Stark House has been doing a good many double-deckers of novels by James Hadley Chase, and I thought I'd mention a couple of them here. One is He Won't Need It Now/The Dead Stay Dumb, with a sterling introduction by Rick Ollerman. The other is Just the Way It Is/Blonde's Requiem, with another fine intro by Greg Shepard. As it happens, both introductions mention that Raymond Chandler was unhappy about what appeared to be that book's plagiarism of some of his work. It's hard to find any information about this on the internet other than the fact that Chase was force to make an apology in print. So I decided to read Blonde's Requiem and see if I could spot any similarities.
The short answer is "no," other than something I noticed on the first few pages of the book. Chase has nothing of Chandler's style, and certainly the first-person narrator, Marc Spewak, bears no resemblance to Philip Marlowe. He's not much of a detective, and he gets scared all too often. He's in the town of Cranville, hired by a man named Wolf, who wants to be mayor. Three young women have disappeared, and Wolf believes that if they can be found alive or dead, he can with the office he craves. The town is supposedly crooked, although we don't see much evidence of that. One of the other candidates has hired a woman p.i. to look into the disappearances, as the cops appear to be doing nothing. Spewak keeps telling everyone he can find the women and break the town wide open, but that's mostly wishful thinking on his part.
The woman p.i. is a good character and gets the best of Spewak quite often, even physically. She knows jiu-jitsu, and he doesn't. Chase moves things right along, as he always does, but the solution to the disappearances comes more or less out of left field and has little to do with what's gone before. None of this is up to the level of Chandler, or even very close. It's lightweight fun, and if that's what you're looking for, these four books are good places to find it.
Mental Floss: On February 18, 1930, amateur astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered "Planet X" using an astrograph, which is essentially a space camera. Planet X was soon named Pluto, and the rest is a nerd battle of historical proportions.
Ms. Pearl – Cedar Creek, Texas The world's largest squirrel statue clutches a pecan bigger than your head.
Mike Skelly, Halo for a Heel, Red Seal, 1952
Twin Peaks' Warren Frost Dead at 91: Frost passed away Friday following a long illness, Showtime confirmed in a statement. He played Dr. Will Hayward, the coroner who refused to perform Laura Palmer’s autopsy, on the original ABC run of Twin Peaks, and came out of retirement to reprise the role in Showtime’s upcoming revival. (Frost’s son Mark is a co-creator of Twin Peaks.)
abc7ny.com: Steele turned pro in 1967 and was best known for his run as a comical babyface attraction in the final years before his 1988 retirement. With his hairy upper body, bald head and green tongue, Steele became one of the most recognizable characters for the WWE -- then known as WWF -- during its national expansion in the mid-1980s, thanks to his penchant for biting open and chewing on the turnbuckle pads.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Not so very long ago I wrote this post about an old friend of mine, Bob Tyus. Bob lives in Spokane now, but he and his wife are on their annual "get out of Washington for the winter tour," which this year brings them to Texas for the first time in decades. Luckily enough he stayed for a while near Houston. One of our high-school classmates organized a little mini-reunion lunch in Spring, Texas, and I got to see Bob again. That's Bob on the left, and bald me next to him. Kay and John Black are the couple on the right. John's another great friend, and I should write about him one of these days. We had Italian food, talked nonstop, and a good time was had by all.
Cynthia: John Lennon's First Wife: If ever there was a case of opposites attracting, it was the case when a teenage John Lennon lost his heart to Cynthia Powell.
Wade Miller (Bob Wade & Bill Miller), Branded Woman, Gold Medal, 1958
