Book Review: Fell of Dark

Book Review: 'Fell of Dark' by Reginald Hill

4 / 5 Stars

British author Reginald Hill (1936 – 2012) was a prolific author of crime fiction, with his ‘Dalziel and Pascoe’ series of novels his best-known works. He did write novels in other genres, including thrillers, suspense, and science fiction, of which ‘Albion ! Albion !’ (written under the pseudonym 'Dirk Morland" is an example).

‘Fell of Dark’ (192 pp.) was published by Fontana Books in 1972. 

(In British vernacular, a ‘fell’ is a hill, particularly a hill situated in a moorland).

This book has one of the most lurid cover illustrations I’ve ever seen for a paperback. Are the contents as intriguing as the cover would seem to imply ?

The novel is set in the early 1970s. Its first-person protagonist is a thirty-three year-old businessman named Harry Bentink. Harry’s marriage is under some strain, and Harry decides it’s a good idea to take a lengthy vacation in the Lake District, hiking the paths in the sublime and wholesome summer weather. Accompanying Harry is his fast friend from college days, Peter Thorne. Psychologically troubled, and ‘queer’ to boot, Peter at times requires special handling. But Harry remains dedicated to their friendship.

The hiking vacation is fully as rewarding as Harry hopes it will be. He and Peter even have a brief exchange with two attractive young women, who also are out on the trails. But on the following afternoon, when Harry and Peter descend the fells to the rail station at Ravenglass, they discover two policemen waiting to take them into custody. The bodies of the two girls have been discovered in a gully, and the police have concluded they were strangled and raped. 

Initially confident that his innocence easily will be established, Harry discovers that there are eyewitnesses to his and Peter’s encounter with the girls on the fell. When Superintendent Melton dissects Harry’s clumsy alibis with distressing ease, Harry makes a fateful decision to escape the police and take his chances as a fugitive. But the moorlands of the Lake District offer no kind shelter for a fleeing felon........

I wrestled a bit with my choice of stars in rating 'Fell of Dark'. The novel is slow to start, and the early chapters in which an insouciant Harry engages in verbal fencing matches with Superintendent Melton are over-written and tedious. But on page 62 the narrative, which seems to be heading into courtroom drama territory, takes an abrupt and unexpected turn and transitions into a chase drama. This is engaging and reflects the author's familiarity with, and affection for, the landscape of the Lake District. There are sufficient plot twists and turns to keep the chase sequence from getting too stale. 

In the opening pages of 'Fell of Dark', Harry Bentink is depicted as something of a twit. He is very much the self-centered everyman, who finds himself suddenly thrust into traumatic circumstances, and as a result, his personal attitudes and complacencies get a much-needed overhaul. In this sense, the novel is a something of a discourse on personal redemption through hardship.

The novel's penultimate chapter, which discloses Whodunit, is well-composed and avoids the overly complicated rationale that dooms many mystery novels. 

Summing up, those who persevere through the rather banal initial chapters of 'Fell of Dark' will find the novel becomes more engaging, and takes full advantage of its picaresque, uniquely British setting. It's deserving of a Four-Star Rating.

The Time Eater

'The Time Eater'
by Jack Butterworth (story) and Paul Neary (art)

from Galactic Wars Comix (Warren magazines, December 1978)

In the aftermath of the success of Star Wars, James Warren had no problem with taking previously printed material and repackaging it to take advantage of the craze for all things sci-fi. So we have Galactic Wars Comix, a reprint compilation from the end of 1978.

This said, Galactic Wars Comix reprinted 'The Time Eater', which first appeared in Vampirella No. 40 (March 1975). 'The Time Eater' has a rather far-out plot (pass the roach clip, please......), but it's the artwork by Paul Neary that really makes this piece memorable. It's unfortunate that the magazine printing process used by Warren really was inadequate to properly display what Neary was trying to do with his intricate Zip-A-Tone and oil painting.

