Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips

 

 

Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips

 

Whatever you think of the style that Max Phillips has with this little entry is what will hold your interest.  My basic problem with Fade to Blonde was that it seems to be a story with no coherent theme.  The story, true enough, is about a woman worried about an acquaintance who is a gangster that has threatened her with physical violence and wants our hero to "take care" of him.

 

But the story jumps around too much for my tastes.  It seems to be two stories (or more) blended into one narrative.  Ray Corson, a former boxer (among other things) takes on the job that Rebecca gives him, that of trying to get Lance Halliday, a gangster, to leave her alone, preferably by killing him.

In the process, Ray gets more deeply involved in the gangster world than he is prepared to do.  Not only does he end up as a member of Lenny Scarpa's organization, he ends up fingering a guy who seems to be muscling in on Scarpa's drug enterprise.  As well, he keeps trying to figure out what angle Rebecca has going for her.  She is less than forthright with him, but because she had a nice body, his focus seems to be wandering as much as her story is.

The fact that the novel is really just a few short stories blended together is only one aspect that bothered me.  The ending doesn't quite mesh and actually made no sense at all when compared with the preceding 200 pages.  

Amazingly, this novel won an award. (Shamus Award: Best PI Paperback Original 2005)  I don't know much about the Shamus Awards, in fact never even heard of it until I saw a blurb saying this book had won one. (Note: On checking a list of past winners I noted that one of my favorite books Bill Pronzini's Hoodwink had won the first Best PI Hardcover award.  So it's not like they don't know what they are doing.)  But maybe I just don't have the same ideas of quality.

Fade to Blonde: 2 stars

Thanks for reading

Quiggy

Next: Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner

Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block

 

 

 

Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block:

The first book ever published by Hard Case Crime is one that might have turned me off if I had picked it up as the first book I ever read under the imprint.  Lawrence Block is one of those authors that is, what might be termed as, an "acquired taste".  At least from my experience, having picked up a few more of his books since reading this one. 

The problem I have with Block is he never pulls punches. Even his heroes, like the Matthew Scudder series, seem to have very few redeeming social values. (Although in later books Scudder became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, which gives me a frame of reference to be aligned with him, at least on that level).  

 

Chalk it up to being weaned early in childhood on Hardy Boys, but before my foray into the Hard Case Crime imprints, I tended to like my heroes to at least have some sort of conscience, little as it may have been.  Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe may not have been saints, mind you, but at least they had a sense of what is acceptable in mainstream society.

 

Here, we don't even have a hero, more like an anti-hero.  The main character, Joe Marlin, is a malcontent who manages to sponge his way cross the country, posing as someone new and racking up whatever he can in the process.  At the start of the novel he has just realized that he is about out of luck on his current identity and has to fold up tents and move on. He was posing as David Gavilan, but his welcome in Philadelphia is about to come to an end because he has been living on credit to the tune of about $600, but he only has about $100 to his name.  Time to move on. Next stop Atlantic City.

 

In the process of picking up a new identity, he steals a couple of suitcases in the train terminal with the initials of L.K.B. imprinted on them, so he decides his new identity is "Leonard K. Blake". While on the beach in Atlantic City he meets up with an attractive woman named Mona who is just as interested in him as he is in her.  But Mona is married and so their liaisons have to be in secret.

But who is the real L.K.B.?  It turns out he may be someone more in line with Joe's world than in the legitimate world, because on inspection of the suitcases, Joe comes across a box containing a batch of pure uncut heroin.  And, oh yeah, it turns out that Mona's husband, Keith, is the real L.K.B... L. Keith Br

Now we get into the meat of the story.  Joe and Mona begin a relationship that in the 60's was still shocking, but by the 2020's has become so common on the big screen and in print that the public is almost inured to it.  In the process, Mona discovers that Joe, whom she currently knows as Lenny, has Keith's bags.  She's Keith's wife, so sure she would recognize his bags, right?

Joe then tells her the truth, that he is a con man and also that her husband is apparently a drug dealer.  Mona expresses her love for Joe and her desire to leave Keith, so in the tradition of movies like Double Indemnity, the two decide that the best solution is to kill off Keith. And thus, the plot is set in motion.

Referencing Double Indemnity  is not just coincidental in this case.  There are several parallels that come out over the course of the novel, not the least of which is that Mona may not be the innocent little woman that Joe thinks she is.  

Grifter's Game, as I said in the beginning, is somewhat disturbing, especially the denouement, which may even shock the most jaded reader by the time he/she reaches it.

Grifter's Game: 3 stars.

Thanks for reading.

Quiggy

Next: Fade to Blonde: by Max Phillips.

Introduction

 

 

Welcome to Hard Case Bookshelf. 

I am a big fan of the imprint of Hard Case Crime.  I started collecting the books back in 2011.  My first experience with the stories was 361  by Donald E. Westlake.  I picked up a few more over the next three months and decided I really liked them, especially the reprints from the 60's.  Reminded me of some of the stories I read in the barbershop while waiting for a haircut when I was in my early teens.

It gradually became an obsession with me.  I used to haunt the used bookstores looking for ones I didn't have.  I remember once while visiting a friend in Tulsa and found a treasure trove of 12 books, one of which was The Murderer Vine by Shepard Rifkin which immediately became my favorite.  (Still is even after having read about 60 of them.)

The goal of this blog is to review each of them.  My memory being somewhat iffy, I have decided to start at the beginning, re-reading the ones I have already read, as well as catching up with the ones I have not read.  As such, this blog will be updated at the rate I read them.  For some reason, I thought it would be cool to do this in the order the books were printed.  Thus, the first entry will be Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block.  You will see a more in-depth synopsis than usual, as well as some thoughts I have on the book.  Hope you enjoy them.

PS: If the publishers happen across this blog, thank you for many hours of reading and for the hours to come.

Quiggy

Next: Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block