CRIME NOVELS: FIVE CLASSIC THRILLERS 1961-1964

 It's only in recent years that I've developed an interest in reading 'classic' pulp fiction, noir thrillers, and detective mysteries.  Because I'm new to the genre, I really didn't have a clue as to which authors I should be checking out - other than Fredric Brown, an author I consider among my favorites due to his sci-fi books. Seeing a collection like, featuring an author I knew and liked (but with a book I hadn't yet read), seemed like a great option.  It should introduce me to some great authors and stories.

I liked three of the books collected here.  Two of them, Dead Calm and The Score left me a little bored, to be honest.

I appreciated the information about the books and about the authors that was provided at the end of the collection. It's definitely helpful as I look to expand my reading in the genre.

I've reviewed each of the books individually, but include the reviews again here:

THE MURDERERS by Fredric Brown

It is the late 1950's/early 1960's and Willy Griff is a down-on-his luck actor in Hollywood. He may not have a lot of luck getting acting jobs, but he has great luck when it comes to women. He is currently making time with a hot little number by the name of Doris. Their attraction for one another is genuine and very, very passionate.  Unfortunately, Doris's husband, John Seaton, isn't too keen on the relationship.

John Seaton is a wealthy businessman. Older than Doris, he's suspected his young wife of having an affair and Seaton has had a P.I. following her. Seaton arranges a meeting with Willy and lets him know that he's aware of the affair. Because Seaton is wealthy and connected, he offers to help Willy get acting work if he promises never to see Doris again.  If Willy refuses, Seaton will make sure the young actor never works in the town again.

Griff agrees to the wealthy man's terms, but the moment the old man leaves, Willy calls Doris to let her know what's happened and instead of living up to the terms, Griff and Doris decide they want it all - their relationship AND Seaton's money - so they plot to kill the old man.  Their plan is perfect ... they'll never get caught ... right?

I love the work of Fredric Brown. I 'discovered' him in the 1970's when I learned that a Star Trek episode was based on one of his short stories and then I started reading his science fiction novels (such as the popular Martian, Go Home). It wasn't until many years later that I learned he had a brilliant career writing mysteries as well as science fiction. I've purchased many but read only a few.  This particular book is new to me.

The plot is pretty basic and, frankly, quite reminiscent of 1950's dark, gritty mysteries. What keeps us reading is our curiosity about whether or not Willy and Doris will succeed, and the strength of the characters.

Neither Willie nor Doris are so incredibly charming that we really want to see them succeed, and Seaton isn't supremely villainous, so it's not as though we want to see him get his comeuppance. But these characters are drawn such that they feel like real people (and most people aren't supremely villainous [yes, I know an exception or two] or deserving of their hearts' desires at someone else's expense).

Brown's writing is incredibly fluid and it's really easy to get caught up in the flow of the story and that's a big reason I enjoy reading his works.  This little-known work of his was quite delightful.

4 stars

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THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH by Dan J. Marlowe

'Roy' and 'Bunny' (these are the names they know each other by but not likely to be their actual names) are bank robbers. In their latest heist things don't go as smoothly as they'd hoped in Phoenix and Roy, who killed three men, gets clipped, taking a bullet in the arm. The duo split up so that Roy can lay low and recover (and to throw off the search for two men).

There's a contingency plan for just such an event - Bunny heads east with the money and the two will meet up later to divide their loot.  Until they meet, Bunny sends regular checks to Roy so that he can stay where he is until he's ready to travel. Roy just needs to stay out of sight and avoid the dragnet looking for the bank robbers, then travel 2000 miles and meet up with his partner in crime. Nothing to it.

But the checks stop coming and Roy learns that something has happened to Bunny and their money. Roy has to travel incognito to the rural town that Bunny was supposed to be in and find out what happened and where his money is. To do this, thought, Roy has to take on the role of a traveling laborer so that he can take stock of the people whom Bunny interacted with.

When I think of the dark, hard-boiled, shoot-'em-up thriller novel (not the hard-boiled detective books), this is exactly the sort of book I imagine.  We're in the life of someone you probably would never want to hang around with. A bank robber ad a killer with very little moral compass. And yet ... we want to know what's happened.

We easily get caught up in the mystery of what happened to Bunny and the money. Whether Roy ever reunites with either really isn't as important as just knowing.

It's a short book (not even 150 pages) which was fairly standard for pulp, paperback fiction of this sort (I tend to think of this as 1950's hard-boiled fiction, but this book was published in the very early 1960's). Even so, we manage to get into the psyche of Roy Martin and know what he's capable of, so his descending on the small town is rife with tension and danger.

Author Dan J. Marlowe's prose is tight and gritty, suiting the story perfectly. I wondered why I wasn't more familiar with Marlowe's work but a quick Google search filled me in a bit as to why he didn't make it bigger (even though this is considered a classic in the genre).

You can't be squeamish and you can't be prudish to read a book  like this.  There's plenty of violence and sex as you would expect (hope?) in such a story. But it's this enigma of a character, Roy Martin (aka Chet Arnold, aka ...), who holds the story together, despite (or maybe because of) his darker side.

4 stars

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DEAD CALM by Charles Williams

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub...

