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Model for Murder
Pretty Phyllis Kirk was an interviewer for the Kinkaid Morals Report -- the shocker that out-Kinseyed Kinsey. In her possession were secrets about the intimate lives of some very important people. Phyllis didn't live very long...
Jason Chase was a private-eye by accident. When Phyllis was discovered beaten to death, he found himself tangling with:
WOMPLER, king of the cheesecake racket (with a little blackmail thrown in free)...
JULIA, the drunken nymphomaniac who couldn't keep her hands off Jason...
Voluptuous young STEFFY, who didn't mind posing for Wompler as long as she got Jason...
Plus assorted B Girls, a lady wrestler, and some of the toughest hoods in town!
137 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1955
3 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Marlowe
193 books26 followersAka Milton S. Lesser, Adam Chase, Andrew Frazer, Jason Ridgway, C.H. Thames.
Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955).
Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008.
Marlowe received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1997.
Stephen Marlowe (1928–2008) was the author of more than fifty novels, including nearly two dozen featuring globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum. Born Milton Lesser, Marlowe was raised in Brooklyn and attended the College of William and Mary. After several years writing science fiction under his given name, he legally adopted his pen name, and began focusing on Chester Drum, the Washington-based detective who first appeared in The Second Longest Night (1955).
Although a private detective akin to Raymond Chandler’s characters, Drum was distinguished by his jet-setting lifestyle, which carried him to various exotic locales from Mecca to South America. These espionage-tinged stories won Marlowe acclaim, and he produced more than one a year before ending the series in 1968. After spending the 1970s writing suspense novels like The Summit (1970) and The Cawthorn Journals (1975), Marlowe turned to scholarly historical fiction. He lived much of his life abroad, in Switzerland, Spain, and France, and died in Virginia in 2008.
Marlowe received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 24, 2019
In "Model For Murder," Marlowe gives us lots and lots of classic pulp elements. There's the ex-con just released from prison where he spent two years of his life taking the rap for his brother. There's the woman he was crazy about who wouldn't wait for him and instead married his brother and is now trapped in a loveless marriage. There's the girl next door who still carries a torch for the ex-con. There's a body battered and tortured. There's a blackmail racket and an editor from Hush magazine who has the goods on everyone.
The story is only about 140 pages and moves along at breakneck speed. It is a solid pulp novel filled with many familiar elements. It was a lot of fun to read.
On the negative side, however, Marlowe may have just thrown too many elements in this one and the plot is a bit of a mishmash with a lot of unimportant story lines appearing.
The story is only about 140 pages and moves along at breakneck speed. It is a solid pulp novel filled with many familiar elements. It was a lot of fun to read.
On the negative side, however, Marlowe may have just thrown too many elements in this one and the plot is a bit of a mishmash with a lot of unimportant story lines appearing.
January 19, 2018
Read this for work, as a final check before we put out the e-book edition in a HARDBOILED CRIME MEGAPACK.
What you've got here is a fairly standard tough-guy crime story. As the book opens, Jason Chase has just been released after a two-year stint in jail, serving time for his brother Ken's (white-collar) crimes. For this he gets paid 100 grand (his brother is a big time construction guy in Manhattan) but he doesn't want the money, because Ken also married his intended, Julia, while he was in stir. Jason eventually gets mixed up in situation involving the coded, now-missing questionnaires from a Kinsey-styled report that could be (and later are) used for blackmail purposes, a publisher of girlie-mags and his Amazonian girlfriend, the disgruntled, bible-quoting police-officer father of ex-flame Julie (and nearly identical younger sister Stephanie) and assorted ex-cons and gangsters. There are a couple of vicious murders, fisticuffs, and visits to the girlie mag photo studio and a back-room brothel in Brooklyn.
This was okay. It wasn't as breezy as my previous read in this genre (Beauty Can Kill / The River Is Cold) and Jason Chase is a bit too much of a cipher (there are very sporadic moments of wry or jaundiced reflections, but mostly it's pulp storytelling by the book) and the sex-tease aspect is slightly less pronounced than in BEAUTY CAN KILL, whereas the violence, although not dwelt on, is pretty horrific (a working over with a boat hook, guys shot in the head). On the plus side, the ending is exciting (although in an overly familiar way) with one of those gangster-guided "long rides" out to Prospect Park during a snowstorm, and a shoot-out underground. And the characters of Wilson Womple (twitchy underhanded ectomorphic publisher of girlie mags like Giggle, Vamp, Hush, Peek-A-Boo, and Keyhole) and especially his Amazonian girlfriend Audrey are some fun.
All and all, worth a read if you like this kind of thing.
What you've got here is a fairly standard tough-guy crime story. As the book opens, Jason Chase has just been released after a two-year stint in jail, serving time for his brother Ken's (white-collar) crimes. For this he gets paid 100 grand (his brother is a big time construction guy in Manhattan) but he doesn't want the money, because Ken also married his intended, Julia, while he was in stir. Jason eventually gets mixed up in situation involving the coded, now-missing questionnaires from a Kinsey-styled report that could be (and later are) used for blackmail purposes, a publisher of girlie-mags and his Amazonian girlfriend, the disgruntled, bible-quoting police-officer father of ex-flame Julie (and nearly identical younger sister Stephanie) and assorted ex-cons and gangsters. There are a couple of vicious murders, fisticuffs, and visits to the girlie mag photo studio and a back-room brothel in Brooklyn.
