Stacked Deck

Johnny Liddell #19

by Frank Kane, Robert McGinnis (Illustrator)

Front Cover: "Sizzling cases of private-eye Johnny Liddell who has a passion for redheads and a talent for trouble."
Contains the stories:
-Dead Set
-Dead Drunk
-Dead Reckoning
-Dead Run
-Dead Wrong
-Dead End
-The Killing
-A Grave Matter!

192 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1961

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

[Oli Turner]

#stackeddeck a collection of short stories by #frankkane featuring #johnnyliddell published in 1961. I’m not the biggest fan of short stories. Never enough time to develop anything. I didn’t find this quite as compelling as the dead stand in. Liddell is much more fun when his assistant is with him. There are a few good lines in this collection. Some of the stories are really trimmed down so that you don’t know information that the detective finds in between scenes off the page and then it is all explained at the end. I am never good at working out whodunnit but sometimes these can be a bit cryptic with Liddell picking up on clues that are not mentioned to the reader at all or in extremely subtle ways. Liddell is the classic hero strong and tough, able to beat up ex-professional boxers and such a ladies man that within 5 minutes of meeting him they are already suggesting a trip to the bedroom. Plus an Alluring cover from Robert McGinnis

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stacked deck is a set of nine Johnny Liddell stories. While I prefer to read johnny Liddell in the form of a full-length novel rather than in short story form, you're not gonna go wrong reading this collection. The stories give you Johnny Liddell in all his hardboiled goodness. They're filled with mean mobsters, sexy dames in tight dresses, horse races, murders, double crosses, insurance scams, and more.
All in all it's quite enjoyable and well worth reading. There's one story that has Liddell having some fun in one of the funky jazz clubs of the era and he comes off as an out of place square. In another story, Liddell attends a Hollywood party for the rich and famous and can't believe the hoods out on the West Coast are treated like they are normal people. And, every time you turn around there's a receptionist telling him to walk this way and he deadpans that he wish he could but just doesn't have the equipment for it. Kane fills these PI stories with his readable prose. While there are dozens of private eyes from the fifties, this creation is one of the most dependably good.

[Chris Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like hard drinking,
womanizing,
think with yer fist,
at least 1 concussion per book,
shamus.
Johnny Liddell is pure.