"The Pitfall" by Jay Dratler (1947, re-published by Stark House Press 2022)

While the 1948 film Pitfall has risen to be regarded as a film noir classic, Jay Dratler’s original 1947 novel The Pitfall has been unjustly neglected. Stark House Press, re-releasing the book for the first time since 1956, reveals that Dratler’s novel is darker, sleazier and less forgiving than the film it inspired. A brutal portrait of blind lust and self-destruction that out-Cains even James M. Cain, Dratler’s The Pitfall deserves to known as a stellar example of 1940s American noir. Stark House’s edition, which includes introductions from the author’s son, Jay Dratler, Jr., as well as novelist Timothy J. Lockhart, will hopefully restore the novel’s rightful reputation.

In the novel, Jon Forbes is a successful screenwriter who seemingly has it all. He has a daughter, Ann, devoted to him; and his wife, Sue, is pregnant with their second child. And he works his own schedule—afternoons and evenings—at home, where his secretary Kate takes dictation. He even has a friend on the police force, Mac, who gives him insider tips for his scripts.

And all it takes is one whisper from Mac about Mona, the wife of a purse snatcher named Smiley currently serving three months, to sink his entire life. Mac wants Jon to cozy up to Mona and pave the way for him. Jon disagrees at first, but can’t get Mona out of his mind. Pretending to be a friend of her husband, Jon arranges to have a drink at a hotel bar. And from the moment they meet, Jon’s doomed fate is sealed—if only he were smart enough to realize it.

"The Girl With No Place to Hide" by Marvin Albert as Nick Quarry (1959)

The Girl With No Place to Hide gave me everything I wanted from a 1950s private eye novel—and in spades. A thoroughly hardboiled protagonist, gritty New York city ambience, wild nights in Greenwich Village bars, Bronx flophouses, incriminating photographs, two-way mirrors, blackmail, loan-sharks, shoot-outs, fist-fights, jail-house brawls, prizefights at Madison Square Garden, thugs, crooked cops, duplicitous dames—you name it, this book’s got it. But it’s also got something extra special—and that’s Marvin Albert. 

The story begins when a young woman enters a bar looking for private eye Jake Barrow’s friend, fight manager Steve Canby, who left the bar just moments before. Later, as Jake is leaving the bar, he finds a thug in the alley strangling the woman. He rescues her and takes her to his apartment for safe keeping, and she reveals that she’s in trouble, and that something bad has happened to her friend Ernie. Before Jake can find out more, he gets an urgent call to come up to the Bronx for $200. When he gets there, he realizes it was a ruse. Returning to his apartment, Angela is gone. The next morning, Jake sees in the newspaper that a photographer named Ernie was found murdered—and he fears that Angela will be the next victim.

I’ll say no more except that this is a wild ride all across New York City, with plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing every step of the way.

Originally appearing under Albert's pseudonym “Nick Quarry” in 1959 by Gold Medal Books, The Girl With No Place to Hide was recently reissued by Black Gat Books from Stark House Press, and it magnificently captures why Albert was a writer’s writer. The Girl With No Place to Hide is the work of a real pro—a slickly designed plot that hits the right beats but not in the expected places, so readers will get what they're looking for but not in the same way they’ve read it before. Albert also shows restraint with the prose, no leaning too much on sex, violence, or slang. This is Albert’s third novel with his series character Jake Barrow—but don’t let that stop you from jumping in. If you’re like me and you haven’t read the first two yet, you’ll have no trouble following along (though you might want to rush out and find the others). 

"Manhunter" by Arnold Hano (1957)

In Arnold Hano’s westerns, the frontier is deceitful above all things, truth is rarely simple, and resolutions never easy. Where other books end—the capture of the killer and the confession—Manhunter begins.

“Ross was no longer vitally interested in Gill. He had his father’s killer, his confessed killer. But Gill could clear up who was lying, and why.

“On the heels of that thought came a terrible doubt, streaking across his brain like a yellow comet. It had all happened so long ago. Maybe it was he—Ben Ross—who was lying.”

Originally released in 1957 under the pseudonym “Matthew Gant” and recently released by Stark House Press (paired with Slade), Manhunter is emblematic of Hano’s strikingly original approach to the western genre. Revenge and closure don't drive his protagonist forward, it’s something darker and all-consuming. These sorts of qualities separate Arnold Hano’s westerns from many of his peers, and what gives them the distinction of being labeled retroactively as “western noir.” 

"Slade" by Arnold Hano (1956)

There’s nothing heroic or romantic about Arnold Hano’s westerns. The frontier is a dark and violent landscape that doesn’t offer redemption, rebirth, or hope. In Hano’s books, the barren landscapes reveal the naked awfulness of its people. These qualities are on full display in Slade and Manhunter, two of Hano’s grim, gut-punch westerns recently reissued by Stark House Press. These great books embody why Hano deserves the title “Master of the Western Noir,” which is the name of Paul Bishop’s terrific essay-interview with the author, which is also included in the new volume.

Slade was originally published in 1956 under the name “Ad Gordon” by Lion Books, where Hano was also the editor. Hano doesn’t handle his characters with kid gloves—he puts them through hell, over and over again. Slade begins with him knocking the titular character off his high horse, and what a fall he takes. Like Icarus before him, Slade flew too close to the sun and paid for his hubris. Here, the gambler bet everything he had—including his saloon—and lost it. With only his horse, his hat, and a sock with $500 he tries to leave town, but after he’s jumped and beaten unconscious he loses even the sock. “Dilt drove both his fists to the back of Slade’s neck and kicked himself loose. Yet somehow he got up again. Finally, the wild red washed through him and turned gray and the last thing he remembered was Dilt saying hoarsely, ‘Fall, you son of a bitch, fall.’”

"Satan Takes the Helm" by Calvin Clements (1952) FFB

Stark House Press's Black Gat imprint has dived deep into the ocean of obscure vintage paperback originals and returned with a real treasure, one that was originally published in 1952 and has been out of print for decades.

Calvin Clements's Satan Takes the Helm is top tier Gold Medal thriller and exemplifies the hard-edged, tightly plotted, noir-laced thriller style that defined the imprint in its early days. It's a sea-faring murder mystery whose every paragraph is saturated with salt water, human sweat, and smoldering sex. Like a nautical James M. Cain, Clements writes characters desperate past the edge of reason, whose carnal thirst for survival drives them to lust and murder. Think The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity but with its characters trapped on the same ship and you'll have an inkling of the claustrophobic sexual tension and paranoid jealousies fueling Satan Takes the Helm. This book is as noir as they come.

