Blue Mascara Tears - James McKimmey

The original 1965 Ballantine edition of James McKimmey’s novel BLUE MASCARA TEARS sports one of my favorite Ron Lesser covers (see below). If I’d seen this on a spinner rack back then, I would have had to buy it. As it is, I just read the new Stark House reprint of the book, in a double volume with 24 HOURS TO KILL, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. So this is my second McKimmey novel, but it certainly won’t be my last.

BLUE MASCARA TEARS is a hardboiled cop novel centering around Inspector Jack Cummings, who works in a big city that I think is probably San Francisco, although McKimmey doesn’t ever specify that. Cummings is investigating two cases, the murder of a gambler who was gunned down in his hotel room by an intruder who stole a wad of money from him and the rape of a neighborhood teenage girl. At the same time, he’s carrying out a vendetta of sorts against gangster Knocko Cutter, whom Cummings blames for the gambler’s murder even though he has an alibi. Knocko is protected by higher-ups in the police department, so Cummings has to battle that corruption, too, as he tries to get to the bottom of the two cases.

This book races along until about two-thirds of the way through when it suddenly appears that Cummings has solved everything. Ah, but then there’s a suspicious suicide that Cummings believes is murder, and in a way the whole thing starts again. The suspense ratchets up more and more until McKimmey really had me turning to the pages to get to the very emotional ending.

BLUE MASCARA TEARS is an excellent novel with a complicated protagonist. Is Cummings right about Knocko Cutter’s involvement with the crimes, or is he too obsessed with getting the gangster and letting that cloud his judgment? Is he so afraid of the corruption rubbing off on him that he sees it where there isn’t any? These questions lurk in the back of the reader’s mind, and even Cummings sometimes questions his own objectivity. This is a pretty philosophical book for a hardboiled crime novel, but McKimmey never lets it bog down with navel-gazing. It stays tough and fast all the way through. I give it a high recommendation, especially since you can get it in that double volume with an equally compelling yarn, 24 HOURS TO KILL.

 

24 Hours to Kill - James McKimmey

I’ve owned most of James McKimmey’s novels in one form or another over the years, probably because they usually had very good covers like the one by Robert McGinnis on the original Dell edition of this book. But I’ve never read any of them until now, prompted by the Stark House reprint of two McKimmey novels, 24 HOURS TO KILL and BLUE MASCARA TEARS.

As you can tell from the title, the action in 24 HOURS TO KILL takes place in a relatively short period of time. That’s a literary technique that I almost always enjoy. There’s a man-against-nature element, too, which is something else I like. The police have caught up to a young punk who killed a night watchman in a botched robbery, then killed a cop and wounded another in his attempt to escape capture. The punk, who has become something of a folk hero because of a series of newspaper columns by a cynical reporter, is being transported back to the city where the crimes took place to stand trial when a flood washes out some bridges and strands the prisoner in a small town that’s effectively become an island. A local teacher who’s appointed sheriff because the actual sheriff is cut off from the town has to be responsible for keeping the prisoner in custody. Unfortunately, several other young punks who idolize the guy are also in town and want to set him free.

If you’re going to write a compressed time book, you usually need a fairly large cast of characters so that you can cut back and forth between them. That’s how McKimmey tackles this novel, concentrating mostly on the young amateur lawman who’s trying to rise to the occasion but also bringing in plenty of supporting characters, some good, some not so good, and some very bad. (The reporter character is one of the most despicable I’ve encountered in fiction.) Some domestic drama crops up to go along with the crime and suspense angles, and all of it is handled very well. McKimmey has a great touch with characterization, and because of that I cared about what was going to happen and kept flipping the pages.

24 HOURS TO KILL is a very well-constructed novel and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I can see why James McKimmey is well-regarded as a suspense novelist. I give this one a high recommendation and I’m glad I have more novels by McKimmey on hand to read.