Misanthropy in crime fiction

Question for the group mind: can you think and name any examples of misanthropy in crime fiction, classic, hardboiled or other? I should be writing an essay on the subject, but can't come up with enough examples, though I think Jim Thompson (especially Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me) and Patricia Highsmith (Tom Ripley!) are essentials. What about Charles Willeford? Isn't a book like The Woman Chaser misanthropic?

Someone suggested Andrew Vachss, but he seems to have an ethos that the innocent can and should be saved. There's of course lots of nihilistic neo-nah (the phrase coined by Kevin Burton Smith), but I haven't really sampled those. I'm not sure, though, whether mere nihilism is enough. Misanthropy is more of a philosophical stance, whereas nihilism seems more like a juvenile attempt to be tough and rough.

Any ideas? I'm not really sure if I can do this (the idea wasn't mine to begin with), but if there are enough examples I'm willing to try. I appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If there's a book on the subject, or even an essay, I'd really like to hear about it.

Winslow's Savages

I just read
Don Winslow's
SAVAGES.

It's fucking good.

You better believe it.

Like a treatment for a Tarantino flick
written by a sharp sociologist.

Out now in Finnish
as RAAKALAISET.

Duane Swierczynski: The Blonde

One of the books I read during my holiday was Duane Swierczynski's The Blonde. As you're probably aware (and you should be, especially if you're Finnish readers of this blog), Swierczynski's previous novel, the great The Wheelman, will soon be out in a paperback series of new hardboiled I edit, and if everything turns out okay, I believe The Blonde will also be. (Hmm.. is this a thing I'm able to mention or is it a business secret?)

You know the expression "non-stop action"? Well, most of the books or films on which that epithet is tacked on are not really non-stop action. But The Blonde is. Trust me. You can't put it down and the action starts from page one (well, okay, it starts from maybe page three or four). And there's lots of sex, while The Wheelman has almost none.

The book could be labeled as science fiction, but Swierczynski isn't really interested in exploring the science, which is fine by me. The Blonde is a perfect example of how a science fictional item can be used as a plot gimmick or even a MacGuffin. It slows the plot down none.

I have only one quibble: if the titular blonde is in the trouble she's in, just how can she act so cool? But there's always suspension of disbelief, and Swierczynski proves he's the master of it. And I just love how he links the previous book into this, even though they are totally separated.

Friday's forgotten book: James Cross: Root of Evil

Finally I had a chance to chime in with Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Book blog thing. I've been posting - in Finnish - the entries of my first book, Pulpografia, in another blog of mine here and when I came across James Cross's Root of Evil I thought I should say something about it in English, too.

I found this novel when I was going through some magazines at the university library and noticed there was a serial in a magazine called Mies (Male or Man) in 1959. It was by a writer not known to me, James Cross. The story looked interesting, so I took a look at Allen Hubin's bibliography and noticed Cross was actually named Hugh Parry and that he had four crime novels to his name. Then I spotted a book by James Cross in a second hand book store. It was called Root of Evil and even though I don't have the book at hand (I think it's in a box in the cellar..), I do remember it was a British paperback reprint. Quick glance told me it was the same book that was serialized in the mag.

So I read the book instead of the serialization. And man, I was sure glad I read it, since Root of Evil is a fast-moving tale of intrigue, murder and extortion. Two brothers buy a house and find a huge treasure of old coins in the backyard. They dig them up and after thinking about it for a while, they decide to keep them. First the taxman comes in, but then come the local criminals and then comes the greedy ex-wife and even if that's not enough, the military also tries to get their hands on the money. From what I remember of the book, it was told in a snappy, hardboiled style in the first narration. It's a very entertaining and well-written book.

Cross seems to have written some short stories, one for Playboy in 1967, and I seem to remember someone saying that he had a story in Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions. That aside, I've never heard or read anyone commenting on his work. Root of Evil should merit at least a mention.

Sorry for the lousy picture - it was the only one I found on Abebooks. It's a Crest reprint from 1958; the original edition is from Messner, 1957.

Pelecanos

A long interview with George Pelecanos. It's a crime that a writer of his fame, stature, quality and readability has had only novel (King Suckerman) translated.

Richard Stark graphic novels

Darwyn (JLA: The New Frontier) Cooke will adapt the first four "Parker" novels by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) as a series of graphic novels for publisher IDW. The titles, which have a "mild continuity" as Cooke explained, will be: The Hunter (aka Point Blank), The Man with the Getaway Face, The Outfit, and The Mourner. The first title, according to Cooke, is targeted for a late 2009 release, with the successive
three titles coming out in two year-intervals after that. (...)

The graphic novels will be fully endorsed and approved by Westlake, as Cooke has been in contact with the author, and referred to the process between himself and the original author as a collaboration that will reflect the tone of the original novels.

In regards to his art style, Cooke said that Parker graphic novels will be similar to his usual style, but will be "choppier and grittier - a far rawer look" than his mainstream superhero work. The art will be in black and white with one color.

From Newsarama.

Sweden's private eye novels

Anders Engwall, from Sundsvall, Sweden, commented a bit about the lack of private eyes in Finland, and it occurred me to ask him about fictional private eyes in Sweden. Here's his comment:

There have been at least two hardboiled PI series in Sweden, if you include investigative journalists among PIs. I can't recall any novels about professional private detectives at all.

Anders Jonason wrote three novels about journalist Dick Mattsson between 1953 and 1959. There was also a fourth crime novel in 1963 about a different journalist.

Jonason also translated many novels, perhaps most notably among them Charles Willeford's Hoke Mosely series. That makes Jonason the only one who has ever translated Willeford into Swedish.

Christer Nygren wrote a series of I believe eight novels about journalist Tommy Westfelt from 1986 until 1998. These are all set in my home town Sundsvall, except that's never stated openly in the books. For us who know the local geography it's obvious, though, and a fun bonus.

These two series are the only I can think of at the moment, unless you also count the well known but rather semi-boiled Harry Friberg series written Stieg Trenter between ca 1943 and 1966. Friberg was not a journalist, but close - a news photographer.

Come to think of it, there are preciously few Swedish hardboiled books at all outside of police procedurals. I have heard good things about the recent Snabba cash by Jens Lapidus, though. Then again, I have read excerpts from it and my initial thought was that short sentences alone certainly does not make you the Scandinavian James Ellroy. I.e. I was not impressed.

Here are a few links to brush up your Swedish.

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Jonason
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snabba_cash

We got to talk more about the matter over Facebook and here's his additional comment:

Of the Stieg Trenter titles I have only read Roparen. It was years ago, but as I recall it was a solid, competent medium-boiled whodunnit (wow, how is that for non-committal?). I remember I really enjoyed the 1980s TV series based on some of his books, though.

One promising thing I forgot is that we recently have had two translations of Jim Thompson published by two different publishers. This lot has THE GRIFTERS and Anthony Neil Smith:

http://www.kaliberforlag.se/

These guys published THE KILLER INSIDE ME and are also about release THE LAST GOOD KISS by James Crumley:

http://www.modernista.se/redanm/entry.asp?ENTRY_ID=22

Jorma Napola's one-off private eye novel from 1962

Private eye novels have never been big in Finland. I don't really know why, but I have some thoughts: private eye is a product of a culture that relies much on individuals and their right to do something, to correct things, to have a vengeance. Finland is pretty much a culture that relies on authorities, on the fact that someone else takes care of things. (Of course there are regions which resemble more Wild West, but more on them later. Perhaps.)

Private eyes in Finnish literature can be counted with one man's fingers. Reijo Mäki has Vares, Markku Ropponen has Otto Kuhala, Ari Paulow has Jesse Hackman.. and there you go. Tapani Bagge's Onni Syrjänen is not really a private eye. In the seventies there were some writers who dabbled in the genre, like Matti Kokkonen and Totti Karpela, but their legacy has not endured. (One distinctive point in Finnish P.I. novels is that they pretty much go for the parody of the genre, especially Reijo Mäki's Vares, or at least are very jokey.)

One shiny example of a good Finnish private eye novel is Ruuvikierre by Jorma Napola. The Finnish title might translate as "The Big Screw". I read the novel for the first time just recently, when I was suffering a bad case of stomach complaint.

The private eye hero in the novel is one Jaakko Piira, who mentions couple of times having been in the war and having fought first against the Soviets, then against the Germans. Piira is your typical private eye, tired, lonely, suffering from melancholy, could be an alcoholic. The book starts with Piira complaining that he's got no job. All he has is him and a spider weaving its web in a corner of his office. He gets a job, though - a nice and coy young lady asks him to check upon a man who was living in her and her aunt's house as a tenant and is now disappeared. Piira promises to look into the matter and finds himself getting woven up in a web of deceits and lies and blackmail. There are couple of murders and some cops who don't really like Piira.

The book was first published in 1962 and the author, who worked as an art critic and journalist, had won the first prize in a crime novel contest a big publisher called WSOY had put up. Napola won also the second prize, but more on that later.

