Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald

Great critiques have already been written about Murder in the Wind (1956) assessing its place in John D. MacDonald's development as a writer, and Stephen King has praised it as an influence. It's another I picked up in conjunction with a re-read of It. Wind, like The End of the Night, suggests influence on King and especially the massive multi-viewpoint approach in It.

Several other factors were also involved in my purchase and reading, beyond studying King.

I love MacDonald's work, as this blog would indicate, and Murder, sometimes called Hurricane really seemed like something I ought to take a look at after enduring Hurricane Irma as it swept through Central Florida. It's almost like a 60-year-old prophecy of a storm's path.

In some ways, Murder also reminds me of The Crossroads, a slightly later fifties novel that really re-awakened my interest in MacDonald several years ago as well as kicking off a period of non-Travis McGee reading. Like Wind, it winds together various plot and character threads around an almost-peripheral crime.

Murder in the Wind is interesting immediately as a historic thumbnail perspective on hurricanes before the development of current technology and modeling.

The fictional hurricane that kicks off the book's action sweeps around Cuba, into the Gulf of Mexico and gains power before battering Florida's West coast. No one really quite knows what's coming as the story unfolds.

And MacDonald begins to introduce characters who'll be in its path. It's an episodic ride that anticipates future disaster fiction and movies.

We meet a young family who came south to find better climate for an ailing child only to find the struggle of starting a small firm to great. They're beginning the trek back north under a gloom of personal failure.

There's also a deal-making businessman and his aging underling who's failed to manage a merger properly, so both are headed north to fix the problems.

Then there are two young criminals and their despondent girlfriend, a slightly mentally challenged young woman who's found their company preferable to bad family circumstances. An FBI agent grief stricken over the loss of his wife rounds things out and ultimate helps tie threads together as the murder of the title and other tragedies unfold at the novel's core.

And a host of others join in. MacDonald even gives us a finely drawn portrait of a long-haul trucker distracted by the recent discovery of his wife's cheating while he's on the road. That leads to the disastrous accident and road blockage that throws the disparate strangers together in an abandoned house to ride out the storm.

As plans are made for the weathering, MacDonald shifts gears, providing the other side of the equations introduced in the early portion of the books. We learn the assistant's understanding of the failed merger and more as the murder transpires and nature and brutal happenstance take over.

MacDonald builds to a satisfying conclusion in the storm's aftermath and ends with a ray of hope.

I'm glad I didn't read it while riding out Irma, but I'm happy to have experienced the novel. It really captures the blend of dread and denial connected with an approaching storm and gives a realistic taste of the brief period in the eye of a storm when disaster seems imminent and possible.

He also delves into human experience in rich and meaningful ways and offers a snapshot of the times.  Murder in the Wind is a great read and a worthy work of fiction.

The Sorcerers by Dorian Winslow (Daoma Winston)

In the the latter days of the gothic paperback era, Avon books offered up a brief and now hard-to-find (or at least pricey) Satanic line. Distinguished by a goat's-head logo, each was penned by a different author. They bore titles like Lord Satan, Her Demon Lover and Red Wine of Rapture and appeared from 1973 to 1974. 

It was the time when every TV detective battled satanists, from McMillan and Wife to Ironside ("Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Murder" featuring Jodie Foster and a cameo by Rod Serling). Cults and the dark lord must have seemed like perfect adversaries for gothic heroines historic and contemporary.


I've wanted to explore some of the gothics for a while, so I've been nabbing the occasional title. I sought out an affordable Avon Satanic  and ran across a reasonable, "good condition" edition of The Sorcerers by Dorian Winslow, a pseudonym of Daoma Winston. I didn't key in on that until I opened to the copyright page, but I once owned Winston's hardcover thriller Mira, so I was pleased to return to her work after many years.

Despite what the logo might lead you to believe, The Sorcerers is not a tale of black-robed cultists and late-night rituals with chickens and blood. It's actually a well-crafted if slow-burn mystery with elements of The Fantastic. Is black magic at work at Walker Hill, the creepy mansion at the core of the story? Or is human evil and superstition?

That's indirectly what the heroine, Gilly Davis, must find out when she accepts a job as companion to Caretha Walker, a woman turned into an agoraphobic emotional invalid by the accidental death of her child.

