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Who Dies There?
A hard-boiled classic, back in print for the first time in over 60 years.
Tough, cynical private eye Johnny Phelan is hired by a teenage girl's wealthy father to recover sexually-explicit photos of her that are being used by blackmailers to extort the family. But things get complicated when the hot-blooded girl's lover in the pictures is murdered...
"The story has many twists and turns. Fans of hard-boiled fiction won't be disappointed." Reading California Fiction
Tough, cynical private eye Johnny Phelan is hired by a teenage girl's wealthy father to recover sexually-explicit photos of her that are being used by blackmailers to extort the family. But things get complicated when the hot-blooded girl's lover in the pictures is murdered...
"The story has many twists and turns. Fans of hard-boiled fiction won't be disappointed." Reading California Fiction
163 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2023
2 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 7, 2024
I'd never heard of James Duff before seeing the new version of Who Dies There? from Cutting Edge Books and that's a shame. Johnny Phelan checks all the traditional private eye boxes and while the story isn't breaking any new hard-boiled ground from that era, this one was really well done and I incredibly happy to have had the opportunity to read it. There is a second novel featuring the character and I will definitely be checking it out.
December 31, 2024
“Who Dies There” was one of two Johnny Phelan private eye novels put out by Duff and both originally published by Graphic in 1956. There’s no clue in the two novels which comes chronologically first but this one has a “slightly” lower Graphic number as well as a lower price on the cover. Duff (utilizing the middle initial P.) also wrote Dangerous to Know,” published as part of an Ace Double in 1959 (and reviewed in this blog just weeks ago) along with Robert Colby’s Murder Mistress (D-361). He also wrote (again using a middle initial) 1957’s Run From Death. A Mystery House book. It is likely Duff’s output included other novels possibly under other names.
Phelan is a hardnosed Hollywood private eye whose cases seem to intersect the works of movie stars and movie studios (at least the sleazy side). He smiles a pipe and gambles any money he makes away on the ponies.
Who Dies There has cover art by Walter Popp which actually died illustrates scene in the story unlike so much of the cover art from that time which often seems drawn by artists who have no idea about what the actual story is about.
Who Dies There is in many ways a take off from Chandler’s The Big Sleep with the detective in both being hired by a wealthy man whose drug-addled and half-crazy daughter is caught up as the subject of a pornography ring and the resulting blackmail operation. In both, the blackmailer is found dead and the crazy drugged daughter (Carmen Sternwood in the Big Sleep and Honor Pendleton in Who Dies There) is the obvious suspect. Both are also set in the mean streets of Hollywood and feature a lone private eye.
Putting the obvious parallels with that earlier work aside, “Who Does There” is still a worthwhile read. It is fun, exciting, and has a load of attitude. It opens with a dapper gentleman in Phelan’s Hollywood office who announces his wife is Baum, the heir to the Baum Movie Studio fortune and that he wants Phelan to secure the negatives to the photos his wife has been sent that feature not so pure as the snow Honor in her full uncovered glory and one which features a dude with her.
Walter Pendleton though is an odd duck who tells Phelan: “I am not one to make much of an impression on people one way or the other. I have no enemies, just as I have no friends.” Eventually, Phelan will come to grasp that the entire family – and perhaps the underbelly of Hollywood itself- is corrupt, perverse, and twisted in grotesque ways.
Before Phelan can investigate anything, Honor herself waltzes in. “She looked a lot better with her clothes on than she did without them. Her mouth gave me a bright red slash of a smile and her big brown eyes widened considerably.” He explains: “She had hair the color of anthracite, cut short like a man’s, and skin as white as fresh chalk. I doubted if she ever saw much of the sun.” His wife who Phelan eventually meets confides in Phelan that her Hollywood experience had been as the cherry at end of every movie deal that brought in the Hollywood stars: “He used me, my god, he used me. I went to bed with half the male stars of Hollywood, usually as the closing agreement in a business deal.”
And before he can even get up from his desk, a muffled voice on the phone offers him the negatives for $10,000 but says to get the money from the older sister Landrith, not the old man, and to bring the money to the boxing arena where a ticket would be awaiting at will call. But to Phelan’s surprise, as the boxing match gets under way, the empty seat next to him is taken by Police Detective Adam Wheeler, Phelan’s one friend on the force who also happens to be an old Army buddy of Phelan’s. Turns out the guy who bought the tickets, Memo Sanchez, was now lying in the county morgue with two bullet jokes in his chest and Wheeler wants to know what it’s all about. Memo Sanchez was the guy in the last photograph posing with Honor.
Duff shoehorns quits a bit into a fairly short novel including the nightclub owner surrounded by bruisers, the tall redheaded temptress (Jean Gibbon) who Phelan falls for in no time at all, leaving him guilty and sad at how she suffered from merely being a witness, and of course the final showdown in an old abandoned Hollywood movie studio where an unarmed Phelan is taken down by a giant Russian wolfhound.
In all, it turns out to be a pretty good novel which could have been the start of a long-running series about another Hollywood private eye but never received much acclaim.
Phelan is a hardnosed Hollywood private eye whose cases seem to intersect the works of movie stars and movie studios (at least the sleazy side). He smiles a pipe and gambles any money he makes away on the ponies.
