“Standing There In The Blazing Sunlight I Suddenly Realized A Basic Fact…

… I’m against killing people.”

Ahh, I just finished the most recent Hard Case Crime offering. That’s always a good feeling.

George Axelrod, the author of The Seven Year Itch, Breakfast At Tiffany’s (the screenplay, clearly), and The Manchurian Candidate, brings the hardboiled, hard drinking conventions of pulp mystery to the publishing world in Blackmailer… the results are mixed.

The novel starts very promisingly, when one of the owners of a small publishing company (their biggest sellers are puzzle books) is suddenly offered a famous, Hemingway-like author’s posthumous final manuscript… which may or may not really exist. Early on, it almost seems like it’ll turn into a prose version of Sunset Blvd, but it never quite hits that level of insight or humor. (Not that that’s a knock, very few people can match Billy Wilder. [Although, it was Wilder who adapted Axelrod's play The Seven Year Itch into a movie.]) Nonetheless, it’s a very fun, engaging mystery for awhile, with a hero whose gun gets caught in his pocket the first time he tries to pull it on someone.

The problem is that as the bodies start to pile up the story gets less interesting. Weird huh? As I read I found myself caring much more about the supposed last book of the dead eccentric writer than I ever did about who might’ve killed who. Of course, it didn’t help that there only were a few suspects in the first place. As the mystery progresses it gets less interesting and starts to hinge on the strange, unbelievable talents of this or that character, and some overall implausible plot developments.

I’ve read many mysteries, and my biggest problem is always the “ok, now I’m gonna explain what happened” monologue that always comes at the end. I’ve seen it done in every vaguely acceptable way possible, but it is always a little awkward. A good thing about Blackmailer is that, near the end when we think it’s all wrapped up, the plot keeps twisting around. The problem? This means there are three or four such speeches as we zero in on the climax. Argh.

The book certainly isn’t all bad, however. Even if the plot goes downhill at a certain point, the writing is always exciting and always witty. It’s certainly full of those great, old school one-liners that we all read these books for. And let me make it clear that the beginning really is very, very good: the scene in which the main character’s apartment is searched is excellent.

So while Blackmailer isn’t Hard Case Crime’s best, it is a worthwhile example of what you can get from the line, and certainly worth 7 bucks if you want a quick, suspenseful read. Plus, I don’t usually get all into drawings of sexy women, but that cover’s gotta be worth some of the price itself.