Witness to Myself

Seymour Shubin
Witness to Myself

Hard Case Crime, 2006

As a teenager Alan Benning once spends a holiday with his parents in a mobile home at the ocean. Alan runs along the beach, steps into the woods and about a mile away from where his parents left off meets a little girl. Her kite is stuck in a tree, and Alan helps remove the kite. Sexually excited, Alan attempts to touch the girl, she begs him not to hurt her, Alan panics and strangles her first, and then throws her on the ground.

Returning to his parents, Alan lays down with a fever, until the family is going away forever from the small town where the beach was located. From that moment fifteen years passes, Alan graduates from university, becomes a successful lawyer, gets a promising job in the charity-specialized company, dates a sweet and sympathetic nurse. But the episode at the beach, the outbreak of violence, does not make the hero rest. He should go back to this town and try to find out whether he had killed an innocent girl or not.

The novel with such dubious hero (an attack on a little girl does not honor him) is not told by Alan himself, but by someone close to him, his cousin Colin, working as a true-crime journalist. Colin writes articles for several tru-crime magazines, knows many detectives, watches popular TV shows about unsolved murders. And as the story is told by journalist, whom Alan have never talked about his only crime to, you can at the very beginning of the book conclude that Alan will pay for his act - and repent before his cousin.

Witness to Myself is a fine example of modern noir, quick, chilling, appealing for sympathy towards the main character, but which does not overdo it with the psychological stuff. Alan could easily come off the pages of an early novel written by Highsmith, only Shubin is not burdened with psychological layouts, trying to move faster with his story. Alan is of that category of noir heroes, whose near-perfect existence marred by a single shameful act from the past. And this act is sitting like cancer in his brain. Sooner or later, it will still kill its host. And it seems the more ideal he is for those who surround him, and in the course of the novel Alan really in everyone's eyes will be almost a saint, the harder he gets along with his past.

Shubin is a veteran writer and Witness to Myself indicates that the writer is still in excellent shape.

Little Girl Lost

Richard Aleas
Little Girl Lost

Hard Case Crime, 2004

John Blake, a private investigator in a small two man detective agency, accidentally learns about the death of a stripper Miranda Sugarman from the newspaper. Miranda died as a stripper, but when John saw her the last time 10 years ago, she was going to become a doctor studying in one of the colleges in the Midwest. Miranda was Blake’s first love, and he just can not leave her death to the police, which, in turn, unlikely to thoroughly investigate the murder of a stripper in a third-rate bar, given that there are zero clues.

Blake's most interested in how a future doctor could do such a striking way to the bottom of society. Blake begins to delve into the suspicious circumstances of the murder, gradually learning of the lives of the visitors and employees of seediest places in New York.

Aleas’s debut novel was written by the old paperbacks rules, adjusted for the fact that everything is taken serious. Every death is horrible and there is no feeling when you know well: the protagonist somehow will wriggle out of all his problems. A familiar background is here updated with modern technology: Blake uses the Internet and mobile phone.

The second and final novel about Blake a few years ago was rated by me so high that I named it one of the best recent mysteries in the field. Aleas knows how to stun the reader, and the novel’s final twist was so bold so for several days I wasn’t myself, turning the end in my head over and over. Little Girl Lost also offers a powerful finale, which strength is spoiled by some predictability.

The main Aleas’s achievement is the moral growth of his characters, which is very rare in serial books. Even Marlow, from novel to novel, remained unchanged. Blake by the finale is wiser and changes his way of life. And little gitl is lost forever.

The Gutter and The Grave

Ed McBain
The Gutter and The Grave

Hard Case Crime, 2005

Matt Cordell was a private investigator once. Now he drinks all day, panhandling and sleeping in flophouses. All because of a woman: Cordell found his beautiful wife in bed with his partner, beat his face to a pulp, almost ended up in prison, escaped a conviction with the loss of a private detective license.

An old acquaintance finds swollen and smelly Cordell in one of the parks of New York. Ex-P.I. has not seen his pal for more than five years. Friend, Johnny, asks for help with a small problem at work: in his tailor shop there were thefts from cash register for six months, and Johnny suspects a business partner, Dom Archese. After long persuading, Cordell agrees to help Johnny look into the thefts at the shop, where they find Archese shot to death, and written on the wall with chalk Johnny’s initials “J.B.”. Cordell offers Johnny to surrender to police and become a police chief suspect, and Cordell promises to find the killer and clear Johnny’s name.

