Review: Carnival Girl

Carnival Girl by Max Gareth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Solid writing propels this sleazer a notch above most of the vintage erotica of the era. It tells the sordid tale of Norma, an eighteen year old runway, who dreams of California but ends up getting work as a stripper in a traveling carnival. Norma is not only beautiful, she has an eye-popping physique that no man can ignore, or even resist. Norma is forced to fend off advances by slathering, slobbering horndogs who just can’t control their primitive instincts. Sort of a mildly amusing female sexual awakening/coming-of-age story (but written by a man) for most of the book then an interesting plot twist catches fire leading to an unexpected climax. I really liked the carney atmosphere and the writing in general. I give it an extra star just because I have an inexplicable fondness for carnival books (swamp books too). It’s an okay book if you like carnival stories. I can’t recommend it otherwise.

Available from Cutting Edge Books. I read it in the Vintage Sleaze collection.

Review: No Nice Girl

No Nice Girl by Perry Lindsay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Perry Lindsay was a pseudo of Peggy Gaddis. When this novel was reprinted in paperback in 1946, it was one of the first of a bewildering array of Gaddis paperback reprints that began appearing along with her paperback originals in the late 1940s and 1950s. By that time Peggy Gaddis had already published more than 100 novels in hardcover. All told, she wrote nearly 300 novels under a variety of pseudonyms. No Nice Girl starts right off with Anice spying through the drapes and catching a businessman having an affair with a neighbor and then blackmailing him into buying her house for $5,000, which in 1946 would have been a considerable amount for an 18-year old to play around with. Where things go next is a bit surprising and never completely given motivation: Anice goes to New York City and moves in with her cousin Phyllis. (What does she do with the $5,000? Spends it mostly on clothes.) Over the course of the novel Anice worms her way into Phyllis's life, angling for her boyfriends and her job. With a little more edge and darkness this could have been really creepy. It's like one of those horror movies (Rock the Cradle?) where the seemingly nice girl invades the family and yet we know she has evil intent. Here, though, the others see what she is up to right away but inexplicably let it happen. Before the happy ending - this is ultimately a romance novel, after all - Phyllis nearly losses everything to her not so nice cousin.

View all my reviews

Review: Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek

Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The popular Spillane/Collins team-ups have proven to be terrific books and the Caleb York novels that take place in the Old West are no exception. Every entry in the six book series has been special. Although you may expect York to be Mike Hammer in the Wild West, the lawful Caleb York is actually a much more multidimensional and sympathetic character. Here York's lover Willa Cather gets involved in a range war with a newcomer, the devious female Victoria Drummond. To greatly complicate matters, Willa finds herself on the wrong side of the law which York, now a Marshall, has vowed to protect. As the range war escalates York, finding himself in an extremely thorny situation, goes full-on Hammer with some drunkenness and brutality showing a side of York that we haven’t seen before. The last third of the book is nearly impossible to put down as the tension and violence ramps up, steering the narrative to a highly satisfying conclusion. It’s been a real pleasure visiting with York and the denizens of Trinity once again and I’m hoping for more Caleb York stories from Spillane/Collins.

Now available in print and ebook.

Review: I'll Call Every Monday

I'll Call Every Monday by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“She had the insurance policy in one hand, her bra and panties in the other.” Ah yes, game on! This is another of Hitt’s noir classics that deserves to be rescued from dusty garage sale boxes, and thanks to inexpensive ebooks, it just might survive. The engaging voice of the first-person narrator keeps this one entertaining even as you hear echoes of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity with the plot of an insurance guy and a femme fatale out to collect on a fraudulent insurance policy. That’s really the only similarity, however, with Cain’s book as Hitt layers in a completely different plot embellished with parallel tracking sub-plots. Enjoyed this one a lot. As is often the case with Hitt's books, reading them now is like entering a time capsule. Here we have the circa 1960 insurance milieu: Insurance agents going door-to-door to collect weekly premium payments. Wow, what a different world we live in now!

View all my reviews

Review: Northwest Nurse

Northwest Nurse by Arlene J. Fitzgerald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Excellent writing and characterization. Medical parts done well, particularly the emergency room surgery scene. Evocative descriptions. Good use of body language to suggest emotional/psychological states. Strong plot with enough conflicts to keep things interesting. Pitch perfect happy ending that this genre usually requires including the bad actors getting what they deserved as well. Plenty of foreshadowing of the big event (a tsunami), my only complaint being that we didn't really get to experience the tidal waves because the protagonists were already on high-ground, where they were well-positioned to treat the injured in the aftermath. There were a couple of noir-ish side plots that I would have liked to have seen teased out more, which would have put our nurse protagonist in more danger, that's really all that was lacking.

View all my reviews

Review: Shadowland

Shadowland by Elaine Evans
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gil Brewer is one of my favorite crime/noir writers and late in his career, writing as Elaine Evans, he wrote four gothic novels, of which Shadowland, published in 1970, is the only one I've been able to find and read. Brewer fully delivers on the gothic atmosphere and paranoia and that is the best part of this novel. Fast-paced action scenes were always a strength of Brewer's and there are plenty of them here, too, usually with the protagonist running, which is another gothic trope Brewer nails. And he also showcases his scenic abilities with a lot of set-piece verbal confrontations between characters. The challenge is that Brewer makes a less than minimal attempt to guide the reader through a plot that doesn't make any sense. Lacking even a skeleton of a story as support, atmosphere and action alone fail to hold this novel together. It's an interesting read for Brewer collectors and completists, but my recommendation doesn't go beyond that.

View all my reviews

Review: By Flesh Alone

By Flesh Alone by March Hastings
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Early lesbian pulp novels were often written by men, not the case here since this one was written in 1962 by Sally Singer using the pseudonym March Hastings. Singer wrote over 120 novels, plenty of them lesbian themed. Openly gay (bold for the times) she gives her novels some serious authenticity. Here she tells the story of Lila, a young woman bored with a dull marriage, who ditches her husband for a life as a Bohemian in early 1960s Greenwich Village. The Village was an epicenter for the Beat Generation at that time populated by artists and musicians, most of them flat broke and living in splendid squallor. The book is very well written, I don’t know how I’ve never heard of Singer before - she can really write, and serves as an interesting snapshot of life in the Village with adventure, romance, jealousy, and some fairly torrid (for the 1960s) lesbian sex.

Available from Cutting Edge Books. I read it in the Vintage Sleaze collection.

Review: It's a Sin to Kill

It's a Sin to Kill by Day Keene
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Strong beginning with a fishing charter captain waking up on the wrong boat and slowly remembering the incidents of the night before that do not add up. He's quickly a murder suspect and the book moves into the investigative phase. As with a couple of the other early Day Keene books I've read this investigative phase gets a bit redundant with the same facts being repeated numerous times. Some good twists, including a nice surprise at the end, but not enough action to make this one really sing.

View all my reviews

Review: The Bitch

The Bitch by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once this one gets into gear it is a typical Brewer nitro propelled plot of robbery, murder, chase and evasion. Starts a bit slow compared to most of Brewer’s other novels, but the slow setup actually pays huge dividends. Tate and Sam Morgan are brothers and partners in a private detective agency and as the novel starts we glean that it is not all brotherly love between them. The plot picks up quickly when we learn that Tate is planning a robbery with Thelma, “the bitch” of the title. There is the usual late 1950s misogyny at work here, but the book could just as easily have been titled “The Bastard” as our narrator Tate has no illusions about what he is. I thought the effort put into character development, although it slowed the pace at times, made this a much stronger and deeply felt book than some of Brewer's more breakneck noirs.

View all my reviews

Review: Lust Is No Lady

Lust Is No Lady by Michael Avallone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Prolific author Michael Avallone is probably best known for his 30+ “Ed Noon” private detective novels.This, the fourteenth entry in the series, tells the story of Noon finding himself dangerously out of his element and stranded when a low flying plane drops a load of bricks on his car while driving through Wyoming on his way to a vacation in California. Things only get more complicated when he rescues a naked woman who has been tied to the ground, gets dumped from a motorcycle, then gets involved with a man with smoking hot wife and daughter,and a psychotic son, who have partnered with some baddies to find a long lost cache of gold dust. The Noon books never take themselves too seriously with lots of sly humor and some wacky plotting which help to make the series, and this book, such delightful entertainment. The book is a total blast, funny and fast moving. I liked it a lot.

Available as an affordable ebook.