One Night Stands and Lost Weekends: Early Stories by Lawrence Block (short stories and novellas)

May you, Dear Reader, like the tomcat who had the affair with the skunk, enjoy these stories as much as you can stand.

—Lawrence Block, from the introduction

In 1999, publisher Crippen & Landru released limited hardcover editions of the early short fiction of author Lawrence Block.  The short-story volume was entitled One Night Stands, and the novella collection was called The Lost Cases of Ed London.

Now, these two volumes have been combined into a single trade paperback with the provocative title One Night Stands and Lost Weekends. The title describes the average time it took to write the short stories and novellas, respectively.

Block begins One Night Stands and Lost Weekends with a self-deprecatingly humorous introduction where he tells why he changed his mind regarding his original decision — set down in the introduction (also included) to the preceding limited collectors' edition — to only release the stories to a limited audience. Basically that, upon reading the stories, no one called "rip off," so why not make a little more money off them?

While these stories obviously aren't to the level of Block's later work (a point he emphasizes in both introductions, practically going so far as to warn the reader away from them), they will still appeal to the author's fans.  His voice is already clear, and the humor and imagination glosses over any imperfections in craft.

Con man Dick Barron runs across an amateur playing "The Badger Game" — badly — and decides to go along with it and turn the tables, though he's a little too arrogant for his own good. Before reading this story, I had not heard of this con, and now references to it seem to keep popping up. Apparently it was a popular plot device during the period. The story is definitely of its time — the narrator speaks of "expensive" thirty-dollar shoes — but Block's skill at character makes this one of special appeal to fans of confidence tales like his The Girl with the Long Green Heart.

"The Bad Night" is a simple and unsurprising standoff between two young killers and their much older potential victim. The use of setting and dialogue goes a long way toward saving this one. "Bargain in Blood," originally published under the "Sheldon Lord" byline, has a simple message: the next time your other half wants you to prove your love, just hope she's not Rita. Block manages to put off the surprise nearly to the end here.

"Bride of Violence" is a very well executed piece of pure crime fiction with a twist that, if hard to condone, is completely the result of the actions of the story. "The Burning Fury" is another one of those stories of people who can't leave well enough alone.  Block's characterization is stunning, giving all the right information and still holding back a surprise.

Characterization is everything in "The Dope," since there's very little in the way of plot.  "A Fire in the Night" is an internal monologue of sorts with a twist that negates several factual statements from the story.  "Frozen Stiff" owes a debt to Roald Dahl, as the irony flows. (A nod to the master is given in the form of a leg of lamb.)  Another Sheldon Lord, "Just Window Shopping," shows remarkable insight into the mind of a voyeur who gets a surprise opportunity.

A quote usually misattributed to Confucius says that if rape is inevitable, just "Lie Back and Enjoy It." But then the tables are turned a little too cutely in this tale from 1958. (Read it online.)  "Look Death in the Eye" is reminiscent of Robert Bloch with its darkly funny and humorously gruesome Tales from the Crypt–style ending.  In "Man of Passion," a photographer on the run picks the wrong town to hide out in.

"Nor Iron Bars a Cage" is one of those tales where you just know there's going to be a twist that the whole story was conceived around, but still Block manages to surprise with his only attempt at science fiction. "Package Deal" concerns town tamer Lou Baron, Joe Milani, Albert Hallander, Mike Ross, Arlington Ohio, and a hit man with his own agenda.

A particular highlight is "Pseudo Identity." It is the tragic tale of a double life that goes awry when the two overlap in an unexpected way.  Block pulls us along a surprising route that ends in a karmic twist.  This is one of his best all around.

"Ride the White Horse" is a very dark tale of how one man's life changes for the better — and then for the worse — when his routine is disrupted. A little naive in its drug knowledge but very astute in drawing the primary relationship.  The overblown ending is the only real detriment.

Even after having so many twists and turns thrown at me, Block still managed to get another one right past me in "The Way to Power," a tale of a mob gunman who finally begins to think for himself.  Lenny Blake (not his real name), the protagonist of "You Can't Lose," offers advice for smart guys who don't like to work but like to stay flush with cash--as long as they're not into luxury.

The "Lost Weekends" portion contains three novellas featuring Block's first series P.I., Ed London.  The introduction to this volume is similar to the other.  In "The Naked and the Deadly," London meets his client's blackmailer, and on the way to do business the extortionist is mowed down by a Tommy gun.

Ed then fills us in on the backstory: he was hired by a secretive woman, a lawyer is looking for the woman, a cop is looking for the lawyer, and things go from there.  The novella gives London (and Block) the chance to ramble on a bit and impress us with his esoteric knowledge.

In "Stag Party Girl," the title character jumps out of a cake at a bachelor dinner and gets shot for her trouble. She'd been intimate with most of the attendees and was potentially blackmailing one or more.  This is an improvement on "The Naked and the Deadly," with London seeming to take his job more seriously.

