Henry Kane

review of
Henry Kane's Armchair in Hell
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 28-30, 2020

I don't remember whether I read mention of Kane somewhere & bought this bk b/c of that ot whether I just found it at my favorite used bkstore & got it b/c I figured it was promising. Whatever the case, I've already more or less forgotten it but I think I enjoyed it as much as I usually do hard-boiled detective pulp fiction (w/ the exception of Mickey Spillane). I reckon Kane's pretty typical.. but in a way I like.

"The devil was a dentist with a drill. I was in an armchair in hell.

"So I woke up: but the buzzing persisted.

"I lay stiff and supine. I lay stiff and prone. I held my breath. I let it go. I wriggled. Resolutely.

"Then I slid my head beneath the pillow and I tried to crawl in after it but I couldn't quite make it, so I kicked off my covers and I put my legs down over the edge of the bed and I palmed my hands over my ears and I hung there, miserably.

"The buzzing crystalized into sound with meaning.

"Someone had dug his finger into the hole around my doorbell, and it was endless, like music out of a juke box in the rear end of a gin mill." - p 5

Do you ever read a word & think something like I haven't seen that word for awhile!? It's a pleasure, at least for me. In this case the word is "supine". Of course, one doesn't read much about gin mills anymore but that's diferent. The narrator refers to himself as a "private richard", that's a little different. He's also hungover, that's not different. &, of course, the person at the door is a friend who's also a client & there's been a murder.

""What cooks?"

""I've got a dame at home."

""Lovely."

""In bed."

""Very lovely."

""A brunette."

""A brunette!" I yapped at him, nose to nose, and I waited a second, and then I went away and started pulling off my tie. "For that I'm taken out of a warm bed and pushed around. Because the guy is a nut on blondes."

""A dead brunette." - pp 8-9

Some guys have all the luck. I mean what're the chances of going out to pick someone up at a bar & getting them home & then finding out that they're dead? Well, ok, that's not what happened.

"Solidly, a man sat with his back to us in the chair at the foot of the table. Quietly. A man with a high proud plume of wavy iron-gray hair. I couldn't see his face. He didn't turn around. It wasn't that he was impolite; it was more that a knife was in his back, high, in a corner, the snub hilt pointing back at us like a stiff tongue pushed out in derision." - pp 10-11

Like I sd, some guys have all the luck. This guy didn't. Then there's booze.

""Have a slug of gin." I showed him how.

""No sir," he said with admirable firmness. "I do not partake of intoxicants. I keep it for my maiden sister. She visits sometimes in the mornings—"

"His eyes began to go. I shook them down. "Marmaduke," I said. "You don't look so good. I insist."

""If you insist, sir—"" - pp 24-25

Do people still think of booze as a medicine? As a 'pick-me-up'? I remember drinking "Invalid Stout" in Australia, it was supposedly healthy for invalids, I sure liked the stuff - & it was cheap. What I like better is hard-boiled detective humor. I'm not sure whether that's cheap or not.

""They have added a record to that album. Now there's an American private detective who has no wife, or sleep, or food, or rest. He drinks, drinks more, and more; flirts with women, blondes mostly, who talk hard but act soft, then he drinks more, then, somewhere in the middle, he gets dreadfully beaten about, then he drinks more, then he says a few dirty words, then he stumbles around, punch-drunk-like, but he is very smart and he adds up a lot of two's and two's, and then the case gets solved. See what I mean?"" - pp 47-48

This novel's copyrighted 1948. Notice that the detetctive "gets dreadfully beaten about" but he doesn't get killed. Do people still act that way? Or do people just get killed right away? I mean why take the risk that the detective might solve the case? Beating the guy up but not killing him seems practically old-fashioned.

The private richard has a team.

"Scoffol and Chambers. Scoffol is short and round and beet-faced with short-cropped white hair, parted down the middle; small legs, little feet, short back, and short stomach, circular and comfortably nudging the vest buttons. I'm another kind of guy. I'm a long one with a clarkie mustache, six feet two, sort of raw-boned with big shoulders (or I get a new tailor). Scoffol is the boulder; I am a phosphorescent glimmer. You can wipe the glimmer off the boulder. You cannot budge the boulder, not a real bouldery boulder. Not without a derrick.

"We have a system in our business. We mind our own. Mostly, I handle the roughneck trade. Or they handle me." - p 74

He goes to a dance club & he handles her.

""Too tight," she said again, suddenly, sadly.

""Sister," I said. "You're nuts. You are gorgeous and even beautiful and completely out of this world, but you're nuts. You've got a fixation. Or something. We are a couple with rare propriety. Furthermore, that's the way I dance. With you, or anyone. With my mother."

""With your mother?" Her black eyes opened and she giggled. "Like that, boy, it's incest, or whatever they call it. Just loosen up, long guy."" - pp 101-102

You know that expression I don't get even, I get odd? Well, it doesn't apply here.

"I threw it with my right with the gun slanting sidewise. I threw it with everything that was left in me, bowling-ball fashion, like you need a ten-strike and you hate the pins; but straightaway, no English. It caught him spruce on the point of the chin and I heard the crunch of vertebrae as his head flashed back and hit bottom, and there he was like a bent Buddhist; his toes touching and his knees touching and then the great inverted arc of his belly and then his head touching; and his breath came in gurgles like soda pop out of a bottle.

"I didn't have to do it. Mostly, it was for business.

"A private richard must not absorb a licking unless he returns it twofold, approximately; it is one of the rules of our outrageous game. If not, he might as well shut up shop." - p 116

There must be a name for that sort of philosophy. What is it? Far.., far— something?

"Cry spat the wood out of his mouth. "I come on a mission of peace," he insisted, "but outside in a nice shiny car I got five boys. If I don't show in an hour, they got pineapples. What you peel with your teeth and you throw."

""You could get killed like that," the Butcher said.

""Me? The hell with that. I'm what you call a fartalist."

""Fatalist," I said.

""I know professor. I am making like a comic. Good, huh? You ready?"" - p 155

How many of you remember that "pineapple" is slang for an American hand-grenade? As opposed to "potato masher" for a German one? Knowing this sort of thing will get you a nice cushy job as an unpd bk reviewer someday if you keep your nose to the grindstone.

"We jelled that way. Telescoped down, it was a picture for the front cover of the Idiot's Crime Gazette with ads in the back for the water pistols. "What the hell?" I said. "What are you doing here? Who's writing this story?"" - p 224

Why?! I'm surprised you asked! We both are. Anyway, Henry Kane's a pretty good writer for this sort of thing. That just goes to show how many good writers there are out there that've fallen thru the cracks.… (más)