Clean Break by Lionel White

 

(pb; 1955)

Review

Fans of Richard Stark’s twenty-four-book Parker series might enjoy Clean Break, with its blunt, succinct descriptions and dialogue, its swift pacing, its character-based twists, all of which start from the first word and doesn’t let up until the last one. This is a great, blueprint-for-the-hardboiled-novel book, one worth owning.

#

The resulting film, The Killing, was released stateside on June 6, 1956. Stanley Kubrick directed it, also serving as co-author (with Jim Thompson) of the screenplay.

Sterling Hayden played Johnny Clay, ex-con brainchild of the heist. Coleen Gray played Fay, Johnny’s girlfriend.

Jay C. Flippen played Marvin Unger, court stenographer-turned-heister. Elisha Cook Jr. played track cashier George Peatty. Marie Windsor played Sherry Peatty, George’s bored, faithless wife. Vince Edwards played Val Cannon, Sherry’s secret lover.

Ted de Corsia, billed as DeCorsia, played debt-saddled Patrolman Randy Kennan. Jay Adler played “Leo the Loan Shark.” Joe Sawyer played Mike O’Reilly (cinematic stand-in for “Big Mike” Henty in the source novel). Timothy Carey played creepy sniper Nikki Arcane. Joe Turkel, billed as Joseph Turkel, played Tiny.

The Red Box by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1936, 1937: fourth book in the forty-six-book Nero Wolfe detective series)

From the back cover

“Murder by chocolate? That’s the premise Nero Wolfe must operate from when a beautiful woman is poisoned after indulging in a box of candy. It’s a case that the great detective—no stranger himself to overindulgence—is loath to take for a variety of reasons, including that it may require that he leave his comfortable brownstone But he and Archie are compelled by a mystery that mixes high fashion and low motives. . . and a killer who may have made the deadliest mistake.”

 

Review

The fourth Nero Wolfe novel, more blunt and potentially violent than previous Wolfe works, shows the titular detective (with help from his right-hand man, Archie Goodwin) solving (and proving) the possibly accidental murder of a young prankster (Molly Lauck) via caramel candy poisoning. When mostly troublesome witnesses, suspects, their family members, and the police (again led by Inspector Kramer) show up—sometimes summoned by Wolfe—the situation heats up, becomes more urgent by more poison-related killings.

The primary reason for Box’s tonal shift is that Archie Goodwin, who narrates the Nero books, has become more straightforward, caustic, and willing to lay hands on anyone who insults or threatens his employer—perhaps a reaction to the physical threats he and Wole have faced in previous books?

Still present tone-wise is Wolfe’s erudite utterances, the humorous undertone of Wolfe and Goodwin’s interactions, as well as the effective, believable twists of the case and those involved. As excellent as the last two books (even with its tonal shift), Box is a definite-check-out read. Followed by Too Many Cooks (1938).

The Fraternity of the Stone by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1985: second book in the Abelard Sanction quadrilogy)

From the back cover

“Scalpel. A clandestine, government-sanctioned operation named for its purpose: precise surgical removal. Assassination.

“Drew Maclane was a star agent—until the day had to stop. He withdrew and for six years lived the life of a hermit in a monastery.

“But someone has tracked him down, leaving a trail of corpses. Someone who knows all about him—who will stop at nothing to kill him.”

 

Review

A superb, gripping and tautly spun follow-up to The Brotherhood of the Rose, Fraternity features a different protagonist (Drew MacLane), a government assassin who’s retreated into a Carthusian monastery after a botched double-target hit traumatizes him. MacLane, like Saul Grisman in Brotherhood, is a relatable (though distinctive from Grisman) character—that is, one worth rooting for as he tries to figure out who’s trying to kill and frame him and those close to him (his ex-lover, Arlene; his best friend and fellow Scalpel assassin, Jake).

Morrell’s strengths as an author are at the fore here: fully fleshed characters, memorable action scenes and their set-ups, and solid explanations, conspiracies and backstories that make up a read that lives up to the phrase thriller and all that it implies. Worth owning, this—followed by The League of Night and Fog.

The Big Meat by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2017)

From the back cover

“The creature was finally dead. After months of fighting it, trying desperately to stop it as it rampaged across the American countryside, turning city after city into a landscape of rubble, we finally managed to beat the damned thing. We actually saved the human species. We survived.

“But the corpse still lingers.