"One is a Lonely Number" by Bruce Elliott (1952) (FFB)

Bruce Elliott’s One is a Lonely Number was published in 1952 by Lion Books (a paperback publisher of such classics as David Goodis’ Black Friday, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, and Day Keene’s My Flesh Is Sweet). The main character is Larry Camonille, an escaped convict with only one partial lung left, a bad cough that threatens to spew out what’s left of his lung, and five dollars in his pocket. He spends the dough on a prostitute, even though a doctor warned him that any exertion—smoking, drinking, sex, whatever—might be enough to kill him. So begins Camonille’s self-destructive binge on his way to Mexico, where he dreams of breathing the warm, dry air—if he can survive long enough to get there. Taking a job in a kitchen to make some money, Camonille shacks up with an epileptic juvenile girl dating one of his co-workers, then embarks on a foolhardy crime spree that even someone with two good lungs could hardly get away with.

This is our hero. Someone so despicable that even Jim Thompson’s characters seem civilized. Someone so sleazy and depraved he makes Harry Whittington’s protagonists seem wholesome. Comb any of the noir films or crime novels from that era and you won’t find anyone so unapologetically degenerate as Larry Camonille. This might very well be the bleakest noir of them all. Page two of the book, and he describes himself as, “Thirty-two years old and dead. A corpse looking for a place to lie down and pull up the earth around it.” This is about as uplifting and likable as Larry gets.

"The Three-Way Split" by Gil Brewer (1960) (FFB)

Gil Brewer's The Three-Way Split is a dynamite novel that ignites on page one and burns until the very last page. Desperate characters hell-bent on self-destruction and with nothing to lose—this is Brewer raw and unfiltered, and I loved every page of it.

Originally published by Gold Medal in 1960, it marked the end of a crazily productive decade for Brewer, who banged out a blistering run of 25 novels in ten years. It also marked the beginning of Brewer's professional decline—two novels in 1961, only one in 1962, and then a four year gap, followed by intermittent books for small publishers mostly under pseudonyms. His eleventh and penultimate book for Gold Medal, The Three-Way Split is both a milestone and a gravestone for Gil Brewer.

All of which makes The Three-Way Split an even more fascinating and bewildering text. Like a true noir protagonist, Brewer momentarily seems to be at the top of his game—and yet the bottom is just around the corner. The book's plummeting darkness and frenetic downward spiral are pure Brewer. Every turn of the page seems like the character is on the precipice of oblivion and holding on for dear life—and so, too, was the book's author, it now seems. Maybe that's why Brewer seems to have such a deep bond to his main character, Jack Holland, a man on his last leg who risks it all on a long-shot that could take him down and his loved ones along with him.

"Frantic" by Noël Calef (1958)

Noël Calef's Frantic is certainly a well-deserved title, even if it is an inaccurate translation. How else can you describe a book about a man trapped in an elevator, who was trying to cover up a murder, while outside his whole world is falling apart and events are set in motion to blame him for another murder which he did not commit? It is a brutally bleak and misanthropic noir structured as Greek tragedy, enacted by a despicable cast of characters care only for themselves and whose selfishness leads to their own downfall. In true noir fashion, this is a book where no one gets away clean.

Frantic was originally published in France in 1958 as Ascenseur pour l'échafaud and filmed that same year by Louis Malle. Three years later, in 1961, both the book and the movie were released in the United States under the title Frantic, with the book being released by the king of paperback crime publishers, Fawcett's Gold Medal Books. While the movie, better known under the more accurate translation of Elevator to the Gallows, is a celebrated film noir masterpiece, the book's English translation has been out of print for nearly sixty years; however, it was raised from obscurity by Stark House Press in 2019 and released as a Black Gat Book.

"Black Wings Has My Angel" by Elliott Chaze (1953)

Elliott Chaze's Black Wings Has My Angel was originally published by Gold Medal in 1953. Bill Crider and Ed Gorman have long been touting this as one of Gold Medal's finest crime novels. Gorman calls it "one of THE classic noirs" while Crider admits "I'm probably to blame, at least in part, for the high price that the book commands these days because I praised it in a fanzine article 35 or so years ago." Now that I've read it, I’ll nod my head in agreement: they weren’t kidding. An unorthodox and peculiar heist novel, its protagonists are an oil rigger fresh off a 16-week stint in the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana and a volatile, bloodthirsty call girl. Beginning with their self-loathing meeting in a cheap motel room to their road trip across the Southwest and culminating in a camping expedition in the Colorado mountains, Black Wings Has My Angel often seems like a travelogue of American scenery and squalor. But that's precisely its magnetic appeal: Black Wings Has My Angel is a tantalizing novel that reveals its dark secrets slowly, never letting us in on the grand plan until we’re too far along to back out.

"Little Men, Big World" (1951) and "Vanity Row (1952)" by W.R. Burnett

The legacy that W.R. Burnett created has eclipsed is own name. His works were adapted into legendary films such as Little Caesar, Iron Man (three times, twice under its original title and once as Some Blondes are Dangerous), Dark Command, High Sierra (three times, first under its original title and then as Colorado Territory and I Died A Thousand Times), Nobody Lives Forever, Yellow Sky, and The Asphalt Jungle (three times, including a western version called The Badlanders, and Cool Breeze). As a screenwriter, his credits include Scarface, The Beast of the City, This Gun For Hire, Background to Danger, The Racket, Illegal, The Great Escape, and dozens more. Burnett, on the page and on the screen, was an essential component in the formation and iteration of gritty realism in several crime sub-genres, such as gangster, hardboiled, and western noir. Not without a sense of humor, Burnett even provided the hoodlum hokum source material for John Ford’s The Whole Town’s Talking.

All of which makes one wonder: Why is most of his work out of print? The answer is certainly not that his novels don’t hold up. In 2009, Stark House Press reprinted a pair of excellent, forgotten books—It’s Always Four O’Clock and Iron Man, both rise-and-fall narratives of self-destructive ambition, the former about a jazz guitarist the latter about a middleweight boxer. In 2015, Stark House returned to Burnett with another double-header of should-be crime classics: Little Men, Big World and Vanity Row.

In his introduction to this volume, author and invaluable crime fiction scholar Rick Ollerman positions these two novels as part of Burnett’s “Urban Trilogy,” along with 1949’s The Asphalt Jungle. “Each one shows a different facet of crime and the reason for its ultimate downfall, related by the strengths but ultimately the weaknesses of the criminals involved. Hoods are people, Burnett shows us, complex and plagued with the same differences in personalities, the same sins and vices, as everyone else.” The crooks here aren’t villains, but schmucks caught in a bureaucratic system that offers no real chance for success. Good guy or bad, Burnett’s characters are all born to lose.

Originally published in 1951, Little Men, Big World is an ensemble narrative of vice and political corruption in an unnamed Midwestern city. At the center of the story is Arky, a bookie whose livelihood is under threat from all sides. There’s a rat in his organization selling out to the Big City boys across the river who want to move in and take over; Ben Reisman, a journalist, is bent on exposing the rackets; and Commissioner Stark wants to run him out of business and clean up the city. It is a book of many mysteries—Who is the informer? Who is the big boss? Who is corrupt and who is on the level? Who will wind up on top and who will fall back into the gutter?—but more than that, it is an exposé of under- and upper-world bureaucracies, the commonalities of their structures, and the ways in which their worlds intersect.