Indeed, in just one panel, Neary uses something like three or four different Zip-A-Tone patterns.....for the woman's hair and clothing, he overlaid one pattern over another. It must have taken him day(s) of X-acto knife cutting and pasting to assemble this panel (in those days, there was no Photoshop).

'The Time Eater' was scanned and posted to the internet in 2011 at the 'Diversions of the Groovy Kind' blog. I've gone and scanned my own copy of Galactic Wars Comix at 300 dpi and fiddled with the contrast  to hopefully provide a bit better presentation........

National Lampoon April 1971

National Lampoon
April, 1971

Let's take a trip back in time again, to April, 1971, and the latest issue of National Lampoon, which features a fine cover by Frank Frazetta.

There's some interesting advertising in the magazine. 

Psychology Today offers an intriguing array of games for adults, including one - 'Blacks and Whites' - that promised that players will 'find out what it's like to be black and poor'. The game resonated quite profoundly with white liberals.

There are advertisements for record albums from Ian McDonald and Michael Giles, who were British musicians; their album is available at YouTube, although I don't think it's very good. 

Two albums originate from members of the Taylor family: Kate Taylor and Alex Taylor, who were brothers and sisters of Livingston, Hugh, and James Taylor. The albums from Kate and Alex offer decent early 70s folk tunes, nothing earthshaking, but nothing awful, either. 

Two Years On was the Bee Gees reunion album, recorded after Robin rejoined the band. It yielded the hit 'Lonely Days'.

Lampoon editor and founder Doug Kenney stars in the 'Foto Funnies'.

The best feature in this April issue is a parody of the men's 'sweat' magazines, titled Real Balls Adventure. It's a dead-on satire of the genre.

Considerably more acid in its tenor is a parody of baseball and football cards. 'Booblegum Cards' features professional athletes who got in trouble for a variety of things. It's a sign that back in the day, more than 50 years ago, the transgressions of professional athletes very much were the stuff of pop culture discourse.

There you have it..........satire from the long-ago year of 1971.

Book Review: The Marksman

Book Review: 'The Marksman'
by Hugh Rae

2 / 5 Stars

Hugh Rae (1935 – 2014) was a Scottish author who, during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, published novels in a wide variety of genres, including crime, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. Using the pseudonym ‘Jessica Stirling’, from 1974 to 2014 he published over 50 books, which were very popular, in the historical romance genre.  

The area did not have the air of a Glasgow suburb, but rather that of a small mining community. Damp November darkness swallowed the far horizons so that Weaver could easily sustain the illusion that nothing lay out there but fallow pastures and the ochre heaps of shale dumps. 

The men walked side by side along the pavement. It was cracked and pot-holed and mud-flecked like a newly excavated relic of the Roman period. The open acres adjacent to it were planted with surveyors’ stakes and construction dumps, tarns of mud and sour surface ash, foundation pits like mass graves and long bunkers of flung clay………

‘The Marksman’ first was published in 1971. This Sphere books paperback edition (269) is a 1987 printing. It is a tie-in to the BBC miniseries based on the novel, that aired the same year.

The novel is set in Glasgow in the early 1970s. Its protagonist, Donald Weaver, is a Glaswegian ‘hard man’ and felon, who has been living in comfort in Spain on the proceeds from a successful armed robbery. When Weaver gets a letter from the elderly Vincent Doyle, telling him that Weaver’s estranged son Gordon was brutally murdered in Glasgow almost a year ago, Weaver returns to his old haunts on a mission of vengeance.

Weaver has little love or sentimentality for his hometown, but doggedly makes the rounds of the neighborhoods in the early Winter darkness and drizzle. It's no easy task; the police closed the case after making a cursory effort to solve it, and the Glasgow demi-monde are less than helpful in responding to Weaver’s inquiries. 

