Review: "To Florida" by Robert Sampson

 

“To Florida” by Robert Sampson from Hard-Boiled ed. by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian Oxford, 1997   Robert Sampson is a name I’m unfamiliar with, but if his story, “To Florida”—originally published in 1987—is representative of his body of work, it’s a serious deficiency in my reading. “To Florida” is a marvelous piece of noir about a low-life named Jerry Teller. When Teller’s girlfriend, Sue Ann, walks into the couple’s apartment with an armload of groceries, Teller is counting a stack of cash and watching cartoons. Sue Ann asks him where the money came from and if they could pay Mr. Davidson, the landlord, since their rent is late again. Teller responds, “He gave me this.” Sue Ann is confused, a condition that’s natural for her, and her confusion only increases when she stumbles across Mr. Davidson’s corpse on the kitchen linoleum. Her confusion turns to excitement when Teller asks if she wants go to Florida with him, in their former landlord’s car (of course). Thus their journey begins with a dazzle of Bonnie and Clyde and a shiver of Natural Born Killers—but very much its own self from beginning to end. “To Florida” is a ride on a dark street with a single, and obvious, destination. Teller is a straight-up crazy f*ck and Sue Ann is—while not truly bad—a lost girl from a bad home with no possibilities and nowhere else to go. Sampson’s narrative is linear perfection with a tight, laconic prose, and a measured, suspense building, pace. While the plot goes where it’s expected, there are surprises along the way and even better, the open ending leaves a little something for the reader’s imagination. “To Florida” is the best short I’ve read so far this year and honestly, it will take something special to overtake it.

There’s not much about Robert Sampson on the internet. The introduction to the story in Hard-Boiled, written by Jack Adrian, tells us he was “fascinated by pulp magazines” and wrote seven books and “countless” articles about the pulps. Several of his articles were published by The Armchair Detective. Sampson wrote for radio and placed shorts with Planet Stories, Science Fiction Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction, the Weird Tales revival from the 1990s, and his story, “Rain in Pinton County”—published in New Black Mask—won the 1986 Edgar for best short story. Robert Sampson was born in 1927 and died in 1992.

ONE FOR HELL by Jada M. Davis

Stark House Press released a reprint of a 1952 Fawcett Red Seal original titled One for Hell written by Jada M. Davis back in 2010. Davis is a writer I wasn’t familiar with and after reading it, I really don’t know why. It is terrific and one of the best hardboiled noir tales I’ve read. It resembles the work of two pulp writers, W. L. Heath—particularly Violent Saturday—and Jim Thompson. It has the violence and dark shadows of Thompson and the sociology of secrets that Heath did so well.

Willa Ree is a drifter and a petty criminal riding the rails toward a small Texas boomtown. His plan is simple: fleece the town and move on. What happens is beyond Ree’s expectations. The town is a gold mine, and he just may stick around for a big score. 

One for Hell is pure entertainment. There isn’t a protagonist. The supporting cast, Willa Ree is the main player (and he’s pure bastard), come and go like visitors to an amusement park. One by one they ratchet the pressure on Ree until he is ready to break. And one by one Ree pushes them aside until he no longer can.

The plot is tight and woven with a sophistication of character, morality and corruption. The town has secrets—everyone has something to hide and Ree uses this underlying human weakness to his advantage. He culls his enemies from the herd and eliminates them. He has a girlfriend who is an arch-type of the flawed woman. She possesses strengths and the weaknesses alike, but she is mostly good.

The action is developed with an audacity that separates this novel from so many others of its type. There is a scene in the middle part of the novel that covers 18 pages that changed my view of what can be done with both violence and action in a prose story. It rolled like a freight train and changed Ree from a smalltime hoodlum to a big time psychopath. It was the crux of the story, the beginning of the end for Willa Ree, and the push that leads the reader into his twisted mind.

