Books: The Star Beast By Robert Heinlein (1954)

“In the future, Earth has had interstellar spaceflight for centuries and has made contact with numerous extraterrestrial intelligent species. John Thomas Stuart XI, the teenage protagonist, lives in a small Rocky Mountain town, Westville, caring for Lummox, an extraterrestrial beast his great-grandfather had brought home. Lummox has learned how to speak, and has gradually grown from the size of a collie pup to a ridable behemoth—especially after consuming a used car. The childlike Lummox is perceived to be a neighborhood nuisance and, upon leaving the Stuart property one day, causes substantial property damage across the city. John's widowed mother wants him to get rid of it, and brings an action in the local court to have it destroyed.”

An entertaining, if somewhat talky tale of diplomacy and family issues, The Star Beast excels in balancing humor with what is a very obvious plot. Designed for a male teen audience, it’s also clearly “of an age,” as the saying goes. I’ve said this before about the classic writers of the Golden Era of Science Fiction that as smart and often clever they were, when it came to actually try and predict a future beyond the 1950s, they fail. I mean, despite its futuristic “setting”, Westville is every homely small town Hollywood spit out in the era. And John Thomas Stuart and his girl Betty could be played by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland (I’m almost sure Heinlien used them as basis here). Everyone still smokes, there is not much in the way of advanced technology in Stuart’s home (or anywhere else, it seems), and has about as much tension as a deflated balloon.

Still, there is something charming about a 1954 book when read in 2024. Beyond the annoying mother, who clearly has issues trying to both mother and father to her son, the “real” world is sort of suspended and we get a simple, familiar, predictable tale about a boy and his alien Lummox who, in the end, is not what he/she (who has, apparently, six sexes) and a His Girl Friday who seemly is brighter and tougher than the hero of this tale.

Books: I Gave at the Office By Donald E. Westlake (1971)

According to The Westlake Review, “Jay Fisher is a news announcer, working for an unnamed network.  He is, as he will tell us many times in the book, a company man, undyingly loyal to the network, defending it even when it refuses to defend him.  He has never been one of its top talents, and in fact is best known for going to a fancy Italian restaurant called The Three Mafiosi. This restaurant is located in a corporate office tower, and there he tapes lunchtime interviews with various minor celebrities–their answers to his questions will then be edited together with the same questions Jay asked them being asked by a more famous TV news personality, who doesn’t have the time to come to the restaurant himself. Jay has achieved success as a company man, but he’s also a full adult, nearing middle age, with two children and a failed marriage to his credit.   He’s not some young slacker who hasn’t found himself–he’s a grown-up who intends to go on hiding from himself for as long as possible. Jay gets conned by some shady acquaintances into pitching an idea to the network–that they film gun-runners supplying Cuban Anti-Castro rebels with arms that will be used to overthrow the government of Ilha Pombo Island, a fictional Caribbean country, inhabited by former slaves, and run by a fat brutal dictator named Mungu, who bears a startling resemblance to Idi Amin.”

This novel is told text is a transcript of his testimony recounting how his “on the scene” documentation of a CIA-esque takeover of a Caribbean dictatorship resulted in an international scandal. The gist of the story is your basic plot to overthrow Mungu and install a new leader. But it becomes clear that these the Cubans being recruited for ‘Operation Torch of Liberty’ are not brightest bulbs on the Christmas Tree.

Towards the end, I was skimming over the book. It’s probably not the worse book Westlake wrote, but clearly there is something missing here. It feels rushed in some way, which is probably why I had such a difficult time with it. The thing with Westlake and his tendency to be so prolific is that as a reader, you get used to his books being good and when you come across a lesser one, like this, it’s disappointing. Still, because it’s seemly inspired by true events, it contains all the elements of a great Westlake novel.

There are a few funny bits, plus a rather cold and brutal “interview” Jay has with the arms dealer of this band of fools, who talks about the morality of the gun: 

A: The gun is power, that’s obvious.  It is the raw material of power, and power is ultimately the only civilizing influence in the world.  It was the handgun that brought civilization to the American West, for instance.  The gun is the primary tool in situations of mob control, which is to say, in the formation of societies.  The gun determines territorial claims, which is to say national boundaries.  The gun determined that you and I would speak English now, rather than French or Spanish or Portuguese.  The gun determined that we would be here at all, and that the Indian would not be.

Q: The Indian is still here, though isn’t he?

A: Herded into reservations, by men with guns.  If there were no guns, men would not be able to build cities, because all the bricks would be stolen the first night.  If there were no guns, estates like this would be overrun by the scruffy mob.  And as population gets more and more out of hand, the gun will be increasingly the only determinant of which of us will live which sort of life.

Q: You credit guns with the sort of power that most people give to money.

A: Without the gun, most people wouldn’t have their money.  Not for long. And with the gun, it is possible to get money, women, or whatever else you fancy in life.

Q: Excuse me, Mr. Grahame, your words could be misinterpreted there. I know you don’t mean to imply approval of armed robbery or rape or—

A: Why not?  I am hardly in a position to favor arms restrictions.  Once we accept the idea that society is valuable, that our civilization was worth the building and continues to be worth the saving, we must take the next step and agree that the tool which built our civilization is also valuable and, to use a moral term, good.  That tool is the gun, and no usage of the gun could be considered evil.   Now, if some dolt takes a pistol and holds up a bank, I would disapprove, but only of his tactics, not his choice of equipment.  His tactics will put him directly in opposition with a superior force of men armed with more guns; that is to say, he will be caught and perhaps shot.  The gun is power, true; it is the central tool of civilization, true; but as with any tool and any form of power, some intelligence must be employed by the operator.

Q: Well then, what should he do instead of robbing a bank?  He wants money, he wants a better life, and your prescription is that he go out and get a gun.  What should he do with it?

A: He should first learn military science, which is, after all, the science of the use of the gun.  And one of the first lessons in military science is, Never attack a superior force.

 It goes on a bit more, but it’s probably the best part of this book.

Books: The Detective and Mr. Dickens By William J. Palmer (1990)

“In Victorian London, Charles Dickens and his protégé, author Wilkie Collins, make the acquaintance of the shrewdest mind either would ever encounter: Inspector William Field of the newly formed Metropolitan Protectives. A gentleman's brutal murder brings the three men together in an extraordinary investigation that leads Dickens to the beautiful young actress Ellen Ternan, who would become the love of his life but who now stands accused of murder.” 

Dan Simmons took on Dickens and Collins in Drood, which I read back in 2009. Where Simmons book focused on final five years (1865 to 1870) of the authors life and his unfinished final novel, adding elements of the supernatural and an unreliable narrator that was Wilkie Collins, Palmer’s tales starts in 1851 where Dickens and his friend become embroiled in murder and mayhem in Victoria England in the middle of the 19^th Century. 

It’s interesting to note, that this is no cozy mystery the English do so well, but a dark tale with a dark subject manner. It has a meanness to it that will prove either fine with some readers or a distraction for others. All the female characters are terrible, written as barely human. They’re either whores, or just on the cusp of being whores. Field the cop is acts more like a modern crime scene investigator than a police officer limited by technology of the era. Meanwhile, Wilkie spends most of the time pining for Meg, another “fallen” women, who highlights the double standards for men and women. She has almost no agency whatsoever, which may be true of the time period, but is in no way charming today.

So yes, the novel seems a bit overtly melodramatic, which could be Palmer’s point, as it’s a reminder of the hypocrisy that was rampant in those repressed Victorian times. Historically, as well, Palmer postulates the meeting between Ellen Ternan –who would become Dicken’s mistress- five years before she was introduced to his fellow society people. Here again, is the pretense of the period, as Ternan was 15 in 1851, while Dickens was 39. Apparently, by 1856, a 20-year-old being with a 44-year-old was seen as less scandalous. This was the first of four novels in this series (I have book two, but will probably not hunt down three or four). Beyond the less than pleasant subject manner, Palmer also could not help but add a bit of modern style prose, especially in the fight and chase scenes, which go on way too long and would not be out of place in a modern cop drama.

Books: The Dead Are Discreet (Jacob Asch #1) By Arthur Lyons (1974)

“When Jacob Asch takes a job investigating the gruesome murders of socialite Sheila Warren and her boyfriend, film producer Randy Folsom, all clues point to Sheila's distraught husband as the obvious killer. At least until Asch discovers that Sheila had been attending séances and dabbling in witchcraft prior to her death. Using information coerced from Sheila's associates in the California black magic scene, Asch learns of a porno film starring Sheila, now in the possession of an arcane sect of Satanists, whose uncanny rites suggest a completely different motive for the crime.”

1970’s noir doesn’t get any creepier than this debut novel by Arthur Lyons. The Dead Are Discreet –the first of eleven books- introduced readers to 34-year-old Jacob Asch, an embittered but nonetheless witty and compassionate, half-Jewish former investigative reporter for the (fictional) Los Angeles Chronicle. After being jailed for six months because he refused to rat out a story source, Asch drifted reluctantly into a gumshoeing career, and found that it fit him.

Arthur Lyons was born January 5, 1946, in Los Angeles. His family moved to Palm Springs at age 11. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1967 and worked in his family’s restaurant business in the town before becoming a writer. Lyons published a nonfiction work in 1970, a study of Satanism and cult development in America called The Second Coming. However, it was this novel which would mark the course of his writing for the next 20 years.

The Dead Are Discreet is seemly an outgrowth from the authors research on cults, as it leads Jacob “through the underground of Los Angeles of the 1970s, from its arcane religious sects of Satanists and Jesus freaks to the kinky sexual pleasures of the wealthy who could callously destroy the life of a teenage girl for the sake of a roll of bizarre movie films.”

Lyons was one among a cadre of talented young American detective novelists of that era and into the early ’80s, all vying to wear the crowns once sported by earlier stars of the genre such as Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald. The New York Times called Jacob Asch “one of the more convincing private eyes in the business, thanks to Mr. Lyons’s skill at characterization.” Dorothy B. Hughes of the Los Angeles Times complimented Lyons on his “true ear for everyday dialogue.” And no less a critic than fellow author Charles Willeford commended Lyons as a “master of plotting.” Asch found himself involved in a wide range of criminal settings, and Lyons researched all of them so thoroughly that he alternated his crime novels with nonfiction studies of cults, devil worship, pornography, and other nefarious activities.

After 1994’s False Pretenses, Lyons turned his attention to noir motion pictures, an interest that led him to produce one last book, a nonfiction work titled Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir, as well help co-create the annual Palm Springs noir film festival, which celebrated its 25^th Anniversary this past spring (and which is now named for him). All of those books are currently out of print, and thanks to Tony, who runs @SideshowBooks here in Los Angeles, and who is a noir fan, I’m going to start reading some. Sadly, In March 2008, after suffering head injuries from a fall, followed by a stroke and then pneumonia, he passed away at 62.