“In the center of the city once known as Portland, Oregon, there lies a mountain of flesh. Hundreds of thousands of tons of rotting flesh. It has filled the city with disease and dead-lizard stench, contaminated the water supply with its greasy putrid fluids, clogged the air with toxic gases so thick that you can’t leave your house without the aid of a gas mask. And no one really knows quite what to do about it. A thousand-man demolition crew has been trying to clear it out one piece at a time, but after three months of work they’ve barely made a dent. And then there’s the junkies who have started burrowing into the monster’s guts, searching for a drug produced by its fire glands, setting back the excavation even longer.

“It seems like the corpse will never go away. And with the quarantine still in place, we’re not even allowed to leave. We’re stuck in this disgusting rotten hell forever.

“The Big Meat is a gut-wrenching, nerve-squirming survival story of loss, addiction and claustrophobia.”

 

Review

Meat, like Mellick’s other nailing-it works, deftly mixes genres, in this case: kaiju, drug addiction, plague and grief dramas as well as science fiction and icky horror. Less light-hearted than works like The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair, Meat flirts with the saturnine-horrific tone of Village of the Mermaids and built-up dread of Quicksand House—it’s an inspired, entertaining 162-page novel, with its protagonist literally going through a “gut-wrenching” situation, looking for his disappeared Blue Food-addicted brother (David) while struggling to survive physically and economically in what appears to be a lose/suffer-more existence.

One of the many things I love about Mellick’s work is how he, with seeming ease, slips in backstory details without sacrificing its odd genre mix pacing, solid storytelling and relatable emotion impact.

Meat, less flashy in its setup and delivery than some high-profile Mellick's books, sports a profound maturity within its sometimes gory, genre-true (especially for kaiju fans) and inspired situations, a work worth owning—one of my favorite reads this year.

The Rubber Band by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1937: third book in the forty-six-book Nero Wolfe detective series)

From the back cover

“What do a Wild West lynching and a respected English nobleman have in common? On the surface, absolutely nothing. But when a young man hires his services, it becomes Nero Wolfe’s job to look deeper and find the connection. A forty-year-old pact, a five-thousand-mile search and a million-dollar murder are all linked to an international scandal that could rebound on the great detective and his partner, Archie, with fatal abruptness.”

 

Review

Rubber Band has the erudite, stubborn Wolfe reluctantly harboring a pretty fugitive (Clara Fox) who’s suspected not only of monetary theft but murder—and those seeking her are not limited to wanting to arrest her. While the cops (often led by the sometimes-friendly Inspector Kramer) and dubious characters try to pound down Wolfe’s door, Archie Goodwin and Wolfe’s reliable butler Fritz Brenner actively form a further bulwark to the urgent invaders while Wolfe susses out the details of Fox’s three-prong difficulties, an effort that should earn him an impressive, calculated payday.

Rubber might be my favorite Wolfe novel thus far. It’s dead-on, from its characterizations, its editing and clever writing, and often laugh-out-loud smart dialogue. In some ways, Rubber feels like the crystallization of the first phase Stout’s iconic detective (considering there are forty-six Wolfe books), and it’s a great entry not only in Stout’s Wolfe series but the mystery genre in general. Followed by The Red Box.

Goth by Otsuichi, aka Hirotaka Adachi

 

(pb; 2002, 2005. Translated from Japanese to English by Andrew Cunningham.)

From the back cover

“Morino is the strangest girl in school—how could she not be, given her obsession with brutal murders? And there are plenty of murders to grow obsessed with, as the town in which she lives is a magnet for serial killers. She and her schoolmate will go to any length to investigate the murders, even putting their own bodies on the line. And they don’t want to stop the killers—Morino and her friend simply want to understand them.”

 

Review

Goth is an excellent, unsettling, clever and twisty work, with a world not set in our reality and a plethora of amoral characters—not only the killers, who have a youkai-like air about them—drawn to the unsmiling Yoru Morino, who’s “Goth” in the sense of her melancholic air and primarily black colors, nothing more.

Animal lovers with little stomach for occasional, semi-detailed acts of animal cruelty (early to midway through Goth) might want to skip this tightly edited book—I considered putting down the book and reading something else, but pushed through the brief scenes/descriptions, and while I won’t read this book again (nor see its resulting Shonen manga and live-action film), I’m glad I read this, and might consider checking out other Otsuiki works in the future (provided there’s no more animal cruelty in them).

Suicide Hill by James Ellroy

 

(pb; 1986: third book in the Lloyd Hopkins/L.A. Noir trilogy)

From the back cover

“Detective Lloyd Hopkins is the most brilliant homicide detective in the Los Angeles Police Department and one its most troubled. In his obsessive mission to protect the innocent, there is no line he won’t cross. Estranged from his wife and daughters on the verge of being drummed out of the department for his transgressions, Hopkins is assigned to investigate a series a bloody bank robberies. As the violence escalates and the case becomes ever more vicious, Hopkins will be forced to cross the line once again to stop a maniac on a murder binge.”

 

Review

This edited review was originally published on this site on October 13, 2006. That review has since been deleted.

Suicide, likes its prequels Blood on the Moon and Because the Night, sports a nasty, tautly penned edge, but this time out, its character-based darkness is offset with an unexpected grace and sense of mercy, with an interweaving, often complex, plot focused and sharp book, with an underlying raw tone.

Lloyd Hopkins embodies this progression. While he’s still not exactly sensitive to others, he’s relatively more restrained, and—with exciting results—sometimes finds his roles switched with other characters (e.g., Capt. Fred Gaffaney, one of Hopkins’s chief foes), putting me in the transcendent mindset of the closing moments of another lots-of-edge work, Abel Ferrara’s 1992 crime drama-thriller Bad Lieutenant. Great capper to the Hopkins trilogy, this, worth owning.

Farscape: House of Cards by Keith R.A. DeCandido

 

(pb; 2000: television show tie-in. Events in this book take place “towards the end of the second season of Farscape, between the episodes “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “The Locket.”

 

From the back cover

“The pleasure planet Liantac was once the greatest gambling resort in the Uncharted Territories. Even now, having fallen on hard times, it remains a spectacle of glitz and greed. Astronaut John Crichton and his fellow interstellar fugitives see Liantac as the source of much-needed supplies—except for Rygel, whose boundless avarice is tempted by the promise of easy riches.

“To discharge the debt, and liberate their ship from the planetary authorities. Crichton, Aeryn, and the others must take on a number of challenging assignments. But all is not what it seems, for treachery and deadly intrigue hides within this. . . House of Cards.”

 

Review

House of Cards, an original-story novel inspired by the Rockne S. O’Bannon-created, Sci-Fi Channel show, reads like a genuine, unfilmed Farscape episode, with its character-true and sometimes flinty-humored dialogue and behavior, twisty and tight storyline, and possibly devious new characters who may or may not be using Moya and her crew for their own Liantac-centric ends. A fast-paced and hard-to-set-down book, it’s a worthy addition to the Farscape series, one worth owning.

House is followed by two character-/universe-linked sequels Dark Side of the Sun (by Andrew Dymond, published September 2001, said to be wildly inconsistent with the Farscape timeline) and Ship of Ghosts (by David Bischoff, published January 2002, which also has “better than Dark Side” but “bland” reviews on Amazon).

The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout

 

(pb; 1935: second book in the forty-six-book Nero Wolfe detective series)

From the back cover

“Paul Chapin’s college cronies never quite forgave themselves for instigating the tragic prank that left their friend a twisted cripple. Yet with their hazing days at Harvard far behind them, they had every reason to believe that Paul himself had forgiven them—until a class reunion ends in fatal fall, and the poems swearing deadly retribution begin to arrive. Now this league of frightened men is desperate for Nero Wolfe’s help. But are Wolfe’s brilliance and Archie’s tenacity enough to outwit a killer so cunning he can plot and execute in plain sight?”

 

Review

The second Nero Wolfe mystery finds the titular detective and his man-about-city assistant Archie Goodwin trying to figure out how murder-book author and poet Paul Chapin—who by most indications seems to be bumping off those who inadvertently wronged him a long time ago—committed the crimes. However, as with most effective and entertaining whodunnit (with Wolfe cases, howdunnit) works, situations and people are not what they always seem.

Stout’s mystery-atypical story setup is not unlike that of the first novel, Fer-de-Lance, with Archie having to wangle and compel Wolfe into setting aside his comfortable schedule to solve the recent succession of small-group killings, with a probable key villain who seems to mock them at every step—and once Archie’s efforts are rewarded, barbed humor gives way to reader-gripping curiosity, brief instances of danger and alarm, as well as sense of things tumbling rapidly into a satisfying and memorable story resolution. This time, though, Chapin is an especially memorable black-hat character, and Wolfe’s mercenary underpinnings—startling in Fer-de-Lance—are more apparent early on, making League one of my favorite Wolfe reads thus far. Followed by The Rubber Band.

 

#

 

League has been filmed at least once, notably by Columbia Pictures in 1937, with Walter Connolly playing the portly Wolfe and Lionel Stander embodying the sarcastic Archie Goodwin.