If the urban arena is meant to signify the height of American achievement—where gangsters, reporters, and politicians alike can wield earth-changing influence—in Little Men, Big World Burnett tears the skyscrapers down to one-story stumps. Unlike Horatio Alger and his underdogs, Burnett’s city boys never succeed through hard work and determination. Arky is the most Alger-esque of the bunch, a runaway kid and petty thief who was saved from jail by a benevolent judge. Plucked from the gutter and placed into prominence, Arky well understands the rule of the city: no one gets where they are on their own. From the lowly driver to the high court judge, they were put there for a reason by someone more powerful than them, who was in turn put there by someone even more powerful, and so on up to the top of a never-ending ladder.

The desires of the characters are abstract—Arky, Reisman, and Stark are vying for power and influence, but over who? Certainly, each other, but none have any tangible, clearly defined goal in sight. Arky seems caught in an ever-changing game of chess, shifting people’s positions and moving locations but never making any actual change. Stark wants to wipe out graft, when by his own admission, “as long as men want to gamble, there will be gambling an army couldn’t stop.” Reisman has risen from beat reporter to syndicated columnist, yet he is now “bored, depressed, at loose ends … he’d really hit bottom.” And what does his career even matter when he suffers from a potentially life-threatening ulcer? Burnett undercuts their ambitions by emphasizing the futility of their visions.

More than just a “crime doesn’t pay” parable, Little Men, Big World projects such a deeply cyncial worldview that even antiheroes can’t be celebrated. Burnett humanizes his pawns before utterly humiliating them. Arky might control the local rackets, but when his girlfriend brings her infant niece into the house, he finds himself emasculated and powerless; Arky’s thuggish driver, Turkey, is made to wear and apron and struggle to cook breakfast as part of his duties; Stark cleans up the underworld but he’s so unworldly not to recognize the ulterior motives behind his own promotion; and Reisman, whose ulcer bookends the novel, is the biggest fool of all for thinking he has made a change in the world when really nothing has changed, he’s only one step closer to death.

Vanity Row, Burnett’s follow-up in 1952, seems very pedestrian on the surface. Police Captain Roy Hargis is investigating the death of a big shot lawyer, and both his superiors and the underworld are putting the pressure on him to pin the murder on the lawyer’s mistress, Ilona Vance, who naturally Hargis falls in love with and believes is innocent. These broad narratives strokes were nothing extraordinary at the time, and are even less so now, but the significance of Vanity Row lies not in its formula but in Burnett’s politically-rooted skepticism of such archetypes. Hargis is another of Burnett’s corporate cogs, placed into power by a character euphemistically referred to as the “big political boss.” Hargis’s unmerited advancement was so he could be used to circumvent official procedure and cut through red tape. Living in a swank hotel and accepting “favors,” Hargis more closely resembles a gangster than a cop, a division made even more complicated by Hargis’ earnest (and naïve) ambition to be a righteous hero. Burnett’s cynical worldview, however, doesn’t allow for such easy chivalry: In a world in which there is no clear line between good and bad, or right and wrong, how can you know which side you are truly on?

As the investigation gets deeper and more dangerous, Hargis futilely puts his career and life on the line to absolve Ilona Vance. Subverting the traditional moral balance of crime novels, the revelation of truth in the final chapters does not set everything right. Justice, in Burnett’s world, is never just: it is a political tool, like money, influence, and power, and it is inherently corrupt.

As a social documentarian, Burnett offers a fascinating and morally ambiguous counterpoint to contemporaneous procedurals like Dragnet. He doesn’t view crime as a battle between cops and robbers, and forensics aren’t a literary tool to piece together an incomplete narrative. Instead, Burnett posits cops and robbers as complements in a fluid structure with no clear diving line, and police methodology not a means to a truthful, more complete narrative but just an added layer of and adulterated facts and obscured certitudes. In Little Men, Big World and Vanity Row, the mysteries might be solved, but the real problems still remain.

This review was originally published at The Life Sentence on October 12, 2015. It appears here in a slightly revised form.

"Rapture Alley" (1953) / "Winter Girl" (1963) / "Strictly for the Boys" (1959) by Harry Whittington

Stark House Press continues their revival of Harry Whittington with their third anthology of deep cuts from the "King of the Paperbacks." The nickname is well deserved. During the renaissance of the paperback originals in the 1950s and 1960s, Whittington was one of the hardest working pros, pumping out multiple titles a year. Ultimately, he published over 170 novels in his three-decade-long career. More than just prolific, he was one of the most reliably entertaining and distinctive paperback writers of his era. Whittington wasn't a flashy plotter: he shot from the hip, and when he hit the bull's-eye, it stuck. His were stories of intensely driven characters living out their unlucky lives as the world closed in on them. He might not have been as bold as Jim Thompson or as plaintive as David Goodis, but Whittington's novels, like the work of those two titans, were character-driven tragedies, at times more realistic and recognizable than those of his more lauded contemporaries. Like Day Keene and Orrie Hitt (both of whom Stark House has also reprinted), Whittington wrote of people you'd find across the street, down at the corner, or sitting next to you in the bar. He turned commonplace situations into frenzied odysseys of obsession and self-destruction.

The three novels selected for this anthology have never been reprinted before, and two of them never even appeared under Whittington's own name. To long-time Whittington fans, this volume will provide a revelation of the depth and diversity of the author's talent, while newcomers will find plenty of reasons to dig deeper into the author's seemingly endless backlog.

Rapture Alley, originally published in 1953 under the pen name "Whit Harrison," charts an aspiring model's descent into heroin addiction: "It seemed that her life had become a bad dream, an endless nightmare in which everything continually worsened." Whittington's rendering of Lora's condition may be, at times, melodramatic, but he nails his portrait of the psychological strain and self-loathing that surround addiction. The doomed relationship-and the impossibility of a truly happy ending-are hallmarks of the author's worldview.

Winter Girl was originally released in 1963 as A Taste of Desire, under the "Curt Colman" byline, by the sleaze specialist Corinth, with numerous scenes added by hacks to spice up the text. Thanks to editor David Laurence Wilson, who restored the novel to Whittington's original version, we're finally able to see the book in its intended form, and it's a real treat. The final product is sort of a "boy and his dog" meets "backwoods tramp" mash-up set in the Deep South. Among its author's more unusual creations, it stands out for its sensitive yet unsettling coming-of-age narrative. The motivating crime - the search for the narrator's stolen prized pet - is nothing compared to the more pedestrian tragedies he faces on a daily basis: alcoholic fathers, abused mothers, rampant unsatisfied ambitions and desires, and the gradual realization that he's fated to become just like everyone else in his crummy, beaten-down town.

