In 1936, Culture Publications, the publisher of the Spicy line of pulps, decided to branch out into hardbacks, using the same authors who filled the pages of their pulps. The result was a company called Valhalla Press, which managed to put out only two books before somebody decided it was a bad idea: PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER by Arthur Wallace (a name that may or may not have been a pseudonym, nobody seems to know) and KILLER’S CARESS by Cary Moran, who was actually a young writer living in Texas named Edwin Truett Long. PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER is a real rarity. I’ve never seen a copy in the wild and it can be found for sale on-line only now and then.
But KILLER’S CARESS is a different story. It’s been reprinted a couple of
times, most recently by Black Dog Books. That edition is still available in
trade paperback and e-book editions on Amazon. I’ve had a copy for quite a
while, and after seeing something about it on Facebook recently, I was prompted
to read it.
The protagonist of this novel is gossip columnist Johnny Harding, who writes a popular newspaper column called Johnny-On-the-Spot. As such, he knows everybody from bartenders to bigshot politicians, from hat check girls to ruthless gangsters and gamblers. He has a beautiful redheaded assistant and a big lug of a driver. One evening when he’s headed out to make his rounds of the nightspots and hunt material for his column, he’s nearly rubbed out by a couple of hired killers. Later in the evening, he runs into the rich, sleazy playboy who has inherited the newspaper where he works. Said playboy has enemies all over the place including his estranged actress wife who’s trying to divorce him, a gambler and nightclub owner, the above-mentioned hat check girl, a news photographer he’s fired, and Johnny himself. The way the guy keeps getting threatened, you know he’s going to wind up dead and Johnny is probably going to be blamed for it.
But that’s not exactly what happens. Somebody winds up being murdered, all right, but it’s a friend of Johnny’s, and that sets him off on a whirlwind of action, detection, and seduction. Johnny’s furious quest to avenge his pal reminded me very much of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, although Johnny, while a tough little mug (I kept seeing a young Jimmy Cagney in my head), is no Mike Hammer. The fact that he has a pal on the homicide squad and a competent knockout of an assistant also reminded me of the Hammer novels, and I can’t help but wonder if Mickey ever read KILLER’S CARESS.
Eventually there are more murders. The pace seldom lets up, and Long crams a lot into a story that takes place in about 48 hours. Everything leads up to a great scene on a gambling ship that includes not only a gathering of the suspects and an explanation of who committed the crimes, but also features a big shootout as the cops raid the boat.
The plot is really complex, but it’s one of those that seems to make sense, especially if you squint your eyes a little and hold your mouth just right. The big appeal to me is Long’s breathless, breezy style, which he was already perfecting in dozens of stories for the Spicy pulps under various pseudonyms and house-names. I had a great time reading KILLER’S CARESS. It reminded me of the hardboiled yarns I grew up reading, and I give it a high recommendation.
I’m also very much interested in the career of Edwin Truett Long, especially since I found out that he’s buried in Fort Worth, about 20 miles as the crow flies from where I’m typing this. But more about him in another post sometime, when I’ve read more of his work.
3 comments:
Hubin has PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER by Arthur Wallace, a pseudonym of Frank Armer (1895-1965), with no further information on the author himself. PASSION is the only book attributed to Armer. The book was reissued by Exotic Books in 1951 as MAN CRAZY as by James Clayford, itself a house pseudonym. I have not read it.
Frank Armer apparently had an extensive career in publishing, including pulp magazines, but no mention is made of PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER, a pulp title if ever there was one. Link: https://www.pulpartists.com/Armer-P.html
The dates given for Armer in the bio match those in Hubin, so it seems likely that we are not dealing with two Frank Armers.
I think Hubin may be mistaken about Frank Armer writing as Arthur Wallace. I don't recall ever reading anything else about Armer being a writer, only a publishing executive. But this far down the road from those days, it's hard to be sure of anything.
Agreed - lost in the mists of time as they say. From the bio and what Contento shows, it appears that Armer did some writing and editing early in his career under his own name: http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/n00/n00275.htm#A166
Contento also shows quite a few entries for "Arthur Wallace" in the 1930s and 1940s, some of it for magazines Armer was associated with: http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/n10/n10493.htm#A48
But, as you point out there is no statement saying the two names belong to the same person, so ...
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