Ruuvikierre has its share of clichés, but if you happen to enjoy these particular clichés, you'll enjoy Ruuvikierre too. There's a strong noirish tone in the book and the style is fittingly hardboiled. Napola also does a nice job getting those American clichés smuggled in Finnish settings, even though at times I found Piira's wisecracking a bit too un-Finnish. You know, we're not really accustomed to people yapping all the time. There are some implausibilities in the plot and I didn't really believe in the scene that took place in a rehab center, but all in all I really much liked this book. As for the foreign readers, suffice it to say that this could've been published in English and no one would've noticed any difference.

Timo Kukkola, who's written the history of Finnish crime literature, doesn't give much weight to Napola's novel and says only that it's a weak attempt to bring the American influence in Finland. He seems to think that hardboiled literature is only what Chandler and maybe Hammett had to offer and says - at some other point - that the fourties should be left alone. Yet he writes page after page about some locked room mysteries and mansion murders.

Kukkola seems to have some joy when he gets to mention that Napola didn't write another novel. He didn't know it all. A small paperback publisher called Viihdeviikarit (and the man behind it, Kari Lindgren, also the man behind Book Studio and now Book Man) put out in 1981 a novel called Ministeri on murhattu/A Minister Has Been Murdered - by Jorma Napola. The back cover told that Napola had won the second prize in the crime novel contest mentioned above, but WSOY didn't want to publish two novels by the same writer (I don't know why they didn't use a pseudonym), so it had remained unpublished for almost 20 years and Viihdeviikarit had dug it up. I remember reading the cheap paperback for at least two times in my teens.

I didn't remember much of it, though, when I decided to reread it after having finished Ruuvikierre. The books don't really resemble each other, except that both have men of principle in the lead. Neither will back down. The murder in the latter book seems impossible at first, but Napola doesn't give much thought to that and focuses more on bitter human intercourse. The book ends in noirish tones of despair and bitterness, even though it's really nowhere as bleak as Ruuvikierre. It's not as humorous either and the plot is not as intriguing as in Ruuvikierre. Ministeri on murhattu seems also to have some tones of the Maigret novels by Simenon.

Jorma Napola's both books deserve rereading and perhaps Ruuvikierre should be reprinted again as an affordable paperback.

Larry Block killing Castro

Hard Case Crime's latest newsletter tells us that in January 2009 they will be publishing a book by Lawrence Block that has never been reprinted and - if I understood correctly - never been acknowledged as a work of Block. Check it out here. The cover is, as usual, great and the theme interesting, to say the least.

And what was the original book? It was called Fidel Castro Assassinated, published under the pseudonym Lee Duncan, by Monarch in 1961. Sorry, can't find no cover scan. Maybe Bill Crider has this on his shelves?

I just hope Fidel gets to live to see the day the reprint comes out. Maybe Hard Case Crime could send him a copy - if the embargo has ended by then.

Arthur Lyons dead

American private eye writer and film noir enthusiast Arthur Lyons has died. He's one of those American crime writers who have mysteriously been untranslated in Finnish. Almost only sign of him in Finnish is the video release of Slow Burn (1986), a TV film based on one of his Jacob Asch novels (the Finnish title of the movie is also Slow Burn). I haven't seen it myself, but I've talked about it with Tapani Maskula, the Turun Sanomat movie critic and one of the best experts on American crime cinema in Finland (and maybe in the whole world as well), and he said he liked the film very much.

Here's a lengthy piece by J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet, and here's Steve Lewis and Mystery*File, providing bibliographic info.

Valentine Day flash horrors

I'm not one to celebrate Valentine Day - I would've totally forgotten about it, if Ottilia hadn't sent me a Valentine Day's text message (yes, she has a cell phone of her own!). I more or less think that you should have Valentine's Day everyday - if you don't really care for the people, what's the point trying to once a year?

Nevertheless, here's a fine selection of Valentine Day's themed flash fiction stories, the focus on crime. Not very romantic stuff, let me tell you! The thing was concocted up by Patti Abbott, who's a very fine writer of short stories and one who I'll be publishing in Isku. I liked her and Patrick Shawn Bagley's story the best (I didn't read them all, though, I most certainly will, on a later date).

Brad Latham's Hook series

I finished reading Brad Latham's Hook series that was published in paperback in the early eighties. From the original five books, three were translated in Finnish, in the early nineties. It seems no one gives a damn about these series, and I won't argue: there's not much to miss. Here's Thrilling Detective on the books, though.

Hook is Bill Lockwood, tough insurance detective working in the late thirties in New York. He meets dames, has gunfights, gets knocked over - you know the drill. I thought at first that the books are filled with graphic sex, but that applies only to the fourth novel in the series (the second in the Finnish series), The Death of Lorenzo Jones (Kuolettava kaunotar). It starts with a scene about a woman who tries to seduce Hook by stripping naked, shaving her pubic hair and wearing only high heels. Needless to say, she manages. The other two, The Gilded Canary and The Sight Unseen, are more or less traditional in their depiction of sex and the books seem pretty coy. (And I was really anticipating more stuff, with my hands sweaty, gripping the books... Just kiddin'. But it would've been nice.)

The most interesting of the three books is the second one (in Finland the third one), The Sight Unseen (Kuoleman varjossa, in which Hook battles against Nazi spies. There are even some political issues. The plot is a bit confusing, though, and the overall effect isn't much.

Now, Brad Latham is a pseudonym. It seems no one knows who it belongs to. I've heard rumours that the books were written by David J. Schow, the famous horror writer who had hand in the splatterpunk school in the late eighties and early nineties, but I would say that these three books had at least two different writers, maybe three. The first one, The Gilded Canary, is skimpy in details and reads faster than the other two. The Sight Unseen is more elaborate and has more convoluted plot than the others. The Death of Lorenzo Jones, however, relies so much on sex that it seems the most important thing in the book - I don't remember much else about it, but I think it also had an okay plot. It seems, though, that Schow's participation is certain - take a look at what Mystery#File has to say (you'll have to scroll down a bit).

The reason I read these books (well, of course I would've read them eventually, but at this point) is that I'll be writing an entry for genre sex paperbacks in the forth-coming book on erotic classics. Now, Brad Latham will be immortalized between Marquis de Sade and Anaïs Nin. Too bad, though, that the books didn't have more sex in them! (I'll also have Gary Tubbs's The Case of the Missing Rubber... but let me get back to that later!)

Roger Zelazny and Hard Case Crime

Hard Case Crime announced in their latest newsletter that they will be publishing "the long-lost, never-before-published thriller by award-winning fantasy and science fiction author Roger Zelazny"; the book will be out "at the start of 2009".

I didn't know that Zelazny, the author of the Amber series and Damnation Alley, amongst others, had written non-SF, so I asked around (mainly in the Fictionmags e-mail list) and found out that "this is the mystery/thriller novel, originally entitled APOSTATE'S GOLD, and then retitled THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER, which was completed in May 1971 by Zelazny and scheduled for a 1972 publication by [paperback house] Berkley...and then cancelled." It appears that Zelazny mentioned having written this novel in a fanzine called Phantasmicom in the early seventies.

His own description of the book in the fanzine is short: the manuscript is "about a priest who is dissatisfied with current Vatican policies - and a little bit of hijacking".

Edward Hoch dead

I learned just about an hour ago from Bill Crider's blog that veteran writer Edward Hoch has died. So sad - he almost came close of having 1,000 short stories under his name (and some pseudonyms).

Here's what I wrote about the man and his writings in Pulpografia (in Finnish, naturally):

Edward D. Hoch (s. 1930) on harvoja nykyisiä jännityskirjailijoita, joka kirjoittaa lähinnä novelleja. Hoch on julkaissut viisi romaania, mutta novelleja ainakin 700. Niitä hän on julkaissut lähinnä Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazinessa, mutta myös muissa lehdissä. Hoch aloitti novellistin uransa 1950-luvun puolivälissä. Hoch julkaisi tuolloin mm. Murder!-lehdessä ja salanimellä Stephen Dentinger Smashing Detective -lehdessä. Vuodesta 1965 alkaen Hochin pääasiallinen julkaisukanava on ollut juuri Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Hochin tuotantoon mahtuu niin klassista perinnettä mukailevia tarinoita (Hochin itsensä suosikkikirjailijoita ovat John Dickson Carr ja Ellery Queen) kuin kovaksikeitettyjä, seikkailullisia novelleja.

Edward D. Hochilla on monta vakiohahmoa. Tunnetuin ja arvostetuin on Nick Velvet, arvottomiin tavaroihin keskittyvä murtovaras. Myös Kapteeni Leopoldista kertovia tarinoita on kehuttu. Suomen-noksissa yleisin on yksityisetsivä Simon Ark, jonka elämä on mysteerioita täynnä. Vuonna 1955 Crack Detectivessä ensiesiintymisensä suorittaneen Arkin väitetään olevan vaeltava juutalainen, joka kulkee ympäri maailmaa Paholaista hakien — ja samalla maallisiakin rikoksia ratkaisten. Ark-novelleissa on usein hyvä tunnelma ja ne ovat huolellisemmin kirjoitettuja kuin suuri osa aikalaisistaan, mutta niiden julkiuskonnollinen sävy on oudoksuttava. Lisäksi novelleissa on usein myös uskonnollisten teemojen varjolla tapahtuvaa diskriminointia — esimerkiksi homoseksuaalisuus novellissa "Salaperäinen rakastajatar" on vain pahasta. Uskonnolliset teemat ovat pinnalla novellissa "Paholaisen hetki", jossa Kiinan kommunistihallintoa paenneet lähetyspapit kuolevat salaperäisesti luostarin muurien sisällä. Simon Ark sanoo novellissa, jossa sivutaan platonilaista symposionia: "Todellinen mystillisyys ei ole magiaa eikä spiritismiä. Se liittyy vain Jumalaan."

Maallisempi seikkailu on "Kadonnut laululintu", jossa Simon Ark ja hänen nimetön apurinsa etsivät Lawn Lawrencea, sensaatiomaista laulajatarta. Laulajattaren salaisuus paljastuu, mutta hän itse kuolee ja häntä kaukokaipaavasti katsellut Arkin apuri tuntee jääneensä yksin maailmaan. Salaisuus — jota en tässä paljasta — vielä menettelee, mutta se, mitä Lawn Lawrencelle tapahtuu, on seksuaalipoliittisesti vähintäänkin epäkorrektia.

Hochin tuotantoon kuuluu myös tavanomaisia vakoilunovelleja ("Labyrintti", jossa Spacer-niminen vakooja etsii Euroopassa Minotauros-nimistä terroristia) ja jännitysnovelleja ("Mies, joka oli kaikkialla", jossa aviomiehestä päästään eroon erikoisella tavalla). Komisario Leopoldista kertovat novellit ovat melko perinteisiä poliisikertomuksia, joissa on usein muistumia mysteeriperinteestä. "Leopoldin lomassa" komisario ratkaisee lomapaikallaan tapahtuvan ampumistapauksen, johon näyttää liittyvän uhkapeliä. "Komisario Leopoldin uhkapeli" on urbaanimpi ja kovaksikeitetympi. Siinäkin liikutaan peliluolien maailmassa: Leopoldin työtoveri huumataan ja häntä ammutaan lomallaan Atlantic Cityssa.

Novellit:
Kadonnut laululintu, Seikkailujen Maailma 5/1961.
Kapteeni Leopold ja lukittu huone teoksessa Josh Pachter (toim): Top Crime — jännityksen valiot. Suom. Jouko Vanhanen. Kirjayhtymä: Helsinki 1984.
Kolme hautakiveä, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 4/1973.
Komisario Leopoldin uhkapeli, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 3. Viihdeviikarit: Hyvinkää 1981.
Kuolema vierailee satamassa, Ellery Queenin jännityslukemisto 4/1963.
Labyrintti, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 10. Viihdeviikarit: Hyvinkää 1983.
Leipää linnuille, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 6. Viihdeviikarit: Hyvinkää 1982.
Leopold hermona, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 1/1974.
Leopoldin loma, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 8/1973.
Lukitun huoneen arvoitus, Maailman parhaat jännärit 4/1971.
Malabarin korppikotkat, Hitchcock esittää 3/1988.
Mies, joka oli kaikkialla, Alibi 7/1958.
Miljoonakaappaus, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazinen valitut jännärit 1. Junior-Kustannus: Helsinki 1977.
Nahka-arkun arvoitus, Maailman parhaat jännärit 5/1971.
Nainen vai leijona? Alfred Hitchcockin valitut jännärit 2/1980.
Paholaisen hetki, Seikkailujen Maailma 9/1961.
Pehmeä turvapaikka, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 6/1973.
Pieni palvelus, Hitchcock esittää 2/1988.
Salaperäinen rakastajatar, Seikkailujen Maailma 1/1962.
Syntymäpäivälahja, Alfred Hitchcockin valitut jännärit 3/1980.
Taistelu timanteista, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 3/1973.
Vakoilija, joka tiesi liikaa, Maailman parhaat jännärit 2/1971.
Vakooja ja kaunis rakastajatar, Maailman parhaat jännärit 1/1971.
Vampyyrin päivä, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 10/1973.
Novelli nimellä Mr. X:
Virvatulten salaisuus, Maailman parhaat jännärit 2—3/1971.

Great cover on Swedish paperback

Here's a great cover for the Swedish translation of Talmage Powell's memorable novella-length story, "Sudden, Sudden Death" (AHMM, 1957; anthologized many times). The story was published in Sweden in 1971 in a series of mini-sized paperbacks (roughly 9 x 14 cm and 120 pages). The illustration, which I like very much and which is the reason I bought the book, is probably Spanish in origin. The Swedish title means "To Hate till Death".

The mini-paperbacks never really caught on in Finland. There was a series called Mikro-kirjat in the late fifties (they published three science fiction novels, may have to do a post about them later) and later on there was only one series, aimed at female readers.

I.G. Edmonds's Big Eye books

I promised to say something about Ivy Gordon Edmonds's private eye books that have apparently been published only in Finnish. It took me quite a while to grasp that this was the only possibility for the books to exist and not to be found in the English crime fiction bibliographies. As I got confirmation from the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, this proved to be 100 % correct (even though they didn't know the books were published in Finland, and it seems they were not published in Sweden or Norway, even though that's what their records state).

Edmonds's hero in these four books is Greg Graves, private eye called Big Eye. He got his moniker from a reporter and is not pleased with it. He owns the Seven Seas investigation office and says that his holy things are "money, scotch and beautiful dames" (as if you didn't know that by now). He seems to be a bit of woman-hater, though, since he also says: "The women-hating hermits are the only real wise men in this crazy world."

It seems to me that the Big Eye books are parodies of the P.I. genre and the clichés it had reverted to in the fifties and the sixties. The Big Eye books remind one of Richard Prather's Shell Scott books, but are not anywhere near as funny.

There are four books translated in Finnish. I don't know the original writing years, but I should suspect they are from the early sixties and had been circulating around the paperback publishers before they found their home in the Northern Europe. One wonders why a cheap paperback publisher like Beacon didn't take these, or even a cheaper one, like Kozy Books. Maybe someone could dig these up and publish them in English for the first time... Hey Hard Case! If they only were better and funnier.

Big Eye and the Torrid Target, published as Etsi sinä - minä tapan (You Find - I Kill) in 1970, starts when Big Eye receives a call from a stripper, who says Big Eye is going to get killed. In Big Eye and the Scorched Bikini (Tulenarka bikini) Big Eye finds a curvy dame in his office, with a literally scorched bikini on her. (I don't have notes for the other books, it's possible I never read them.) The books, or at least some of them, were published with Robert McGinnis covers, which makes them rather nice.

There's also a war paperback published as by I.G. Edmonds, called The Devil Cheaters (Pirullinen tehtävä), that hasn't apparently been published in America.

I have I.G. Edmonds's address and will write him a letter later this week and will ask about these books. Will let you know if he answers!

Here's the bibliography:

Etsi sinä — minä tapan. Transl. Aila Virtanen. Viihdekirjat: Tapiola 1970. Originally Big Eye and the Torrid Target. 1969. [The original year is given in the book, but that must've been the year of the sale.]
Kuumaa tavaraa. Transl. Ritva Rekola. Viihdekirjat: Tapiola 1968. Originally Big Eye in Kiss or Kill.
Tulenarka bikini. Transl. H. Suikkanen. Viihdekirjat: Tapiola 1968. Originally Big Eye and the Scorched Bikini.
Villikissa. Transl. H. Suikkanen. Viihdekirjat: Tapiola 1967. Originally Big Eye and the Naughty Nudes.

And the war novel:

Pirullinen tehtävä. Transl. H. Suikkanen. Viihdekirjat: Tapiola 1967. Originally The Devil Cheaters.

Ivy Gordon Edmonds

I received this morning a lengthy e-mail from Brian Threlkeld, who'd noticed my seven-year old query on writer I.G. Edmonds at the Rara-Avis e-mail list's archives. I asked him a permission to publish his letter here. So, here it is, with my original query on top.

RARA-AVIS: I.G. Edmonds From: Juri Nummelin

Date: 15 Aug 2000
Does anyone know anything about one I.G. Edmonds? There are several books translated in Finnish under this name, but he's not mentioned in Allen Hubin's crime fiction bibliography. Edmonds had in the sixties a sex-cum-private-eye series called Big Eye and the titles are always something like "Big Eye and the Scorched Bikini". Any information is valuable.

Juri

Hello. You made this query quite a while ago, but perhaps an answer will still interest you. I encountered the author I.G. Edmonds (I think his first name is "Ivy") when I was in the 6th grade, through one of his books, entitled The Case of the Marble Monster and Other Stories. This collection of stories for younger readers was about Tadasuke Ōoka (1677-1752), a judge in "old" Japan who because legendary for his wisdom, generosity, creativity, and unassailable integrity. Marble Monster may have been a condensation of Edmonds's Ooka the Wise: Tales of Old Japan, (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1961), which, itself, Edmonds seems to have adapted from an earlier book (see below).

A helpful summary of information about Judge Ooka was included in a book review, in an English-language Japanese paper, of a series of recently-published mysteries or crime stories for young readers, set in 18th-century Japan. The books were written by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, a husband and wife team living in New York City.

"The crimebuster in the three Hoobler books published so far is Judge Ooka Tadasuke, Echizen no Kami (Lord of Echizen), a historical figure who certainly needs no introduction to Japanese readers. Appointed by Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune as one of Edo's two machi bugyo (governor-magistrates) in 1717, Ooka presided over the Southern Court for nearly two decades and earned a legendary reputation for integrity.