Finally, in "Twin Call Girls," Ed gets an urgent call from a frightened woman.  But when he gets to the meeting he finds her dead.  When the girl subsequently turns up alive at his office, it's not hard to figure out what's going on.  (The title gives it away.) This is the darkest of the three, with Block delving into some of the seediest aspects of humanity, but always with enough heart to make it palatable.

Reading these solid detective novelettes, it's easy to see how Block would progress to his later detective series.  And readers hungry for more Ed London can find him in Coward's Kiss.

Readers seeking classic Block should keep searching. But I heartily recommend that readers of Block's Hard Case Crime reprints get a copy of One Night Stands and Lost Weekends.

Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella (Stark House Press)

John Albano is behind on his child support. To that end, he needs to make quick money, and his car-driving job isn't cutting it. Luckily, he's come into a job running bootleg copies of the newly banned porn film Deep Throat (labeled as "Peter Rabit," misspelling and all) between Brooklyn and Long Island, collecting the receipts from the head-counters at the box office (five dollars for each patron), and giving the proceeds to the mob guys who "bought" the movie (actually, forced the film's writer/director Gerard Damiano out of their partnership).

For this, he is paid fifty dollars a day — and these are 1973 dollars. The guy who did it before him got the nickname Tommy Porno, but he was caught stealing and turned up dead with his hands cut off. So now they call Albano Johnny Porno, and he doesn't like it.

Meanwhile, John's ex-wife Nancy's first ex-husband Louis — whom she cheated on John with, and is cheating on her third husband with, too (are you keeping up?) — has hatched a plan to rob John of the mob's money when John comes to make his weekly child support payment to Nancy, with her help.

Louis owes four thousand dollars to his shylock and his bookie. He keeps looking for his next score but can't cut his nickel bags any more than he already does, or they'll start smelling like an Italian dinner. But Louis is a full-time con artist and philanderer loaded with ideas for whatever can make him an easy buck.

At the same time, Albano is also being pursued by police. Captain Billy Hastings, forced to retire when he took a swing at Albano and got knocked out for his trouble, is bent on revenge. And a duo is trying to clean the porn off the streets by investigating John's boss, Eddie Vento. Author Charlie Stella keeps all these subplots up in the air simultaneously without ever dropping a single ball.

Stella was raised in Brooklyn and spent 18 years making money wherever he could (legally or otherwise, much like his protagonist), so he knows the crowd he writes about. He wrote his first novel, Eddie's World, to impress his current wife, and he has steadily grown a following for his intelligent and astute books about criminals, receiving starred reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

Inspired by a viewing of the documentary Inside Deep Throat — Stella and his wife looked at each other and said "Next book" — Johnny Porno, Stella's seventh novel, is a terrific crime epic from this woefully underknown author. It is loaded with a cast of quirky losers, layabouts, and louts, with the one shining star being John himself. It's the got the kind and number of characters that director Robert Altman liked to juggle, and I like to think it could have been his 1973 crime film if he hadn't decided to reimagine Philip Marlowe with The Long Goodbye.

Based on my experience with Johnny Porno — I haven't read his other books but plan to remedy that soon (Charlie Opera is $2.00 on Smashwords) — I must say that Charlie Stella is one of the best writers the crime genre currently has to offer. He's a natural wordsmith, putting down the way people really talk in a way that still reads smoothly — not an easy task. The fact that Stark House Press, who previously focused on reprinting "lost" pulp novels, chose Stella as their first original author — after author Ed Gorman recommended him upon reading the manuscript — says a lot about his peers' respect for him.

Lucky at Cards by Lawrence Block (Hard Case Crime)

Since September 2009 marks the fifth anniversary of Hard Case Crime, I will be reprinting my reviews of the first 40 books from my old (and now mostly defunct) Craig's Book Club site — 2 for the first 10 days, and 1 a day for the next 20. I hope you enjoy this refresher course in the variety of crime fiction that this fascinating publisher has to offer.

"They say every man has a weakness. They say that for every man there's a woman somewhere in the world who can make him jump through fiery hoops just by snapping her fingers. They say a man's lucky if he never meets that woman." — from Lucky at Cards

If your publishing imprint's best-selling novels were by a particular author, you'd keep putting out novels by that author, wouldn't you? Well, that must be what's going on over at Hard Case Crime, because Lucky at Cards is the third "lost" Lawrence Block classic they've come out with. Lucky for us, it's another doozy, but what else could you possibly expect from the master of the crime novel?

Bill Maynard is an ex-magician who found his way into the card-sharp business. He upset the wrong people in his last town, so he's moved temporarily to New York, following an opportunity. But he's about to get very distracted by another, much more unexpected, opportunity — one "with hooker's hips and queen-sized breasts," and one that's easily as dangerous as getting aces and eights.

