The Case of the Sulky Girl (Perry Mason) by Erle Stanley Gardner

The second of the Perry Mason novels is the first to take on the familiar traditional approach of having lengthy courtroom scenes dominate the end of the book. An enjoyable plot revolving around Perry's client, a young woman who is accused of murdering her Uncle in order to get her full inheritance.

I really enjoyed the way Erle Stanley Gardner combines two major mystery elements here.  The first is the expected mystery of whodunit. But the second, more subtle mystery involves Perry Mason's courtroom tactics and trying to figure out how he is going to turn the tables on the huge pile of evidence against his client. Cleverly done, of course.

Looking forward to more of this series.

Me, Hood (Mike Hammer) by Mickey Spillane

I picked this up in honor of the 100th birthday of Mickey Spillane but to be honest, that was just an excuse.  This is actually my very first Mickey Spillane experience and I’ve been itching to try one.  A couple of friends suggested I start with something other than a Mike Hammer book because they preferred his standalones and since I had this on the shelf it was an easy pick.

This volume includes two short novels: “Me, Hood” and “Return of the Hood”.  Ryan is a hoodlum, a man who skirts the law and frequently crosses the line but is smart enough to get away with it almost always.  He is often called, simply “Hood” or sometimes “Irish”.  In the first story he is conned by the police in order to bring justice to a situation that is beyond the rules of proper police procedure.  His brand of violence and his connections provide just the spark that’s needed.  The second story has a bit of an international espionage flavor to it as Hood is randomly entrusted by a desperate female spy with a capsule containing top secret microfilm.  Unfortunately, he has simultaneously been accused by a gang leader of offing his little brother and during the resulting chaos, Hood loses the capsule.  

These novellas were almost exactly what I expected from Spillane.  Lots of hard boiled crime, violence, femme fatales etc.  They are told in that wonderful first-person POV that works so well and allows for many a glib one-liner.  I’m not sure how these two stories rank on the Mickey Spillane quality index but they worked well for me as an introduction and I feel confidant they won’t be my last.

Hard Target (The Zone series) by James Rouch

The Cold War has turned hot. World War III is upon us. But this time around, the art of war includes harsh tools like chemical and biological weapons and tactical nukes. Rather than let such things loose worldwide, NATO and the Warsaw Pact agree to limit the fighting to a large swath of West Germany called ‘The Zone’. 

First published in 1980, almost ten years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Hard Target” is the first of ten books in “The Zone” series by British author James Rouch. The novel opens by dropping readers right in the middle of the action with a Soviet T-84 tank bearing down on a small group of what will become the main characters. Such small, tactical scenes are the norm throughout the novel, never widening up the scope of the action to really understand the greater strategies at work. Nor are we treated to much in the way of how or why the war began. Team leader, American Major Revell, together with British Sergeant Hyde, must somehow create a cohesive unit out of a bunch of misfit ‘Dirty Dozen’ style mavericks, each with their own unique and often bizarre and even unlikable personalities.

The plot involves one of many post-apocalyptic refugee enclaves located in The Zone where the Soviets have placed, against the rules of war, an elite tank salvage unit charged with refitting enough Soviet armor to enable a successful counter-attack in the coming months. Revell and his team must destroy it in order for NATO to be able to keep the Reds at bay. The story moves along nicely, and the final covert op sequence is a fun ride. While that mission does wrap up in this first book, most readers will want to turn to book two to find out what happens next to this motley crew.

The Awful Egg (Doc Savage) by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent)

The 88th novel in the Doc Savage series (#92 by Bantam publication order) is representative of the later Doc stories, published during the WW2 years. This one was the second published in 1940 and features a plot that hints at the kind of fantastic elements from earlier novels but reveals itself to have a much more mundane plot. Perhaps the publisher wanted more realism by this time in the face of the growing war as well as to better match up to the competition.

But no matter, this book has most of the “Doc’isms” I hope for including appearances by all of Doc’s five aides. (But no Pat Savage in this one, alas). The plot features what appears to be the discovery of a dinosaur egg, with a Little one still alive inside and about to chip its way out. Even Johnny, master archeologist and geologist is convinced of its authenticity. But when the egg is stolen Doc and his crew must chase down the mystery before it eats its way through man and beast. 

The plot quickly turns from a dinosaur hunt to a murder and stolen gold plot but it was another fun read. It’s written by the creator, Lester Dent and not one of the handful of ghost writers working on the series in the 1940s.

The Doomsday Affair (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) by Harry Whittington

The plot in this second novel in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. Television tie-in series jumps right into the middle of the action when a young woman (and THRUSH defector) removes a lei from around her head that she had recently received from Honolulu airport.  Unfortunately, there is an explosive device within the lei and her movements trigger the bomb which kills her immediately.   This happens right in front of Napoleon Solo and literally blows the action wide open in the first paragraph.  It all leads to a diabolical plot by a mysterious entity named Tixe Ylno ('Exit Only' spelled backward) to blow up a major American city with an atomic bomb and pin the deed on Russia, thereby launching World War III.  

Yes, we’ve seen this plot numerous times before but since this was published in 1965, perhaps it was a newer concept then.  For this second book in the series, author duties were handed over to Harry Whittington, who is known as one of the most prolific pulp authors of all time, managing to churn out 85 novels in the space of only twelve years.  That sort of churn and earn approach, unfortunately, is quite evident in this book, and its quality is not nearly as high as in book one, The Thousand Coffins Affair written by Michael Avallone.  Lots of action sequences but all crammed together with little expository or explanatory effort.  The ending is especially representative of this as it all ends rather abruptly.  I turned the last page expecting to see at least a couple more paragraphs but no, nothing there.  No extraneous words wasted on what the consequences of that final scene were or how the characters dealt with it.  Also, the big reveal of the identity of Tixe Ylno is handled just as obviously as thousands of novels before, as well as practically every episode of Scooby Doo you've ever seen.

There was one scene that I was happy to read.  As I watched the television series I kept wondering about the guy who ran the tailor shop that doubled as the secret entrance to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.  Was he simply a tailor?  Was he a retired agent?  In this novel, Napoleon Solo wonders the same thing but even though we don’t get an actual answer, at least it was good to know that Napoleon and I think alike.  

I did find it interesting that this volume did include Illya in a major role (unlike in book one where he is clearly a minor character).  But he is still obviously subservient to Solo, telling me the book was written based on early scripts or shortly after the first couple of episodes had filmed.  It only took the TV series 5 or 6 episodes before these two characters began to be almost equal in skills, experience, and air-time so I’m expecting the book series to evolve that way as well in short order.

Looking forward to book 3 which is written by yet another author, John Oram Thomas who seems to have been anything but prolific.