Blonde Bait - Stephen Marlowe

Stephen Marlowe is best remembered for his long-running series of paperback originals about private detective/international troubleshooter Chester Drum. But he also wrote science fiction under his birth name, Milton Lesser, and various pseudonyms, big historical novels late in his career as Stephen Marlowe, and numerous non-series noir and suspense novels, also as Marlowe. One of those stand-alones is BLONDE BAIT, originally published by Avon in 1959 with cover art by Ernest Chiriacka under his pseudonym Darcy. Stark House has just reprinted it under the great Black Gat Books imprint.

There’s at least one other noir novel entitled BLONDE BAIT, this one by Ed Lacy (Leonard Zinberg). I reviewed it more than ten years ago and had some reservations about it. But if ever there was a title that fit a genre, BLONDE BAIT is it. It goes together perfectly with noir. The blonde in this case is Bunny Kemp, a beautiful, unhappily married woman who pays a visit to a ski resort in upstate New York where our narrator, Chuck Odlum, is also unhappily married (to the resort’s owner) and runs the ski school there. Bunny and her husband have a secret, though, and once Chuck gets involved with her, things quickly spiral out of control and more than one brutal murder occurs. You know how it goes in noir novels.

I really enjoyed this BLONDE BAIT. Marlowe was a top-notch writer, skillfully mixing character, setting, and plot to create a fast-paced novel that careens along from one complication to another in a series of harrowing scenes. As Gil Brewer did in SATAN WAS A WOMAN, which I read recently, Marlowe uses nature to great effect, making the snowy setting almost a character in itself.

I’m glad Black Gat Books has reprinted this novel. It’s one I never came across, never even heard of as far as I recall. It’s an excellent yarn, and if you’re a fan of Fifties hardboiled noir, you shouldn’t hesitate to snap up this BLONDE BAIT. It's available in paperback and e-book editions.