There’s something that bothers me about some of these old time pulp novels when the protagonists are the criminals. In so many of them, a drifter, low-end job, no-good man hooks up with a woman, and then the two of them commit a crime together. Frequently a murder. The question is, why do they hook up, and so quickly? In James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice the drifter rolls into town, and despite the fact that he’s worthless a woman is telling him to bite her lip within 24 hours. A married woman no less. I suppose I can sort of understand why he’s doing it, except that right off he says she wasn’t any raving beauty. And yet there’s something else that attracts him. I can understand wanting to get busy with an attractive woman. I’m male; not a day goes by I don’t think about schtupping someone. But why would a lifetime drifter all of a sudden stay so interested in a woman that’s going to tie him down? I just don’t get the motivation for either of them.

So anyway, the crime the two of them plot is to off the woman’s husband, Nick Papadakis. Why? Because he’s a greasy Greek and the woman feels dirty sleeping next to him. They don’t just run away. No, despite there not being any money in it for them, just a restaurant, they decide to off him. Only they aren’t too smart and murder is difficult to plan. Will they pull it off? And if they do, are they smart enough to get away with it? And can the two of them stick together?

Of course, this is noir. One really shouldn’t think too much about noir. It’s all about mood and chemistry. The mood is pretty deftly done. The chemistry? I guess the 1930s style of writing just doesn’t impart chemistry between our two anti-heroes to me. But it might have to the folks back then.

Despite my negative sounding comments, this isn’t all that bad. Just me thinking a bit too much I suppose.

Title: The postman always rings twice
Author: James M. Cain
Cover creator: James Steinberg
Imprint / publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 116 p.
Publication date: August 1992
ISBN-10: 0-679-72325-0
LC classification: PS3505.A3113

Until Bookgasm posted a quick review of this book, I’d never noticed Hard Case Crime. Shelved a few books with the distinctive yellow ribbon on the cover, including one by Stephen King, but they all passed under the radar. But with a cover and title like these (and Hard Case Crime has lots of covers like these), any American male with a pulse is going to sit up and take notice. So I ordered a copy.

Sad to say the book doesn’t live up to my expectations. The good parts: there’s no cookie cutter ending (which I won’t reveal anyway) and the language is blunt and effective. The biggest bad part though is that the criminals (and this is told from the point of view of one of the main criminals) are stupider than my cat. Some parts are repetitive and drag too.

Our main man, Jack Ruxton, owns a small television repair shop. He gets a call one day from Shirley Angela, a comely 18 year old caring for an aging old man with a heart condition. She instantly falls for Ruxton, somehow knowing he’ll help her off the old man so she can take control of the money. The initial plan isn’t too shabby, but it quickly jumps the shark. Ruxton will install a faulty intercom system, and when the old man needs oxygen and help, Angela won’t come running. Old man dies, and everyone will blame Ruxton for a shoddy and negligent, but not criminal, job. That’s the theory anyway.

The problem is that anyone with half a brain would stay the hell away from Shirley Angela after she ignores repeated instructions to avoid contact. If they are to get away with the plot, passersby must not see them together plotting. Or hear them. Remember, this is written in the 1950s when telephone party lines were common. Ruxton ain’t too smart neither. He leaves clues like moletracks through a lawn. The story plods through numerous meetings where the conversation is little more than Can we go through with this? Think of the money! I need you so much! So do I, but think of the money. I also want to know what the hell is so attractive about Ruxton that three different women throw themselves at him upon first meeting him.

Once all the preliminaries get done with though, it’s quick pacing to a great finish. It’s that there isn’t much worse written in the English language than the build-up to it.

Title: The vengeful virgin
Author: Gil Brewer
Cover artist: Gregory Manchess
Imprint / publisher: Hard Case Crime / Dorchester
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 220 p.
Publication date: April 2007 (originally 1958)
ISBN-10: 0-8439-5770-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-8439-5770-9

I think there has to be a rule that lawyers, prosecutors especially, begin second careers as mystery novelists. They do know the criminal justice system. That doesn’t mean they know how to write a good story though. William Landay does know how to write a good story.

I read Landay’s first novel, Mission Flats a few years ago and was blown away. Most mysteries follow a pretty predictable storyline. I did not see the ending coming in that book.

The Strangler is Landay’s second novel, and it will be released for sale next Tuesday. It’s awesome as well. Go pre-order now, or call your local Barnes & Noble and have them put a copy on hold.