I think this is the first novel by McBain, which I read, and I think it will not be the last. McBain, mostly familiar to readers as the author of police procedurals, keeps steadily on private detectives field. How often have you read detective stories where the detective would have been drunk and a bum? Cordell during the investigation partially stays on the wagon, and it is to his own advantage: the detective will find the murderer by the end.

McBain plays by the rules, gradually introducing all the suspects, throwing tips and clues and allowing the reader to figure out the killer. Even though the novel inhabits some cliches and banalities, The Gutter and The Grave reads with gusto. McBain here even parodies the famous trick when beaten detective escapes from the hospital to continue the investigation. It is not clear who every time then pays for the medical bills for these fugitives?

Cordell is a tragic figure himself, and the world of the novel is not particularly bright, nevertheless, McBain adds a few jokes in his novel. In 1958, jokes about Hitler had not yet gone out of fashion.

It’s a great novel from the master of the genre.

Fade to Blonde

Max Phillips
Fade to Blonde

Hard Case Crime, 2004

Ray Corson virtually works for free for a local building contractor, and it starts to bother him. Corson came to Hollywood as a screenwriter, but also tried himself in the ring, in front of the camera, and now doing odd jobs. When an attractive blonde finds him and asks to help her with one thing, Corson immediately quits his job, knocking out the payment from his boss.

A blonde named Rebecca LaFontaine (of course, a pseudonym) offers a small sum of money for Corson so he would help her get rid of a persistent suitor Lance Halliday, and for get rid of him the girl means to kill him. Corson is not ready to kill and offers simply to scare Halliday with more peaceful ways. Halliday owns a small film studio, engaged in the production of pornographic films, as well as on the side deals drugs. While Ray is looking for ways to approach Halliday, the dead bodies begin to pile up.

It is not difficult to guess that Phillips wrote an homage to paperback novels from the 50s. The detective hero himself came as if from noir novel (eventually Corson considers killing Halliday and solving all problems), but the novel’s plot here is purely mystery. Phillips plays by the rules, scattering hints and pieces throughout the text, but doing without trickery.

Charm of Fade to Blonde lays not only in the plot and style. The novel reads more like a book from 40s or 50s that has been forgot and only now was found. It is perfect to learn to distinguish the original from the copy. Connoisseurs of old PBO novels will find the whole scenes and the individual words that you can read here, but never could find in the paperbacks of the middle of the last century.

«"You can touch one for a dollar, "she said.

"What?"

"Give me a dollar," she said, drying her back.

After a moment, I took a dollar from my pocket and handed it to her. She folded it twice and tucked it under the right strap of her suit, then swung my towel around her shoulders like a shawl. Beneath it, she lowered her left strap. She took hold of my right hand, slipped it under the towel, and placed it on her breast. It was heavy and firm. The skin was still cold and goose-pimpled, but I could feel the heat inside.»

This scene gives a particularly good idea of the differences between the two eras. I find it difficult to imagine that such an episode would find a place somewhere in the book of a detective imprint (although we can not exclude softcore publishers).

Fade to Blonde is a clever homage and strong whodunit.

Joyland

Stephen King
Joyland

Hard Case Crime, 2013

Student Devin Jones spends a summer working at an amusement park Joyland, located in North Carolina. In 1973, Disneyland has not yet gobble up all the other parks in America and become a monopolist, and organizers expect a steady flow of visitors. In addition to the old-timers are hired temporarily students – to do a dirty work. Devin will have to dance in the heat in a fur dog suit, scrape the vomit with seat rides, pick up trash, control a cart train, and he is ready for it all. Working in the park all day long helps the protagonist to forget his first love, who broke his heart. Description of the park everyday life is mixed with supernatural element: in the horror pavilion once a girl had been murdered. The killer was never found, although the police had even photos of the suspect taken by park workers. And some old-timers say that the ghost of the murdered girl sometimes shows up to children and adults in the horror pavilion.