To maintain his short-term stay in Glasgow Weaver is obliged to procure more money, and despite misgivings, teams up with a fellow thief for what seems to be a straightforward job. But a crooked cop is in on the take, and when alliances go bad, Weaver discovers that even as he pursues his son’s murderers, he himself is pursued by parties who prefer to dispense their justice in as unpleasant a manner as possible. For Donald Weaver, time is running out, and with each passing day, the operatives in the Glasgow underworld come closer to putting a bullet in his brain…….

‘The Marksman’ starts off well, benefitting from its setting in Glasgow and the author’s familiarity with that milieu. Weaver’s misadventures take place against a backdrop of gritty, threatening landscapes and supporting characters. 

Unfortunately, as the novel progresses, it becomes very slow going, heavily padded with lengthy philosophical and psychological expositions that indicate author Rae wanted 'The Marksman' to be a 'literary' work, one that transcended the crime genre. 

The final confrontation between Weaver and his adversaries relies on a series of improbable actions that, after dutifully plodding through 255 pages of plot set-up, I found deflatingly contrived.

'The Marksman' is a two-star Brit Crime novel. Recommended only for those with the patience for a dilatory narrative preoccupied with character development, mood, and atmosphere over plot.

On 4th and Broadway: Remembering Tower Records

'On 4th and Broadway: Remembering Tower Records'
by Michael Gonzales

Over at the 'We Are the Mutants' blog, a reminiscence of the New York City of the 1980s, from Michael Gonzales. 

I didn't have a Tower records store where I lived in upstate New York, but I did have 'The Listening Booth' in the Oakdale Mall, and, at the campus of the State University of New York at Binghamton, 'Slipped Disc', the student-run record store. 

And like Gonzalez, I was partial to the albums in the cutout bins (and the LPs with the 'Nice Price' sticker !).

Back in January, I posted a link to Gonzales's article about comic books, artists, and publishers in that same era of 1970s and 1980s New York City. It's also well worth reading !

Once again at the Library Sale

 Once Again at the Library Sale

Yep, time once again last week to make for the twice-yearly Library Sale. As always, I was able to pick up some worthwhile titles for really affordable prices. 

Quite a few Science Fiction Book Club entrants, from the 1970s. 

'Epoch' is a hefty tome, of 623 pages, from November 1975. I am sure that more than a few of the stories in the collection are duds, but that's how it was, with those 'all original' anthologies. Sometimes the contributors just grabbed something off their 'return' pile and mailed it in.

I'm not a huge fan of Thomas Disch, but 'Triplicity', an omnibus of of 'Echo Round His Bones', 'The Genocides', and 'The Puppies of Terra', was only two bucks. So if it turns out badly, not a big outlay of my personal finances.

'Whetted Bronze' is the second volume in the so-called "Odan the Half-God" trilogy. 'Manning Norvil' was the pen name of the prolific UK author Kenneth Bulmer. I'm not all that excited about those of his other novels that I've read, but maybe I'll give 'Whetted' a try.

I also came away with some 'Orbit' anthologies from 1972 - 1973, and their offerings of unadulterated New Wave goodness........

Rounding out my acquisitions were two classics of 1970s trash / pulp fiction............!

'Thunder la Boom' (January 1975) is one of several pulp fiction novels authored by Anne Steinhardt. 'Thunder' is about the girls at 'Obie's Topless, Bottomless Bar', which, the back cover blurb tells us, is the 'wildest, raunchiest watering place in California'.

'The Queen of America' (May, 1973) was one of a number of crime / suspense novels authored by Russell Greenan. 'Queen' is about Betsy, a chick who doesn't take any shit from anybody hanging out in the downtown Boston hippie world of the early 1970s. 

All of Greenan's books are long out of print, and have pretty steep asking prices, so I was lucky to find this somewhat battered copy. 

All in all, a good outcome from this April's Library Sale..........

Book Review: The Smoke

Book Review: 'The Smoke' by Tom Barling

1 / 5 Stars

'The Smoke' was published by Corgi Books (UK) in 1986. 

