. Nick’s ideas always turn out to be correct.

Nick is James Bond exaggerated almost to the point of parody but this is no spoof. We are expected to accept that Nick Carter is the most super of super-spies - tougher, smarter and more irresistible to women than regular super-spies. Nick Carter can bed more women in a weekend than James Bond can manage in a year.

Nick has an extraordinary fixation with breasts. Fortunately all the women he encounters have firm thrusting breasts and prominent nipples that are always erect. Almost every page of the novel contains something that will offend the over-sensitive and have them spluttering about how problematic and dated it all is. In 1969 nobody minded if a book was problematic as long as it was entertaining.

Judas is a very villainous creepy evil super-villain. Harold and Tartar are vicious nasty henchmen.

This is a very sleazy novel with a brutal edge to it. It’s also a very exciting and relentlessly fast-paced novel. There’s some underwater action as well, always a major bonus in my opinion.

The Sea Trap really is very pulpy and hugely enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Nick Carter Killmaster novels - the excellent The Bright Blue Death, The Executioners (also by Jon Messmann and also featuring underwater action), the slightly disappointing The Mind Poisoners, the outrageous Web of Spies and the fine Spy Castle.

Gardner Francis Fox's Silverfinger

Gardner Francis Fox (1911-1986) was a prolific author of pulp fiction in numerous genres as well as a hugely prolific writer of comics.

Silverfinger, published in 1973, was the third of his Cherry Delight sexy crime thrillers written under the pseudonym Glen Chase. These novels were sometimes marketed as the Sexecutioner series and they have some vague affinity with the Mafia thrillers that were popular at the time.

Cherise Dellissio, better known as Cherry Delight, is an ace agent for the top-secret agency N.Y.M.P.H.O. (New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organisation). She’s part of the elite Femme Fatale squad, highly trained in both combat and bedroom skills (both of which are equally useful in her line of work).

The Mafia is trying to take over the Italian shipping empire of the della Fanzio family. There are three della Fanzios, two brothers and a sister. Their father built the business and he was a hard man but his three children are not so tough. They’re frightened and they’re inclined to cave in to all the Mafia demands. Cherry has been sent to Calabria to put some backbone into the della Fanzios and to foil the Mafia’s plans.

Her first task is the keep the della Fanzios alive.

She also needs to infiltrate the Mafia operation, and specifically to get close to the local Mafia kingpin, a man known as Silverfinger. His mane of silver hair earned him his nickname but he likes it and he drives a silver-plated Mercedes-Benz 300 SL.

Somewhat to her surprise Cherry also finds herself dealing with devil-worshippers. In this part of Italy the old pagan beliefs and superstitions have survived and gradually morphed into Satanism. Cherry has to attend a Black Mass and while she’s horrified she’s also rather excited the sight of so many naked bodies. Sex is something that is never far from Cherry’s mind.

There’s plenty of action and plenty of sleaze, Cherry has some narrow escapes, she has an epic cat-fight with Silverfinger’s now discarded mistress, there’s a very high body count. It has to be said that Cherry does most of the killing, quite a bit of it with her bare hands.

Cherry is a ruthless and efficient agent although there are times when perhaps she should concentrate more on the job in hand and less on satisfying her sexual urges. She’s a feisty likeable heroine.

Fox’s prose style is pure pulp but with plenty of energy.

The plot is pretty straightforward. It’s mostly an excuse for the action scenes (which are very good) and the sex scenes (which are quite explicit). But that’s the sort of book this is. It’s a violent sleazy sexy action thriller and it’s not trying to be the least bit literary or the least bit subtle. There’s no message and the characterisations are basic. We don’t get any profound insights into Cherry’s personality or motivations. We know that she’s tough and resourceful and dedicated and she likes to get laid as often as possible. We really don’t need to know any more about her than that.

If this is your thing then Silverfinger delivers the goods. I enjoyed it. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Gardner Francis Fox’s books including the first two Cherry Delight thrillers (the excellent The Italian Connection and Tong in Cheek), several of his Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers (Lay Me Odds, To Russia With Lust and Lust, Be a Lady Tonight) and one of the Coxeman sleazy spy thrillers, The Best Laid Plans. And I’ve reviewed his superb sword and sorcery/occult thriller The Druid Stone which shows what he could do when he tried to be a bit more ambitious. He’s always entertaining.

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.

Dell Holland's The Far Out Ones

The Far Out Ones by Dell Holland is included in Stark House’s three-novel paperback edition A Beatnik Trio. It was published in 1963.