The real prize of the anthology, however, is Strictly For the Boys, originally published in 1959, and the only one of the three to bear Whittington's own name. The story is about a battered wife attempting to flee an abusive husband who refuses to let her, her mother, and her new boyfriend alone. Downright disturbing in its realism and sobering depiction of domestic violence, Strictly For the Boys displays a social consciousness that was prescient for its time, and which continues to be relevant today.

Editor and scholar David Laurence Wilson deserves special commendation for his tireless efforts to restore Whittington's reputation (and, in the case of Winter Girl, to restore the text itself). Wilson and Stark House publisher Greg Shepard give their books scholarly attention on par with the Library of America. Meticulously researched and lovingly edited, Stark House presents these forgotten paperback novels not as pulp curios, but as real literature, and set the bar high for other reprint series.

(Originally published January 23, 2012 at the Los Angeles Review of Books)

"Night of the Horns" and "Cry Wolfram" by Douglas Sanderson

If it weren't for Stark House Press, I might never have read Douglas Sanderson. Or it might have taken me longer than it did, which is too long already, and I'm hitting myself for not reading him as soon as they released their first collection of Pure Sweet Hell and Catch a Fallen Starlet in 2004. But I didn't. I also missed their 2006 collection, The Deadly Dames and A Dum-Dum for the President. Looks like I'm the real "Dum-Dum" here for being so late to the game, because I just read their latest collection, Night of the Horns and Cry Wolfram, and they're both high caliber 1950s suspense novels, a punchy blend of adventure, humor, and fist-fighting, gat-spewing action.

Night of the Horns (1958) is about a lawyer, Robert Race, trying to make an honest buck, but whose two current clients are a man on trial for statutory rape, and a racketeer named Kresnik. Against his better judgement, Race agrees to pick up a suitcase at the docks for Kresnik. Bad decision. Race is attacked and the suitcase stolen. Soon, he finds himself on the run in Mexico, chasing after the suitcase, his attacker, and his run-away wife, all the while trying to avoid the cops, the gangsters, and the Mexican locals he's pissed off in his pursuit.

With a darkly humorous edge to his style, Sanderson seems a literary cousin to Jonathan Latimer. Both authors mix wise-cracks with head-cracks, poking fun at the genre while pounding the crap out of the characters. Light hearted at moments, but still plenty dark.

Cry Wolfram (1959) is another international thriller, this time in Europe. Imagine John Dickson Carr writing The Sun Also Rises--a dizzyingly twisty jet-set whodunit that moves from French high society nightlife to the Spanish sun as bodyguard John Molson tries to solve his employer's murder and unravel a corporate conspiracy. It would be a fine vacation if not for all the double-crosses, back stabbing (figuratively and literally), dead bodies, and rampant corruption going on. Overall, an exotic and exciting suspense story.

Favorite quotes:
"After two years of marriage the kick not only remained, it increased. Each time i made love to her was more potent than the last. Merely to watch her undress was like being belted by a mule." (Night of the Horns)

"I opened my eyes and the pale-faced guy was leaning over me with a hypodermic needle the size of an Indian lance. He hadn't yet washed his hair. He was flaked thick with dandruff and I thought some of it would fall on me. The prospect wasn't pleasant." (Night of the Horns)

"The gun bored hard at my vertebrae. I felt a sense of hurt pride that she had never really liked me." (Cry Wolfram)

"North Beach Girl" (1960) and "Scandal on the Sand" (1964) by John Trinian

Available to purchase here.

John Trinian is not your typical Gold Medal author, and North Beach Girl (1960) and Scandal on the Sand (1964) are not your typical Gold Medal paperback originals. Far from ordinary, these two titles are among the most unique and extraordinary Gold Medal originals I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. Once again, thanks must be given to the team at Stark House Books for rediscovering these should-be classics, and collecting them in new volume with three illuminating essays by historian Rick Ollerman, close friend Ki Longfellow, and daughter Belle Marko.

A radical blending of 1960s counterculture and noir sensibilities, Trinian’s novels evoke the West Coast spirit of the times with the doomy melancholy of Goodis. The plots vaguely touch on murder, but they're more like hangout books, with the characters drunk or stoned most of the time. Booze, drugs, and art flow freely through these pages—at times the inebriation is a pure high, at others it’s a hazy attempt to block out reality. But unlike something like Lawrence Block’s A Diet of Treacle, these books aren’t Beatnik-sploitation, or caricatures of the scene. Trinian, who was pals with Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, lived the lives he writes about. With each passing page, there’s an authenticity to North Beach Girl and Scandal on the Sand that can’t be faked—it gives the books their realism, but it also gives them their sadness. Trinian feels for his characters, their troubled pasts, their hazy futures, and their lost present.

Though at first glance, the title North Beach Girl might sound like some Frankie and Annette sandstorm, it is nothing of the sort. Erin, the main character, just quit her job as an artists’ model. She crashes as a garage paid for by another woman named Bruno, who runs a local art gallery. The gallery has attracted a local crew of beatniks, drunks, artists, wannabes and has-beens, including Riley, a painter who comes knocking on Erin’s door late one night, piss drunk, wanting to hire her as a model. Bruno, who obviously has some sort of affection for Erin, is resentful and jealous. Deep in debt and looking for a way out, Bruno wants Erin to borrow money from her dying grandmother in order to invest in a larger gallery space. And Erin, indecisive in life and love alike, hasn’t made up her mind what to do about anything.

“The bitter confusion of her life became magnified and it seemed to melt into a solid lump of nothingness. Why should she think about it? Life was wretched and disgusting. It was mean for the stupid idiots who could swallow its lies and shadowy promises. Only fools lived in peace. She thought of the cemetery where her mother was buried. Give and take, old ashes to even older ashes … have another drink and the hell with it. One negated the other.”

It’s as gloomy as any of Goodis’ gutter monologues, a pure mainline dose of 100% noir.

Trinian’s first line in North Beach Girl establishes the theme of entrapment that runs throughout the novel: “Erin covered herself with the pale green robe and sat on the empty packing crate by the narrow barred window.” From her workplace to the garage to the gallery to her grandmother’s house—and of course the variety of places where she goes to drink—Erin never has a place of her own. Always in between, borrowing, crashing, or killing time, she lives in a permanent state of impermanence. While she may be an anti-establishment figure of the time who has dropped out from mainstream society, Erin isn’t a romantic or idealistic character at all. She’s realistic as hell. Most of us have either known an Erin, or been like her (at least for a little bit). And that’s where the power of North Beach Girl is—in the characters. Unlike Riley who likes his “entertainment real simple,” where “the good guy wears a big white hat and the bad guy wears a black one,” Trinian writes ambiguous characters who are neither good nor bad, neither heroes or villains, nor even anti-heroes. They’re screwy people who drink too much and say stupid things and waste time and never seem to figure out what they’re supposed to do. And that’s why Trinian’s characters are among the most recognizably human—and modern—in all of the Gold Medal paperbacks.

