Don Smith: Secret Mission: Morocco

In my on-going research on later American paperback crime and adventure writers, I read one of the Secret Mission books by the Canadian Don Smith. I'd read earlier two of his books featuring the international private eye Tim Parnell and liked them quite a bit, so I thought this might also be to my liking. 

The hero of the Secret Mission books is Phil Sherman, an international traveler and entrepreneur, just like Don Smith seems to have been, who also helps CIA and other officials out. In Secret Mission: Morocco, he's asked to dig up something about an European millionaire who looks like he's smuggling counterfeit gold bars from Morocco. Stuff ensues. 

Don Smith is not a very colourful writer, and Phil Sherman is not a very colourful character. In fact, both are quite bland. I liked this trait in the Tim Parnell books, but this one left me colder. Maybe it was the Finnish translation. Nevertheless, the book is quite realistic in tone and milieu (Don Smith lived in Morocco, so that explains the believable description of the locales), and the bad guys are not your pulp-style crazy bastards. Still, there's a weird sadistic scene in the book in which Sherman is captured and whipped while a sexy woman fondles and kisses her.  

Here's Spy Guys and Gals on Don Smith. The guy has an interesting history, that must be said. 

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Out now: Dark Places and Little Tramps: writings on noir, hardboiled, sleaze and other genres.

Lee Raintree: Dallas

And now for something completely different - or is it after all that much different from any other books I've been writing here in my blog? 

As you can see from the cover and the title, Dallas by Lee Raintree (published by Dell in 1978) is a novelization of the Dallas TV series. It's written on the basis of the original miniseries which has later been dubbed as the first season, because the series was continued after the five-part miniseries proved to be popular. Mind you, I never watched Dallas and I don't really know how faithful the book is, but luckily there's a Goodreads writer telling what the differences are (i.e. Bobby Ewing is a Vietnam veteran in the book and suffers from violent anxiety attacks). It also seems that the book has a beginning missing from the series that tells about the start of the feud between the Ewings and the Barneses. The epilogue is set in the 1920's or the 1930's, and it's quite strong and dramatic. 

Lee Raintree was really Con Sellers, a paperback writer whose books I've written earlier about in my blog (see here). He started out in very cheap sleaze paperbacks, but managed to make it big with Dallas and scored big deals with his next books. This is his only book as by Lee Raintree. 

Dallas is the fourth book I've read by him, and seems like he was a good writer with a sense for words and drama. His characters and sentences are edgy and angular, and I like that kind of style very much. This is no smooth soap opera for faint-heart middle-class ladies. There are scenes of violence and rape, and the scene near the end when two white trash men crash into the Ewing house and threaten the women of the family is very powerful. (In the book, Ellie Ewing saves the women and kills the other man, in the series Bobby and Jock Ewing come to the rescue.) Of course it also titillates readers, and after having been assaulted, Sue Ellen, the wife of J.R. Ewing, finds her hidden sexuality, which might be embarrassing to some readers. It is indeed awkward and old-fashioned. One other thing must be said: J.R. Ewing is only a mean bastard in the book (fantasizing about tying Pamela Barnes in bed and raping her), and were he to appear like that in the series, he wouldn't have proven so popular. (I noticed there's a book The Quotations of J.R. Ewing. C'mon!) It must be said, though, that at times the book can be quite long-winded, with lots of dialogue going nowhere, especially in the middle. Sellers was probably paid by the word. 

The Finnish translation which I read is quite different from the other translations or the original. It was published in hardcover (which, as far as I can see, is the only hardcover publication of the book), and it was given a nice, Polish-style cover by Finnish artist Pekka Loiri. 

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Out now: Dark Places and Little Tramps: Writings on noir, hardboiled, sleaze and other genres. 

A novel by L. Patrick Greene needs identification

I'm trying for research purposes to identify a novel by the pulp writer L. Patrick Greene that was translated in Finnish in 1944. It had earlier, in 1943, come out as a serial in a Finnish newspaper, but none of the editions state what the title of the book is originally. Its Finnish title is "Diamond Shaft", meaning "Timanttikuilu", but there's no title by Greene under that title. The book starts with the diamong smuggler Aubrey St. John Major rescuing a woman who's getting a beating in an alley, but soon he finds out it's a scam and they were only after his money. Later on a man called Soapy Sam Richards makes him a proposal about a mysterious diamond shaft which the local people are afraid of. It's said that the shift doesn't have a bottom. There are several other people after the diamonds as well, including the woman in the beginning getting beaten up and the man who does the beating. There's also a scene in which St. John Major talks about using a monocle with a policeman.

Does anyone reading this blog recognize the book or the serial from this? Any tip would be appreciated. The writer's name is misspelled in the Finnish book. 

EDIT: This turned out to be Devil's Kloof from 1931. Thanks to everyone who answered! 

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Out now: Dark Places and Little Tramps: Writings on noir, hardboiled, sleaze and other genres. 

Michael Brett: An Ear for Murder (1967)

I read this old private eye mystery by Michael Brett in a day, which I quite enjoyed, having struggled through a much longer crime novel which took almost a week. The book's protagonist is Pete McGrath, a tough private eye working in New York, but going to Las Vegas in the book. In the beginning, he's hired by a mysterious woman saying her husband has disappeared. She doesn't want to get to touch with the police, which of course makes McGrath suspicious, but a man has to make a living. Soon he stumbles upon a dead man, which is a given in any old school PI novel. McGrath has to find a sadistic killer who works with an axe or a machete, portrayed in the cover. 

I liked the book, though it's nowhere near great. It's a fast read, and everything flows quite smoothly. Brett makes McGrath a likable hero who can work his way out in the mean streets, but there are also bursts of sudden violence. Especially the scene in which McGrath cuts off an ear from a killer is gruesome. There's also lots of old school male chauvinism in the book, but what can you expect? It must be said, though, that McGrath also dates a young woman who works at the UN. 

Here's more about Brett in Mystery*File. 

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Out now: Dark Places and Little Tramps: Writings on noir, hardboiled, sleaze and other genres.