Everything works in One for Hell. From the plot to the characters to the psychology to the prose and it wraps itself together in a tight weave. Willa Ree spends much of his time trying to guess the actions and motives of other people and the internal dialogue is simple and interesting:

“Maybe the old woman knew. Or maybe she found it, though not likely. Baldy wasn’t a trusting sort of person, and she wouldn’t have guessed he had money in the first place. He sat on the trunk and surveyed the room. Pictures? Too simple.”

One for Hell is solid proof that Stark House is the best publishers of classic crime fiction going. 

This review was written in the long ago, and this is a slightly altered version.

SLAMMER by Allan Guthrie

Nick Glass is a rookie guard in a Scottish prison. He’s been on the job six weeks with bad results. The other guards make trouble for him and he’s not respected by the inmates. At home he has a five year old daughter and a wife. A wife who’s at the tail end of an affair and drinks more than she should. 

To make things worse Nick is approached by one of the inmates and asked to mule drugs inside the prison. The inmate gives Nick a couple options: mule the drugs and make an easy buck, or don’t mule the drugs and his little family gets hurt. Nick is in big trouble because neither choice is worth having, and ultimately both his life and his families lives are in danger. 

Slammer is the sort of novel that creeps up on you in a hurry. It starts hard and strong and never lets go. Glass is a regular guy caught in a nasty and impossible situation. He doesn’t belong in the prison, as a guard or anything else, because he’s a nice guy; weak and fear-filled. Nick, like his surname, is prone to fracture and Guthrie makes sure he does.

Reminiscent of Guthrie’s first novel Two-Way Split, but Slammer displays a higher skill set with a sharper execution. The prose is hardboiled, lean and smart. The dialogue crisp. The atmosphere weighty and oppressive. A fine example of the new noir: a hopeless, distraught and shameless (in a good way) vision of the human condition. 

THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES by Lawrence Block

Jay Walker “Doak” Miller is a retired NYPD detective. He left the job for sunny small town Florida supplementing his pension as a part-time private investigator; performing background checks, routine insurance inquiries, and every so often undercover work for the local Sheriff’s office, which is where the story begins.

The wife of a wealthy businessman, looking to hire her husband killed, was fingered by a small time crook. The Sheriff wants Doak to revive his Jersey accent and play the part of hitman; get it on tape, and accept a $1,000 down payment. Doak readily agrees until he sees the woman, and calls everything off. The problem, he doesn’t tell the Sheriff, and he coaches the woman exactly what to say for the tape.

The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes is challenging. It is short, written with Mr. Block’s usual literate, stark flair, and remarkably complicated. It is third person from Doak’s perspective, but has the feel of first. It is Doak Miller’s story, and intimately told. There is some cheating—the girl’s (the one with the deep blue eyes) backstory is told in narrative disguised as dialogue, but it works.

The challenge is the novel’s lack of morality, or more precisely, Doak’s lack of morality. He is devious, criminal, selfish, and, as the novel develops and Doak’s character is revealed, it is clear he is a man fallen, rather than falling. His destruction is self-inflicted, and the woman is the tool he chooses to use. It is a cock-eyed version of the film Double Indemnity; here the man is predator and the woman his willing playmate.

The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes admirably plays off the old black and white film noir without losing its own identity and interest. Its plotting is disturbingly good. Nothing is out of place or unresolved. There is a heavy dose of erotica, and not a single likable character. It is both familiar, and new—

“‘That’s the movies,’ she said. ‘This is life.’”



This review was written for Ed Gorman’s blog and went live on September 15, 2015. I have a few projects going right now, which have been keeping me away from the blog more than I like, but I hope to have some original material soon.

SLAMMER by Allan Guthrie

Nick Glass is a rookie prison guard in a Scottish prison.  He has been on the job six weeks with mixed results—the other guards mock and make trouble for him and the inmates don’t respect him.  At home he has a five-year old daughter and wife.  His wife tends to drink too much, and is just on the backside of an affair.  To say Nick has a little stress is an understatement.

To make things worse Nick is approached by one of the inmates and asked to mule drugs inside.  The inmate gives him two choices: 1) make an easy buck; or 2) his little family gets hurt in a big way.  Nick is in big trouble as he desperately tries to protect his family at home and his own life at work.

Slammer is the sort of novel that creeps up on you in about three pages.  It starts hard and strong and never lets up.  Glass is a regular guy caught in a nasty and impossible situation.  He doesn’t belong in the prison.  He is a nice guy, both weak and sincere.  He, much like his name, is prone to fracture.  And Guthrie makes sure Glass does just that.

The novel opens with Glass in the office of the prison psychiatrist.  It is a mandatory visit and Nick is less than pleased to be there.  The psychiatrist is an instrument Mr Guthrie uses to foreshadow and then define the undoing of Nick.  He is a skewed sentiment of sanity in a dark and insane world.  A world that envelopes Nick and threatens to destroy him.  And Nick is the perfect object—he is prone to fantasy, and as the novel progresses, he begins to mistake his fantasy for reality.  It is a trip into hell.  A trip the reader knows is coming with each progressive sentence, paragraph and page, but is helpless to stop.

Slammer is a wonderfully executed novel.  It is reminiscent of Guthrie’s first novel Two-Way Split, but its execution is better (amazingly).  It is short, 263 pages, but it does not lack meaning or story.  The prose is hardboiled, lean and smart.  The dialogue is crisp, and the atmosphere is weighty and oppressive.  It is a fine example of the new noir: a hopeless, distraught and shameless (in a good way) vision of the human condition.

This is an encore post.  It originally went live on November 23,2009.

"The Plunge" by David Goodis

I recently read Dark Passage by David Goodis and really enjoyed it.  It is a novel where everything works.  It is plot controlled, but the characters are given just enough room to be interesting, and the atmosphere vibrates between something close to despair and almost, but not quite, hope.  When I finished I had the sharp desire to flip back to page one and start again.  Instead I dug out a David Goodis’ short story I read a few years ago titled “The Plunge” and reread it.  It was better this time than the last, and rather than satisfy my urge to reread Dark Passage, it made the itch more demanding.   

The following review originally appeared in 2009, and be warned it is a spoiler.

David Goodis is a writer that every hardboiled reader should know.  His work is dark—about as dark as you will ever read—heavy and literate.  It is often difficult to differentiate between the good and the bad, and the tales are drenched with a self-loathing that gives the stories a deep and sinister glimpse into the darkness of the human condition.

His short story “The Plunge” is one of his best, and a perfect example of what Goodis did well—create men who are, for the most part, good and then twist their world just enough to push them out of bounds into waiting darkness.

Roy Childers is a clean cop in a corrupt department.  He has risen through the ranks quickly; he is a homicide lieutenant with a bright future.  He has four children and another on the way.  His wife loves him and he seemingly loves his wife, but that isn’t enough for Roy.  He doesn’t consciously understand that he wants more, but he does.

His world begins its slow descent when a warehouse is taken down for $15,000.  The robber killed one security guard and blinded the other. It is a trademark Dice Nolan score.  Dice is a man whom Childers has a special connection; they grew up on the same street and Roy has put him behind bars more than once.  Now Childers wants to take Nolan down one last time, but he isn’t ready for what happens.  Nolan has something Roy wants and it will be his undoing.

“The Plunge” is a brutal story.  It chronicles the unwinding of a man.  A man who seemingly has everything.  A man who is better than his end.  And a man who should know better. It is literate and the prose is pitch-perfect:

“Seven out of ten are slobs; he was thinking.  There was no malice or disdain in the thought.  It was more a mixture of pity and regret.  And that made it somewhat sickening, for he was referring specifically to the other men who wore badges, he fellow-policemen.  More specifically he was thinking of the nine plainclothesmen attached to the Vice Squad.  Only yesterday they’d been caught with their palms out, hauled in before the Commissioner, and called all sorts of names before they were suspended.”

