Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I’ve probably read this book before, but it’s been twenty years since I ran through most of the old, pre-90s 87th Precinct series. They’re getting kind of hard to come by, the old ones, although you can generally find the 21st century hardbacks at book fairs. I found this one somewhere in a 1981 paperback.

The book only has one central mystery, unlike the later volumes. A model is murdered in her apartment while her five-year-old daughter in an adjoining bedroom reassures her dolly that everything will be all right. There’s some pre-existing friction on the squad, and the lieutenant is going to transfer Kling, but Carella speaks up for him and partners with him on the case. Carella goes missing and a body turns up in a fiery wreck in his automobile, and Kling gets suspended but continues to pursue the case. They find the model has a secret, and only when the detectives from the 87th can figure that out can they find the killer and rescue Carella.

It’s a hard-hitting plot, maybe, for the 1960s, but in the 21st century, it’s as deep as the episode of a television crime drama. Then again, one of the joys of the mass market paperback is that they really were fast moving, singular sorts of plots with good prose attached. Well, sometimes with good prose. McBain’s, though, is some of the best.

Books mentioned in this review:

I know what you’re thinking: He’s really following up a book of jokes with a book of cartoons? No, even better: this book is actually a subset of Snoopy cartoons from a larger volume, Snoopy Come Home. So it’s like a Readers Digest Condensed Book of cartoons.

These Peanuts cartoons come from the late 1950s and 1960s and center on Snoopy, of course. They deal with his love for dinner and his relationships with Charlie and whatnot. No Red Baron at this time, and Woodstock does not look fully formed within the cartoons themselves (although he looks like we know him on the cover).

The Peanuts cartoons are timeless if you’re of a certain age who grew up with new ones in the paper and television specials frequently. But I can’t think what a younger crowd would think of them.

Worth it for a certain nostalgic value and some amusement, but no real laugh out loud things.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is a little pulp bit from the era of the early Don Pendleton “The Executioner” series. It’s not published by Gold Eagle or Pinnacle, though: it’s some off-brand called Modern Promotions/Unibook.

And it’s a pleasant surprise.

The main character of the book is a former NYPD detective now serving as a deputy in a small town in Maine after leaving New York in disgrace for having taken some money from some non-Mafia bookmakers. When the chief of police is in a coma and the main character acts as chief, a known mobster moves into town. The incapacitated chief of police, a good man by all accounts, looks to have taken some money. The chief’s wife, a sexpot, has designs on everyone in town, including the main character. As Maine becomes an open territory for mob homesteading, with the New York outfit hoping to beat the Montreal outfit to the new rackets, can one tarnished hero keep the mob out of his town at least?

A short pulp read, pretty dark and noir, but it moves well and keeps you rooting for the main character even as he admits some mistakes, pays for them in his own ways, and tries to do somewhat right.

Recommended.

Books mentioned in this review:

This book is the second book published by Xerox that I know I’ve read. It’s not the first photocopied book I’ve read; that would be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, which I pirated from the Marquette Memorial Library back before the Internet made it available for $10. What was I talking about before admitting I’m a book pirate? Oh, yes.

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Xerox had a publishing arm that pumped out at least books for young adults. I read The Day The World Went Away some years ago when I bought the book during my Ebaying days. Spoiler alert: It was the hippies.

This book, Moontoons Jokes & Riddles, is a collection of jokes about landing on the moon and aliens and whatnot. This must have been rushed out pretty quickly after the moon landing to capitalize on it. Sadly, the schoolchildren who were of the age to read this book when it was fresh–me included–might have thought space exploration would continue apace. How wrong they would have been.

The book includes a number of cartoons and gags that kids find funny. I only laughed at one thing, but I forget what it was. A couple of things predicted the modern sensibilities better than the then-future of space travel: there’s a cartoon where moon creatures complain about air pollution from the lander’s retrorockets, and there’s a cartoon where a moon dweller tells astronauts he hopes they don’t treat them like the American Indian. These were jokes in 1970, but a way of life for some people in 2012.

I’ll have to try some of these jokes on my children. I suspect they, as the target audience, will enjoy them more than I do, even if they don’t tend to include the words “bananahead” or “diaper.” At least, not until my children retell them.

Books mentioned in this review:

I read this book early in my college career, when I was cutting classes to hang out and read in the Marquette University Memorial Library. I read Existentialism and Human Emotions (which I reread in 2006), and I was looking for some other Existentialism to sink my teeth into. So I did a library catalog search (on a computer, even then, not on little cards), and I found the Camus. I checked out The Stranger and the book right next to it, The Outsider. When I finished The Stranger and cracked open the other, it was quite deja vu, although it did not make me physically nauseated. The Outsider was a British translation of The Stranger.

So, where was I? Oh, yes. Rereading this bit about Meursault not doing much, killing an Arab, and then getting tried for it.

Well, it’s a bleak little piece, and I don’t find Meursault a particularly unsympathetic character, the pivotal point comes when he, after his suspicious “friend” is in a fight with the Arab, returns to the place where the Arab lingers and, dazzled by the sun and his headache, shoots the man.

He’s like a Forrest Gumpian feather floating along on life, and then an Arab is shot, and he starts thinking deeply, well, Existentialism-deep on things? Bleh. I could have followed along some other path with the man who just lives in the moment without thinking or reacting coming to some other realization, but to have it hinge on a single, unforeshadowed violent act just doesn’t work for me.

I don’t remember what exactly I thought of this book twenty years ago, but as I age, it’s becoming clear to me that French Existentialism is a philosophy for college students and Frenchmen. It relies too much on subjective interpretation of reality to speak to someone older than 24. Or at least me.

Books mentioned in this review:

I’m pretty sure I’ve read this book before, but not since I’ve been blogging. I haven’t watched the film too recently, either, so although I was basically familiar with elements of the film and the plot, the exact order of them and many of the details I’d forgotten, so it was more akin to reading anew a book by an author I’ve read a lot of.

This book, written during the Eisenhower administration, finds Bond coming out of convalescence from the things that happened to him in From Russia, With Love. M is not sure that Bond is the agent he once was (sort of like in the film Die Another Day). So M sends Bond to Jamaica to look into the disappearance of the station agent there and his secretary. While the powers-that-be think he’s run off with the woman, Bond looks a little more closely and discovers it’s more related to the secretive island sanctuary of a mysterious Chinese figure, Doctor No. Then hijinks happen and Bond gets quite mauled but wins the day and the girl.

The girl who has the big broken nose, unlike Ursula Andress.

The book departs from my memory of the film, of course, but they’re both independent media, so they’re both enjoyable in their own way. Now that I’ve read the book again, I have the urge to watch the film. Kind of like watching the film The Living Daylights prompted me to pick this book up.

More Bond novel reviews:

• Thunderball (2006)
• Thunderball (2011)
• From Russia, With Love
• The Man with the Golden Gun
• Goldfinger

Books mentioned in this review: