Devlin Tracy, Trace to his friends, is a P.I. who works out of Las Vegas and lives with Chico, a blackjack dealer/part time hooker. He’s your typical wisecracking detective, sarcasm delivered with stunning regularity.
He’s an insurance investigator for Garrison Fidelity and is sent to New Jersey to look into a case there. One of their policyholders died in a private hospital and it was discovered he’d changed his beneficiary on a hundred thousand dollar life insurance just a few days before he’d died. The new name was that of the doctor that ran the private hospital.
At the same time, the owner of GF asks him to look in on a rich friend, a recent heart attack victim, residing in the same hospital. He’s worried that their might be something to the claims of the first patient’s family who’s threatening to sue.
Things seem fairly straightforward though to Trace as he interviews all the participants, the lawyers, one in particular representing both the doctor and the rich friends of his boss.
Until he’s jumped by a pair late at night, thumping him a bit before he gets the upper hand and drives them off. Both his rear tires had been flattened and he finds a scrap of paper lying beside the car embossed with the hospital’s name at the top.
When on a case, Trace keeps a tape recorder taped to his back, a wire running around to a tie clasp/speaker. He records interviews and makes personal notes to himself. He listens to them later to organize his thoughts and maybe gain some insight.
Liked this one. Warren Murphy is one those responsible for two of the most popular characters in adventure fiction. Remo Williams, The Destroyer, and his mentor, Chiun.
Patti Abbott does the collecting on Fridays at PATTINASE.
Max Allan Collins gets better with every Mike Hammer novel he completes from partial manuscripts left in Mickey Spillane’s papers. If one believed in that sort of thing, one might say he was channeling the late author.
This one was originally announced for publication in the sixties, but was abandoned for some reason. It’s a sort of sequel to THE GIRL HUNTERS(brief aside. I always liked the filmed version and thought Mickey did a better job playing Mike Hammer than he was credited). And Collins encourages the reader in the introduction to picture Mike as Hammer(something I’ve done in all these slate of co-authored novels.
Here, Mike accompanies a conservative Senator on a fact finding mission when his regular bodyguard is killed in an assassination attempt and Mike gets a minor leg wound stopping the killer.
Once there, Mike gets arrested while out walking off a heavy meal and taken into the back of a prison. He doesn’t waste any time when he gets a shot and fights his way out of the prison, gun blasting and spends two months getting out of Russia. He fights and kills forty-five in that effort.
The bulk of the novel is the aftermath when he gets back. The Russians are screaming, American politicians are screaming, and Mike isn’t taking shit from anybody. There is the very real possibility of him being turned over to the Russians to avoid an “international incident.”
Mike and Velda find themselves targets of both sides as they dig to find out what’s really going on.
Nicely paced Hammer thriller that I devoured in a couple of sessions in the afternoon.
In the world of 1972, Patrick “Podge” Becket had gotten rich in the burgeoning world of computers and the Security business, setting up the movers and shakers of the world as long as they weren’t enemies of America. But back in the fifties he’d been something else.
Who was The Red Menace? That was the question on every Communist leader’s lips during that period. He popped up all over wearing the black cape and mask with a disturbing tendency o turn red at odd moments and stopping whatever scheme had been planned to end democracy.
But things change and he’d retired young to lead his own life.
But now a ghost from the past has popped up in Cuba and an old comrade of Becket’s had died to get that message out. Becket’s old organization had called him out of retirement to deal with it. Twelve years older and a lot smarter, his loyalty was still there. A Russian presence so close to America was intolerable.
Along with his partner, Dr. Thaddeus Wainright, he has to figure a way to get into the country and stop whatever was going on.
A fast program to get him back into Red Menace shape is undertaken. The first time he dons the cape and mask, Becket realizes just how arrogant his younger self had been. He looked positively ridiculous in the costume. Ah well.
We don’t know a lot about either man at this point, but hints are dropped throughout that neither is an ordinary agent/spy or just a costumed athlete. One assumes more will be revealed as the series progresses.
Jim Mullaney, the author, either wrote or co-wrote(with Warren Murphy) the better novels in the last ten years or so of THE DESTROYER’s publication history. This has the same style and panache as that adventure series.
I look forward to the next one due on February 14th.
Gloria Swanson made her first picture in 1915, at sixteen, and became one of the giants of the silent era. She moved smoothly into talkies, but was never the magnitude of star of those early days. She was in London with her husband Michael Farmer to have a baby when PERFECT UNDERSTANDING was made. At the suggestion of Douglas Fairbanks, she formed a production company to make it.
She plays an American businesswoman in London where she meets playboy Nicholas Randall(Lawrence Olivier, twenty-six at the time) and they fall in love. With the naivete of the young, Nicholas devices a marriage contract based on perfect understanding, to not be husband and wife, but lover and mistress. Jealousy would never happen to them.
They leave on a whirlwind. extended honeymoon and we get a montage of trains, boats, and airplanes as they tour Europe. Then, somewhere in Spain, they seem a bit bored sitting in an outdoor cafe. Apparently they’ve been there a while as mail is delivered directly to their table by a postman on a bicycle. It from their friends, Kitty(Genevieve Tobin) and George(Michael Farmer, Swanson’s current husband) Drayton inviting them to Cannes for the week.
Nicholas wants one last adventure before they settle down. Judy wants to return to London to get their new flat in order. She sends him to Cannes promising to come in a few days herself. She extracts a promise not to enter the boat race this year.
In Cannes, Nicholas feels lost without Judy and hangs out on the sidelines from most activities. Then an old lover, Lady Stephanie Fitzmaurice(Nora Swinburne) arrives and seems ready to resume their earlier relationship, despite Nicholas’s admonitions of marriage and love of Judy. When a telegram arrives from Judy telling him she won’t make it after all, he impulsively enters that race he’d promised he wouldn’t.
The “Cocktail Regatta” it’s called, a drinking/speedboat racing game. Let’s see, alcohol and speedboats. You know that can’t end well.
Because Nicholas had won the race two years running, he’s under a handicap: four cocktails before the race starts. George gets two, but protests he’s as good as Nicholas and gets two more. All other entrants start with one. Then they have to swim out to their boats, crank them, and take off. At key points along the route they grab another cocktail on the run, and continue. As mentioned earlier, alcohol and speedboats. Completely drunk, George crashes into Nicholas and the race is suddenly over. Neither are hurt bad, mostly shook up, but Stephanie gets them to take Nicholas to her villa, where he spends the night.
Guilt ridden, he reveals all to Judy when he gets back to their flat and begs her forgiveness. She does, but one can see the hurt in her face.
This is billed as a comedy, but I hadn’t seen any yet. Now begins those series of misunderstandings. Nicholas is away on business and Judy goes one evening to have dinner with an old friend, Ivan Ronsson(John Halliday), who’s leaving the next morning for two years abroad, She tells him about the marriage problems and he professes his love for her. “Tell me the word and i won’t get on that boat!” She wants to think about it and leaves, deciding on impulse to walk. Ronsson tells his butler the lady may return. “I’m home to no one else.”
Nicholas returns a day early with flowers, the maid tells him where Judy is having dinner, but when he knocks of course the butler tells him no one is home. Judy’s car sits out front though and he hangs around a bit, gets a cab to ride for fours, finds the car there still at 3:00 a.m., and goes home. Judy wanders all night, then leaves a note innocently thanking Ronsson for their last night together, and returns home. She and Nicholas argue, he storms out to go confront Ronsson, and finds that he’s gone already. But there’s that note.
The pair separate and a month goes by until Judy learns she’s pregnant. Thinking that will bring them back together, it does the opposite. Nicholas still believes she slept with Ronsson and wonders if the child is not his. Another argument. Things aren’t helped when Stephanie shows up and begs Judy to give Nicholas up. She’s divorcing and wants them free to marry. Though she still loves, Nicholas, she’s only to happy to agree and initiates divorce proceedings.
Big elaborate court setting, Judy’s about to get her way, and Nicholas doesn’t want any of it. In desperation, he gets his lawyer to introduce that letter he’d found. British law allows for divorce if one party has been unfaithful. But if both have, no deal.
The sappy happy ending occurs.
At the beginning of the film. Swanson sings a song to her future husband. It’s the clip below.
For more overlooked movies and other things, drop in on Todd Mason over at SWEET FREEDOM.
