Friday's Forgotten Books, June 10, 2011

THE SUMMING UP will come over the weekend. Sorry for the delay.

Taking a week off next week, but carry on without me.

Ed Lynskey is the author of the newly released Lake Charles among other fine books.

The Bait by Dorothy Uhnak. 1968. Simon & Schuster.

One of the delights I’ve experienced in my writing career was the opportunity to conduct a phone interview with Dorothy Uhnak about a year or so before her tragic suicide in 2006. I’d read all of her novels, so I felt as if I’d had prepared enough. I needn’t have worried. She was a pistol, very friendly and engaging. You can read my interview and essay here: http://tiny.cc/ge08r.

The Bait won the 1969 Edgar Award for the best first novel, and Anthony Boucher praised it in his New York Times review column. It introduced her character Detective Second Grade Christie Opara (the surname is Czech) who went on to appear in two subsequent novels: The Witness (1969) and The Ledger (1970). Christie was based on Ms. Uhnak’s own fourteen-year career as a twice-decorated detective with the New York City Transit Police. Christie is a 26-year-old widow living with her small son Mickey and mother-in-law Nora.

After her husband died two years before in a construction job accident, Christie now works for Casey Reardon of the District Attorney’s Squad. En route to a big LSD drug bust, Christie arrests Murray Rogoff for indecent exposure while riding on the NYC subway. She sets off a chain of events that brings her back to clash with Murray under far darker circumstances. Three young ladies have been strangled, and Murray becomes the prime suspect.

I like Ms. Uhnak’s characterization, the precise mannerisms and pitch perfect dialogue she uses. She also injects enough gritty on-the-job realism to her cop tale without going overboard or bogging it down. The scenes showing the cops’ interactions feel natural and smooth. Banter and humor surface even when setting a trap with Christie offering herself as “the bait” for the murderous psychopath Murray. Christie strikes up a romantic interest with Reardon, a married man with a reputation for having affairs. I don’t remember how all that shakes out through the rest of the Opara trilogy.

Murray also wears special glasses to protect his lashless eyes and keep them moist. Ms. Uhnak told me she based his character on a real life perp she arrested who wore such special glasses. The perp left his lasting impression on her. She said she’d searched the police archives to hunt down his old arrest record.

I bought my paperback copy of The Bait from a used bookstore for $1.50. I thought our library system still shelved most of her books, but my online check just revealed all but one title have been culled. Within five years of her death, her books have disappeared. What a pity. She was a first-rate crime fiction writer and one of the pioneer lady authors working in the police procedural subgenre. At any rate, I suspect her used and ex-libris books are readily available for a mere few bucks.

Ed Gorman is the author of the recent STRANGLEHOLD and editor of ON DANGEROUS GROUND and Other Stories. You can find him here.

THE LAST MATCH by David Dodge

Dictionary: The word “picaresque” is taken from a form of satirical prose originating in Spain, depicting realistically and often humorously the adventures of a low-born, roguish hero living by his/her wits in a corrupt society.

This is the only word I can find to adequately describe THE LAST MATCH by David Dodge. In a winningly cynical voice, a young swindler tells us all about working scams in places as far flung as Cannes, Tangiers and Lima, among others. He is particularly deft with women.

Good to remember that Dodge was also a travel writer of considerable note, so the backdrops here are almost as vivid as the characters, who are mostly low-borns working their way downward reeking of sweat, booze and occasionally blood.

Dodge hangs a good deal of his tale on the romance between Curly and a fetching young woman of British royalty named Regina. She, unlike most other humans who trod the earth, seems to feel that Curly’s soul is worth saving and she attacks this task with almost saintly (and sexy) determination.

I didn’t care much about the story, but was won over completely by the high style of the prose, the incorrigible personality of the narrator and the unending list of badasses who appear along the various map points. This has the feel of a memoir rather than a novel, and that makes it all the more realistic.

I think you’d have to say that Dodge – who wrote this novel sometime in the early ’70s even though this is its first publication – didn’t have much interest in the usual tropes of genre thriller fiction. Graceful and sardonic writing seem his biggest fascination, a true world view with some gunfights, fist fights and bad ladies thrown in every once in a while to honor pulp expectations. I should note here that early in the first chapter, Dodge struts his stuff, introducing us to an attractive and appealing middle-aged woman who is using him as her current boy-toy. You know you’re in the hands of a real writer when Dodge makes us like and even respect the woman. Not a cliché in sight. I knew right off I’d like book just because of its opening chapter.

His daughter Kendal Dodge Butler provides a loving, even endearing afterword about her father. He seems to be about what I expected: a man who had his darkest adventures early on and then settled into a respectable middle-aged family life that allowed him the leisure and luxury to pursue his writing where he got to polish up some of those old adventures and display his wide knowledge of cons and scams. –Ed Gorman

Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Michael Carlson
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Jerry House
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Curt Evans
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Richard Pangborn
Graham Powell
Eric Peterson
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Mike Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple