A Rough Edges Rerun Review: No Wings on a Cop - Cleve F. Adams (and Robert Leslie Bellem)

Like SHADY LADY and CONTRABAND, NO WINGS ON A COP is another novel published under Cleve F. Adams’s name that was actually expanded by Robert Leslie Bellem from an Adams pulp story into a novel. Bellem and Adams were good friends, and I seem to recall reading that Bellem wrote those novels as a favor to Adams’s widow. Of course, I imagine Bellem got a cut of the money, too. If I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone who knows more about the situation will correct me. Also, I’m not sure which Adams story served as the basis for this book. It might be “Clean Sweep”, from the August 24, 1940 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, which, according to the Fictionmags Index, features police lieutenant John J. Shannon, the hero of NO WINGS ON A COP. If anyone knows for sure, again please let us know in the comments.

With that bit of background out of the way, how is NO WINGS ON A COP as a novel? Pretty darned good, that’s what it is. When the story opens, Lt. Shannon’s boss and good friend, Captain Grady, has already been murdered, and the killing has been pinned on gambler Floyd Duquesne, who evidently had been paying off Grady for protection. Shannon doesn’t believe that his friend was crooked, of course, and sets out to find the real killer. Almost as soon as he begins his investigation, though, somebody plants a bomb in his car. Shannon survives the explosion, but his left arm is broken, so for the rest of the book he’s going around with his arm in a cast and a sling, which proves pretty inconvenient at times but ultimately comes in handy on at least one occasion.

All the action in the book takes place in less than twenty-four hours, and it’s a whirlwind pace, as you might expect. Shannon clashes with the acting chief of police (the regular chief is out of town), gets kicked off the force, gets hit on the head and knocked out, trades banter with his girlfriend, who’s a beautiful model, has a couple of shootouts with hired killers, has a beautiful redheaded stripper try to seduce him, and runs up against an assortment of crooked cops, corrupt politicians, big-time gamblers, and dangerous hoodlums. It’s all great fun, with a complex plot that Shannon finally sorts out at the end. I’ve been reading this sort of hardboiled detective novel for more than forty years now and still get a big kick out of a good one, which NO WINGS ON A COP certainly is.

Bellem’s writing is as smooth and fast and enjoyable as ever, and knowing the background of the book’s authorship gives it an added level of humor. There’s a mention of a cab driver reading an issue of the DAN TURNER, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE comic book, some of the characters sit around and drink Vat 69, Turner’s favorite hooch, and Bellem even writes himself into the book as a character, bank officer Robert B. Leslie: “The guy was a middle-aged man with slightly wavy hair, a thickening middle and a mustache of which he seemed inordinately vain.” Although Adams might have been responsible for some of that in the original story, I don’t know. He and Bellem were friends, after all.

NO WINGS ON A COP was originally published by Handi-Books in 1950 and later reprinted by Harlequin. As far as I know, it’s been out of print for more than fifty years now, and it ought to be a prime candidate for reprinting by one of the small presses. This is one of those books that sat on my shelves for years without me getting around to reading it, then was lost in the fire. I replaced it not long ago and decided that I’d better get it read. I’m glad I did. Highly recommended.

(This post appeared originally on April 16, 2010. Since that time, NO WINGS ON A COP still hasn't been reprinted. One of these days . . .)

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Window With the Sleeping Nude - Robert Leslie Bellem

I used to own a copy of the original Handi-Books edition of this 1950 novel by the creator of the iconic Dan Turner, but it was missing some pages and so I never got around to reading it. Luckily, Pulpville Press has reprinted it in a nice-looking, affordable trade paperback edition that uses the same cover art as the original (which is pictured alongside this post). (The trade paperback is still available, as are hardcover and e-book editions.)

Bellem is a prime example of a “love him or hate him” author. I happen to love his work, and have ever since I discovered the Dan Turner stories years ago. No author has made me laugh more often. I think Bellem’s use of language is brilliant, and most of the Turner stories are very well-put-together mysteries, to boot, packing some pretty complex plots into short story and novelette lengths.

THE WINDOW WITH THE SLEEPING NUDE proves that Bellem’s writing works equally as well at novel length and in third person. This isn’t a Dan Turner yarn. The hero is store detective Barney Cunard, who’s in charge of security at the biggest department store in an unnamed town. Barney arrives at work one rainy, hungover morning to find a nude blond female mannequin on his desk. He’s barely started trying to figure out how and why it got there when something else happens that has to be connected to this mystery. The body of one of the store’s window dressers is discovered in a bed in one of the store’s window displays, dressed only in lingerie and stabbed in the heart. Obviously, the killer replaced the mannequin with the corpse and left the mannequin on Cunard’s desk for some unfathomable reason.

But this is one of those novels where very little that seems obvious turns out to be true. The plot twists and turns with dizzying speed as all the action takes place in just a few hours. In that short period of time, there are several more murders and a kidnapping. Cunard gets hit on the head and knocked out, guzzles rye, runs around in the rain, and finally figures everything out from clues that Bellem cleverly plants along the way. Of course, as a veteran of the Spicy pulps, Bellem manages to find excuses for several of his female characters to wind up in various stages of undress. This novel reads very much like it could be an expansion of one of Bellem’s hundreds of pulp stories, but I don’t know if that’s the case or not. (I still don't know, so if you do, please clue us in!) He also tuckerizes at least one obscure pulp author who must have been a friend of his, and there may be more such instances that I missed. (There's a character named George Armin, so I assume this is a tip o' the fedora to prolific pulp writer George Armin Shaftel.)

Bellem has been mentioned as a possible influence on Richard S. Prather, and there are definite similarities between Bellem’s Dan Turner and Prather’s Shell Scott. I think Prather was a slightly better writer, giving some of his novels a more serious undertone than you’ll find in Bellem’s work, but Bellem’s stuff is laugh-out-loud funny, well-plotted, and very much worth reading in my opinion. I had a great time reading THE WINDOW WITH THE SLEEPING NUDE and I suspect some of you would, too. Highly recommended. (This post was published originally in a somewhat different form on January 29, 2010.)