[The term 'the smoke' apparently is British slang for the criminal life.]

'Smoke' opens in 1963, on a dismal, dreary Spring day in London's East End. Archie Ogle, the city's crime boss, is surveying a construction site with Charlie Dance. Charlie is a fixer, a hard man, willing to do dirty deeds for his surrogate father Archie. When Archie, who is in declining health, steps down, there is a very good possibility that Charlie will inherit Archie's 'firm'.

But all plans are suspended when an 'accident' involving a crane and a wrecking ball dumps the side of a building onto Archie and Charlie. The former is seriously injured and at death's door, while Charlie suffers a broken arm and cuts and bruises.

Word quickly travels through London's criminal underground: Archie Ogle is an invalid, one facing a greatly reduced life span. The gangs and their bosses who, until now, have acknowledged Archie's sovereignty, begin scheming to take over control of all the rackets percolating in the alleys and bars and clubs and warehouses of the city. 

Tommy and Jesse Troy, the debauched gangster lords of Bethnal Green, see opportunity in taking over Archie's gambling operations. Connie and Wally Harold, who run a crooked scrap metal business, have their own ambitions, which include eliminating the Troys. Eyetie Antoni, the Mafia's representative in London, longs to take over the drug distribution networks in the city. 

As these and other organizations arms themselves for confrontation, Charlie Dance sets out on his own path towards retaining Archie's holdings. And with everything to lose, and much to gain, Charlie isn't holding back. Nobody involved in London's criminal underworld is prepared for what Charlie's going to bring to the table. And for him, there's no such thing as too high of a body count.............. 

At 555 pages, 'The Smoke' can't afford to be a slow read. Unfortunately, I gave up on the book just 85 pages in. This is because the author is so fixated on infusing his prose with a British gangster vernacular, (along with heavily purpled metaphors and similes) that the book is very difficult to understand.

Some examples:

'Glass of Bass and a ham on white. And Gawd have mercy on us sinners if it ain't Charlie Dance. Thought you was too high on the firm to trudge the cobbles to cop the subs.'

Charlie added whiskies to Flynn's pint and sandwich and paid with small change.

"What's the crack with the coffin ?'

*****

'He never was the cleverest yiddle on the fiddle. What do Antoni and Kosher think they're playing ? Ethnic Monopoly ? "You give me Greek Street and I'll swap you Leicester Square and two dozen used toms" ?'

'Ain't no laughing matter, Arch.'

'Ain't "Spot the Virgin", neither. I take it you've smiled at both sides and kept your khyber to the alley wall ?'

'Does it rain downwards ? Smooth Bad Alice first.'

*****

Bulstrode sank his beer chaser.

    'Cotton's used us and blown us out as bubbles. He's done a deal with Buck's CID and rowed us out. We've opened the doors and they've slammed them in our faces. They can have the kudos for this train job, but that's where it ends for this kiddy.'

*****

Valetta simmered. 

    A furnace of marzipan buildings under a hot and white Sahara sky. Whiter than snow and hotter than sand. The noonday promenade in Kingsway had been a listless mill of bored soldiery and young Maltese, all too jaded to flirt or exchange the usual ribald banter.

*****

The manager's office was a warm womb of oiled teak with a splash of light over the partners desk. Tommy lounged in the manager's chair to be close to the Armagnac and ice. His cigar hadn't the class to travel the six miles from Bethnal Green, and his pomaded hair gleamed like a swash of petrified tarmacadam. Charlie leaned by the aquarium with a small Irish.

While I understand that hardboiled prose is necessary to impart verisimilitude to a crime narrative, wading through the content of 'The Smoke' was simply too onerous a chore for me. Perhaps UK natives can understand the vernacular sufficiently to make this novel engaging, but for me, 'The Smoke' is a firm One Star rating. 