Recently devastated herself by the decampment of her husband John with her best friend, 23-year-old Gilly accepts the job from  Mason Walker,  a man of "imposing good looks." He's wealthy and has pretty much taken in most of Gilly's family at Walker Hill in the remote town of Cumberland, surrounded by red hills and shrouded in mist.

As Gilly works to bring Caretha out of her depression and despair, she observes strange behavior and disturbing occurrences including black, inverted crosses smudged about the house. Miss Ming, a Pekingese, serves as a sinister observer, seemingly materializing at inopportune moments.

Caretha's sister Megan indulges Caretha's taste for fortune telling and dressing dolls as if they are members of the household, practices Mason strives to obliterate as detrimental.

There's a musty old attic, a mysteriously departed former employee, weird visions in a mirror, a burned out residence in town and soon mysterious accidents and a death.

There's certainly a Dark Shadows feel to it all, but everything's subtle, building to revelations in the final few pages, tying things together in a satisfying fashion almost in an Agatha Christie vein. I suppose the less patient reader might find things a little slow, but it's all to a purpose.

The romance component may really be what's lacking or at least taking a back seat to other goings on. It comes late in the slim (160-page) novel and without much real justification that we're shown. It's really like genre requirements had to be shoe-horned in around the mystery, but so it goes.

In general, I liked this volume and its quiet, moody horror. It's not for all tastes, but it's not a bad entertainment, especially for a cold, dark night's reading.

This is not an impulse buy proposition. Keep an eye peeled wherever you shop for used books. 

Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald

I read and loved many of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels  in my high school and college years. I read most of the titles and wrapped up with a hardcover purchase of The Lonely Silver Rain.

While it has an exciting opening sequence, Darker Than Amber (1966) somehow lost me when I started it back in the day, having secured a paperback copy from The Book Nook in Alexandria, LA, where I often scanned the shelves for detective works I'd read about. 

My dad read it through and liked it, but I guess the opening passage was a bit slow for me in my younger years.

McGee, you probably know, was a houseboat-dwelling beach bum who took his ongoing retirement in chunks. When funds grew low, he'd take on a salvage job. Recover money or property for someone in exchange for half the value to fund a little more free time of boating, fishing and otherwise enjoying life. McGee had frequent female guests aboard, often for complex though brief relationships.

When Darker Than Amber opens, he's fishing with his pal Meyer. Meyer's an economist who occupies a boat called the John Maynard Keynes a few slips away from Trav's F-18 at the Fort Lauderdale marina known as Bahia Mar marina.  

Meyer and Trav's motorboat is anchored beneath a South Florida bridge when a girl's hurled over the railing with weights on her feet. Trav dives to save her and manages to unfurl the wires holding the weights in place, ripping of his shirt to help with the tightly-wrapped metal. Fortunately her would-be killers didn't have time for concrete galoshes. 

He takes her back to his houseboat, The Busted Flush and soon learns she's named Vangie, short for Evangeline, though she has about as many aliases as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon. 

The color of the title

Vangie seems to be of Hawaiian island lineage and has eyes that provide the book's color title, a conceit devised by MacDonald to help buyers differentiate the books they'd already read. 

A former prostitute, we learn Vangie gained a conscience while serving as bait in a con game she's a little vague about as she hangs out aboard the Flush, donning duds left behind by previous guests. She bonds a bit with McGee though he turns down a sexual encounter and winds up posing for a few photos for Meyer. 

Then she's off to pick up dough she siphoned off from the con games from a hiding place she's hopeful her former accomplices haven't discovered.

Mild spoilers past this point

McGee's soon at the morgue using a ruse to check the body of a hit-and-run victim, and yes it's Vangie. 

Feeling a sense of duty as well as a desire to pick up the funds she might not have accessed, McGee sets off to find out what Vangie was a part of. 

Soon, McGee's got her hidden cash and is unraveling the con game with a murderous component and devising an elaborate scheme of his own to rattle the bad guys and exact justice. That includes a dangerous character named Ans Terry, who has a touch of a conscience but a brutal side as well. He was kind of forced to throw Vangie off the bridge.

I guess originally the opening dragged a little for me. On this reading at a more patient age, it flowed well and overall it offers an interesting and different entry point into the adventure for McGee.

The scheme Vangie was part of is a bit complicated, and the pains and lengths McGee and Meyer go to in order to rattle the culprits make up the latter part of the action. This is not my favorite McGee because it all seems just a little shaky and strained, but it eventually comes together well with some satisfying action, a bit of McGee role playing and an exciting climax. 