Lucky at Cards was originally released under the title The Sex Shuffle and the byline "Sheldon Lord," and it was published in 1964, the year before The Girl with the Long Green Heart, Block's previous Hard Case Crime outing. It shares a more optimistic tone with that novel that is a far cry from the much darker Grifter's Game (a.k.a. Mona) from just a couple of years before. This is apparently a huge coup for the Hard Case gang as Block has been notoriously shy when it comes to his early pseudonymous novels.

Its brisk pacing is a big attraction, but Lawrence Block's forte has always been his wonderfully complex plots, especially in these early novels. The likable, relatable characters like Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr came later — guys like Bill Maynard in Lucky at Cards are just slightly nonaverage Joes with very healthy imaginations.

Hell, they think like novelists, with their convoluted scenarios involving multiple character roles and layers of deception requiring huge amounts of footwork and no discernible sleep. No real person could pull all this off. And while this may be a drawback for some readers, I get a lot of fun out of watching these unrealistic, but still somehow highly plausible, situations play out. As long as Hard Case Crime keeps discovering these gems, I'll keep reading them.

The Last Match by David Dodge (Hard Case Crime)

Since September 2009 marks the fifth anniversary of Hard Case Crime, I will be reprinting my reviews of the first 40 books from my old (and now mostly defunct) Craig's Book Club site — 2 for the first 10 days, and 1 a day for the next 20. I hope you enjoy this refresher course in the variety of crime fiction that this fascinating publisher has to offer.

"The Thirteen Match game ... is one of the simplest and most effective swindles in existence. The mark can't ever wins unless you want him to. You throw thirteen matches ... on the table. Then you and the john take turns extracting one, two, or three matches from the pile at a time.... The aim is not to take that last match." — from The Last Match

Fans of author David Dodge who were thrilled to see his series character Al Colby back in print with Hard Case Crime's rerelease of Plunder of the Sun are bound to be even more excited to learn that The Last Match, a new, never before published novel and Dodge's last, has been unearthed and is finally available to the public, more than 30 years after it was written.

Dodge, also the author of the novel Alfred Hitchcock used as the basis for To Catch a Thief, used pieces of his life throughout his fiction. A world traveler with his family, he alternated novels fictionalizing his trips around the world with travelogues chronicling the true events. His daughter Kendal Dodge Butler writes in the afterword to The Last Match that "I have such a well-documented childhood that at times I'm not sure whether a thing really happened or it's just something I read in a book." She also believes that Curly, this novel's hero, is simply her father "dreaming of long cons."

But whatever is true and whatever may be recycled from earlier novels (but based on real people), The Last Match is a fine example of Dodge's writing. I didn't particularly enjoy the treasure-hunt aspect of Plunder of the Sun, but the writing was impeccable, and as a fan of long-con stories like The Sting and The Girl with the Long Green Heart (another Hard Case Crime reprint), Dodge's final book was right up my alley. There's not a whole lot in the way of plot; the hero, only known as "Curly" because of his hair, is basically writing a memoir of his time traveling the world pulling cons on unsuspecting marks, and sometimes getting involved with local women.

His adventures take him to many exotic locales, each connected to the last merely by a necessary trip to the next country to escape the authorities of the one he pulled his last job in. He acts as chauffeur to the Honorable (and untouchable) Regina Forbes-Jones in France, and takes charge of a stunningly beautiful (and equally naive) honey-skinned women named Boda while writing suspect letters for Arabs in Tangier. He subsequently hitches a ride in the fire-room of a ship to Peru (after looking out for Boda's future welfare, of course — he's hardly a cad) where he helps perpetuate a Spanish Prisoner scheme much like the Nigerian scam that permeated e-mail of late (this illustrates how old that particular game is).

And that's only the first 150 pages or so. On and on Curly goes and it is simply impossible to predict where he'll go or what he'll do next. Often I got the sense that Dodge wasn't even sure, that he was just letting the story go where it took him. This gives The Last Match an immediacy that is equally as fascinating as the story being told.

Which brings me to another reason I liked The Last Match better than Plunder of the Sun: this book displays the easy flow of a writer who is very comfortable behind the typewriter. You don't attempt to chronicle a period in the life of a character in detail unless you are confident in your ability to improvise at the keys. I had the feeling that the other novel was so tightly plotted in order to get the story told efficiently that there was little room for movement, and that comes through Al Colby in his gruff manner. Conversely, The voice of Curly is unforced and very natural. It poured easily off my tongue when I read it out loud to my infant son (yeah, I know, but those board books get tedious after the 37th reading!), even the most complex sentences were easy reading.

Dodge does go a little wrong with the ending of The Last Match in an attempt to give it a climax with some emotional weight, but the rest of this 315-page work (comparatively large for Hard Case Crime, but I'm not complaining) takes the reader on quite a ride. And Curly the life-long confidence artist is not a character I am likely to forget any time soon. "Nevah feeyah."

