Classic Private Eye Novels: This Girl For Hire - G.G. Fickling (Gloria and Forrest E. "Skip" Fickling)

Many, many years ago, when it was new, I watched and enjoyed some of the episodes of the TV series HONEY WEST. Even as a young lad, I appreciated how beautiful Anne Francis was. It wasn't regular viewing for us, however, because it was on opposite GOMER PYLE, U.S.M.C., and my mother really enjoyed ol' Gomer's antics. (To be completely honest, I like Gomer, too.) These days, I own the entire HONEY WEST series on DVD but have never gotten around to watching it. Soon, maybe.

Also over the years I've owned copies of some of the novels in the series that was the source material for the TV show. I may have read one back in the Seventies. I don't recall for sure about that. But recently, I read the very first one, THIS GIRL FOR HIRE, published by Pyramid Books in 1957.

Honey West is the daughter of Los Angeles private eye Hank West. She took over his agency when he was murdered, a crime that remains unsolved as this book opens. However, THIS GIRL FOR HIRE isn't the story of Honey tracking down her dad's killer, as you might expect. Instead, in a very Spillane-like opening, Honey and her cop friend, Lt. Mark Storm, are looking at the body of a murdered actor Honey was fond of. A short time later, Honey is hired by a TV executive who believes the star of the show he produces is trying to kill him. As Honey investigates, she discovers that almost everybody connected with the show has a motive to murder one or more of the other people involved. And that's what happens when they all go on location to shoot some scenes on the island of Catalina. Bodies start dropping all over the place. And wouldn't you know it, there may even be a connection to that murdered actor from the first scene of the book.

Okay, calling this a classic private eye novel may be stretching it a mite. The plot is so overly complicated that it's just too busy and frantic, rather than complex. The big twist ending is entirely predictable. The characterization is really shallow. And despite the claim on the cover, there's very little sex and it's extremely tame. Honey loses some clothes a couple of times. That's about it.

And yet, despite all that, I enjoyed THIS GIRL FOR HIRE. Most of that appeal is probably nostalgic. This is the kind of stuff I would have eaten up back in the Sixties, when I was tearing through any book I could find with a private eye in it. The pace is fast, there are some funny lines here and there, and it's just sexy enough that teenage me would have found it intriguing. It's a Front Porch Book, for sure. I don't know if that's enough to prompt me to read more of the series, but I sure might. This one is available in an e-book edition, as are most of the other Honey West novels. 

Overlooked Movies: Bottom of the 9th (2019)

I don’t think BOTTOM OF THE 9th is based on a true story, but other than that, it fits neatly into the inspirational sports movie category. Twenty years ago, hotshot baseball phenom Sonny Stano makes a tragic mistake, gets sent to Sing Sing Prison, and has to forget his dream of becoming a New York Yankee. When he finally gets out, he returns to his old neighborhood, struggles to get a job and fit in, deals with old enemies, tries to rekindle a relationship with his former girlfriend, and then gets what seems like a lucky break when he runs into his old minor league coach and winds up with an assistant coaching job on the local farm team. But Sonny can still hit, and the dream of making it to the bigs isn’t completely dead . . .

Most of these movies are pretty predictable, and BOTTOM OF THE 9th is no exception. I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen in it, and chances are, you will, too, if you watch it. The appeal is in the cast, the writing, and how well the whole thing is executed. In those respects, I thought this was an entertaining movie. Joe Manganiello, who I’ve always found to be a likable actor, turns in a good, believable performance as Sonny. Sofia Vergara, who’s married to him in real life, is okay as the former girlfriend, but the script really doesn’t give her a lot to do. The supporting cast is solid, there are a few funny lines here and there to break up the slow-burn drama, and basically, I’m a sucker for baseball movies and have been ever since I saw THE BABE RUTH STORY when I was a kid. This doesn’t go in the top rank of baseball movies, but I liked it and thought it was a decent way to spend a couple of hours.

The Annotated Guide to Robert E. Howard's Weird Fantasy - Fred Blosser

I'll read anything Fred Blosser wants to write about Robert E. Howard and his work. Since I started reading Blosser's articles and essays in THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN more than forty years ago, I think it's safe to say I've been reading him longer than any of the other REH scholars, and I always enjoy what he has to say.

His latest book is THE ANNOTATED GUIDE TO ROBERT E. HOWARD'S WEIRD FANTASY. Blosser breaks down Howard's fantasy stories into several different categories, including Cthulhu Mythos, The Little People, Gaelic Fear, Ghosts, Science Fiction, Texas Terrors, Swampland Shadows, Skull-Face, De Montour, Jungle Horrors, Faring Town, Psychic Investigators, and Shudder Stories. For each story, he discusses the plot, fills in the background of how Howard came to write it, and places it in the context of Howard's other work. As Blosser mentions in his introduction, this volume is aimed more at newer Howard readers, but even though I've been reading Howard for more than fifty years and have read some of these stories multiple times, I still always get something from Blosser's insights into them.

