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Junkie!
"It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. It was four a.m. on a muggy Washington morning and the liquor hadn’t helped. Neither had the jam session at Sully’s. That was the hellish thing about a torch – the longer you carried it, the hotter it burned."
- GenresNovels
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1952
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About the author
Jonathan Craig
91 books8 followersJonathan Craig was a pseudonym for Frank E. Smith, an American writer who lived in Florida. His series character for most of his novels was PI Pete Selby. He also wrote many short stories.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 6, 2023
This book follows a basic hardboiled pulp-era plot of a man and a woman framed for a murder that they didn't commit and racing against time to figure out who really committed the murder before the police and the bad guys catch up with them. It is a plot line that has been used in countless fifties- era pulp novels, but it is a plot that stands up well to the test of time and Craig has a different take on it than most writers of the era did.
Craig's hero in this book is not a detective or insurance agent. Rather, Craig's protagonist is Steve Harper, a jazz musician who works the various jazz clubs scattered around the Washington D.C. area. Nowadays, jazz musicians don't sound very scandalous, but in the fifties before rock'n roll really took off, jazz was very scandalous. Those clubs were where the action was, where the women were, and were the dope was. Harper has women chasing him left and right and had himself fallen into the temptation of dope. The undercurrent of this novel is the world of the jazz clubs, the world of call girls in Washington, D.C., and the world of temptation that assaults Harper. There is a driving jazz beat in the background of every page. The reader knows that it is nighttime in the city and that blondes in tight dresses are dancing to the jazz beat.
But it is a pulp novel and it is about murder and about being framed. As Craig explains in the opening line to the book, "It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better." If that doesn't give you the flavor of the book, then who knows what will.
The back story is that Harper had once had a relationship with Lois, but Lois moved on to her now-husband, who not being a jazz musician, had money and a future. Nevertheless, Harper was the man who Lois still had a torch for. After Lois, Harper met Kathy Mason. At the time, Kathy was a call girl and a junkie, but he had never met anyone like her. She was one in a million to him from the minute she walked into the hotel suite. He wanted to drive the highways with her with his arm around her. He got her back on her feet, away from the life, away from the dope. But, as the story opens, they had a falling out and were separated. Harper had fallen into temptation with another woman and Kathy couldn't stand it. He still carries a torch for her and it is all he can think about.
Harper comes home and hears jazz music playing in his apartment. Thinking he left the stereo on, he opens the door and sees that she was very blonde and very beautiful and that her clothes were all in a heap on the floor. But this is Lois, not Kathy, and he throws Lois out of the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Harper gets a call from his friend who is now a police officer, Mark, telling Harper to come to his friend Haynes' apartment because something has happened. Something, something like Haynes has been choked to death and the police received a telephone call from a woman who said she was Kathy Mason, that she had killed Haynes, and that she was going to kill herself. The officer asks Harper gently where Kathy is and what he knows and warns Harper that he better produce Kathy if he knows what is good for him.
Of course, any reader of pulp literature knows that Harper is not going to simply turn Kathy over to the police and let her be framed for this killing. Harper knows that Kathy, no matter what her past, is no murderer. Harper sets out to find Kathy and protect her and, on the way, stumbles into bar fights with Lois' husband who is upset about Lois being in Harper's apartment, knowing Lois really wants Harper. Harper stumbles over more bodies as a conspiracy is uncovered and he races against time to solve the mystery before the police dragnet closes in on him and Kathy.
It is an incredibly well-written book, deserving of far more attention and acclaim than it has received. The story moves at a breakneck pace as Harper races through the jazz clubs, reefer dens, garages, and apartments of the Washington, D.C. area trying to find Kathy and unearth how she is being set up and by whom.
Craig's hero in this book is not a detective or insurance agent. Rather, Craig's protagonist is Steve Harper, a jazz musician who works the various jazz clubs scattered around the Washington D.C. area. Nowadays, jazz musicians don't sound very scandalous, but in the fifties before rock'n roll really took off, jazz was very scandalous. Those clubs were where the action was, where the women were, and were the dope was. Harper has women chasing him left and right and had himself fallen into the temptation of dope. The undercurrent of this novel is the world of the jazz clubs, the world of call girls in Washington, D.C., and the world of temptation that assaults Harper. There is a driving jazz beat in the background of every page. The reader knows that it is nighttime in the city and that blondes in tight dresses are dancing to the jazz beat.
But it is a pulp novel and it is about murder and about being framed. As Craig explains in the opening line to the book, "It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better." If that doesn't give you the flavor of the book, then who knows what will.
The back story is that Harper had once had a relationship with Lois, but Lois moved on to her now-husband, who not being a jazz musician, had money and a future. Nevertheless, Harper was the man who Lois still had a torch for. After Lois, Harper met Kathy Mason. At the time, Kathy was a call girl and a junkie, but he had never met anyone like her. She was one in a million to him from the minute she walked into the hotel suite. He wanted to drive the highways with her with his arm around her. He got her back on her feet, away from the life, away from the dope. But, as the story opens, they had a falling out and were separated. Harper had fallen into temptation with another woman and Kathy couldn't stand it. He still carries a torch for her and it is all he can think about.
Harper comes home and hears jazz music playing in his apartment. Thinking he left the stereo on, he opens the door and sees that she was very blonde and very beautiful and that her clothes were all in a heap on the floor. But this is Lois, not Kathy, and he throws Lois out of the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Harper gets a call from his friend who is now a police officer, Mark, telling Harper to come to his friend Haynes' apartment because something has happened. Something, something like Haynes has been choked to death and the police received a telephone call from a woman who said she was Kathy Mason, that she had killed Haynes, and that she was going to kill herself. The officer asks Harper gently where Kathy is and what he knows and warns Harper that he better produce Kathy if he knows what is good for him.
Of course, any reader of pulp literature knows that Harper is not going to simply turn Kathy over to the police and let her be framed for this killing. Harper knows that Kathy, no matter what her past, is no murderer. Harper sets out to find Kathy and protect her and, on the way, stumbles into bar fights with Lois' husband who is upset about Lois being in Harper's apartment, knowing Lois really wants Harper. Harper stumbles over more bodies as a conspiracy is uncovered and he races against time to solve the mystery before the police dragnet closes in on him and Kathy.
It is an incredibly well-written book, deserving of far more attention and acclaim than it has received. The story moves at a breakneck pace as Harper races through the jazz clubs, reefer dens, garages, and apartments of the Washington, D.C. area trying to find Kathy and unearth how she is being set up and by whom.
October 30, 2021
When you look up Jonathan Craig to see who he was, you see that Jonathan Craig is a pseudonym for Frank E. Smith and he is credited with having written over 100 books and perhaps 300 short stories and was one of the mainstays of the Manhunt magazine in the early to mid-1950's. His better known pulp-era books include So Young, So Wicked, The Case Of the Beautiful Body, The Dead Darling, Junkie, and Case of the Petticoat Murder. He was well-known for having written a police procedural series about the Sixth Precinct.
Junkie is a misleading title for this book and more than likely one that Craig's publisher stuck on the book to garner attention at the newsstand. The title and the original cover of the book lead one to believe that the story follows the downfall of a woman wracked by drugs and falling into oblivion. Instead, Junkie follows a more basic hardboiled pulp-era plot of a man and a woman framed for a murder that they didn't commit and racing against time to figure out who really committed the murder before the police and the bad guys catch up with them. It is a plot line that has been used in countless fifties-era pulp novels, but it is a plot that stands up well to the test of time and Craig has a different take on it than most writers of the era did.
Craig's hero in this book is not a detective or insurance agent. Rather, Craig's protagonist is Steve Harper, a jazz musician who works the various jazz clubs scattered around the Washington D.C. area. Nowadays, jazz musicians don't sound very scandalous, but in the fifties before rock'n roll really took off, jazz was very scandalous. Those clubs were where the action was, where the women were, and were the dope was. Harper has women chasing him left and right and had himself fallen into the temptation of dope. The undercurrent of this novel is the world of the jazz clubs, the world of call girls in Washington, D.C., and the world of temptation that assaults Harper. There is a driving jazz beat in the background of every page. The reader knows that it is nighttime in the city and that blondes in tight dresses are dancing to the jazz beat.
But it is a pulp novel and it is about murder and about being framed. As Craig explains in the opening line to the book, "It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better." If that doesn't give you the flavor of the book, then who knows what will.
The back story is that Harper had once had a relationship with Lois, but Lois moved on to her now-husband, who not being a jazz musician, had money and a future. Nevertheless, Harper was the man who Lois still had a torch for. After Lois, Harper met Kathy Mason. At the time, Kathy was a call girl and a junkie, but he had never met anyone like her. She was one in a million to him from the minute she walked into the hotel suite. He wanted to drive the highways with her with his arm around her. He got her back on her feet, away from the life, away from the dope. But, as the story opens, they had a falling out and were separated. Harper had fallen into temptation with another woman and Kathy couldn't stand it. He still carries a torch for her and it is all he can think about.
Harper comes home and hears jazz music playing in his apartment. Thinking he left the stereo on, he opens the door and sees that she was very blonde and very beautiful and that her clothes were all in a heap on the floor. But this is Lois, not Kathy, and he throws Lois out of the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Harper gets a call from his friend who is now a police officer, Mark, telling Harper to come to his friend Haynes' apartment because something has happened. Something, something like Haynes has been choked to death and the police received a telephone call from a woman who said she was Kathy Mason, that she had killed Haynes, and that she was going to kill herself. The officer asks Harper gently where Kathy is and what he knows and warns Harper that he better produce Kathy if he knows what is good for him.
Of course, any reader of pulp literature knows that Harper is not going to simply turn Kathy over to the police and let her be framed for this killing. Harper knows that Kathy, no matter what her past, is no murderer. Harper sets out to find Kathy and protect her and, on the way, stumbles into bar fights with Lois' husband who is upset about Lois being in Harper's apartment, knowing Lois really wants Harper. Harper stumbles over more bodies as a conspiracy is uncovered and he races against time to solve the mystery before the police dragnet closes in on him and Kathy.
It is an incredibly well-written book, deserving of far more attention and acclaim than it has received. The story moves at a breakneck pace as Harper races through the jazz clubs, reefer dens, garages, and apartments of the Washington, D.C. area trying to find Kathy and unearth how she is being set up and by whom.
Junkie is a misleading title for this book and more than likely one that Craig's publisher stuck on the book to garner attention at the newsstand. The title and the original cover of the book lead one to believe that the story follows the downfall of a woman wracked by drugs and falling into oblivion. Instead, Junkie follows a more basic hardboiled pulp-era plot of a man and a woman framed for a murder that they didn't commit and racing against time to figure out who really committed the murder before the police and the bad guys catch up with them. It is a plot line that has been used in countless fifties-era pulp novels, but it is a plot that stands up well to the test of time and Craig has a different take on it than most writers of the era did.
Craig's hero in this book is not a detective or insurance agent. Rather, Craig's protagonist is Steve Harper, a jazz musician who works the various jazz clubs scattered around the Washington D.C. area. Nowadays, jazz musicians don't sound very scandalous, but in the fifties before rock'n roll really took off, jazz was very scandalous. Those clubs were where the action was, where the women were, and were the dope was. Harper has women chasing him left and right and had himself fallen into the temptation of dope. The undercurrent of this novel is the world of the jazz clubs, the world of call girls in Washington, D.C., and the world of temptation that assaults Harper. There is a driving jazz beat in the background of every page. The reader knows that it is nighttime in the city and that blondes in tight dresses are dancing to the jazz beat.
But it is a pulp novel and it is about murder and about being framed. As Craig explains in the opening line to the book, "It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better." If that doesn't give you the flavor of the book, then who knows what will.
The back story is that Harper had once had a relationship with Lois, but Lois moved on to her now-husband, who not being a jazz musician, had money and a future. Nevertheless, Harper was the man who Lois still had a torch for. After Lois, Harper met Kathy Mason. At the time, Kathy was a call girl and a junkie, but he had never met anyone like her. She was one in a million to him from the minute she walked into the hotel suite. He wanted to drive the highways with her with his arm around her. He got her back on her feet, away from the life, away from the dope. But, as the story opens, they had a falling out and were separated. Harper had fallen into temptation with another woman and Kathy couldn't stand it. He still carries a torch for her and it is all he can think about.
Harper comes home and hears jazz music playing in his apartment. Thinking he left the stereo on, he opens the door and sees that she was very blonde and very beautiful and that her clothes were all in a heap on the floor. But this is Lois, not Kathy, and he throws Lois out of the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Harper gets a call from his friend who is now a police officer, Mark, telling Harper to come to his friend Haynes' apartment because something has happened. Something, something like Haynes has been choked to death and the police received a telephone call from a woman who said she was Kathy Mason, that she had killed Haynes, and that she was going to kill herself. The officer asks Harper gently where Kathy is and what he knows and warns Harper that he better produce Kathy if he knows what is good for him.
Of course, any reader of pulp literature knows that Harper is not going to simply turn Kathy over to the police and let her be framed for this killing. Harper knows that Kathy, no matter what her past, is no murderer. Harper sets out to find Kathy and protect her and, on the way, stumbles into bar fights with Lois' husband who is upset about Lois being in Harper's apartment, knowing Lois really wants Harper. Harper stumbles over more bodies as a conspiracy is uncovered and he races against time to solve the mystery before the police dragnet closes in on him and Kathy.
It is an incredibly well-written book, deserving of far more attention and acclaim than it has received. The story moves at a breakneck pace as Harper races through the jazz clubs, reefer dens, garages, and apartments of the Washington, D.C. area trying to find Kathy and unearth how she is being set up and by whom.
May 23, 2014
Jazz cats, junkies, whores and murder. Yup, that about sums up this tawdry little tale of love among squalor. This novel was likely written to cash in on the Beat craze going on at the time. Steve Harper is a horn man, one of the best, who's burning a torch for a former call-girl and junkie named Kathy. Kathy came out to the big city to find success but found the needle and a brothel instead. Soon as she meets Steve things start to look up. Sure, Steve has some existential angst and all, falling in love with a prostitute, but damn! Kathy lets Steve have his way with her on their first night together and decides to kick the needle. There was no mention of how much scratch changed hands on their first date, but she definitely leaves scars in his heart.
Jump ahead a couple months and Steve is mooning over Kathy after sleeping with one of his gal-pals named Lois. Lois plays a hell of a boogie-woogie on the ivories, and once Steve could have really gone for her. But Lois up and married a clown with dough instead. Since then Lois has been slinking around Steve's pad, sitting around in her underwear playing Steve's records and torturing him about Kathy dumping him. And that's the scene, until one night Steve's cop friend calls him up and drops the news that Steve's old mentor Wally Haynes was given the dirt nap. And the chief suspect is...Kathy!
What follows is pretty much Steve running around town playing gumshoe trying to find Kathy, while also trying to nail the real gink who offed Wally. There's some booze, some hash, some reefer, some round-heeled dames, a couple of swishes, more murders and a lot of jazz. If that sounds like your thing then you'll have a good time.
Jump ahead a couple months and Steve is mooning over Kathy after sleeping with one of his gal-pals named Lois. Lois plays a hell of a boogie-woogie on the ivories, and once Steve could have really gone for her. But Lois up and married a clown with dough instead. Since then Lois has been slinking around Steve's pad, sitting around in her underwear playing Steve's records and torturing him about Kathy dumping him. And that's the scene, until one night Steve's cop friend calls him up and drops the news that Steve's old mentor Wally Haynes was given the dirt nap. And the chief suspect is...Kathy!
What follows is pretty much Steve running around town playing gumshoe trying to find Kathy, while also trying to nail the real gink who offed Wally. There's some booze, some hash, some reefer, some round-heeled dames, a couple of swishes, more murders and a lot of jazz. If that sounds like your thing then you'll have a good time.
January 21, 2016
The title is a little bit misleading, but this book was entertaining and I enjoyed it. Standard noir novel with a macho alcoholic hero trying to save the young beauty.
August 25, 2020
A cool and smoky noir with trumpet player Steve, former prostitute and junkie girlfriend Kathy, the Boogie piano playing ex-girlfriend Lois, and the nymphomaniac Donna cranking out murders and double-crosses against the backdrop of 1950's Washington DC Jazz clubs. Not nearly as sleazy as it sounds, I found the story compelling, and really dug the whole Jazz musician vibe.