Normally when I review mysteries, I spend a fair amount of time railing against all the clichés most authors use. The rogue police officer. The mysterious tough guy back up (e.g., Hawk from Spenser or Ranger from Plum). That sort of thing. Landay’s The Strangler is remarkably free of these tropes. Not completely free. But not so burdened by them that they take away from the story.

The story concerns three Daley brothers: Joe Jr., Michael, and Rickey. Like a few other mysteries, the brothers end up on opposite sides of the tracks. Joe Jr. followed his father’s footsteps into the police force. Michael became a prosecutor, though his job is actually evicting people who’s property has been taken by the state under eminent domain. Rickey burgles, superbly.

It’s set in Boston starting on the day that John F. Kennedy is assassinated in 1962. The city papers are full of tales of the Boston Strangler. Now, when I first saw the cover, I groaned. Most other books that tell the author’s theory of some famous murder case are dull (Roderick Thorp’s River for instance). I’m happy to report that this book isn’t really about the Boston Strangler. Landay uses the case mostly to set the brothers on their paths. Despite the fact that Albert DeSalvo is in custody, Rickey’s girlfriend is murdered in a style that is remarkably similar to the Strangler modus operandi. Despite differences, the brothers find common ground enough to decide to take revenge together, if they ever find out who did it. Meanwhile Rickey’s in deep for burgling a mob-protected jeweler. Joe’s in deep with the same mobster for gambling debts, and he’s soon pressed into their service to repay the debt. Michael is generally aloof and non-participatory, but he soon decides his mother’s new boyfriend is responsible somehow for the murder of their father, Joe Sr. It’s Boston in the early 60s and most of the police force is on the take.

That’s the setup. One of Landay’s themes seems to be disturbing the otherwise tranquil surface of regular people and seeing what kind of murky things float up. The brothers make mistakes. But they aren’t mistakes of logic. They aren’t mistakes of following the evidence only to find out that one little piece changes everything. Everything is grey. Everything is confused. So what will the characters be willing to do to clear things up?

And yeah, Landay does build in a theory about who really was the Boston Strangler and it’s not DeSalvo. But it’s not central to the story so it doesn’t distract.

Title: The strangler
Author: William Landay
Imprint / publisher: Delacorte Press / Bantam Dell (Random House)
Publication Date: January 2007
Format: Advance reading copy
Length: 391 p.
ISBN-10: 0-385-33615-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-385-33615-4
Subject: De Salvo, Albert Henry, 1931- — Fiction
Subject: Private investigators — Fiction
Subject: Serial murderers — Fiction
Subject: Boston (Mass.) — Fiction
LC Classification PS3612.A5477 S77 2007

In addition to being on a John Allen Paulos kick lately, I am also on a Dennis Lehane kick. I stopped in at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop (you should too, one of the best bookstores in existence) and stocked up on all the Lehane books I didn’t already own in paperback. So watch for reviews of the three books of his I haven’t yet read in the coming weeks.

A Drink Before the War is the first book starring Patrick Kenzie and Angeline Gennaro. They are private investigators in Boston who find people. In this case, a powerful state senator hires them to find the cleaning lady for one of his lackey senators. Seems she quit, disappeared on the same day certain photographs of the lackey senator (in a compromising position) also went missing. They assume she has them. So they want Kenzie and Gennaro to find her. Well, actually, they couldn’t care less about the cleaning lady. They just want the photographs. No photographs, no blackmail and no scandal. And they can then continue on their normal course of graft.

Now, why the cleaning lady Jenna Angeline, took the photographs is pretty quickly obvious. Kenzie finds her, but she talks him into not reporting back to the Senator so she can show Kenzie what she has on him. She hands over to him a photograph of the senator with a young boy, but also recognizable in the photograph is her ex-husband. He’s a gang boss and pimp. It’s the one coincidence in the book. Normally, I hate when mysteries are built on lots of coincidences, but Lehane generally does a good job of not building his stories on coincidence. This one is built entirely on coincidence, but it’s not a totally outrageous one. Shortly after turning over that one photograph to Kenzie, her ex, the gang boss known as Socia, has her killed and Kenzie is there to witness it. He doesn’t want to be implicated either.

However, the bulk of the photographs have yet to be recovered so Kenzie and Gennaro have to find those as well. Unfortunately, this puts him right smack in the middle of a gang war. Socia’s son Roland has his own rival gang, and he doesn’t seem too happy that his mother has been killed. Father vs. son, both of whom are gunning for Kenzie and Gennaro.

Again (or first, rather, since this is the first book from the author), Lehane pounds two themes into his readers. Crimes against children and their consequences. And somewhat related, his heroes have more than feet of clay. They have mean streaks and are more than willing to cut corners as well as generally do things for which god will send them to hell. For instance, in an incident prior to the story but described in a flashback, Kenzie beats the crap out of Gennaro’s asshole husband, who took it out on Gennaro after his release from the hospital. This scene is used to explain why Kenzie does nothing when Gennaro shows up for work with a black eye courtesy of said asshole husband.

The book is extremely engrossing and readable. Don’t read it though if you are sensitive to graphic violence or crimes against children.

Title: A drink before the war
Author: Dennis Lehane
Series: Kenzie-Gennaro book 1
Imprint / publisher: HarperTorch / HarperCollins
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 277 p.
Publication date: December 2000
ISBN-10: 0-380-72623-8
Subject: Kenzie, Patrick (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Gennaro, Angela (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Private investigators — Massachusetts — Boston — Fiction
Subject: Family violence — Fiction
Subject: Boston (Mass.) — Fiction
LC classification: PS3562.E426 D75 1994

Gone, Baby, Gone is the third Dennis Lehane book I’ve read. I’ve previously read Mystic River and loved it and Shutter Island and thought it was okay. I reposted the Mystic River review but I can’t find where I reviewed Shutter Island anywhere. Too bad.

Continuing his theme of writing about children as well as about less than perfect characters, Gone, Baby, Gone stars Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro (who I believe appear in other Lehane books as well). They are private investigators who are hired to find Amanda McReady who has been abducted. She’s a small child with a neglectful drug addict for a mother. Soon they find out that not only had Helene McReady abandoned the child for 10+ hours to drink at a bar, she had recently helped rip off Sven Cheese Olamon the local drug lord of $200,000. Revenge for the theft puts Cheese at the top of the list of suspects. But it gets a lot more complicated when an exchange of the $200,000 for Amanda McReady goes horribly wrong; Kenzie and Gennaro are shot at and pinned down in a quarry, while the pick-up men for Cheese are found dead in a car. Who did the shooting and how they got away become the mystery. The next day Cheese is found dead in the prison where he serves time and runs the drug trade.

In the whole book, there’s really only two characters who are typical good people. Beatrice McReady, the aunt who hires Kenzie and Gennaro, and Amanda McReady herself. Together they get very little screen time. Kenzie and Gennaro have killed people in cold blood in the past. Cheese is a fairly upright guy on the other side. Helene McReady of course is a nearly worthless mother. The two cops on the case, Nick Raftopoulos and Remy Broussard show a complete willingness to break the rules, skipping search warrants for instance.

The looming question throughout the book is that of returning Amanda McReady to her mother Helene, who is a worthless mother. While she is in the hands of kidnappers, she’s certainly likely to be killed. But should she be returned to her mother if she’s found?

The plot is pretty complicated, but at least it doesn’t rely too much on coincidence. Still, there are a couple of huge plot holes that bothered me. One is that Cheese, after the failed exchange, has every reason to spill the beans of what he knows. He doesn’t, because he’s afraid of the real bad guy. Yet when the story ends, I realized Cheese had little to lose from the bad guys who left his two pick up men dead at the scene. Plus, there are a couple of other pivot points that require the cooperation of people who really could enhance their own prospects if they do not cooperate. I think that’s all a side effect of a complicate story.

Title: Gone, baby, gone
Author: Dennis Lehane
Series: Kenzie-Gennaro book 4
Imprint / publisher: HarperTorch / HarperCollins
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 412 p.
Publication date: February 2001
ISBN-10: 0-380-73035-9
Subject: Kenzie, Patrick (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Gennaro, Angela (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Private investigators — Massachusetts — Boston — Fiction
Subject: Children — Crimes against — Fiction
Subject: Boston (Mass.) — Fiction
LC classification: PS3562.E426 G66 1998

This is the review of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, that I wrote in June 2004 on my other blog. I’m reposting it here because I just finished another Lehane book that I really liked (review to come shortly).

Yep, more reading. Looks like this is going to be a good year for clearing off my to read list. Who am I kidding though? I am buying them faster than I am reading them, even at the 1+ a week clip I am going at.

I saw Mystic River in December when it was in the theaters. I thought it was a good movie although I thought Sean Penn over-acted some. Turns out not so much. Looks like Clint Eastwood stuck pretty close to the book, including the parts that I thought had been over-acted. So I suppose I can’t blame it on Penn.

Dennis Lehane‘s book, Mystic River is also pretty good. Definitely better than your run of the mill mystery novel. As kids, Jimmy Marcus and Sean Devine watch as their friend Dave Boyle is abducted by fake cops who later molest him. Years later, Sean Devine is a cop and Jimmy Marcus is an ex-con who owns a convenience store. Dave Boyle lives in the neighborhood and is married to Marcus’ sister-in-law. Except they are no longer really friends. They see each other every once in a while in the neighborhood. Marcus daughter Katie is murdered the same night Boyle comes home bloodied after a supposed mugging. Devine is a detective assigned to the case.

What I liked about the book is similar to what I liked about the movie. None of the characters are stock good guys or stock bad guys. The book explores the guilt Devine feels over letting Boyle into the car. It shows how Marcus is alienated from those around him, but manages to straighten himself out from the path he was on and become a loving father and husband. Boyle is permanently down on his luck, but because of the molestation has a core that is hard and dangerous. The best part of the book is how the murder and other events around each forces each to face the demons.

Title: Mystic river
Author: Dennis Lehane
Imprint / publisher: HarperTorch / HarperCollins
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 448 p.
Publication date: April 2002
ISBN-10: 0-380-73185-1
Subject: Police — Massachusetts — Boston — Fiction
Subject: Male friendship — Fiction
Subject: Boston (Mass.) — Fiction
LC classification: PS3562.E426 M97 2001

This contains his five novels. Most of his writing was short stories. Spent something like a month reading this. Even though the individual novels are somewhat short, getting through 700+ pages wasn’t easy for me.

Red Harvest

The first novel is a story-arc. I think that’s the term for it. There’s several stories strung together; one leads into the next. The protagonist is the same throughout. He’s the Continental Op or Continental Detective Agency operative. He’s hired to help find a killer in the town of Personville, Montana and subsequently to clean up the corrupted company town.

The Dain Curse

The second details the story of a girl Gabrielle Leggett, who believes she carries the curse of her mother. Everyone around her dies. The Continental Op is hired by various people to track down what’s going on. Throw in a small cult and a small town outside San Francisco with its own feuds, and he has to unravel quite a bit.

The Maltese Falcon

You’ve likely seen the movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet. I own it, though I haven’t watched it in over a year. I recall the movie being more about the falcon. The book is more about Sam Spade falling in love with a girl he doesn’t trust.

The Glass Key

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a detective story. It’s the story of Ned Beaumont who is a political operative for Paul Madvig, the head of the party machine in San Francisco. Madvig supports Senator Henry for re-election, and has designs on the Senator’s daughter. But late one night the Senator’s son is killed. Beaumont goes after a bookie who was owed by the younger Henry, and who coincidentally owes Beaumont some money. This mistake and rumors begins to implicate Madvig in the murder. Beaumont must unravel the clues to save his political boss as well as get the girl.

The Thin Man

A retired detective, Nick Charles, is drawn into the investigation of a murder that occurs at the residence of a former client Clyde Wynant. Steadfastly refusing to be hired by anyone, and mostly wishing to not be involved at all, he nevertheless solves the riddles with a casual wit and reparteé. Seems very much like a lot of movies these days. Notable in the story is the use of the word erection. Kind of risqué for a book written in 1934.

Yeah, the above descriptions don’t really give you much of a sense of the stories. It’s mostly to jog my memory when re-reading this.

The characters in the stories are hard-boiled. The men are at least. The women, with the exception of Charles’ wife Nora in The Thin Man, get upset at the least mention of anything untoward, even when they are scheming leeches. Also notable is Hammett’s view of the police and criminals. The police think nothing of a severe beating, and neither does the victim usually. It’s all business. Very few take anything personally, and it’s a very bleak view indeed. Also unlike a lot of other old-time novels, Hammett works very hard on his characters. A lot about them are cookie cutter, but he makes an effort to have something change the protagonist in each case (except Red Harvest). It’s not just a case of solve the case and move on. Hammett writes about love and friendship. A narrow view of it, but for the most part these stories are about these topics. Not the solving of crimes.

Title: Dashiell Hammett : five complete novels
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Publisher: Avenel Books
Format: Hardcover
Publication date: 1980
Length: 726 p.
ISBN-10: 0-517-33841-6
Subject: Detective and mystery stories, American
LC classification: PS3515.A4347 A6 1980