review of the Robert E. Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg edited "Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames"

review of

the Robert E. Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg edited

"Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2225. "review of the Robert E. Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg edited "Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames""

- complete review

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE -

- uploaded to my Critic website March 6, 2024

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticTough.html

review of

the Robert E. Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, & Martin H. Greenberg edited

"Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 1, 2024

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticTough.html

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6319907889

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381152.Tough_Guys_and_Dangerous_Dames

Lately, the phrase "works of the imagination" has been on my mind alot. Of course, all fiction, all poetry, cd be called "works of the imagination" but what I'm referring to is work that particularly impresses me in this regard. This compilation of pulp writing fits the bill. I loved many of these stories not just b/c they were 'hard-boiled' but b/c they were 'weird menace'. A sizeable portion are truly fantastic, the authors were very inspired.

The Introduction begins:

"Between 1920 and 1950, America was one tough country. The landscape from New York City to Los Angeles was a single poorly-lit city street, traversed by huge black sedans with running boards and lined with gambling dens, speakeasies, and cheap boarding houses. The residents were small-time hoods perpetually muffled in fedoras and rumpled overcoats, rich thrill-seekers slumming to pique their jaded appetities, smart-aleck con men looking to make a quick buck, and painted ladies of dubious virtue. When they walked the streets it was to a background rhythm of belching .45 automatics police were powerless to stop. None of them showed their face before nightfall, and every morning they read the obituaries like the sports page.

"This is a gross exaggeration of course, but you would have had a hard time proving it to the readers of pulp detective magazines. More than 200 such magazines were published in the first half of this century, and virtually all of them depicted an America overrun with criminals, seething with vice, and wallowing in moral turpitude. Here was the home of the hard-boiled detective, a character whose existence confirmed the country's social decline, and whose task it was to halt it.

"Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames is a celebration of the hard-boiled detective, a true American folk hero who stood with one foot firmly planted in the imaginations of writers and the other in the reality of twentieth-century urban America." - p ix

Need I say more? Well, yeah. There're the pen names:

"The story's opening scene, in which Sail works coolly to conceal a corpse from a snooping police officer, is more hard-boiled than anything that had appeared in the Doc Savage novels Dent had been writing under the Kenneth Robeson pseudonymn since 1933, and a good example of how Black Mask gave writers a chance to flex their imaginations." - p xi

Sail then saves Nola from being murdered:

"Sail looked around, then threw an arm up. He missed the first springline which held the houseboat to the bulkhead. He grasped the next one. He held Nola's head out.

"Water leaked from Nola's nose and mouth.

"Some of the rope which had tied her to the heavy navy anchor was still wrapped around her. Sail used it to tie her to the springline, so that her head was out of the water.

"Then he had to try twice before he could get the springline to the houseboat deck. Nola began gagging and coughing. It made a racket." - p 25

I found most of the stories in this collection to be a bit outré, to have detectives more than a little bit unusual or cases the same. That's a large part of what I enjoyed about it. In the case of the next story I'll refer to, "The Magician Murder" by Raoul Whitfield, the murder mystery starts off in a cockfighting arena & the man murdered is a magician. Interesting. Having just recently watched "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" this had strong resonance for me.

"His name was on the lips of the mixed breeds of the Islands. He was a savage magician, working with knives and poisons. He made incisions on people and there was blood in evidence. Yet it was only a trick. The audience saw incisions that did not exist, and blood that was only a colored water. But they liked it, and Cardoro was great. Therefore he occupied the box of honor." - pp 30-31

Then there's "Black" by Paul Cain. Here's a nice little tidbit showing the duplicity of people:

""By---! I like your style," he said. I've been trying to get along with an outfit of yokels."

"We smiled at one another. I was glad he said he liked me because I knew he didn't like me at all. I was one up on him, I didn't like him very well either." - p 46

Then there's Raymond Chandler, he can do no wrong, he sure can set a scene:

"Court Street was old town, wop town, crook town, arty town. It lay across the top of Bunker Hill and you could find anything there from down-at-heels ex-Greenwich-villagers to crooks on the lam, from ladies of anybody's evening to County Relief clients brawling with haggard landladies in grand old houses with scrolled porches, parquetry floors, and immense sweeping banisters of white oak, mahogany and Circassian walnut." - p 62

Frederick Nebel's "Chains of Darkness":

"["]I tell you that even then I won't believe it's murder and suicide!"