The Girl with the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block (Hard Case Crime)

Since September 2009 marks the fifth anniversary of Hard Case Crime, I will be reprinting my reviews of the first 40 books from my old (and now mostly defunct) Craig's Book Club site — 2 for the first 10 days, and 1 a day for the next 20. I hope you enjoy this refresher course in the variety of crime fiction that this fascinating publisher has to offer.

It was a crime novel from Lawrence Block that initiated the Hard Case Crime line (a new imprint from Dorchester Publications and Winterfall LLC that focuses on books written in the style of the old pulp crime novels) in 2004, and Grifter's Game was a nearly perfect choice. It set the tone for works to come while making a terrific impression on its own terms.

Now Ardai and company have returned with another fantastic Block reprint, again with a grifting theme. I love a good long-con tale, and The Girl with the Long Green Heart is one of the best. In terms of pure entertainment value (and educational value, if you're an aspiring criminal like me), it belongs side-by-side with The Sting.

The title character is Evvie Stone, secretary (among other things) to millionaire Wallace J. Gunderman. He promised to marry Evvie a long time ago, but never came through with the ring. However, that hasn't stopped him from getting his milk for free, so to speak, and Evvie is primed for revenge.

Enter Doug Rance and John Hayden, a couple of long-time con artists who work terrifically together due to their complementary styles. They've hatched an ingenious plan guaranteed to relieve Gunderman of a hundred thousand of his precious dollars, and Evvie couldn't be more eager to help them out from the inside. But is she too eager?

Block devises a con so well, it makes you wonder if he hasn't been involved in a little "research" himself (in addition to his lock-picking expertise as shown in his Bernie Rhodenbarr series). The author has a way with words unlike any other author. Written in the first person, The Girl with the Long Green Heart has a lot of internal monologue from John's point-of-view. Much of it has to do with the planning of the job, but a preponderence is simply one man's thoughts when thrust into a set of situations he did not plan on, and Block manages to somehow make it all utterly riveting.

In which case, The Girl with the Long Green Heart reads like lightning — I was finished before I realized I was over halfway through. And it's that kind of readability that brings me back to Block (and Hard Case Crime) time and time again, whatever the book. He's not always the most original plotter (his Rhodenbarrs owe a huge debt to Agatha Christie and his Chip Harrison "mysteries" are just softcore Nero Wolfe rip-offs), but his distinctive voice ensures familiarity and his pure skill at storytelling promises a fun read every time — the primary reason why he is one of my favorite authors.

Honey in His Mouth by Lester Dent (Hard Case Crime)

Reading Honey in His Mouth was an exercise in giving an author a second chance. I first read the work of Lester Dent in June when I happened upon a Doc Savage novel by "Kenneth Robeson" (Quest for Qui) in a used-book store. I didn't like it. Mostly, I didn't like the characters. After all, why does a superman of sorts need five assistants, especially when he spends most of the book saving them from their own stupidity?

That said, the story showed some real creative thought on display, so I opened Honey in His Mouth with both trepidation and anticipation. This novel was written in 1956, one of Dent's last, and it remained unpublished until Hard Case Crime got hold of it and added it to their roster of lost novels that include Roger Zelazny's The Dead Man's Brother and David Dodge's masterful The Last Match, a modern classic of grifter lit.

The main draw of Honey in His Mouth for me was its con-man protagonist. If you want me to read a book, tell me there's a confidence scheme involved, and the more elaborate the better. (Another recent read, King Con by Stephen J. Cannell, was very enjoyable in an Ocean's Eleven kind of way — meaning all the pieces are there, but it was a little too eager to be mainstream to be anything more than a fun ride.)

Dent starts out with a truly exciting car chase. Walter Harsh is a photographer who is not averse to scamming folks for equipment. Such was the case with D.C. Roebuck, who let Harsh have $712 worth of supplies to be billed later. Harsh never paid the bill and subsequently met Roebuck at a filling station. Harsh speeds out; Roebuck gives chase, and off we go. Before the end, an arm is broken, and a car is off the road.

Harsh's time in the hospital gives him an opportunity. He has O-negative blood, you see, a very rare type. This just happens to be the same blood type as the president of a South American country, whom Harsh also just happens to exactly resemble. There is a quartet of schemers who have been looking for someone just like him to impersonate the dictator, and they're willing to pay him $50,000.

Dent sends us on a ride that will not only please his fans but also those of other Hard Case Crime novels. The vetting process of Harsh is a highlight, with the five main characters taking turns in the spotlight. Each one — Brother, Doctor Englaster, Mr. Hassam, Miss Muirz (the dish depicted in the cover painting by Ron Lesser), and Harsh himself — is a full-bodied individual easily distinguished by his or her own conceits and deceits.

