TRUE SLEAZE DETECTIVE

True Crime Detective Magazines 1924-1969 by Eric Godtland, edited by Dian Hansen (Taschen, 2008)

A a long time lover of True Detective magazine and its many imitators (and one of the few to notice its passing), I've been waiting for years for an even half-assed history of the genre. And, with the publication of True Crime Detective Magazines, I'm still waiting.

Not that there isn't a whole lot to love about this lavish volume. For Taschen books, pictures are the thing. And there is no shortage of eye candy here. The book is loaded with some 400+ drool worthy reproductions of detective magazine covers. It begs for coffee table display.

The text, however, is another matter. Granted, the image-heavy format and Taschen's policy of printing the text in English, French, and German doesn't give the writers much to work with. But even allowing for these tight constraints, the "history" presented herein is sketchy, scatter shot, and from what I can tell, frequently inaccurate. The authors seem to have been so distracted by the chapters on bondage covers and "girls smoking" covers (??) they appear to have spent little time actually reading the damn things. As painful an experience as this may be, sometimes a writer's gotta take one for his audience.

An even bigger gripe is 1969 cut-off. Why, my god, why? This is when things were getting really interesting ironically. The wave of sleaze they describe as engulfing the magazines in the 1960s didn't really hit until the 1970s. During the disco decade, every cover was a tasteless tableau of a woman about to come to a painful, violent, and frequently sexually sadistic end. Blurbs promised to reveal the truth about the "Mutilation Murder of Palm Beach's Millionaire Homo" of "When You're Done, Stack Her With the Others." They were truly documents of a nation seemingly going insane.

Luckily, there is something more than pretty pictures. Almost as an afterthought, they include "I Was a True Detective Editor" by Marc Gerald, wherein Mr. Gerald describes his memorable first job out of college in 1989. This article about the almost-final days of the crime magazines is worth the price of admission alone.

It's sad that even Canada's really crappy crime magazines have gotten a real book (True Crime, True North) while the land that invented the damn things (all praise St. Bernarr MacFadden!) has to make do with this. But it does look so nice on my coffee table....

GETTING BURIED DEEPLY

The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd by Jana Bommersbach (Simon & Shuster, 1992)

Megan Abbot's next book, Bury Me Deep, is loosely based on the 1931 Winne Ruth Judd "Trunk Murders" (not, as one or two pinheads suggested, the Brighton Trunk Murders.) Naturally, this sent me scurrying to my library to do a little background reading.

The first book on the case, 1973's Winnie Ruth Judd: The Trunk Murders, is little more than as assemblage of newspaper clippings tediously re-written into narrative form. Definitely not worth the bother. Bommersbach's book is definitely the one to get, and as a read it goes done painlessly. But accurately? That remains to be seen.

First, the facts. Winnie Ruth Judd was a 26-yr old medical typist trying to may a go of it in Phoenix in 1931. For friends, she had x-ray tech Agnes LeRoi and TB patient Hedwig Samuelson. For fun, she had big-wheel lumberman Jack Halloran. And she did have a husband, but he was conveniently out-of-state looking for work and played no role in subsequent events.

On the night of October 26th, Judd visited her pals. There was an altercation caused, Judd later claimed, by her introducing Halloran to a woman with a arrested case of syphilis. Two days later, her erstwhile friends were found in a pair of leaky trunks in the checkroom at Los Angeles's Union Station; Samuelson's body had been cut into four pieces to fit. Judd was quickly arrested. In a trial that can only be described as "unusual," she was convicted of LeRoi's murder and sentenced to death. She was ultimately found insane and remanded to a state mental hospital. She would escaped seven times over the next 30 years (once staying AWOL for seven years) before being finally paroled in 1971

Bommersbach makes a good case for the investigation being flawed, the trial unfair, and the whole process skewed by official efforts to protect Halloran. But to protect him from scandal, or prosecution? Bommersbach has her explanations; in fact, she has two. Unfortunately, her solutions are as problematical as the prosecution's. To run them down, they are:

• Single Woman Theory: Acting entirely alone, Winne Ruth Judd shot her two friends, did her own chopping and stuffing, and then put a bullet in her hand to make it look like self defense. This is the official prosecution theory.
• That Nasty Man: Jumped by her two friends, Judd somehow wrested the gun away after sustaining a bullet wound in the hand and proceeded to kill them in "self defense." She summoned loverboy Halloran, who arranged to have the bodies loaded in trunks. This is Judd's personal story.
• The Second Gunman: There was another gunman who shot one, or possibly both, of the women, leaving Judd entirely innocent.