""And why?" sneered Dirigo.

""Because-simply because Murfree was a ladies' man. Because he had too many dames on the string to lose his head over one."

""Nuts! That logic's nuts!"" - p 100

Now, I have to disagree w/ the worldly-wise detective here. His logic is that a ladies' man won't do certain things that an incel guy might do. But I remember a story about a Baltimore bartender who'd been accused of rufie-raping: people who knew him sd things like 'I don't believe it, he cd get any woman he wanted.' It was my opinion that that didn't matter b/c some guys just like the power & the rufie-raping was as much if not more for the power than it was for the sex.

"Evans promptly got the hiccups. Cardigan went to the bar and came back with a glass of water. He made Evans stand up, told him to bend way over and drink from the opposite side of the glass. Evans did this and his hiccups vanished." - p 108

Nebel's story is from 1933. The cure for hiccups is the same one I use - but when I suggested its use to a friend of mine he thought I was pranking him. I eventually convinced him to try it, he did & it worked. He asked me where I learned that technique & I didn't remember. Here it is referred to 20 yrs before I was born. Proof that it goes 'way back'.

Some chairs had been stolen for investigative purposes. The detective is the suspect of the policeman. The police raid the detective's in hopes of finding the chairs. One of his colleagues is a quick thinker.

"Pat turned to Engle. "What happened-"

""I heard them," Engle said. He turned and pointed to a groundglass window. "I tied the chairs to a rope, hung 'em in the shaftway."" - p 114

Clever.

Merle Constiner's "The Arm of Mother Manzoli":

The clients:

"The little brunette was just a kid, in her late teens or early twenties, and plenty attractive. She had sulky lavender eyes with long lashes and a boyish little figure, but there was an air of helpless femininity about her that rang about as true as a lead quarter.

"The lad with her was right out of the sporting ads. Obviously wealthy-and super-obnoxious." - p 124

The weirdness:

"I'm tenderloin born and raised. I didn't go for it. I said: "Boss, this job's too spooky for me. A treasure-hunter wacky over old-time prizefighters. A wax arm. And a college professor doping himself on love-potions."" - p 129

"After she had gone, I began to gripe. 'Now it's a map of a pool table. Before it was a wax arm, imitation emeralds, and the mystery of a third andiron!"" - p 145

Over the past few yrs, I've been hearing people say over & over again: 'Be Safe!' Is this what they meant?: Be under the floor in a closet?!

"For no reason at all, I kept worrying about that old-time safe. A big dealer like the Switchman would have a better box than that. I glanced about the walls. They were bare, no tell-tale pictures. Then I doped it. He had a floor-safe-in the closet." - p 139

Norbert Davis's "Murder in the Red":

"["]No one objects to your holding meetings, but you can't do it on street corners where you block traffic and menace the safety of passers-by."

""It's a plot!" Riganov yelled. "You're just a fascist tool of the special interests-"" - p 156

I thought this was interesting partially b/c the story was written in 1946, a yr I'd expect to've been a bad one to have a leftist street agitator portrayed somewhat sympathetically. Even more importantly, there's a mention of novelty music, the most important subject in the world, if not the universe.

""Well-why the funny noises?"

"Meekins looked like he had been holding his breath. "What Craig said-that the music sounded like swing played on a fire-siren! A couple of weeks ago we pulled a guy named Windy Moore out of the pokey when he was in for getting on a marijuana jag. This Moore's an entertainer. He plays pieces by blowing up an inner tube and letting the air come out through a rubber squee-jee on the valve. I heard him. It sounds like a fire-siren. He's playin' now at Shine Brevani's clip-joint on Clark just off Kester."" - p 170

From novelty music to a novel weapon:

"Mrs. Riganov didn't seem to move fast. She raised her right hand. She was holding a flat-iron in it. It was not an electric iron. It was an old-fashioned flat-iron-an ugly wedge-shaped piece of solid metal-and Mrs. Riganov threw it at Luke.

"Luke tried to dodge but he was too close. The flat-iron hit him in the face with a sound like a board slapping water and carried him clear across the room and smashed him into the wall. He dropped to the floor and didn't move." - p 185

Hugh B. Cave's "Brand of Kane":

"Mr. Michael Aloysious Kelly, night watchman on board the steamship Concord, took a corncob pipe out of his face and stretched himself. Being alone on board the half-submerged hulk of a wrecked steamship did not annoy him so much as did the endless yammering of rain around and about him." - p 192

What is it about the image of a night watchman on board a half-submerged ship that makes me think of corn-on-the-cob covered w/ cotton candy that's on fire that burns black?

Kane, the detective, is an alcoholic.

"The owner of the boat had possessed a pint of amber-hued liquid that smelled like the concentrated juice of crushed bedbugs and tasted worse than it smelled." - p 205

Just the thing to wash down corn-on-the-cob covered w/ cotton candy that's on fire.

Fred McIsaac's "Blond Cargo":

"There was an elaborate buffet spread on snowy tables on the far side of the dance-floor. There were turkeys, chickens, glazed hams, salads and ices shaped like fruits and birds and beasts. Kate O'Brien ate like a horse. Murphy, who'd eaten a very hearty dinner, sipped coffee and enjoyed watching the kid eat. Apparently, the girl had been half starved during the voyage.

"With a deep sigh she finally ended her amazing consumption of victuals.

""Jiminy Cricket," she said, "I never had such a good time in my life."

""That's swell," he said. "Now I'll take you back to the steerage. Come along."

""Things like this is what makes Bolsheviks," she stated. "Well, I got mine for once. I'm ready to quit."" - p 238

It's that dagnabbitted Bolshevik slang that grabs me by the balls. "Jiminy Cricket" my left butt cheek!

Erle Stanley Gardner's "The Kid Clips a Coupon":

How many people remember Gardner as the creator of "Perry Mason", the main character of the tv show of the same name (1957-1966)? It was very popular at the time, I watched it as a kid, but why wd anyone care about it now? 58 yrs after it ended?

""But," Dan Seller pointed out, "if that was the motive for the crime and the man knew she had telephoned for the police, he'd have been doubly foolish to have murdered her and then gone on eating, knowing that they were on their way in a radio car."

"Inspector Brane's face flushed.

""More of your amateur detective stuff," he said." - p 304

Well, what wd you say if you'd just accidentally flushed yr face?

Fred C. Davis's "The Sinister Sphere":

Things really start to get good around the time of the Moon Man:

"Dargan went in, smiling. The room beyond was dark. A moment passed before his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Gradually he was able to see a form standing behind a table, a figure that blended out of the blackness like a materializing ghost. The figure was swathed in a black cape. Its head was a smooth globe of silver." - p 348

Moon Man is a Robin Hood figure, stealing from the ill-gotten gains of the rich to give to the desperately needy. Here's part of a letter written to one of his unintentional donors:

"What do I mean by a "worse punishment than death"? I mean disgrace and humiliation, the loss of your friends and position, becoming a pariah. I know that, while you were handling the drive for money under the United Charities, you as the treasurer of the organization helped yourself to five thousand dollars of the funds. I can and will produce proof of my statement if circumstances demand it. It is that stolen five thousand I want. You will leave it for me in your safe, as I direct, and make no move to interfere with my taking it-or I will give the facts to the newspapers.

"MM" - p 354

Moon Man wears a sphere over his head as part of his costume. Technical specs for this are gradually revealed.

"Pausing, he drew on his long, black cloak and pulled on his black silk gloves. He placed on his head the glass mask modeled as a moon. It was padded inside so that it sat firmly on his head. A deflecting plate, which came into position over his nose and mouth, sent his breath downward and out, so that it would not fog the glass and blind him. He was ready." - p 364

Nice. But the practical person in me thinks that the glass cd be easily broken, causing all sorts of problems & making the Moon Man an easy target.

John D. MacDonald's "The Lady is a Corpse!":

"He crossed the big room to the built-in record player. He pondered. Atonal stuff would probably help tension along better than anything traditional. He selected two hours of Milhaud, Schonberg and Antheil, stacked them on the spindle, cut in the amplifiers of the sea-level terrace where they would have cocktails and the amplifiers in the east gardens, and then adjusted volume down for background." - p 371

Ha ha! The main character in this one brings together suspects for one crime or another to a 'party' at his rich man's expense & then tries to pit them against each other until the culprit is revealed. "Milhaud, Schonberg and Antheil" are all favorite composers of mine so his choice of them is particularly amusing.

"No one has seen Lisa Mann since. Apparently she never returned to her own appartment. There was an investigation. Her parents are well-to-do. I asked you four down here because things like that intrigue me. I hope that during your stay here one of you will, directly or indirectly, admit to his guilt in the death of Miss Mann." - p 375

Donald Wandrei's "The Lunatic Plague":

""True enough. Also, I can look at your machine without getting any idea what it's for."

""The centrifuge? This particular specimen, an improved model, which I started two hours ago, has reached a speed of 300,000 r.p.m. It works somewhat on the principle of a cream separator. There's a quartz observation piece and a light-beam reflector to watch what happens. At present the cell contains several drops of blood from which the red coloring matter, hemoglobin, has filtered out."

""What good is it?"

""It permits the measurement of molecular structures, and the sepaation of a liquid into the components. It may lead to new discoveries or processes" - p 394

35 yrs ago I worked for a medical lab. At that time, centrifuges were common. One of my jobs was to fix them. The most common way to do that was to hit them. This story was 1st published in August, 1936.

"As one of the most commonly used laboratory instruments today, the centrifuge offers an efficient means of preparing and separating samples of different densities often for scientific and medical use. This form of density-driven preparation has been around for centuries, dating as early as the 1400s with simple hand-powered milk separators, however a formal commercialized version of the centrifuge did not emerge until the 1800s.

"In 1864, Antonin Prandtl invented the first centrifuge-type machine, which was used in the dairy industry to separate milk and cream on a large scale. Following Prandtl, Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss physician and biologist, was the first to apply centrifugation in the lab. From a crude centrifuge system he developed in 1869, Miescher was able to successfully isolate nucleic acids from the nuclei of white blood cells, which served as an important development in the discovery of DNA inheritance." - https://www.marshallscientific.com/the_history_of_the_centrifuge_a/349.htm

One might think from the story that the centrifuge was a miraculous new invention unknown to the general public as of 1936 but, apparently, that's not the case. Everyone who cd afford it had at least one in their home for separating DNA that cd then be introduced to cream to make rock bands. But that's no more preposterous than the following:

""Do you know what he said when we asked him why he pushed a peanut up the street with his nose? Harmin made the silly answer, 'Oh, I thought it was a jelly bean.' " Inspector Frick snorted." - p 395

Now you might think I'm deliberately taking things out-of-context to distort them to my own wicked ends here. One of the great things about this story is that that's an actual quote from it & there's plenty more like it AND the fiendish criminal plot behind it all is eventually revealed & thwarted.

"He jotted down numbers, went into the laboratory, returned with a device like a small microphone that he handed her togetehr with a list of numbers. "Now call these and in each case say, 'The job was well done. That's all. There won't be any more.' "

""What's the mike for?"

""Speak through it. It's a voice filter. The listener will be unable to determine whether you are male or female, young or old."

""And the numbers?"

""Are those of the surviving members of what we may call the lunatic band. Repeat to them only the message I gave you, and ring off immediately."" - p 401

Voice filter? THAT seems sophisticated for 1936 so that shows what I know, eh? I don't know of any recordings from that era that use such a thing & it seems like I wd. If there were such a device I'd want to use it for my own audio production.

"Of all the events crowding the last hour, she remembered most vividly the moment when the limousine drew parallel with her and the snout of a submachine gun slanted toward her, while the faces of three painted, grotesquely grinning clowns pressed against the windows." - p 405

I loved this story so much I tried to force an arranged marriage between it & a Christian Bök molecular poem but neither of them were having it.

But, HEY!, Arthur J. Burks's "Slack Wires" was way up there in works-of-the-imagination-land too:

"On his own part, Dyce was having a good time. He liked to walk high wires, especially slack ones. And if they were charged with high voltage, so much the better. It added to the excitement.

"He was scarcely giving a thought to the people he intended contacting in that house." - p 431

A tough midget detective & risks that anyone bigger wdn't be able to take.

Robert Leslie Bellem's "Homicide Hunch":

"When consciousness rejoined me, I was slumped in a chair with my wrists and ankles tied like a Christmas goose. There was a lump on my thatch the size of Grant's Tomb and I had a headache built for an elephant." - p 463

Hey, nose! Watch yer language, there's ladies present!

"Even as he swung on me, a roscoe sneezed: "Ka-Chow" from the kitchenette doorway. Baldy toppled forward on his profile, slugged a dent in the carpet with his trumpet. He was deceased before he stopped bouncing." - p 467

See? I told you so.

Then there's a Fritz Leiber story, "Power of the Puppets", another weird menace one. I've always associated Leiber w/ sword & sorcery stories. I read one of his bks as a teen & never had any interest in checking out a 2nd one. I liked this one very much tho:

"It is ironic that Punch and Judy is associated with children and the nursery for few plays are more fundamentally sordid. Modern child educators are apt to fling up their hands at mention of it. It is unlike any fairy tale or phantasy, but springs from forthright, realistic crime." - p 487

& it's a little known fact that EVERY HEINOUS CRIMINAL watched Punch and Judy repeatedly as a child when they weren't otherwise occupied w/ torturing insects & animals. But, seriously, folks, I don't like Punch and Judy, not one hair.

"Hurriedly I got out my opera glasses and turned them on the stage. It was some time before I could focus one of the puppets, they jerked about too much. Finally I got a clear view of Punch's arms. As far as I could make out, they ended in tiny hands-hands that could shift on the club, clenching and unclenching in an uncannily natural way." - p 487

Frank Gruber's "Death at the Main":

How many compilations have TWO stories that take place at cock fights? I wonder how many other critters can be manipulated to fight each other to the death. Obviously cocks are used b/c they're common to the barnyard - but think about the possibilities: betting on alligator fighting in a ring, betting on hippo fighting in a ring - the hippos equipped w/ protruding electro-shocking devices. Humanity brought to the animal kingdom!

Our central character? A HUMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA!, one of my favorite types of endangered species.

""Gentlemen," he continued in his rich, penetrating voice. "I'm Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia. I have the greatest brain in the United States, probably the greatest in the world. I know the answers to all questions: what came first, the chicken or the egg; the population of Sydney, Australia; the dates of every battle from the beginning of history; the founders of your family fortunes. Try me out, gentlemen. Any question at all-any! History, science, mathematics, general interest. You, sir, ask me a question!"" - p 514

How many orgasms did my girlfriend have in 28 hrs when we met in Iowa?

I once called myself a Human Encyclopedia. I wasn't nearly as knowledgable as this character. Now that I'm 70 I call myself a Reader's Digest Condensed Dictionary w/ some pages missing.

"A marvelous memory and this faculty of fitting together apparently irrelevant bits of information was largely responsible for his nickname-the Human Encyclopedia.

"Quade deserved that name. Fifteen years ago he'd come into possession of a set of Encyclopedia Americana, twenty-five large volumes. Quade read all the volumes from A to Z and then when he had finished, began at A again. He was now at PU on the fifth trip through the volumes. Fifteen years of reading the encyclopedias, plus extensive reading of other books had given him a truly encyclopedic brain." - pp 522-523

It's tempting, isn't it? To read like that. I have some old encyclopedias in my personal library. It's tempting to read at least one of them from beginning to end - but, no, I think I'd rather read compilations of pulp fiction.

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