June 24, 2015
The title's pretty misleading, and so is the blurb, but . . .
Wow!
To my shame, I've never before read a book by Jonathan Craig, an icon of the hardboiled, but I'm going to be searching him out now.
Steve Harper (no relation to the execrable Canadian premier) is a trumpeter, a jazzman pulling down steady work in Washington DC. He's as good as he is on the instrument because of his friendship with one of the all-time greats, Wally Haynes. He's as good as he is at life because three months ago he met a junkie hooker called Kathy Mason; the two of them fell in love, and they managed to turn each other into decent people. The trouble is that Steve, in a couple of drunken moments, cheated on Kathy; there's a whole lotta estrangement going on.
Haynes may have stepped out of himself to teach Steve how to be a great musician. Otherwise, though, he was a dope-dealing scumbag. His greatest pleasure was to inform spouses of their partners' transgressions, just to watch them squirm.
The night that Wally Haynes is grotesquely murdered, Steve has a sort of alibi in that his old and now-married girlfriend Lois Connery was doing her best to seduce him. Kathy has no alibi, and there's all sorts of circumstantial evidence pointing to her as the killer. Even though there's doubt as to how the petite woman could have manually strangled Haynes, no matter how drunk and doped he was, cop Mark Logan wants her pulled in as a suspect -- after all, she could have had an accomplice. Mark wants Steve to help catch her and this hypothetical strangler; Steve's glad to play along if it'll enable him to clear Kathy's name and redeem his tarnished reputation with her . . .
This is a short book, and despite work pressures I'd had have read it in a sitting if I could; even so, I read it in a day. The writing style is in one sense pretty ropey, but at the same time it's immensely readable. If you want to finish a novel feeling as if you've got to the end of a fast-paced film noir, Junkie! is certainly worth a try.
Wow!
To my shame, I've never before read a book by Jonathan Craig, an icon of the hardboiled, but I'm going to be searching him out now.
Steve Harper (no relation to the execrable Canadian premier) is a trumpeter, a jazzman pulling down steady work in Washington DC. He's as good as he is on the instrument because of his friendship with one of the all-time greats, Wally Haynes. He's as good as he is at life because three months ago he met a junkie hooker called Kathy Mason; the two of them fell in love, and they managed to turn each other into decent people. The trouble is that Steve, in a couple of drunken moments, cheated on Kathy; there's a whole lotta estrangement going on.
Haynes may have stepped out of himself to teach Steve how to be a great musician. Otherwise, though, he was a dope-dealing scumbag. His greatest pleasure was to inform spouses of their partners' transgressions, just to watch them squirm.
The night that Wally Haynes is grotesquely murdered, Steve has a sort of alibi in that his old and now-married girlfriend Lois Connery was doing her best to seduce him. Kathy has no alibi, and there's all sorts of circumstantial evidence pointing to her as the killer. Even though there's doubt as to how the petite woman could have manually strangled Haynes, no matter how drunk and doped he was, cop Mark Logan wants her pulled in as a suspect -- after all, she could have had an accomplice. Mark wants Steve to help catch her and this hypothetical strangler; Steve's glad to play along if it'll enable him to clear Kathy's name and redeem his tarnished reputation with her . . .
This is a short book, and despite work pressures I'd had have read it in a sitting if I could; even so, I read it in a day. The writing style is in one sense pretty ropey, but at the same time it's immensely readable. If you want to finish a novel feeling as if you've got to the end of a fast-paced film noir, Junkie! is certainly worth a try.
December 7, 2014
Junkie! By Jonathan Craig is hardboiled crime fiction tinged with noir from 1952, so you know going in that it is not going to be as explicit and lurid as the cover suggests. Also, the name on the cover isn’t Thompson, Chandler, Hammett, Goodis, or Brewer, so it may not be a shining example of what was the best from that era. If you are a fan of genre, you know these things when you pick it up.