All are flawed. Although it isn't as hard to chop up a body as Bommersbach makes out, she does make a good case that Judd's hand was injured before the bodies went in the trunks. Dissecting assistance is probable. But Judd's self-defense claim flys in the face of physical evidence. LeRoi was killed by a single shot to the head fired at extremely close range. But would Halloran, a businessman with ready access to trucks that could easily transport the bodies out into the desert, bring in a second witness to chop up Samuelson and then send the injured and no doubt thoroughly rattled Judd on a lengthy, idiotically conceived trip with no clear plan to get rid of the evidence?

The second gunman theory is simply silly. Not only does this beg why Judd would spend the rest of her life screaming self defense, the only basis is the early news stories that had the women being killed by different guns. Where Bommersbach sees evidence of a sinister conspiracy protecting important men, I see another screw-up by know-it-all newshounds.

My theory is that Judd sneaked into the house, shot LeRoi and then brawled a bit with Samuelson before shooting her. If she did have some post-mortem help, I think it was a third party that lacked access to more convenient methods of body disposal. But who... and why?

It is with keen anticipation that I await Ms. Abbott's novelization (and hopefully, rationalization) of these events.

ALL CHOKED UP

Autoerotic Fatalities by Hazelwood, Dietz, & Burgess (Lexington Books, 1983)

Recent events in Thailand inspired me to dust off my copy of this transgressive classic from the '80s and skim the good parts. Aimed at a professional audience of the hardworking souls who have to clean-up the medical and legal aftermath of these mishaps, the writing is dry and matter-of-factual, but never dense or dull. After reading this, you could one-up the Bangkok police.

The book is based on a a study of more than 100 cases, with a generous number described in detail in the text. There are common elements. The victims are almost invariably male. They are generally found nude save for a few articles of women's clothing and/or bondage gear. Typically, "the victim hid this sexual activity from family and friends." But it's not just classic autoerotic asphyxiation; the authors delve into cases involving a floor buffer, home-made electrodes, and household refrigerants. While the famous "Love Bug" case is only alluded to, not discussed in detail, there is no shortage of cases illustrating other novel expressions of the human sexual instinct.

The bulk are, of course, autoerotic asphxiations. My personal favorite was about a 19-year old man who was visiting his fiance's family. After dinner, he begged out of a shopping trip. After they all left, he stripped down, shoved a corncob into his rectum, and filled a shallow hole in the backyard with water. He wallowed in his improvised bog until he was thoroughly covered with mud and then proceeded to hang himself from a fence. But as happens so often, he got carried away and wound up asphyxiating himself. When his fiancee and family return home to make the horrifying discovery, one can only imagine that their shock was tinged with a slight sense of relief that the marriage was off.

There are dozens of others in here that are almost equally novel. After reading this book, Mr. Carradine's apparent misadventure starts to look not only far from unusual, but decidedly unoriginal.

DONALD WESTLAKE #2: THE FIRST WESTLAKIAN STORY

Most of Westlake's early stories appeared in the digest-sized mystery magazines that came and went during the 1950s. Although emminently readable, they weren't particularily Westlakian. "Arrest" (Manhunt, 1/58) was a decent, albeit typical atmospheric killer-waiting-for-the-cops story. "Everybody Killed Sylvia" (Mystery Digest 5/58) was an uneven, undistiguished PI caper with a few comic touches. "The Ledge Bit" (Mystery Digest 9-10/59) had an actor trying to revive his career by playing "suicidal" on hotel ledge; alas, the hotel he chose lacked this vital architectural feature.

For the first touches of that inimitable Westlake style, we must turn to the November 1959 issue of the Guilty Detective Story Magazine. Published by a schlocky Massachusetts-based outfit, Guilty (and its sister magazine Trapped) were far more interesting than they had any right to be. Although their contents were dominated by the hack work of burnt-out pulp writers, the editors preferred JD stories (touching relics of the days when the biggest threat to Western civilization was a teenager with a zip gun) to the standard vitrified Mike Hammer clones. They also published a surprising number (not large, just surprising) of good stories, including early work from Lawrence Block, Harlan Ellison, and of course, Westlake.

"The Knife Fighter" is a bouncy, lightly-written vignette about Al, an ordinary looking teenager who provokes a philosophical confrontation with three JDs. "...let's say we get into an argument...and we decided to settle it with knives," he tells them. "What would it prove?" Using reverse psychology, he manipulates the leader of the trio into an alley for one-on-one action. The action is short and quick. After he wipes his knife off, he walks out of the alley, sadly telling the dead boy's companions, "You can't prove a thing with a knife." He walks down the street and decides to head for the Upper West Side because "he needed more action tonight...[and] there were some real mean guys up there." The Sharks and Jets were never this much fun.

Next up: the most unusual Westlake book you'll never read.

DONALD WESTLAKE #1

Donald Westlake's passing this past December inspired a large number of respectful obituaries, fond tributes, and humorous anecdotes. And justifiably so; he was a true master of the genre who could have used his prodigious output to shake the MWA for three Grandmaster Awards: one for Donald Westlake, one for Richard Stark, and one for a the goofy pen name he could have used for the Dortmunder books. It would have been a joke that I'm sure he would have enjoyed hugely

The closest I have to a Westlake anecdote is more about editorial myopia. Back in 1997, when Westlake brought back Parker (yippie!) in Comeback, I was doing a very small amount of freelance writing for a would-be Details. I pitched my editor what I still think is my best-ever book review idea: an "interview" with the monosyllabic Parker that would end with him breaking my arm or something. He said no. "Too obscure" were his very words.

Two weeks later, Comeback received a full page review in that renowned journal of the obscure and idiosyncratic, Time.

However, there is much Westlake that is truly "too obscure" for all but the fanatics. Next up: a look at some of his earliest stories.

ESCAPE FROM NOIR CITY #2

Belatedly wrapping up the Noir City...

The Unsuspected: The atmosphere on the screen trumps the novel, but the the convoluted plot did not translate well. Presumably, key expository scenes wound up on the cutting room floor. I was the only person in the theater who could actually explain it.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is beyond a reasonable doubt not adapted from Grafton's novel.

Two O'Clock Courage is a heavily streamlined, but reasonably faithful adaptation of Burgess's novel with a surprising amount of B-movie charm.


The Harder They Fall: A great flick from a great novel that I really should re-read. But those who look upon this as an accurate depiction of the Primo Carnera story should be advised that liberties were taken. Legitimately or not, Carnera did KO Jack Sharkey for the title, boxed for four years after losing his title, and went on to a long and successful career in wrestling.

The Sweet Smell of Success was, as always, a success. I even managed to restrain myself from shouting "There's Frank Rosolino," although I did twitch. The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river!

Next up: an even more belated Donald Westlake tribute!

ESCAPE FROM NOIR CITY #1

I'm back from Noir City. Even after two weeks, I'm still a little bleary from seeing 22 films in 10 days. But it was worth it, especially the night I got to surreptitiously sit behind Miss Noir City (at right.) Now that's a cinematic experience that you'll never have in your "home" theater!.

Obviously, I didn't make my goal of blogging (or even reading) every novel. I never even made it to James M. Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit (filmed as Scarlet Street) or Samuel Fuller's Dark Page (Scandal Sheet) and didn't get around to re-visiting Budd Schulberg's wonderful The Harder They Fall or Hemingway's "The Killers." I did get about 1/4 of the way through Tiffany Thayer's One Woman (Chicago Deadline) before throwing in the towel. I'd already seen the movie, which was shaping up to be a reasonable adaptation and welcome condensation of the too-long novel.

Now for the rehash:

Wicked as They Come: great flick, decent adaptation of Ballinger's Portrait in Smoke. They ditched the cheap skip tracer (no problem), but inexplicably shifted the action to London for no apparent reason. Arlene Dahl is suitably vicious.

While the City Sleeps: the business end of the novel is handled well, with the contenders reduced to a more manageable trio, and the plot follows the book closely. My only gripe is that the cool Freudian seductive mother and kinky killer son are replaced with a Reader's Digest-style weak mother and JD son. C'mon, it's about handkerchiefs and underwear!

Big Clock: Very nifty flick that does justice to the novel. Of course, the homosexual subplots have been all but erased, but attentive viewers can spot some vestigial mincing. Kudos to scripter John "Cuban Pineapples" Latimer for actually coming up with a more logical end for Janoth!

to be continued....