Stark House – Larque Press | The Digest Enthusiast

Uncategorized November 21, 2024

Too Rich to Die by H. Vernor Dixon

Too Rich to Die by H. Vernor Dixon
Black Gat No. 65

A lousy first impression is a difficult smear to unsmirch. T. Howard Carleton makes a doozy in Chapter 1. Born fabulously rich, he’s shallow, callous, rude, and a mysogonist to boot. I got more than enough of him in the first 18 pages and almost had to bail. But Dixon knew what he was doing and spends the remaining 200+ pages churning things around. It isn’t so much that Carleton metamorphasizes into a butterfly; instead he finally figures out who he really is sans the baggage of ostentatious privilege.

The trigger is a nasty tryst Carleton tries to cap, waving a pistol at his latest conquest in hopes of scaring her off once and forever. Trouble is, he’s so drunk he passes out and can’t remember shooting her dead. Faced with an open-and-shut case, even opulence can’t compensate, he goes into hiding, fortuitously landing a cook’s job on a fishing boat that feeds the canneries in Monterey.

Dixon spent his life in California, eventually settling in Monterey, so he knew the territory well and cites numerous geographic points of interest in this and several of his other works.

Richboy/playboy Carleton takes on the alias Tom Howie, but is still plagued with a sort of death wish. His wealth has precluded him from any normal/genuine relationships, so he takes outrageous risks just so he can feel like he’s alive. And despite his reckless antics, his luck never fails. Hence the title: Too Rich to Die.

This is a marvelous character study, wrapped in a fast-moving adventure story. Howie/Carleton gets the most ink, but the skipper, Matt Radovich, the femme fatales, cousins Ginny and Gail Norton, and even the sardine king, Steve Moore, all get three dimensional treatment that get a little shallower by their role’s importance.

Unlike real life, people nearly always change in fiction, sometimes quite easily. Dixon does a good job with his lead, who slowly grows into the realization that most of the world isn’t black and white, but shades of gray. So his change seems more genuine than that born of crisis or epiphany.

This one has it all—crime, adventure, romance, action, suspense, and danger–all set aboard the churning tides of cannery row. Great, great fun.

Reviews November 2, 2024

BG64: Chartered Love by Conrad Dawn

The introduction by Gary Lovisi explains this novel was originally published in 1961 by sleazehouse Novel Books (#3506); so you know going in to limit your expectations. Nonetheless, it has a lot going for it. Dawn apparently knew the territory of scavenger operations and treasure hunters, and sold me on the authenticity of his narrative. There is plenty of detail, clever twists, and plenty of action to keep you turning pages.

The aspect that keeps things tethered in the second-tier arena is lack of character development. The leads are moderately fleshed out, while the supporting cast is nothing more than roles with names. Skewed toward the male readers of its era, Captain Darrow is a borderline toxic macho-man and the love interest—and financier of the treasure hunt—Elizabeth McCain is likewise stereotroped into her shipboard attire and manner.

Not quite in the league of most of Black Gat’s earlier reprints, Chartered Love, is still worth a few hours of your reading time. It’s an exciting, adventurous treasure hunt told by an author who knows the ropes and the waves.

Uncategorized October 3, 2024

Hunter at Large by Thomas B. Dewey

Black Gat No.62: Hunter at Large by Thomas B. Dewey

This novel is prime for an action movie. Mickey Phillips, detective second grade, is home for the evening, a rare occasion due to a combination of workload and short-staffing at the bureau. His beautiful wife, Kathy, has prepared his favorite meal and they’re grateful for the romantic evening ahead. But their martial bliss quickly turns to horror when two home invaders arrive. The murder of Kathy is particularly brutal and Mickey receives his own brand of torture. He is shot to ensure there are no witnesses, but somehow he survives.

After months of rehab, he finally regains his memory of that night and his physical stamina. Now he wants only to find out who did this—and why? His Captain can’t condone Mickey’s vigilante mentality, he wants to track the killers through normal channels and see the men are brought to justice. Mickey wants only one case and one objective. In short order, Mickey resigns his position and begins the hunt.

There is a relentless aspect of Mickey’s determination and his pursuit of clues as to the identity of the killers, but time is also relentless and Mickey is forced to live a life in the same reality of his hunt. Along the way, he meets two women. Very different, but each unique and affecting to Mickey and readers. These subplots add unexpected constraints to the hunt, and force Mickey to confront himself and his mission.

Hunter at Large is a first rate manhunt thrill-ride with plenty of action, great characters, and several unexpected revelations.

First published in 1961 in hardcover by Simon and Schuster, its latest edition is from Stark House Press’ Black Gat Books, No. 62 in the series. This edition includes Dewey’s bibliography and a short bio.

Reviews October 1, 2024

Each Dawn I Die by Jerome Odlum

Present day prison novels and memoirs are loaded with violence and assault. The convicts must band together for survival against rival gangs and their keepers. So I was particularly interested to read Odlum’s novel, first published in 1936, for comparison. It presents a somewhat more charitable view of life inside, at least as far as an ever-present threat of sexual assault. But hold on. As revealed in David Rachels’ well researched introduction, the novel went through several heavy rewrites over its development. “The publisher told Odlum to remove all ‘obscenity’ and ‘perversion,’ which included references to sex criminals and homosexuality.”

Odlum had served several stints in Minnesota State Prison for writing bad checks and other swindling offensives, so he knew all about prison life first-hand. In his novel, the convicts are the heroes and the screws and management are the sadistic villains.

Newspaperman Frank Ross is set-up to take a bum rap by a powerful political machine. He is deemed responsible for a fatale car wreck while driving dead-drunk. His trial is swift, and he finds himself facing up to twenty years in Stoney Point prison.

His struggle to gain a new trial to prove his innocence is the main thread of the story, pursued by his wife and other colleagues at the Mountain Record newspaper where he worked, and by fellow-inmate Stacey, a powerful gangster with plenty of pull on the outside.

Much of the novel depicts the daily prison life, its harsh conditions, and man’s inhumanity to man. The controlling rules are nearly intolerable and the slightest infraction triggers a suspension of all “privileges” or worse—solitary confinement in the hole, where a man subsides on bread and water with no cot and only a bucket for his latrine.

If you’ve a fascination of prison life, Each Dawn I Die presents an unforgettable deep-dive into doing time, where men are so desperate for a piece of reality they adopt cockroaches as pets and long for escapes that can’t possibly succeed.

In real life, Odlum lost more than he won, but his debut novel rose above this failings and delivers a high-stakes mystery loaded with atmosphere, tension, and action.

Reviews August 2, 2024

Wild by Gil Brewer

Private Investigator Lee Baron relocates to his Florida past to take over his now deceased father’s one-man agency. He explains his approach to a couple of local cops who think he’s holding out on them:

“My old man was a lummox. He was a great guy, but he believed the book. Sometimes the book isn’t right. You go through life believing every word in the book, that’s all right. You live it your way. It’s not my way.” I stopped talking, and they didn’t speak. I said, “It’s not that I don’t want to come to you. You have facilities, means of operations I’ll never have. But I can’t always come to you.”

It’s an anemic explanation of Baron’s hardboiled detecting style, but then it wouldn’t be wild if it wasn’t.

In true 1958 PI rogue, an old flame walks into Baron’s office with a heap of trouble—most of it below her surface story—giving him just enough to set the hook. This is a juicy, messy, murder mystery with a cast of untrustables who leave more cuts than clues. The wild cover girl is one of two sisters, both hot, but one far reckless than the other. What begins as one sort of case soon reveals a more complex chain-of-trouble underlaid by a high-stakes robbery.

Gil Brewer was a top-tier paperback original author, and Wild is a worthy entry on his impressive bibliography of hits.

Reviews May 24, 2024

BG59: Drink With the Dead by Jay Flynn

Booze is big money, not only for the supply chain, but for Uncle Sam who collects premium excise taxes off each gallon sold. That’s why when counterfeit brand names start cutting into the market for the legitimate stuff, the Treasury Department takes particular notice.

The stuff in Drink With the Dead is good. Maybe near as good as the real thing. Based on the volume and quality there must be a major operation behind it—well funded and well hidden.

The Agent-In-Charge of the Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Unit for Northern California, Leonard Purvis, assigns John Levangie to find out who’s running it and where it’s located. Levangie poses as a newspaperman and begins asking questions. He has a photographic memory and keeps all his leads and evidence in his head. Trouble is, when he’s killed, he doesn’t leave any clues about what he’s learned.

His murder is covered up and ruled an accidental death by the local authorities. The boss, Purvis, ain’t buying it, and sends in Konrad Jensen to investigate both Levangie’s death and the agent’s original assignment. Jensen poses as a private operator hired by Levangie’s kinfolk to disprove or validate the official accidental death finding.

Jensen is a tough, live wire who leads with aggression and apologizes not at all. He soon embroils himself in the action, and trouble ensues as the pages zip by. Jensen makes good progress, but only through considerable wear-and-tear and high-stakes endangerment. There’s a woman too, and she’s a doozy.

John M. Flynn, writing as Jay Flynn, delivers a fast-paced espionage mystery. Its protagonist is not unlike its author according to Flynn’s biography, written by Bill Pronzini for mysteryfile.com—and Pronzini knew the guy.

Reviews May 3, 2024

BG58: Bait by William Vance

Melody Frane had it all, and she had nothing. She was strikingly beautiful, seventeen, and dirt poor; wandering from town to town working the fields under the tutelage of her drunken, promiscuous mother. Not a promising future.

She catches the eye of every man that ogles her. Two of them change the course of her life. Millionaire Harry Ransome seduces her with the promise of the good life—education, steady meals, clothes, travel, and money. But it’s a deal with the devil. Ransome wants Melody not only for his own amusement, but as bait to get what he wants from the men who can deliver it. And Melody is gullible and confused enough to allow him to use her.

The second beau, Kenney Ward, flies a private plane for Ransome. He wants Melody too, but in light of the life she’s living, can he stick by her? Can he provide a way out of her degradation?

Bait is a heartrending tale of a young woman coming of age in poverty, exploited by the only asset she controls—herself. William Vance writing as George Cassidy, lingers long enough on the sex in Bait to classify it as a sleaze novel; but the majority of its pages rise above that label to offer a stark portrait of an impoverished life with few prospects.

Reviews April 26, 2024

SC 010: Hacking New York by Robert Hazard

A novel in vignettes. Street savant Hazard shares jazz-age memories of the daily grind of a hackman in the heart of the Big Apple. It’s his own (and a few compadres’) street savvy view of the intersection of customers, cops, and cab fare. His urban urbane names names and paves the route on when to stick it to ‘em and when to take the high road. Remarkably candid, this is the real inside deal, out of print for over 90 years.

It’s bookended by a deep-dive intro by Staccato Crime co-editor Jeff Vorzimmer who unearths the mystery of the man behind the wheel and a quartet of short stories. “Old Bill” delivers the same folksy tone as the main event, but this time the setting is rural; in a passionate memoir about an earlier mode of transport—the horse. “Brothers” shifts our perspective from horses to a couple of farm dogs, and “The Cops Got Their Men—Including the Taxi Driver” fictionalizes a robbery where the astonishing getaway car is a taxicab!

The volume’s final entry is a reprint from Scribner’s Nov-Dec 1929. And it’s a reprint here as well, as every vignette is pulled from the earlier mother lode. Kind of a “best of” the vignettes that came before. They read faster the second time, and provide a satisfying end cap to a fascinating slice of history from the big city.

Reviews April 13, 2024

Black Gat 57: The Steel Noose by Arnold Drake

First published as a paperback original in 1954 by Ace, The Steel Noose is a tightly plotted murder mystery in which newspaperman Boyd McGee sleuths out the truth, two or three steps ahead of the sometimes cooperative, sometimes antagonistic NYPD. Gangsters, blackmail, and politics all play a role in this fast-paced crime drama. I think this was Drake’s only novel, which is unfortunate because he turned in an excellent manuscript, which could easily have been the first novel of a series. He spent more of his career in comics with DC, Marvel, Dell, and Charlton. He also wrote a couple of screenplays for low-budget drive-in flicks.

McGee is tapped into the NY scene at every level. His sources run the gamut from high-society to hard-luck street sleepers. His daily gossip column is so popular he calls most of the shots despite his sometimes testy relationship with his editor and publisher. When his latest effort highlights an affair with a high profile tobacco baron, he finds himself closer to the edge than usual. And as the story progresses, his troubles only blossom.

The Steel Noose is a fine, hardboiled crime novel. Loaded with clever patter, elements of noir, and a cocky protagonist who manages to right himself after several missteps along the way—some nearly fatale. All-in-all, a terrific read.

Reviews March 14, 2024

Night Boat to Paris by Richard Jessup

Night Boat to Paris by Richard Jessup

A very entertaining adventure story with great characters, plenty of action, and excellent writing. It is primarily a heist novel that’s wrapped inside a spy mission. Our hero, Duncan Reece, is pulled out of espionage retirement to serve his country just this one last time. The robbery’s spoils, which Reece will be allowed to keep, is cover for the real target, a microfilm of a Soviet blueprint for a military space station that could potentially end the cold war with Russia the victor.

Reece accepts the mission more for its massive payoff, than for his patriotic spirit, and begins assembling a ragtag team of outsiders, each with their own skillset and baggage. The team relocates to a remote farmhouse where Reece runs them through training exercises to ensure their success. Then it’s on to the mission itself, where of course, not everything occurs as intended.

Reece perseveres with complications as the tension and action continues with a chase adventures in the mountains of France.

All said, Night Boat to Paris is a terrific heist/spy/chase novel with near non-stop action. Originally published by Dell in 1956, it was Jessup’s fourth novel and already shows his command of the medium.