John and Rae Ingram are on their honeymoon, cruising casually on their yacht through the Indian Ocean when they encounter a young man, Hughie Warriner, along in a small boat.  Hughie claims to have come from another boat where the other three passengers succumbed to food poisoning, and with them incapacitated, the ship sank with them aboard, with Hughie only barely managing to escape in the dinghy.

John, a former Naval officer, senses too many inconsistencies in Hughie's story and heads off in the direction that the young man had come from.  He finds the listing boat and when Hughie is asleep below deck, John takes a small boat over to investigate.  What he finds is an unhappy Russ Bellows and Mrs. Warriner, begging for help. Hughie, it seems, caused the death of Bellows' wife and has gone off the deep end (pun acknowledged).

While John was investigating, Hughie takes the Ingram yacht, with Rae still aboard, and leaves John with the abandoned boat. John will pursue the kidnapper and his new wife in any way he can.

I was not familiar with author Charles Williams prior to this, and I see now that this is a follow-up to another book with John and Rae Ingram - though this definitely stands alone.

I thought it was really interesting to set the entire novel aboard a small boat on an ocean.  It really contributed to a strong sense of claustrophobia which greatly added to the psychological unease.

There wasn't really any 'terror' here, but when you are stuck in cramped quarters with someone you find suspicious, perhaps even a murderer, the constant emotional strain really wears a person down. Williams really captures this sense well, but manages to change it up when Hughie takes off with the boat and Rae.  We then get the chase and a new sense of danger for Rae as she's now alone on the boat, nowhere to escape, with the man who's left her husband for dead.

I quite enjoyed the book. I liked the challenge of containing the action to such small spaces, really forcing this to be a story of people and their actions.  But though I liked it, I can't honestly say that it's made me want to seek out more of Williams' writing.

3-1/2 stars

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THE EXPENDABLE MAN by Dorothy B. Hughes

Hugh Denismore is a young doctor driving his mother’s Cadillac from Los Angeles to Phoenix to attend a family wedding. He is well educated, polite, and civilized - he is privileged.  Although he hesitates to pick up the young, female hitchhiker along his drive, he has a soft spot for the trouble she seems to be in and he hopes he can help her out in some way. She is equally hesitant to get in a car with Hugh, but perhaps the Cadillac changes her mind.

The girl doesn't provide a very clear, or consistent, story as to where she's headed, which convinces Hugh of her troubles. As they drive, they chat and she becomes more and more comfortable around Hugh - such that after dropping her off at the bus station and providing her with bus fare to where she wants to go, she turns up at his motel room. This would seem to be dangerous in a normal situation and is doubly so given that Hugh is a Black man.

A few days later, the girl is found dead and a tip leads the local police to Hugh who first denies knowing her (the name she provided was different than the name the police were using).  Hugh finds himself facing a murder charge and the police don't seem to want to look any further than the Black man who gave the girl a ride, so he knows he has to find the killer on his own.

This was a really difficult book for me to read. Not because it was bad or poorly written - just the opposite ... it was too good.

I can feel really anxious in some situations, one is when an innocent person is railroaded into looking guilty and the other is racial discrimination.  Combine them as well as author Dorothy B. Hughes does, and I was constantly fidgety and anxious and reading through this at breakneck speed to (hopefully) get to where both situations would resolve.

It was easy to read through this quickly - the writing is smooth and direct. There aren't a lot of extraneous characters and I really, really liked the support that Hugh gets from his family and his lawyer. It definitely helps the reader trust Hugh and root for him.  I can't imagine how any reader, even those who might otherwise have race issues, couldn't root for the man.

It's hard to believe that a book with these characters, in these situations, could be published and achieve success in the early 1960's and I suspect it rattled a few cages.  Sadly, I don't think the general consensus has changed much in Arizona.

4 stars

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THE SCORE by Richard Stark

Is it possible to rob an entire city? If that city is Copper Canyon, and the heist is planned by Parker, on of the best in the business, it just might be possible. The idea is brought to Parker who initially dismisses it, but after careful consideration, he begins to make a plan. The heist will need a team of people and of course the more people in on it, the less each man takes.

A mining town in the middle of nowhere, with only one way in and out of the town, Parker gets to work on a plan and hiring a team. Given the specific needs, he needs specific men - some of them no longer available so going to second and third options.  Each man will need to accomplish his job with clockwork precision but by all measures, it should work.  

Parker believes he has everything planned for a perfect heist ... but he never planned for the blonde.

This was a really fast-moving, straight-forward story.  An idea, a plan, the plan in action, the hiccup.  There's no sub-plot and until we get into the heist itself, when we get to see some of the different men in action, it's quite singularly focused.

There is some curiosity and interest in how this is going to work, but at least the first half of the book (maybe the first 2/3rds) is plan, plan, plan. The book picks up a bit when the heist actually gets underway. We know that something has to go wrong (or at least we hope that's the case or this would be even more boring than it already is) so our curiosity is piqued a bit.

For the most part, this book just never captured my interest.  Or, rather, it let my interest down. The idea of robbing an entire town sounded interesting, but the very direct manner of storytelling didn't really serve the excitement for this reader.

2-1/2 stars

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Looking for a good book? Anyone interested in classic mysteries or noir fiction need not scour the used books store - five classics are gathered here in Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964, for the interested reader.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

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Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964

editor: Geoffrey O'Brien

publisher: Library of America

ISBN: 9781598537376

hardcover, 950 pages