This was okay. It wasn't as breezy as my previous read in this genre (Beauty Can Kill / The River Is Cold) and Jason Chase is a bit too much of a cipher (there are very sporadic moments of wry or jaundiced reflections, but mostly it's pulp storytelling by the book) and the sex-tease aspect is slightly less pronounced than in BEAUTY CAN KILL, whereas the violence, although not dwelt on, is pretty horrific (a working over with a boat hook, guys shot in the head). On the plus side, the ending is exciting (although in an overly familiar way) with one of those gangster-guided "long rides" out to Prospect Park during a snowstorm, and a shoot-out underground. And the characters of Wilson Womple (twitchy underhanded ectomorphic publisher of girlie mags like Giggle, Vamp, Hush, Peek-A-Boo, and Keyhole) and especially his Amazonian girlfriend Audrey are some fun.
All and all, worth a read if you like this kind of thing.
August 10, 2018
Milton Lesser wrote a wide variety of novels, particularly science fiction and mystery, many under the pseudonym Stephen Marlowe. “Model for Murder,” is a noir-type crime novel that goes a long way to satisfy most elements of that grand genre.
The protagonist, Jason Chase, is recently released from a 2 year prison term served for a crime his brother committed. In addition, his brother has married his girl while he was away. Jason gets involved trying to find the murderer of another female friend – “I don’t want the cops to get them. The law’s too soft and moves too slow and kills too quick. I want to find them. Me. I want to get them.”
Along the way. Jason becomes entwined in more than one blackmail scheme, one of them involving a sex study along the lines of Kinsey. Colorful characters include a crooked private detective, a pornographer, several alluring women, including the daughters of a crusty homicide detective.
The book has a nice balance of sex, violence, adultery, and even a love story. Descriptions are classic: “I turned and saw .. . falling forward in the bright snow-reflected glare of a street light. A .45 slug had entered his skull from behind and ripped his face open in front. He fell like that, with no face left, sprawling across the snow.”
The novel is suspenseful, and the action moves quickly. The end is not very predictable, either. There is some unique subject matter and some very well-developed characters. Well worth reading.
The protagonist, Jason Chase, is recently released from a 2 year prison term served for a crime his brother committed. In addition, his brother has married his girl while he was away. Jason gets involved trying to find the murderer of another female friend – “I don’t want the cops to get them. The law’s too soft and moves too slow and kills too quick. I want to find them. Me. I want to get them.”
Along the way. Jason becomes entwined in more than one blackmail scheme, one of them involving a sex study along the lines of Kinsey. Colorful characters include a crooked private detective, a pornographer, several alluring women, including the daughters of a crusty homicide detective.
The book has a nice balance of sex, violence, adultery, and even a love story. Descriptions are classic: “I turned and saw .. . falling forward in the bright snow-reflected glare of a street light. A .45 slug had entered his skull from behind and ripped his face open in front. He fell like that, with no face left, sprawling across the snow.”
The novel is suspenseful, and the action moves quickly. The end is not very predictable, either. There is some unique subject matter and some very well-developed characters. Well worth reading.
December 22, 2024
Jason became an accidental private eye. Stolen secrets. Blackmail. And the characters: Jo-Anne, who had waited for Jason for two years while he spent time in prison to cover for his brother. Phyliss, Jo-Anne's roommate, who died first. Ken, Jason's brother, had a fat check for Jason but had married Jason's girlfriend while he was in prison. Jason tore the check up. Then Jo-Anne was killed for her knowledge of the secret code by Five O'Clock McGuire and Puggie LaBetta, two hired psychopaths, who were working for whom? The cop who hated Jason's guts, ready to bust him on the slightest pretext and put him back in jail where sinners belonged. The cop's two daughters, one of whom was now married to Jason's brother Ken. And the cop's other daughter had eyes for Jason. Barrett, a real private detective, hired by Jason to help find the stolen secrets and Jo-Anne. And Whompler, who made dirty movies, what was his involvement? Why was he blackmailing Ken? Or was he?
A lot of people, but Stephen Marlowe (pseudonym of Milton Lesser) makes it work.
A lot of people, but Stephen Marlowe (pseudonym of Milton Lesser) makes it work.
March 12, 2024
One sister blows you off while in jail, pick up with her younger one when you get out of the joint, what could go wrong? O yea and her dad is a cop....
great vintage crime fiction
great vintage crime fiction
October 4, 2016
This has all the earmarks of good pulp. You've got a hero who's dirty on the outside, yet made of gold on the inside. You have several beautiful ladies, all in varying shades of naughty, from ingenues discovering their sexual powers to alcoholic vamps to Amazonian lady wrestlers. You've got two twisty mysteries, interwoven in an artless, yet fun, way. And you've got murder, lots of gory, shocking murder. It really doesn't get much better than this.
August 3, 2015
A brother searches for the men responsible for the deaths of several, and is involved in a blackmailing caper.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews