Review: A Rage of Desire - Clayton Matthews

We’ve all encountered guys like Mitch Sutton in noir novels before, but there are some important differences in Mitch’s character, too. He doesn’t have a great job—he’s a used car salesman in Los Angeles—but he’s good at it and enjoys the work. He’s not exactly trapped in a loveless marriage—he genuinely cares for his wife and their twins—but there’s definitely a spark that’s missing, too. One day, when Mitch drops into a neighborhood bar for his usual beer on the way home from work, that lack prompts him to take a drink of hard liquor instead—and Mitch can’t handle the hard stuff. He knows that, but he gets drunk anyway and picks up a woman at the bar who turns out to be a high-class prostitute. Things don’t work out between them, though, because Mitch is too drunk.

He would have been luckier if things had stayed that way.

But no, the woman winds up marrying Mitch’s boss, but Mitch falls hard for her anyway, leading to a torrid affair that, sure enough, winds up with somebody dead and a murder charge hanging over Mitch’s head.

A RAGE OF DESIRE is the latest reprint from Black Gat Books. Originally published as a paperback original by Monarch Books in 1960, with a cover by Harry Barton, it’s the first novel by Clayton Matthews, who went on to a career as a prolific paperbacker over the next three decades. I’ve read a couple of other novels by Matthews, and this one is very similar, utilizing the sort of crime and noir elements we’ve seen in scores of novels but changing things up enough that the books also work as domestic dramas. Matthews was a very good writer and had that paperbacker’s knack of keeping the reader turning the pages.

Over the years, Matthews wrote Westerns, family sagas, romantic suspense, and traditional mysteries. In the early Seventies, he married author Patty Brisco, and together they produced a bunch of bestselling historical romance novels under the name Patricia Matthews. This is hearsay, or gossip, if you will, but I was told by a mutual writer friend that Clayton Matthews did nearly all the writing on those romance novels published under his wife’s name, in addition to the ones that were credited collaborations. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the person who told me that was in a position to know.

And speaking of mutual friends, Clayton Matthews was also the cousin of my long-time friend Tom Johnson, who was one of the leading figures in pulp fandom for many years. He always referred to Matthews as “Matt” and told me that some of Matthews’ family sagas set in Texas were based on actual people and incidents. Again, I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s certainly plausible enough.

A RAGE OF DESIRE may have been Matthews’ first novel, but it’s a polished debut, no doubt about that. It’s not as hardboiled as some, but it has a gritty edge and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This novel is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions, and I think it’s well worth reading.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Power of Positive Loving - William Johnston

When I was a kid, I read all the tie-in novels by William Johnston based on the TV series GET SMART. I think I liked them even more than the TV show. I also recall reading and enjoying the novelization of the movie LT. ROBIN CRUSOE, USN, which Johnston wrote under the pseudonym Bill Ford. Johnston’s books were all over the spinner racks back in those days, since he wrote dozens of excellent movie novelizations and TV tie-ins. 

However, a friend mentioned to me that Johnston’s early, non-tie-in novels are very good, too, so I decided to try a few of them. First up is THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING, published by Monarch Books in 1964. I don’t mind admitting that one reason I bought this book is because of the cover. That’s one of the cutest redheads I’ve seen on a paperback cover, and the wink really sells the book.

As for the novel itself, well, that’s pretty good, too. The protagonist is Harry Ash, a down-on-his-luck public relations guy who comes up with a scheme to promote a sleepy little coastal town in California as a hotbed of sin and sensationalism. He plans to do this by teaming up with sexpot movie starlet Babe O’Flynn (that’s a great name), who has a habit of losing her clothes and winding up in the slick magazines like LIFE and LOOK. Harry comes up with a wild story for the gossip columnists about Babe going to this little town to recover from a broken heart after a top-secret love affair with the Secretary of State. He’s going to have a photographer get pictures of her on the beach in a bikini – or less – and figures that tourists, scandal-seekers, and sensation-mongers will converge on the motel and bar that he buys in partnership with a hamburger magnate. Naturally, things don’t work out quite like Harry plans.

Monarch Books lasted only a few years, but the company published quite a few books including some Westerns and mysteries. However, it’s best known for the abundance of slightly less graphic sleaze novels it put out. Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, and Robert Silverberg all wrote pseudonymous books for Monarch, including a number of so-called non-fiction studies of various sexual subjects that were really fiction, under imposing sounding names like L.T. Woodward, M.D., and Dr. Benjamin Morse.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING is risqué enough to fall into the sleaze category, but just barely. Unlike most books in that genre from that era, this one is a comedy, a racy, romantic, screwball farce that takes satiric shots at morality, the advertising business, politics, show business, the military, the media, and just about anything else you can think of. The title itself is a pun on the self-help bestseller THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING by Norman Vincent Peale. If it had been made into a movie in 1964, it probably would have starred Jack Lemmon as Harry and Ann-Margret as Babe. As usual with such a scattershot yarn, not all the jokes work all the time, but enough of them do that this is a pretty funny book. It reminds me a little of the work of Max Shulman, for those of you old enough to remember his books. (Probably the same ones who remember Jack Lemmon and Ann-Margret.)

