Devil on Two Sticks by Wade Miller

Wade Miller is the pseudonym for co-authors Bob Wade and Bill Miller. The pair first came to my attention by another pen name they used of Whit Masterson. Badge of Evil (1954) by Masterson is the novel that Orson Welles’s film Touch of Evil is based upon. While searching for that novel, I stumbled across the Wade Miller name. Devil on Two Sticks published in 1949 and reprinted in 1950 under the title of Killer’s Choice. The 2008 version I obtained was from Stark House and contained an extra novel by the duo called The Killer (1951).

Beck is a snappy dresser complete with pastel sweaters, tweed suits, and a perfectly tied bow tie. He drives an expensive coupe and parks the car where he can always see it. He moves in an almost mechanical precision for his crime syndicate boss named Pat Garland. On his off time, Beck’s a lady’s man and has a fling with his boss’s wife. Meanwhile, a young woman, named Marcy Everett, which he met right before a raid one of the syndicate’s gambling houses, distracts Beck.

Released from jail with the aid of the syndicate’s new lawyer J.J. Everett, Garland calls Beck into action to expose a mole for the Attorney General that has breached their inner circle. Exposed details of the syndicate’s criminal operations single-out a select group of individuals. Beck gathers the data and inputs his list of suspects into his memory banks to process. As the suspects are investigated, one syndicate member is found dead and another looks highly suspicious. Beck’s intuition fingers Harvey Isham for the mole and Garland orders his elimination; a mistake that causes the Circle’s inner trust to break.

As a lead character, Beck is not exactly amiable. He’s very stiff. He doesn’t quip the wise cracks or flash his gun, in fact, he doesn’t even carry a gun. The majority of his emotions remain internalized and surface only when necessary. Beck is very clean and organized except when something disrupts his everyday patterns. Beck is the Devil on Two Sticks caught between the two sides of his life, which Beck literally demonstrates in the novel at a dinner party with a toy diabolo. However, torn by his professionalism and his emotions for Marcy Everett, Beck soon realizes that either direction will have severe consequences.

Devil on Two Sticks is not action packed, but its not without its share of exciting moments. Particularly, a chase in the dark of a funeral home was well paced and suspenseful. I was expecting a straightforward crime novel, but there’s much more underneath the surface of this existentialist crime novel than I expected. The writing is very mechanical and emotionless. In retrospect, this may have been the author’s intent because the writing style interlocks with Beck’s characteristics too. Everything is logical and precise clockwork, which created a stilted reading experience. In that respect, the ending is unsatisfying but is correct and works for the story. The novel also has a touch of redemption at the end. Beck chooses to walk away without completing his assignment to prove that love can change a person.

Perfidia by James Ellroy

James Ellroy’s Perfidia is quite an undertaking, not only for the reader, but also for its shear scope of Los Angeles history. The first of a new quartet of novels that spans the war years of 1941 to 1946 in America leading up to the events in the original L.A. Quartet that consists of TheBlack Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. The novel also connects with Ellroy’s most recent work, dubbed the Underworld USA Trilogy, consisting of American Tabloid, Blood’s A Rover, and The Cold Six Thousand. Overall his cannon of work unveils a fictitious, dark and hidden history of the Los Angeles police force that works its way into the FBI and finally into the political landscape of the 1960’s and early 70’s.

Admittedly, I was intimidated by tackling such an expansive book coupled with the fact that it’s been many years since I’ve read the original quartet. However, my fears quickly vaporized once I remembered that I was in the hands of a master crime writer. Personally, I think Ellroy is a true successor to Hammett and Chandler in the ways that the authors re-create the hard-boiled criminal underworld with acute vernacular and criminal intent. What is interesting about Ellroy’s style is that it is not merely an imitation of Hammett or Chandler’s work, but an entirely new beast of hard-boiled tough-guy detectives that surpasses Spade, Marlowe, or even the entire Continental Op. This is the next wave of crime writing and it’s exciting because Ellroy is still alive and kicking.

The inciting incident and backdrop of the novel is an investigation into a Japanese family’s ritualistic suicide called seppuku; however, homicide is quickly determined after the investigation reveals key elements that don’t fit in with the ritual. More importantly, this family’s slaying happens on the eve of Pearl Harbor’s bombing which causes resentment, violence, and riots in Los Angeles against Asian minorities. Sadly, the Los Angeles population has trouble distinguishing between the Chinese and Japanese races. Also, in question is whether the murdered family had prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor’s attack due to the presumed suicide note found at the scene of the crime.

