Scarlet Goddess - Ennis Willie

(This post originally appeared in somewhat different form on June 1, 2007.)

I believe SCARLET GODDESS is the novel that introduced Ennis Willie’s iconic hardboiled character Sand, a former top man in the Syndicate who leaves organized crime despite the fact that doing so means there will always be a price on his head. [UPDATE: Wrong! I think it's actually the final Sand novel, although I'm not sure about that, either.] That’s already happened when this book opens, so it’s not really an “origin story”, so to speak. Sand agrees to deliver a mysterious package for a friend and former Syndicate associate of his, and that proves to be a mistake. Before he can get the package to its destination, it’s stolen from him and he finds himself in a violent mess involving a serial rapist/killer known as the Sasquatch, a cult of Satan-worshippers, and a gigantic fire-opal called the Devil Stone that carries a deadly curse with it. The story rockets along at a fast pace to a fiery, apocalyptic climax.

It’s easy to see that Ennis Willie’s work was a big influence on James Dockery, the author of those early novels in the Butcher series. Their styles are very similar. Willie’s prose is considerably smoother and more polished, and despite the bizarre subject matter is more grounded in reality than Dockery’s. SCARLET GODDESS is sexy, violent, and a real pleasure to read. Ennis Willie’s work deserves to be back in print, and I’m glad that efforts to insure that are underway. [UPDATE: Yes, several of the Sand novels have been reprinted by Ramble House since then, in the volumes SAND'S WAR and SAND'S GAME, but we need more Ennis Willie reprints!]

Forgotten Books: Code of Vengeance - Ennis Willie

Every time I read a book by Ennis Willie (which isn’t as often as I’d like; the man’s books are hard to come by!), I’m struck by what a wonderful storyteller he was. This is certainly true of CODE OF VENGEANCE, published in 1965 by Merit Books, which features Willie’s series character Sand, who left the mob and has survived all the attempts since then to take him out.

This book opens with Sand walking along a foggy, misty nighttime street in an unnamed city. It’s very reminiscent of the opening of Mickey Spillane’s best Mike Hammer novel, ONE LONELY NIGHT. Then there’s a scream, Sand sees a girl running from a couple of thugs, he intervenes, the girl winds up dead anyway, and—get this—she turns out to be someone Sand knows, a rich society dame who wanted to be his girlfriend a couple of years earlier, although he turned down her pitch. Even though they weren’t romantically involved, Sand sets out to find whoever wanted her dead enough to send a couple of killers after her, which is also reminiscent of Mike Hammer.

Sand’s investigation sees him acting like a private detective, gradually uncovering the connections between the dead girl, her somewhat dysfunctional family (including a couple of beautiful blond sisters), assorted hoodlums, a redheaded stripper, a gay bar (an element of the plot that’s handled pretty sympathetically for 1965), and a fancy sanitarium. Along the way, somebody keeps knocking off people involved with the case and Sand has to survive several attempts on his own life.

It’s a pretty standard plot and fairly easy to figure out (although there’s one late twist I didn’t see coming), but Willie’s magic is in his writing, his full-scale acceptance of these tropes and willingness to run with them at an all-out sprint that kept me flipping the paces breathlessly to see what was going to happen. Throw in the occasional line that verges on pure poetry, and it’s a very winning, compelling combination. It’s early yet, but CODE OF VENGEANCE is the best book I’ve read so far this year.

Forgotten Books: The Twisted Mistress - Ennis Willie

The telegram finally caught Tagger on a dismal morning-after in a New Orleans brothel.

That’s the opening line in Ennis Willie’s excellent hardboiled mystery novel THE TWISTED MISTRESS, published in 1963 by Merit Books and, to my knowledge, never reprinted. And if you can read that and not feel compelled to keep flipping the pages, you’ve got more self-control than I do.

Tagger is Lash Tagger (Willie’s protagonists always had great names). Years earlier, as a runaway from the orphanage where he was raised, Tagger was taken under the wing of Alex Beaumont, a textile mill owner who had worked his own way up from hardship to riches. Beaumont has a son and daughter of his own, but Tagger almost becomes like a son to him as well, until a falling-out between them causes Tagger to take off on his own when he’s a young man.

