Forgotten Books: Carnival Girl - Max Gareth (Stuart James)

“Max Gareth” was actually Stuart James, the author of FRISCO FLAT, which I posted about a couple of months ago. CARNIVAL GIRL may be his first novel. It was published in 1960 by Chariot Books, and a more mysterious publisher you’re unlikely to find. There’s no address in the book, not even a city, and just a simple book number on the spine. Chariot Books, whoever they were, published more than a hundred books in the early Sixties, but the only author names I recognize are Arthur Adlon and John Burton Thompson, both of whom wrote for several other softcore sleaze publishers. It must have been a pretty low-budget operation.

But that doesn’t mean the books they published were all bad. CARNIVAL GIRL is actually a well-written coming-of-age story for the most part, albeit a very violent and lurid one at times. The protagonist is a beautiful 18-year-old girl named Norma who runs away from home in New Jersey due to an abusive stepfather and winds up having to hitchhike across the country. She doesn’t have a real destination, just a desire to head west. She winds up getting a ride with a trucker who seems decent at first but winds up raping her, taking her virginity. Then she encounters a traveling carnival and finds a home there, befriending several of the performers and getting a job dancing (stripping, actually) in one of their shows. A romantic triangle soon develops between Norma, the drummer who provides music for the show she’s part of, and a young motorcycle daredevil who’s also part of the carnival.

In general, I like carny novels. Fredric Brown’s MADBALL is excellent. CARNIVAL GIRL isn’t at that level, but James spins a fast-moving, compelling tale that has a literate, well-written style and lots of interesting carnival background. The characters and plot are standard, early Sixties sleaze/soap opera. There’s a crime/noir element farther along, but it never really fits into that category as many of the other softcore novels from that era do. For what it is, it’s a very readable, entertaining yarn. Clearly, Stuart James was a natural storyteller. I have several more of his books and plan to read them soon.

Forgotten Books: Frisco Flat - Stuart James

See, I thought this book was about an apartment in San Francisco. Nope, not at all. It’s set in California, but that’s about the only thing I got right. Frisco Flat is actually the name of the small town where Frankie Cargo grew up. (And isn’t Frankie Cargo a great name for a protagonist? I wonder if he’s related to Clutch.)

At any rate, Frisco Flat is on the coast, with farms to the east and the Pacific to the west, so it’s both an agricultural town and a fishing town. Frankie grew up there, the son of a fisherman, then went off to the Korean War, and when it was over, he knocked around various places for six years before finally returning to his home when he gets the news that his father has died.

We’ve all read enough of these books to have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. Frankie quickly runs afoul of the local law and discovers that sinister things are going on in Frisco Flat. For one thing, his father was murdered. The local big shot tries to buy the fishing boat Frankie inherits, and when Frankie refuses to sell, the boat is vandalized. The beautiful brunette who’s moved into his house is a hostess in the local honkytonk and also the mistress of the corrupt sheriff. There’s a beautiful rich blonde who wants to help Frankie, but can she really be trusted? His best friend from childhood and the other fishermen in the area are counting on him to break the hold of the bad guys who have moved in and taken over, so he can’t just cut his losses and leave.

Unlike most of the authors who wrote for Monarch Books, Stuart James seems to have used his real name on this and the eight other novels he wrote in his career: three movie novelizations from the Sixties, three hardboiled sleaze novels (this one and two for Midwood), also in the Sixties, and three thrillers in the Eighties from Bantam. This information is from my friend David Spencer, who has read and collected them all. Why the long gap in the middle of his career and why he didn’t write more, I have no idea. It’s a shame, because based on FRISCO FLAT, he was pretty darned good. The plot in this one is fairly standard, but as I’ve said many times, the appeal of a book with a traditional plot lies in how well the writer handles those elements. James does a good job. This book is a little better written, a little more literary in places, if you will, than many of the hardboiled novels from that era.

On the other hand, while FRISCO FLAT moves along well, it doesn’t have quite the same sort of propulsive storytelling you find in books by Harry Whittington and Gil Brewer, for example, nor does James have his plot as tightly under control as, say, Day Keene usually does. Unless I missed something, he never completely resolves one of the main plot points. But hey, Raymond Chandler didn’t know who killed the chauffeur, either. I enjoyed this one enough that I won’t hesitate to read the other couple of books by Stuart James that I have on hand.

Now, a word about that cover. When I first looked at it, I thought that maybe Tom Miller had painted it, because it reminded me of covers by Miller on some of the other Monarch Books. However, this one isn’t on Lynn Munroe’s checklist of Miller’s covers, and I trust Lynn completely in such matters. Also, FRISCO FLAT was published a couple of years earlier than Miller did most of his work for Monarch. So I don’t know who painted this cover, but it’s a really good one anyway.