Forgotten Books: Scarred Faces - Hank Janson (Stephen D. Frances)

SCARRED FACES is the second novella by Stephen D. Frances featuring Hank Janson (which is also the by-line, of course). In this early tale, Hank is still a traveling cosmetics salesman who just happens to wind up in the middle of violent crimes. This time it’s an acid attack on a beautiful young woman that leaves her dead. Shortly after that, two thugs kidnap Hank and try to take him for a ride because they think he may have seen too much. Of course he escapes, and from there it’s not long until he’s mixed up in a dangerous racket that involves several more beautiful young women, at least one of whom wants Hank dead.

This yarn isn’t driven quite as much by coincidence as the first Hank Janson, WHEN DAMES GET TOUGH, which tells me that Frances’s plotting may be getting better. His tough guy prose still doesn’t sound the least bit authentic American, but I don’t really care. He can tell a story and keep the reader racing along, flipping those digital pages. There are three more novellas in this collection I’m reading (I didn't figure you'd mind looking at the cover by Reginald Heade again), and I’m looking forward to them.

Forgotten Books: When Dames Get Tough - Hank Janson (Stephen D. Frances)

I’ve been aware of the Hank Janson series for many years (and the gorgeous covers by Reginald Heade), but never got around to reading one until now. Although it might not have been the wisest course of action, for reasons I’ll get into below, I started with the very first Hank Janson novella, WHEN DAMES GET TOUGH, published in 1946.

Some quick background: Stephen D. Frances was a young, struggling writer/publisher in England who had been writing what were known as gangster stories, lurid, hardboiled tales set in America, mostly written by authors who had never been in America and had only a loose grasp of American slang and geography. As a publisher, Frances found himself in need of urgent need of a 15,000 word novella over a weekend, and not having anyone else to do it, he wrote it himself, dictating it to a secretary. Not only is the protagonist named Hank Janson, that was the by-line on it, as well.

This was WHEN DAMES GET TOUGH, a fast-paced, first-person yarn narrated by a traveling salesman (of ladies’ cosmetics) named Hank Janson. Hank happens upon a beautiful young blonde being interrogated and tortured by thugs, so naturally he wades in and rescues her, which lands him up to his neck in a criminal scheme involving black market goods (still a hot topic in those days just following World War II), mistaken identity, yet another beautiful blonde, and more than one attempt on his life.

This novella is certainly not without its flaws. Frances’s American tough-guy patter is less convincing at this point than that of James Hadley Chase (Rene Raymond) or Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates), the other two English authors I’ve read who produced mainly American-set mystery novels. The plot is driven by several pretty hard to swallow coincidences. And making your wise-cracking, two-fisted hero a salesman of ladies’ cosmetics is, well, an unusual choice, to say the least.

However . . . WHEN DAMES GET TOUGH is pretty darned entertaining. Frances’s style may be a little crude at times, and his Americanisms may not ring true, but dang, this yarn rockets along and is told in a distinctive voice, which I always like. There’s plenty of action, the girls are sexy, and Hank is a likable galoot. The Heade cover depicts an actual scene from the story with a fair degree of accuracy (the girls are both blondes in the story). I wound up liking this one quite a bit.

There are a couple more early novellas before Frances retooled the character as a crime-busting reporter from Chicago, and those tales are included in an ebook currently available, along with two short stories featuring the later incarnation of the Janson character. I plan to read those as well and then move on to the ebooks of the full-length novels. I’m glad these reprints are available since the original editions are sort of hard to come by, and I want to read more about Hank Janson.