I couldn’t resist reviewing Frank Kane’s Slay Ride (a far cry from Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride”) for an FFB this close to Christmas. Frank Kane wrote a series of private eye novels featuring a tough investigator named Johnny Liddel. I enjoyed Kane’s clever titles for his novels (check them out below).
Slay Ride involves Johnny Liddel in an insurance transaction: trade money for jewels stolen from a client. Of course the hand-off goes wrong and one of Liddel’s colleagues gets killed. Liddel resisted the whole “swap of money for stolen jewels” scheme so this debacle only fires up his motivation to take down the jewel heist ring who shakes-down insurance companies for Big Bucks.
If you’re a fan of the Mike Shayne series, you’ll find Johnny Liddel a similar type of private eye. Do you have a favorite Private Eye? GRADE: B
Frank Kane’s Johnny Liddel Series:
About Face (1947)
Green Light for Death (1949)
Slay Ride (1950)
Bullet Proof (1951)
Dead Weight (1951)
Bare Trap (1952)
The Icepick Artists (1953)
Poisons Unknown (1953)
Red Hot Ice (1955)
A Real Gone Guy (1956)
The Living End (1957)
Trigger Mortis (1958)
Grave Danger (1960)
A Short Bier (1960)
Time to Prey (1960)
Due Or Die (1961)
The Mourning After (1961)
Stacked Deck (1961)
Crime of Their Life (1962)
Dead Rite (1962)
Hearse Class Male (1963)
Johnny Come Lately (1963)
Ring-a-ding-ding (1963)
Barely Seen (1964)
Fatal Undertaking (1964)
Final Curtain (1964)
The Guilt Edged Frame (1964)
Esprit De Corpse (1965)
Two To Tangle (1965)
Maid In Paris (1966)
Margin For Terror (1967)
Johnny Liddell’s Morgue (2012)
Stairway To Hell (2016)
Johnny Liddell Mystery Crime Box Set (2016)
Frame (2022)
I don’t remember reading any of these. Right now I am reading Paperback Jack by Loren Estleman which is about a writer who starts writing paperback original novels after WW2 and the pulp market dried up.
Steve, I’ll be reading PAPERBACK JACK in 2023!
Thanks for mentioning that, Steve. I have it on hold now.
I used to read ONLY PI novels for years but not so much these days. The Continental Op, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, all had their day with me. I didn’t read much of the earlier stuff like Mike Shayne or Johnny Liddell, but anything from the ’70s and ’80s I’m sure I’ve read.
Jeff, I was reading Carter Brown, Mike Shayne, Mike Hammer, Honey West, and Johnny Liddell in the 1960s. I read The Continental Op, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, and Spenser novels in the 1970s. The 1980s led to the Nameless and Amos Walker series. But, as I tried to argue at EYECON in the 1990s, the Private Eye genre was dying just like Westerns.
Pretty sure I read a couple of these long ago but don’t remember anything about them and never read further. They seemed to be fairly standard PI stuff. My favorite PI series is Macdonald’s Lew Archer, but Archer isn’t my favorite PI. He’s actually rather dull. I’ll go with Mike Hammer.
Michael, when I read I, THE JURY for the first time it’s as if I was hit by a lightning bolt!
Lew Archer, the early Spenser, Travis McGee, James Rockford, and so many more. Lew is rather dull but he gets good cases.
Patti, let’s not forget Honey West!
Maybe Hammett’s CONTINENTAL OP, but it’s difficult to choose. All have strong points. Chandler and Marlowe probably cast the longest shadow.
Fred, Santa was smiling on me yesterday because I found Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories (Everyman’s Library)–https://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Chandler-Collected-Stories-Everymans/dp/0375415009/ref=sr_1_14?crid=30K6ZFJ45HL1K&keywords=the+complete+raymond+chandler&qid=1671805289&s=books&sprefix=the+complete+raymond+chandler%2Cstripbooks%2C103&sr=1-14–for 50 cents!
I may have read some of these titles as a but I mainly was a fan of Mike Hammer, spent some valuables Deutschmark on them.