THE HEALER was quite a revelation for me. I’d usually had with novels translated into English in the past. Whether this was the author’s style of the translator I was never quite certain. Antii Tuomainen’s novel gave me no such problems. I zipped through it pretty quickly. Lola Rogers was the write who translated from the Finnish.
The author’s third novel, It received the Clue Award as the best Finnish crime novel of 2011. It has, or is, being translated into twenty-six languages.
What Tuomainen has given us is a thriller that’s a mix of strong crime novel and an end of the world tale.
It’s a few days before Christmas and social order in Helsinki has been crumbling for a few years now. It rains almost constantly, subways are flooded, coastal areas as well, the news is filled with pandemic warnings of everything from malaria to the plague. Electricity is out in most places and sketchy everywhere else. Food’s growing short, clean water is growing short, medicines have become hard to get.
The police have largely become ineffective, mainly because so many have quit to be with their families. People are fleeing the city, headed North where conditions are tolerably better. At the same time refugees arrive taking abandoned homes, burning anything they can find to cook, use for heat.
Security firms have taken over everywhere, some largely more than organized thievery.
Tapani Lehtinen, a struggling poet(he hasn’t published in four years), still lives in the city with his beloved wife Johanna, a journalist with the paper.
And now she’s gone missing.
The case she’d been working on involved The Healer, a serial killer who murdered whole families. She’d begun getting emails from him on each crime with addresses to find them. She called late one night, saying she’d be home til much later. Tapani hadn’t heard word for more than twenty-four hours. Not like her at all.
The police couldn’t help. Just don’t have the manpower. Jaatinen does give him a few clues though.
And so begins Tapani’s frantic search through Helsinki for Johanna. Along the way, he discovers things about his wife he never knew, things in her past that connect her to the very killings she’s investigating.
1: 18 1/2 Minutes(review copy) – Ronald C. Meyer: from the cover, one gets the idea. This thriller explains what was on those “accidentally” erased 18 1/2 minutes from the Nixon Tapes.
2: The Healer(review copy) – Antii Tuomainen: winner of the Clue award for the best Finnish crime novel of 2011 appearing in English for the first time. A poet looks for his missing wife, a journalist investigating a serial killer, whole families, dubbed The Healer, amid a crumbling Helsinki. Society is in collapse because of worldwide climate changes. The review goes up in the morning.
3: The White Mountain(review copy) – Ernie Lindsey: My review posted this morning.
4: Leverage: The Bestseller Job – Greg Cox: based on the now cancelled TNT series, a group of ex-criminals now help the little guy stepped on by the rich, self-important guy.
5: Lullaby: Ace Atkins: I liked the author and have heard good things about his take on Robert Parker’s Spenser.
6: Hawke – Ted Bell: I was only vaguely aware of the author, but a recommendation on Forgotten Books convinced me to give this one a try.
7: A Trace of Smoke – Rebecca Cantrell: since teaming with James Rollins, I’ve become a fan and wanted to check out her solo work.
and the ebooks:
8: Warbirds of Mars: Stories of The Fight! – edited by Scott P. Vaughn & Kane Gilmour: a collection of short stories based on the WARBIRDS OF MARS, the webzine of pulp style action. It encompasses everything from air stories to war stories to spy with a cadre of characters known as The Martian Killers. Even a radio program of the stories. They have all kinds of goodies from this print(or ebook) anthology to two books of the strips gathered comic book style to tee shirts of the various characters. Am reading this one now.
9: The Bloody Spur – Charles Einstein: recommended by Ed Lynskey on Forgotten Books. Downloaded it from the Munsey’s site.
10: Sledge – Ernie Lindsey: a short story connected with the novel THE WHITE MOUNTAIN posted on earlier.
The plot to Ernie Lindsey’s new novel is not new, but he handles it with a deft flair and enough twists to keep me guessing and turning the pages.
Our heroine is private eye Mary Walker, a woman who scrapes along with workman’s compensation cases and cheating spouses. She walks with a cane, one leg crushed years ago while a cop by a serial killer, SLEDGE, so named for his choice of weapons.
The plot here is people hunting people, an underground game where every couple of years, ten men, all usually special forces, are set loose to hunt, and kill, each other. The final survivor then has to fight the previous winner, Ares, for the grand prize of ten million dollars. The game stretches all the way back to the Civil War and is controlled by a powerful family with connections to the White House.