Johnston was nothing if not a versatile writer, though. I have several more of his non-tie-in novels on hand, and it looks like every one of them is considerably different from the others. I’ll be getting to them in due time and reporting on them here. For now, if you want a nice entertaining slice of mid-Sixties comedy, THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING is well worth reading.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on August 27, 2010. Despite the good intentions expressed in the final paragraph, I haven't read any more of William Johnston's novels, tie-in or otherwise, since then. But I still might. I know where they are on my shelves--I think. And I stand by my comment about the redhead on the cover. She's really cute. The cover art is by Tom Miller.)

The Trailer Park Girls - Glenn Canary

Like many of the soft-core novels of the mid-Sixties, THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS is very much a crime novel in disguise. Three young army veterans who met while in the service, Burton Stone, Jack Cannon, and Al Leeds, move in together in a trailer and decide, for various reasons, that they’re going to rob a department store in nearby Cleveland. But then they meet three young women who also live in the same trailer park, Sally Talent, Marianne Nirvell, and Fran Novak. Of course, each of the guys falls for one of the girls, and that winds up greatly complicating their holdup plan. Will they be able to carry out the robbery, or will love derail their criminal scheme?

Author Glenn Canary gives us a fairly simple plot in THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS, although there are a few twists and turns along the way. The first half of the book consists mostly of Canary filling in the backgrounds of his six main characters. He does an excellent job of it, too, but the book picks up steam as the robbery comes closer and closer. The last 40 or 50 pages of this novel are really suspenseful. I was going to put it aside and go to bed, but I couldn’t. Had to keep turning the pages to find out what was going to happen.

THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS was published originally in 1963 by Monarch Books, ostensibly a step up from Beacon, Nightstand, etc., even though the sort of books they all published was very similar. Glenn Canary had written two novels for Monarch before this one, and later, in the Seventies, he wrote two suspense novels for Pinnacle Books, plus some short stories for various mystery and men’s magazines during the Sixties. Not a prolific career, but based on THE TRAILER PARK GIRLS, he was a pretty darned good writer. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Black Gat Books has reprinted it in paperback and e-book editions, and if you like a good slice of life/crime novel, you definitely need to give this one a try. Recommended.

Forgotten Books: Hell is My Destination - John Conway (Joseph Chadwick)

Joseph Chadwick was a prolific contributor to the Western pulps, writing dozens of stories under his own name and also turning out novels featuring Jim Hatfield (under the Jackson Cole house-name), the Rio Kid, and the Range Riders. As the pulps faded away in the Fifties, he turned to writing original paperbacks, mostly Westerns, but he also wrote soft-core sleaze, plantation novels, and crime novels under the names John Creighton and John Conway.

One of those John Conway novels is HELL IS MY DESTINATION, published by Monarch Books in 1959 with a great cover. The art may be by Ray Johnson; I’m not enough of an expert on Johnson’s work to be sure about that. But it promises a lurid, noirish yarn, just the sort of thing I enjoy. However, that’s not exactly what this novel delivers.

Instead, HELL IS MY DESTINATION is a rather slow-paced police procedural. The protagonist, Tom Matthews, is a police detective who is warned off from investigating a gas station stick-up in which the proprietor was shot and killed. Despite that tragic death, it seems like a fairly minor case, not worth threatening a cop over, especially when the primary suspect is a petty criminal. But then the stakes get higher as Matthews’ crippled son is struck and killed by a car in what is clearly not a typical hit-and-run. Unless he lays off the case, his wife and daughter are next, he’s told.

Well, that’s not going to happen. Matthews promptly quits the force so he can conduct his own investigation without playing by the rules. At least, that’s what he says, but even though it’s not official, his investigation is as plodding and dogged as if he were still carrying a badge. Oh, other than sleeping with his former mistress to get information, I guess. Got to get the racy scenes in there somewhere. This is a Monarch book, after all.

The whole thing is told in plain, flat, almost DRAGNET-like prose, but lest you think I’m damning with faint praise, let me make it clear that I enjoyed HELL IS MY DESTINATION quite a bit. It’s just not what I expected from the cover. It takes a while to get going good, but I’m glad I stuck with it. The second half generates considerable suspense, and while the solution isn’t unexpected, it works pretty well. Chadwick has never been one of my favorite Western writers, but his work is always competent and sometimes very good to excellent. This is the first crime novel by him that I’ve read, and I liked it enough that I’ll read more. Don’t run out and start looking for HELL IS MY DESTINATION, but if you come across a copy, it’s worth reading.