Just as I was getting comfortable with them and settling in for a smooth read, Dent throws a monkey wrench that practically sends their plans all to hell. I was worried that Honey in His Mouth would soon focus on the scheme to the book's detriment, but this conflict only serves to bring out the characters' differences and personalities all the more.

Dent is a highly skilled plotter, and Honey in His Mouth in a prime example. It is definitely one of the best of the year, and it just may be one of the best that Hard Case Crime has published yet. It rushes headlong toward a roller coaster conclusion — with plenty of sharp turns to keep things interesting, including two I never saw coming (though my wife thought one was obvious, so your mileage may vary).

Between Honey in His Mouth and The Last Match, my favorite books of the Hard Case Crime like have been ones found by their authors' estate. I for one would be very grateful if all late crime authors' relations would thoroughly scour their famous kin's files for more gems like these. Sometimes trunks house treasures.

Ten More Great Reads from 2008

This is my second Best Books I Read in 2008 list. (The first one is here.) This one consists of those books that were not first published in 2008. These should not in any way be taken as lesser selections — in fact the best book I read all year is on this list — I just wanted to keep them separate.

So, here they are, in the order I finished them, along with their year of publication. Any links go to the more detailed reviews I wrote when I first read them. Others have short summaries and capsule reviews. You can research more about those yourself (and then tell your friends that you discovered them).

1. Douglas Preston, The Codex (2004) —Three brothers compete to find the inheritance their puzzle-happy father left them ... buried along with him somewhere in the Honduran rainforest. Preston flies solo in this globe-trotting adventure that is a little long but still immensely entertaining.
2. John Burnham Schwartz, Reservation Road (1998)
3. Lois Lowry, The Giver (1993)
4. Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) — The story of Sammy Glick, a copy boy who schemes his way through the ranks of Hollywood. Schulberg makes a despicable character sympathetic by filtering through the eyes of his only friend. Sammy was originally meant to be outrageous, but soon became a "how-to" manual for those on the move.
5. David Robbins writing as Ralph Compton, Rio Largo (2006)
6. Ed McBain, Ten Plus One (1964)
7. John D. MacDonald, Cry Hard, Cry Fast (1955) — The author most famous for his Travis McGee novels paints intricate portraits of every person involved in a multiple-car crash; terrific characterization.
8. Stephen King and Peter Straub, Black House (2001)
9. John Irving, A Widow for One Year (1998)
10. Charles Portis, True Grit (1968) — (A repeat from last year's list: I liked it so much, I read it again and loved it almost as much!)

Top Ten Best Books I Read in 2008

My first Best Books I Read in 2008 list consists of those books that were first published in 2008. I plan to do another list of books I read this year that were published elsewhen (if it's not a word, it should be), but who knows when that might happen?...

When compiling this list, I noticed (but was not particularly surprised by) two aspects:

1. This is the fourth year I've done a list, and at least one Hard Case Crime book has been on it every year. This year is no exception; two of their books made the list.

2. Many authors from this year are repeats from previous years' "best of" lists. Whether this means that I need to expand my reading horizons, or that I've simply made good choices in the authors I read regularly, I don't know. As always, comments are welcome.

So, here they are, alphabetically by author. The links go to the more detailed reviews I wrote when I first read them.

1. Charles Ardai, Fifty-to-One
   
2. Tom Bradley, Lemur
   
3. Edward Bunker, Stark
   
4. Max Allan Collins, The First Quarry
   
5. Patrick Culhane, Red Sky in Morning
   
6. Ray Garton, Ravenous
   
7. Harold Jaffe, Jesus Coyote
   
8. Joe R. Lansdale, Leather Maiden
   
9. David J. Schow, Gun Work
   
10. Matthew Warner, Horror Is Not a 4-Letter Word
    

(In the interest of total disclosure, I received free review copies of all but one of these, and I got that one from the library. Hooray for free books! Also, I usually try to limit the list to one book per author. But since Patrick Culhane is actually Max Allan Collins, and it's technically another name, I've made an exception due to that technicality.)

Gun Work by David J. Schow (Hard Case Crime)

There are friends you hang out with on a regular basis. Then there are your special friends — the ones you can depend on to get you out of a jam you can't solve on your own. Carl Ledbetter is in that kind of trouble.

His fiancée Erica has been kidnapped while in Mexico City, and the ransom is one million dollars. So, who can Carl call but his fellow Iraq War vet, Barney, a scarred yet deliberately nondescript character with the proverbial "checkered past." Carl once saved Barney's life, so Barney accompanies Carl to the money drop and shows he was born to tackle this kind of situation.

But when things go wrong because Barney's aim is too good, he smells a fish ... and someone who was supposed to stay alive doesn't ... and then things get really bad.

Though he's done a great deal in the intervening years, author David J. Schow is probably still best known for (whether it's true or not) coining the term to describe the kind of horror fiction he and his fellow "splatterpunk" writers were producing in the mid-1980s.