The authorship of late 50 and early 60s sleaze novels can be challenging to untangle. Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block, prior to finding fame as crime writers, made a very good living churning out sleaze fiction using pseudonyms such as Andrew Shaw. They figured it would be cool if they could get other writers to ghost-write some of these novels. Which is how William R. Coons came into the picture. He wrote sleaze novels as Andrew Shaw and as Dell Holland. The Far Out Ones is one of the books he wrote as Dell Holland.

It has to be said that The Far Out Ones doesn’t have a huge amount to do with beatniks. The only beatnik is Jim, and he never considered himself a fully-fledged beatnik.

Jim is hitchhiking and gets picked up by two gorgeous young women, Sue and Joan. Sue and Joan are headed for New York. The three need a place to stay for night and end up at Zach’s Inn. The inn is hard to miss, what with the nude girl on the roof and all. Not a picture or a statue but a real nude girl. Her name is Emmy. She’s fixing the roof for her pa. Emmy isn’t keen on wearing clothes.

Her pa is Sam. He has a distant cousin by the name of Charlie working for him as handyman. Charlie belongs to the local tribe but they’re a bit embarrassed by him. Every time he ventures into the woods he gets lost. Charlie has no more idea how to survive in the woods than any greenhorn city boy.

Jim is keen to get Joan into bed. Sam and Charlie are equally keen to bed Sue. They all get their way. Sue is a very broadminded girl and she’s happy to have two men alternating as her bed partners. Joan is a bit more prim and proper but Jim’s charm wins her over and she’s soon shedding her clothes for him.

It’s all rather cosy, until disaster strikes. But it’s not a real disaster, since Sam ends up with quite a bit of money. Sam likes making his friends happy so they all head for new York. They end up in Greenwich Village. Emmy comes along as well - she has dreams of making it as a dancer.

Joan is the only one with any keenness for work. Emmy does however get a job as a belly dancer. Jim has decided to become a famous playwright. It sounds like a good way to make a living, as long as he doesn’t actually have to write plays. He thinks he’s found a way to make his plan work.

Along the way there’s lots of sex for everybody.

Despite the fact that some later scenes take place in the Village and despite Jim’s semi-beatnik status it’s a stretch to call this a beatnik novel. It’s basically just a sleaze novel.

A sleaze novel with major comic overtones. In fact at times it approaches farce. And it is genuinely amusing and pleasingly crazy and frenetic.

It’s also reasonably sexy, with the sex being described moderately graphic (by 1963 standards). One nice thing is that everybody enjoys the sex. The women enjoy it every bit as much as the men. This is a cheerfully amoral good-natured feel-good story. Nobody gets punished for having sex. Nobody gets punished for choosing freedom rather than the daily grind of a 9 to 5 job. It’s OK to have a good time. In that respect, in its rejection of the conventional social norms of its day, I guess it could be considered a sort of counterculture or beatnik novel.

This isn’t a work with any literary aspirations but it’s a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angel

Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angel is a 1953 noir novel published by Fawcett Gold Medal.

Elliott Chaze (1915-1990) had a very long career as a novelist and journalist but wrote only nine novels, and only a minority of those qualified as crime fiction.

Tim has just finished up a spell working on an oilfield. Now he’s in his hotel, having washed off several weeks’ worth of grime and he’s feeling pretty good. And the bellboy has found a girl for him. Her name is Virginia. She’s stunningly beautiful, obviously well educated and has a cultured voice. You’d expect a girl like Virginia, if she happened to be a whore, to be a high-priced Manhattan call-girl rather than turning tricks for ten bucks a throw in some jerkwater town.

Tim isn’t complaining, not when the girl has legs like these.

Three days later they finally get out of bed and head off together. Tim has no intention of allowing anything serious to develop. He has plans and Virginia does not fit into those plans. He’ll dump her at some gas station when he’s tired of her, but he isn’t tired of her yet. Virginia’s love-making is cold and mechanical but undeniably skilful and that’s fine.

Tim’s plan is for a big heist. He’s currently on the run after breaking out of prison. But the plan is perfect and there’ll be enough money to set him up for life. Virginia might be a problem, if she learns too much about the plan.

Then they have a huge fight. They beat the daylights out of each other. They both end up covered in bruises. But the sex afterwards was incredibly hot and there was nothing cold and mechanical about Virginia’s love-making this time. Now they realise they love each other.

Insofar as either is capable of loving anything other than money.

Of course they cannot trust each other. They both know that.

You could not describe Virginia as a classic femme fatale. She never even pretends to be a good girl. With Virginia you know what you’re getting right from the start. She’s selfish and greedy and treacherous but she makes no secret of any of these things. And she is gorgeous and she’s good in bed. She’s everything Tim wants in a woman.

