CRIME NOVELS: FOUR CLASSIC THRILLERS 1964-1969

After enjoying the previous Crime Novels collection (Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964) I was reading to dig in to four more crime classics. Three of these books I've already reviewed here on my blog and on Goodreads, though I'm including those reviews here. The fourth book, The Tremor of Forgery, I'm reviewing here first.

Once again, I enjoyed this collection overall. I wasn't familiar with Margaret Millar, but The Fiend definitely thrills. Ed McBain is a name I'm quite familiar with (I've spent many years working in bookstores) but I've never read anything by him.  The Doll is a great introduction and does make me want to read more in the series.

Run Man Run didn't sit well with me, but it wasn't the writing - Chester Himes does a great job - but the subject always puts me on edge.  And Patricia Highsmith is a name I've seen on the shelves but also hadn't ever read prior to this. The Tremor of Forgery is both subtle and complex.

I really appreciate editor Geoffrey O'Brien's hand in these selections and providing the background on the books and the time in which they were written. 

The book includes a really great selection of Biographical Notes and Notes On The Texts. Especially as someone still relatively new to the genre, I found these extremely helpful and informative.

To the reviews:

THE FIEND by Margaret Millar

Margaret Millar's The Fiend is a story of the mentally deranged individual, Charlie Gowen. There had been an incident in Charlie's past, involving a child, which has made him the town pariah.  Today, though, at least on the surface, he is more or less coping and the few people he does interact with consider him more or less "cured."  His brother, Ben Gowan, seems to be aware that Charlie needs constant watching and has given up his own life to keep a watchful eye on his brother. For good reason.

Charlie is slowly showing signs of returning to his old life with an unhealthy interest in children. Charlie should not be sitting in a car across from a park and watching the children. 

Charlie has fixated on one particular little girl, Jessie Brant, when he watches her scramble around a jungle gym and fall. Charlie believes it is his duty to warn her parents - that she needs protecting, from dangers like the jungle gym as well as from people like himself.

The book is not so simple, though, as a pedophile with an interest in a particular child.  Millar digs in and examines a number of people in the story, including the girl's parents and friends of the family - who also have an apparent unhealthy obsession with the neighbor's child.

While we're tempted to label Charlie as the titular 'fiend' based on what we know about him and the actions we see him engage in, Millar shows us how ugly people can be and how so many are able to hide their more unsavory sides.

This was a really engaging and surprisingly fascinating read ('surprising' because I didn't think I'd enjoy a book with a child molester at the forefront). It's a psychological thriller that really keeps the reader guessing and changing opinions.

Looking for a good book? From 1964 comes Margaret Millar's psychological thriller, The Fiend. It's a powerful novel examining the vagaries of the human psyche.

4 stars

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DOLL by Ed McBain

A woman, model Tina Sachs, is killed, brutally slashed to death while her young daughter sat in another room, quietly playing with her doll.

In the squad room of the 87th Precinct, Steve Carella asks his lieutenant to assign Bert Kling to the case. Kling has been a bit belligerent since the loss of his fiancé. He's about to get booted out of the squad but Carella still believes in him and thinks he just needs the chance to prove his worth. But Kling and Carella have an argument during the investigation and Carella orders Kling to go home.

Shortly after Kling leaves, Carella makes a discovery in his investigation and heads off to follow up on his lead. Unfortunately Carella never calls in to report on what he's discovered and the criminal(s) behind the crime surprise and subdue the officer.

Stripped naked and bound to a radiator, the killers torture (mentally and with doses of drugs) Carella to try and force him to tell them how he discovered them as they believed they had covered their tracks. As the torture gets more intense, Carella's only hope to survive is that the men at the 87th precinct can find him.

I've never read an Ed McBain book but I recognize his name from my browsing of bookstores. I'm quite sure I never knew about his 87th Precinct series but after reading this I am more curious to read more.

What I liked here was the absolute tension that McBain provides. The mystery of 'who dunnit' took a back seat to 'is Carella going to survive'? We also wonder (along with the killers) how Carella figured it out.

Being just one in a long series of books about the precinct, I do wonder what kind of relationships there are among the men. Are the books mostly about solving crimes, or are they about the men who work there (or a bit of both)? This is what has me curious to read more.

What doesn't work here for me is how quickly the book ends.  We have so much tension built up and then it's over in a couple of pages and hardly any denouement (and what there was made almost no sense unless, perhaps, we're more familiar with the series).