The story opens in normal enough fashion.  The protagonist is a cop who wants to find a murderer.  There is even something special and personal about this particular criminal, but Mr Goodis takes the premise and smudges it with his own recipe.  He marks it with weakness and greed.  He takes a good and strong man and chops him down with life, fear, and hunger.

The best part is, he does it all without ever losing his grip on the story or its impact on the reader.  He makes it interesting and entertaining from beginning to end.  He builds a path into darkness and then shows the reader the way out—a cleansing, but a rather messy and permanent one.

“The Plunge” originally appeared in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine October 1958. I read it in A Century of Noir edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins.

THE MIDNIGHT ROOM by Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman posted on his blog yesterday that his terrific novel The Midnight Room is available as an eBook for a very reasonable $3.99.  I read The Midnight Room when it was released in mass market by Leisure back in 2009; 18 or so months before Leisure's very sordid demise.  The Midnight Room is in my top five favorite list of of Ed Gorman's work, which makes it a damn fine novel.  It is currently only available for the Kindle, but I hope it will follow as a Nook Book.  Do yourself a favor, and buy this one.  The review below originally went live June 24, 2009.

Cindy Baines is a cute girl. She is the daughter of less than accomplished parents—her mother is a drinker, and her dad is a fundamentalist whack. They live in a trailer on the wrong side of town, but despite everything she seems to have a bright future. She is intelligent, beautiful, and very well liked. Unfortunately she is also the target of a demented serial killer.

When Cindy disappears the community is in near panic; Cindy isn’t the first girl to disappear and everyone is afraid she won’t be the last. There is a heavy load of pressure placed on the police department—particularly its small detective bureau—to find the girl and stop the killer. The detectives assigned to the case all have their own problems. Two of them are former lovers, and the third drinks too much and is a little crazy.

The Midnight Room isn’t a typical serial killer novel. The killer is revealed early in the story—the second chapter—and its focus is less on the killer and more on the drama that plays between the detectives, their work, and their families. It’s important to stress that it isn’t a drama. It’s very much in the crime noir form and Mr Gorman uses the tropes and expectations to develop the dark, sharp and poignant struggle of good and evil that rages in his characters, just as it rages in us all.

The characters are varied and well created—none are completely good and none are completely bad. Two of the detectives are brothers—Steve and Michael Scanlon. The older is their father’s favorite, but he has never been quite right. He wants everything fast and easy, while the younger is the more dependable, but underappreciated, son and detective. The story whirls around the two in a frenzy of misfortune, bad choices, and plain bad luck.

There is also a street tough ex-con named Leo Rice who is out for revenge. Steve Scanlon killed his brother while on the beat a few years back and now Leo wants his pound. Rice is the perfect street tough. He is hard, violent and stupid, all in one pure mixture. Add to that the serial killer, an aging father, a tough female detective and a missing girl who are all starkly vivid in Gorman’s deceptively simple prose, and you have a story that is vibrant and true.

The Midnight Room is a terrific lean and hard crime thriller. Its roots are deep in the hardboiled and noir genres, but it is nothing less than original. The characters and its dark vision of an unfair world raise it well beyond the expected, and in the end it’s the very bitter dark that offers redemption for both the characters and the reader.

Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective

I stumbled across two Nameless titles by Bill Pronzini recently published by Cemetery Dance in hardcover.  They are advertised as novellas, and one is a reprint and the other is an original.  The cover art is beautiful.  The titles are: Kinsmen, and Femme.