The book features many South Florida locations and offers a look into the cruise industry of the mid-sixties as well. Any McGee is a fun and rich reading experience. I'm happy to have returned and taken this additional step toward being a McGee completist. I still have a few steps to go.

I should note I saw the movie version with Rod Taylor on TV in the early '80s with a trimmed version of the famous fight scene between Taylor as McGee and William Smith as the Terry character sans the Ans. 

I didn't care for the film either back in the day. Re-watching it today in uncut form, I think it does a good job overall with the novel, is pretty true to the McGee spirit and dishes up a pretty cool fight scene directed by Robert Clouse who was destined for Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon. 

Taylor's a pretty good McGee as well. Makes me a little sad the planned movie series didn't pan out.

Miami Mayhem by Marvin Albert

As hurricane Irma approached Florida, even though I was a good distance inland, it was a bit unsettling.

Tony Rome with Frank Sinatra turned up on the broadcast TV channel Movies!, and I recorded it and watched it Saturday afternoon Sept. 10 as the storm neared Florida.

It had been a while since I'd seen it, having first learned of it in Jon Tuska's The Detective in Hollywood when I was a kid. It came in the wake of Paul Newman's Harper as part of a mini-detective cycle in the late '60s. I caught it finally on cable years after that.

I'd forgotten much of it as I re-watched the film, which was about all I could really focus on that pre-Irma afternoon with all the hurricane prep I could manage already accomplished. 

Maybe the Miami setting played a small role. It was kind of relaxing watching Sinatra drive Jill St. John around in a convertible on happier and sunny Florida days.

The storm passed through in the wee hours of Sept. 11-12 , bringing us a lot of wind, but we survived and were lucky. We lost power 36 hours or so and had water and canned ravioli, so we fared OK.

I plucked the novel the movie was based on from my shelves. Somewhere along the way I picked up a tie-in edition of the 1960 book but had never read it.

I was pleasantly surprised. The novel's really deftly plotted and fairly character rich. I suspect Albert was a Raymond Chandler fan, but resemblances are really a tip of the fedora, I believe.

Anthony Rome, the hard-boiled narrator protagonist, is an ex-Miami cop with a gambling problem. He lives on a houseboat called the Straight Pass from the craps game that won it for him, and Travis McGee's Busted Flush is possibly a tip of the fedora to that even though McGee didn't wear one.

Anthony aka Tony's slightly less cool than Sinatra is in the movie. He gets rattled a little more, but the movie's fairly faithful to the novel's plot.

Rome is called on by an ex-partner to drive a missing heiress home from a seedy hotel where she's wound up at the end of a drinking binge. When he arrives at her dad's house, he's promptly hired by her businessman father, Rudy Kosterman,  to find out what's troubling his daughter, his only heir from a first marriage.

By the time Tony makes it back to the Straight Pass, thugs are waiting, in search of a daisy-shaped diamond pin the daughter, Diana Pines, should have been wearing.

Tony's situation gets worse from there. That ex-partner's murdered soon after Tony asks about the missing pin, and he's off to figure out what's up as his efforts lead to word of a swindler named Nimmo and his henchman named Catleg.

From ruined-mansions to secret gambling dens and redneck shanty towns, Tony dodges bullets, outmaneuvers cops, including pal Lt. Santini, and encounters drug dealers. He finally figures out what's up with the pin and the Kosterman family as the tale winds down. It really all ties together in a tight package.

I need to look up the other Rome books including Lady in Cement, which was also adapted into a film about a year after Tony Rome. Albert moved on from Rome after three titles to craft a longer series about a hero named Pete Sawyer. 

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death by Tucker Coe aka Donald E. Westlake

I discovered Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death first on one paperback rack or another when the Charter edition appeared. I'd read Chandler and MacDonald by then, so a tale of an unlicensed private detective looked like an interesting one to peruse.

The edition was apparently issued in 1976, but I'm not sure it was that early that I ran across it. Paperbacks floated around in news service vans, finding their way to random corners of the universe in those days.

I didn't realize in that moment that Tucker Coe was a pseudonym for Donald E. Westlake, creator of Dortmunder, the hapless robber, and as Richard Stark, Parker, the much more grim and professional thief.

As I recall my dad read it around the time I did and liked it also, but recently I realized I could remember little more than the fact that Mitch Tobin, the ex-cop hero was building a wall around his back yard as he investigated a murder case.

As with many things I read when I was young, I suspect many of the subtleties of character were lost on me the first time around.

I still had the paperback amid private eye novels on my shelf, so I decided to re-read it the other day after plucking it out to share a photo with other Tsundoku types in a Facebook group, and it was great to revisit it with mature eyes.

Secrets and lies
The story seems deceptively straightforward at first. Tobin, booted off the force following his partner's death is approached to conduct a murder investigation even though he holds no investigator's license.

Tobin, we learn, was seeing a mistress while on duty and failed to provide backup for his partner on a police call that turned deadly.

Months into exile from the force though still married, Tobin's approached by a representative of "the corporation" for help. He's building the above-mentioned wall as a way of metaphorically putting his life back together and would rather keep building, but he sees the investigation as perhaps a path to some form of redemption, maybe both professionally and spiritually. His wife Kate's been supporting the family with extra shifts at a five and dime.

The mob of the Tobin world is indeed very corporate with dark-suited managers interacting with union representatives and quasi-legitimate business executives.

Corporate intrigue
Married mobster Ernie Rembek, sort of a regional manager for the corporation, has lost his girlfriend, Rita Castle. She left the apartment he provided with a suitcase full of cash. A note states she's found a "real man" to help spend it. Unfortunately for her, she got only as far as a mob-connected Allentown hotel before being murdered.

Ernie's a sentimental guy and wants Tobin to find the killer, even if he feels the need to turn the killer over to the authorities for justice to be done. While it's not ideal, Tobin agrees to the job and the payday especially after his wife gives it a blessing.

Soon he's set up in an office and interviewing others in the corporation who can't provide an alibi for the time of death.

For a while it seems Tobin's just going to be cataloging information and ferreting out the culprit, but then office explosions and other threats arise, and he begins to gain understanding and insight into Rita Castle that reveals all is not as it seems, not with Eddie or other corporation members.

With a plot that zigs and zags and many surprises, Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death turns into a character-rich mystery that proves just as 361 had before it, that Westlake was as comfortable with a circuitous murder case as he was with a heist or caper.

It stands up well to a contemporary reading. Only the dollar values and the view of the mob hint that it's from another era, and it can be had in an ebook edition.

A great entry in the private eye realm, and a solid mystery as well.

Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton

I sampled most of the great thriller series as a kid, Doc Savage, Tarzan, James Bond, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, The Executioner and so on. I saw Matt Helms around the used book store too and even wound up with a couple of Donald Hamilton volumes, but I never delved into the series.

Happily the ebooks were on sale the other day, and someone told me it's best to begin at the beginning with the Helm books. This is an experience from the Kindle and not the book boxes in the attic.

I'd always known they were more serious than the Dean Martin movies, which I did watch on TV as a kid, but I didn't realize quite how crisp and grim the books would be.

While his focus is espionage, Hamilton delivers in the tough-edged style of Fawcett Gold Medal heroes of the day, though Matt Helm may be the most pragmatic, ruthless and relentless of the lot.

It's 15 years after World War II, and while he was a fierce operative during the war years, Helm has settled into the comfortable life of a writer of Western novels and occasional travel articles. He's living in New Mexico and is part of a comfortable suburban circle of friends. Things open with him carrying a Martini at a party.

But Tina, a wartime co-worker turns up, a co-worker who's never left the game. Almost in the blink of an eye Helm has a body in his study and this ruthless former girlfriend/partner in assassination on his doorstep. She has her current husband in tow, a formidable figure with little love for Helm.

The dead woman is a young writer who'd asked Helm for assistance, but she was also an enemy operative who had her sights trained on his physicist friend Amos Darrell, Helm is told.

He drawn into disposing of the body and soon on the run across the Southwest along with Tina because others are following.

Possibly enemies have to be identified and eluded, and as they travel the situation grows increasingly complicated. Helm's old boss is still at work, and a complicated web of twists and betrayals begins to unravel.

Matt's family doesn't exist by accident in this tale. Ultimately they're placed in peril, and he's forced to re-channel all of his wartime cunning and unflinching amoral outlook and abilities.

Sure, they're called spies here, but this is a tough, noir-tinged crime thriller with pages to be turned rapidly at the end and a final, blood-stained confrontation to wrap things up.

I see now why Helm books have ranked among the other thriller greats with many fans. I'll definitely stick with the series now that's it's finally caught my attention.

