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Hero's Lust / The Man I Killed / House of Evil
HERO'S LUST
Everyone in Crescent City knows that Mayor Gowan controls the town, most of all Red Norton. Red's an ace reporter, sure, but he's living in the mayor's side pocket. What the Mayor wants, he gets. And right now he wants Red to write up his new Medical Center. The Mayor needs a pitch, and finds it in tubercular Ann Porter, who is scheduled for an upcoming operation. Her story sells a lot of papers, and puts a face to the Mayor's pet project. Red didn't figure on falling in love with the kid, but now he's involved. And with the Mayor making some new demands, Red is about to find out just how rotten the town really is—the hard way.
THE MAN I KILLED
When Lew Ross was young, he got into a fight and killed a man, then fled the scene. Haunted by this event throughout his life, he finds himself back in that same town again, at the same club where it all happened. Except that now the place is a nightclub. And this is where he meets Kitty, one of the hostesses, and her slick boss, Marty Evans, who has a proposition for Ross—pick up a delivery from a local rival, and join his crew. Evans even loans him a gun for protection. Trouble is, the pick up is a set up, and Ross is the fall guy. Now he's in a squeeze play between a scheming D.A., an honest cop, and Evans' thugs. And then there's Kitty...
HOUSE OF EVIL
Nina Valjean needs a fix or she wouldn't have agreed to see Smith again. Smith is one of the sick ones, but sometimes a girl can't afford to be picky. Still, she's got a bad feeling about this time. The next day, Roman Laird lets himself into his out-of-town fiancée's apartment, and finds Valjean's nude, strangled body. Things haven't been good between he and Joyce for a while, but finding a body in her place is just crazy. Trying to protect her, Laird tracks the dead woman to a seedy bar called The Red Parrot, which is how he meets an exotic dancer named Cecille Merrill. But all this time, Smith is out there, watching him–ready to kill again.
Everyone in Crescent City knows that Mayor Gowan controls the town, most of all Red Norton. Red's an ace reporter, sure, but he's living in the mayor's side pocket. What the Mayor wants, he gets. And right now he wants Red to write up his new Medical Center. The Mayor needs a pitch, and finds it in tubercular Ann Porter, who is scheduled for an upcoming operation. Her story sells a lot of papers, and puts a face to the Mayor's pet project. Red didn't figure on falling in love with the kid, but now he's involved. And with the Mayor making some new demands, Red is about to find out just how rotten the town really is—the hard way.
THE MAN I KILLED
When Lew Ross was young, he got into a fight and killed a man, then fled the scene. Haunted by this event throughout his life, he finds himself back in that same town again, at the same club where it all happened. Except that now the place is a nightclub. And this is where he meets Kitty, one of the hostesses, and her slick boss, Marty Evans, who has a proposition for Ross—pick up a delivery from a local rival, and join his crew. Evans even loans him a gun for protection. Trouble is, the pick up is a set up, and Ross is the fall guy. Now he's in a squeeze play between a scheming D.A., an honest cop, and Evans' thugs. And then there's Kitty...
HOUSE OF EVIL
Nina Valjean needs a fix or she wouldn't have agreed to see Smith again. Smith is one of the sick ones, but sometimes a girl can't afford to be picky. Still, she's got a bad feeling about this time. The next day, Roman Laird lets himself into his out-of-town fiancée's apartment, and finds Valjean's nude, strangled body. Things haven't been good between he and Joyce for a while, but finding a body in her place is just crazy. Trying to protect her, Laird tracks the dead woman to a seedy bar called The Red Parrot, which is how he meets an exotic dancer named Cecille Merrill. But all this time, Smith is out there, watching him–ready to kill again.
304 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 27, 2022
This Stark House three-fer offers three short pulp novels by relatively unknown authors from the Lion catalog.
Kermit Jaedeker's Hero's Lust was a 1953 paperback original from Lion Books, one of the more well known paperback original publishers, best known perhaps for its Jim Thompson novels. Hero's Lust is a tale of big city corruption set in a fictional city, Crescent City, seen from the eyes of a news reporter Red Norton who earns more from graft than by reporting and is the corrupt Mayor's cheerleader. He knows it's all crooked machine politics but he's in too deep and knows if he crosses the mayor he will do more than hang from a twenty two story balcony fearing for his life. He passes up a chance to do good. But makes the mistake of falling in love with Ann Porter, a TB sufferer who was set to be the star of a new series about the Mayor's hospital. The book is tough, no-nonsense and a stern indictment of machine politics so prevalent in so many northeastern cities. Jaedeker only wrote two novels.