Stephen King has written a short novel for the publishing house specializing in pulp classics. This novel is short only by King’s standards, it’s only 280 pages, but by the standards of paperbacks of 50s and 60s it’s 100 pages too long. Good two-thirds of the novel is devoted to the everyday life of the park, just in the spirit of King:

«I ride-jockeyed. I flashed the shys in the mornings-meaning I restocked them with prizes-and ran some of them in the afternoons. I untangled Devil Wagons by the dozen, learned how to fry dough without burning my fingers off, and worked on my pitch for the Carolina Spin. I danced and sang with the other greenies on the Wiggle-Waggle Village's Story Stage. Several times Fred Dean sent me to scratch the midway, a true sign of trust because it meant picking up the noon or five PM take from the various concessions. I made runs to Heaven's Bay or Wilmington when some piece of machinery broke down and stayed late on Wednesday nights-usually along with Tom, George Preston, and Ronnie Houston-to lube the Whirly Cups and a vicious, neck-snapping ride called the Zipper . Both of those babies drank oil the way camels drink water when they get to the next oasis. And, of course, I wore the fur.

In spite of all this, I wasn't sleeping for shit.»

With nostalgia in his voice, an elderly narrator recalls this summer in "Joyland", and then a fall, for Devin decided to postpone his admission to college. The abundance of details does not seem excessive, you can feel the era with your skin. In «Author's Note» King writes that «much of what I call" the Talk "doesn't exist» - carnival slang used in the novel was half-invented. But all these greenies, gazoonies, rubes, points, etc are not only organically woven into the text (you never uknow what was invented and what was not), but also will make you laugh. And if King removed the mystery element Joyland would become a normal production coming-of-age novel.

But King did not remove the mystery, though took it to the side, making the novel crooked to one side. Pulp writer would never allow himself to write this book: the thrills here are one on hundred pages, not enough. Only in the last 50 pages King seems to recall, and mystery element breaks through the surface. Though whodunnit here is so-so and puzzle is rough. King, alas, failed with a serial killer plot.
I was confused also with the author’s use of the grammar. Italian «Capisce» suddenly becomes «kapish», and the characters with accents on paper suddenly lose all apostrophes:

«When a guy does that, I notify em that they're foulin the line. The points? Never.» If consider the scene where mentioned the driver who ran down the child to death because he was on the phone while driving (in 1970, it is unlikely that the driver worked at law enforcement agencies), the editor deserves a reprimand.

King has not lost the talent, but there is little joy for the reader in this Joyland.

Two for the Money

Max Allan Collins
Two for the Money

Hard Case Crime, 2004


Initially, two novels Bait Money and Blood Money, which make up this book, were published separately, but here on the author's intention they are made in one novel, as if divided into two parts.

Nolan, a professional burglar, is not a youth no more. The thieves do not retire, Nolan's peace is not expected, as well. After killing a mobster’s brother 16 years ago and taking the money that did not belong to him, Nolan made a run, forced to retrain from club manager to a robber who with a group of professionals robbing banks, armored trucks and other institutions, suffering from an overabundance of money. Nolan robbed and robbed, saving money until one day he was recognized by the mobster’s friends and got a couple of bullets in the side. Hardly recovered from his injuries, Nolan now has to act: all that he had saved now not available and he has to somehow put up with the mobster and try to get money for retirement.

Charlie, mobster from the top of the Chicago organization, has forgiven Nolan for his brother's death, but never forgave the humiliation. Charlie gives Nolan a task: Nolan has to pay Charlie 100,000 dollars, then they will be even. Nolan had to go to the next robbery, and not with the professionals but with amateurs, with the youngsters, among them is Jon, nephew of the former robber and collector of comic books.

«Only it was Charlie's laugh: if Nolan fucked up, and died, or ended in stir, Charlie would just love it; and if Nolan did pull this off, Charlie would be a hundred grand ahead and would have saved face with the Family. Nolan would've appreciated the joke, but for the dull ache in his side from Charlie's last attempt to kill him».

Two for the Money is a pleasure to read for someone who is familiar with Richard Stark's Parker novels. Collins himself admits that his books about Nolan are such voluntary rewriting of Stark’s novels, Parker rip-offs. Collins’ novels read at first only to find borrowing from Stark. Here is a description similar to the description of this of Stark’s book, and this character as if straight from Stark. Collins borrows plot lines, motivations, descriptions. But by the beginning of the second book, Blood Money, we begin to notice not the similarities but differences. Nolan is much older that Parker and from time to time think about his retirment. Parker is a thief who can not be not a thief. Nolan is a thief not by calling, who dreams of his own club and a quiet life. And even more so Parker would never have allowed himself to become friends with a greenhorn, also a collector of comic books (in Jon, it seems, Collins expressed his passion for comic books).