Looking for a good book? Doll is a good (but not great) introduction to Ed McBain and the 87th Precinct series. Excellent for fans of dark, police thrillers.

4 stars

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RUN MAN RUN by Chester Himes

Matt Walker is a white cop with a bad temper. Drunk and stumbling around Harlem after a rough visit with a prostitute one night, Walker can't find his car and is sure that a Black man - a porter at the hotel - he runs into has stolen it. He threatens the man, pointing a gun at him, trying to make him say where the car is when the gun 'accidentally' goes off.  Walker isn't so drunk that he isn't aware of the trouble he'll be in, so he finishes the man off- killing him with another shot.

Another Black porter is aware of what's happened and Walker kills him as well.  And still another man, Jimmy Johnson, is in Walker's way to a free and clear exit and Walker shoots him, too.  But Jimmy survives and when he wakes from his coma, he points the finger at Walker. But Walker was at least smart enough not to use his service revolver (which was tested after the allegation) so who are people going to believe? A New York cop or a Black man in Harlem?

But Walker isn't satisfied leaving a possible witness to his crime and stalks Johnson, looking for a way to get rid of him. What Walker doesn't know is that he is also being stalked - by someone he would never suspect.

It's more than a little bit sad that a story about a cop killing a Black man, published in 1960, is still a story that resonates, perhaps even more-so, today.

I have to be honest and say that this kind of racism is really hard for me to read and enjoy.  Of course I read through it, hoping that Walker would not come out unscathed, but it's still the rare kind of story that puts me on edge and I really have difficulty enjoying.

There's a fair amount of tension in the stalking, which I suspect is what holds this book together for most readers, but I actually found it not only uncomfortable, but a bit boring.

This is not a book I would recommend and it's not something I would consider to be a classic.

Looking for a good book? Run Man Run by Chester Himes is a thriller from 1960 that is much too close to home today and shows how poorly we've done with race relations.  

3 stars

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THE TREMOR OF FORGERY by Patricia Highsmith

The exotic Tunisia is the setting for Patricia Highsmith's slow-building thriller. 

American Francis J. Adams - short, paunchy, bombastic (ie the 'typical' American) - pulls up a beach chair and starts talking to Howard Ingham. Ingham, a writer, is quiet and reserved - not your typical American. Adams invites Ingham back to his bungalow where he plies the writer with booze and conversation. When asked what he does for a living, Adams tells Ingham that he considers himself a self-appointed ambassador - spreading goodwill and Our Way of Life. This latter so important to Adams that Ingham takes to thinking of him as OWL.

Ingham, stuck in Tunisia and looking to write his novel (tentatively title The Tremor of Forgery) also befriends Danish patriot Anders Jensen. Jensen appears to be quite the opposite of OWL Adams, though both have some obvious biases toward Arabs.

When someone (Ingham believes it to be a particular Arab) attempts to break into his bungalow, Ingham grabs the only thing he can find to use to protect himself - his typewriter, which he throws out the window toward the intruder. There's a scream and a thud, but there is no body and Ingham is sure there should be a body. Did OWL Adams or Jensen, who seem to be looking out for Ingham have anything to do with it?

I referred to this as a 'slow-building' thriller, and I hold to it. And if you think about it ... 'slow-building' and 'thriller' are terms that don't exactly go together well.

Mostly I was bored with this book. Historically, I can understand why this book is something that was included in the Four Classic thrillers collection. There's a lot of powerful messages regarding Americans and how we're often viewed by those in other countries. The war going on in the background of the book (the Six Day War between the Arabs and the Israelis) also reflects an American ignorance of what is happening elsewhere in the world while the OWL Americans proclaim some sort of superiority.

Then the tossing together of strangers who form some sort of unique bond, though it's all facade, has some strong social commentary (it might be interesting to note - at least I thought it was interesting - that Highsmith is also the author of Strangers on a Train which has some very similar themes).

All this is well and good and definitely has its place in literature. It's the sort of book that I would expect to be taught in a good English literature class. But, except for about three of you reading this (yeah, you know who you are), a book taught in English Lit is not generally the sort of book one reads for entertainment. 

There's a little too much background, too much set-up, which doesn't significantly impact the plot, though I'd agree in some discourse that it does impact character and intent.

Looking for a good book? As a novel of importance, Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery is impactful.  As a "classic thriller" ...? Not so much.

3 stars

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

The collection gets 4 stars.

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Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964-1969

editor: Geoffrey O'Brien

publisher: Library of America

ISBN: 9781598537383

hardcover, 950 pages