It's My Funeral

Daniel Port #3

by Peter Rabe

Ex-mobster Daniel Port has just arrived in Los Angeles. He has a sporty new car but no long-range plans. His main goal is getting together with adorable lounge singer Tess Dolphin. Then he meets an obnoxious con man from his past, Joko Mulnik, who is now something of a Hollywood talent agent. Mulnik has obtained some film showing megastar Ella Anders in the nude. He wants Port to join him in blackmailing Anders and her studio. Port turns him down flat but is drawn into the scheme anyway.

Cover art by John J. Jr. Floherty

Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Peter Rabe aka Peter Rabinowitsch, was a German American writer who also used the nom de plumes Marco Malaponte and J.T. MacCargo (though not all of the latter's books were by him). Rabe was the author of over 30 books, mostly of crime fiction, published between 1955 and 1975.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between 1956 and 1959, Peter Rabe published six novels in his Daniel Port crime series, a series that has the same main character appear throughout, but does not follow a set scheme throughout. Each of these novels could be read on its own as a standalone novel, yet all contain in some manner the theme of a criminal trying to get out of the rackets, but unable to fully escape his past. The series includes (1) Dig My Grave Deep (1956); (2) The Out is Death (1957); (3) It’s My Funeral (1957 ); (4) The Cut of the Whip (1958 ); (5) Bring Me Another Corpse (1959); and (6) Time Enough to Die (1959). Stark House Press has recently been kind enough to republish all six novels in a two-book set.

It's My Funeral takes Port far away from his midwest haunts. Indeed, he thinks that in Los Angeles he is far enough away from anything familiar that he can start over. He has only been there a few weeks when the novel opens and still finds the lack of ocean smell at the beach a bit weird. He has an apartment in Hollywood and is dating a nightclub singer. The problem though as it always seems to be for Port is that he can never escape his past.

Merely going to the Santa Monica Pier doesn't provide enough escape for him because an old acquaintance spots him and, though Port wants nothing to do with this nemesis, finds himself roped back into a criminal enterprise, this time the subject is blackmail of an up and coming female lead. Very typical of the time, every female lead in the movies has some blue movie in the past she wants to forget and the old acquaintance of Port's has got a scheme in mind and, spotting Port on the beach, cinches it because he intends to use Port as the fall guy.

Port turns out to the good guy in this caper and part of that is that everyone he encounters from his old acquaintance to the Hollywood managers and agents and movie studio producers is corrupt and out to take advantage of young starlets. Port wants to stay out of trouble, but trouble finds him wherever he goes and just won't leave him alone, not even for a moment.

As is typical of the Gold Medal originals, the cover blurb has little to do with the story inside.

[Jure · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the best blackmail stories I can remember of. This nasty "business" is usually used to trigger some other plot but in this one it stays in the center all the way through. There's no single villain - instead we have a bunch of amoral assholes ranging from some sleazy "talent scouting agent" to the studio exec and they all want to have a piece of our unfortunate damsel in distress. And there's nobody standing between them and her but our hero. Who himself is a bit shady character...

More here (review includes spoilers!):
http://a60books.blogspot.ie/2016/07/i...

[Michael Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last of the tales by Rabe of the fixer.