I'll admit, my favorite sections are the ones on Texas Terrors, since I've always loved Howard's Weird Westerns, and his Weird Menace yarns, since that's one of my favorite genres in recent years. But all the areas of discussion are interesting, informative, and entertaining. Blosser does include the endings of the stories in his plot summaries, so those who haven't yet read the stories themselves might be wise to steer clear of those. But for those who have, THE ANNOTATED GUIDE TO ROBERT E. HOWARD'S WEIRD FANTASY gets my highest recommendation. You'll probably learn a few things, and I guarantee you'll have a good time.

 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Mystery Stories, April 1942

The usual good cover by H.J. Ward on this issue of SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, the Spicy line's sort-of-Weird-Menace pulp. Inside are stories by the usual group of authors under the usual mix of pseudonyms and house-names: Robert Leslie Bellem (at least twice), Hugh B. Cave (as Justin Case), Laurence Donovan, Edwin Truett Long, Colby Quinn, and more. I really like the Spicy pulps, as most of you know. I find them consistently entertaining, although formulaic enough that I have to space them out some.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, October 1946

Something of a rarity on this issue of .44 WESTERN, a cover by Sam Cherry on a pulp not published by the Thrilling Group. But as usual with a Western pulp published by Popular Publications, there are some great authors and titles. For example, "A Hundred Wagons, Rolling to Hell!" by Tom Roan and "Gun-Brothers of the Brimstone Border" by Ed Earl Repp. You don't get more Popular Publications Western pulp than that. Other authors on hand are Joseph Chadwick, Lee E. Wells, M. Howard Lane, and Harry Van Demark, as himself and as Jared Kingsley.

Forgotten Books: Branded - A.C. Abbott (Helen Meinzer)

Rock Kendall rides into Arizona with a murder charge from Texas hanging over his head. Even worse, he’s accused of killing a woman, just about the most heinous crime anybody can commit on the frontier. Rock was framed, though, and he’s on the trail of the actual murderer, his former partner in a ranch that the varmint wound up stealing from him, as well as making him a fugitive from the law. That former partner has changed his name, started another ranch in Arizona, and is a rich, powerful cattleman well on his way to being governor someday. But Rock is determined to destroy those plans and clear his own name in the process.

Unfortunately, Rock runs into another rancher, this one a beautiful young woman with a rustler problem, and he gets caught up in an effort to help her, which may put his own vengeance plans in jeopardy. Another beautiful young woman, this one from a clan of outlaws, complicates things for Rock even more. And when his true identity is revealed, he has the law and every honest man in the territory after him, bound on either jailing or lynching him. In other words, every hand is against him, and the odds of him coming out of this alive, let alone accomplishing the goals that brought him to Arizona, are very slim indeed.

BRANDED, published in hardback by the World Publishing Company in 1953 and reprinted in paperback by Signet in 1954 (the edition I read; my copy in the scan) is the second and final novel by A.C. Abbott, an author who contributed about 70 stories to various Western pulps in the late Forties and Fifties. Earlier this year, I read and really enjoyed the first A.C. Abbott novel, WILD BLOOD, and curiosity about the author led me to discover she was really Helen Abbott Meinzer, one of the few women to write hardboiled Westerns during that era.

And BRANDED, like WILD BLOOD, is really hardboiled. Rock Kendall gets shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, and knocked out more than once in the course of this book, but he absorbs all that punishment and keeps coming back stubbornly for more as he tries to clear his name and avenge himself on the man who betrayed him. Meinzer has a fine touch with her characters, too, and the romantic relationships, even though they don’t take up a lot of space in the book, ring true, which is no surprise since she wrote a lot for the Western romance pulps with her steadiest market being RANCH ROMANCES. In the two novels I’ve read, the plots are pretty traditional, but there are a few nice twists along the way.

Meinzer died in 1963, at a fairly young age, her mid-forties. I don’t know anything about her personal life, but I do wish we had gotten more novels from her. She was an excellent writer, and WILD BLOOD and BRANDED are a limited but fine legacy. If you’re a Western fan and ever run across either of these novels, I give them a high recommendation.

Classic Westerns: Tracker #1 The Winning Hand - Robert J. Randisi

I've read at least some entries in just about every Western series Bob Randisi has written over the past forty years--and there have been a lot of them. But I realized I never read any of his Tracker novels, a seven-book series that he wrote for Avon in the Eighties under the pseudonym Tom Cutter. Since these are available now in e-book editions under Randisi's name, I picked up the first one, THE WINNING HAND, read it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tracker (we never find out any other name for him) is a man with several other mysteries about him, such as his background and profession. As this book, and the series, opens, he wins a San Francisco hotel in a poker game and sets out with his con-man friend Duke to find out what he's won. Tracker himself lies low and lets Duke pretend to be the hotel's new owner, since Tracker hasn't decided whether or not he wants to be in the hotel business.