Though sex, drugs and murder are very much a part of the story North Beach Girl, the novel isn’t plotted like your standard head-first-into-the-action thriller. Trinian takes his time, slowly developing the characters, their relationships, and their inebriated trajectories. North Beach Girl is structured like an extended bender, coming out of the haze for brief moments of recognition and sobriety, only to drive back into the fog once they see the bleakness of their circumstances.

“Hell,” Erin said softly, “people drink a lot.”

One aspect of Trinian’s writing that does remind me of Lawrence Block, and also anticipates the work of Ed Gorman, is the portrayal of alcohol and drugs. These aren’t people who drink to have fun, or get high to have a good time—they’re just sad wrecks of people. Trinian has great sympathy for them and their constant need substances—and he never pities them, perhaps because he was something like them, himself. As his daughter, Belle Marko, writes, “He was popular and unreliable, his own worst enemy in many ways, getting in his own way with self-sabotage and isolation, depression and bouts of rage and horrible remorse. He was plagued with demons …” One of the biggest clichés of noir literature is its senseless and unrealistic celebration of alcoholism. Trinian, on the other hand, hammers home the unpleasantness of what it really is like.

The second book in the anthology, Scandal on the Sand, also sounds like a Frankie and Annette movie, but it is even less like one than the preceding novel. It begins with a great, and totally surreal, first line:

“In the deep, in cold darkness, a hundred feet below he rocky cliffs and half-hidden among the fan fronds and greenly-waving fields of sea grass, the great gray whale hovered, his tail fins moving now and then to maintain his depth.”

The first couple pages are all from the whale’s point of view—an unorthodox narrative as exciting and it is insane, and yet Trinian pulls it off perfectly. The story is set into motion when the whale washes up on the beach, gets stuck, and can’t get back to the ocean.

An ensemble narrative like John D. MacDonald’s Cry Fast, Cry Hard, Scandal on the Sand follows a group of characters on a single afternoon that all come together because of the spectacle of the beached whale. There’s Karen and Hobart, a hookup from the night before that Karen resents and that Hobart thinks will lead to marriage. There’s Joe Bonniano, a wanted hitman whose picture is on the front page of the newspaper and who is hanging around for a delivery of money. Also near by is Mulford, a cop whose stupidity is matched by his ego and quick temper. Out for a stroll are Fredric, a one-time Hollywood star-turned-dope addict, and his wife, Becky; Riley, an ex-con tow truck driver; and even a sleaze photographer named Earle and his two bikini models. And overseeing all of this is Alex, a lifeguard too hungover to notice what is unfolding on his beach.

Scandal on the Sand is, in my eyes, an even greater accomplishment than North Beach Girl. Structuring the novel around the beached whale is just a magnificent, maverick concept that borders on the avant-garde. The whale functions as a unifying symbol for all the characters: a manifestation of their collective problems, disappointments, uncertainties, and pains. Confronting the whale brings out their true character—in some it reveals compassion, in others indifference, opportunism, and violence.

Like in North Beach Girl, Trinian’s characters are distinguished by their waywardness and uncertainty. In Scandal on the Sand, the action may be compressed into a single afternoon, but the characters experience years of life through their reveries and regrets. Unable to actualize any change in their lives, they’re stuck in a limbo consisting always of nights-before and nights-after-next; days are spent forgetting and planning, and rarely doing. Of Karen, Trinian writes, “She felt a terrible need to search for something, anything, inside or outside herself that would help erase the idiotic outcome of the night before.” Trinian also has Fredric ask his wife, “Becky, do you think that if I can manage it on pills today, pills alone, without anything else, that I’ll still be all right by this evening?” These aren’t characters living for the day so much as they’re struggling to just make it through. As Earle sums it up, “Sometimes I do good; sometimes I don’t. Beer one day, champagne the next. Up and down, and down and up. That’s life.”

Scandal on the Sand also has its moments of hardboiled noir philosophy, like this line that reads like something out of Richard Hallas’ You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up:

“What had Herb said? That Joe wouldn’t even break away from the post? That the odds weren’t in his favor? That was a laugh and a half. Joe had known that all along. Because that’s the way it had always been. Not matter what. Dice, roulette, poker, the horses. Everything always ended with a bust-out.”

North Beach Girl and Scandal on the Sand have whetted my appetite for Trinian, and convinced me that he is one of the true unheralded greats of the Gold Medal canon.

"One for Hell" by Jada M. Davis

Whoever said stories must have a likable protagonist clearly never read One for Hell. Or maybe no one ever bothered to tell that piece of so-called wisdom to the book’s author, Jada M. Davis. Or, more likely, Davis just decided that the old rules weren’t for him, and he was going to break them all. And how he did.

Originally published in 1952 on Fawcett’s short-lived Red Seal imprint, and now available from Stark House Press, One for Hell is one of the most astonishing crime novels I’ve ever read. Simply put, it’s in a class all its own. It is like Hammett’s Red Harvest told from the inside out—you’re on the wrong side of the law every step of the way, and there’s no Continental Op to set things right.

Like a one-man plague, Willa Ree rides into a sleepy Texas town and quickly turns it into a hotbed of crime, vice, and corruption. Beginning with petty thievery, he maneuvers himself into the local police force and spends more time breaking laws than enforcing them. The local government originally sees Willa as a patsy, just another cog in their wheel of graft. Once he has the badge, however, Willa reveals that he has grand criminal ambitions of his own, and they threaten to blow the whole town sky high and expose everyone involved.

Like Peter Rabe’s Kill the Boss Good-By and Dig My Grave Deep, there’s something almost clinical about the way that Davis details the mechanics of the crime syndicate inner-workings. There’s no romantic subplot, no false notes of redemption, no attempt to soften the characters and make them likable. It’s as close to anthropology as it is to noir. But whereas Rabe was deeply concerned about psychology, Davis is more concerned with the behavior of his characters and the mechanics of their operation. Davis, prior to writing One for Hell, worked as a journalist in a town similar to the one he was writing about, and he had first-hand experience with corrupt law officials and small city vice. He knew what he was writing about, and it shows in his work. Davis writes with cold-blooded, matter-of-fact precision, and every step of Willa Ree’s crime spree rings unsettlingly authentic.

From bitter beginning to bitter end, this is hard-lived hardboiled.  

"Hell, Hurt, Blood and Rapture" at Los Angeles Review of Books

My most recent post at the Los Angeles Review of Books is called, "Hell, Hurt, Blood and Rapture." Check it out for reviews of Jake Hinkson's Hell on Church Street (New Pulp Press), Reed Farrel Coleman's latest Moe Prager book, Hurt Machine (Tyrus Books), John Rector's Already Gone (Thomas & Mercer), Alan Glynn's Bloodland (Picador), and a Harry Whittington anthology from Stark House Press that includes Rapture Alley, Winter Girl, and Strictly For the Boys.

Read the full article here.

Excerpts below:

Hell on Church Street is one of the rare novels that actually deserves the over-used comparison to Jim Thompson, not just because Webb follows in the footsteps of such crazed protagonists as Lou Ford (The Killer Inside Me) and Nick Corey (Pop. 1280), but because Hinkson takes a risk and deviates from Thompson’s iconic moulds.

Rector writes hardboiled noir with a rare poetic élan, tight, almost violently compressed action, and reticent melancholy... He’s already proven himself among the freshest and most stylistically austere voices working in the thriller field. In fact, labeling his books “thrillers” feels too limiting. There’s a tonal ambience and doleful vibe that permeates his work, which comes as a surprise, considering how action-packed and tense his narratives tend to be. Acutely visual, Already Gone pulses with cinematic urgency and visceral punch.

Reed Farrel Coleman’s Moe Prager saga, about a Brooklyn ex-cop turned reluctant wine merchant and occasional PI, is that rare series that improves with each new entry. Coleman is now up to the seventh book, Hurt Machine, and it’s not only the best one yet but also the darkest... Coleman’s novels, like Ed Gorman’s, impress not with distractingly complex plots (though they’re both certainly capable of spinning real page-turners) but with their profound clarity and expert simplicity. Coleman’s characters don’t need grand schemes or million dollar payoffs as motivations: as Moe too frequently discovers, there’s enough potential for lifetimes of pain in our everyday lives.

Alan Glynn’s Bloodland, a loosely related follow-up to 2009’s Winterland, is a stunningly intricate and timely piece of globalization noir... In its depiction of immoral business practices and the increasingly blurred lines between criminals and politicians, Bloodland is like an amped-up 21st-century version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key. From the exploitation of human labor through umpteen middlemen to who-knows-where, Bloodland captures the fragmentary and alienating mechanism of international affairs with prismatic clarity.

The real prize of the anthology, however, is Strictly For the Boys, originally published in 1959, and the only one of the three to bear Whittington’s own name. The story is about a battered wife attempting to flee an abusive husband who refuses to let her, her mother, and her new boyfriend alone. Downright disturbing in its realism and sobering depiction of domestic violence, Strictly For the Boys displays a social consciousness that was prescient for its time, and which continues to be relevant today... Editor and scholar David Laurence Wilson deserves special commendation for his tireless efforts to restore Whittington’s reputation (and, in the case of Winter Girl, to restore the text itself). Wilson and Stark House publisher Greg Shepard give their books scholarly attention on par with the Library of America. Meticulously researched and lovingly edited, Stark House presents these forgotten paperback novels not as pulp curios, but as real literature, and set the bar high for other reprint series.

"The Cheaters / Dial "M" For Man" by Orrie Hitt (Stark House, 2011)

Every time I look at my shelf, I’m thankful for Stark House Press. Greg Shepard and his colleagues tirelessly endeavor to find the hidden gems of American literature—the forgotten classics, should-have-been-hits that fell between the cracks, the critically misrepresented, and the underdogs that never got their due. Orrie Hitt is all of these and more, and now he joins Stark House’s esteemed roster that includes Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, W.R. Burnett, A.S. Fleischman, Margaret Millar, and Robert Silverberg. This new anthology includes The Cheaters (originally published in 1960 by Midwood), Dial "M" For Man (originally published by Beacon in 1962), as well as introductions from Hitt's children and Brian Ritt, an afterward by Michael Hemmingson, and a complete bibliography of Hitt's work.

Half a century after most of his books were published, Orrie Hitt still carries the stigma of the “sleaze” genre. But, as Brian Ritt points out in his introduction, this “allowed him to portray a side of American life not dealt with in the mainstream media during the 1950’s.” Upon first publication, Hitt’s milieu might have been thought of as licentious, but today his characters just seem real, and all too relatable. They’re working stiffs sick of their day job, tired of their home life, and bored with their surroundings, and they resort to alcohol and sex to take their mind off the monotony and dreariness of their everyday life. Hitt is not an idealist, and his characters are as imperfect and morally bankrupt as the world they live in.

In The Cheaters, young lovers Clint and Ann leave their farm-town of Beaverkill, NY and wind up living in the slums of Wilton, known as “The Dells.” Ann works by day in a diner, while Clint spends his nights tending bar. Soon, he finds himself caught in a web of small-time vice that could lead to big-time problems. There’s the bar’s owner, a fat pimp named Charlie; his buxom, hot-to-trot wife, Debbie; and a corrupt cop with his eyes on Debbie, Red Brandon. When Clint sees his chance to dump Ann, grab Debbie and the bar, and get rid of Charlie and Red, he decides to put everything on the line…

Dial “M” For Man is about Hob Sampson, a twenty-something with his own TV business, a deadbeat business partner, and a frigid, virginal girlfriend. All that changes when he makes a house call on Doris Condon. Her husband, shady business tycoon Ferris Condon, stands in the way of everything Hob wants: he blocks Hob’s bank loan to improve his shop, and he won’t let go of Doris. Sick of his shop, his girlfriend, and his partner, Hob decides to clear out of Hawley, NY once and for all—but not without Doris, and not without exacting revenge on her scheming husband.

Both The Cheaters and Dial “M” For Man are finely crafted novels, blending squalor, suspense, and social realism. The world that Hitt resents is more recognizably human than in many of his contemporaries’ books. Hitt is like William Inge, but with less melodrama, and with more crime and depravity. And forget about the “sleaze” label—these two novels are 100-proof noir, as potent as any of the more celebrated stuff coming out from Gold Medal or Lion. Hitt’s characters are lost in their frustrated desires, unable to get anywhere new and unwilling to go back to where they came from. Instead of digging up and out, they only dig themselves deeper into the grave. Their motivations are the stuff you find sitting next to you on the bus, or behind you in line at the store—working man’s noir. Read this little excerpt from The Cheaters and see what I mean:

“Several times I tried calling the apartment but when I did he answered and I hung up, my hands shaking and my guts tense and tight. All I had to do was think about her and I was a wreck, a hopeless ghost of a man who was blinded by all of the love that was being lost. More and more I turned to the bottle, seeking from the bottle the answers to the thousands and thousands of questions that kept churning around inside of me. I didn’t find any answers. I got drunk and stumbling and I didn’t care whether I worked at the bar or not.”

One thing you can you say about Hitt’s characters: they really go to work. In both books, the day-to-day grind of the job is intimately detailed. Hitt is deeply invested in the notion of work as few authors are. There’s a lived-in, worked-in quality to Hitt’s novels that is unmistakably authentic—the tedium, the irritation, the slog, and the disappointment is utterly real. There’s the sense that his characters have to work for their dollar, for their booze, and for their rent. Not one aspect of daily life is overlooked or taken for granted. There’s a palpable sense of poverty, hunger, and destitution on every page. As Hitt writes in Dial “M” For Man: “Living with her would be constant excitement. Yes, living with her, giving her children—but how would I be able to pay the bills? Poverty, stark and real; she would not want that and neither would I.”

Real-world worries distinguish Hitt’s plots and give them their distinctive edge. He invests classic suspense scenarios with working class woes, and the result in both books is a story as fantastic as it is believable. On the one hand, Clint and Hob find themselves living out their big bosomed fantasies and their paranoid nightmares, but at the same time, they’re never fully divorced from the concerns of putting a meal on their plates or paying their rent. Call it noir neorealism with a little added sex—Orrie Hitt’s 1950’s make many novels of the time seem like vanilla ice cream in comparison.

Another aspect of Hitt’s novels that I love is his style. There’s a natural, unlabored flow that reminds me of Harry Whittington (though Whittington is, on the whole, much more intense). Hitt had a clever sense of humor, and he rarely resorted to clichéd expressions, instead creating his own distinctive style. For example, “She dripped sex like a leaky faucet,” (The Cheaters) or “She had a low voice, hot and sultry, the kind of a voice that could sell bathing suits in the middle of winter” (Dial “M” For Man). Even when Hitt is trying to be sexy, there’s frequently an underlying nuance of poverty and struggle, such as this line from The Cheaters: “She was the kind of a girl you could starve to death with and not mind it at all.” In fact, that is precisely the future that Clint sees for himself unless he can find a way to pay-off Red Brandon.

When it comes to plotting, Hitt doesn’t rush head-first into trouble, and instead lets the situations develop slowly. Both The Cheaters and Dial “M” For Man are more about the build-up than the pay-off. Don’t get me wrong, both have terrific and surprising finales, but Hitt dispenses with conclusions rather quickly. He’s more interested in how—and why—his character get themselves in such a rut. Two of the driving motivations are summarized by Hitt himself:

“I’ve got a bull by the tail here but I’ve got to hang on. If I let go now there won’t be another chance. There’d be just jobs here and jobs there and I’d end up floating from place to place, never earning very much and never being sure what I was going to do the next day.” (The Cheaters)

“How bored can you get and still live with yourself?” (Dial “M” For Man)

Hitt’s characters are as restless as they are in need of a rest. The male characters are afraid of commitment, and frequently realize that they’re no good sleazebags. As the narrator of The Cheaters admits, “I was making big money in The Dells but I was just as bad as the prostitutes who worked out of the bar.” The female characters, in particular, are ready to settle down, but they don’t want to settle for less than they feel they deserve. While many of the women are too easily forgiving of the men and too quickly accept the role of a martyr, Hitt never forgets the hardships they faced in order to maintain their independence. They’re smart, savvy, and world-weary from a very young age. Only the femme fatales—Doris and Debbie—come off as thinly characterized (but “fully” developed, physically speaking) archetypes. But these are also the characters Hitt spends the least time with—he’s obviously not interested in them, nor does he sympathize with those who exploit others for personal gain. His loyalty is with the underdogs, the losers, and the workers.

Two days ago, I was new to Orrie Hitt. Today, I’ve read three novels by him. Not only the two books reprinted by Stark House, but also I’ll Call Every Monday, Hitt’s debut. And sitting by my side is another Hitt novel, Shabby Street. Yup, I’ve been bitten by the Hitt bug, and I’m a happier readier because of it. On page one, I knew I would enjoy Hitt's work, and by the end of the collection I knew I had found a new favorite author.

Thanks, Stark House, and keep up the excellent work!

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Vintage Paperback Covers found at Orrie Hitt: The Shabby Shakespeare of Sleazecore.

"The Criminal Kind" Pt. 2 at LARB: Faust, Bruen, Gorman, and Keene

The second installment of my Los Angeles Review of Books column, "The Criminal Kind," has been posted on their website. In the piece, I discuss Christa Faust's Choke Hold, Ken Bruen's Headstone, Ed Gorman's Bad Moon Rising, and Day Keene's Dead Dolls Don't Talk, Hunt the Killer, and Too Hot to Hold.

Excerpts are below, or read the full piece here.

Christa Faust
Choke Hold
Hard Case Crime, October 2011. 256 pp.
Written in a casual-but-confident first person perspective, Faust skillfully weaves some of today’s most kinetic hardboiled action with her endearingly earthy humor and moments of unexpected poignancy.

Ken Bruen
Headstone
Mysterious Press, October 2011. 256 pp.
“Taylor, I heard you were dead,” yells a cabbie in Ken Bruen’s ninth Jack Taylor novel, Headstone. Bruen’s series detective has endured enough booze, coke, beatings, and bruises to bury most of his private eye predecessors, but like a hardboiled Sisyphus, Taylor’s eternal punishment is to push bottles back-and-forth across a bar, taking cases as they come, seeking atonement that’s always out of reach, and accepting yet another glass of Jameson as a consolation prize.

Ed Gorman
Bad Moon Rising
Pegasus Books, October 2011. 256 pp.
Gorman is in top form in Bad Moon Rising. Rather than wax nostalgic or reactionary about the sixties, Gorman cuts through the mythology to reveal a much more nuanced and confused socio-political landscape... Sam McCain is Gorman’s most compassionate and endearing character, and Bad Moon Rising is another triumph in an already extraordinary career.

Day Keene
Dead Dolls Don’t Talk /Hunt the Killer /Too Hot to Hold
Stark House Press, August 2011. 371 pp.
Rounding out the Keene anthology is Too Hot to Hold (1959), in which average joe Jim Brady steps into a Manhattan cab on a rainy day and walks out with a suitcase full of money... Circumstances get so twisted that even Joe wonders, “What kind of a nightmare had he gotten himself into?” The type of nightmare that Day Keene can dream up: the result is a lean, dizzying, and masterful thriller to rival any of today’s top-sellers.

"Dead Dolls Don't Talk / Hunt the Killer / Too Hot to Hold" by Day Keene (Stark House, 2011)

Stark House Press returns with one of their strongest collections yet, a triple-header of 1950s noir from the incomparable Day Keene: Dead Dolls Don’t Talk, Hunt the Killer, and Too Hot to Hold. These are sweaty, grimy, relentless thrillers that capture Keene at his zenith—masterfully concocted plots, breakneck pacing, and some of the sleaziest characters you’ll find in 50s paperbacks.