Kinsmen.  This is the reprint.  The cover art is by Glen Orbik. It is listed as "in stock" with a publishing date of December 28, 2012 at Cemetery Dance's website, but is listed for pre-order at Amazon.  The page count is 192.  The CD description reads:

"Allison Shay was traveling home from the University of Oregon with her new boyfriend, Rob Compton, when their car broke down near the tiny rural town of Creekside, California. Soon after, Allison and Rob went missing without a trace

"Whatever happened, it felt like something bad to the Nameless Detective. Five days without a whisper of contact with the outside world. Long past the inconsiderate-kids stage; long past the silly and the harmless."

Femme.  This is an original.  It has a page count of 176.  The cover art is by Glen Orbik.  Similar to Kinsmen, it is listed as "in stock" at the publisher's website, but is still a pre-order at Amazon.   The CD description reads:

"You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection with noir fiction and film noir. But they're not just products of literature or film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society, too. The genuine femme fatales you hear about now and then are every bit as evil as the fictional variety. Yet what sets them apart is that they're the failures, the ones who for one reason or another got caught. For every one of those, there must be several times as many who get away with their destructive crimes...

"In the thirty years the Nameless Detective has been a private investigator, he has never once had the misfortune to cross paths with this type of seductress... but in Femme he'll meet Cory Beckett, a deadly woman who has brought some new angles to the species. New—and terrible."  

These novellas seem to be a departure from CD's usual fare, along with its recent release of The Interregator and Other Criminally Good Fiction anthology, of horror and dark suspense.  A departure maybe, but these are both titles I am very interested in, and I hope they do well for both Pronzini and CD so we can look forward to more like these.       

ONE FOR HELL by Jada M. Davis

Stark House Press released a reprint of a 1952 Fawcett Red Seal original titled One for Hell written by Jada M. Davis back in 2010.  Davis is a writer I wasn’t familiar with and after reading it, I really don’t know why.  It is terrific and one of the best hardboiled noir tales I’ve read.  It resembles the work of two pulp writers, W. L. Heath—particularly Violent Saturday—and Jim Thompson.  It has the violence and dark shadows of Thompson and the sociology of secrets that Heath did so well.

Willa Ree is a drifter and a petty criminal.  The novel opens with Ree riding the rails toward a small Texas boomtown. His plan is simple: fleece the town and move on.  What happens is beyond Ree’s expectations and the town looks better to him by the minute.

One for Hell is pure entertainment.  There isn’t a protagonist.  The supporting cast, Willa Ree is the main player, come and go like visitors to an amusement park.  One by one they ratchet the pressure on Ree until he is ready to break.  And one by one Ree pushes them aside until he no longer has the ability.

The plot is tight and woven with a sophistication of character, morality and corruption.  The town has secrets—everyone has something to hide and Ree uses this underlying human weakness to his advantage.  He culls his enemies, the weaker ones first, from the herd and eliminates them. He has a girlfriend who is an arch-type, flawed at that, of woman.  She has all the strengths and the weaknesses and most are both—a desire to trust, to love and believe.  She is the light of the story and the hope.

The action is developed with a solidity and audacity that separates this novel from so many others of its type.  There is a scene in the middle part of the novel that covers 18 pages that changed my view of what can be done with both violence and action in a prose story.  It rolled like a freight train in the dark hard night.  It changed Ree from a smalltime hoodlum to a big time psychopath. It was the crux of the story, the beginning of the end for Willa Ree, and the push that leads the reader into his twisted mind.

There really isn’t anything flat in One for Hell.  Everything works.  From the plot to the characters to the psychology to the prose and it wraps itself together without the reader really knowing that it is happening.  Willa Ree spends much of his time trying to guess the actions and motives of other people and the internal dialogue is simple and interesting:

“Maybe the old woman knew. Or maybe she found it, though not likely. Baldy wasn’t a trusting sort of person, and she wouldn’t have guessed he had money in the first place. He sat on the trunk and surveyed the room. Pictures? Too simple.”

One for Hell is proof that Stark House is one of the best publishers of classic crime fiction.  This, like all of its releases, is still fresh and vibrant all these years later and it is going to be on my bookshelf for a very long time.