Shel Walker's The Man I Killed was republished recently in a trio-set of Lion novels by Stark House Press. Remarkably, it was the original cover of the Walker novel that became the cover of the new trilogy set. Shel Walker is not a well known name today and his tough guy novel had that Hardboiled atmosphere typical of tales of towns controlled by mobsters where everyone seemed to be on the take. It was a dirty, filthy town but for some unknown reason it was pulling Lew Ross back to the scene of his crime where he left a man dead in the dirt following a bar fight, fleeing the town. Ross can't put it out of his mind and has to return to figure out of the law's gunning for him or it's all been forgotten. It's a fascinating story of returning to the crime scene and Ross dealing with his guilt and his lack of any explanation for his past. Sadly, it's rather little more than a backstory in this novel which centers around Ross's arms length relationship with the town's primary gangsters. Ross is caught between the gangsters who have it in for him and the police who think he's one of the hoodlums. Of course, the first person he meets in town is the cocktail waitress with a heart of gold. All in all, a Strong, fastmoving story.
This husband and wife writing team who wrote the third book in this triumvirate were primarily playwrights and short story writers. In 1954, Lion published their only novel, House of Evil, which isn't quite the best title as it points more to a horror story. This story is told with a heavy, oppressive atmosphere about a man, Laird, whose life is torn asunder when he stops by his girlfriend's apartment while she's out of town and finds a nude corpse of a local prostitute. The story goes back and forth between his desperate attempts to uncover the killer and his idea that the killer was really aiming for Joyce, not the actual victim, Nina. Alternately, we hear the story from Nina and the killer's points of view and get a glimpse of the madness and violence. While not altogether successful, it does echoes Jim Thompson's twisted psychological studies.
Kermit Jaedeker's Hero's Lust was a 1953 paperback original from Lion Books, one of the more well known paperback original publishers, best known perhaps for its Jim Thompson novels. Hero's Lust is a tale of big city corruption set in a fictional city, Crescent City, seen from the eyes of a news reporter Red Norton who earns more from graft than by reporting and is the corrupt Mayor's cheerleader. He knows it's all crooked machine politics but he's in too deep and knows if he crosses the mayor he will do more than hang from a twenty two story balcony fearing for his life. He passes up a chance to do good. But makes the mistake of falling in love with Ann Porter, a TB sufferer who was set to be the star of a new series about the Mayor's hospital. The book is tough, no-nonsense and a stern indictment of machine politics so prevalent in so many northeastern cities. Jaedeker only wrote two novels.
Shel Walker's The Man I Killed was republished recently in a trio-set of Lion novels by Stark House Press. Remarkably, it was the original cover of the Walker novel that became the cover of the new trilogy set. Shel Walker is not a well known name today and his tough guy novel had that Hardboiled atmosphere typical of tales of towns controlled by mobsters where everyone seemed to be on the take. It was a dirty, filthy town but for some unknown reason it was pulling Lew Ross back to the scene of his crime where he left a man dead in the dirt following a bar fight, fleeing the town. Ross can't put it out of his mind and has to return to figure out of the law's gunning for him or it's all been forgotten. It's a fascinating story of returning to the crime scene and Ross dealing with his guilt and his lack of any explanation for his past. Sadly, it's rather little more than a backstory in this novel which centers around Ross's arms length relationship with the town's primary gangsters. Ross is caught between the gangsters who have it in for him and the police who think he's one of the hoodlums. Of course, the first person he meets in town is the cocktail waitress with a heart of gold. All in all, a Strong, fastmoving story.
This husband and wife writing team who wrote the third book in this triumvirate were primarily playwrights and short story writers. In 1954, Lion published their only novel, House of Evil, which isn't quite the best title as it points more to a horror story. This story is told with a heavy, oppressive atmosphere about a man, Laird, whose life is torn asunder when he stops by his girlfriend's apartment while she's out of town and finds a nude corpse of a local prostitute. The story goes back and forth between his desperate attempts to uncover the killer and his idea that the killer was really aiming for Joyce, not the actual victim, Nina. Alternately, we hear the story from Nina and the killer's points of view and get a glimpse of the madness and violence. While not altogether successful, it does echoes Jim Thompson's twisted psychological studies.
June 9, 2021
Lion Books was one of the great paperback publishers of the 50s. They published writers who later became well known, such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis, and many lesser known writers, such as the three included in this collection. Hard hitting, very brutal and twisted at times, they are week worth reading.
June 25, 2017
Interesting 3 in 1 volume of Lion paperbacks from the 1950s. Similar to Stark House's previous offering of a Trio of Gold Medal pbo's. These are all pretty good, none set in New York City, of course, per Moe Goodman edict.
January 14, 2019
****-Hero's Lustre
***-The Man I Killed, House of Death
***-The Man I Killed, House of Death
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews