Showing posts with label Private Eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Private Eyes. Show all posts

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Dakota #5: Chain Reaction


Dakota #5: Chain Reaction, by Gilbert Ralston
November, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Chain Reaction is so dull that I could hardly finish it. Really, I spent the last chapter and a half speed-reading, even though this is where the allegedly thrilling climax occurred. It lacks excitement and mystery, the cast of characters is ridiculously and confusingly large, and many scenes exist of filler dialogue telling us stuff we either already know or don't care about. Sort of if a writer was trying to stretch a 50-minute screenplay to a 180-page manuscript.Marty McKee

Man, first they cancelled ALF and now this! It’s the last volume of Dakota, friends, so I’m sure you all are shedding just as many tears as I am. 

Once again Marty McKee has succinctly captured my own thoughts – as mentioned before, Marty sent me his Dakota books, so I’m reading the same copy that he read. Like it’s a holy relic or something! Marty’s comment that “the cast of characters is ridiculously and confusingly large” pretty much sums up my major problem with Dakota. I sort of get what Gilbert Ralston was trying to do, like a family saga mixed with a hardboiled American Indian detective in “today’s West” sort of thing, but I don’t think it worked. As it is, Dakota comes off like a guy who needs to bring a few buddies along with him to the restroom when he takes a leak, and then calls his mom afterward to let her know how it all went. It’s like I wrote in my review of the first volume: Dakota is the only men’s adventure protagonist who regularly calls his mother, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the character and the series. 

The helluva it is, there’s material here for a good yarn…it’s just that Ralston’s insistence on straddling Dakota with legions of clingers-on robs the character of any ass-kicker potential. I’m not so much sure if Ralston was trying a different spin on the lone wolf ‘70s paperback action hero ethic than it was he just didn’t understand it. As Marty also noted, and I concured with, it seems evident that Ralston intended Dakota as the springboard for a TV series. It just seems very clear, given Ralston’s Hollywood background, the large group of characters, the lack of much violence and zero sex at all…I mean it’s not too hard to believe that’s what this series was intended as. After all, fellow Hollywood vet Paul Petersen attempted the same thing, around the same time, with The Smuggler, and that too failed to gain any traction outside of the paperback field. 

As Marty also noted in his review of Dakota #3 (here’s my review if you are super bored – and that installment of the series was mostly interesting because it seemed to be a rewrite of Ralston’s concurrent The Deadly, Deadly Art), Dakota is like “McCloud meets Nakia,” and again it’s not hard to see this might have been Gilbert Ralston’s exact intention. Nakia was a 1974 TV crime show with Robert Foster as an American Indian cop, and McCloud was a ‘70s crime show starring Dennis Weaver as a Nevada marshall assigned to the big city of New York…hey, what if you combined the two concepts into a series and hoped it got picked up for a TV deal? This would explain the tepid thrills, the “ridiculously large cast of characters,” the focus on Dakota’s home town as a central facet of the storyline, etc. 

Unfortunately, it still doesn’t make the series any good. Dakota is a far cry from the ‘70s-mandated lone wolf vigilante hero, though the potential is there for him to be one. We’re often told of how he’s packing a pistol, but rarely if ever does the guy actually use it. Instead, he’s more likely to let one of his many, many friends do the job for him. I mean like a fool I got my hopes up several times in the course of Chain Reaction; like we’re told at the start that Dakota has a .38 hidden in his “new Chevrolet,” same as he had one hidden in his original car back in the first volume…but it’s not really used. Later on he arms himself with a .357 Magnum, but again it’s his buddies who do the brunt of the fighting, one of them using a carbine Dakota has loaned him. 

So it seems clear Ralston was aware of the market he was writing for, he just couldn’t be bothered to do the job right. Once again the editors at Pinnacle understood what the series was supposed to be: the memorable cover art and the back cover copy all illustrate the novel’s most memorable sequence, of a naked American Indian woman hung by her thumbs while a pair of thugs torture her to death. “Hung By The Thumbs” is even emblazoned as the slugline on the back cover, like this was a grimy crime paperback from Leisure Books. But this scene is only vaguely brought to life in the very opening pages, Ralston cutting to brief sequences of this undescribed woman hanging by the thumbs, nude, and some guys passing a flame over her body – all very grim indeed, but hardly exploitative. 

Instead, the big focus of the opening pages is…Dakota’s buddy Joe Redbeard getting married!! Friends I kid you not. While the poor “Indian woman” is hung by her goddamn thumbs and being torture-killed, Ralston keeps cutting away from the scene, back to Dakota…who waits at the airport for his girlfriend Alicia (whom he still keeps begging to marry him – again, pretty much says all you could say about Dakota), and then he goes back to his overpopulated home to shoot the breeze with his many, many hangers-on. Hell there’s even a part where the Indian woman’s daughter has come here to Dakota’s ranch, unknowing that her mother is being tortured to death that very minute, and Dakota literally tells her to wait because first he has to attend Redeard’s wedding! In like a dozen pages you learn everything that is wrong about Dakota. You can almost hear the editors at Pinnacle sighing in exasperation. Like I said before, there’s no mystery why this was the last volume. 

Well anyway, it’s a few months after the previous volume; it’s Spring now, as we learn via some evocative word-painting that again indicates Ralston was attempting his own sort of Spoon River Anthology for the paperback crimefighter set. Dakota’s latest private eye job is courtesy the aforementioned daughter, a teenager from San Francisco whose dad was mysteriously killed and now she has this key in an envelope that was given to her by her mother – who, we readers know, is also now murdered. Dakota, forever putting off Alicia (it might be implied they have off-page sex, but you have to really use your own fevered imagination), takes the job and assembles his unwieldy cast of clingers-on and hangers-on to look into the mystery – and, like the previous volume, that’s pretty much all Chain Reaction is: a mystery novel. 

The opening “sweat mag” vibe is lost…and again Ralston blows his own potential with his refusal to cater to what we want. Those two torture-killing thugs? Dakota doesn’t even deal with either of them. Either of them!! Indeed they are pretty much red herrings on that front, and instead the narrative plays out as more of a mystery: Dakota gradually unravels a plot that connects these two thugs with the crime world guy who has been plaguing Dakota for volumes. The same guy who hired Guy Marten, the ineffectual professional assassin who first appeared in Cat Trap. Luckily Ralston goes back to the Marten subplot here in final installment Chain Reaction, but we don’t get any resolution on it (indeed, Marten by novel’s end is geared to becoming even more of a menace in Dakota’s life, given his advancement up the crime world chain), which indicates Gilbert Ralston did not plan to end Dakota here. 

Dakota gets some pals from previous volumes together and they head off to San Francisco – that is, after Dakota’s let his mommy know. (Not joking, either.) Here they follow the leads on the two thugs and gradually figure out it has to do with Dakota’s old archenemy. There’s occasional action, but again it’s Dakota’s buddies doing the shooting and stuff; Dakota just drives the car during one such scene. There’s another part where Dakota and his mini-army are jumped by some stooges and they get in a protracted fight, but Ralston again proves his lack of mettle in this field by writing so much of it passively, ie “Dakota was handling two of them,” and the like. Dakota does knock out one dude with a “savate kick,” at least, but even in the finale there isn’t much in the gun-blazing action you’d expect from this publisher; it’s more of a taut suspense-thriller vibe. 

But even here it lacks much bite. So without any spoilers, the deal is Dakota’s girlfriend is abducted by Guy Marten, working under the auspices of the aforementioned crime boss, Marvin Kintner. But since Alicia’s hardly been in the novel, this event doesn’t have much impact. Also, she’s not mistreated in any way, so there isn’t much impact in that regard, either. So to get the upper hand Dakota puts together a team (can you believe it??) to kidnap Kintner, and use him as a bargaining chip. It’s written like a heist, with the group breaking into the high-tech defenses of the guy’s place, getting him while he’s in bed with his floozie, etc. It’s an okay scene but again the thrill factor is undermined by the amount of people Dakota has working with him, plus there’s confusion because the names of all these people blend together and you often forget who is who. 

Spoiler alert, but there is no confrontation between Dakota and Guy Marten; the two don’t even meet face to face. As mentioned though Ralston clearly intended Marten to be a continnuing threat, as by novel’s end some crime-world bigwigs discuss moving Marten up the totem pole. Instead, as with the previous volume, the “climax” is more on a mystery tip, with Dakota putting pieces of the puzzle together and getting justice for the orphaned teen Indian girl who hired him. Speaking of whom, I thought she was going to be added to the menagerie of supporting characters, but Ralston indicates at the end of Chain Reaction that she might be moving away with other relatives…I doubt it, though. I bet if there’d been a Dakota #6 she would’ve been in it, probably getting married to Dakota’s young helper Louis Threetrees (marriages being another recurring gimmick of the series, btw…another indication of how Ralston just didn’t get it). 

So this was it for Dakota, and to tell the truth it’s a miracle it even lasted this long. Thanks again to Marty for sending me the books all those years ago (along with tons of others I’m still working through!), but if anything I found Dakota interesting as a failed genre experiment. But then, maybe Ralston didn’t even know it was an experiment. Regardless, now that I’ve read the series I really think Marty is correct – as theorized in the comment he left on my review of Dakota #2 – that the series was Ralston’s attempt at farming out a concept he’d failed to get produced in Hollywood.

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Digger #1: Smoked Out


Digger #1: Smoked Out, by Warren Murphy
February, 1982  Pocket Books

The prolific Warren Murphy wrote this private eye series for Pocket Books, and ultimately it ran for four volumes, after which Murphy jumped ship to another publisher and changed the series (and protagonist’s) name to Trace. But for this initial series, Pocket followed the same angle as Popular Library did a decade earlier when they packaged the similarly action-free P.I. series Hardy as an “action series.” 

Not to imply that Digger is as bland and boring as Hardy. I mean, at least Julian “Digger” Burroughs does more than watch TV and eat in Smoked Out. He finds time to hook up with a couple women and even get in a fistfight. But otherwise the action is about on the level of The Rockford Files or some other private eye TV show of the era. And if I’m not mistaken, Trace did end up as a TV show, or at least a TV pilot. Anyway, Digger doesn’t even carry a gun; his weapon of choice is a tape recorder, “the size of a pack of cigarettes,” which he usually straps to his chest to surreptitiously record the witnesses he interviews. 

Like the earlier Killinger, Digger is a claims investigator, but unlike Killinger he isn’t a “ruggedly virile” type who lives on a Chinese junk with all the bachelor pad trimmings. Digger is in more of your typical sleazebag private eye mold, and operates out of Las Vegas, where he shares an apartment with a hotstuff Japanese babe named Koko who happens to be a high-class hooker. The Digger-Koko relationship is by far the best thing about Smoked Out, and in truth is a little reminiscent of the Remo-Chiun relationship in The Destroyer, if only for the acidic barbs which are traded back and forth. There’s also the element that the two love each other but cannot admit it (to each other or to themselves), just like Remo and Chiun. 

But, obviously, it’s a romantic love in Digger, instead of the father-son love of The Destroyer. Otherwise as you’ll note, it’s the same setup: smart-ass white protagonist and calm-natured Asian, with all the bickering and bantering Murphy does so well. In fact he does it too well, as ultimately I found that my problem with Smoked Out was the same as with the other Destroyer novels I’ve read: it was all just too glib for its own good. I kept having bad flashbacks to Chevy Chase in Fletch (which I only saw once, in the theater when it came out, and I was just a kid), as it was quite hard to take Digger as a serious character as he spent the entirety of the novel making one glib comment after another. 

As with The Destroyer, there was nothing believable about the character, at least nothing that made his drive to solve the case believable. Digger, like Remo, seems to exist in his own self-impressed world, mocking and laughing at everything, thus it is hard to understand why he even cares about cracking insurance cases. Same as when Remo is suddenly all resolved to stop some bad guy. Why does he even care? What drives him? This must be a recurring gimmick of Warren Murphy protagonists. They’re such glib smart-asses that I personally can’t believe in them when they’re suddenly retconned into determined heroes due to the demands of the plot. 

In other words, if things aren’t serious for the protagonist, how are they supposed to be serious for the reader? But then, we aren’t talking about globe-threatening plots in this series: Digger’s first case has him investigating the death of a wealthy doctor’s wife in Los Angeles. This would be Mrs. Jessalyn Welles, who’s car ran over a cliff while her doctor husband was a few hundred miles away at a conference. Digger gets the job from his company and heads to L.A., where we learn posthaste the method of his investigation: he goes around to a seemingly-endless parade of people who knew Mrs. Welles, introduces himself with a different fake name to each, and then runs his mouth endlessly in the hopes of getting info from them. 

It gets to be confusing – and not just to the reader. Digger gives one new name after another, seemingly coming up with the names on the fly, as well as what his job is. And of course trading glib dialog with the person he’s trying to get info from. Pretty soon he gets confused which name he gave which person. It’s all funny at first but quickly becomes grating. I guess I just have to accept the fact that I’m not a big fan of Warren Murphy’s novels. And the dialog just gets to be grating. He finds a dimwitted babe who is into vitamin pills and trades lots of glib dialog with her about them. Or he concocts the novel scheme of going around and telling people he’s working on a remembrance card for Mrs. Welles and wants input from those who knew her. 

Speaking of babes, Digger manages to get laid – not that he seems to enjoy it much. Another curious Remo parallel. Anyway, it’s a Scandanavian gal who casually admits she’s had an affair with Dr. Welles, and soon enough Digger’s in bed with her. And thinking of Koko the whole time. That said, Murphy gets fairly explicit here, more so than any of the Destroyer novels I’ve read. But still, Digger doesn’t seem to enjoy it. For one, Murphy’s sarcastic vibe is so perpetuating that any cheap thrills the reader might want are denied; the gal in question is treated so derisively and dismissively by Digger that one would be hard-pressed to understand that she is in fact very attractive and incredibly built. Digger could just as easily be screwing a cardboard cutout, is what I’m trying to say. Also, more focus is placed on Digger’s certainty that the gal is faking it, with his running commentary on how he’d rate her performance. It’s only when Digger himself finally orgasms that he is “Surprised once again at how good it felt.” This is the sort of robotic shit that plagued The Destroyer

One difference between Remo and Digger is that Digger isn’t a “superman” (like the old Pinnacle house ads described Remo). Shortly after the lovin’ there’s a part where Digger is ambushed by a few guys; certainly the inspiration for the cover art, as this is pretty much the only “action” scene in the entirety of Smoked Out. Digger gives as good as he gets, but still gets his ass kicked and is only saved by the appearance of another female character. The ambush was due to Digger’s investigation, of course, and true to the template of most all P.I. novels Digger soon discovers that Mrs. Welles was into all kinds of shady stuff, and that her death might not have been so accidental. 

But still, Smoked Out was a chore of a read. The glib protagonist, the glib dialog, hell even the glib author – I could only imagine Warren Murphy smirking to himself the entire time he wrote it. I mean the dude could write, there’s no argument on that. I just don’t like what he wrote. But as the cover of Smoked Out declares, “over 20 million” Warren Murphy novels were in print in 1982, so clearly my sentiments aren’t shared by everyone.

Thursday, March 30, 2023

The Ms. Squad #2: On The Brink


The Ms. Squad #2: On The Brink, by Mercedes Endfield
September, 1975  Bantam Books

We have here the second (and final!) installment of The Ms. Squad, one of the more curious representations of the “men’s adventure” genre you’ll ever encounter. This is because it is in fact a caper with a light comedy tone and features a trio of women who are determined to do everything better than men – especially heisting places. But as it turns out, the best thing about On The Brink is the cover art; it isn’t credited, but it looks so similar to the work of EC Comics alum Jack Davis that I’ll go ahead and assume it’s by him. The same artist did the cover for the first volume of the series, Lucky Pierre (which I don’t have). 

Also the background of the book is more interesting than the actual plot; it’s copyright “Ruth Harris Books, Inc,” which appears to have been an outfit similar to Lyle Kenyon Engel’s “Book Creations Inc.” Only much less successful; I can hardly find anything credited to “Ruth Harris Books.” On The Brink is itself credited to Bela Von Block in the Catalog Of Copyright Entries. Block was a prolific writer of the era, writing under a host of pseudonyms, though this is the first book of his I’ve reveiewed here. He had most success writing as “Johnathan Black” in the ‘70s and ‘80s, turning out big, Harold Robbins-style blockbusters like The World Rapers and The Carnage Merchants. Around a decade ago a reader from Manhattan sent me a few packages of books, with a handful by Black, enthusing over their sordid plots (not to mention the strange frequency in which the word “smega” appeared in them), but folks I still haven’t read those books, and I feel bad about that. But damn, they’re long; The Carnage Merchants for example is over 900 pages! 

Well anyway, if Bela Von Block did indeed write On The Brink, one can only hope his “Jonathan Black” material was better – that is, if Block was really Black. That too seems to be a mystery, but I was fairly confident of this at one point. These days I’m not confident about anything. Wait, I’m confident that most of you won’t dig this book. Because I’m sad to report it isn’t very good. And despite being under 160 pages it moves really slowly. This is because Block doesn’t seem to know how to write a fast-moving book. So much of On the Brink is given over to telling rather than showing…with the double kick to the crotch that we’re often told about stuff we already saw happen! Indeed, the second half of the book concerns a new character trying to figure out what happened in the first half of the book…events which we readers were privy to from the start. 

That said, On The Brink is a fun ‘70s time capsule, which I always enjoy; that new character I just mentioned is a famous black private eye named John Shift; Block doesn’t go all the way with the goofy in-jokery and tell us there’s also a famous song about him. Otherwise he’s clearly based on John Shaft, even down to his hatred of the mob. But there’s also an interesting modern vibe to the novel. For we learn that the three members of Ms. Squad have banded together over feminist ideals, in particular the lack of pay equality. The leader of the team, Jackie Cristal (who barely factors in this installment), in particular rails against pay inequality; she’s the Vice President of a cosmetics company, their chief chemist who designs new perfumes and other inventions, but she doesn’t get paid very well. 

Apparently Lucky Pierre detailed the formation of the Ms. Squad. There’s also Deanna Royce, a black soul singer who too is sick of being treated second-hand just because she’s a woman in a man’s industry. Finally there’s Pammy Porter, whose name cracked me up because I work with someone named Tammy Porter; Pammy’s a blonde-haired gold medal gymnast who rails against the fact that she doesn’t get half the lucrative sponsorships the male Olympic athletes do. Apparently in the first Ms. Squad installment these three met at a women’s lib conference or somesuch and, the way these things go, decided to band together to heist places(!?). That first volume detailed their heisting of a luxury hotel; in other words, a retread of The Anderson Tapes

But there are two quirks with the Ms. Squad. For one, they hit places after they’ve already been hit; in Lucky Pierre, they apparently robbed that hotel shortly after it had already been robbed. And in On The Brink, they decide to heist the Brinks vault on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous Brinks robbery. The other weird quirk is that the Ms. Squad does these heists to prove that women can do the job better than the original male robbers did…but folks, this entire setup is ruined because the three Ms. Squad girls disguise themselves as men on the heists! WTF! So who exactly are they proving these feminist victories to?? 

Anyway as mentioned, the series is basically a comedy. The Ms. Squad has sworn that no one will be killed on their heists; Jackie, the chemist, comes up with all the harmless weapons, like “Perma-zonk,” which is hidden in an “atomizer” in their purses and can knock someone out for hours with just one spray. She also creates various explosives and fake skin that they can wear on their hands that will disguise their fingerprints. Pammy brings the muscle to the team, using her athletic ability to hop around and fight as necessary – but the action scenes, as shown below, are minimal at best. As for Deena…well, she brings her experience as a black woman to the table: she’s familiar with the crime world and how criminals think because she’s black. I’m not making that up, either. 

Deena does all the heavy lifting in this one; the dialog indicates that Pammy might have featured the most in Lucky Pierre. But then again, it appears that the two books follow identical setups; the Ms. Squad carries out a heist, then some private eye gets on the case and tries to prove these three harmless women were really the heisters. In Lucky Pierre it was a handsome Irish P.I. who got on the case and ultimately banged Pammy. In On The Brink it’s handsome black P.I. John Shift who gets on the case and ultimately bangs Deena. But folks even the banging’s off-page. There is absolutely zero in the way of sleaze or filth in On The Brink, I’m sorry to report…which again makes me wonder if this really was by Bela Von Block, given that his “Jonathan Black” books are fairly risque. 

But then, maybe this “G rating” was the request of Bantam Books, or even the mysterious “Ruth Harris Books, Inc.” I just find it curious, because you have here a series about three hotstuff swinging babes in the ‘70s who like to heist places, so you’d figure it would be at least a little explicit in the sexual tomfoolery. But it isn’t! It’s curiously deflated, as if Block doesn’t know how to write the book. This again makes me suspect he was writing to spec, as Bela Von Block also wrote some “nonfiction” sex books as “W.D. Sprague,” so you’d figure the guy would have no problem sleazing things up. Damn you, Ruth Harris! 

Another strange thing is the novel is so awkwardly constructed. So it starts post-heist, with the Ms. Squad having hit a “black restaurant” in Boston which is on the sight that the Brinks vault was back in the ‘50s. Again, their schtick is they hit places a second time, thus they wanted to heist the exact location that the Brinks armory once was, even if it’s now a place called “Chick ‘n’ Treat.” Yes, a big black-owned chicken diner. But the girls discover that they’ve heisted a lot more than the two hundred thousand haul they expected to get; the place was filled with money bags, and after all night counting they discover it’s just shy of two million dollars. 

But all this is told in summary, to the point that I assumed we were being recapped on what happened in the first volume. Not so. The majority of the novel is told in this summary fashion. Then we flash back like a year or something to the aftermath of the previous book, and learn how the girls came up with this “Brinks anniversary” heist. It’s all heavy on the plotting and planning, with little in the way of action. Jackie is the only one we get to see in her normal life as VP at the cosmetics firm; Deena and Pammy only factor into the heist planning scenes. The team comes up with an idea to hit the Brinks place, flying to Boston and scoping it out – and finding a chicken diner there. So Deena goes undercover as a waittress to scope the place out, and Pammy comes up with an idea to steal a Brinks truck, just like the original Brinks crooks did 25 years before. 

Of course, we already know from page one that they are successful in the heist, so there’s zero tension here. As I say, Bela Von Bock has a rather interesting approach to how he writes what’s supposed to be a suspenseful novel. At page 70 we catch up with the opening, and now it’s all about John Shift being hired by the heisted chicken diner owner – whose diner was really a front for a numbers racket – and putting together the pieces of how the heist went down. That’s right folks, the entire first 70 pages are the setup of the heist, and the remainder of the novel is devoted to a secondary character figuring out how the heist was planned and carried out! To say On The Brink is a study in repetition would be, uh, redundant. 

The goofy ‘70s touches are okay, like a black crook who retains a seven-foot henchman basketball player named Abdullah Eleven, clearly a spoof on Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who uses his basketball to torture Deena – slamming her in the stomach with the ball. Shift shows up with his .357 Magnum to save the day, not that anyone is killed. Block also tries to develop suspense with Shift suspecting Deena of the heist while also developing feelings for her, and Deena trying to hold him off with lies while developing feelings for him, etc. Shift also factors into the climactic action scene, which also features Pammy, apropos of nothing, showing off sudden obscure kung-fu skills: 


The girls kill no one, though we’re told the cops kill a bunch of the bad guys off-page. That’s another thing. For a trio of heisters, the Ms. Squad is saved twice by the police in the final pages, first in New York and then in Boston. Just super lame all around. Block apparently planned a third volume, as On The Brink ends with the hint that the Ms. Squad, having pulled off the biggest heist on American soil, will now try to do the same thing in a foreign country, namely Brazil. But readers of the day clearly disliked The Ms. Squad as much as I did, thus this second volume turned out to be the final volume. No tears were shed, I’m sure.

Monday, August 29, 2022

Cage #4: The Silver Puma


Cage #4: The Silver Puma, by Alan Riefe
No month stated, 1975  Popular Library

I was under the impression I had the third volume of Cage, but I’ve belatedly discovered I don’t; this is why it’s been five years since I reviewed the series. I kept thinking I’d come across the third volume in one of my book boxes, but I’ve finally concluded that I never even had it. Well anyway, we’ll just pass over that one and continue with the series with this fourth volume. There isn’t much continuity in Cage, anyway. 

The main thing to note about The Silver Puma is that with this volume Alan Riefe has recast Cage into essentially a light comedy, with only occasional violence. Whereas the first volume had a pulpy concept, this one’s just goofy, and also has no bearing on the series setup. Namely, that Huntington “Hunt” Cage, a New York-based private eye, secretly has a twin brother (Hadley Cage) who sometimes steps in for Hunt on the job. The Silver Puma doesn’t even use the P.I. setup and instead has Hunt hired to pose as the president of a fictional South American country, only to learn he’s walked into a convoluted conspiracy. 

But really this has nothing to do with private investigation; Hunt is hired for reasons that escape him, and his being a P.I. is only seen as a bonus, because it means he can think quickly and make decisions or some other crap. What seems most obvious is that Riefe has grown bored with the series concept, or maybe didn’t know what to write for this fourth volume, and thus came up with a sub-Adventurers setup that features a helluva lot of South American travelogue and a storyline that would be more at home in Mission: Impossible, complete with Hunt Cage disguised as old President Rocafuerte, the benevolent dictator of San Felipe…better known to his people as “The Silver Puma.” 

Riefe is really up to some page-filling trickery because the first few chapters just feature Hunt walking around New York and mulling over the case that’s been offered him, because he suspects something’s up with it. But basically De Ruiz, a “theatrical” and “phoney” official from the San Felipe consulate in New York, calls Hunt in and tells him the secret info that the Silver Puma has just died, here in Manhattan; the Puma was here for special throat treatment or something. The convoluted job would have Cage posing as Rocafuerte, with a bandage over his throat to disguise the fact that he cannot speak Spanish, and going down to San Felipe for a few months until a new leader can be chosen. 

In other words Cage’s job is to fool the locals, but it’s all so ridiculous. Like for example, how in the world was Huntington Cage, a private eye who grew up in Canada, even chosen for this job? It’s explained away that he vaguely resembles Rocafuerte, but this comes off like total bullshit. It’s pretty clear that Riefe had plumb run out of ideas for the series and has shoehorned this caper into the storyline. But we do get a lot of Hunt walking around Manhattan and trying to decide if he should take the case. There’s even a part where he gets his hair cut; at this point the “action” is as prevalent in Cage as in the contemporary P.I. series Hardy

We still get that pulpy concept that the Cage brothers can contact each other on a secret radio watch; we get more detail on it this time, including that the idea for the switch concept was…Hadley’s. This part of the setup has always puzzled me, as Hadley Cage is a New Jersey-based artist, one who hangs out with rich clientele…yet he’s also Hunt’s gun supplier and eagerly takes part in Hunt’s assignments. We also get the bizarre note that Lee has been accused by Hunt of “enjoying” killing, given how easily he does it. Hadley also takes part in most of the action in The Silver Puma, but the action is rendered in outline-esque blandness: 


And really the action comes off like something Riefe has included due to publisher mandate, as “light comedy” aptly describes The Silver Puma. It’s almost Three Stooges-esque at times…for example, Hunt takes the job and at much page-expense gets the Silver Puma’s coffin flown via Pan Am to San Felipe, and then he travels down there, disguised as Rocafuerte…only to discover, of course, that the whole thing was a scheme and he’s going to be used as a patsy to take a bullet for the Silver Puma. Meanwhile Hadley Cage, unbeknownst to Hunt, has also come down to San Felipe…and Hadley manages to get his hands on the real Rocafuerte, who is of course alive and part of the conspiracy Hunt’s been caught in. 

It gets even goofier when Hadley swaps the real Rocafuerte for Hunt, who we’ll remember is disguised as Rocafuerte…and then later on Hadley himself is captured, but everyone thinks he’s Hunt. I mean it’s just plain stupid, like a lame comedy of errors, and it just keeps going and going. To make it worse there’s zero in the way of sex, and the violence is minimal. Like when Hadley is captured, instead of a big action scene where he breaks out, he’s put on a kangaroo trial…one that goes on for an incredible twenty pages of exposition and dialog. The lameness of it all compounded by the fact that the prosecutors think Hadley is Hunt! 

There are times when you read a book and you know without question that the author is desperately trying to meet his word count, and The Silver Puma is one of those times. There isn’t even an action finale, where the Cage brothers mete out bloody revenge to the San Felipe scum who set them up. They basically just high-tail it out of there when they can and get back to New York, so Riefe can end the book on a dumb joke. 

But then, “dumb” also apty describes The Silver Puma. I’m not crying over that third volume that I thought I had. In fact it’s a shock Cage went on for two more volumes. Now those two I’m sure I have, so I guess I’ll get around to them someday.

Monday, July 25, 2022

Dakota #4: Murder’s Money


Dakota #4: Murders Money, by Gilbert Ralston
March, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Wake up, everyone, it’s time for another volume of Dakota! Yet another blood-soaked tale of fast-moving action and mayhem with tons of explicit sleaze to spare! Actually all of that’s a total lie; I was just trying to be as misleading as the art and back cover copy. For in reality Murder’s Money is even more slow-moving than the previous three installments, as hard as that is to believe. But at the very least Gilert Ralston himself is honest this time; he has removed all pretensions toward writing “men’s adventure,” and this one’s really just a mystery novel. 

At this point I’m more interested in what was going on behind the scenes at Pinnacle. I think it’s very impressive that they tried to package Dakota as an action series. This took some very creative thought from the marketing department, or whoever wrote the back cover copy. The plot promised on the back cover squashes all hopes of an action extravaganza, though; we’re told Dakota is hired to figure out who murdered someone. I mean we aren’t exactly talking The Executioner. But then this is what paperback publishers were doing in the ‘70s; take a look at the similarly-boring Hardy series, which was also misleadingly packaged as a sex and violence thriller, where in reality it was more focused on what Hardy ate or watched on TV. Same goes for Renegade Roe, another “action” series low on thrills that featured an American Indian P.I., much like Dakota

One interesting thing is that Murder’s Money picks up immediately after the previous volume; as we’ll recall, Cat Trap ended with an assault on Dakota’s Nevada ranch, led by a professional assassin who worshpped an ancient Egyptian god. This one opens the morning after that assault, with Dakota and his many friends cleaning up the frozen corpses. One frozen corpse not here is that of the professional assassin, Guy Marten, who as we’ll also recall was lamely allowed to get away in the climax of the previous book. Dakota will often ponder this throughout Murder’s Money, “knowing” that he will once again encounter Marten. We readers know this is true, given occasional cutovers to Guy Marten and his plan to get revenge on Dakota. Given that there was only one more volume to follow, I wonder if we will see this plan come to fruition. 

The periodic ruminations on Marten and his possible return seem to be Ralston’s attempt to cater to Pinnacle’s “action” mandate, because otherwise Murder’s Money is deadly dull, and has more in common with Agathie Christie than Don Pendleton. Let me give you an example of this. After handling corpse patrol, ie removing the frozen bodies from around his ranch, Dakota is informed by one of his friends: “Your mother says come to breakfast.” Folks this line basically encapsulates Dakota. It’s a wonder Ralston didn’t go all the way with it and saddle Dakota with a nagging wife: “You better forget about working on another case, Mister – we’re going to The Home Depot!”

Even though it’s just a few hours after he fended off a commando attack in the middle of a snowswept night, Dakota heads on into town to look into his latest case: basically, he’s been hired to find out who killed a local named Jack Bray. The accused is Henry Bray, wheelchair-bound brother of Jack, an eccentric millionaire who pays people in gold coins. We learn later in the book (though the back cover copy gives it away) that Henry Bray is wheelchair-bound because his brother Jack ran over him years before, which of course gives him motive. Henry Bray has hired Dakota to clear his name, insisting he is innocent, and paying Dakota in those gold coins: “The wallpaper we call money is a mortuary bill for a dying economy.” How prescient

So Dakota drives around Nevada and on into California as he tracks various clues. There is a lot of driving and clue-tracking in Murder’s Money. One can’t help but feel that Ralston has run out of steam…and he didn’t have much to begin with. A few more off-page murders occur, like that of an ex-Marine who works at the curio shop where Bray would get his gold coins. Ralston also works in an allusion to the notorious Lindbergh baby kidnapping with a subplot about “the Gerber kidnapping,” an equally notorious event in the world of Dakota. Long story short, the coins Henry Bray have been using were involved in the payoff for the long-ago Gerber kidnapping scheme, leading to a complex conspiracy Dakota tries to work his way through. 

And also Dakota’s still planning to marry Alicia, the woman he met in the first volume. She again appears in this book, not adding much except to tell Dakota to be careful and to hurry back to her. See, the nagging is already starting! But the main female character in Murder’s Money is Melissa Bray, stepdaughter of Jack Bray; she too hires Dakota’s services. She also features with him in an extended sequence that does nothing more than pad out the pages; Melissa, a pilot, flies Dakota in her private plane, but sabotage causes them to crash, stranding them in the desolate expanse of a forest. It goes on forever as Dakota tries to take care of an injured Melissa, while a group of “mountaineers” navigate through the thick snow to find the two of them. If I wanted something like this I’d just read Jack London’s “To Build A Fire.” 

Once all that is out of the way, Ralston decides around page 135 to make Dakota a badass. When a friend of his is shotgunned in California, Dakota starts busting heads when he tries to get some answers. He punches and kicks a couple people, causing another friend to tell him, “You’re two people. This one scares hell out of me.” Well, too bad we readers didn’t see more of “this one.” Soon enough Dakota’s going around with a group of criminals, among them a Japanese guy who is impressed with Dakota’s martial skills, and there’s a bit more bad-assery when they get info from a stooge by threatening to blow him away. But Dakota himself shoots no one, despite the misleading cover, and the novel’s biggest action scene occurs at the very end, where four motorcyclists give chase to Dakota’s car as he drives to Nevada. Unbelievably, Ralston charges through this entire action scene in a single paragraph that goes on for a page and a half…and that’s it. One can only imagine how a more confident action writer would’ve played out this sequence. 

Staying true to its mystery credentials, Murder’s Money instead “climaxes” with a long dialog exchange in which Dakota and his too-many friends baldly exposit on who might have killed Jack Bray. I mean up to and including listing the same characters over and over in different capacities so far as their awareness and involvement in the scheme would go. It’s very clear that Ralston at this point is on an empty tank and is praying to hit his word count asap. Not helping matters is that he (or perhaps a Pinnacle copyeditor) has neglected to put any white spaces in the book for scene transitions, meaning that we jump all over the place in the narrative with no warning. 

By novel’s end the promise is there that Guy Marten will be coming after Dakota for his revenge, but as mentioned there was only one more volume so we’ll see if it happens. There’s also I would say no mystery whatsoever why there was only one more volume in this series.

Monday, May 2, 2022

Harry O (Harry O #1)


Harry O, by Lee Hays
No month stated, 1975  Popular Library

A well-regarded private eye TV series I’ve never seen, Harry O ran for two seasons and starred David Janssen as a former cop turned P.I. in San Diego. I was born the year season 1 came out, so obviously didn’t watch it at the time. And I don’t believe it was ever syndicated, given it only lasted two seasons. In fact I think I only discovered the show a few years ago when I was looking up any and all crime-based TV shows of the ‘70s. Well anyway, even though Harry O didn’t last very long, it still managed to get a pair of TV tie-ins, both written by Lee Hays, and this being the first of the two. Curiously the “#1” only appears on the cover and nowhere else in the book, but Hays did publish a second novel the following year. 

This is an original story, so far as I can determine, and I can only assume it captures the vibe of the TV series (which I’m sure is on DVD, and maybe I’ll actually watch it someday). Hays follows what I’ve learned to be the setup of the show: Harry Orwell, who narrates the novel for us, is a grizzled ex-cop with a bad back, given that he was shot there by a perp some years ago (which led to his retirement). Now he lives off his pension in San Diego, occasionally doing private eye work while not fiddling with his boat, The Answer. He isn’t Joe Mannix by any means; Harry is not at all an action-prone private dick, and usually keeps his gun rolled up in a towel in his house. He won’t use it in the entirety of the novel. In fact, Harry won’t do much of anything in the entirety of the novel. He does manage to score, though, so at least there’s that. 

Speaking of which, it’s interesting that Harry O was published by Popular Library, who seemed to corner the market on private eye series paperbacks in the ‘70s – they published Cage, Hardy, Renegade Roe, etc. Maybe an editor there just had a serious jones for this genre. But at least this one wasn’t misleadingly packaged like an action series, as those others were. Which is a good thing, because it’s mostly action-free. Harry O follows the template of practically every private eye story I’ve ever read: cynical P.I. is hired by a sexy broad who seems to have ulterior motives and soon finds himself in over his head, embroiled in a convoluted plot. So in other words there’s nothing new here, and if the TV series was the same then all the critical accolades are confusing to me. Harry even has the mandatory fractious relationship with the cops, in particular a former captain who has a grudge against him. He also has the mandatory friend on the force: Manny Quinlan, a character who seems to have also been on the show. 

Hays takes adavantage of the San Diego setting with frequent trips to Baja and Tijuana. In fact, there’s a lot of scene-setting in Harry O, to the point that it’s a bit egregious. I’d also say it’s there so as to pad the pages, as Hays doesn’t give himself much plot to work from. We meet Harry as he’s working on his boat; he never sails it in the course of the novel, so maybe that’s another schtick from the show. And in true “burned-out private eye” fashion, Harry ignores the constantly-ringing phone over in his house, just wanting to work on the boat despite needing a job. The caller ends up coming to him, and true to the template it’s a hotstuff babe. While the novel isn’t explicit in the least, there’s still a lot of that casual ‘70s “male gaze” as it’s now referred to – Harry seriously checks this chick out, practically oggling her as she walks by him – breasts, butt, face, etc. And she of course just makes a flippant remark about it, which adds to the charm. 

Harry makes her some coffee; he’ll make a lot of coffee in the novel. If Harry isn’t making coffee he’s checking the coffee to see if it’s still warm enough to drink; if not, Harry will heat it up. This is pretty much the majority of what our narrator does in the course of Harry O. Anyway, the pretty young lady is named Mary Alice Kimberly, and she was sent to Harry by Harry’s cop friend Manny. Her story is that her husband, who wants a divorce she won’t give him, has taken advantage of some land she gave him in Baja, and Mary Alice thinks her husband plans something shady there – to the extent that he’ll kill her to protect his investment. Harry doesn’t really believe her story and she takes off. 

This is of course where the plot thickens. Mary Alice calls Harry that night and begs him to come over to the office of another private eye, this one a sleazebag who specializes in dirty divorces. Well he’s dead, courtesy a bullet, and of course Mary Alice says she found him that way; she says her husband probably killed him. But now she herself is on the run from the cops, so Harry will spend the rest of the novel hiding her from his former friends on the force while trying to clear her name. So far as Mary Alice is concerned, her husband Arthur is involved in some shady business, so Harry heads down to Baja to check it out – oh, and another recurring bit is that Harry’s car is always in the shop. But he doesn’t like to drive, anyway. I mean there’s a part later in the book where Mary Alice is driving him back and forth to Mexico, and she asks Harry if he’d mind driving for a while, and Harry initially demurs! I mean some kick-ass hero! 

The novel comes to life with the appearance of Sydney Jerome; with his “neat mod suit” and “girlish figure” he’s clearly intended to be gay, not that Hays actually states it. He’s the larger-than-life shadowy figure expected in the private eye template, employing his own henchmen and talking “like a character out of Dickens.” He offers Harry a drink (Harry drinks liquour, at least) and tells him he too is involved with the deal, and is also looking for both Arthur and Mary Alice Kimberly. The plot further thickens when Harry’s again woken up in the middle of the night by a woman, but this time it’s Billy, the former stripclub dancer who was married to the murdered sleazebag private eye. This part seems to go nowhere – lots of dialog about the couple that doesn’t matter to the plot but fills the pages – until it leads to unexpected developments. 

As Harry O moves into its second half, things become a bit more tense; Harry himself is now trying to clear his name of murder. And also he manages to hook up with Mary Alice, who per the template throws herself at him. However Hays keeps this entirely off page. But at least Harry’s boat factors into it, as this is where Mary Alice has been hiding. But when Arthur Kimberly himself finally shows up, he warns Harry not to trust his estranged wife and tells Harry that Mary Alice is a “nympho.” Regardless Harry spends a lot of time with her, shuttling back and forth to Mexico. Our narrator literally just sits around while Mary Alice does the heavy lifting of moving the plot; it now develops that Arthur and Sydney were involved in a heroin smuggling scheme, and Mary Alice intends to foil Sydney by dealing him sugar down in Mexico. And through it all Harry just sits there while she does all the plotting and planning. 

Even the finale is underwhelming. Again true to the private eye template, the “climax” is mostly comrpised of expository dialog while various characters explain what exactly has been going on. There’s no real action; at one point Harry actually goes to get his gun, but finds that the towel he rolls it up in is now empty. Harry finally figures out how he’s been swindled, but even here his approach to it is rather humdrum. Hell, if I’m not mistaken he even makes more coffee in the climax, or maybe checks the temperature of already-made coffee. But there isn’t a big finale; instead, the villain just waits calmly while the cops head for Harry’s house. And we leave our narrator where we found him, working on his boat. 