The Gauntlet by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack

 

(pb; 1977: movie tie-in novel, based on Butler and Shryack’s screenplay)

 

From the back cover

“He was a cop who ‘got a job done.’

“She was a hooker set up by both the law and the mob to have a job done on her.

“They were two people with nothing left to do but run.”

 

Review

Gauntlet is a fun, comic book-ish movie tie-in that tries to ground its absurd action-fantasy cinematic counterpart in some semblance of reality and largely succeeds. Penned by Butler and Shryack, who also wrote the screenplay, they add small details and background to their lead characters (including a nice meta-crack about “Dirty Harry”), giving some heft to Gauntlet’s leads. Many of its situations, especially in its last quarter, are still ridiculous but they’re less egregious in their execution than in the film, which come as just silly. This book version is worthwhile if you don’t expect too much and are just looking for something violent but relatively light to fill an hour or two. Below is the iconic Boris Vallejo movie poster.

Escape from the Living Dead by John Russo

 

(pb; 2013: sequel to the 1978 book version of John Russo’s Return of the Living Dead. Third book in Russo’s Living Dead series.)

 

From the back cover

“In an isolated roadside diner, a desperate group of strangers barricade themselves against a ravenous horde of undead customers who crave something more than the early bird special. They want flesh. Human flesh. With a side order of brains and stomach-turning terror.”

 

Review

Escape, set sixteen years after the events of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and ten years after Return of the Living Dead (published in 1978), has the same virtues and drawbacks (for some readers) as Russo’s two previous Living Dead books, with a few series-fresh and world-expansive ideas thrown into the mix (e.g., a scientist, Dr. Harold Melrose, who’s infected with zombifying virus but doesn’t “turn”).

If you like blunt action with little nuance, short-lived characters whose pasts are effectively sketched out (to keep the action going at rapid clip), and villains who are repulsive in their outlooks and violence, Escape might be your pulpy, putrescent and gory kick. If I have any criticisms of Russo’s writing, it’s usually this: he makes philosophical statements that take me out of the story unnecessarily—these truths and musings could easily be woven seamlessly into the story, within the characters’ dialogue, actions, and situations themselves; also, some of his characters’ dialogues are stilted, providing awkwardly stated story information and information about their pasts (while talking to people who’ve known them awhile and therefore should already know them).

These minor nits aside, Escape, like Russo’s other works, is a choppy-edit, gory, grim, violent and character-sketched tale, one worth reading if you can embrace the above-stated qualities of his writing, and don’t mind a bit of bleak-humored misanthropy.

The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair by Carlton Mellick III

 

(pb; 2022)

 

From the back cover

“This is a ghost story.

“It is also a love story.

“It is a story about obsession, desperation, loneliness, and depravity.

“It is not a story that will make you happy.”

 

Review

Girl is an instantly addictive (in a good way) read, seamlessly incorporating integral facets of Japanese horror (aka J-horror) into a relatively straightforward, sometimes clever-twisty tale: a kind, quiet boy (Yusuke) is thrown into wild situations after helping a strange street girl (Akiko Mori) and, while doing so, attracting the weird-affection attention of his popular, pretty and casually cruel junior high classmate (Narumi Wada). Events spiral out of bloody, community-threatening control when Akiko’s true nature is revealed, playing out in a way that feels true to J-horror and its well-developed character while maintaining a fresh take on it. Girl, Mellick’s sixty-fourth book, is less bizarre in tone and execution, but still a wild, entertaining and standout work, one worth owning.

Chamber of Horrors by Robert Bloch

 

(pb; 1966: story anthology)

 

Overall review

Chamber is an excellent, twelve-story collection by an often-excellent author. All the tightly written and twisty tales shine, even if Bloch-familiar readers guess/sense the character- and fate-based turns within the works. Worth owning, this—a master class in effective, get-regularly-published writing.

 

Review, story by story

“The Living End”: Nobel Prize-winning scientist Herbert Zane is unpleasantly distracted from his groundbreaking work by his shrewish wife (Hilda), in a life-altering way. While some readers may guess how Herbert might be undone, it’s still—especially for the period it was originally published (1963)—effective, clever, and rings true.

 

“The Headhunter”: Otto Kranz, an axe-wielding executioner for the SS (and full of wonder at the mysteries of life and death) risks death to seek answers to nagging, core questions. Good story.

 

“Impractical Joker”: A heartbroken, disgruntled bartender (Teddy), working his final shift at the Fun House (a bar), goes for broke (im)practical joke-wise. For Bloch, this is a relatively gentle work shade-wise, but still moralistic (in a good way) with its twist(s).