Who Dies There has cover art by Walter Popp which actually died illustrates scene in the story unlike so much of the cover art from that time which often seems drawn by artists who have no idea about what the actual story is about.
Who Dies There is in many ways a take off from Chandler’s The Big Sleep with the detective in both being hired by a wealthy man whose drug-addled and half-crazy daughter is caught up as the subject of a pornography ring and the resulting blackmail operation. In both, the blackmailer is found dead and the crazy drugged daughter (Carmen Sternwood in the Big Sleep and Honor Pendleton in Who Dies There) is the obvious suspect. Both are also set in the mean streets of Hollywood and feature a lone private eye.
Putting the obvious parallels with that earlier work aside, “Who Does There” is still a worthwhile read. It is fun, exciting, and has a load of attitude. It opens with a dapper gentleman in Phelan’s Hollywood office who announces his wife is Baum, the heir to the Baum Movie Studio fortune and that he wants Phelan to secure the negatives to the photos his wife has been sent that feature not so pure as the snow Honor in her full uncovered glory and one which features a dude with her.
Walter Pendleton though is an odd duck who tells Phelan: “I am not one to make much of an impression on people one way or the other. I have no enemies, just as I have no friends.” Eventually, Phelan will come to grasp that the entire family – and perhaps the underbelly of Hollywood itself- is corrupt, perverse, and twisted in grotesque ways.
Before Phelan can investigate anything, Honor herself waltzes in. “She looked a lot better with her clothes on than she did without them. Her mouth gave me a bright red slash of a smile and her big brown eyes widened considerably.” He explains: “She had hair the color of anthracite, cut short like a man’s, and skin as white as fresh chalk. I doubted if she ever saw much of the sun.” His wife who Phelan eventually meets confides in Phelan that her Hollywood experience had been as the cherry at end of every movie deal that brought in the Hollywood stars: “He used me, my god, he used me. I went to bed with half the male stars of Hollywood, usually as the closing agreement in a business deal.”
And before he can even get up from his desk, a muffled voice on the phone offers him the negatives for $10,000 but says to get the money from the older sister Landrith, not the old man, and to bring the money to the boxing arena where a ticket would be awaiting at will call. But to Phelan’s surprise, as the boxing match gets under way, the empty seat next to him is taken by Police Detective Adam Wheeler, Phelan’s one friend on the force who also happens to be an old Army buddy of Phelan’s. Turns out the guy who bought the tickets, Memo Sanchez, was now lying in the county morgue with two bullet jokes in his chest and Wheeler wants to know what it’s all about. Memo Sanchez was the guy in the last photograph posing with Honor.
Duff shoehorns quits a bit into a fairly short novel including the nightclub owner surrounded by bruisers, the tall redheaded temptress (Jean Gibbon) who Phelan falls for in no time at all, leaving him guilty and sad at how she suffered from merely being a witness, and of course the final showdown in an old abandoned Hollywood movie studio where an unarmed Phelan is taken down by a giant Russian wolfhound.
In all, it turns out to be a pretty good novel which could have been the start of a long-running series about another Hollywood private eye but never received much acclaim.
April 12, 2025
That was a heartbreaker of a mystery.
Wiseguy P.I. Johnny Phelan is asked by a rich man to find the source of pornographic photos of his daughter. Not long after that, the man in the dirty pictures is found dead.
Phelan is a broken man. He's cynical to the point of hopelessness. And the way the story goes, he has no reason not to be. I felt so sorry for the guy, as well as the characters around him who ended up hurt or dead.
There's a surprising bit of preachiness about the book. Phelan is openly disgusted by pornography and everyone involved with it, which was a switch from the usual sex-mad narrators of hardboiled books. The pornographers—models & photographers—aren't painted too sweetly either, but are damaged souls trying to heal through empty means. It's a pretty bleak book.
Wiseguy P.I. Johnny Phelan is asked by a rich man to find the source of pornographic photos of his daughter. Not long after that, the man in the dirty pictures is found dead.
Phelan is a broken man. He's cynical to the point of hopelessness. And the way the story goes, he has no reason not to be. I felt so sorry for the guy, as well as the characters around him who ended up hurt or dead.
There's a surprising bit of preachiness about the book. Phelan is openly disgusted by pornography and everyone involved with it, which was a switch from the usual sex-mad narrators of hardboiled books. The pornographers—models & photographers—aren't painted too sweetly either, but are damaged souls trying to heal through empty means. It's a pretty bleak book.
December 25, 2024
I loved the way it ended. There will be no sense of justice being served or any redemption for the family involved ("The hell with them, I thought; the hell with them all"). Johnny gets the second instalment of his fee (another 100 bucks), promptly calls the bookie and places another bet. The horse's name? Missie Gloom. And the bookie's response? "Ah, Johnny-boy, you're nuts. She won't even get outa the gate".
How much more noir-ish can one get?
More here (review includes spoilers!):
https://a60books.blogspot.com/2024/10...
How much more noir-ish can one get?
More here (review includes spoilers!):
https://a60books.blogspot.com/2024/10...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews