Pity the Damned -- Andrew Shaw (Lawrence Block?)

PITY THE DAMNED sounds like a Gold Medal title if I ever heard one. Unfortunately, it’s not a Gold Medal. It’s a Reed Nightstand book, which means it’s a 1970s reprint of a soft-core porn novel originally published in the early Sixties – in this case, SLUM SINNERS by Andrew Shaw, the same pseudonym that was used on the reprint edition. And Andrew Shaw, at least some of the time, was really Lawrence Block.

Paperback scholar Lynn Munroe’s Reed Nightstand checklist can be found here. It’s his theory that when the earlier Nightstand Books and Midnight Readers, etc., were reprinted as Reed Nightstand books, the author’s original manuscript title was used. That could certainly be the case with PITY THE DAMNED, which sounds like a Block title to me. Supposedly the reprints were updated and revised as well, but there doesn’t seem to be much of that going on in this novel. There are a few word changes to make it more timely (a skirt becomes a miniskirt, for example), and the language might be a little more graphic than in the original, but without having a copy of SLUM SINNERS to do a real comparison, my best guess is that the revisions were slight.

This is the story of four people who live on the upper west side of Manhattan: the unhappily married couple Ruth and Glenn Lansing; beautiful, fifteen-year-old Monita Ruiz, who just wants to escape her life in the slum no matter what it takes; and tough ex-con Al Carter, who’s looking for a big score to make him rich. You can figure out going in that their storylines are going to twist and turn and intertwine with each other, and sure enough they do. As you might also guess, there’s also a lot of sex along the way, some of it fairly kinky.

Unfortunately, this never really becomes the noirish crime novel that it might have been, as some of Block’s early porn novels did. The sordid schemes that Al Carter comes up with might have gone that way, but instead the book remains more of a soap opera. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s well-written. That’s not really the case, either, as the book sort of ambles along and never generates much sense of urgency. I suspect that Block wrote it – several of the clues that usually point to his pen-name work are there – but it’s far from his best work. It’s worth reading, but probably only for Block completists (which I’m not, although I like his books a lot) or anyone interested in those early Sixties soft-core porn novels.

Markham -- Lawrence Block

This is a book I’ve had on my shelves for many years, and I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. It’s a tie-in novel, based on a short-lived series that ran on NBC in 1959 and 1960, starring Ray Milland as New York-based private eye Roy Markham. Now, if Ray Milland isn’t exactly your idea of a hardboiled private eye, well, I feel pretty much the same way. Maybe a lot of other people did, too, and that’s why the series didn’t last long. This novel didn’t come out until 1961, after the TV series was over. I guess Belmont had it in inventory already and decided to go ahead and throw it out there. Lawrence Block wasn’t a big name at the time, so that wasn’t the reason (as it probably was a few years ago when this novel was reissued under the title YOU COULD CALL IT MURDER, with no mention of the TV series or its original Belmont edition).

As for the book itself, it’s pretty standard PI stuff. As a favor to a friend, Markham takes on a wandering daughter job. The girl has disappeared from the fancy private university she attends in New Hampshire. Markham starts investigating and then gets roped into what seems to be a completely different case – but you know the jobs will wind up being connected, and sure enough they are. There’s a lot of small-town college scenes, some late Fifties/early Sixties hipster stuff, a suicide that might be murder, some other deaths that are definitely murder, blackmail, gangsters, and lots of drinking and smoking. Everybody in this book spends a lot of time taking out cigarettes, lighting up cigarettes, putting out cigarettes, etc. Markham gets hit on the head and knocked out. Eventually he untangles everything and exposes the killer, of course.

Not surprisingly, despite the generic plot Block’s use of language is excellent, as always. Even though this book came early in his career, he could already put sentences together in a consistently interesting and entertaining fashion. I didn’t really see anything in this book that was a precursor for, say, the Matt Scudder books. (There is a minor character named Keller, however.) It’s worth reading, although it’s not on the same level as his other early books that have been reissued by Hard Case Crime.

Lucky at Cards -- Lawrence Block

Originally published by Beacon Books in 1964 under the title THE SEX SHUFFLE and the pseudonym Sheldon Lord, Lawrence Block’s novel LUCKY AT CARDS has been resurrected by Hard Case Crime, and we should be thankful to Charles Ardai for that because it’s a fine book.

Bill “Wizard” Maynard was once a stage magician, but as the book opens he has long since turned his sleight-of-hand skills to making a living as a card sharp who can cheat at just about any sort of game. Unfortunately for him, he was caught at it by some guys who took offense. After being beaten up and run out of Chicago, he finds himself in a medium-sized, unnamed city somewhere between Chicago and New York, where he runs into a beautiful woman who’s every bit as shady as he is. Problem is, she’s currently married to a rich, successful tax attorney. Bill begins an affair with her anyway, and anyone who’s read very many books in this genre knows where that’s going to lead. The lawyer’s will is structured in such a way that they can’t just murder him, so they have to come up with a more elaborate plot to separate him from his money. But wouldn’t you know it, once they embark on this scheme – say it together with me, kiddies – Things Go Wrong.

I don’t mean to sound sarcastic. Yes, the plot’s a little formulaic and the ending might have been a tad more dramatic. But Block writes so well I don’t care about any of that. This is a beautifully rendered picture of the late Fifties/early Sixties era, with skillfully drawn characters and a pace that just rockets along in some of the best prose of anybody around, then or now. You won’t find a better example of the books that were published as soft-core sex novels back in those days but were really nice little crime yarns. Run right out and find a copy of this one if you don’t have it yet, and let’s hope that Block and Hard Case Crime decide to bring more of his early, pseudonymous work back into print.