 

“Pride Goes—”: Alice Aiken, an adulteress, plots her husband’s murder, and finds even the most no-fuss killing too easily becomes tangled. Masterfully foreshadowed finish, one of my favorite stories in this anthology—and one of my all-time favorite Bloch stories.

 

“The Screaming People”: A post-car accident amnesiac (Steve Edmundson), dream-led by “The Voice,” suspects he might’ve committed a murder. Thankfully, there’s his loving wife (Roxie) and Dr. Carl Wagram (a neuropsychiatrist) to guide him back to complete sanity. . . maybe.

Bloch, again, masterfully mines noir tropes and converts them into pulpy, twisty gold with his deftly placed foreshadowing, gray-shade characters, sly humor and overall excellent writing.

.

“Fat Chance”: A longtime-married husband plots his wife’s (Mary) death after she puts on seriously unhealthy weight and he meets Frances, a stimulating, weight-healthy woman. Readers familiar with Bloch’s writing style and structure may see what “Fat Chance”’s twist-finish is likely to be, but it’s still the work of a superb writer spinning a worthwhile, clever tale.

 

“The Unpardonable Crime”: Sherry,  a desperate, lowlife actress, returns to her husband (Roger, a film director) after disappearing for three years. She hopes to revitalize her career, but things have changed in ways she couldn’t foresee. Fun, Hollywood-dark read, offbeat and excellent twist.

 

“Method for Murder”: Madness—contagious?—dominates this tale about a woman (Alice), sick of her husband’s obsession with his thriller work; she finds an illicit and dangerous way to deal with it. Fans of Bloch’s 1982 novel Psycho II might especially appreciate “Murder.”

 

“Two of a Kind”: A wealthy man (Preston Lambert) offers a young couple (Mary Dexter and her husband) a life of luxury if they’ll work with him on what seems like mad lark. Memorable, great twist-finish in this story.

 

“Untouchable”: Race Harmon, an arrogant and racist filmmaker in India, goes stir crazy beyond his usual, drunken actions and slurs (which are language-explicit and may be shocking for sheltered/sensitive readers). This being a Bloch tale, there’s a heavy price to be paid for such behavior. Nasty, blunt and excellent story.

 

“Beelzebub”: A fly torments a Hollywood writer (Howard). Fun story.

 

“ ‘Frozen Fear’”: Walter Krass realizes that his Cajun wife (Ruby) intends to kill him, so he tries to respond in kind—but murder isn’t always the answer, nor is it the end of certain situations. Good, solid work.

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry

 

(hb; 2012: seventh book in the Jane Whitefield series)

From the back cover

“James Shelby has been unjustly convicted of his wife’s murder. To save him from prison or death, Jane orchestrates his escape from the heavily guarded criminal court building in Los Angeles. Within minutes, imposters posing as police officers shoot Jane, take her away, and tie her to a mattress in a small, dark room.

“Jane’s captors are employees for the true killer, who believes he won’t be safe until Shelby is dead. His henchmen will do anything to break Jane’s mind, body, and spirit to get her to reveal Shelby’s hiding place, yet Jane endures their sadistic torment using techniques passed on via her Seneca warrior ancestors. Jane is alone, wounded, thousands of miles from home with no money and no identification, hunted by both the police and her ruthless captors. In an unrelenting cross-country battle, Jane must use all her cunning to rejoin Shelby, get them both to safety, and unmask the real murderer. And when at last Jane turns to fight, her enemies face a ferocious warrior who has one weapon they don’t.”

 

Review

One of the many strengths of Perry’s Jane Whitefield series (and overall writing) is that he, a prolific author, regularly switches up the plot structures and setups of his books, often within the same series, so that each book stands out from (most of) his other works. This is especially true of Poison Flower, which focuses not on Jane guiding her clients to safety, but her trying to escape kidnappers and, having done so, making sure that she and those she cares about are safe from them—even if it means her engaging in an activity she reluctantly engages in: revenge.

Poison, like other Jane Whitefield novels, is a fast, entertaining work, making for another thriller that feels fresh and familiar while expanding ongoing characters and Jane’s world. The emotional gravitas of the dangers Jane and her friends and family face are immediate, engaging, action-brutal and often hair-raising (especially after Jane is kidnapped by Daniel Martel’s auction-minded killers). This is an excellent work, not shocking considering its creator, fast-moving but not so slick as to lack memorability or emotional heft. Followed by A String of Beads.