Soon after the attack, the L.A.P.D begins to round up questionable Japanese residents into holding cells and work farms. A subplot emerges about farmlands bought for commercial development, but until the war is over, the land becomes Japanese prison camps for monetary gain. A surge of patriotism causes both civilians and the police force to enlist into the armed forces. This action causes a hardship for the Police Department losing many of their best men and potential cadets to the war.

Employed by the L.A.P.D. is police chemist Hideo Ashida, the Department’s sole Japanese employee. Frustrated by being the only Asian minority on the force and hampered by his closet homosexuality, Ashida works hard to keep his position on the force and preventing his family’s detainment in a war camp. Ashida’s commanding officers, Sergeant Dudley Smith and Captain William Parker (Whiskey Bill), quickly recognize his resourcefulness and begin to use him to promote each of their own questionable agendas.

Dudley Smith is both brilliant and sinister. Capable of seducing his prey into unsuspected collaboration and astonishing acts of violence while at the same time manipulating multiple police investigations to his advantage. His acts are incorrigible and, at times, highly intelligent, but motivated by the need for solutions, regardless if they are the correct ones. Before New Year’s Eve, City Hall demands a resolution that the family’s murderer be Japanese, perpetuating a Japanese on Japanese crime that justifies the acts against L.A.’s Japanese population. Therefore, Dudley works to find a Japanese killer. Dudley’s web of deceit is so intricate that the character creates a coded chart in his office so that he can keep track of all his deeds. Meanwhile, Dudley tries to maintain an affair with the one and only Bette Davis.

On the other hand, Whiskey Bill Parker thrives on political career moves that edge him towards the Police Chief’s desk. His hard drinking and public spousal abuse blemish his reputation. Parker entraps a young woman named Kay Lake whose estranged marriage to the department’s Lee Blanchard connects her back with suspected criminal activities within the police force. Her previous testimony has kept Lee Blanchard out of trouble. She and Hideo Ashida also share a mutual affection for a recent police enrollee Bucky Bleichert. Kay willingly partakes in the adventure of a lifetime to oust and infiltrate social-lite communist Claire De Haven’s camp. De Haven, aka The Red Queen and her party are in the process of publishing anti-propaganda tracts against the Los Angeles police department exposing the brutality against the Japanese minorities. Eventually, Parker’s motivation for ousting De Haven becomes confused with his obsession for Kay. Likewise, Dudley’s obsession for Bette Davis causes catastrophic events too.

As different sides of the same coin, Dudley and Parker’s characters clash and complement each other nicely. Similarly, both Kay Lake and Hideo Ashida are pawns in a deadly game where no one is innocent of anything. Every character has something concealed. To whom to swear their allegiance is constantly blurred and continuously shifty. Eventually, every character questions how their role will play out in the bigger picture, which is precisely the point Ellroy makes with Perfidia: don’t sweat the small stuff because in the end it does not matter. When the murder mystery becomes unveiled, the dark manipulations of all the characters and the police force, paired with the declaration of war, manage to place the actual truth on hold. The murderer remains protected by the course of history. To the Mayor’s office and the higher echelons in the department, the true guilty party does not matter as long as the right person burns for the job. History will move on regardless of the outcome. Orchestration of events can happen anyway that you want them to. Which is exactly what Ellroy has done inside his Los Angeles universe mixing true historical characters and events with fictional ones; concocting resolutions that suggest the truths about the Los Angeles police world.

Ellroy’s universe works beautifully. The power of this novel rests in Ellroy’s ability to write economically and efficiently. I don’t want to fool anyone by my meager attempt at summarizing the plot; every cog in this wheel seems meticulously greased. Elloy’s work deserves, or rather demands, consumption.

Compliments of a Fiend by Fredric Brown

First off, my discovery of Fredric Brown stems from the unauthorized adaptation of his 1949 novel The Screaming Mimi. That film was Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1969). It was an international success and a defining example of the Giallo mystery subgenre. 

The giallo-film is a highly stylized type of murder mystery or crime film that usually places a strong emphasis on the violent and sexual aspects of the story. The giallo-film stems from Italian publisher Mondadori’s set of pulp paperbacks with yellow covers hence the name “giallo”. Since the study of the giallo-film leads to the Italian giallo paperbacks, the Italian paperbacks naturally lead to American crime fiction of the early and mid- 20^th Century. Translated into Italian, many American crime authors had books published in the giallo paperback series. Therefore, my love for the Italian genre film, called the giallo, has metamorphosed into my love of American crime novels.

Anyway, a long story short, I know, too late; I first tried to track down Fredric Brown’s novel The Screaming Mimi. I quickly found out it is out of print along with the majority of Brown’s work. My first copy of the text was a bootleg. I read it and enjoyed it quite a bit. Furthermore, I’ve always kept an eye out for any of Brown’s novels, and just recently, I stumbled onto a private collection sold to Rhino booksellers. Now, after enjoying The Screaming Mimi, I’m digging into the rest of Brown’s work for the first time and in publication order.

Compliments of a Fiend (1950) was the fourth novel in Brown’s detective series featuring Am and Ed Hunter. As stated above, reading the novels in order I am able to see the progression of a much larger story arc that details the establishment of the Hunter and Hunter Detective Agency. In the first novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), Ed Hunter stays under Uncle Ambrose’s guidance after his father is murdered. They work together to solve the crime. Ambrose, who has had experience as a detective, works at a Carny and eventually takes Ed, in the subsequent books The Dead Ringer (1948) and The Bloody Moonlight (1949), into the Carny life until they decide to venture out into the world of private cops. Prior to starting their own agency, the Hunters work for the Starlock Dectective Agency and this is where Compliments of a Fiend begins.

Brown’s premise for this novel, inspired by Charles Fort’s work Wild Talents (1932), surmises that after two notable people named Ambrose, Ambrose Bierce and Ambrose Small, disappear under mysterious circumstances that a strange Ambrose Collector must be at work. Strangely enough, Uncle Ambrose doesn’t return home from a job after a man named “Collector” calls and specifically asks for Uncle Am. So begins, Ed’s adventure retracing his Uncle’s steps with the help of their boss, Starlock, and a former carnival burlesque dancer, Estelle. Along the way, we discover a multitude of suspects including a low rent psychic, an amateur photographer, a low life car skip, a crime boss and his menacing henchman. Only Ed is able to tie all the loose ends together to discover what has really happened to his Uncle (and mentor) Am. Only Ed can figure out if a fiend is actually collecting people with the first name of Ambrose.

Brown’s writing is consistently clean and straightforward with a sense of humor. There are a few suggestions of the supernatural to keep things mysterious and light. As I continue to read his work, I am constantly surprised at how well his stories hold up. I also have quite a few of his novels lined up to read this year, so I will continue to log them into my journal entries. McMillian Press published several collections of Brown’s short fiction a few years back, but sadly, those have gone out of print and are collecting enormous sums on the collector’s market (I guess those puns were intending since the book was about collecting). Also available, an omnibus of the first four Ed and Am Hunter novels, published in 2002, by Stewart Masters Publishing that isn’t too hard to find.

Deliver Me From Dallas – by Charles Willeford

Very few authors seemingly entertain and captivate as effortlessly as Charles Willeford. His hard-boiled style mixes humor and violence while exploring characters and plots that are at once familiar and completely new. My first knowledge of Willeford came about through the film Miami Blues (1988). Hoke Moseley, our protagonist, is a gruff homicide detective that loses his dentures. Naturally, this was right up my alley and appealed to my sense of humor. However, I wasn’t the only one that enjoyed Willeford’s characters. With the popularity of the Hoke Moseley series, Willeford’s career received a twilight boost. Suddenly, all of his older work, including his pulp novels dating back to 1953, became instant hard-to-find expensive collector’s items. Now, I freely admit that I am always late to the game in finding cool authors and great books. I discovered my love of Willeford’s books within the last five years. It wasn’t until I set about tracking down his work on the used bookstore scene, with some luck, that I was able to digest his older works.

The latest addition to my library is Deliver Me From Dallas, originally published under the title The Whip Hand in 1962 by Gold Medal, and under the name W. Franklin Sanders. McMillan Press published this edition in 2001. In the introduction by Jesse Sublett, The Whip Hand was relatively easy to track down on the used market until Willeford’s name connected to it. In fact, Sublett thought that W. Franklin Sanders was a pseudonym, but it turns out that he was an actual person and did indeed provide some input into the construction of the novel. The Gold Medal paperback version fetches $200 or more on the collector’s market and practically impossible to find in good shape, while the McMillan version is hard to find but can be more affordably purchased. There are also subtle differences between the two publications. It appears that McMillan Publication’s version stems from an early draft discovered among Willeford’s personal artifacts after his death in 1988.

The story begins with a Los Angeles police officer, Bill Brown, on the run from his traffic-cop duties blunder involving an assault on a smart-aleck motorist. On the lam in Dallas, Brown stumbles onto a kidnapping scheme gone wrong by a trio of bumbling, violent con men. Determined to right himself with the Los Angeles police force, he sets out to solve the case but manages to get deeper into trouble when it turns out the kidnappers have murdered a child and kept the ransom money. Eventually, justice, served Texas-style, comes with a whip.

What strikes me about the novel is the juxtaposition of humor and violence. A tone that brings to mind the Coen Brothers’ crime films such as Blood Simple, Fargo, and even the zany Raising Arizona. My favorite scene involves a hungry kidnapper scoping out the carnival hot dogs only to find one pugnaciously rammed into his face by Bill Brown. The dopey kidnapper brothers, one named Junior and the other Donald, interact in such hick-comedic ways, the dialect written spot-on, it is hard not to think the novel was a comic caper. However, the tone shifts radically with vicious violence. Junior goads Donald into believing that the parents of their 6-year old kidnap victim will find her safe and then sneaks her into the bathroom and kills her. The kidnapped victim’s father uses a whip to extract his gruesome revenge on Donald who ultimately had little to do with kidnapping scheme or her death. Likewise, Bill Brown has a temper that explodes from the slightest provocation; hence, his speedy departure from his traffic duties in Los Angeles, which, in turn, were punishment from a previous outburst.

I cannot recommend this novel enough and if you are able to track it down on the collector’s market, it is worth it. After reading this novel, I promptly searched for other Willeford titles not in my collection. I found Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, another McMillan Press reprint that sits quietly and awaits for me to pull it off the shelf and open it.

I Wake Up Screaming by Steve Fisher

Steve Fisher’s I Wake Up Screaming (1940 and revised in 1960) is a novel that has been on my shelf for a while. I’ve always looked at it with a curiosity, but never felt compelled to peel it open and digest it. It contains all of my favorite elements in a good crime novel: lust, murder, mystery, and Hollywood. Therefore, the reasons for my disinterest in reading it sooner are a mystery to me! I finally solved that problem when I broke down and read it this year.

The Hollywood scene for a writer was quite different from that of an actor and Fisher’s story opens up the production offices of a Hollywood studio. Our young fresh writer attempts to engage with the lovely secretary, Vicky Lynn, who no one in the office seems able to crack open beyond the cordial work environment. He succeeds by proposing an opportunity to brainstorm on story ideas. In a reasonably short amount of time, he’s able to do the “impossible” when a romantic relationship is established; and gradually, a decision is made to convince his associates at the studio to back Vicky Lynn into becoming a silver-screen starlet. She’s then promptly run through the publicity machine and given a completely new identity including a “public” relationship with a leading man. Everyone seems obsessed with the manufactured Vicky Lynn. Jealously spirals out of control; and soon, she winds up dead in her apartment.

Suddenly, motives for her death start to turn up in the form of investments, insurance policies, rivals, and contemptuousness. Our protagonist avoids suspicion for the murder at first, but it isn’t long before a homicide detective, Ed Cornell, starts twisting the screws in his coffin. Ed Cornell’s obsession with pinning the murder on our narrator, regardless of the evidence, centers on revenge. Cornell demonstrates a very high level of fixation on, not only, solving the case, but on the avengement of Vicky Lynn. His reputation is on the line.

Cornell’s character is engaging enough despite the fact the detective angle plays out in the background. Most importantly, he’s never been wrong on a case. I can feel threads of James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet universe. For example, The Black Dahlia’s character Bucky Bleichert and his obsession for Elizabeth Short after her death (Black Dahlia is also set in and around Hollywood in the 1940’s) and Captain Dudley Smith’s corrupt law enforcement style that is both wicked and immoral; and yet, manages to maintain a high-ranking position in a public office.

Considered one of the earliest examples of film noir the film version of I Wake Up Screaming (1941) starred Victor Mature. In the novel, written in the first person singular, I was unable to site a reference to the protagonist’s name; but in the movie, Mature plays the lead as Frankie Christopher. The novel’s bleak, downward spiraling plot does offer a point of redemption at the end. I’m not sure that I like the redemption angle, because it feels that a happy-ending tacked on, although, I was completely satisfied as a reader with the resolution of the mystery.