Mary’s brother-in-law, Randall, is one of the participants and when the battle comes to their home, he lies to Mary, sending her to D.C. for information from a friend, mainly to get her out of harm’s way.
With Mary stepping into trouble up North, Randall, his family moved to safety, in his own troubles down South, the thriller ramps up the action on both fronts.
Not read any of the author’s work previously, but have SLEDGE ready to go next.
The plot of A MAN CALLED DJANGO! is a spaghetti western staple: the revenge story. Django(Anthony Steffen) is looking for four men who’d hit his ranch, robbing and killing his wife(rape had been planned until she grabbed a gun). He’d been hunting for a year. He had one name: Carranza(Stelio Candelli). It’s never explained how he got that name, supposedly one of the four men who killed his wife. In the year he’d been looking for Carranza, he;d come across a newspaper article about the Mexican’s prison break. Two days after his wife’s murder! But he was known to be part of the gang. Again no mention of how he knew that.
Django walks into a town carrying his saddle over the right shoulder and a Winchester in his left. Strangely deserted, he meets Paco(Donato Castellaneti), the local bartender, who tells him outlaws keep taking over the town, first an American bunch, then a Mexican bunch. the honest people hd left. Paco was the only one left.
The film has comic relief in several spots. One outlaw up on a tower likes to taunt Paco with pieces of dynamite. While Django is talking to the bartender, he tosses one at his fee. Here we see hallmark cool spaghetti western hero who bends down, picks the dynamite up, and uses the sputtering fuse to light a cigar before tossing it back. The fellow spends the next fifteen minutes staggering around toting Django’s saddle, blackened and smoking, looking for a saloon. Another time, it’s almost a Keystone Cops feel in one segment chasing around town looking for Django.
Django learns Carranza is about to be hung for horse thievery by Jeff(Chris Avram), leader of the current gang in charge of the town. So naturally he has to help him escape, dressed as a priest there to administer comfort to the man about to die.
The pair team up to pursue the four men responsible for his wife’s murder. There’s also gunrunning in the mix, the greedy Carranza eager to cash in on the death of his old comrades.
This was an OK western, not great, and I saw the end coming a long time before our hero did. To much happened to give it away and Django was oblivious.
The story and script was by Nino Stressa and was directed by Edorado Mulargia. It-er-borrowed heavily from Sergio Leone’s westerns. Django carries a music box with his wife’s picture in it(Lee Van Cleef’s pocket watch in For A Few Dollars More), Carranza was definitely a more vicious Tuco(Eli Wallach, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), they even used Tuco and Whhitey’s(Eastwood) dodge of turning Carranza in for the reward, then helping him escape.
Not a great western, but I love these things.
In 1939 Chicago, private eye Miles Palodon walks into a dark alley for a meeting only to see a flash in his face and feel the bullet enter his chest. The next thing he knows he’s sitting up and where a bullet should be, an arrow protrudes.
He loks over a battlefield full of dead bodies decked out in armor, weapons, swords, pikes, bows and arrows scattered about, the occasional horse wandering.
And a voice in his head saying “pull the arrow from our body or we’ll die.”
It is called the pairing and Miles had been pulled into a parallel universe into the body of his double. Close but not exact. His body is in better shape and when Miles looks into a mirror, he sees an unbroken nose.
Prince Palodon of Palandrum is his name and as the eldest child, he’s the heir to his father’s throne. Someone has tried to kill him, the battle long past, and the Prince suspects one of his siblings. His father, the King, is near death, some sort of wasting disease.
Miles, while sharing the body with the Prince, seems to be mostly in control.
He takes on the job of finding who wants the Prince dead, He’s a P.I. after all.
A nice mix of P.I. and fantasy with sorcerers, palace intrigues, beautiful women(this sort of tale never has even plain women), and sword play.
Had a fine time with this one from 1987. It’s set-up for a more conventional sequel, Miles looking for the man who shot him in the alley. Not sure if one was ever written. Finally, a number of fine black and white full page illustrations by Fernando da Silva fill out the book.
Devlin Tracy, Trace to his friends, is a P.I. who works out of Las Vegas and lives with Chico, a blackjack dealer/part time hooker. He’s your typical wisecracking detective, sarcasm delivered with stunning regularity.