Also, though Schow has written half a dozen novels, and about as many Hollywood screenplays, his reputation has been primarily based on his skills at the short story. He deserves for his newest novel, Gun Work from Hard Case Crime, to change that perception.

Gun Work is Schow's first book since his 2006 collection, Havoc Swims Jaded — and his first ever set firmly in the hardboiled crime genre. 250 pages of constant action are divided into five parts and no chapters, with Schow (who was once married to fellow Hard Case scribe Christa Faust) offering up a speedy, grueling, and ultimately satisfying read — as well as a graduate-level education in artillery.

Parts of the story fit well into the usual Hard Case style, but Gun Work is most definitely rawer than anything else they've published to date. Barney has to go through one hell of a struggle to finish the task he sets for himself, all resulting in a blistering confrontation with the person responsible for the whole mess. If you enjoyed how Allan Guthrie put his protagonist through the wringer in Hard Man, you'll love what Schow does with Barney in Gun Work. The Mexican wrestlers are just a bonus.

21 directed by Robert Luketic (starring Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Bosworth)

21 (2008). Screenplay by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb from the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich.

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a brilliant MIT student on his way to Harvard Medical School. He's already been accepted, but the money is an issue. Ben is up for a full scholarship, but so are 76 other people, and he has spent so much time studying, he's had little opportunity for the "life experience" the scholarship board seeks from that one "dazzling" candidate that deserves the $300,000 free ride.

So, when his Nonlinear Equations professor, Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey), recruits him to his team of other brilliant students to count cards in Las Vegas casinos, he reluctantly accepts — on the condition that once he's earned the three-hundred grand, he's out.

Spacey is electric as Professor Rosa, but it's Sturgess's work as Ben Campbell that grounds this flight of fancy in reality. He is instantly likable, and his troubles are relatable, even though few people have actually experienced them. Laurence Fishburne also has a nice turn as ultra-intimidating security man Cole Williams, a man who does whatever it takes to keep his job in an increasingly computer-controlled arena.

Though it's supposedly based on a true story, 21 is pure Hollywood all the way. From its underprivileged hero given the opportunity of a lifetime, to its instant inclusion of the hero's dream love interest (here Kate Bosworth), to how Ben drops his geek friends once he gets the chance to hang out with cooler people, to how the student surpasses the teacher.

The first portion of the movie is so predictable, in fact — and so spelled-out for the general audience — that it's a struggle just to get through to the interesting portion: the actual Vegas scenes. As a whole, however, 21 is a lot of fun, and I was surprised at how much I thought about it after it was over, especially that insipid but catchy phrase, "Winner, winner, chicken dinner."

Fifty-to-One by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime)

"[This game is] called 'Fifty-to-One'. Those are the odds, you see."
"Of winning?"
"Of surviving." — from Fifty-to-One

Charley Borden is a publisher, editor, and self-proclaimed rip-off artist. The best-selling book of his publishing line, Hard Case Crime Books, is blatant Mickey Spillane pilferage — Eye the Jury by Nicky Malone ("a Mac Hatchet mystery") — and he thrives on bad publicity because it sells books.

But Charley's a likeable sort, so when he asks showgirl Tricia "Trixie" Heverstadt — who dances in a famous gangster's nightclub but really wants to write for The New Yorker — to write a true-crime work on her boss's exploits, she is glad to oblige for a penny a word. Only the story she tells — of the theft of the gangster's millions — is completely made up.

Or so she thinks. The gangster disagrees; the details of the events depicted in Tricia's novel happened to him exactly the way she wrote them — down to the combination of the vault — and he wants to know who the thief was. The police would also like to know the identity of the book's author (published as "Anonymous" to create mystery and sell more books, of course) and no one is going to let up until they get what they want.

Fifty-to-One is the 50th book in the Hard Case Crime line (the real one), founded in 2004 by Charles Ardai and Max Phillips. In recognition of this milestone, Ardai felt a very special sort of book was called for, and he wrote it himself (though Phillips contributed a chapter).

And Ardai really set himself a challenge: to tell a riveting story in 50 chapters, each named after the Hard Case Crime books published up to that point, in chronological order. Chapter 1 is "Grifter's Game," chapter 2 is "Fade to Blonde," etc. (Observant readers will also find references to books 51-55.) And Ardai's story tries its damnedest to deliver what the chapter titles promise.

Along for the ride are a couple of writers named Larry and Don (maybe you've heard of them?), ever-ready with a quip or a caper. Their influence is felt in how Ardai deftly commingles suspense and humor in what is undoubtedly the funniest book Hard Case Crime has published to date. (The humor carries you through a few too many convenient coincidences.) Ardai makes fun of the publishing business, the crime genre, and best of all, he makes fun of himself!

