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Pieces of the Game
Minor wear on edges of covers. Pages are clean with light tanning due to age.
Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1960
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 29, 2024
Pieces of the Game (1960) (Gold Medal # s1008) (republished by Cutting Edge) by Lee Gifford is a top-notch men’s adventure/wartime novel. Gifford is a bit of an enigma as there do not appear to be other books published under that byline and he writes like a consummate professional. The format of the book is that there is a wartime back story which forms the heart of the novel and a more present-day (the book was published in 1960 fifteen years after the war) thriller about literally buried treasure which essentially wraps around the backstory. In the hands of a less nimble writer, this format might not have worked, but Gifford does an excellent job.
As our story opens, James Sheridan is working in San Francisco and has been assigned a task of going to Manila in the Phillipines to secure a deal to trade in pearls. He says he does not really want to take the trip because he has had his fill of Manila and then some. The opening is par for the course of a men’s international adventure novel with Sheridan meeting a beautiful woman (Ellen Roberts)on the plane and finding out that they are heading for the same hotel. But, as he reminds us readers, Sheridan has a “whirling kaledioscope of memories; the green hell of Bataan’s jungles, the numbing shock of defea”t on the white rock of Corregidor, the roaring engine of a PT boat that exploded in death and fire.” He also has memories of Tulana, shy, beautiful, a singer at the hotel he is headed to now, who he spent fruitless months searching for after the war ended. The hotel he is headed to is where he stayed before he joined up after Pearl Harbor, the Casa Grande, operated then and now by Jacques Costeau. No, it is not the internationally famous sea diver and oceanographer, but a name doppelganger. Perhaps in 1960, the name was unremarkable as the famous television series had not yet begun to air.
The theme of the novel, reflected in the title, is a chess game, and Sheridan has been invited once again to play the great game with his wartime nemesis Colonel Yamata who still has his eyes on the prize, seven million dollars worth of silver Phillipine pesos to be had for the taking from the bottom of Caballo Bay. Colonel Yamata is accompanied by his assistant, Sergeant Takahito.
It turns out that, when the American and Phillipine allies retreated to Correggidor and then surrendered, resulting in the Bataan death march, Sheridan had been among the captured. As one who speaks numerous languages, he was thought to be handy to a mission led by Yamata, that mission being to salvage the millions of dollars in silver that had been taken from the Bank of Manila and scattered beneath the bay by the American armed forces before their final surrender. With very little equipment, Yamata is sending American divers down to get the silver, but Sheridan sees Yamata is playing a deadly game to slow the salvage operation so that he might, after the war, return and secure the silver treasure for himself. It is a high-stakes wartime thriller as the few American divers try to survive the operation and secure a plan for escape the bay from which escape is impossible and from which thousands of POWs perished in long death marches.
Through the war, Sheridan plays chess with Yamata as an allegory for the chess match they play in reality. And now having returned to Manila (or tricked into returning as the possible only one who would still know the location of the buried treasure), Sheridan once again is playing a life-and-death chess match against Yamata and his evil henchman Takahito.
This is a superb novel, thrilling and exciting from start to finish.
As our story opens, James Sheridan is working in San Francisco and has been assigned a task of going to Manila in the Phillipines to secure a deal to trade in pearls. He says he does not really want to take the trip because he has had his fill of Manila and then some. The opening is par for the course of a men’s international adventure novel with Sheridan meeting a beautiful woman (Ellen Roberts)on the plane and finding out that they are heading for the same hotel. But, as he reminds us readers, Sheridan has a “whirling kaledioscope of memories; the green hell of Bataan’s jungles, the numbing shock of defea”t on the white rock of Corregidor, the roaring engine of a PT boat that exploded in death and fire.” He also has memories of Tulana, shy, beautiful, a singer at the hotel he is headed to now, who he spent fruitless months searching for after the war ended. The hotel he is headed to is where he stayed before he joined up after Pearl Harbor, the Casa Grande, operated then and now by Jacques Costeau. No, it is not the internationally famous sea diver and oceanographer, but a name doppelganger. Perhaps in 1960, the name was unremarkable as the famous television series had not yet begun to air.