Death Sentence by Brian Garfield

I bought and read a movie tie-in edition of Death Wish around the time the film was in theaters in '74, but I was unaware of the book sequel until I ran across the paperback edition of 1975's Death Sentence on a display rack in a department store. This must have been '76 or so.

I picked it up because I'd liked the first and had read interviews with Brian Garfield by then about his disillusionment with the film version. I was too young yet to appreciate his point.

But he stated he'd seen his protagonist, Paul Benjamin, as disturbed, not quite the gunslinger hero Charles Bronson played as Paul Kersey.

I've read initially a film adaptation was planned with Jack Lemon in the lead, which probably would have been closer to the book.

By the beginning of Death Sentence Benjamin has made his way to Chicago following the death of his daughter who was traumatized in the events of the first novel.

He picks up where he left off in his vigilante ways, targeting street toughs in the midst of preying on school girls and other dark characters, but soon a love affair begins to refocus Benjamin.

There's a sense that the book is a bit of atonement from Garfield who was disturbed by the movie's glorification of the protagonist's activities. In an interviews around the time of the film, he talked about the real life slashed convertible roof that made him think of striking back but that action vs. fantasy are two different things. He'd been to a friend's in Manhattan and came out to find his roof in ribbons, and that made him angry enough to want to hunt the culprit in the moment. He turned the feeling into the novel.

The Chicago cop chasing Benjamin's vigilante expresses similar thoughts on deed vs. fantasy down to the slashed car top in a TV interview in the novel, and soon the plotline begins to focus on the dangers of Benjamin's ways.

A copycat a tad more wanton and a tad less introspective begins to work the streets as well. Benjamin's mission turns from hunting down street denizens to dealing with his doppelgänger, and the story begins to move toward an inevitable showdown.

I actually found this novel a little more engaging than the first, and it has interesting moments focused on Benjamin's pragmatic planning from acquiring weapons to doing things like smearing grease on license plates to obscure the numbers.

It's thematic texture, while perhaps a little more heavy handed, makes it a layered and thoughtful thriller. A bit of that theme about the impact of revenge on the avenger is perhaps the common element between the book and the 2007 James Wan film adaptation with Kevin Bacon which otherwise creates a whole new story of a father tracking down gang members who've put his son in a coma.

One point that stood out for me in the book was that Benjamin purchased and was shown how to use a Centennial revolver with a safety grip in the handle. My dad actually owned a gun like that, so it helped me understand what the book was talking about.

All in all it's a good read and a good entry in Garfield's output of '70s thrillers which included Hopscotch and Recoil.

Impulse buy

361 By Donald E. Westlake

This is a story that catches Donald E. Westlake more closely aligned to his Richard Start pseudonym under which he wrote the Parker series. It's not so much a signpost for his lighter John Dortmunder series.

361 is a 1962 tale,  a mystery, perhaps even a whodunit in thriller clothing when all is said and done.

I discovered its existence recently in a Facebook group when someone posted a vintage edition he'd discovered at a used book sale. I was happy to learn Hard Case Crime had republished it along with an audio version which I soon downloaded for a listen.

At the outset, we're told .361, according to Roget's Thesaurus means "Destruction of life; violent death. Killing."

First-person narrator Ray Kelly's in for plenty of that as the story moves forward. His dad seems a little nervous about picking up in New York City after he concludes a stint in the Air Force.  Ray dismisses the nerves until a tan-and-cream Chrysler pulls alongside them on a roadway and guns blaze.

Dad's killed, and Ray's injuries include irreparable damage to one eye. He gets a glass one as he recuperates, a process that begins with his brother, Bill, at his side but becomes a solo journey when his brother stops showing up for visits.  Soon he learns Bill's wife, who he's never met, has been killed as well in a car accident. Coincidence?

When recovery's over, Ray decides it's time to look for answers, and those begin with a visit from an old friend of his dad's who owed Pop one. He suggests Ray keep his head down. Not satisfied with a cryptic warning, Ray and Bill try beating a few answers out of the pal. He's so fearful he'll only let a few details slip.

So Ray and Bill set off to research just what their father might have been party to. Bill favors a private investigator, while Ray wants to do things on his own and digs into enough newspaper clippings to discover Dad was once a mob lawyer.

That's the tip of the iceberg, and each move takes Ray further along the road to dark truths about his family's past and his own identity. Deaths and gunplay, ensue along with revelations,  and there's no question this deserves a hard-boiled label as important players die and Ray sets out on a path that has him wondering who he'll be if he comes out the other side.

