Encore FFB: DECOY by Cleve F. Adams (1941)

NOTE: I was tempted to blame this rerun post (from 2010) on last weekend's Willamette Writers Conference. It's true I'm still tired in body and brain and didn't read much this week, but the real truth is that I was planning on reviewing another book and chickened out. Not for my own sake, but for the author's. That other novel presented an unflattering portrait of a certain Middle Eastern Icon, and with all the crazy shit going on right now, it occurred to me that calling attention to it could be bad for the author's health. Ain't that a sorry state of affairs?

Decoy, published in 1941, is the third book in the Rex McBride series, and also Cleve F. Adams’ third novel. It first appeared earlier that same year as a 6-part serial in Detective Fiction Weekly. I reviewed the first two McBrides, 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.

Black Friday's Forgotten Books: DIG ME A GRAVE by John (Cleve F. Adams) Spain

If you've been here before, you may have noticed I'm a big admirer of work of Mr. Cleve Franklin Adams. I've read and enjoyed all of his novels, but my favorites (as of this moment) are Sabotage, The Private Eye and this one, Dig Me a Grave.

Adams' many heroes, Rex McBride, Steve McCloud, John J. Flagg and their brethren, were all cut from the same cloth, the main difference being that some were slightly more amoral than others. Bill Rye, the protagonist of Dig Me a Grave is the most amoral of them all, and the most unusual, because he's sort of a hybrid. He's about 50% typical Adams Black Knight, and 50% Ned Beaumont.

Adams made no secret of his admiration for Dashiell Hammett. At least two of his novels, Sabotage and Decoy, paid homage to the plot of Red Harvest, and this book's lead characters were inspired by Ned Beaumont and Paul Madvig of The Glass Key.

Like Madvig, this book's Edward Callahan is a behind-the-scenes political boss, and like Beaumont, Bill Rye is his right-hand man. Adams captured Madvig's character perfectly, and the relationship between the two characters is spot on. He also made a valiant effort to reincarnate Beaumont in the body of Rye, but the characteristics of his own standard hero were too deeply ingrained to be suppressed. The result is that hybrid character, more mysterious and opaque than Rex McBride, but more emotional, and more amused with life, than Ned Beaumont.

Hammett's style in The Glass Key is much like that of The Maltese Falcon - ultra-objective, so that we're never told what the hero is thinking or feelings. We have to discern that from his words and actions. Adams makes a stab at that sort of objectivity here and there, but in other scenes we are privy to what's going on in Rye's head, making him more likable and more relatable than Beaumont.

The result is a novel that's more fun and (to me) more satisfying that The Glass Key. The prose of Hammett's novel is better crafted, of course, and the story more literate, but Dig Me a Grave delivers more smiles - especially if you've read The Glass Key, and know where it's coming from.

Commercial: For a closer look at Adams and  his characters, you might take a squint at my article, "Cleve F. Adams: Black Knight, Cannibal and Forgotten Man" in Windy City Pulp Tales #14, available right HERE from Black Dog Books.

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?

(click to enlarge)

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: And Sudden Death by Cleve F. Adams

A couple of weeks ago I reread (and reviewed) Cleve F. Adams’ first novel Sabotage, and enjoyed it so much I was eager to reread the second. This is it, and I was not disappointed. There’s something infectious about Adams’ voice and style that just makes me want to keep reading. Luckily, I have another dozen of his books on hand. 

And Sudden Death (1940) first appeared as a 6-part serial in Detective Fiction Weekly under the title “Homicide: Honolulu Bound”. It's a direct sequel (at least in sub-plot) to Sabotage. Private detective Rex McBride is still smarting over what happened to his lady love in the first book, and she is often on his mind.

This time, Rex’s job is to follow a woman to Hawaii, where she just might be planning to rendezvous with her husband - a man who betrayed his business partners and absconded with two million dollars. In 1940, that must have been a ton of dough.

The case, of course, is not that simple. He’s soon caught up in a web of espionage and revenge, and needs all his skills at womanizing and consuming vast quantities of liquor to come out on top.

In the Sabotage review, I addressed the charge by some 80s-era critics that McBride is a racist. This book offers evidence to the contrary. While other characters express distrust of Japanese folk, Rex does not. When the fellow on the pulp cover asks to borrow his binoculars, Rex agrees. He finds he genuinely likes the guy and invites him to shoot craps. Even later, when they become adversaries, McBride retains his respect for him.

The title comes from a line late in the book, when McBride predicts, “I don’t know just how soon, but sometime in the very near future there’s going to be murder and sudden death.” Guess what? He’s right on both counts.

And Sudden Death was reprinted at least once in digest (with a hideous cover) but I don’t believe it ever appeared in a regular paperback. Too bad. It’s a good read, and I’m looking forward to the next book, Decoy.

(click to enlarge)

For your reading pleasure, I recently posted a complete Cleve F. Adams novelette called "Jigsaw".

For links to more of today's Forgotten Books, visit Patti Abbott's pattinase.