Review: The Wicked Streets - Wenzell Brown

I first encountered the work of Wenzell Brown in THE SAINT MAGAZINE in the Sixties, where he published a few espionage novellas about a secret agent named Mike Stranger. I don’t remember a thing about them except that I thought the sex scenes in them were pretty graphic for a digest mystery magazine in that era—which I, as a teenage boy at the time, certainly appreciated. I had no idea back then that Brown had had a successful career as a paperbacker, specializing in true crime volumes and juvenile delinquent novels.

But even though I’ve been aware of Brown and his books for many, many years, I don’t believe I actually read any of them until now. THE WICKED STREETS was published originally by Gold Medal in 1958 with a cover by Barye Phillips and has been reprinted recently by the fine folks at Black Gat Books with a cover by Howell Dodd.

The protagonist of this novel, if you can call him that, is Buzz Baxter, a young man from a good family who is definitely not a good guy. He’s left his home for the seedier parts of New York City, where he works occasionally as a jazz musician. His main line of work, though, is pushing heroin, a gig he got by turning in another pusher to the cops. That pusher, psychopathic knife artist Frank Nucci, is out of jail a lot sooner than Buzz anticipated, and now Nucci has a grudge to settle. This grudge endangers Diane Griscom, a beautiful teenage society girl who is in love with Buzz. He leads her along, but he’s really planning to use her in some sort of scheme aimed at her wealthy father.

Then another girl winds up naked and dead in Buzz’s bed, as they have a habit of doing in novels like this, and all his plans start collapsing. Nucci committed the murder, of course, but unless Buzz can cover it up, the cops will pin the killing on him. Danger closes in on all sides, not only for Buzz but also for the innocent Diane.

Brown does a good job in structuring the plot of this novel in a clever manner that continually ratchets up the tension on these characters. The writing is excellent and does an especially good job of creating a nightmarish world spinning further and further out of control. New York City has never been sleazier or more garish and threatening.

THE WICKED STREETS is another top-notch reprint from Black Gat Books and has made me realize that I’m going to have to hunt up more books by Wenzell Brown. In the meantime, this one is available on Amazon in both e-book and paperback editions.

Satan Is A Woman - Gil Brewer

I’ve read and enjoyed many books by Gil Brewer over the years, but for some reason, two of his earliest and most successful novels have sat unread on my shelves for quite some time now. So I took the arrival of Stark House’s latest Gil Brewer double volume to be an omen that I ought to go ahead and read them. I’m going to start with SATAN IS A WOMAN, which was Brewer’s second published novel. He had previously expanded a Day Keene pulp novelette into a full-length novel that was published as LOVE ME AND DIE under Keene’s name. My review of that one can be found here. SATAN IS A WOMAN was published by Gold Medal in 1951 with a great Barye Phillips cover and launched Brewer’s career under his own name.

Larry Cole, the narrator of this novel, is one of Brewer’s everyman protagonists. He owns a not-too-successful beachfront bar on the west coast of Florida, is a World War II veteran, and is trying to live a respectable life even though he comes from a family of criminals. His father was a mob gunman, his mother was a prostitute, and his older brother Tad has been mixed up in plenty of shady deals. When they were growing up, Tad tried to keep Larry on the straight and narrow despite his own activities. As the novel opens, Tad is on the run from a murder rap and hiding out at Larry’s house. He gets caught and sent to prison, and while Larry would like to get him a better lawyer and try to help him, there doesn’t seem to be any way for him to do so. The guilt Larry feels over this tortures him.

He's about to feel a lot more guilty, because one day a beautiful blonde named Joan Turner walks into his bar, and that starts Larry on a path that includes robbery and multiple murders. Larry wants to do the right thing, but he’s so caught up by love, lust, and circumstances that he seems doomed right from the start, in the finest tradition of noir novels.

Then, late in the novel, Brewer springs a really nifty plot twist that I didn’t see coming at all. It was a real “D’oh!” moment for me because everything is set up fairly, right out in the open, and with Brewer’s angst-ridden, breakneck style, I just went right past all the clues. I love it when that happens.

SATAN IS A WOMAN is one of the best-written Brewer novels I’ve read, with plenty of action and some poetic, poignant moments that are very effective. There’s also a long scene set in a rowboat on a stormy sea that gave a confirmed landlubber like me the galloping fantods. It’s wonderful stuff.

I can see why SATAN IS A WOMAN sold well and made Brewer a successful author right off the bat. It’s really, really good. I give it a high recommendation. The new Stark House reprint, along with Brewer’s all-time bestselling novel, 13 FRENCH STREET, will be out next month and is available for pre-order now. I’ll be getting to that novel very soon.

Flight to Darkness (Original Gold Medal Cover)

I decided to look up the original cover of FLIGHT TO DARKNESS from its 1952 Gold Medal edition (the only edition until the New Pulp Press reprint). The art on this one is by Barye Phillips and is okay, but I don't think it's one of his better covers. My favorite Phillips covers are probably on some of the Shell Scott novels, although I'm far from an expert on his work.