Now several years have passed and Tagger is broke, but the telegram changes all that. Beaumont is dead, and Tagger has to return to the town where the mill is located for the reading of the will. When he gets there, he finds that not only has he inherited a third of Beaumont’s fortune, but Beaumont has given him control of the business as well and charged him with preventing the takeover of the mill by a ruthless competitor. Needless to say, Beaumont’s grown children don’t like this arrangement at all. The situation becomes even more complicated and dangerous when Tagger discovers that Beaumont was murdered, and when he starts poking around in that, somebody paints a target on his back, as well.

Oh, and there are three or four beautiful women involved, too, all of whom are attracted to Tagger whether they want to be or not, and some of whom probably can’t be trusted . . . but I probably didn’t have to tell you that.

THE TWISTED MISTRESS is just an enormous amount of fun for a fan of hardboiled, slightly sleazy crime and mystery novels from the early Sixties. Willie’s prose is so smooth and fast-paced that it’s a joy to read and you wind up flying through the pages. There was a time I would have read this in one sitting, I’m sure, and even though I can’t do that now because I don’t have as much time to read, I still got through it quickly. Lash Tagger is plenty tough, not exactly likable but certainly easy to root for. Maybe the women all fall for him a little too quickly and easily, maybe the plot could have used one more twist, but that doesn’t matter because this is a book designed to be gulped down. I wish I could tell you to go out and buy a copy, but like I said above, it’s never been reprinted and like all Ennis Willie books, it’s a little hard to come by and a little pricey if you do. But if you ever see a copy, my advice is to grab it.

By the way, I realize the cover says TWISTED MISTRESS, but the spine and the title page add THE, so that’s the title I went with. And unlike the titles of some of the books of this type from this era, the title actually does have something to do with the story. The cover also says “Adult Reading”, but don’t let that fool you. There’s sex in it, but very tame and mostly off-screen.

Forgotten Books: Luscious, Teasing Body - Ennis Willie

Several of Ennis Willie's novels have made a well-deserved comeback in a pair of handsome Ramble House editions, SAND'S GAME and SAND'S WAR. Here's one that hasn't been reprinted yet, but it should be. LUSCIOUS, TEASING BODY is a stand-alone instead of an entry in the series featuring the former mobster Sand. The protagonist here is Tripp Fortune, and when he shows up in the Quarter, the vice district of an unnamed town (I'm pretty sure it's not intended to be the French Quarter in New Orleans), he immediately sets off fireworks because gunners working for the local crime boss, Big Jake Dunken, are after him. This is a real problem for Fortune, because other than his name and a beautiful stripper called Joy, he doesn't remember a thing.

Yes, it's the old amnesia bit, but like Harry Whittington in the classic BODY AND PASSION, Willie not only makes the plot fresh, he puts a heck of a twist on it, springing a late surprise that I didn't see coming at all. Before he gets to that point, he sends Fortune on a blood-splattered tour of the Quarter in which he clashes several times with Dunken's men. It's not all guns and guts, though. Fortune also meets several gorgeous women who fall for him and help him in his quest to find out who he really is.

Despite the title and the cover, the sex scenes in this novel are pretty tame by today's standards, as they are in most of the books from that era. And like many others in this sub-genre, it's more of a hardboiled crime novel than anything else. A really good one, too. Willie was a fine writer who could mix over-the-top action with the same sort of bleak poetry of desperation you find in Orrie Hitt's best novels.

It strikes me that with their very brisk pace and relatively short length, Ennis Willie's novels are perfect candidates for e-books. I hope some enterprising publisher will realize that and make arrangements to reprint more of them. I'd buy 'em all.

Sand's Game - Ennis Willie

You’ve seen this book on Ed Gorman’s blog and Bill Crider’s blog in the past couple of days, and quite possibly elsewhere. But here’s my two cents worth: SAND’S GAME is a great book and a book that’s a long time overdue. The novels and the stories are about as tough and fast-paced as any you’ll ever read, and all the additional material is, as others have said, worth the price by itself. Don’t pass this one up, and here’s hoping that it’ll be just the first of many Ennis Willie collections to come.