Tim isn’t corrupted by Virginia. He was thoroughly corrupted long before he met her. He’s a criminal and he’s ruthless. He doesn’t like murder but if it’s necessary he’ll do it. He’s selfish and unstable and a bit crazy. And he’s good in bed. He’s everything Virginia wants in a man.

The plot is nothing special. We know how a story like this is likely to end and the ending isn’t likely to be pretty. The ending is however not quite what we expect. Chaze likes the idea of fate having nasty little ironic twists in store for his characters. I have to say that I found the ending to be clever but a bit contrived.

There’s some violence and it’s kind of nasty. There’s plenty of sleaze. There’s as much noir atmosphere as you could possibly want. Virginia and Tim are not very nice people. They’re not particularly nice to each other (except when they’re having sex and the sex is a bit nasty). They’re obsessed by money and they don’t care if other people have to get hurt.

Their relationship is quite complex. There is love, of a sort. Neither of them had any intention of falling in love and whether that love is strong enough to overcome their innate greed and their natural instincts for betrayal is an open question. But however twisted and tenuous their love might be, it is there.

The heist itself is moderately clever. The plan for disposing of the evidence is a bit more ingenious. But the heist is not the focus of the book. In fact crime is not the focus of the book. The relationship between Tim and Virginia is what the novel is all about.

This is a pretty good noir novel. I’m not sure I’d put it in the very top rank of noir fiction but as a twisted love story it’s definitely top-tier. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this one with Bruce Elliott’s One is a Lonely Number in one of their excellent two-novel paperback editions.

Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent

The publication of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent in 1907 is an important milestone in the development of the spy novel. Spy fiction already existed but it was very much of the heroic sort. The Secret Agent is the beginning of a tradition in spy fiction that would reach its full flowering in the works of Eric Ambler, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, John le Carre and Len Deighton - the pessimistic, sordid, cynical school of spy fiction.

The inspiration for Conrad’s novel was an anarchist bomb outrage in London in the 1880s. Even by the standards of anarchist terrorism this was a remarkably senseless and useless act - an attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, of all things. It also seems highly likely that it was influenced by Dostoevsky’s The Devils (also known as Demons or The Possessed) although the rabidly Russophobic Conrad was unlikely to have admitted to the influence.

Mr Verloc runs a sleazy little shop in London, specialising in dirty books. He makes very little money from this trade but he has another source of income - he is a secret agent working for an unnamed European great power. He is in fact an agent provocateur. His problem is that so far he has provided some useful intelligence on the anarchist organisations he has infiltrated he has not actually managed to provoke anything. And now his employers want him to do just that. They want a terrorist outrage in Britain. They believe this will encourage the British Government to join them in a continent-wide crackdown on anarchists, socialists and other trouble-makers.

While the foreign power for which Mr Verloc works is not named it does has an emperor so it has to be the Austrians, the Germans or the Russians. Given that the Polish-born Conrad was not only motivated by his inherent Polish Russophobia but had presumably picked up on the hysterical Russophobia of 19th century England it seems reasonable to assume that the power in question is Tsarist Russia. And it’s made clear that this power is extremely reactionary which tends to confirm the view that it’s Russia.

Mr Verloc has close connections to a committee of anarchist activists. They are in fact a motley collection of dreamers, ineffectual agitators, incompetent propagandists, lunatics, losers and would-be terrorists who would be unlikely to terrify even a sensitive five-year-old child. Somehow Mr Verloc will have to find a way to produce the required terrorist outrage or risk losing his lucrative post as a secret agent. That would mean that he might actually have to work for a living, a prospect that horrifies him. Mr Verloc has a wife to support, as well as Stevie. Stevie is his wife’s brother, a young man who is somewhat child-like, over-sensitive and over-excitable.

Most of Mr Verloc’s anarchist contacts are unlikely to be of much help to him but the Professor is another story. The Professor makes bombs. He also carries a bomb with him permanently concealed in his person, a bomb which he intends to detonate if a policeman ever tries to arrest him.

Preventing such acts of terrorism is the task of the Special Crimes division at Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Heat is an old hand at the job and he is very competent. His superior, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Special Crimes division, is perhaps not so competent. He’s an ex-colonial policeman but he is more adept at playing politics than at catching anarchists. The sensible course of action would clearly be to leave the matter to Chief Inspector Heat but the Assistant Commissioner, for reasons which an ungenerous observer might describe as self-interest, decides to meddle.

Conrad clearly has little sympathy for these anarchist misfits and even less sympathy for secret agents. He doesn’t have a huge amount of sympathy for the police either, or for the governments that employ them. And for all his contempt for the anarchists he has to admit that the society they wish to overthrow is corrupt and unjust. He just doesn’t think that throwing bombs will lead to a better society.

Conrad was a deeply pessimistic writer but his tone in this novel is ironic and mocking. It’s often rather amusing. This is not quite the black comedy of Greene’s spy thrillers but at times it does approach black comedy. The world of Conrad’s novel is sordid and cynical. This is not quite Greeneland but one could say that Conrad was mapping out the territory that would later become Greeneland.

This is of course a lot more than a spy novel but it’s The Secret Agent’s place in the history of spy novels with which this review is concerned. Don’t expect a great deal of action and excitement or even suspense (although there is some suspense at the end). The Secret Agent is a study in the psychology of espionage, and the psychology of betrayal, and its influence on writers like Greene and le Carre make it a crucial step in the evolution of the genre. And they make it essential reading for serious students of espionage fiction. Recommended.

James O. Causey's Frenzy

Frenzy, published by Fawcett in1960, is one of the three excellent noir novels written by James O. Causey between 1957 and 1960. These novels were quite successful at the time but for reasons unknown his writing career petered out after Frenzy.

Norman Sands (the first-person narrator) is a loser and a louse. He’s a two-bit grifter working as a shill in a casino. Or he was working there, until he slept with Robin. Robin was a singer at the casino but she belonged to the boss. The boss didn’t take kindly to the idea of her sleeping with Norman. Norman gets a severe beating and, totally down-and-out, he winds up in his home town. He left Mason Flats after an unfortunate fight which left another kid dead. That was a decade-and-a-half ago.

We get his backstory early on. He started messing up his life really early. There was a woman, Laurie, with whom he was hopelessly in love at the age of sixteen but there were plenty of other reasons that he became a loser and a louse.

He discovers that his brother Matt is still planning to marry Laurie. Matt is a failed businessman.

Mason Flats is about to be hit by oil fever. Nobody is sure if there is any oil or how much there is but there’s plenty of greed. For a smart guy like Norman, who knows all the crooked angles, that’s an opportunity. The problem is Murdoch. Murdoch owns Mason Flats. He owns the Chief of Police. He owns the mayor. There is plenty of corruption in the town and Murdoch has a finger in every corrupt pie. He’s not going to be pleased about a city punk moving in and running his own corrupt schemes.

Norman is confident he can outwit these dumb hicks. He’ll have to use Matt. Matt is dumb and naïve but even worse he has a streak of idealism. He is however necessary to Norman.

Women always get Norman into trouble and another dangerous woman is about to enter the scene. Shannon is a thousand-dollar whore. She belongs to Murdoch. It would be crazy even to consider taking her to bed but she has a fabulous body and Norman thinks she’s worth the risk. Maybe she’s in love with Norman. Maybe she just sees him as her ticket out of Mason Flats. Maybe she’s crazy and unstable. She’s certainly ruthless. Norman doesn’t care. He wants her.

Norman’s chief asset as a grifter is his persistence. He can have the daylights beaten out of him and immediately he’ll start working on a new angle. You can admire his refusal to give up, or you can shake your head in wonder at a dumb punk who never learns his lesson.

Norman is dumb and smart at the same time. His schemes are clever and devious and daring. That’s the smart part. He’s also a small-timer trying to play games with the big boys and the big boys play very rough. Norman is out of his league. He might be smarter than Murdoch and his cronies but they have organisation and muscle behind them and they’re utterly ruthless. If Norman makes one slip-up he’s a dead man. He really should quit while he’s ahead but he won’t. That’s the dumb part.

Norman is definitely a louse. But he’s a louse with complicated motivations. Of course he wants big money but women are perhaps a bigger motivating factor. His relationships with the three women - Robin, Laurie and Shannon - are complex in both emotional and sexual ways. Mostly Norman wants to prove he’s not a loser. He has a pathological need to win.

Norman Sands may be the most vicious treacherous conscienceless amoral protagonist in all of noir fiction. He will betray anybody and everybody. No scheme is too dirty for him. Despite this he’s fascinating. His risk-taking is breathtaking. He never ever gives up. And perhaps he does, in his twisted way, love one of the three women. Even scarier, perhaps he loves all three, but not in a way that could possibly be described as healthy.

The three women are rather complicated as well. They’re not straightforward femmes fatales. Shannon is the closest to being a classic femme fatale but her motivations are understandable from her point of view. Given that Norman is far more morally corrupted than Shannon he certainly does not need a femme fatale to corrupt him. He’s more dangerous to these women that they are to him.

This is noir fiction on steroids and it’s excellent. Very highly recommended.

Stark House have issued all three Causey noirs in a single paperback volume and it’s a must-buy. I’ve also reviewed his two earlier noir novels, Killer Take All! and The Baby Doll Murders.