Fifty-to-One is well paced, and it has that pulp-style written-in-a-hurry feel that adds to its sense of immediacy. That said, it also feels a little too long at 330 pages. But it's hard to be too critical of a book that is so obviously a labor of love. Ardai didn't have to write a special book to commemorate Hard Case Crime's 50th "anniversary," so the fact that he wanted to is all the more endearing.

Ardai's novel isn't meant to be a future classic — it's just a fun, self-referential romp purely intended to offer a few hours' diversion along with its plethora of cross-merchandising (an 8-page gallery of all 50 covers is included in place of the usual club advertisement). The great thing is, fans will see these as bonuses, which just goes to show how attuned to his readers Ardai is. He has produced a novel that attempts many things and succeeds at more of them than should have been possible. Fifty-to-One is a book that is not only a solid example of the comic crime novel, but also goes to show what a really good writer can come up with when he truly challenges himself.

"Sense of Humor" by Damon Runyon (Broadway short story)

Any fan of crime fiction would do well to check out the short stories of Damon Runyon. One of the most most popular writers of his day, he is now largely forgotten among modern readers, except for fans of the musical Guys and Dolls (and they may not even know that Runyon's work was its source).

Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly his reputation for unapologetic sentimentality (almost completely absent in crime fiction since the "tough guy" 1950s) and his propensity for O. Henry–style twist endings — both aspects that appear dated to readers in the 21st century.

But alongside those traits runs an ironic (often pitch black) sense of humor that would probably surprise someone expecting a more "innocent" tone from 1930s fiction. Take for example this (more than somewhat edited) selection from the story "Sense of Humor" (available along with many others in the new collection Guys and Dolls and Other Writings):

"Say," [Joe the Joker] says, "I am going to play a wonderful joke on Frankie Ferocious."

"Well, Joe," I say, "you are not asking me for advice, but I am going to give you some free gratis, and for nothing. Do not play any jokes on Frankie Ferocious, as I hear he [...] will not laugh if you have Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Ed Wynn, and Joe Cook telling him jokes all at once. In fact," I say, "I hear he is a tough audience."

"I am going to have myself delivered to Frankie Ferocious in a sack."

"Well," I say, "personally, I see no percentage in being delivered to Frankie Ferocious in a sack, because as near as I can make out from what I read in the papers, there is no future for a guy in a sack that goes to Frankie Ferocious. What I cannot figure out," I say, "is where the joke on Frankie comes in."

"Why," Joe the Joker says, "the joke is I will not be asleep in the sack, and my hands will not be tied, and in each of my hands I will have a John Roscoe, so when the sack is delivered to Frankie Ferocious and I pop out blasting away, can you not imagine his astonishment?"

Well, I can imagine this, all right. In fact, when I get to thinking of the look of surprise that is bound to come to Frankie Ferocious's face when Joe the Joker comes out of the sack I have to laugh, and Joe the Joker laughs right along with me.

Add to that Runyon's signature use of present tense (which can come off as stilted when he forces past- and future-tense phrases into its rules but has a charm all its own), and you have something that is difficult to get into at first, but that is immensely rewarding once you "learn the language."

"Sense of Humor" ends with a twist worthy of the darkest crime fiction and had me open-mouthed, but at the same time, it's really the only ending that fits the story. Runyon's stories often wrap around themselves and tie up neatly with a ribbon, often in a way that elicits a smile at the author's craftsmanship.

Shooting Star / Spiderweb by Robert Bloch (Hard Case Crime double)

It's at first a little surprising that Hard Case Crime would reprint a Robert Bloch novel, let alone two, since he is best known for writing the novel that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Psycho. Though Bloch then became known as a horror writer, that book was just one of 20 he wrote throughout his career, covering other genres like science-fiction and, the appropriate one here, crime.

Shooting Star appears in this volume along with Spiderweb, packaged together in a form reminiscent of the old Ace Doubles — two complete novels printed back-to-back and head-to-tail with a separate cover for each one. You read one novel, then flip the book over to read the other. Each one has its own copyright page and cover art. It's a gimmick, to be sure, but a great one.

This presentation is perfect when you consider that Shooting Star and Spiderweb actually both first appeared as part of the Ace Double line (each runs just over 150 pages). Not together, though: they were published in 1958 and 1954, respectively. (Spiderweb was backed by a David Alexander novel, and Shooting Star was backed with a collection of Bloch's short stories.)

When an old friend asks him to solve an old murder, a one-eyed, down-on-his-luck literary agent becomes a one-eyed, down-on-his-luck private eye. After Mark Clayburn had the accident that lost him an eye (and gained him a patch), no one came to visit him — not even Harry Bannock, though they were pretty close at the time.

Now Bannock wants a favor: for Clayburn to solve the murder of Dick Ryan (Clayburn has a PI license and gun permit to help with research on true-detective yarns) so Bannock can cash in on a TV deal for Ryan's series of 39 Lucky Larry movies. (Ryan was found with "reefer butts" at the time, and the TV people are wary of closing the deal due to the scandal.) Clayburn only agrees because he could use the money. But the threats begin right away, and the police are less than helpful.

