Book Review: The Hoods Come Calling

January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'The Hoods Come Calling' by Nick Quarry

 3 / 5 Stars

 

'The Hoods Come Calling' (160 pp.) was published by Fawcett in 1958, as Gold Medal Books No. 747. It's one of a number of Gold Medal crime novels, featuring private eye Jake Barrow, authored by Marvin H. Albert under his pen name 'Nick Quarry.'

 

Albert (1924 - 1996) published over 100 nonfiction and fiction works, the latter in a variety of genres.

 

'Hoods' is set in New York city in the late 1950s. After a two-year absence, Jake Barrow has returned to the place where he grew up. Barrow is hoping to start his own private-eye business. To do this, he needs the $1,600 that his estranged wife Carla presumably has been safekeeing in their joint bank account. 

 

Getting the money won't be easy. Jake and Carla have a troubled history. Carla is quite a looker, but also has a problem with staying faithful, one of the reasons Jake felt compelled to leave the city in the first place. 

 

At a party hosted by Eddie Jerango, a childhood friend and now a mover in the city's underworld, Jake meets a swell dame named Sandy Adams. Jake also learns that Carla now is the squeeze of Buddy Jerango, Eddie's brother. Hot-headed and intemperate, Jake creates a public scene with Carla and Buddy, a scene that ends badly for Jake.

 

When, soon after, Carla is murdered, Jake finds himself the lead suspect. With just days to find the murderer and clear his name, a desperate Jake prowls the summertime streets and hood haunts of the city, looking for clues to the identity of the perpetrator. Luckily Sandy Adams is willing to help him out; she's got beauty and brains, and seems to show up in the right place at the right time. Maybe Sandy is too good to be true...........?

 

'Hoods' is one of those rarer Gold Medal titles that, for most of its length, delivers a well-told, and well-plotted, hardboiled crime story. Author Quarry / Albert has the style down pat:

 

    It was a cheap hotel, down near Times Square. A small room and bath with a view of an open airshaft for two-and-a-half a day. The first dirty streaks of dawn were creeping into the night sky as I let myself into the room and locked the door.

 

    I didn't turn on the light. I went straight to the bureau and opened the top drawer. The flat pint of rye was still there, under my shirts. I carried it into the bathroom, got a tumbler and poured the rye into it. The neck of the pint kept clinking against the glass as I poured. 

 

    I gulped it all down without taking the glass from my teeth. When I poured again, my hands were no longer shaking. I carried the bottle and the filled glass into the other room and sat on the edge of the bed. I sat there till I'd finished the bottle. My brain was rocking like a rowboat in a squall. 

 

'Hoods' is standard-issue private-eye fiction from the postwar era; when it comes to hand-hand combat, Jake takes on all comers and, while he may suffer some superficial damage, always manages to get the best of his adversaries. Helping to sooth his injuries and tribulations is the fact that Barrow regularly meets comely young women who, for some reason, can't help wanting to sleep with him. 

 

Where the novel falters is in its final chapters, where all sorts of loopholes and contrivances lead to the discovery of Whodunit and their fate. It's a flaw not unusual in many private eye tales but, given the higher quality of the initial chapters in the book, it seemed as more of a letdown to me.

 

I'm willing to investigate other entries in the Jake Barrow franchise, but I'm hoping their conclusions are more convincing that what I read in 'Hoods.' 

Playboy January 1974

Playboy

January, 1974

Time to travel back in time 51 years, to January, 1974, and take a look at the latest issue of Playboy magazine. It's a thriving publication, with a hefty 294 pages celebrating the magazine's twentieth anniversary. And all for $1.50 ! Compare and contrast to today's magazines.........

 

There is quite a lineup of premiere contributors for this special issue, all of whom are very much in tune of the magazine's major demographic; men over the age of 40:

The Interview features none other than Hugh Hefner himself. Hef is living large in these mid-1970s years, enjoying the company of his girlfriend Barbi Benton, and hanging out at the Playboy mansion amidst all the cool people who want to see and be seen. Hef is very much  the international man of adventure, looked upon with admiration. 

 

In the Interview he does display some rancor towards Bob Guccione and Penthouse (which by '74 had a larger circulation than Playboy), Gallery, Genesis, and other 'imitators,' but Hef seems secure in the knowledge that these 'copycats' fails to offer anything that is 'fresh and original.'

This January issue features a portfolio of all 12 Playmates from 1973. Ironically, these photos all have adopted the soft-focus photography pioneered by Guccione. But, hey: whether soft- focus or not, these are some foxy ladies !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with the portfolios, there are some interesting fiction and nonfiction articles in this January issue.

A profile of comedian Jerry Lewis is particularly sharp and acidic. O'Connell Driscoll, the author of the piece, was allowed to 'tail' Lewis for several months in the spring of 1973.

 

Driscoll apparently was able to record everything Lewis said, verbatim, although the article does not explicitly state this. 'Birthday Boy' starts off with Lewis staying at the Deauville Hotel in Miami in March, 1973, where he is co-performing in a comedy show with Milton Berle. Lewis has just turned 47 and his career is fading. He is frustrated and unhappy with having to do a lame show with Uncle Milty, a signal of has-been status, playing to the elderly Jewish retirees in the Miami area. As the article progresses, it becomes ever clearer that Lewis is flailing, trying to find some outlet that will grant him the fame and appreciation in the USA, that he enjoys in Europe.

At the close of the article, Driscoll is present when Lewis is doing the edits on the footage of the (never-released) movie The Day the Clown Cried. Seemingly indifferent to the fact that he is being recorded, Lewis shows how odious and unpleasant a person he can be:

You can read the entire 'Birthday Boy' article here.

 

'Haiti, Goodby,' an article by Bruce Jay Friedman is decidedly more appealing. Friedman, having left behind his days as an editor of 'sweat' magazines at Martin Goodman's Magazine Management publishing firm, describes his 1973 stay at the Hotel Oloffson, a resort hotel in Port-Au-Prince. It's bizarre to realize that fifty years ago people would willingly go to Haiti on vacation, although - as Friedman tells it - the Europeans and Americans he encountered at the Oloffson were towards the stranger end of the spectrum.

John Updike was one of the leading authors in the USA in 1974, and he has a short story in this January issue.

'Nevada' features Updike's favorite type of character: a Jewish man, closer to middle-age than he would prefer, who is confronting a personal crisis. Culp is the character's name, and his crisis, a divorce from his wife Sarah. While the ex enjoys a honeymoon with her new hubbie, Culp is tasked with looking after his two daughters. The three of them take an existential journey through the heat and emptiness of Nevada, where, by the story's end, Culp finds a measure of self-renewal. It's a good story.

And that, dear reader, is how it was, back in January of 1974...........

Book Review: Lucinda

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Lucinda' by Howard Rigsby

 

2 / 5 Stars

Howard Vechel Rigsby (1909 – 1975) wrote a number of novels and short stories in the gothic romance, suspense, and western genres in the 1950s and 1960s. ‘Lucinda’ was published in 1954 by Fawcett / Gold Medal books.

The novel is set in the late 1940s / early 1950s. Judson Hay is a young artist who travels the back roads of northern California, looking for painterly scenes. When his girlfriend Julia asks him to try and find her employer, a lawyer named Malloy, who was last located in the coastal town of Mussel Point, Hay somewhat reluctantly agrees. But Hay’s efforts to travel to Mussel Point are upended when a chance encounter in the unmapped wilderness of the mountains makes him a witness to the murder of a man in a corduroy hat.

Labeled a possible suspect, Hay winds up hiding out in the remote fastness of Squatter’s Valley, a strange and rustic collection of log cabins and hillbillies straight out of a ‘Lil’ Abner’ comic strip. 

However impressive the mountain scenery surrounding Squatter’s Valley, it pales in comparison to the beauty of the eponymous Lucinda Plumb, a stunning 17 year-old girl whose parents are seeking to marry her off in a ‘Dogpatch’ – style convocation of eligible bachelors. The convocation, to be held few days hence by Lucinda’s mercenary father, has drawn the interest of all of the Valley’s bachelors, an unsavory lot of rustics with bad hygiene, missing teeth, and unsatisfied erotic yearnings.

While preoccupied with trying to learn who killed the 'corduroy hat man,' someone who well  may be trying to kill Judson, too, our hero finds himself falling for the amazing Lucinda. But identifying himself as a suitor for Lucinda draws the ire of those others seeking her hand: hard men, desperate men, who have no problem with loosing rifle shots at any competitors, especially ones from outside the Valley……..

‘Lucinda’ is a competent Gold Medal novel. There are some plot twists and turns that at times get a little too complicated for their own good, and the ending relies overmuch on sentimentality. I can’t say it’s worth searching out, but those with a fondness for the ‘milder’ Gold Medal titles may find it interesting.