Margin for Terror

Johnny Liddell #32

by Frank Kane

Rocky Nelson was a dumb boxer, but his written expose of the fight racket was powerful enough to blast the syndicate wide open, and the bosses knew it. So for life insurance, Rocky got Johnny Liddell to lock the document in his office safe. But they busted the safe--and then Rocky...

Johnny knew it was murder, but he couldn't prove it. The only clue he had was a stage-struck redhead--and her disappearing act had stopped the show...

156 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

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 4 out of 5]

Margin For Terror, first published in 1967, was the final Johnny Liddell novel ( some 30 novels plus two anthologies) after twenty years and, in fact, the last novel Kane put out, a year before he passed away. This is a solid, action-packed detective novel. In it, Kane focuses on a story of a boxer being forced to take a fall and what happens when he refuses to go along with the mob's play. It feels much more like a mid fifties pulp than a late sixties paperback. Kane does a bit of a twist on the mob-boxing story and has Liddell involved trying to find the right thing and attempting to stay one step ahead of the mob thugs.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as pulps go this one was pretty good and definately left me wanting to read more of this genre and era. Funny, because I previously read a different Frank Kane/Johnny Liddel book and was unmoved. It was a fun, quick read. Gotta hit the used book stores for more!

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good pulp novel. Fast-paced, nice plot and plot twists, good characters. The dialogue could have used some more snappiness, but the climax was great and it was just lurid and violent enough to keep things interesting. I'm looking forward to reading another one of these Liddell stories.