Talmage Powell (1920–2000)

Beware The Young Stranger (1965) by Ellery Queen. I bought an original copy of this book for 25 cents. I got it for half price as the cover clearly proclaims a 50 cent cost for this Pocket Books issue. Despite the low cost, I was very disappointed by this book, but not so much by the story. I have been reading mysteries written by the duo of cousins who called themselves Ellery Queen for decades and hoped for one I had missed. Turns out this story was penned by Talmage Powell who, upon show more occasion, wrote an E.Q. (the author not the character) book.
Usually when I see the name Ellery queen on the cover, I assume the character of Queen is in the book. Not so with this novel.
So two major disappointments with this book without even reading it.
But upon reading I discovered I liked the story. Not loved it, but it was a well told tale. The main character is John Vallancourt, an American diplomat home from overseas at last. The time is mid 1960’s. John is single due to the passing of his wife years before. Now he is faced with a daughter, Nancy, in her early 20’s, who is in love with a very nice and presentable young man. Keith Rollins is the nephew of one of John’s close friends. Dorcas Ferguson is a powerful leader and formidable woman, eldest of the three Ferguson sisters. She managed to resurrect the family’s fortunes and property holdings, and has her nephew for the summer. Keith and Nancy are in love.
John finds out more about Keith in a very short time. The only thing he actually learns about the young man is that he was the prime suspect in a rape/murder crime in Florida over spring break. He was the victim’s close friend and possibly the last friend she ever was with. The police had questioned him but there is no strong evidence linking him to the actual crime and released him.
John is faced with the ever lasting struggle between father and daughter. Forbidding her to see Keith will only drive her into his arms faster, but John must do something.
But when two men, John being one, find Dorcas dead in her home, thoughts turn to Keith. John actually discovers Keith hiding behind the drapery of the murder room, but Keith escapes.
This is a suspense thriller that will capture your interest, especially if you are a father of a young woman. I don’t suppose it would come as a shock to you dear reader, but Nancy, even after hearing the news that her Keith is wanted on suspicion of his aunt’s murder, still believes in him.
I overcame my initial disappointment and got into this thriller. It turned out pretty good, especially as it captures the time it was written in so well. Golfing and drinks at the club, local businessmen with ties, sport coats and Fedoras talking earnestly over cigarets and dinner, large lumbering autos run too fast and stopping suddenly to have the car’s front end take a bow. All these things and more evoke the feel of the mid-sixties.
I enjoyed the nostalgia as much as I did the story. show less

“The Killer Is Mine” is the first of five Ed Rivers PI novels by Talmage Powell, one of the pulp writers from the Tampa Bay area in the fifties. Rivers is an ugly bear of a man who can’t stand Florida’s oppressive heat. He has a low-rent apartment and office in Tampa’s Ybor City. He was originally a New Jersey police officer who fell for a girl he thought was “everything fine and decent in human form,” only to discover that she had it bad for a hood and ended up watching her show more and the hood lose a race with a freight train. Rivers works on his own, often at odds with the interests of the law. His specialty seems to be defending men accused of/convicted of murder when no one else believes they have one drop of innocence.

“The Killer Is Mine” is a terrific PI novel and a lightning fast read from cover to cover. On the way to righting wrongs and doing justice, Rivers encounters seven-foot tall circus freaks, blonde call girls (with “bedroom blond hair framing a face that was almost pretty as a doll’s”), blackmailing waiters, victims families who are so wrought with grief that they are claimed by insanity and/or inebriation, precocious teenagers, and a grande dame of a wealthy family. He is battered, bruised, set on fire, shot at, jailed, run over, and otherwise trampled.

And, of course, the accused’s wife (Laura Tulman) couldn’t just be ordinary, could she? “She was the kind who’d make the whole trip for a man, right to hell’s front door. Even for a guy in his spot.” The accused on the surface doesn’t seem like a crazed child molester/killer and, the narrator explains, “in a gentler world, Wally Tulman might have been an outstanding success. But the world was not the gentle place he needed. It was a place of atom bombs and wars and death and blood, and it viewed Wally Tulman with critical, bloody eyes.” And what they accused him of was putting him through hell on earth: “They had built a nightmare like a strait jacket and laced his spirit up in it. They had him so confused he half-believed he had really done it.”

The late fifties/early sixties brought a ton of PIs of every kind to the literary world, but Powell’s Ed Rivers is one of the best. Powell has created a character that is not just a caricature, but has tremendous depth. He isn’t just bamboozled by feminine wiles, but is concerned whether someone has lost their soul and now has “a chunk missing inside” and has “lost the line between right and wrong.” show less

Talmadge Powell wrote a number of pulp novels and stories in the late
50's & early 60's. Among his work are five novels featuring PI Ed
Rivers, a tough hardhreaded bear of a man who worked out of an
office in Tampa, partcularly Tampa’s Ybor City.
The story is well written and nicely paced. There are few if any wasted
words. I picked up three of Powell's books last month and I wish I'd
picked up several more.
The story begins with Rivers glancing out of his apartment window and
spying a show more gorgeous scantily clad woman in another building. She was
either beckoning him over or taking ill. In any case, Rivers investigates
and ends up in a tangle with a crazed killer stalking him and the local
syndicate looking to shut him down.
Terrific book filled with nonstop action. Highly recommended. show less

"Man-Killer" is a short novel of country pulp by Tampa Bay writer Talmage Powell. You won't go wrong picking up anything by Powell. His writing style is not filled with fancy prose and probably most of his books don't stand out from the pack as being unique, but he is certainly a great writer. He knows how to tell a story and, in the end, that's what is most important.

The plot here consists of the following: Wade Calhoun is head over heels in love with Vicky Hustin, who while waiting for her show more two-years of spousal desertion to run its course has split her time between Calhoun and a rich, dapper gentleman from the City. Vicky is from the McCalls, hillbilly trash from up in the hills. No one in this small-town thinks she is any good to begin with and, when her husband comes back and is soon killed, she is the only suspect. It doesn't help that she is seen leaving the murder scene and her fingerprints are all over the murder weapon. It doesn't help that she was pretty much forced to marry Rock Hustin, who was pretty much a pathological criminal.

The town, just about every last one of them, is ready to see her hang for this crime. Calhoun, however, isn't going to give up on her even if everything he does to save her turns against him.

Powell does a great job in this novel of painting this small mountain town and the insular community there. As a reader, you really get a feel for Calhoun being alone with no one else he can really count on.

It is a story about trust and loyalty and betrayal. It is also a story about cages and finding a way out of cages. Although as a reader you are never quite sure of whether or not you should be rooting for Vicki, you feel her pain as she tries to escape from all the cages of her life, beginning with being born into the no-good McCalls and being forced into a marriage with Rock, who was himself no-good in his way. Being locked in the county jail seems almost to her like being locked away in the final cage.
One of the things about reading Talmage Powell's novels is that he writes so smoothly that, before you even realize it, you've rocketed your way through the book. show less