Mickey Rat in 'Bored to Raise Hell'

Mickey Rat
'Bored to Raise Hell'
by Robert Armstrong
from Mickey Rat No. 3 (1980)

We've all been there, at one time or another......

Book Review: Harry's Game

Book Review: 'Harry's Game' by Gerald Seymour

4 / 5 Stars

Gerald Seymour (b. 1941) is a UK writer. In 1963 he joined the staff of the Independent Television News and covered the conflict in Northern Ireland, among other newsworthy hotspots. ‘Harry’s Game’, published in hardback in 1975, was his first novel and successful enough to allow Seymour to devote his career to writing. His Wiki entry lists over 35 novels to his credit. Some of his novels were adapted for television productions; ‘Harry’s Game’ aired as a miniseries in 1982 on the ITV network.

The Fontana paperback edition (256 pp.) of ‘Harry’s Game’ first was published in 1977. My copy is dated 1987, a twelfth printing.

The novel is set in Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s. A British cabinet minister has been assassinated by a IRA gunman, an atrocity that the government cannot allow to go unpunished. However, increased police and army raids in the Catholic part of Belfast fail to uncover any useful information. A frustrated Prime Minister decides that a man should be sent in, undercover, with orders to find and apprehend, or kill, the assassin.

A British Army captain, thirty-four year-old Harry James Brown, agrees to carry out the mission. Brown has had some experience in undercover operations, and, being born in Portadown, is familiar with Northern Ireland and its people.

Masquerading as a seaman, come home to Northern Ireland after 10 years in the merchant marine, Harry takes lodgings in a home in Catholic Belfast and sets about learning the identity of the assassin. It’s a dangerous job, made even more difficult by the fact that his minders have allotted Harry no more than three weeks to find his quarry.

Unknown to Harry, the Provos - the footsoldiers of the Provisional Irish Republican Army – keep careful track of any newcomers arriving in the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast. Can Harry keep up his cover story long enough to keep from being ‘made’ by the Provos, and find the man he has been sent to kill ? With each passing day, the margin of error grows ever slighter…….and the likelihood of Harry’s tortured and bullet-ridden corpse being found lying on a patch of bare ground in Belfast  grows ever larger…………. 

'Harry's Game' is an impressive first novel. The author's familiarity with The Troubles and the environs of Belfast lends authenticity to the segments taking place in Northern Ireland. As well, Seymour carefully avoids sympathizing either with the IRA or the Crown, preferring to present each side's justification for their actions without sermonizing. It is left to the reader to determine the legitimacy of the mayhem committed by the IRA assassin, or his ideological counterpart, Harry. 

'Harry's Game' is very much a 'British' action novel, in that the embellished heroics of American-style adventures are absent. Indeed, in the pages of 'Harry's Game, random events and blunders account for success or failure as much as careful planning and personal gallantry. The endeavors of Harry and his quarry are related in a detached prose style, and tinted with enough cynicism to lend the closing chapters a bleak quality that refuses to provide any optimism about a peaceful resolution of the conflict roiling Northern Ireland. 

If you like your British crime and suspense novels to be hard-bitten, then 'Harry's Game' will deliver.

April 2023 is Brit Crime month

April 2023 is Brit Crime Month at the PorPor Books Blog !

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to take a break from reading science fiction, horror, and fantasy media from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and instead focus on another genre of literature.

For April, 2023, we're going to look at British crime and suspense novels. Now, everyone and his brother has reviewed 'Get Carter' (aka 'Jack's Return Home') by Ted Lewis, so I thought I'd look at some rather less well-known titles:

These books have expanded my vocabulary, with words like 'dreich' (Scottish for gloomy, dull weather) and 'blagging' (Brit term, for achieving something through guile and trickery). I've also learned that the UK in November is marked by overcast skies, chill drizzle, widespread clinical depression, decrepit tenements discolored by layers of soot initially deposited in the early 19th century, and vitamin D deprivation. 

Stand by for reviews of Brit Crime all this month !