The Hot Beat - Robert Silverberg

A lot of Robert Silverberg’s pen-name books have been reprinted over the past ten or fifteen years, which is a good thing. Most of them, even the so-called sleaze books, usually had some sort of crime or noir element to them, and I think he does an excellent job with them. The latest such early effort is THE HOT BEAT, originally published by Magnet Books in 1960 under the pseudonym Stan Vincent and recently reprinted under Silverberg’s name by Hard Case Crime.

This one is set in Los Angeles, and the plot concerns swing band leader and musician Bob McKay, who was a star before he hit the skids because of his drinking, which cost him his band and the beautiful starlet he was dating. Now he’s under arrest for the murder of a prostitute, and no one believes he’s innocent except his former girlfriend and a sympathetic newspaper columnist. They team up to try to find the evidence to clear McKay’s name and expose the real killer.

There’s a bit of a procedural feel to this one as Silverberg follows the unofficial murder investigation step by step. The story moves along nicely with an occasional twist, and the solution to the mystery is well put together and satisfying. There are a few mild sex scenes. Overall, this novel is a little on the lightweight side but very well-written and entertaining.

The Hard Case Crime edition is rounded out by three short stories Silverberg wrote for the late Fifties crime digests TRAPPED DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE and GUILTY DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE. These were published by the same company that published Magnet Books. “Jailbait Girl” appeared under the pseudonym Ed Chase in the September 1959 issue of GUILTY. It’s a con game story, and there’s no actual jailbait girl, as there very well could have been in that era. “Drunken Sailor” appeared under the name Eric Rodman in the October 1958 issue of TRAPPED and is about a sailor on leave in New York City who runs into a dame—and trouble. “Naked in the Lake” was first published in the February 1958 issue of TRAPPED under the name Ray McKensie. It’s about an ambitious guy married to a beautiful heiress, with a pregnant girlfriend on the side. That’s a set-up ripe for murder, of course. All three of these stories are predictable, but they’re fun to read and excellent examples of Silverberg’s ability to produce worthwhile and saleable fiction for whatever market he set his sights on.

Overall, I had a great time reading THE HOT BEAT, which is available in both trade paperback and e-book editions, with a nice cover by Claudia Caranfa. It’s an evocative reminder of the era in which these stories were first published, and it only whets my appetite for more of Silverberg’s crime fiction. He mentions in his introduction that he wrote several more noir novels. I hope we’ll see those reprinted in the future.