The theme of the novel, reflected in the title, is a chess game, and Sheridan has been invited once again to play the great game with his wartime nemesis Colonel Yamata who still has his eyes on the prize, seven million dollars worth of silver Phillipine pesos to be had for the taking from the bottom of Caballo Bay. Colonel Yamata is accompanied by his assistant, Sergeant Takahito.
It turns out that, when the American and Phillipine allies retreated to Correggidor and then surrendered, resulting in the Bataan death march, Sheridan had been among the captured. As one who speaks numerous languages, he was thought to be handy to a mission led by Yamata, that mission being to salvage the millions of dollars in silver that had been taken from the Bank of Manila and scattered beneath the bay by the American armed forces before their final surrender. With very little equipment, Yamata is sending American divers down to get the silver, but Sheridan sees Yamata is playing a deadly game to slow the salvage operation so that he might, after the war, return and secure the silver treasure for himself. It is a high-stakes wartime thriller as the few American divers try to survive the operation and secure a plan for escape the bay from which escape is impossible and from which thousands of POWs perished in long death marches.
Through the war, Sheridan plays chess with Yamata as an allegory for the chess match they play in reality. And now having returned to Manila (or tricked into returning as the possible only one who would still know the location of the buried treasure), Sheridan once again is playing a life-and-death chess match against Yamata and his evil henchman Takahito.
This is a superb novel, thrilling and exciting from start to finish.
July 18, 2020
Pulp
Good fifties pulp. Not a classic but fun. A quick read, retro in the extreme. Enjoy. Recommended. Thanks to Cutting Edge Press for bringing this one back( I have the original gold medal editions I
Good fifties pulp. Not a classic but fun. A quick read, retro in the extreme. Enjoy. Recommended. Thanks to Cutting Edge Press for bringing this one back( I have the original gold medal editions I
February 8, 2025
This was some pretty darn good paperback pulp with tough guys trying to get through tougher times graced with some really good prose.
Jim Sheridan fought in the Pacific during WWII where he was captured and, with a ragtag bunch of other tough guys, forced by the Japanese to reclaim a trove of silver coins that were dumped into the depths of a Philippine bay. They didn't get all the silver then, and hid some of it in an underwater cave. Now, more than a decade later, he finds himself face to face with the Japanese colonel who oversaw the salvaging operation and wants Jim to finish the job.
The bulk of this novel takes place in WWII, with the contemporary scenes acting as a framing device. The writing is pretty darn good. Gifford can turn a good phrase, but on top of that, he writes in a way that makes you believe everything. I couldn't help but think that some of the book had to be autobiographical, because the details and emotional content rang so true. Alas, there appears to be no biographical information about the author out there, and this is the only book he ever wrote, so who knows if any of this adventure was born from experience.
The WWII portion is definitely the stronger part. The framing around it feels a little less real, but it's not unsatisfying. I'm sure that, in a couple dozen years, when I've forgotten all the details, I'll happily come back to this book and immerse myself again in the sweaty Philippines of WWII and their dark, treasure-laden seas.
Jim Sheridan fought in the Pacific during WWII where he was captured and, with a ragtag bunch of other tough guys, forced by the Japanese to reclaim a trove of silver coins that were dumped into the depths of a Philippine bay. They didn't get all the silver then, and hid some of it in an underwater cave. Now, more than a decade later, he finds himself face to face with the Japanese colonel who oversaw the salvaging operation and wants Jim to finish the job.
The bulk of this novel takes place in WWII, with the contemporary scenes acting as a framing device. The writing is pretty darn good. Gifford can turn a good phrase, but on top of that, he writes in a way that makes you believe everything. I couldn't help but think that some of the book had to be autobiographical, because the details and emotional content rang so true. Alas, there appears to be no biographical information about the author out there, and this is the only book he ever wrote, so who knows if any of this adventure was born from experience.
The WWII portion is definitely the stronger part. The framing around it feels a little less real, but it's not unsatisfying. I'm sure that, in a couple dozen years, when I've forgotten all the details, I'll happily come back to this book and immerse myself again in the sweaty Philippines of WWII and their dark, treasure-laden seas.
December 21, 2024
There’s a great story here, actually three great ones.
But there’s an old saying in football: if you have two quarterbacks, you don’t really have the one, and that’s pretty much true here as well.
I’m not sure where to start as I review this, and I think Gifford may have had the same problem as he wrote it.
As it is, he begins with WWII vet – and one-time POW in the Philippines – Jim Sheridan as he heads back to the Philippines on what he believes is his firm’s opportunity to purchase pearls. When he gets there, conveniently having met a siren of a nightclub singer who (15 years younger than he is) flashes her interest in him, he finds himself drawn back into a life he thought he’d left behind. We learn, slowly,
That’s a pretty intriguing story, I think – the story of a man who comes back to a place where he suffered as a young man.
The bulk of this novel, though, deals with a flashback to his time in the war. And that’s a pretty good story, too.
Sheridan fights until the bitter end when, hit by a shell, he’s taken prisoner, healed up, and compelled by a would-be chess-playing Japanese admiral to be part of a team of Americans doing deep dives in the bay. That chess metaphor takes on gradual importance – as the title suggests – with the idea that each American is a pawn, someone to be sacrificed as necessary for the larger “game.”
There’s potential for real intrigue there, and – to be honest – this is both the best and most substantial part of the book. I’d have preferred more detail – this is always a trim novel – but there are some striking moments and real tension. It’s chilling to read about the primitive technology that protected them underwater, and there’s nice tension as they discover more and more of the material at the ocean floor.
There’s a third story as well.
The ultimate problem, then, is that we don’t get enough of any of this.
I found this one after an enthusiastic review by a Goodreads friend. (Thanks, Dave.) It’s interesting to read what was likely cutting-edge adventure noir from 1960. It doesn’t hold up for me as it did for Dave, but no complaints – still a lot of fun.
But there’s an old saying in football: if you have two quarterbacks, you don’t really have the one, and that’s pretty much true here as well.
I’m not sure where to start as I review this, and I think Gifford may have had the same problem as he wrote it.
As it is, he begins with WWII vet – and one-time POW in the Philippines – Jim Sheridan as he heads back to the Philippines on what he believes is his firm’s opportunity to purchase pearls. When he gets there, conveniently having met a siren of a nightclub singer who (15 years younger than he is) flashes her interest in him, he finds himself drawn back into a life he thought he’d left behind. We learn, slowly,
That’s a pretty intriguing story, I think – the story of a man who comes back to a place where he suffered as a young man.
The bulk of this novel, though, deals with a flashback to his time in the war. And that’s a pretty good story, too.
Sheridan fights until the bitter end when, hit by a shell, he’s taken prisoner, healed up, and compelled by a would-be chess-playing Japanese admiral to be part of a team of Americans doing deep dives in the bay. That chess metaphor takes on gradual importance – as the title suggests – with the idea that each American is a pawn, someone to be sacrificed as necessary for the larger “game.”
There’s potential for real intrigue there, and – to be honest – this is both the best and most substantial part of the book. I’d have preferred more detail – this is always a trim novel – but there are some striking moments and real tension. It’s chilling to read about the primitive technology that protected them underwater, and there’s nice tension as they discover more and more of the material at the ocean floor.
There’s a third story as well.
The ultimate problem, then, is that we don’t get enough of any of this.
I found this one after an enthusiastic review by a Goodreads friend. (Thanks, Dave.) It’s interesting to read what was likely cutting-edge adventure noir from 1960. It doesn’t hold up for me as it did for Dave, but no complaints – still a lot of fun.
April 16, 2026
Lee Gifford only wrote one book—Pieces of the Game—and that’s a shame, because it’s a really good one. He spent most of his life as a purchasing manager for big companies and, I suppose, like all of us part-time authors, filled those dull, gray moments at his day job with idle daydreams of far-off places and interesting people.
If you read enough of these old pulp spinner-rack books, you see a lot of Lee Giffords. And I find myself wondering how someone who took the time to write a book—to send it out, to get rejected dozens of times, and then finally get published—can walk away from that? I know, for me, having a book published just ramps up my enthusiasm for writing even more, and it seems very foreign to me to try a thing, succeed, and then decide that’s enough. Maybe there is maturity in knowing when to quit, and madness in not.
That’s definitely a theme in Pieces of the Game, a fun, noir, action romp of a book. It’s about a guy, Jim Sheridan, pushing paper at the Great Western Import Company in San Francisco. It’s not what he thought he’d be doing with his life, especially after going to school to become an engineer. But when the money’s right, sometimes you take it.