That will only come after several twists and believable maneuvers that wrap up the action, reveal the truths and set the book on the road to a satisfying conclusion that's at a place the reader can accept in this grim universe.

Woven around the story is a bit of mob history. It's interesting to get a taste of early sixties perception of the mob, making the book almost a prelude to the revenge tales that would come a few years later in the action-adventure era.

There's one set-up phase involving meetings of mobsters and other necessary exposition that seemed to drag a bit to me, but otherwise the tale is tough and taut and a great experience.

It's truly a hidden gem recovered by Hard Case for contemporary readers after years of the book being out of print.

Impulse buy

The End of the Night by John D. MacDonald

The synopsis made me hesitate a bit. 

As a kid, I always had better luck finding John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books than in locating the non-series tales. I ran across A Bullet for Cinderella on a spinner rack while visiting relatives in Camden, Arkansas, but that was the exception.

The rest of the long list of non-series books you'd find in the front of McGee titles eluded me, though I was intrigued by titles such as One Monday We Killed Them All, The Last One Left and Dead Low Tide.

I've worked at acquiring the stand-alone books for a while now, right after my love for MacDonald's work was re-activated when I was living in Texas and ran across The Crossroads in a shop mostly devoted to collectible hardcovers.

When I stumbled on an article mentioning Stephen King's praise of The End of the Night (1960) recently, I was happy to find it was among MacDonald Bookmooch acquisitions waiting on my shelf. Then, as mentioned above: that synopsis.

"Four drug-crazed young sadists--a world of damage. Driven by random, violent lusts they could barely articulate and understand, they embarked on a cross-country terror spree that left a trail of victims in its wake."

I don't shy away from grim tales, but I wasn't sure it was what I was in the mood for a criminal-focused tale with dark results.

Still, I figured there must be something to King's assertion that it was "one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century." I cracked the cover and read the opening passage, a missive from a prison guard recounting the executions of said drug-crazed young sadists.

That's a bold opening move, telling us how things end before falling back to reveal how events converged to drive everything to that point. I kept reading and discovered the piece never lacked for suspense despite the early reveal.

I read on and was drawn in, because the MacDonald magic took over, mesmerizing with a collection of well-drawn characters plus trial memos, death house diary entries and outside accounts that reveal the dark happenstance that connect killers and victims.

Riker Deems Owen, attorney for the four, perhaps defending his courtroom loss, defines their relationships and prepares the way for a framing and engrossing account of Helen Wister, a young woman trying to let an infatuated suitor down as she plans for her marriage to another, a young architect.

Then we drop into the eloquent journal of Kirby Stassen, college dropout turned participant in the crime spree, and we learn of his long path from New York and brushes with show business to Acapulco and a misguided romance with an older woman that primed him for his soul-dead excursion with the Sander Golden who's manipulating brutish Robert Hernandez and Nanette Koslov. Perhaps his diary is too eloquent and perceptive for his years, but that's a bit of license worth granting this novel.

Once connected the four are dubbed the Wolf Pack by the press, and their spree gains national notoriety with reverberations of Charles Starkweather's spree and the Richard Hickcock/Perry Smith In Cold Blood murder case.

Stassen recounts their humiliation and murder of a tile salesman but chooses not to delve into even more brutal events in Nashville where even he admits things were woefully out of hand.

Objectively the story continues via a never-named narrator who details the FBI dragnet and the fateful encounter between Wister and the band, building toward a culmination and epilogue that reveals tiniest glimmer of affirmation.

Its power is in both its exploration of the random, circuitous paths that lead to destruction, and its glimpse into at least a part of what drives random killers even beyond drug-induced dissociation.

Given King's affection for the work and his friendship with and admiration for MacDonald, I suspect it was an influence on the complexly-structured It, which features an architect protagonist as well.)

The End of the Night is a dark ride, but I'm glad I pushed past the synopsis because it's not as nihilistic as the cover might suggest. Don't judge a book by it's back cover.

Impulse buy

Testament by David Morrell

I discovered David Morrell via the movie version of First Blood. A tie-in edition came out around the time of the release and soon after I found Blood Oath, new then and released in paperback with similar artwork.

I read somewhere that Testament was a really great thriller and found a nice copy of the 1975 Fawcett paperback edition at my go-to shop, The Book Nook.

The reviews from the cover, like this one, are correct:

"WARNING: Do not read this book alone -- or at night -- or with the doors unlocked." - Worcester Sunday Telegram. 

 It's a grim and relentless experience, a modern Western that builds to a brutal conclusion and a wrap-up that's heart-wrenching but appropriate.

Testament is the story of journalist Reuben Bourne, and we meet him as the first line foretells on "...the last morning the four of them would ever be together: the man and his wife, his daughter and his son."

The family cat's killed by poison, and Reuben quickly learns he's the target of a fanatic named Kess, a businessman heading a chemical and electronics company called Chemelec. (Speaking of milk, if you've never encountered Morrell's chilling short story "Dripping" seek it out in one of his collections or in Best American Noir of the Century.)

Kess is also the head of a militia-style organization, The Guardians of the Republic, a group with ties to many other similar shadowy groups whose numbers, when combined, he says rival that of the U.S. Marine Corps.

The group grew out of a hunting trip in which Kess and friends were accidentally fired on by another hunter. Surrounding the man, they taunted him and fired near misses for a day before relenting.

That's a chilling template for what's in store for Reuben and family.

In articles about militia groups following an interview granted by Kess, Reuben failed to deliver the expected puff piece, so Kess wants revenge.

After another family tragedy, Reuben realizes the authorities can't really help and plots an escape route across brutal Midwestern terrain and forest land. It's all before the internet we know now and long before things like Google Earth, so Reuben's reliant on maps and topographical charts.

That sets up one of the novel's coolest set pieces as he and his family discovered an undocumented ghost town with intact buildings and a surviving resident who offers a bit of aid and comfort.

Kess' men are never far behind, however, and Reuben's soon faced with more violence and a moral dilemma that builds to that conclusion I mentioned before.

It's a perfect thriller, a mature and sober excursion that's still an exciting read and still relevant.

Impulse buy here.

The Case of the Worried Waitress

I find Perry Mason is not quite a household name among my twentysomething students these days. That's a pity, though on the bright side, some of his cases seem to be available on Kindle, waiting to be discovered.

I picked up a late series entry recently, and it holds the same fast pace, circuitous plotting and curiosity-piquing situations that readers enjoyed for decades in Mason's heydey.

This tale appeared in print in 1966, right at the end of the Raymond Burr TV series run, so it seems to have escaped adaptation, but it still comes alive on the page today.

It's not Mason's greatest adventure. The courtroom scenes come late in the story in the form of  a preliminary hearing, but there are enough twists and puzzles along the way to keep things intriguing.

As is often true, things get rolling when Perry and his assistant Della Street go to lunch. The eatery manager warns that their waitress bought their table from another server. It's a practice when deployed when a big tipper's on hand and the waitress is likely to see some ROI.

The manager fears it's not a tip but Perry's legal expertise that's made him a desirable customer. That's exactly the situation with the title's Katherine Ellis.

Instead of turning her away, Perry, with his usual soft spot, arranges to hear her story for the cost of an over-tip.

Seems Katherine has just lost her father. She's in her early twenties and has had her comfortable lifestyle ripped away from her because dad wasn't a saver, hence her current position.

Hatboxes full of hundreds
She's moved to L.A. to live with her Aunt Sophia, who's a bit of a cipher. Aunt Sophie pinches pennies, seemingly broke after her "husband" died on a golf course and left all his money to his ex. Despite the penny pinching, Aunties takes costly cab rides to a local factory to hawk pencils at the gate. Oh, and she has hatboxes full of money in her closet. HATBOXES! It's 1966.

Uh, oh. Perry warns she's now in danger of being accused if that hatbox dough goes missing. He urges her to get out of the house immediately. That may seem a little extreme, but soon that's exactly what's happening. Aunt Sophia's gentleman friend's on hand to demand finger printing when not hundreds of thousands but a $100 bill goes missing. It's 1966 dammit, and Perry informs his private-eye-on-retainer Paul Drake that fingerprints can be lifted from cardboard hatboxes now.

Perry steps in to avoid the finger printing even though Aunt Sophie's beau has a private investigator of his own on hand. The guy's from a legitimate firm and not backing a lot of the shenanigans.

Paul's army
Deploying a small army of Paul Drake's nameless, faceless operatives on his own dime, Perry vows to get to the bottom of things to satisfy his own curiosity. Gardner had similar passions, so you can buy it. Perry's so famous he has to be loaded, and all he does is work.