George, all over the European media are reports on the horrible US weather situation, will probably get worse.
Not a nice Xmas present!
I hope you and everybody else here are doing ok and manage that abominable cold.
Wolf, right now Western New York is under Wind Warnings as a “Bomb Cyclone” approaches. We’re going to experience 70 mph winds, blizzard conditions, Lake Effect Snow, and Arctic temperatures. All the schools are closed. Most retail establishments shut down. Travel bans will be in effect soon. Thank goodness we have a natural gas generator because thousands are going to lose power during this storm.
I know I haven’t read any of these, and given the mountain of to be read books, I won’t ever get to them.
Hate to say this, as I know many of you live in the cold part of the world, but San Diego has a forecast of 81 degrees for Christmas day (in the inland area).
Maggie, just flip that 81 degrees around and that’s what we’ll be experiencing today. The wind chill temperatures will be below ZERO with 70 mph winds!
Always thought Spillane was a terrible writer. I preferred Hammett, Chandler, Ross MacDonald, John D. MacDonald. Later on I read Stephen Greenleaf, Arthur Lyons ,Jonathan Valin, Joseph Hansen, Michael Lewin-all of whom I thought better than Robert Parker.
Steve, I should have included Stephen Greenleaf, Arthur Lyons, Jonathan Valin, Joseph Hansen, Michael Lewin, and the early Andrew Vachess. I loved Robert B. Parker in his early mysteries, but he lost me with his girl friend and dog.
Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, Bill Pronzini’s Nameless/Bill, and those of Sara Paretsky, Hammett, John MacDonald’s almost PI, Gregory McDonald’s Fletch books were the first series I read through, Richard Prather, William Campbell Gault, Ross Macdonald, and quite a few others. Haven’t yet gotten around to Kane, since he seemed to publish mostly in the third-rate CF magazines back in the ’50s and ’60s and I figured he would tend to run along those lines; read Jean Kerr’s and Fritz Leiber’s parodies of Spillane before I ever tried one of his. Preferred the former. It was easy.
Todd, Spillane was a publishing phenomenon–look to James Patterson’s success as an analog–but he ended up in Bud Light commercials.
Well, audiences tend to fade, even the ridiculously voracious ones that helped launch (FANTASTIC, and, somewhat more honestly) MANHUNT and its horde of imitators (of which MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE was clearly the most durable).
Todd, STARK HOUSE is reprinting the best of MANHUNT. Great stories!
The BRAZEN film I refer to below is apparently based on the novel BRAZEN VIRTUE by Nora Roberts, probably even more than Stephen King or the great outliner James Patterson the best latter-day example of the writer who can’t help but have a bestseller with every book (no matter how bad the book, as in too many cases with all of these, though getting clean has certainly helped King get more consistently good).
You had every opportunity to make your point about the death of the PI (who is still alive) at Eyecon and you clammed up!!! It was brave of you to face a hostile audience, but you took a dive!
I like almost all PIs but my top rank is Marlowe, Amos Walker, and Nameless.
Bob, you were great to “officiate” THE DEATH OF THE PRIVATE EYE debate in costume! But no private eye series on TV, no private eye movies, and few private eye novels being published anymore. The facts speak for themselves.
The poorly-titled SO HELP ME TODD and the returning (as an NBC offer) MAGNUM PI are PI series, and THE EQUALIZER verges on being one. GLASS ONION, SPEARS, MARLOWE, and the apparently rather dire BRAZEN (Alyssa Milano as a younger Jessica Fletcher-sort of novelist/amateur detective) among the films. I’ll admit to not keeping up with the novels, and just about bought the only copies of the 2022 cf annuals at the local B&N yesterday, but decided I was cutting it pretty close in the funds (and have a space heater right now running under the kitchen sink to get the cold water pipe flowing again…fun refuses to stop, as always).
Todd, did you receive a package from Santa?
I did! Thanks…hope you saw my emails…
Todd, I didn’t get any emails from you. My College email account–after 30 years!–was purged with all retired faculty email accounts by the new college President, who has been fired after this outrage. My new email account is popeviagra@aol.com