The book opens like this: “It was cold in Wharton’s office. Just a few degrees colder than the old man himself.” And if that doesn’t make you want to know what comes next, then there is something wrong with you. And what happens next is that Sheridan finds himself drafted into going back to Manila, a place he spent most of the war in as a prisoner before leading a daring escape and then spending a good deal of time as part of a local resistance unit. He really doesn’t want to go back, not because of what he did during the war but because of a woman who broke his heart, the gorgeous nightclub singer Tulana.
The company Jim works for has decided they want to get into the business of importing pearls, and Jim is the only one in the office who speaks both Spanish and Japanese. He’s given a single white pearl, an expense account, a plane ticket, and told to wait at the Casa Grande hotel, where he’ll be met by a contact with a matching, but black, pearl.
It’s a great setup, made even better because Jim thinks the whole thing sounds too good to be true and totally fishy. The Great Western Import Company deals in boring industrial products and routine transactions, and the kind of cloak-and-dagger trip he’s being sent on is way out of bounds for what he normally does. But when the mysterious Home Office tells you to do something, you do it.
What follows is a fantastic novel told in two distinct parts—a flashback to Jim’s time during the war, and the present day, when the consequences of his war years catch up with him. It really reads like a lovely action novel sandwiched in between a gritty noir mystery, and each section has so much to recommend.
All of it revolves around a real historical event in WWII, the dumping of $8 million in silver pesos into the waters off Corregidor Island as the American and Filipino forces fled from the Japanese in the early days of the war. In the book, Jim’s experience follows these events closely, with one critical twist. The Japanese know about the silver at the bottom of the bay, and they’ve captured six U.S. Navy divers to go dredge it back up, only they can’t talk to them. Turns out, despite his complete lack of experience with salvage diving, Sheridan, because of his language skills, is the crucial link between the Japanese Navy and the team they need to get the silver.
Enter Colonel Yamata, the Japanese naval officer in charge of this operation. Yamata is a wonderful heavy, very much in the erudite and polished vein of a good James Bond villain. He even has a henchman, the terrible Sergeant Takahito, who you will just love to hate as the book goes on. Turns out Yamata is the reason Sheridan is back in Manila—in fact, he’s the reason Jim Sheridan works for the Great Western Import Company in the first place, as Yamata owns it.
Yamata and Sheridan have a very complicated relationship both in the flashback and in the present-day parts of the book. It really is wonderfully done, and no summary will quite give you the exquisite complexities of the way these two men both admire and hate one another. The metaphor Gifford uses to describe this throughout the book is one that has become a tired trope, but is quite apt in this setting: the game of chess.
Both Yamata and Sheridan love the game, only in the flashbacks Yamata is just learning it, and Sheridan becomes his teacher. By the present day they are equally adept at the game, and there are several scenes of them playing it. As I said, we’ve seen this a million times before, but what makes Gifford’s take on it so good is the way you can see, both in the flashback and in the present-day part of the book, how both Sheridan and Yamata are making moves against each other all throughout. It really works, mostly because of Gifford’s restraint in applying the metaphor and his expertise in making the story align so well with the game.
For a book that clocks in at 176 pages, it really is a wonder how much Gifford gets in. And while I’ve extolled the virtues of tight, economical writing in past reviews, this is one of the rare times I found myself wishing there had been more. As much as Gifford gives you in this book—I mean, you get a whole action story, a whole noir mystery, and I don’t even have time to go into the wonderfully weird revenge subplot around the mysterious Barracuda character—I still found myself hungry for more.
And part of that is Gifford’s skill as a writer. I think in another author’s hands the weird multi-national band of U.S. Navy divers—there’s an Italian guy, a Swedish dude with an accent, a German guy named Fritz, and the Filipino locals Esteban and Guido—would have come off as cartoons, but Gifford really makes all of them great characters. So much so, when Yamata and Takahito started doing terrible things to this ragtag team, I really felt bad for them, and very angry with Yamata.
Finally, let me say something about the love interest in this book—there are two. Like any good noir book, the protagonist has to be wounded in some way, and Sheridan’s relationship with Tulana serves that purpose well. As I said, it’s the main reason he doesn’t want to go back and once Gifford lays out all the reasons why, you can understand Sheridan’s point. However, what Gifford does that’s unusual is he builds a very believable new romance for Sheridan in the present day with another nightclub singer named Ellen. This relationship requires him to find a way to resolve his feelings about Tulana before he can really move forward, and it’s something he struggles with deeply.
Ellen is a lovely character that Sheridan meets on the plane over to Manila, and right out of the gate there are verbal fireworks between the two of them. The fact that she now has the exact same job, at the exact same hotel as his past love interest is only revealed bit by bit, so that when it lands for Sheridan it also landed for me, making the reveal and parallels just lovely.
Of course, in every noir tale, there has to be the moment when the main character confronts the source of his pain, and the scene where Sheridan and Tulana catch up in the present day and have it out is really touching, painful, and well balanced. Too often in these old, pulp books ex-girlfriends come off as cruel devil women, only out to hurt the honest, unsuspecting men. But Tulana’s betrayal of Sheridan is complex, believable, and, once she explains it from her point of view, totally understandable. It’s one of the best moments in a book that’s full of great character moments.
I really can’t recommend Pieces of the Game enough. It’s a damn shame it’s the only book Gifford ever wrote; I would have loved to see what he came up with next. But maybe this was all he had in him. Maybe his next book wouldn’t have been that great and it’s better to leave the world with one truly magnificent novel than one good one and a lot of also-rans. I don’t know.
Suffice to say, you should read this one. It’s fun, it’s satisfying, and you’ll have a hard time putting it down. Not every spinner-rack book is a winner, but this one is. Trust me: if you like adventure, strong characters, a great plot, good villains, and satisfying endings (there are like three endings in this book too!), then this is for you. Give it a try—you won’t be sorry.
If you read enough of these old pulp spinner-rack books, you see a lot of Lee Giffords. And I find myself wondering how someone who took the time to write a book—to send it out, to get rejected dozens of times, and then finally get published—can walk away from that? I know, for me, having a book published just ramps up my enthusiasm for writing even more, and it seems very foreign to me to try a thing, succeed, and then decide that’s enough. Maybe there is maturity in knowing when to quit, and madness in not.
That’s definitely a theme in Pieces of the Game, a fun, noir, action romp of a book. It’s about a guy, Jim Sheridan, pushing paper at the Great Western Import Company in San Francisco. It’s not what he thought he’d be doing with his life, especially after going to school to become an engineer. But when the money’s right, sometimes you take it.
The book opens like this: “It was cold in Wharton’s office. Just a few degrees colder than the old man himself.” And if that doesn’t make you want to know what comes next, then there is something wrong with you. And what happens next is that Sheridan finds himself drafted into going back to Manila, a place he spent most of the war in as a prisoner before leading a daring escape and then spending a good deal of time as part of a local resistance unit. He really doesn’t want to go back, not because of what he did during the war but because of a woman who broke his heart, the gorgeous nightclub singer Tulana.
The company Jim works for has decided they want to get into the business of importing pearls, and Jim is the only one in the office who speaks both Spanish and Japanese. He’s given a single white pearl, an expense account, a plane ticket, and told to wait at the Casa Grande hotel, where he’ll be met by a contact with a matching, but black, pearl.
It’s a great setup, made even better because Jim thinks the whole thing sounds too good to be true and totally fishy. The Great Western Import Company deals in boring industrial products and routine transactions, and the kind of cloak-and-dagger trip he’s being sent on is way out of bounds for what he normally does. But when the mysterious Home Office tells you to do something, you do it.
What follows is a fantastic novel told in two distinct parts—a flashback to Jim’s time during the war, and the present day, when the consequences of his war years catch up with him. It really reads like a lovely action novel sandwiched in between a gritty noir mystery, and each section has so much to recommend.
All of it revolves around a real historical event in WWII, the dumping of $8 million in silver pesos into the waters off Corregidor Island as the American and Filipino forces fled from the Japanese in the early days of the war. In the book, Jim’s experience follows these events closely, with one critical twist. The Japanese know about the silver at the bottom of the bay, and they’ve captured six U.S. Navy divers to go dredge it back up, only they can’t talk to them. Turns out, despite his complete lack of experience with salvage diving, Sheridan, because of his language skills, is the crucial link between the Japanese Navy and the team they need to get the silver.