The back cover of Harry O features several blurbs from various publications praising the show. Curiously, half of them (plus the blurb on the front cover) are all based out of Chicago, so Harry O must’ve been pretty popular there, even if it was set in San Diego. Some of the blurbs even go so far as to say Harry O is the best private eye show in history. I don’t know, though. At least judging from this paperback tie-in…well, I’d rather watch Mannix.

Monday, July 26, 2021

The Emerald Chicks Caper (Renegade Roe #2)


The Emerald Chicks Caper, by L.V. Roper
January, 1976  Popular Library

The second and final volume of Renegade Roe gives a good indication why this series didn’t last: Renegade Roe is a dick. In fact I’d rank him as the most annoying protagonist in any of the series I’ve reviewed here. He’s an obnoxious twit, and once again I wonder if L.V. Roper even realized it, or if the whole thing was just an intentional joke. 

At the very least, Jerry “Renegade” Roe comes off slightly better than he did in the first volume. Sure, he still talks a big game but does little in the way of action to back it up, but at least this time he actually knocks a guy out. And sure, he himself is again knocked out a couple times and constantly has to be saved by his partner, Stuart Worth, same as last time. But at least he doesn’t do stuff like “spy” on people with binoculars while standing in plain sight of his prey or talk out loud to himself while “hiding” in a closet. On the other hand, he’s become even more juvenile than he was in the previous volume, pulling off stuff that could get a guy jailed in our #metoo era, up to and including feeling up the firm’s hapless secretary…and then accusing her of wearing a padded bra! 

Roe does seem to get laid a bit more this time, though as ever Roper leaves everything off page. The novel opens with Roe’s perennially-aggrieved partner, Stuart Worth, showing up at the office one morning to find Roe sacked out in their room with a nude blonde at his side…the very same runaway socialite Roe and Worth had been hired to track down. We’re to understand that this girl, as well as the others who fall in his sway in the novel, are drawn to Roe due to his “exotic” cast: he’s tall, reddish skin, wears flamboyant “Indian” fashions like moccasins and a headband, and of course is a loudmouthed brute. 

This is displayed posthaste, when Roe, mere hours after sleeping with the blonde, sets his sights on yet another attractive female client: Helen Bingham, who slinks into the office and asks to hire Worth and Roe to find out what happened to the gold egg and emerald chicks her husband found in Venezuela. Roe makes his interest known immediately, in his usual fashion – ie making all kinds of inappropriate comments – and the idea one gets is that sophisticate Helen merely decides to entertain him so as to file off “an exotic” from her bucket list. As for her case, it’s involved: her husband, a loser who married Helen for her money, desperately struck out to find money for himself, given that Helen had lost interest in him, but was too lazy to file for divorce. Thus Mr. Bingham found out about the legendary golden egg and emerald chicks of Venezuela, and somehow managed to get them, and mailed them to Helen here in New Orleans. But the shipment is missing. Oh, and he’s dead now, not that Helen seems to give a rat’s ass. 

This caper takes Roe into the upper crust of New Orleans, but Roper doesn’t do much to bring any of it to life. Nor does he do much to heat up any of the erotic stuff; Roe just makes his inappropriate comments – the one thing Roper does excel at – and when Helen gives in to his “charms” it’s an immediate fade to black. Even the exploitative content isn’t up to stuff; when Roe visits Helen late one night to ask some questions on the case, she answers the door in a robe made of “transluscent material” (so, uh…plastic??), and Roe can’t stop staring at her boobs: “That’s a lovely bra you’re not wearing.” But Roper doesn’t even do much to bring those heaving, upthrusting, ample charms to life, other than to tell us how Roe keeps gawking at them. The entire novel is just so listless. 

And given that the case has Roe hanging out with uppercrust of society types, there’s little opportunity for much action, so what Roper does is have endless scenes where Roe shows up at Worth’s house and starts hassling Roe’s wife. Just ridiculous stuff, like being there every time Worth comes home from the office – even at one point rushing over to Mrs. Worth when Stuart comes in and panting, as if Worth just caught them in the act. Just stupid juvenile stuff. What makes it worse is that Roper wastes not only our time but his own by even writing all this shit. It just goes on and on, Roe showing up at the Worth home and bugging them…honestly it’s almost like if Billy from Predator had starred in What About Bob? 

Action does finally show up when some Venezuelan thugs accost Roe; he beats up one of them but is of course caught, and Worth has to save him. This is a repeat of the previous volume and will happen again before novel’s end. This motif is one of the things that makes me wonder if Roper had his tongue in cheek the entire time he wrote, because American Indian “Renegade” Roe is presented as the studly hero of the series…yet he’s always getting captured and it’s up to the white guy to save him. Maybe the whole series is a subtle play on the whole cowboy and his sidekick Indian schtick, who knows. 

Not that Roe’s upset by his near death; soon enough he’s back to harrassing Frances in the office, even unizipping her dress when she’s unawares and grabbing her bra strap. Shortly thereafter Frances herself is abducted; Roe finally makes some headaway in the “action hero” department when he tracks her down and sneaks in to free her, but wouldn’t you guess it he’s knocked out and captured again. And who arrives in the nick of time to save his ass but Worth? Roe’s shot in the shoulder here, and there follows and interminable bit where he’s in the hospital, then storms his way out of the place because he’s figured the villains are going to escape via plane. Roe gets in his Mustang and races onto the tarmac to stop it. 

And mercifully here The Emerald Chicks Caper comes to a close, as does Renegade Roe itself. Whereas The Red Horse Caper had a “future books in the series” page with a slew of projected titles, The Emerald Chicks Caper doesn’t, which leads me to believe that by the time of publication Popular Library had decided the series was finished. I guess maybe they’d also had enough of Renegade Roe’s shit.  Great uncredited covers, though; I wonder if they were done by Hector Garrido of The Baroness and The Destroyer.

Monday, April 26, 2021

Dakota #3: Cat Trap


Dakota #3: Cat Trap, by Gilbert Ralston
September, 1974  Pinnacle Books

Conventional plotting and characterizations take precedence over the action and sleaze factors, which barely exist. -- Marty McKee

I think one thing we can all agree on though is that the Dakota series is graced with some of the finer covers in the men’s adventure genre. This one, with its lysergic green cat statuette, is especially nice. The artwork is signed, but I can’t make out the signature. There seems to be an “S” and a “V” in there. I was wondering if it was either John or Marie Severin, but I’m not familiar enough with their art or signature styles to say. Anyway, it’s too bad Pinncale didn’t credit the artist on the copyright page. 

I have been somewhat looking forward to this volume of the series if only to get some clarity on the plot and its similarity to a standalone novel Gilbert Ralston published through Pinnacle at this time: The Deadly, Deadly Art, which came out in November of ’74. Both it and Cat Trap feature an assassin who worships ancient Egyptian feline god Bastet. It seems very strange that an author would devote two books to the same thing in such a short span of time. It turns out though that the whole Bastet thing factors much more heavily into The Deadly, Deadly Art than it does in Cat Trap, so perhaps Ralston didn’t feel he had explored the concept sufficiently here and thus decided to devote another novel to it. Because Marty was right on the money in his review when he commented that Cat Trap suffers from “a waste of a potentially memorable villain.” 

What’s very curious is that the plots for Cat Trap and The Deadly, Deadly Art are practically identical: a Bastet-worshipping hit man takes out his victims with a special poison that mimics heart attacks. Only a telltale red dot on the victim’s back is evidence of the poison injection. But the killer is given more narrative space in The Deadly, Deadly Art, and the whole Bastet worship thing is more elaborated upon. In Cat Trap it comes off as an afterthought, introduced as a compelling subplot but ultimately dropped and not really explained. Even more curious is that there was potential to make Cat Trap a sequel to The Deadly, Deadly Art, as the Bastet worshipper Dakota goes up against is almost a clone of the villain in the other book. 

Marty in his review also notes that Dakota “has a very large supporting cast,” and that’s once again made clear within the first few pages of Cat Trap (how much you wanna bet Ralston had a different title in mind – another word for “Cat?”). As with the previous books in the series it’s clear Ralston wants to write a sort of family epic; he seems much more interested in the various supporting characters and their interactions than the action and whatnot the men’s adventure genre demands. Whereas the previous volume at least had a memorable sort of climax, this one’s comes off as perfunctory…and the few other action scenes throughout are over and done with in the blink of an eye. Well anyway, pages 2 through 4 are a nightmare of info-dumping, Ralston telling us the names of all the various people involved with Dakota near his family ranch in Carson Valley, Nevada, even up to and including “Caruso, Dakota’s pet raven.” And the damn bird isn’t even mentioned again. 