All that being said, I actually enjoyed Junkie! quite a bit. It is a short, fast read. It takes place in Washington in the Jazz scene of the time. When the reader meets the protagonist, Steve, he is a Jazz musician who has somehow managed to bungle his relationship with a junkie prostitute named Kathy whom he is deeply in love with but cannot remain faithful to. When Kathy is suspected of murdering a fellow Jazz musician, it is up to Steve to find her and help make things right. Along the way, Steve interacts with some colorful folk from the Jazz scene and has many opportunities to test his renewed commitment of fidelity to the missing Kathy.
Here is a snippet from the opening scene: It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. It was four a.m. on a muggy Washington morning and the liquor hadn’t helped. Neither had the jam session at Sully’s. That was the hellish thing about a torch – the longer you carried it, the hotter it burned.
I’m glad I stumbled across this one. If you like pulp-era crime, you may want to give Junkie! a try.
All that being said, I actually enjoyed Junkie! quite a bit. It is a short, fast read. It takes place in Washington in the Jazz scene of the time. When the reader meets the protagonist, Steve, he is a Jazz musician who has somehow managed to bungle his relationship with a junkie prostitute named Kathy whom he is deeply in love with but cannot remain faithful to. When Kathy is suspected of murdering a fellow Jazz musician, it is up to Steve to find her and help make things right. Along the way, Steve interacts with some colorful folk from the Jazz scene and has many opportunities to test his renewed commitment of fidelity to the missing Kathy.
Here is a snippet from the opening scene: It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. It was four a.m. on a muggy Washington morning and the liquor hadn’t helped. Neither had the jam session at Sully’s. That was the hellish thing about a torch – the longer you carried it, the hotter it burned.
I’m glad I stumbled across this one. If you like pulp-era crime, you may want to give Junkie! a try.
May 13, 2023
If you like the vintage stuff and have not read Craig or this one in particular, you are missing out on a great writer often overlooked in this genre.
June 25, 2022
A gritty tale of murder from the underbelly of Washington, DC, where musicians, call girls, and junkies drift through jazz clubs, gay bars, seedy SRO hotels, and reefer dens. One of the city's best horn players, Steve Harper gets plenty of attention from women but carries a torch for Kathy, a former junkie and call-girl who left him after a series of infidelities. When Steve's mentor and world-class horn player Wally Haynes is found dead and the cops suspect Kathy's involved, Steve is desperate to find her and prove her innocence. Pretty soon, there are more corpses, and suspicion falls on Steve, too. Steve must race to find the killers before the cops arrest him for a crime he did not commit. Great writing, with lots of wonderful musical references and metaphors, snappy dialogue, and atmosphere.
Unsurprisingly, there is an element of misogyny here, too, the guys vs dames stuff, labeling one character a "nympho," and so on. Though expected in this genre, I still found Steve's recollection of his initial encounter with Kathy disturbing. She is his call-girl one evening and when he sees his idealized "dream-image" of a woman in her, he is so undone by this, he rapes her. "All right, so this thing had happened! So what? Refuse to accept it. Fight it. Tear it out by the roots, destroy it before it destroys you … He was brutal about it, savage with a savagery he hadn’t known he possessed. He had never acted that way with a girl before...But that time wasn’t like any other time. That time he was trying to destroy something, trying to burn it out of his heart. She struggled against him, desperately but vainly. Once she cried out in pain and almost slithered from his grasp. He clamped his hand across her mouth, trying to blot out the sound of her crying. The upholstery groaned with his violence and he could feel the wetness of her cheeks. Then it was over, suddenly, abruptly." Of course, he later feels bad, and Kathy tenderly comforts and forgives him, and they fall in love. Even in this seamy world, that is seriously fucked up.
Unsurprisingly, there is an element of misogyny here, too, the guys vs dames stuff, labeling one character a "nympho," and so on. Though expected in this genre, I still found Steve's recollection of his initial encounter with Kathy disturbing. She is his call-girl one evening and when he sees his idealized "dream-image" of a woman in her, he is so undone by this, he rapes her. "All right, so this thing had happened! So what? Refuse to accept it. Fight it. Tear it out by the roots, destroy it before it destroys you … He was brutal about it, savage with a savagery he hadn’t known he possessed. He had never acted that way with a girl before...But that time wasn’t like any other time. That time he was trying to destroy something, trying to burn it out of his heart. She struggled against him, desperately but vainly. Once she cried out in pain and almost slithered from his grasp. He clamped his hand across her mouth, trying to blot out the sound of her crying. The upholstery groaned with his violence and he could feel the wetness of her cheeks. Then it was over, suddenly, abruptly." Of course, he later feels bad, and Kathy tenderly comforts and forgives him, and they fall in love. Even in this seamy world, that is seriously fucked up.
