The last twenty years of publishing has really done a number
on the second hand book market. As a kid, you couldn't swing a dead cat
in a used bookstore without hitting some high quality writing. Near as I
can tell, the early Heinlein novels and Conan collections and Burroughsian
planetary romance novels with the odd 70s psychedelic covers or Frazetta covers,
have all been shoved off the shelves by the flood of carbon-copy modern day magic
girl and low magic grimdark fantasy novels. In my moments of optimism I pray those works
have all been snatched up and sit in places of honor in the basements of
discerning readers. The corollary would
be that the things on the shelves of the used bookstore sit there because no
one wants to keep garbage sitting around their house.Nonetheless, hope springs eternal, and the last trip down into the book mine saw me emerge with a rough jewel in the form of Ed McBain’s Killer’s Payoff. It was only after reading this novel that I discovered McBain is the man behind the 1954 book and following film, Blackboard Jungle.
Sidenote: As a child of the 1990s, the name McBain will
forever conjure up the following:
With a cover that titillating, and a publishing date of 1958, this
book fits perfectly into my irregular toe-dipping into pre-1970s writing that aren’t sci-fi and fantasy. Sci-fi and fantasy has always been my first
love, but enough other bloggers are re-discovering genre fiction. Somebody should really look into the more
down to earth blue collar material. I’m somebody! So let’s get to it.
Before cracking the cover, let’s recall that today’s view of
yesterday’s work is one of the victors looking down upon the vanquished with
scorn. Is
this a well-earned reputation, or have we been listening to the same sorts of fools who
think modern art is an improvement upon the Realist movement? This book might not answer the question by
itself, but it might just add to my growing collection of data that modern
writing has degenerated from, rather than improved upon, the writing of my
forefathers.
We’re still not ready to crack the cover, because we need to
talk about the cover. That cover serves
as a warning that this book contains graphic and explicit content of a
distinctly carnal nature. This isn’t
wholesome fare for the whole family, but mature material suitable only for
those with a taste for the seedy. You
might not want to read this on the bus where it will surely draw judgmental raised
eyebrows from the matrons and young mothers sitting nearby. The cover screams that this is a book about
sex, and it is, but only to a 1950s extent.
The actual plot of the book is that of two detectives,
Cotton Haws and Steve Carella, investigating the murder of a notorious
blackmailer. That blackmailer, Sy
Kramer, was soaking three different parties for cash, a high society lady who
was paying to hush up a series of photos for a low society magazine, a soda pop
magnate, or one of a trio of men who shared a hunting trip with the victim some
months back.
This is just one of a long running series of
novels featuring the 87th Precinct of the fictional, but really it’s
New York City, burrough of Isola. And
long running this series was; the last of them was published in 2005, just a
year before the author’s death. That’s a
pretty good run that speaks well of the man’s writing. But does it hold up?
The book works as a mystery, with various blind leads, tense
interrogations, and two or three quick action sequences. With the exception of the murder victim, who
the investigation slowly reveals deserved a good killing, all of the people in
the book are drawn as sympathetic and three-dimensional. At least until the big reveal at which point
the murderer, bent on escaping justice, is revealed to be as venal as his
victim.
The actual salacious content of the book is limited to a one
extra-marital affair, a pre-marital hookup, and two or three references to
titillating photos that would be considered tame by today’s standards. On that score, the cover fails to
deliver. These days I’m the one judging
at the matrons and young mothers on the bus unabashedly reading lit-porn. My cover might suggest a lot more, but all
this book does is suggest – we Chuck Tingle fans all know how graphic those ‘romance’
novels get.
My how the times have changed.
Speaking of changing times, as a window to homicide
investigations in the 1950s, Killer’s
Payoff is a fascinating look at how
information was gathered before the dawn of the information age. Without recourse to Google or databases of
any kind, it’s fascinating to see the increased import of questioning suspects
and witnesses and even those who merely knew the suspect takes. The attention to detail required by the
police in this novel, and the clever ways they deduce events that transpired
months previous, clues that sometimes literally hang by a thread, answers
questions that we towering intellects of The Current Year wouldn’t even think
to ask.
The writing is tight, the pace deliberate, the characters
believable, and the setting itself well realized. The police procedural is not my first choice for
fiction, but this book held my interest despite that. Killer’s
Payoff may not be award-worthy or likely to spark a new renaissance of
literature if only more people would give it a chance. I wouldn’t recommend rushing straight out to
Amazon and buying a copy of this “must read lost gem”. On the other hand, McBain is a solid writer,
and it’s easy to see why he was so popular in his own time.
In conclusion, Killer’s
Payoff absolutely serves as another example of high quality work produced
for the masses in the 1950s that far too many people today write off as old and
boring. It’s as good as any of the
police procedurals I’ve read that were written in the last ten years, at
least. As a light piece of mystery and
escapism, it works well. Better yet, it reminds
me that sometimes a little regression can be a good thing.
Post-script: For sci-fi
fans, McBain wrote the cover story of the August 1952 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly, under the
pseudonym S. A. Lombino. My conclusion that
McBain is still worth a read can be applied to sci-fi as well as crime fiction.