Until recently, I’d never heard of hardboiled mystery author Dana Chambers, whose real name was Albert Fear Leffingwell. Looking at his books, though, they seem to be right in my wheelhouse, and since Stark House Press is making it easy by reprinting them, I recently read the first in the Jim Steele series, SOME DAY I’LL KILL YOU, published originally in hardback by Dial Press in 1939 and reprinted twice in paperback by Popular Library in 1949 and 1953, prior to the recent Stark House double volume that also includes the second novel in the series, TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING, and an informative introduction by Curtis Evans.
With a name like Jim Steele, you’d figure the narrator/protagonist of this book is a private detective, but no, he’s actually a writer of radio thrillers, although he’s one of the toughest, most two-fisted radio scripters you’re liable to run across. Hey, he even fought in the Spanish Civil War as a pilot for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. But as this novel opens, he’s back in the States and concerned with the trouble in which an old flame finds herself. Beautiful Lisa Ridgman, married to psychiatrist Mike Ridgman, is being blackmailed over accusations that she murdered her first husband. She’s gotten three anonymous letters so far, not only demanding money but being threatening, as if her own life is in danger.
Well, Jim knows the girl he’s in love with isn’t a killer, of course, and when she asks him to come along to her husband’s country estate in Connecticut for a weekend get-together with some of their wealthy friends, Jim agrees right away. Of course, he doesn’t know that he’ll barely be on the scene before murder strikes—and it won’t be the only killing before the weekend is over, either.
SOME DAY I’LL KILL YOU is a really offbeat blend of an English country house mystery and a rock’em, sock’em hardboiled crime yarn. Sure, you’ve got brittle banter among rich folks, much discussion of wills and inheritances, and some genteel flirtations. But then you’ve also got gangsters and shootings and slugfests (Jim gets hit on the head and knocked out twice in 24 hours), lots of hard drinking, beautiful babes, and surprisingly risque dialogue for the era. Chambers mixes and stirs all these elements in amusing, fast-paced prose that’s also suitably brutal when it needs to be. Jim Steele may spend his days typing scripts, but you don’t want to make an enemy of him.
I really enjoyed this book. It’s a Front Porch yarn for sure, the kind of book I grew up loving and still do. Highly recommended. You can find ebook and paperback editions of the double volume on Amazon.
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