The ARGOSY LIBRARY rolls on

It's great to see Adams' first Rex McBride novel back in print. The cover art is from my copy of Detective Fiction Weekly, featuring part 1 of the serialization.

Forgotten Books: The Crooking Finger by Cleve F. Adams

 

It’s been a while since I read Cleve F. Adams, so I decided to soldier on with the Rex McBride series. The Crooking Finger is the fifth, and the last of the true McBride novels, the others being Sabotage, And Sudden Death, Decoy and Up Jumped the Devil, all former FFBs. One posthumous McBride novel, Shady Lady, was published as half of an Ace Double, but it was actually a non-McBride pulp story expanded by Robert Leslie Bellem.

In a comment over on Mystery*File, David L. Vineyard once said that Adams used the plot of Red Harvest several times. I hadn’t noticed that on first reading, but have been looking for it since, and The Crooking Finger, from 1944, was one of those times.

The action takes place in a Nevada gambling town called San Gorgonio, that could be based on Reno. As in the Hammett masterpiece, our hero is up against two factions battling for control of the town. He also meets a femme fatale clearly based on Red Harvest’s Dinah Brand. McBride’s plan is to “dynamite” the situation by setting them at each others’ throats. Unlike Hammett’s Op, he’s not interested so much in cleaning up the town as in nailing the person who killed his friend and getting himself and his inamorata, Miss Kay Ford, out from under the trouble he causes.

Overall, McBride is more subdued here than in earlier novels. He only gets drunk once, is less preoccupied with proving himself a heel, and does not adopt a hard-drinking palooka as partner in anti-crime. If you’re new to Adams, I’d say The Crooking Finger is not the place to start. Instead, go with Sabotage (Adams’ first mining of the Red Harvest theme), and it’s direct sequel, And Sudden Death.

Though this is the last true McBride book, it’s not the end of Adams. There are six other genuine Adams novels and four collaborations, including the aforementioned Shady Lady. I have a lot more re-reading to do.

Forgotten Books: UP JUMPED THE DEVIL by Cleve F. Adams

Remember Rex McBride? He debuted in Sabotage (1940) and returned in And Sudden Death (1940) and Decoy (1940), all previously featured as Forgotten Books.

This fourth volume of the series, from 1943, boasts the coolest title, lending itself to some of the coolest artwork. Why then, when Signet reprinted the book in 1950, did they retitle it Murder All Over? Beats me! (BTW, beware of the Handi-Books edition. It's abridged.)

Reading Cleve F. Adams is always a joy. My brain slides right into the familiar rhythm of his prose and the jaded attitudes of his heroes. In Up Jumped the Devil, Rex is in San Francisco on the trail of a fabulous string of diamonds known as the Adelphi necklace. It’s gone missing, and the company that insured it for a hundred grand has hired Rex to get it back.

He’s up against the fatcat owner, a Cesar Romero lookalike sniffing around the owner’s wife and adopted daughter, a dirty cop who hates his guts, an unscrupulous diamond dealer, a gambling den magnate and an assortment of small time hoods and grifters. And just to make things tougher, the FBI is using him as a stalking horse in their investigation of sabotaged war plants on the West Coast.

For this one, Adams employed the art of “cannibalization” made famous by his friend Raymond Chandler. The first third of the book began life as the novelette “Exodus” in the Jan. 13, 1940 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly. In the story, the detective is a McBride clone named Regan. Some of the supporting cast retained their names in the novel, while others were rechristened. That same issue of the mag featured Part 5 of the 6-part Rex McBride serial published later that year as And Sudden Death. While "Exodus" later proved to be a fine title for a movie - and a great Bob Marley song - I consider "Up Jumped the Devil" a big improvement.

If you haven’t read Adams, the first two pages of “Exodus” (below) will give you a good taste.

On this reading, the character of Rex McBride struck an extra chord, and I got the possibly crackpot notion that John Sandford, author of the Prey series, might be a Cleve F. Adams fan. Like McBride, Sandford’s hero Lucas Davenport is dark complexioned, a fancy dresser and a womanizer. Both like to spend money on themselves, both have quick, violent tempers, and both have contacts at all levels of society. How about it, Mr. S? Is Lucas is Rex’s nephew?

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Crave more Adams? I posted scans the complete short story "Jigsaw" right HERE.

For links to more Forgotten Books from the usual suspects, visit pattinase. 

Forgotten Books: DECOY by Cleve F. Adams

Decoy, published in 1941, is the third book in the Rex McBride series, and also Cleve F. Adams’ third novel. I reviewed the first two, Sabotage and And Sudden Death in earlier Forgotten Books posts, and invite you to take a look.

Decoy picks up shortly after the events in And Sudden Death, in which McBride foiled a pre-war plot by Japanese agents. Rex is throwing an extravagant party at a fancy hotel to spend some of dough he made on the previous job. That’s when his usual employers, the execs of an insurance company, come begging him to take on a new case.

Three commercial airliners have crashed (one burning with all passengers) and the insurance companies are taking it in the shorts. When a fourth plane vanishes completely, they come begging McBride to save them. McBride tells them to go to hell until he learns that another insurance investigator - a man he likes - has also gone missing. His takes the case to find out what happened to his friend.

Rex McBride is never quite comfortable in his skin. He wear expensive clothes and drinks good liquor (or any other kind), but never forgets his roots. He came from the gutter, and is more at home with cab drivers, bellhops, barflies and petty grifters than with folks in his own income bracket. He has nothing but contempt for the insurance execs and captains of industry who employ him. They're phonies who pretend to have clean hands, but hire McBride to do their dirty work for them.

A stock element of Adams’ books is a temporary sidekick/drinking partner for the hero. In this one, that role goes to a down-on-his-luck pilot who’s lost his license to fly. He helps McBride in some tasks, but more often just helps him get into trouble. Every Adams novel also features at least one deadly dame who tries to cozy up to the detective, usually for nefarious purposes. Somehow, the hero’s inamorata (in McBride’s case that’s Miss Kay Ford, secretary to an insurance exec) always manages to walk in on one of the cozier moments and get her nose out of joint.

This evil babe factor was all the excuse a British publisher needed to issue a 1956 reprint under the title Decoy Doll. In the U.S., the 1944 Books Inc hardcover reprint isn't too hard to come by, but as far as I know the only paperback edition was an early Handi-books abridgment. Too bad. This is a good read. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe a youngster named James M. Reasoner, from a 1982 issue of The Not So Private Eye:

 

Adams' distinct prose style is tough to describe, but I find it infectious. It's what keeps me coming back for more. If you haven't tried him, click HERE for a complete 1938 novelette from Detective Fiction Weekly called "Jigsaw."

And after that, be sure to check out the latest slew of Forgotten Books at pattinase.

FORGOTTEN BOOK: Sabotage by Cleve F. Adams

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I love this book. I’ve been wanting to read it again for the past several months, but it was buried so deep in storage it took several back-breaking hunting trips to finally find the right box. (The same box also contained all Adams’ other novels, along with a bunch of books I forgot I had - Christmas in February!)

Sabotage ran as a six-part serial in Detective Fiction Weekly in 1939 and was published in hardcover the following year. The book introduced Adams’ number one detective Rex McBride, a character who has - like Adams himself - been both ignored and reviled for far too long.

Back in the extremely socially-conscious 80s, an intelligent and well-meaning critic labeled McBride a racist and a fascist. That’s unfortunate, because other critics took up the cry, tarring the reputations of both McBride and Adams. A later critic, a guy I both like and respect, called McBride “one of the most repugnant characters in detective fiction history.”

Well. Because this is a G-Rated blog, I’ll restrain myself and answer, “Bunk!” Were these guys reading the same books I was?

I think McBride (and Adams) got a bad rap. In Sabotage, McBride exhibits no fascist behavior. He’s tough when necessary, but he’s a long, long way from Jack Bauer. The racist charge is inflated as well. In this book’s 252 pages, there are two instances of racial insensitivity (not uncommon in 1940) and one of them offends McBride himself.

And repugnant? Not from where I’m sitting. McBride doesn’t care what his employers think of him, and tells them so, but he stays the course and gets the job done in spite of them. He chases women, but only as far as they want to be chased. When one who’s a bit too young and innocent offers herself to him, he sets her straight and sends her home, at his own expense. McBride may try to act like a heel, but he always ends up doing the right thing.

As David Vineyard pointed out recently on The Mystery File, Sabotage borrowed the bones of its plot from Hammett’s Red Harvest. Well, why not borrow from the best? Actually, though I do see the similarity, Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing all followed the Red Harvest story more closely than did Sabotage.

Adams’ style is smooth and laconic, with a rhythm every writer should envy. Though I hadn’t read him in twenty years, the first two pages of Sabotage sucked me right back in and slapped a smile on my face. I invite you to enlarge the pulp spread below and see for yourself. If you like what you see, you’ll find ten other books bearing his name (five featuring Rex McBride), and three more under the pseudonym John Spain. Though none have been reprinted in over 50 years, low demand has kept the prices reasonable. I guess that’s something we can thank the critics for.

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Tomorrow: “Jigsaw” - a complete (and no doubt never-reprinted) Cleve F. Adams novelette from a 1939. Ya’ll come back, now.

Links to more Forgotten Books await you at Patti Abbott’s pattinase.