Dead Weight

Johnny Liddell #5

by Frank Kane

Frank Kane was brought up in Brooklyn, New York. He attended St. John's Law School but had to leave his studies to support his spouse and newborn child. He worked as a columnist for The New York Press, as a letterer for the New York Trade Newspapers Corporation, for the New York Journal of Commerce, and in public relations, particularly as an advocate for the liquor industry. After World War II, he was a freelance writer, later working in radio, where he introduced movie stars, and in television.

Genres: Mystery

173 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Frank Kane, Brooklyn-born and a lifetime New Yorker, worked for many years in journalism and corporate public relations before shifting to fiction writing. At the time he was selling crime stories to the pulps he was also sustaining a career writing scripts for such radio shows as Gangbusters and The Shadow.

In addition to the Johnny Liddells, Kane wrote several suspense novels, some softcore erotica, and (under the pen name of Frank Boyd) "Johnny Staccato", a Gold Medal original paperback based on the short-lived noir television series, starring John Cassavetes, about a Greenwich Village bebop pianist turned private detective.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dead Weight is the fifth Johnny Liddell novel out of thirty. Published in 1951, it is one of the earlier Liddell novels and has Liddell working as a private eye out of a small office in NYC with Pinky operating the front desk and Muggsy Kiely, his reporter girlfriend, jealous of Pinky.
This is a fast-paced, action-packed story that features mysterious packages, Treasury Agents, hoods, gambling syndicates, treacherous Mata Hari characters, gunfire, corpses, frames, and secretive Chinatown Tong Gangs. It's as if Kane threw everything he could dream up into this one.
If you like fifties era action packed private eye stories with all kinds of twists and turns, this is your ticket. It holds up well even sixty plus years later although be forewarned that some of the terms used for the Chinese wouldn't be deemed acceptable now.