In the second book Collins is gradually released from the Parker complex, and began to write more relaxed, less looking at the venerable teacher. Collins’ novels, of course, is not on par with Stark’s novels, they are secondary, but it's good entertainment stories, with lively dialogue (here, by the way, the dialogues are much more natural than in Quarry).

361

Donald Westlake
361

Hard Case Crime, 2005

23-year-old Ray Kelly discharges from the army in Germany and returnes home. In New York, he is be met by his father, Willard Kelly. Kelly Sr. behaves strange, not wanting to leave the hotel room, and Ray himself goes to his father. In the father’s car they are going to a small town where Willard and Ray’s brother Bill live. But on their way they are shot at by unknown people, and Ray wakes up in hospital two months later. His father is dead, and he lost an eye. Later, Ray learns that Bill's wife was hit by a car. Ray suspects that someone is trying to erase from the Earth the whole Kelly family.

When a messenger tells Ray and his brother that their father was not supposed to come to New York, Ray kicks out from a messenger some useful information. It turns out that Kelly Sr., who worked as a lawyer, even before the war had a connection with New York-based organization (read: mob). Ray, a young man with a glass eye, is left with two suitcases of his things and lost everything, which he returned home to, steps on the trail of revenge.

The third Westlake’s novel, written under his own name, is perhaps even darker than his debut "The Cutie". Some may find the story quite unoriginal, with a bunch of beaten twists and techniques, but how Westlake controles these twists and techniques! Yes, this is not the first novel about a man who, after returning from service, is faced with the fact that all his dreams were dashed in an instant. And it is not the first novel of revenge, where a single man is opposed to mob. The main Westlake’s finding is the voice of the protagonist Ray Kelly. Muted, flat, dry, unemotional voice of the narrator can make to think that Ray himself doesn’t care what would be with him and his offenders, but through the cracks in the dry narrative seep anger and rage. Kelly is generally faced with the problem (after a few turns of the plot): to avenge or not avenge? And by choosing revenge, he puts himself in the category of those who do not believe that revenge is a dish served cold.

Very good. 361 times good.

The Cutie

Donald Westlake
The Cutie
(originally published as The Mercenaries)

Hard Case Crime, 2009

Clay’s night sleep is disturbed by the familiar heroin addict named Billy-Billy Cantell asking Clay for help. Clay works for the organization (read: mafia) as an “accident man”: he arranges accidents on the orders of his boss Ed Ganolese. Cantell is scared to death: he woke up in a strange apartment with a dead girl lying behind him. Hardly having time to escape before the arrival of the police, Billy-Billy leaves in a flat hat with his name and fingerprints all over the apartment. Small-time dealer and user sure did not kill the girl, and Clay believes him: someone framed Billy. In another situation, Clay would simply arranged an "accident" for the addict, so Billy during the police interrogation wouldn’t betray the secrets of the organization (Cantell is not just user, but also a heroin dealer and also works for the organization), but Billy during the war met impotrant people from the European organization, and you can not just kill him now.

The police immediately visit Clay’s apartment, where he hid Billy, but when the cops leave, Billy escapes through the window already. Now, half of New York City Police is looking for a two-bit user who, they believe, killed the girl, Mavis St. Paul, who was the mistress of an influential old man with big connections. And Ed Ganolese tells Clay to find Billy before he will make great wrongs. And in addition to Billy, Clay must find that cutie, who framed Billy and brought so much trouble for the organization.

The beginning of the novel may seem a bit familiar, but, believe me, this is only the beginning, further in the novel there will be a lot of surprises, so that everything will turn upside down. «The Cutie» is Westlake's debut novel under his own name (he wrote several softcore novels before that one), and what a debut it is! Westlake writes sparingly, with humor, but let humore not to fool you: the book is very grim, and the finale is starless night.

Cutie from the title of the novel is by no means the girl from the cover, but the man, who framed the unfortunate Cantell, and later gave more than one trouble to organization. Westlake, which tells the story from Clay’s point of view, strikingly demonstrates, step by step, cutie’s tricks, so we are on one side with Clay and his boss, Ed, and also want to capture the villain immedietly.

Here is a quote from the dialogue, when Clay and Ed discuss the cutie:

«"Okay, "said Ed. "Okay, okay. He asked for it. He went a little too far this time, Clay, he got a little too cute for his own good. The cops have Billy-Billy now, and that means they'll close the goddam case . That means he's ours, Clay. That son of a bitch is ours, we don't have to turn him over to the law at all. "

"That's right," I said. "I hadn't thought about that."

"Neither did he, the bastard. But I'm thinking about it. Clay, I want that son of a bitch more than ever now. I want him right in front of me. He's mine, Clay. You get him and you deliver him to me. That little cutie has got just a bit too goddam cute for his own good."»

Westlake in his novel finds a balance between the classic detective story and a thriller about the mafia. Clay in the middle of the novel tells to his beloved Ella how he got into the organization and how he, a pretty and educated man, became a mercenary and hitman for a criminal boss. Clay is not deluded about himself: he is who does what he is asked, he is a murderer, but only when it is necessary for bussiness. The heaviest choice Clay will need to be done is choosing between personal life and work.

«The Cutie» is a novel of immense power, coldly written, a poem in prose about that there are no good people at all. But good books there are, and this is one of them.

Songs of Innocence

Richard Aleas
Songs of Innocence

Hard Case Crime, 2007

A former private investigator and currently the administrator of the course «Creative Nonfiction» at Columbia University, John Blake once lost his beloved and barely survived himself. 30-something-year-old Blake, himself attending a course on creative writing, moves closer to Dorrie Burke, who also attends the course. When Dorrie found dead in her apartment with a bag over her head and a book «Final Exit» next to her, the police do not doubt that she committed suicide. Dorrie's mother is not so sure of it and hires Blake to conduct an investigation of suicide and show to her that it was murder. Dorrie trusted Blake, and he knew her secret that she kept from her mother. Dorrie worked in massage parlors like sort of a prostitute and once took Blake's promise that if it something’d happen, Blake would have to remove all traces of the second life of the girl. The PI removes all information from Dorrie’s laptop that may reveal her secrets. On the Internet Blake looks for clues, how he would find people with whom she Dorrie worked. Among them is a dangerous mobster, a Hungarian by birth.

It is difficult to say who has written this book so well, Richard Aleas or John Blake. Aleas cleverly combined the two professions in Blake, a private detective and a writer, and this is what explains why this Blake not only knows where and whom to look for, but how apply words to each other, but still with such grace. There are enough detective writers in the world literature, Aleas is not the first in there, but he successfully solved the problem, which troubled many readers of detective stories about private detectives, written from the first person view: why do these men who shoot well and hit in the face (and are hitted themselves not less) well tell their stories so good? Here the answer is obvious: Blake has the literary talents.

Blake, however, is not demure and not a homebody. In his past as a private eye he had lost any kind of innocence, and because of that the tour to massage parlors of New York (and «Songs of Innocence» is exactly this trip), with its meetings with the lower social classes, dangerous criminals, strong prostitutes, does not scare or surprise Blake at all. He has already seen it. He already has passed it.

Aleas not only writes well, he's a masterful plotter, with each chapter throwing new puzzles. The novel is built by the canons of 30-50s pulp fiction, and if not the sudden appearance of a laptop in the first chapters, one would think that the action is taken place in our time. However, «Songs of Innocence» is a story of today, with mobile phones, laptops, Internet, e-cards in the subway. It should complicate the task for a writer, because he must take into account new elements added to the classic story. And here Aleas manages to be original: not revealing the plot, I will note only that modern technology plays a key role in the highly twisted plot.

This is a book about the irreversibility of the secrets and mysteries of the people; about that always there is a line that under no circumstances must not be crossed. Already closer to the finale Blake recalls that he once has been told by a detective from the NYPD:

«You work like a bastard for days and days and nothing makes any sense. You're lost, you're confused, you've got no answers and you're wasting your client's money. You're a fraud, you've always been a fraud ... one day, you think of something. Or you see something. Or someone tells you something. And suddenly, everything that didn't make sense does. Only here's the thing: nine times out of ten, you wish it didn't. You wish you were a fraud again. Because the things people hire us to figure out are the ugliest fucking things in the world».

For the same reason we read books: to get to the dark corners of human soul, to look at these ugliest things, to be a little different after reading. And songs of innocence no longer play in your head.