I often enjoy novels set in old Hollywood. In fact, just before beginning Shooting Star, I had just read two others — What Makes Sammy Run? and Rude Mechanicals — and I thought my brain was primed for the experience. But, as one might expect, Bloch shows a different side of Hollywood. No bright lights here, expect for the occasional muzzle flash. Clayburn can't trust anyone, not even the people he has to depend on most.

What I didn't expect was conventionality. Though few of them are genuine classics, all the other Bloch novels I've read were nonetheless intriguing in their pursuit of original ideas. But, apart from a couple of interesting details — namely, the one-eyed protagonist and the antidrug message (with repeated talk of "reefer addicts") — Shooting Star is like a lot of other private eye novels. Plus, the solution is so predictable that it's practically given away before the book begins.

Even Spiderweb offers a very typical noir-fiction plot: greed gets a guy in over his head with some shady dealings, and he has to find a way out. Eddie Haines had a promising career in Iowa. The star of the senior play, they all said, "You oughta be in pictures." When he got a crackerjack idea for a TV series, he headed for Hollywood. Two months and $300 to an agent later, after not a single bite, Eddie is standing in front of his bathroom mirror with a straight razor in his hand and shaving the farthest thing from his mind when a Peter Lorre lookalike knocks on his door with $100 and the opportunity to become someone else.

The only different between this and any other typical crime novel is Bloch's use of psychology as a theme. Fortunately, that difference goes a long way toward making Spiderweb the more entertaining of the two. My guess is that it was the novel actually selected to be reprinted but that it was too short by itself and Shooting Star was picked to fill out the page count. Either way, I still hope Hard Case Crime produces more dual volumes like this one and the one they published early on, collecting Max Allan Collins's first two novels — I have to admit I like getting "two for the money."

Stark by Edward Bunker

Stark is the long-lost first novel of Edward Bunker, who died in 2005. Bunker was an author, with four other novels, a memoir, and three screenplays (two based on his own works) to his credit. He was also an actor with over 20 screen credits (including the role of "Mr. Blue" in Reservoir Dogs).

But Bunker was also a criminal. He was the youngest inmate at San Quentin at 17, and continued with the life into his 40s. Most all of his work is based on his time and experiences on the wrong side of the law.

Stark is the story of Eddie stark, a con man, a heroin addict, and a snitch (though not a very good one, at first) for Detective Lieutenant Patrick Crowley. A good portion of the story consists of Crowley's continued threats of incarceration and Stark's continued inability to find where his dealer, Momo Mendoza, gets his supplies.

But the fun is in how Stark is continually sidetracked — by whores, horse, and heat just to name three. Bunker tackles it all with the experience and directness of one who has lived it. His six-page rundown of three junkies geezing is only shocking after the fact; Bunker writes it just like any other scene in any other book.

But Stark is ever hopeful, and Stark is a hopeful kind of story, despite chronicling the lives of the hopeless. It is also a really solid novel, belying its trunk origins. It doesn't have any of the signs of most first novels, with an ease and confidence missing in works by many more experienced writers.

Having not read his other books, I don't know how Stark compares with Bunker's other work, but fans of 1960s-era crime (and of Hard Case Crime, in particular) should really dig it.

Hard Case Crime Quote of the Day (from Lucky at Cards by Lawrence Block)

"They say every man has a weakness. They say that for every man there's a woman somewhere in the world who can make him jump through fiery hoops just by snapping her fingers. They say a man's lucky if he never meets that woman."

— from Lucky at Cards by Lawrence Block
(reprinted by Hard Case Crime)

Fake! by Clifford Irving

Subtitled The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time, Fake! is the only kind of true-crime book I can get into: not the story of a murderer, but of a classy kind of con artist.

As any fan of Orson Welles's F for Fake will already know, Elmyr de Hory was responsible for a real shake-up in the art community. For decades, he sold all over the world paintings of his own as the work of old masters. But his story never reads as a mean-spirited attempt to get rich, mostly due to the approach.

Author Clifford Irving (who would, just a few years after writing this book, pull off his own fake -- with the fictional Autobiography of Howard Hughes) portrays Elmyr as a sympathetic figure. He only did it when he needed money; when he was flush, he focused on his own art career, and never painted in others' styles during those periods.

Sadly, his own career never took off, and so he was repeatedly forced to go back into his particular bag of tricks and produce works in the styles of Picasso, Modigliani, Derain, Renoir, and others until he was finally caught, though he was never convicted due to what was essentially a technicality. Elmyr always claimed to have never signed any of the paintings (although his business partners may have) which keeps the paintings from being outright forgeries.

Fake! is a terrific book. Part biography, part crime story, part world travelogue, and probably part fiction, it remains wholly engaging and eminently readable.