One factor that may influence his decision is that if he stays, he'll have a partner: the beautiful blond daughter of one of the former owners. As if that's not enough of a complication, Tracker also runs afoul of one of the local big shots and gets involved in a boxing match where one of the combatants is the big shot's son--and he'll stop at nothing to win, including murder.

Randisi spins this yarn in his usual fast-paced, dialogue-heavy style, and it's a whole lot of fun. There's plenty of action, Tracker is a likable protagonist, and by the time the book is over, things have been set up for an excellent series. It's hard for me to believe that this book came out 37 years ago. That really makes me feel old. But at the same time, it's an early gem in Randisi's legendary career, and I'm glad I finally got around to this series. Highly recommended.

Overlooked Movies: Beyond the Mask (2015)

I’d never heard of this movie until someone mentioned it in an email group I belong to that’s devoted to Zorro and the work of pulpster Johnston McCulley, but it sounded promising so I decided to check it out. BEYOND THE MASK is set in England and America in 1775-76. The protagonist is a former mercenary/assassin for the East India Company who wants to leave the violence and darkness of his life behind and start over as a peaceful man. His former bosses don’t want that, however—he knows too much, and he’ll make a good fall guy for them—so they try to have him killed. Some twists of fate wind up with him taking on the identity of a vicar and falling in love with a beautiful young woman. But more plot twists ruin what might have been an idyllic existence for him, and before you know it, he’s off to the rebellious colonies in America, where he becomes a masked vigilante known as the Highwayman, battling plots by his old enemies who are trying to put a stop to the American Revolution before it barely gets underway. From that point, things get pretty wild and over-the-top.

BEYOND THE MASK is part Dr. Syn, part Zorro, and a lot The Wild, Wild West, a steampunkish version of the early days of the Revolutionary War. You won’t have heard of any of the actors in it except John Rhys-Davies, who has a good time chewing the scenery as the head bad guy. But the cast does pretty good for the most part, there’s a lot of well-staged swashbuckling action, and the production values are top-notch most of the time. The movie looks good. Despite some notes at the end trying to justify the goofy plot, there’s not much semblance of historical accuracy, but if you go into it knowing that and take the movie for what it is, I think it’s entertaining.

This was produced for the inspirational market, but the religious elements are pretty rare and not heavy-handed. There’s no sex or cussing or excessive gore, but you don’t find those things in movies from the Thirties and Forties or TV from the Sixties, and that’s what BEYOND THE MASK reminds me of. Judging by the reviews on IMDB, this is a love it or hate it movie, but I didn’t react either of those ways. It’s not a great film, but I had a good time watching it.

Classic Crime Novels: Cut Me In - Jack Karney

Black Gat Books has reprinted several excellent novels involving cops and organized crime, such as Louis Malley’s STOOL PIGEON and Ferguson Findley’s MY OLD MAN’S BADGE. Originally published as a paperback original by Pyramid Books in 1959, CUT ME IN by Jack Karney is a worthy addition to that group. The protagonist is Coley Walsh, a rookie policeman in New York City who has a couple of tragedies in his past haunting him. Coley also has ambition, and he quickly rises in the ranks to become a plainclothes detective working directly for the captain of his precinct. The thing is, Coley’s job is to collect all the graft that the corrupt captain is raking in, and he takes to this assignment right away. His ambition and ruthlessness help him seize other opportunities, and soon he’s taking on the Syndicate, not out of any altruistic motives but because he wants to start a criminal organization of his own.

Ah, but you know as well as I do that such plans never quite work out in noir novels. When Coley falls for a beautiful model who works for a company the Syndicate wants to take over, it complicates things for him. He gives up his battle against the Syndicate and joins them instead, not only to try to protect the girl but to further his own crooked goals as well. It’s only a matter of time, though, before everything goes to hell for Coley Walsh.

Jack Karney, who lived his entire life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, worked for the District Attorney’s office in New York City, so he brings an undeniable authenticity to this sordid tale. CUT ME IN is a little slow to develop its plot in the first half of the book, but once things start rolling, Karney proves to be a fine storyteller and the final scenes generate a lot of genuine, page-turning suspense. For most of the novel, Coley Walsh isn’t a very likable protagonist, but the reader winds up rooting for him anyway. I enjoyed CUT ME IN quite a bit. It’s another entry from Black Gat Books that’s well worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, January 1934

There are skeletons on this THRILLING DETECTIVE cover by Rafael DeSoto. That's appropriate enough for the day after Halloween, right? Inside are some top-notch authors, including Norman A. Daniels, Johnston McCulley, Arthur J. Burks, Lawrence A. Keating, Thrilling Group house-name C.K.M. Scanlon (if I had to guess, really Keating or Daniels), and little-known authors Barry Brandon and Walter A. Sinclair.