George Harmon Coxe (1901–1984)

Wow! I found this book and another like it at a church fair book table. I had thought I'd like me some pulp detective fiction from the 40s, and that's what this is. For some reason, GoodReads claims this book is from 1950, but the inside of the cover says 1937, and Wikipedia says 1938. The ambiance seems more 30s to me than 50s. As such it's great. As literature, of course not. It certainly merits a 3* rating, because it's a great example of its genre.

The story is about an ace newspaper show more photographer (in Boston no less) who is asked by his wife to see if he can bail our her best friend, who apparently has just murdered someone who had been blackmailing her. When the photographer gets to the place where the victim was murdered, he takes a picture of a street parade (that also has a bunch of odd people watching/by standing), then goes inside and takes a couple more shots of the crime scene. This, before the cops even know about the crime. Well, all and sundry start tracking the guy down to try to get the pictures from him before they get published, or even to the cops. Several more people get murdered on the way to a surprise ending.

That's as much as I'll tell of the plot. But it's wonderful pulp fiction. It's full of tough guys, floozies, rich people trying to pay off folks to get the odds bent in their favor, double crossing, adultery (alluded to, and only tastefully at that), con men, and so forth. Oh, and, of course, lots of drinking. This is stuff right out of Guy Noire or Humphrey Bogart, i.e. awesome in its tawdry way. The copy I had—a Dell paperback—has just about the worst typography one could imagine (although a campily lurid cover). But thinking about the time period, they were likely saving on money, so skimped on niceties like margins, white space and so forth.

Anyway, if you fancy an occasional cheesy 30s/40s dime novel, this is a great choice; if you want real literature, hunt up some Dickens of Murakami. show less

Woman At Bay is a top-Notch, absolutely terrific mystery thriller. As in
Maltese Falcon, there's a fabulous prize that seemingly everyone wants
to get their hands on and there is a constant shifting of trust and
loyalty. It is however no ordinary murder mystery set as it is in an
exotic location -Havana,Cuba- and a time -postwar - that provides for
some real interesting background. The prize has to do with exposing
Nazi collaborators in Wartime Vichy France and the one who has the
prize is show more crossing the Atlantic from Lisbon by steamship.

More intrigue is thrown in with the protagonist McKinnon being
assigned because it's his ex wife who has the materials -the ex wife
who divorced him when he left Paris to go fight in the Spanish Civil
War and failed to return promptly. The hope is that McKinnon can
sweep her off her feet again but the feelings between them are quite
complicated.

The story has an exotic European feel as it takes place in fancy hotels
and parties as these folks square off but it doesn't take long before the
plot draws the reader in deeply with mysterious killings and
doublecrossings and more.
The writing is just superb and this book and this author deserves far
more recognition than he's gotten. show less

Kent Murdock is a photographer for the Courier paper. He receives a locked suitcase from his old friend, retired Criminal lawyer Arnold Stanton, for safekeeping.

Within hours, Stanton’s house is burgled, Murdock is held up by hoodlums and a man is found murdered. Somehow there are connections between these people and events, and Murdock is out to find them.

When the suitcase goes missing from Murdock’s storage, things really rev up and more possible suspects appear, from family members to show more old business partners. The threads are slowly unraveled. The plot twist is just that. A total surprise.

A little slow at the beginning, but it does pick up and get going. A good vintage read. show less

Pretty decent read by longtime Black Mask contributor George Harmon Coxe. Here, his Boston newspaper photographer/inadvertent detective Flash Casey--older, if not much wiser--accepts a freelance assignment that lands him in a world of trouble and may have had something to do with the murder of a friend. Plagued by guilt, he attempts to track down the killer and soon uncovers a blackmail scheme targeting a psychiatrist's female patients. Can Casey and salty Homicide Lieutenant Logan join all show more the loose ends and bring the murderer to justice?

Unlike Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, Coxe was not a literary stylist: he was a solid, reliable storyteller and wrote many books. The drawback here is that Flash Casey had his origins in the two-fisted, rough-and-tumble brand of crime fiction, so that the older, slightly more introspective Casey isn't quite as engaging a character as his younger self. He just doesn't have enough depth to compete with Chandler's Philip Marlowe or Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer. (For Casey at his finest, see Black Mask stories like "Murder Picture" and "Once Around the Clock.") Still, Error of Judgment is a consistently entertaining novel; it's unlikely that you'll ever reread it, but you won't be sorry that you read it the first time. Three and a quarter stars.

(Originally published in 1961; reissued in 1967 as One Murder Too Many.) show less