Enter Colonel Yamata, the Japanese naval officer in charge of this operation. Yamata is a wonderful heavy, very much in the erudite and polished vein of a good James Bond villain. He even has a henchman, the terrible Sergeant Takahito, who you will just love to hate as the book goes on. Turns out Yamata is the reason Sheridan is back in Manila—in fact, he’s the reason Jim Sheridan works for the Great Western Import Company in the first place, as Yamata owns it.
Yamata and Sheridan have a very complicated relationship both in the flashback and in the present-day parts of the book. It really is wonderfully done, and no summary will quite give you the exquisite complexities of the way these two men both admire and hate one another. The metaphor Gifford uses to describe this throughout the book is one that has become a tired trope, but is quite apt in this setting: the game of chess.
Both Yamata and Sheridan love the game, only in the flashbacks Yamata is just learning it, and Sheridan becomes his teacher. By the present day they are equally adept at the game, and there are several scenes of them playing it. As I said, we’ve seen this a million times before, but what makes Gifford’s take on it so good is the way you can see, both in the flashback and in the present-day part of the book, how both Sheridan and Yamata are making moves against each other all throughout. It really works, mostly because of Gifford’s restraint in applying the metaphor and his expertise in making the story align so well with the game.
For a book that clocks in at 176 pages, it really is a wonder how much Gifford gets in. And while I’ve extolled the virtues of tight, economical writing in past reviews, this is one of the rare times I found myself wishing there had been more. As much as Gifford gives you in this book—I mean, you get a whole action story, a whole noir mystery, and I don’t even have time to go into the wonderfully weird revenge subplot around the mysterious Barracuda character—I still found myself hungry for more.
And part of that is Gifford’s skill as a writer. I think in another author’s hands the weird multi-national band of U.S. Navy divers—there’s an Italian guy, a Swedish dude with an accent, a German guy named Fritz, and the Filipino locals Esteban and Guido—would have come off as cartoons, but Gifford really makes all of them great characters. So much so, when Yamata and Takahito started doing terrible things to this ragtag team, I really felt bad for them, and very angry with Yamata.
Finally, let me say something about the love interest in this book—there are two. Like any good noir book, the protagonist has to be wounded in some way, and Sheridan’s relationship with Tulana serves that purpose well. As I said, it’s the main reason he doesn’t want to go back and once Gifford lays out all the reasons why, you can understand Sheridan’s point. However, what Gifford does that’s unusual is he builds a very believable new romance for Sheridan in the present day with another nightclub singer named Ellen. This relationship requires him to find a way to resolve his feelings about Tulana before he can really move forward, and it’s something he struggles with deeply.
Ellen is a lovely character that Sheridan meets on the plane over to Manila, and right out of the gate there are verbal fireworks between the two of them. The fact that she now has the exact same job, at the exact same hotel as his past love interest is only revealed bit by bit, so that when it lands for Sheridan it also landed for me, making the reveal and parallels just lovely.
Of course, in every noir tale, there has to be the moment when the main character confronts the source of his pain, and the scene where Sheridan and Tulana catch up in the present day and have it out is really touching, painful, and well balanced. Too often in these old, pulp books ex-girlfriends come off as cruel devil women, only out to hurt the honest, unsuspecting men. But Tulana’s betrayal of Sheridan is complex, believable, and, once she explains it from her point of view, totally understandable. It’s one of the best moments in a book that’s full of great character moments.
I really can’t recommend Pieces of the Game enough. It’s a damn shame it’s the only book Gifford ever wrote; I would have loved to see what he came up with next. But maybe this was all he had in him. Maybe his next book wouldn’t have been that great and it’s better to leave the world with one truly magnificent novel than one good one and a lot of also-rans. I don’t know.
Suffice to say, you should read this one. It’s fun, it’s satisfying, and you’ll have a hard time putting it down. Not every spinner-rack book is a winner, but this one is. Trust me: if you like adventure, strong characters, a great plot, good villains, and satisfying endings (there are like three endings in this book too!), then this is for you. Give it a try—you won’t be sorry.
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