September 19, 2019
Originally titled Frenzy - no doubt the publisher reprinted the book with the new title (EXCLAMATION POINT and all) to attract the soft-core smut crowd - JUNKIE! is a straightforward whodunit that follows jazz musician Steve Harper as he tries to prove his ex-prostitute (ex-JUNKIE!) girlfriend is innocent of murdering his close friend and jazz horn mentor by tracking down the real killer. In typical pulp fashion, the bodies start piling up and the eyes of the law start focusing in on Steve as gets closer to the truth. Yes, there are junkies in the book, and there is talk of drug use and - GASP - nymphomania, but there isn't much lurid detail on either of these fronts, just a tour of the seedy underground of 1950's Washington DC. Jonathan Craig is the pen name of Frank E. Smith, who worked as a research analyst at the pentagon, which explains the atypical setting and occasional references to pentagon secretarial pools. If you can look past the misleading TITLE!, JUNKIE! is a decent pulp read.
September 27, 2025
Philandering Steve Harper is off to save the call-girl with the heart of gold in this hardboiled novel set in the early 1950s Washington, DC underground jazz scene. It's a world of dissolute geniuses and desperate druggies; after-hours bottle clubs and neglected rooming houses. Johnny the bartender is holding something back, and what is the mysterious Donna Webb so afraid of? Worth it for the cover with the jazz musician, the girl in her underwear, and the seedy hotel. I do not know why it is titled 'Frenzy'.
July 27, 2018
Good stuff. I love good pulp fiction.
August 11, 2025
Pulp Fiction Vacation
I enjoyed the descriptions of half-naked bad girls, who seemingly went after the hero at different times in the story. Femme fatales for the imagining.
I enjoyed the descriptions of half-naked bad girls, who seemingly went after the hero at different times in the story. Femme fatales for the imagining.
September 6, 2015
Steve is a brawny saxophone-playing man who upon coming home one night, finds an old fling in his apartment smoking while playing some old Jazz records.
His phone rings, a cop friend tell him a fellow musician is dead and they need to talk. Steve heads over to the crime scene and finds out his ex girlfriend whom he is still pining over is the main person of interest.
Steve goes on a man-hunt to find out who killed his old jazz-playing buddy and to convince the cops his girlfriend is not the killer. He finds himself in the seadiest parts of town, the swinging side of town. Girls throw themselves at Steve, beer and whiskey is necessary as is blood and air is to live. Steve uncovers the ugly side of his girlfriends life, and tries hard to remain faithful and unwavering in his attempt to rekindle what they once had.
Junkie is a fun read that keeps you riding along at a very fast pace as soon as the first pages are open. You get a glimpse of the dark city life back before cell phones were avialable, before banks were available 24/7 but also a little reminder that people are were always very desperate people especially when put in desperate situations. I loved it.
His phone rings, a cop friend tell him a fellow musician is dead and they need to talk. Steve heads over to the crime scene and finds out his ex girlfriend whom he is still pining over is the main person of interest.
Steve goes on a man-hunt to find out who killed his old jazz-playing buddy and to convince the cops his girlfriend is not the killer. He finds himself in the seadiest parts of town, the swinging side of town. Girls throw themselves at Steve, beer and whiskey is necessary as is blood and air is to live. Steve uncovers the ugly side of his girlfriends life, and tries hard to remain faithful and unwavering in his attempt to rekindle what they once had.
Junkie is a fun read that keeps you riding along at a very fast pace as soon as the first pages are open. You get a glimpse of the dark city life back before cell phones were avialable, before banks were available 24/7 but also a little reminder that people are were always very desperate people especially when put in desperate situations. I loved it.
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September 3, 2015This is JUNKIE! with an exclamation point. Not to be confused with William Burroughs' JUNKIE. An entertaining mix of noir-ish atmosphere, sex, drugs and jazz.
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