Review #2 - The Restless Hands

Bruno Fischer (1908-1992) was a weird cat. German-born and Long Island-raised, he cut his teeth as a reporter for several small-time New York newspapers and socialist journals before he started writing fiction to increase his earning potential. His first contributions were weird stories, what we call horror today. From what I learned about the guy, he wrote pretty grizzly stuff. But then, as Fischer put it, the weird fiction market suddenly collapsed in the early 1940’s. Like… there one day, gone the next. All the stories he sent for publication were returned to him, and he was basically out of work. But no one can keep a good writer down - or a hack. When he was ready to ride the writing dragon again in the late 40s, the paperback novel market was emerging, a perfect place for a man of Fischer’s caliber. His novel The Restless Hands was published in 1953.

Where to start with The Restless Hands? Well, here it goes. Tony Bascomb, a small-time crook, must escape NYC fast because of some dirty double-crossing during a delivery truck heist in New Jersey. He goes to his hometown of Hessian Valley, NY, to hide out. But if he had his druthers, Hessian Valley would’ve been the last place he had chosen. For you see, he was, and still is, the number one suspect in the strangling murder of local beauty Isabel Sprague. Why? Because they were seen together THAT one time before her death! Seriously.

Tony meets up with his childhood chums Mark Kinard, the caretaker of his parent’s summer campground and a very tightly wound Virgo, and George Dentz, a wannabe lothario with a terrible case of chronic horniness. The action starts to gather speed when Tony also meets up with his former sweetheart, Rebecca Sprague, older sister to our slain Isabel. Rebecca has some mixed feelings about Tony. He has a bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold quality that is hard not to fall in love with. On the other hand, most people in town think he murdered her sister. He also didn’t do himself any favors by running off to NYC without telling her. 

Anyway, somewhere along the story, a romantic square is formed when Mark, George, and Tony all decide to pursue Rebecca for marriage, because obviously she’s the only woman in town. And while all this is going on poor, dear Rebecca has an unfortunate run-in with a pair of strangling hands in the middle of the night. The assault is so severe that Rebecca’s Pa and local lumber magnate, Mr. Sprague, hires Boston, MA’s private detective-to-the-stars, Ben Helm, to find the perpetrator because HVPD’s one cop couldn’t be bothered, apparently. Things become more complicated when the girlfriend of Tony’s gang boss arrives in HV, NY, looking for Tony, and the boss is close behind, looking for him as well. 

The ending of The Restless Hands wasn’t good. The number one thing that disappoints me about a mystery novel is when it solves the mystery without any leadup. I literally said, “What?” in that incredulous tone we all have when a book’s ending doesn’t smack. And here, it didn’t smack. But Bruno Fischer made up for the slipshod ending by creating a world of believable characters. Some of the situations Tony and the crew found themselves in did make me chuckle. It was like reading an episode of Joel-era MST3K at times. Though I’m sure that wasn’t Fischer's intention. Overall, if I run into any more Bruno Fischer novels, I will read them.
x

Review #1 - The Extortioners

 The Extortioners by Ovid Demaris

Ovid Demaris (1919-1998) was well known for his non-fiction work. Seventeen of the thirty-four books he published were investigative journalism focused on organized crime. But like every reporter out there, he dabbled in fiction. And he sure followed the axiom “write what you know” to the letter. 

In 1960, Demaris published The Extortioners, #960, of Fawcett Gold Medal Books. It’s a story about the ultimate American fiction, a self-made millionaire, and his run-in with the mafia. 

Hugh Dewitt is a pug-faced, red-headed former wildcatter with a seventh-grade education (if that) who struck it rich drilling for oil in the hills of Los Angeles, earning him an astronomical $10 million. He has a blond beauty model wife, Nancy, and a blond supermodel daughter, Alison, because, of course, he does. But everything takes a turn when an old friend, Angelo Rizzola, and his girlfriend, Lola, come a-calling, asking for a stake in Dewitt’s oil claim. Though no promises were made, nothing written down, except for a non-committal grunt from Dewitt, Angelo believes in his heart that he’s getting that stake and the gob-smacking $10,000 a year that it earns. There’s just a slight problem: he doesn’t have the capital to buy in. So, just like any other hood trying to get rich quickly, he goes to his capomandamento Jimmy Gracio, promising ol’ Jimmy a part of the stake if he fronts the cash. And… he accepts? With nothing to prove that any part of this scheme exists, Jimmy just gives Angelo the investment money. Okay.

When Angelo tries to collect the stake, lo and behold, Dewitt doesn’t remember promising him. A he-said-he-said ensues. You know where this is going; the Gracio crime syndicate gets involved. And by that, I mean Jimmy, his seven-foot, meat-headed enforcer goon, Bastiano, and Jimmy’s A-lister movie star girlfriend, Marsha Moore (a not-too-subtle Marilyn Monroe). What follows is tit-for-tat, move-countermove, intimidation and ultimatums, violent reprisals, and the involvement of a strangely competent, To-Serve-and-Protect LAPD. 

Reading The Extortioners, I couldn’t help but feel an undercurrent of anti-Italian sentiment throughout the book. All Italian-American characters - Rizzola, Gracio, and the murderous machine Bastiano - are either sleazy to the point of incompetence, villainous to the point of parody, or violent beyond the point of sadism. Meanwhile, our other characters - Dewitt, his knockout wife and daughter, and police Sargeant Tucker - are self-reliantly, selflessly heroic, wilting victims of unconscionable violence or stoically determined to uphold the law and decency. It wasn’t my cup of tea. It was a fast read, I will say. But I don’t think I’ll seek out any other of Demaris’ novels.