"As his fame spread after his death in 1751, stories about his exploits were compiled into an anthology known as 'Ooka Seidan (Famous Cases of Ooka),' dramatized in several kabuki plays and, from 1970, made into a popular television series.

"Ooka, incidentally, boasts the distinction of having entertained readers in English for nearly a century. His first appearance dates back to WJS Shand's 'The Case of Ten-Ichi-Bo, a Cause Celebre in Japan,' published by the Tokyo Methodist Publishing House in 1908. Ooka then reappeared in 1956, in 'Solomon in Kimono: Tales of Ooka, a Wise Judge of Old Yedo,' an oversize illustrated book from the Pacific Stars & Stripes by I.G. Edmonds. "

I remember reading a brief note by Edmonds in Marble Monster that told of being stationed in Japan after WW II (in the U.S. Air Force, I think), and of listening to his Japanese landlady tell funny, fascinating, and delightful stories about Judge Ooka. He clearly enjoyed living in Japan, and his desire to publish English-language versions of those stories reflects the affection he had for the place and the people. I would speculate that he also married a Japanese; a number of his books included the co-author Reiko Mimura.

More generally, the Library of Congress online catalog indicates that Edmonds was publishing in the United States from 1961 to about 1982. He authored over 50 books, largely for young people, on a wide variety of topics. He seems to have written mostly as what I would call a pulp, or commercial, writer. He would write about anything, it seems, from motocross to the Shah of Iran to magic tricks. I've wondered if a lot of his books weren't written on commission from publishing houses. Perhaps publishers for youth markets were trying to make sure they had a catalog of books on a certain range of topics always available, and they hired writers like Edmonds to crank out books to order with a fairly short turn-around. Such writers would have been able to work quickly, and generate books that were undistinguished as literature, but competently written -- easy reading for transient enjoyment, to be consumed, set aside, and forgotten. That, however, is just speculation on my part.

I do feel, however, that the Ooka books appear to have been more a labor of love for Edmonds, something he cared about for more than the living he could earn from it. Edmonds would, by the way, be about 90 years old, by now, I think -- but at least one source I've seen states that he's still alive, living in the town of Cypress, in southern California.

I hope this has been at least a bit illuminating for you.

This certainly was illuminating. As to my original query, I'd found sufficient info on Edmonds (I was working my way through writing Pulpografia) and noted that he was Ivy Gordon Edmonds. I also found, thanks to Barry Malzberg, that the Scott Meredith Literary Agency records state that the Big Eye books were sold to Scandinavia (not to Finland, however, so the Finnish editions were probably pirated and no one was ever paid for them). So, they share the same fate as some crime novels by Bruce Cassiday and Frank Castle, i.e. they weren't published in English at all. I may post a list and pictures of them at a later point.

Furthermore, Brian managed to find an address to one Ivy Edmonds, who might still be alive in his early nineties. I may yet write him a letter and ask him about these affairs.

Frank Castle's Sowers of the Doom

Here's a book that has been somewhat puzzling to bibliographers, henceforth me. It's not known to have appeared in English at all, even though Castle was a paperback writer who published a lot of books in the fifties and sixties. The original title is given in the verso page: The Sowers of the Doom. Yet there's no book under this title.

Castle's book wouldn't be the first one. There are several examples of American paperbacks having been published only in Europe or even only in Scandinavia. When I was doing my Pulpografia, these books puzzled me as they'd puzzled Simo Sjöblom who'd done a massive bibliography of crime fiction in Finnish.

The books were a puzzle until I managed to make contact with Bruce Cassiday. He'd been writing pulps and paperbacks since the fourties and my letter found him near his 80th birthday. I contacted him because there's a Finnish paperback called Vain viisi tuntia (= Only Five Hours), with the original title given as The Heister. Yet, The Heister is not known to have been published in English. I wrote Cassiday asking about this and he wrote back saying that he and his agent couldn't sell the book that he'd written already in the early sixties in the US. They shopped it around in Europe. It ended up being published in Finland in 1968 and in Norway in 1971 as Blindgaten. Cassiday remembered it was first published in Sweden, but that appears not to have been the case. I sent him the Finnish copy of the book and he thanked me kindly sending me a chapbook collection of his old pulp crime stories (published by Gryphon Books).

After this I took a closer look into some books. Dean Owen's Hot Line, several WWII paperbacks by Robert Sidney Bowen, a spy novel by Joseph Chadwick, four P.I. novels by Grover Brinkman, another P.I. series by I.G. Edmonds... all turned out to be published only in Finland (some in Sweden, some in Norway). There are some that are certain (such as Brinkman and Edmonds), some that are not so certain (Dean Owen, Chadwick, Bowen).

For some reason or another, I didn't look into Frank Castle. Don't know why. I wrote about him later in my Kuudestilaukeavat/Six Guns that's about Western paperbacks published in Finnish and noticed he was hell of a writer. I highly recommend his Guns to Sonora (Berkley 1962), it's hardboiled and it's noir and also lots of violent action fun in which everyone tries to deceive each other. Also very good is Brand of Hate (Tower 1966). I have notes of Blood Moon (Fawcett 1960), but I don't remember reading it.

Not much is known about Castle. He started out in the late fourties writing for the pulps, mainly mags like Fighting Western and Leading Western. He also wrote for Ranch Romances. I don't know for sure, but I don't think these were grade A western pulps. He moved into paperbacks alongside tons of other authors when pulps died in the early fifties and penned also lots of crime novels, mainly for Fawcett Gold Medal. His Move Along, Stranger came out in 1954 and was his first Gold Medal offering. He also wrote westerns for the Ace Double line. Castle's known to have used Steve Thurman as his byline. Castle faded out in the late sixties. My notes say his latest novel is Lobo that came out in 1969 (from Belmont). I don't know what happened to him.

Sowers of the Doom must by from the same era or maybe from the mid-sixties. It came out in Finnish in 1971 and the copyright says "1970". Wouldn't bet on that. The book starts out pretty crisply (I'll try to translate back into English):

Cleve Haig sensed the death moving in the desert. He could smell it in his nostrils, he tasted it his mouth - and for the first time in his nice life he felt completely helpless: the woman behind him was pressing the gun barrel hard against on his back.

Cleve Haig is a millionaire's carefree son, who gets hijacked into the world of international intrigue and spying. There seem to be some terrorists on the loose in the American soil - and they have atom bombs. Cleve Haig joins the extra unit that fights the terrorists and falls in love with a woman who's also in the unit. Her husband has been reported killed in action, but there are also some doubts about her being a traitor.

Maybe it's the Finnish translation (they weren't always very good and many were abridged), but the book is a bit boring. It moves pretty fast, but the plot seems overtly complicated and the persons never come out alive and distinctive from each other. There are some nice action scenes throughout the book, but it's not very engaging in the whole. Maybe Castle wrote it in 16 hours - it certainly reads that way.

But nevertheless, I'd really like to know more about this and Frank Castle's fate. What came of him and what urged him to write his great noir westerns? And as I haven't read any of his crime novels, I'd like to hear about those. (And no, he didn't become The Punisher.)

Robert Martin

A good and lengthy article on Robert Martin, a nearly forgotten PI writer from the fifties. I've read only two stories by Martin and both were good.

Books read: Charlie Huston, Arthur Maling, Emerson Dodge (almost)

Some capsule reviews of some books I've read recently, after completing the book on forgotten writers:

Charlie Huston: Already Dead. One of Huston's Vampyre novels, with Joe Pitt as the vampire private eye. I'm not sure whether I'll read more of these, but this was entertaining enough, with Huston's ultrahardboiled style that moves in present tense. A bit too long, perhaps, and not enough plot for my taste. Huston's received lots of praise from the hardboiled aficionado, but the Vampyre mythology pretty much wore me out. Couple of real Ross Macdonaldish moments in the bunch, however, which makes me want to read more of his non-Vampyre work.

Arthur Maling: From Thunder Bay (1981, translated in Finnish as Veljensä vartija, WSOY/SAPO 1988 or so). Seems pretty obscure these days, but Maling has published quite many books. This one is a Dortmunderish story, without Westlake's humour, about a two-bit loser who accidentally kills a cop after a raid on a plane he's been flying without knowing he's smuggling guns into the US. I had mixed feelings about this - it's touching and warm in its depiction of its anti-hero, but also pretty long, and as I said, there's not much humour in it. But I did finish the book and should say that read it if you can find it cheap. There are elements you don't easily find in an American crime novel - one of the heroes (or anti-heroes, actually) is an Ojibwa Indian who belongs to the Canadian Marxist-Stalinist Party.

I've been also reading Emerson Dodge's Australian paperback novel that was published in Finnish as Lyijypuuroa aamiaiseksi (translates back as Lead Porridge for Breakfast), without mentioning the original title. I've carried this along with me to buses and banks and such, so I'm pretty much in the middle. It's pretty okay so far, traditional Western with raggedly handsome Buck Fallon as the hero. Dodge is Paul Wheelahan, one of the most prolific Australian paperbackers.

Now I'm reading Laura Lippman's Charm City from 1998, but really have to get on again with my work.