Indeed, Dakota’s personal entourage has gotten even more unwieldy. His father died at the end of the previous book, so now he lives with his mom, former local cop Bennedetti (plus Bennedetti’s wife and kids), young punk Louis Threetrees, and ‘Nam pal Joe Redbear, who figured in the memorable action climax of the previous book. In addition Dakota has a girlfriend named Alicia, introduced in the previous book and appearing again this time – Dakota’s such a “different” sort of men’s adventure hero that he even proposes to Alicia in the course of Cat Trap (she tells him “Not yet”), and hell there’s a part where he takes some other woman out on a date, just to get some info from her, and then drops her off back at her home so he can head back to his hotel and brood. And now that I think of it, there’s another part where Dakota stumbles onto a porn shoot, and the “actress” basically propositions him, and Dakota replies that he’d rather screw “a water buffalo.” 

Ralston piles on one-off characters and subplots in the first few chapters, making for a demanding read. What it boils down to is that two seemingly-unrelated men die of a heart attack on the same day in Reno, and Dakota is hired to look into it. In one subplot it’s an old ‘Nam commander who wants to find his son, and in another it’s a gambling casino that hires Dakota to find out what happened to one of its executives. But again all of this is very similar to The Deadly, Deadly Art, to the point that it’s humorous Ralston was able to sell Pinnacle practically the same book twice in the same year. I guess you could argue that Cat Trap has more action, comparatively speaking, but then again as mentioned as least The Deadly, Deadly Art had a better-developed villain. 

But in this book the villain is almost an afterthought. One of the heart attack victims died on a crowded street, and a witness overheard someone mutter something like “Bastet;” gradually (very gradually) Dakota will learn the whole connection with the ancient god. But as with the other book, ultimately we have here a professional assassin who pledges his kills to Bastet and uses a curare-tipped rapier to do his assassinating. As Marty notes, though, the villain is left so much in the background that he only appears twice, and the potential is not reaped in the least. Instead Dakota tassles with a couple low-level thugs over the plodding course of the novel. 

But Dakota is a private eye, and that’s really the vibe Ralston goes for…that is when he isn’t focused on the family and friends dynamics. Dakota flies around the country a good deal this time, meeting a host of characters who spout memorable dialog…which is another bone of contention I have with the series. Every single character delivers annoyingly glib dialog; Ralston had a Hollwyood background, which is very clear. But it’s too much of a good thing. I mean if one or two characters had some nice snappy dialog that would be fine. But when every character talks like they’re mugging for the camera it gets to be annoying – like for example the phrase “To hear is to obey,” which is uttered by two separate characters in the course of the book. Dakota himself continues to dole out the glib rejoinders; my favorite in that regard is when a hippie girl asks him if he’s an Indian and Dakota responds, “You want to see my tomahawk?”

Really though Dakota spends most of his time calling colleagues and flying to meet them to research on the ground. Here’s where that “sequel” potential is. One of Dakota’s contacts is a former New York cop named Cochran, who now works in San Francicso. He is familiar with a case in New York from a few years back where random people were dying of heart attacks, and it turned out to be the work of a professional killer named Guy Boyle Marten…who just happened to be a highfalutin snobbish type who worshipped Bastet. Yes, exactly like the art professor-professional killer who worshipped Bastet in The Deadly, Deadly Art…a novel which featured a New York cop as its hero. Man, all Ralston had to do was make that New York cop, Mack Bennett, the character Dakota works with in Cat Trap

It even works with the Marten connection; The Deadly, Deadly Art climaxes with what appears to be a random act of fate taking care of the villain, Brian Sattler…and we learn here that Guy Marten too is supposedly dead, victim of a random house fire. Marten even works for a sort of hitman staffing agency, same as Sattler did. And guess what – both Marten and Sattler live in Connecticut, where they work as teachers. It would seem clear then that these are the same characters, but Ralston never makes the connection. All he had to do was replace Cochran with Mack Bennet, and Marten with Sattler, and he would’ve had a fine sequel to The Deadly, Deadly Art. Of course that book was published two months after this one, but such things are a regular occurrence in the world of paperback originals. 

Well anyway, Dakota ventures to San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Connecticut in the course of his investigation, finding the opportunity to hook up with Alicia again in SanFran. There’s zero hanky-pankery this time; more focus is placed on Alicia’s lingerie store being ransacked with “chemicals,” a note left on the scene for Dakota to “go home.” Dakota instead sends Alicia back to the ranch in New Mexico and continues his investigation, getting in a couple scrapes. There’s a humorous amount of “kicking” this time; both Dakota and the one-off thugs are prone to launching high kicks to the head, as if inspired by Black Belt Theater or something. But this isn’t an action-heavy series by any means. I mean honestly Dakota is at one point hooked up with a pistol…and he never uses it, instead giving it back to his contact and telling him to hang on to it. 

Ralston’s writing is fine; I mean he’s clearly invested in the characters and has a gift for dialog. But he seems to be writing more of a James Michener sort of novel than about “a modern Indian lawman in today’s West.” Also the glibness extends to the narrative. There are so many short, direct sentences that at times it takes on the vibe of a hardboiled parody. But in his focus upon characters and introspection Ralston overlooks the more racy demands of this genre. I mean even Jon Messmann stories move, despite the inordinate introspection and philosophising. 

This is especially clear in the climax. After shuttling around the country to follow leads, in particular a sort of hitman hirer named Gordo (not to be conused with Greedo), Dakota finally has a personal confrontation with Marten…who makes zero impression on the reader, and instead just escapes. So Dakota heads on home to the ranch…and meanwhile Marten closes in on the ranch with a few thugs, each armed with “machine pistols.” Their orders are to kill everyone in the ranch. Taking place at night during a snow storm, this sequence has the opportunity to be very memorable…a sort of prefigure of Prairie Fire. But instead Ralston barrels through the action in just a few pages, having wasted so much time on the pondering and the glib-dialoging. That said, at least Dakota shoots someone here – and so does his mom, toting a gun she gets out of the pantry! 

What’s worse, the ending is wholly unsatisfactory, with a certain character straight-up escaping…Dakota even giving him a thirty minute head start to get away! Of course this sets up the potential that The Deadly, Deadly Art could be viewed as the sequel to Cat Trap, but then that one takes place in New York and all the stuff with New York and Guy Marten took place before the events of Cat Trap. Still though, it’s pretty lame, sort of like the average Marc Olden novel, where the villain escapes and you know they’ll never be mentioned again. I mean I demand to see the villain’s head exploding in the finale of a men’s adventure novel! 

That’s pretty much it for Cat Trap. Two more volumes were to follow, and I’m going to suspect they will be more of the same. Still, I do really like the covers. And I’m thinking more and more that Marty’s correct and Dakota started life as scripts Ralston worked on for a proposed TV series. The ensemble cast, leisurely plotting, and lack of sex and violence are all pretty much in-line with a TV production of the era. We’ll just assume Lalo Schifrin would’ve done the soundtrack.

Monday, April 19, 2021

The Soul Hit


The Soul Hit, by Charlie Haas & Tim Hunter
No month stated, 1977  Harper & Row

I learned about this obscure novel thanks to the Rolling Stone Cover To Cover CD-ROM. I was doing a search on “rock novels” (which is how I discovered Death Rock several years ago) and came upon a somewhat-positive review of the book. The review also mentioned that co-writer Charlie Haas had been responsible for the “hip” liner notes to be found in Warner Bros records at the time. However looking up The Soul Hit online it would appear the novel didn’t resonate much, as info is scant and there doesn’t even appear to have been a paperback edition – which is exactly what the book needed, as it’s already around the length of an average PBO of the day. 

So it only came out in hardcover, the back cover of which informs us that co-writers Hunter and Haas were buddies in college, both now live in Los Angeles, and both are in some degree involved with the entertainment industry. They make a fine writing team; it’s hard to detect two people wrote the book, so in that regard it reminded me of The Headhunters. I did notice that some chapters would open with elaborate scene-setting, usually detailing one-off or supporting characters, with the main plot being concerned with the investigation of a retired FBI agent into a music biz killing, so perhaps that was the line of delineation. At any rate the writing here is very good – very much in-line with your typical private eye yarn, but gussied up with a bit of a “literary” vibe at times. And definitely aware of the inner machinations of the record and radio business. 

The novel takes place in 1976 and opens in an AM radio station in San Luis Obispo, CA; the authors are already aware of how radio has changed so drastically, with the young jock, Barry Marsh, unable to voice too much “personality” and just sticking to the hits. This is a fun bit and comes off like the fictional equivalent of FM or Radio Waves, only it’s about the much less interesting (to me at least) world of AM instead of FM. (There will be another character who is an FM deejay later in the book, but the authors don’t bring the environment to life as much as they do here.) Barry spins some singles and then, his overnight shift over, goes to the local Y to let off some steam on the squash court. Then a sniper blows his head off. 

This introduces us to the hero of the tale: Ben Marsh, Barry’s “middle-aged” uncle, a retired FBI agent. He now lives in Oregon, tending to the peach trees on his estate. The authors bring this stuff to life with info on how to cultivate peach trees and whatnot, letting you know they’ve done their research. Marsh gets a call from another nephew – Barry’s brother – and flies to California for the funeral. The local cops haven’t made any headway, so Marsh does his own investigation. This leads to a nice bit where Barry’s girlfriend, a hippie chick who works at the college bookstore, lets Marsh into Barry’s apartment and they look around – and find all five hundred of his records smashed on the floor. This part even upset me…I mean the poor vinyl! The girl goes into the bathroom and Marsh hears some grating metal; Barry had a stash of coke hidden in the shower, payola from a PR guy from Colony Records. 

This stuff brings to mind Triple Platinum, and again the authors – likely Haas – show familiarity with how hit records don’t just happen, how it all comes down to the hustle. Also Marsh is pretty hip for an FBI guy, giving the girl back the coke after getting more info from her on where it came from. Eventually he ends up in Los Angeles, looking into the Colony PR guy, Jerry Vilella. Jerry met with Barry Marsh the day before Barry was murdered, so Marsh tries to figure out if there’s a connection. And there sure seems to be; Marsh finds the door to Vilella’s home unlocked…and Vilella himself lying on his bed, his head blown off. Marsh hears someone at the door and hides in the closet, watching as a hotstuff blonde comes in and, oblivious to the corpse under the sheets in the bed, starts to disrobe, though the authors aren’t ones to get into sleazy details. 

Her name is Carrie Voy, and she is the FM deejay mentioned above; Marsh continues to hide as she discovers Lenny’s corpse, freaks, and runs from the house. He tracks her down after the funeral and she will ultimately become his assistant in the investigation. Carrie is not only a memorable character with sparkling dialog – the authors in general deliver good, movie-esque dialog – but she also provides Marsh with another glimpse into the workings of the record business. I especially liked how she is halting and uncertain in her speech when meeting people, but cool calm and collected when on the radio. There also seemed to be a shout-out to famous WNEW-FM DJ Alison “The Nightbird” Steele here, with Carrie referring to herself on-air as “…the night light, Carrie Voy, flying on the air with the greatest of ease at ninety-three FM.” 

An interesting thing about The Soul Hit is that Marsh is older than the majority of the other characters, thus he adds a layer of reflection to everything; he notices things that younger people surely wouldn’t, and his appreciation of Carrie is altogether old-fashioned. The veteran reader knows where this is going, but the authors do a great job of making the relationship develop gradually and naturally. It starts when Marsh follows Carrie home after the funeral, and sees a thug in a suit barge into her house and threaten her with a gun. Luckily Marsh has kept his own gun (a .38 revolver) and comes to her rescue. After which Carrie is so concerned that she wants Marsh to basically stay in her place, even though he’s a stranger himself. 

Curiously this element though doesn’t go further; I kept waiting for the goons to show up again, but the authors pretty much forget about them until near the very end. Same goes for the cocaine Barry Marsh got as payola; Marsh follows this angle to the Colony Records office building, coincidentally running into a sexy “coca-skinned” stewardess who was apparently hired by Jerry Vilella to smuggle in cocaine. This subplot is built up a little and then abruptly dropped. Regardless Marsh’s visit to Colony Records is another well-delivered sequence, again bringing to mind Triple Platinum. He learns that Jerry was pushing a new single by Ovis Timbers, a sort of proto-Prince in that he’s a soul artist veering over into the pop charts: the “soul hit” of the title. 

Carrie acts as Marsh’s sort-of informant, preparing him with insider info on the music world; Jerry’s co-worker at Colony invites Marsh to a party that night being thrown for Timbers, and Marsh invites the coke-smuggling stew. He’s met her simply by walking into Jerry’s office and snooping around, and coincidentally she just happens to come by at that very moment to arrange payment for the coke she’s brought in! That night at the party Marsh “samples” the merchandise, feeling his mind blown…even though Carrie told him to “act cool” and say the coke “must’ve been cut.” But this will be it for the coke-smuggling subplot, with the focus instead on the gang war brewing around Ovis Timbers. His gang has promised to donate all proceeds to charity, and a rival gang claims it’s all b.s., and a ruckus develops. 

The vibe is very much of a private eye yarn; Marsh heads to the afterparty, and just as stews he’s with begin to disrobe (thanks to snorting some coke, apparently), he runs into one of the thugs who showed up at Carrie’s house. What makes this different than the average private eye yarn is that Marsh is a “shoot, then call the cops” sort of hero…which is exactly what he does after tangling with the thug. This introduces us to another memorable character, a police captain “older than Marsh” who has some very dry, acerbic humor. The two develop a somewhat-contentious working relationship, and Marsh is able to continue his own investigation, even keeping his gun. 

Meanwhile he sleeps in Carrie’s living room, the authors doing a good job of bringing this whole relationship to life. Carrie does the night shift, same as the Night Bird, thus her “dinner” is other people’s “breakfast.” This entails some domestic scenes of Carrie preparing meals while Marsh sits and listens to her. Nothing is rushed here, with Marsh sleeping on her couch, waiting around while she’s home so she feels safe, and then going off to investigate when she’s at the station. The authors also don’t do much to dwell on the age gap, nor the fact that Carrie’s previous fling was murdered just a few days before. In fact Marsh gives her time, and even later chastises himself for “his thoughts of love-making” when he watches her in action at the FM station one night. Regardless, Carrie as expected begins to develop feelings for Marsh, especially after he begins coming home with his ass kicked. 

This is another similarity to Mike Hammer or some other P.I. deal; Marsh gets taken through the wringer in the course of the book, captured a few times and beaten around unmerciful. At one point he’s captured by the rival gang and knocked around, then later some bikers get hold of him. This part is also cool because the authors show how records are made, the bikers running a bootleg operation. One thing I didn’t like though was that a lot of Marsh’s revelations and realizations were kept from the reader, with him doing stuff for seemingly no reason, only to explain why in the final pages. But ultimately everything is connected: the gang war, the bikers, the murders, and Ovis Timbers’s new single. While Timbers is more of a soul artist than a rock artist, the book still has the vibe of a rock novel, with lots of behind-the-scenes info and actual description of what the music sounds like, something that eludes most other “rock novelists.” This is especially pronounced in the description of Timbers’s hit single with its opening “fast bass run, low, crouching, insistent,” as well as in the concert Timbers gives in the novel’s climax. 

While the action was cool and the music biz stuff very interesting, I found myself most interested in the Marsh-Carrie relationship. Again, the initial thing that brought them together (the thugs threatening Carrie) is kind of dropped, but still the whole bit with Marsh staying with her so she’d feel safe was nicely handled. And of course she eventually comes to Marsh in the living room one night, leading to the expected shenanigans, though the authors as mentioned don’t dwell on any sleaze. But we do at least get a little resolution with those thugs, who happen to be at Timbers’s concert in the climax, along with the bikers, members of both gangs, and everyone else who has taken a shot at Marsh: “This place is more like a free fire zone than a rock concert,” our hero tells Carrie. 

I enjoyed The Soul Hit a lot, and can’t understand why it didn’t get more traction when it was released. The novel is graced with blurbs on the inner jacket: Ring Lardner, Joe Gores, and James D. Houston all provide glowing appraisals and opine that the novel is destined for success. But it doesn’t look as if it was to be. I’ve been too lazy to see if Haas and Hunter collaborated on anything else, but I certainly will one of these days, as The Soul Hit was an engaging read…and another one I never would’ve learned about if not for that Rolling Stone CD-ROM.