Lawrence Block The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep
No Exit Press Pbk £4.99
Pity the poor reviewer who has to say something
positive about some of the dross he has to plough through. I know I do. But now, like rain
on a parched desert, No Exit Press have reprinted a couple of novels of yesteryear that I
would actually read for pleasure. The cover of The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep depicts a leggy blonde lounging against a huge turquoise convertible - Cover Photo : c. The Image Bank - all of which suggests.... well, not too much about the book anyway. She never appears in this picaresque tale concerning a hunt for treasure hidden during the Greek and Turkish war in 1922. Yes, we're in Eric Ambler territory here, but with an added tweak of surrealism.
Due to an unfortunate shell burst in the Korean War Evan Michael Tanner is a long term insomniac and this is the convenient pretext for the author to endow him with the knowledge of virtually everything worth knowing. He studies while you and I sleep, you see. As a consequence, he is able to traipse right across Europe and converse with a host of eccentric characters without any language problems (except for Basque which, I was interested to discover, has the most hideously malformed grammatical structure of any tongue).
The increasingly dotty adventures mount up to make a wonderfully edifying and absorbing read, although it's significant how just a short span of history can alter a reader's perceptions. When the book was published thirty years ago Yugoslavian ethnic groups and the IRA were just a joke - bloody civil war can take the edge off the humour, ever so slightly. (See review of The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams)
Charles Willeford Miami Blues
No Exit Press Pbk £4.99
The cover of
Miami Blues shows palm trees silhouetted against a blue tropical sky. They don't appear in
the novel either - just what are these Image Bank people playing at? The book concerns
Freddie Frenger, a nasty piece of work, described as both a psychopath and a sociopath -
he doesn't even give a break to his fellow psychopaths. He embarks on a criminal career in
Miami and comes into conflict with Det. Sgt. Hoke Moseley, a corner cutting, decent cop.
You know, the sort who were doing such a good job in the West Midlands Regional Crime
Squad around the time this book was originally published. Anyroad, what gets the ball rolling is a piece of coincidence at which even Thomas Hardy would turn up his nose. I won't dwell on that though. I mean, it just might happen that in a city with a population of one and a half million you could encounter and then enter into a "Platonic Marriage" with the sister of the man you had killed a few hours previously. Well, it might. So now that the author has got that sorted out he can play around with the dramatic possibilities, as well as making old Hoke's job a sight easier (and a little painful). Willeford's writing is strongly reminiscent of the work of Patricia Highsmith with it's concern for insignificant details and explosive violence described in a low key manner. Not a bad role model for any crime writer.
Now I want to pore over the full No Exit Press canon, if only for those craazzee covers. (JRC)