The protagonists in these stories are all “average joes” —Keene’s stock-in-trade—whom fate, or coincidence, has thrown for a deadly loop, but none of them are entirely innocent. Keene’s characters are remarkably mature in their self-awareness. They know they’re philandering dirtbags and no-good heels, and they don’t pretend for a moment they’re any good. But that’s what makes them so sympathetic and, oddly enough, relatable. It’s easy to see how they’re lead down the path, and how they engineered their own doom. Coincidence and bad luck play a big role in each of the plots, but the majority of the blame likes squarely with the protagonists themselves: guys who want sex and booze so bad they’d screw up everything right with their lives just for one wild fling. We’ve all known someone like that, and that’s one of Day Keene’s formulas for success. Everyday people in everyday situations gone massively out-of-hand—our craziest dreams turned into living, breathing nightmares.

Dead Dolls Don’t Talk (Crest, 1959) follows a juror who learns the hard way what it means to find yourself on the wrong side of the law. Hours after returning a verdict of “guilty” in a murder case, Doc Hart wakes up next to the condemned man’s wife…dead wife. On the run and wanted for murder, Hart’s only friend is Gerta, the young woman from his shop whose affections he turned down in the past. Together, the two of them head to Mexico to unravel an increasingly complicated scheme that looks harder and harder to prove.

Hunt the Killer (1951, Avon)—my favorite of the bunch—is about a Florida smuggler, Charlie White, who is released from prison only to walk immediately back into the same trap that put him there. Only this time it’s not smuggling he’s wanted for, it’s murder. If only he could figure out the identity of his mysterious employer, Señor Peso, he’s sure he could prove himself innocent.

Too Hot to Hold (1959, Gold Medal) is about a dissatisfied husband whose dull life takes an unexpectedly exciting turn when he steps into a Manhattan cab one rainy morning. In the back seat is a suitcase filled with more money than he’s ever seen before. There’s no identification tag, so he’s takes it, and soon finds himself a mob target. Meanwhile, back at home things are headed for disaster as his nympho daughter threatens to make a scene if he doesn’t sleep with her, and his spiteful wife is on the warpath about his obtuse behavior.

If you’ve never checked out Keene before, this is the perfect place to start. Not only are all three books top of the line noir, but David Laurence Wilson’s meticulously researched introduction is a must read. Keene, whose real name was Gunard Hjertstedt, is one of those writers who didn’t leave too many clues about his own life behind him, and Wilson’s essay sheds light onto one of the author’s biggest mysteries—himself. Exquisite literary taste and impeccable scholarship make Stark House not only one of my favorite contemporary publishers, but also one of the most reliable out there today.

One thing you can always count on Day Keene for: killer openings. He knows how to hook a reader from line one like nobody else, and the beginning paragraphs to each of these three novels are some of his best. Take a look and if you like what you read, check out Stark House Press’ website for more information.

From Dead Dolls Don’t Talk:
“There was no boy and girl business about it. Both of them knew what they were doing. It was a thoroughly adult and sordid affair involving proven lewd and licentious conduct, resulting, so the State alleged, in murder:

"The man’s name was Harry L. Cotton. He had been a professional aerial crop duster. He was big. He was young. He had a way with women.”

From Hunt the Killer:
“It was hot. It was dark. The cell block smelled of men sleeping with dreams. Men without women for years. Of fear and despair and frustration. Night after night, alone. Three walls, a high window, iron bars. A hard, narrow cot—and you. With disinfectant replacing affection. A small squirrel in a big cage. Staring hot-eyed into the dark. Wanting a drink. Wanting a woman. Trying not to blow your top. Hysteria building up inside you.”

From Too Hot to Hold:
“Although his actual physical death didn’t take place until two days later, Mike Scaffidi began to die the moment he picked up a fare in front of Grand Central Station at exactly 9:25 on the morning of November 3, 1958.”

"Gang Girl / Sex Bum" by Don Elliott (Robert Silverberg) (Stark House, 2011)

Stark House Press delivers two more overlooked classics from the paperback treasure chest. Gang Girl and Sex Bum and were originally published under the name “Don Elliott,” a pseudonym which has since been attributed to its rightful owner, the legendary Robert Silverberg.

Silverberg’s introduction to this volume, “Those Good Old Soft-Core Days,” is a absorbing and insightful remembrance of the paperback publishing industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While it’s a very personal (and quite humorous) personal history, Silverberg’s intro also captures a significant piece of literary history that is overdue for attention. Books like Tropic of Cancer and publishers like Grove are often referenced when discussing American literature and censorship, so it was really fascinating to read about the Nightstand and Midwood books and the role they played during this time period. Even if Gang Girl and Sex Bum don’t sound like your cup of tea (but hey, don’t judge a book by its cover), Silverberg’s essay is highly recommended for anyone interested in the history and evolution of American literature.

As for the books themselves, Gang Girl and Sex Bum offer finely tuned thrills and impressive, dynamic craftsmanship. Silverberg was only in his mid-20s when he wrote these, but already he knew how to churn out sleek, vigorous novels at a rate that would break most writers back, if not exhaust their creativity. 2 or 3 novels a month, and sometimes 4. For five years. Let’s give Mr. Silverberg a round of applause.

Of the two novels, I liked Sex Bum best. It was originally published in 1963 by Midnight Readers. Set in upstate New York, it’s about a cocky delivery boy with his eyes set on the big city. Seeing an opportunity to get in with the local mob, he makes a name for himself during a poolhall fight and starts working his way up the ranks, and where he stops no one knows. This is a novel of ambition and comeuppance, and Johnny Price is like a backwoods Icarus. There’s lots of smalltown gangster flavor, and Silverberg achieves a nice balance of suspense and humor.

Gang Girl (originally published in 1959 by Nightstand) was Silverberg’s second book as “Don Elliott.” It’s a juvie crime novel about Lora Menotti, a sixteen-year-old girl whose parents move her from the Bronx to the Lower East Side in hopes that she’ll clean up her act and leave the gang life behind her. Instead, she takes up with the local Cougars, and begins to work her way to the top of the pack. The teenage angst displayed in the book isn’t so different from Rebel Without a Cause, and while nothing could be more different from my life than Lora Menotti and the Cougars, it’s hard not to understand their need to rebel against family, school, and society. More shocking than the sex today is the level of violence in the book. The fights are gritty and merciless. As a warning to some readers, there is a rape scene that is quite disturbingly depicted. It’s that scene that actually made me think about the book in a different way and recognize how powerful Silverberg’s writing actually is, if it can still provoke this strong a reaction fifty years later.

Closing out the volume is a terrific Afterword by Michael Hemmingson called “Sin, Softcore and Silverberg,” which puts the novels in context.

Stark House has been on a roll in 2011 so far. First was Peter Rabe's The Silent Wall/The Return of Marvin Palaver (reviewed here) and Jada M. Davis' One for Hell, already in the works for later this year are trios from Harry Whittington and Day Keene, as well as an Orrie Hitt double.

Keep up the good work, Stark House!

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Original Gang Girl art from majipoor.com.
Original Sex Bum art from Leonard Shoup.