The operatives turn up more strange behavior including a blind woman who trades off with Aunt Sophie on the pencil-selling gig, but before Perry can put things together the aunt's brained into a coma and Katy's charged with attempted murder, or something like that, because at just about the time of the subbing she went back to the house to pick up comfortable shoes. She's on her feet all day as a waitress.

Perry and Paul are soon staking out the aunt's residence, gathering more puzzling clues, running afoul of Lt. Tragg and executing Perry-level schemes to bring out the truth.

All of the odd elements eventually tie together, and Gardner wraps things up in his deft, professional way despite this being about seven or so books from the end of the series. It's not the best introduction to Perry and misses some of the nail-biting from earlier books in the series, but it's still fun and fast with tension and surprises.

Impulse buy? This one's not on Kindle at this writing, but browse Gardner titles here.

And at Open Library.

Tanner's Twelve Swingers

Signet edition

I'm a member of a Facebook group where people share photos of favorite books and acquisitions and discuss great books and stories from the past. Recently I posted a few Lawrence Block titles from my library including a few of the Evan Tanner Fawcett Gold Medal editions I acquired back in the day.

I used to read Block's column in Writer's Digest, and that often sent me out to my favorite used book store back then, The Book Nook in Alexandria, LA, to look for titles he mentioned. I was fortunate. This was the early eighties, and The Book Nook had been around a while and housed holdings stretching back into the '60s at least.

I found Two For Tanner, Tanner's Tiger and Here Comes a Hero there and loved the semi-comic action adventure the books offered, a product of the '60s, James Bond-inspired spy craze.

Later I acquired Jove re-issues of The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep, first in the series, and The Cancelled Czech and then the last book, Tanner on Ice, when it came out in 1998.

When I posted my collected pic, someone on Facebook noted Tanner's Twelve Swingers was his favorite, and it occurred to me I'd never sought it out though more re-issues had come along since my bachelor days when all of my disposable income could go to books.

What should I happen to run across when I was up in DeLand, FL, at my new favorite used bookstore, the Family Book Shop, but the Signet re-issue from 1994.

Fawcett Gold Medal edition

I'd love to find the original Fawcett edition, but for the moment it was a great find, and a great opportunity to rectify the deficiency in my Tanner reading.

My new favorite Tanner
I have to agree, it's now my favorite title too, kind of a perfect storm of Tanner elements, character, humor, offbeat politics and high adventure.

For the uninitiated, Tanner, who had the sleep center in his brain destroyed by shrapnel in Korea, never sleeps. He spends his time researching, reading and writing term papers and dissertations for lazy grad students. B plus guaranteed. And he has a passion for political lost causes that's drawn him peripherally into espionage work for a shadowy U.S. intelligence agency with a chief that thinks he works for them.

A complicated set of circumstances finds Tanner on the road as this tale begins. He's doing some border hopping through central Europe, on his way to Latvia to rescue the lost love of an old friend. Her name's Sofija, and he met her in 1964 at the Tokyo Olypmics where she competed as part of the Soviet Women's Gymnastics Troupe. It's the mid-sixties as the story unfolds.

A good portion of the tale unfolds on Tanner's journey up through Yugoslavia and Poland, traversing border fences and resting in the homes of acquaintances with similar political passions.

There's a great feel, even a warmth, to the little stops along the way including many revolutionaries and lone farm with an erudite and lonely young widow. All along the route Tanner acquires excess baggage including a Yugoslav polemicist and his manuscript who becomes a handy sidekick as the story unfolds.

Once in Latvia, Tanner discovers Sofija has a sister, and they have a horde of teammates who'd also like to escape from behind the Iron Curtain. (Block's original title for the book was The Lettish Tomatoes, since it followed the Cancelled Czech, but that title was changed by Fawcett.)

Everything in the tale sets up a challenging, rollicking and intricate finale as Tanner devises an exit strategy for the team along with assorted bits of microfilm, manuscripts, Chinese tracts and a young heir to a lost throne.

It's exciting, funny and a thrill-a-minute as plans fall apart and Tanner's forced to re-think his options. There's a payoff for just about everything mentioned in the book's setup as a new plan arises, and Block's enjoyable style and turn of phrase shine atop it all.

I'm late to this book, but it's great fun and a great taste of another era's leisure reading.

Impulse buy for Kindle