E. Howard Hunt (1918–2007)

Next we will be reading books by G Gordon Liddy and Charles Colson. E Howard Hunt is best known as one of Dick Nixon's "plumbers," a secret team of operatives fixing leaks, which included breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's office and forging State Department cables designed to make JFK look bad. Hunt masterminded the first Watergate burglary and served nearly three years in prison for his role in the scandal. In addition to being a criminal, Hunt served for twenty years as a CIA operative and even a station chief. He was highly involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and, as he died in 2007, hinted that LBJ had been involved in the JFK assassination.

Strangely enough, Hunt wrote many novels. Beginning in the early forties, he penned a number of spy novels under his own name and under various pen names. His spy novels were informed by his experience in the CIA and are considered quite intriguing for that reason. All told, Hunt may have published as many as 41 fictional novels and 4 nonfiction books over the course of fifty years.
House Dick was originally published in 1961 under the pen name Gordon Davis and published by Gold Medal. It is, quite unbelievably I might add, a terrific hardboiled book that I highly recommend. It has recently been republished by Hard Case. It stands up quite well with other books of the era. It is a quick- reading story that I found hard to put down.

The protagonist, Peter Novack, is, as the title suggests, the House Detective, at a large 350-room Washington, D.C., hotel. He is grumpy, sour, and, although, on the surface a bit crooked and corrupt, a guy who ends up doing decent things. The tone throughout the book is dark. The story is about a "a girl in a platinum mink coat walking toward the reception desk." "The girl was an ash blonde" and "walked with her head thrown back, her heels making subdued clicking sounds on the marble floor of the lobby." "[H]er eyes were as grey as the furs she wore." This is Ms. Paula Norton, who is the femme fatale of this story. She has a very wealthy sugar daddy. She also has a mean mobster she was once married to and who has found her again. And, Novack, tough as he is, falls for, hook, line, and sinker. The story is about a wealthy couple who stays at the hotel and reports and then unreports missing jewels. Mrs. Boyd "was a tinted brunette in the mid-forties with bon-bon jowls and arms like rolls of biscuit dough. Her fleshly feet were jammed into pointed slippers two sizes too small and her face was heavily powdered to improve an uncertain complexion."

Hunt can write descriptive phrases like nobody's business. The dialogue, the scenery, the tone, all works and all feels like your typical hardboiled detective novel. You have your femme fatale, your gangsters, your police detectives, your murders, your kidnappings, your stolen jewels, and the story that flows quite well through all its twists and turns. And, Hunt can write fight scenes quite well too: "The man gurgled and his eyes went wild. From the hips up his body started to shake. Novak slapped the other cheek. Harder and a little lower. A drop of blood appeared on the man's upper lip. His face was scarlet now, jaw muscles working like a skein of worms."

I never thought I would read a hardboiled detective novel by one of the Watergate burglars or that the novel would have been written, not while the burglar was cooling his heels in prison, but years before. Nor would I have thought that it would be just as compelling as many of the other Gold Medal or Fawcett books published at that time.… (más)

E. Howard Hunt. Now there's a name that brings back memories. And not particularly pleasant ones as a member of the “plumbers.” On the other hand, he served in the Navy during WW II on destroyers and as this book was written in 1942 while he was out there living the book.

It takes place on a destroyer on convoy duty. Each chapter is preceded by a short italicized section on preparing the ship, following by perspectives from members of the crew, each with a short bio. While clearly fictional, I suspect the characters had considerable basis from his experience.

Blacks had no place except as servants to the officers. Their world was “yessuh,” no matter whether they were seasick or had other difficulties. The captain was angry because their ship hosted the commodore who second guessed his every move. Others had come from farms. All felt the drudgery.

And I never realized until I went to sea how much you can hate something that you can’t beat … something that wins over you whenever you’re tired … something that won’t let you rest … where there is never anything but the feel of the spray and the shock of the waves and the blackness of night and the fog-gray days and always the sea. Always the sea and the tearing wind and no place ever to lie still while your heart pounds with the feel of the sea and your brain is tight with the smell of the sea and your belly is hollow with the fear of it, and always the ship goes on through the night and the days that are not day.

The theme and writing reminded me a little of Alistair MacLean. If you enjoy nautical fiction, you will like this book. Not up to Marley Mowat, or Herman Wouk, but good enough and of historical interest since it was written during the war it portrays.… (más)