Ring-a-ding-ding

Johnny Liddell #24

by Frank Kane

The blonde didn't have to tell Liddell that she made the circuit. One look, and he could see she was a fast operator. Johnny Liddell dialed "0" for information, but all she was selling was her party line...

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1963

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

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the twentieth novel of the Johnny Liddell private eye series, Frank Kane revisits some popular pulp themes such as the sultry nightclub singer, the blackmail scheme, the tough guys hanging around the clubs, and the various dead bodies that turn up with the private eye being the prime suspect. However, Kane manages to make this private eye tale feel fresh and new. The Liddell series is a terrific private eye series with a tough guy private eye and this book is no exception. It opens with Liddell paying a late night visit to a prospective client - only someone got there first and tipped off the homicide squad. And, the action never lets up from there: "She was redheaded. She was stacked. She was also very dead." Kane uses some great phrasing in this one such as telling us that the sultry nightclub singer "was stacked like an 85 cent sundae" and "she looked as if she had been sculptured from milk chocolate, wrapped in good foil." Granted, Kane's Liddell novels did not manage to break new literary frontiers, but they are just good-old fashioned fun to read. The menare tough and ready to brawl. The women are all eye candy. And, no one it seems has a heart of gold. Tough, hard-nosed, cynical just as a good private eye tale should be.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found a nice first edition Dell paperback of this one. A quick and fun read. The first two chapters are tight set-pieces featuring a shakedown blackmail and client found murdered and the energetic writing sucked me in. Got a bit weaker after some clumsy back story reveals and some on-the-nose dialog before getting back into high gear with a bunch of fight scenes and more plot complicating murders. For the most part the prose is objective with hardly any interior access to the characters, especially when it comes to our protagonist Johnny Liddell. We follow him but never really get to identify with him, which I thought was a bit strange for a series character. On the other hand, Liddell is a tough guy PI so we are meant to see him in action, and more suspense is built by not knowing what he is thinking as he investigates. Good string the reader along technique.