Westlake Score and Review: Murder Among Children (Mitch Tobin #2) by Tucker Coe, alias Donald E. Westlake (Souvenir Press, 1968)

NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.

Let's take a detour from the signed editions for the moment and return to the novels Donald E. Westlake wrote under the nom de plume Tucker Coe in the 1960s and '70s, all of which star disgraced former cop Mitchell Tobin. I reviewed the first of those, 1966's Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, a couple of weeks ago, adding its 1967 British Souvenir Press dust jacket – designed by S. R. Boldero – to my Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery, and I'll be doing the same with this latest Westlake Score: the scarce 1968 Souvenir Press first edition of the second Coe/Tobin book, Murder Among Children, which again features a striking Boldero cover, this time one that, to my knowledge, has never been seen online before...

Originally published in the States by Random House in 1967, Murder Among Children finds Mitch Tobin still at a loose end, still building his symbolic-but-also-quite-concrete wall around his back yard, still unwilling to rejoin the world a year on from inadvertently causing the death of his partner and consequently getting thrown off the force. Once again it's Mitch's wife, Kate, who urges him into action, this time to assist a female cousin, Robin, whose West Village coffee house is being targeted by a corrupt policeman. But when Mitch arrives at the coffee house, he finds Robin covered in blood and clutching a knife, and a dead man and woman in a room upstairs. And so, even more reluctantly, and at the behest of another of the coffee shop's owners, a young black man named Hulmer Fass (and at the behest of Kate), Mitch agrees to look into the crime, as the bodies begin piling up...

As with Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, one of the chief draws of Murder Among Children is the selection of interesting characters Westlake populates the story with. Hulmer Fass especially I found an agreeable companion – smart, witty and hip – as indeed does Mitch, for whom Hulmer becomes a kind of unofficial sidekick. And of course Mitch himself is as intriguing as before; although he does less soul-searching than in the first book, his powers of observation are as acute as ever, except coloured by his own situation and, let's face it, depression. At one point he watches Hulmer walking away down the street... 

...youthful, optimistic, humorous, bouncing on the balls of his feet, I found myself envying him in half a dozen different ways. I envied his youth, of course, and his optimism, and his humor, and I envied the absence of scars on his psyche that made the youth and optimism and humor possible. But beyond that I envied him for being young now, and black, and alive to the world in a way that I had not been for years, in a way that I perhaps had never been in my life.

That sense of the now (or rather the then-now) is evident throughout the book. Westlake paints a vivid picture of a New York sweltering under a summer heatwave: shirts drenched with sweat; the cooling relief of air conditioning. And there's an escalating tension, too, as Mitch has a brush with death on a tenement stairwell, and then towards the close of the novel becomes a suspect for the murders himself. In the end, he's offered an olive branch by a police captain, along with a glimmer of hope of a wiping clean of his slate, and even, perhaps, a return to his former life as a cop. But Mitch knows that's a delusion, and as in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, all he wants to do at the finish is get back to building his wall.

The back cover of the Souvenir Press edition of Murder Among Children carries British reviews of Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, the fourth one down of which caught my eye. It's credited to the Oxford Mail, which means it's almost certainly by spy novelist Anthony Price, who, as he explained in the interview I conducted with him last year, was reviewing crime fiction for the Mail around this period. It's nice to find that an author for whom I have a great deal of respect enjoyed Westlake's work – even if he probably didn't know it was by Westlake – and makes me wonder if Price reviewed any others of Westlake's novels. And oddly enough, after Murder Among Children, in the 1970s the remaining three Mitch Tobin novels would be published in the UK by Gollancz – the same publisher that was home to Price's David Audley novels in the '70s and '80s.

S. R. Boldero's dust jacket for Murder Among Children has now joined his other wrappers in the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery – and I've another, lovelier Westlake wrapper waiting in the wings, this time from an earlier novel, penned under Westlake's own name, and which to my mind is one of the best things he ever wrote. Look out for that – and an attendant review – next week. Next though: it's back to the signed editions, with another graphic novel published this very year...

Book Review: Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death (Mitch Tobin #1) by Tucker Coe, alias Donald E. Westlake (Souvenir Press, 1967)

NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.

Slight change of plan here: I had intended to blog about the final book which begat a perhaps more famous film to start the working week, but unfortunately I haven't finished reading the bloody thing yet; you'll have to hang on another day or so for that. Instead, while we wait, I thought I'd veer off-topic and take a look at a novel that I showcased as a Westlake Score all the way back in September 2010 – in its 1967 UK Souvenir Press first edition – but never got round to reviewing – or indeed showing off properly, as the photographs I took of the book back then were fairly awful. And having since established my Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s gallery, and the jacket of this particular edition having been designed by an artist who's already in the gallery – S. R. Boldero – it struck me I could kill two birds with one stone... well actually, three: review the novel, add to the gallery, and fill an unexpected hole in Existential Ennui's schedule...

Originally published in the US in 1966, Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death was Donald E. Westlake's first novel under the alias of Tucker Coe, under which moniker he would go on to pen a further four books over the next five years or so. All star disgraced former cop Mitchell Tobin, who, as the series opens, has been off the force for six months following an illicit affair which led to the death of his partner. Mitch's wife, Kate, forgave him the affair (although he's unsure if his thirteen-year old son, Bill, has), but his former colleagues haven't forgiven him the death of his partner – and nor, for that matter has he forgiven himself, which is why he's spent six months doing virtually nothing other than, latterly, building a wall around his backyard.

So when a representative of New York mobster Ernie Rembek turns up at Mitch's house with a job offer, Mitch eventually – reluctantly – agrees – not because he has any interest in the job – which is to find out who within Rembek's organisation murdered Rembek's mistress – but because Kate thinks it will be good for him to do something other than build his wall. And so, attended by Roger Kerrigan – "an observer from the corporation", as Rembek puts it – Mitch sets about interviewing and eliminating suspects, in the process becoming a target for murder himself...

I must admit I was surprised by how good Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death is. Alongside the Parker novels – written, of course, under Westlake's rather better-known nom de plume of Richard Stark – I'd suggest that Kinds of Love is one of the best books Westlake wrote in the 1960s: a restrained yet quietly gripping murder mystery that's all the better for its sober, unshowy approach. Ordinarily my interest in mysteries is minimal – often as not I couldn't care less "whodunnit" – but Kinds of Love transcends its mystery trappings by dint of its fascinating take on mob life, which Westlake depicts as unrelentingly unglamorous. To take just one example, during an interview with one of the mobster suspects, Frank Donner, it arises that Donner and his wife have separate bedrooms, a detail that Mitch finds suspicious. But the explanation proves so mundane it becomes even more believable: Donner's wife admits with embarrassment that she snores.

For his part, Ernie Rembek is an unusual mob boss: he's intelligent and cultured, at one point referencing G. K. Chesterton in relation to overlooking background players in any investigation (a sly nod from Westlake to an influence, there). But each of the gangsters is well-drawn, Westlake-via-Tobin appraising each of them dispassionately – appraising everything dispassionately, in fact – deploying the occasional simile to add colour: noting how the glaring sun makes he and two other men lower their heads "like a trio of penitents", or describing a body, "its arms stretched out ahead of it", as "an acrobat still reaching for the trapeze".

Of course, Mitch's dispassion is a symptom of his lack of interest in pretty much everyone and everything – something that, conversely, serves to make him more interesting as a character – with the exception of his family and his wall, the latter of which he's back to building by the close of the novel. "Mitch, didn't it change anything?" Kate asks him of his investigation. "Change what?" is Tobin's blunt response, suggesting he has a long way yet to travel over the subsequent novels.

S. R. Boldero's wrapper for the Souvenir Press edition of Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death has now joined his one for Desmond Cory's Johnny Goes South in the Beautiful British Book Jacket Design gallery, taking the total number of covers up to 74. And I'll be adding another couple of Westlake dust jackets before too long, one of which, the British edition of the second Tucker Coe novel, I believe has never been seen online before. Next though: the final book which begat a perhaps more famous film...

Westlake Score: Backstage Love by Alan Marshall (Midwood/Tower Sleaze Paperback, 1959)

Like a lot of writers toiling in the unforgiving fields of pulpy postwar paperbacks, Donald E. Westlake wrote under an array of pseudonyms. The most famous of those is, of course, Richard Stark, under which moniker Westlake created the Parker series of crime novels in the early '60s. But as well known as that particular pen name is today, it's easy to forget that, back then, it was just one of many used by Westlake to churn out umpteen books every year. Richard Stark may have proved to be rather special, but from Westlake's perspective there weren't nothing special 'bout Stark at the time.

Aside from Stark, Westlake wrote books under the names Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Curt Clark. But all of those pseudonyms debuted after Stark's debut, 1962's The Hunter; there are a whole boatload more alter egos who preceded the birth of Richard Stark. I blogged about one of those, John B. Allan, back at the start of June, but Allan's single contribution to the Westlake canon, a 1961 biography of Elizabeth Taylor, is somewhat mild in comparison to the material published under some of his other nom de plumes in the late '50s and early '60s. For, like many of his contemporaries, including Lawrence Block, Westlake bashed out (so to speak) dozens of pseudonymous soft porn paperbacks.

Now, I hadn't intended to start collecting any of the soft porn books Westlake wrote under names like Edwin West or Andrew Shaw. But as luck would have it, a chance trip to a bookshop over in Essex the other week turned up a novel written under the disguise that Westlake used the most for his more titillating titles:

A US paperback of Backstage Love by Alan Marshall, published by the amusingly named Midwood/Tower Publications in 1959. This was lurking in a pile of similarly smutty paperbacks in an alcove under some stairs to the side of the rather ramshackle shop. It took me a few moments before I realised what it was; I would've recognised one of the better-known Westlake alter egos right away, but I'm less familiar with the filthier end of his oeuvre. And not carrying the complete annotated list of Westlake wank-fodder round in my head, I wasn't completely sure Backstage Love was the genuine article: quite apart from the immediate poser of whether Alan Marshall was indeed Westlake, there's also the thorny problem that, as with many of these soft porn author identities, other writers also used the Alan Marshall moniker, so not all the Marshall-written books were by Donald E. Westlake.

I'd like to say I leafed through the book and immediately recognised Westlake's style, but while these opening lines:

He had to change buses in New York, with a two hour wait. He had never been in New York City before, so he left the Port Authority Terminal and walked up a block to 42nd Street. It was early June and the late-morning sun made the sidewalks look bright and the buildings look clean.

could conceivably have been penned by him, coming across as proto-Stark, they could also have been penned by countless other writers. No, what I think really tipped me off was the setting for the novel: a summer stock theatre. That's a theme that Westlake has returned to more than once, with the events of Pity Him Afterwards (1964) being set in a similar location, and Alan Grofield from the Parker novels spending his summers acting in stock theatre. And anyway, at £1.50 it was worth the gamble.

There's a few copies of Backstage Love on AbeBooks for up to £25, but those are all in the States; it's unusual to chance across a copy in a UK bookshop. I rhapsodised briefly on Sunday about the pre-internet 1970s and 1980s (and even '90s) when books like this were tantalisingly out of reach for us Brits; finding this book was almost like stepping back in time to those years, when a junk shop in Penge Market might, if you're lucky, turn up a dreamed-of comic or paperback. I figured that sort of thing just didn't happen anymore, with collectors being so virulent. Turns out, it does.

The cover artist on Backstage Love is the appropriately named Rudy Nappi, who, rather ironically given the book's naughty nature, is best known for his covers for that squeakiest of squeaky clean characters, Nancy Drew. Which just goes to show, everyone has a dark side...

Westlake Score: A Jade in Aries by Tucker Coe

I've got a few interesting (to me, anyway; I can't even begin to guess about you, whoever you may be) things to blog about this week, including a brand new (highly) irregular comics feature, some recent scores from Lewes' charity shops, some rather rare Max Collins paperbacks (which have a Richard Stark connection), and perhaps more besides, time permitting. But let's kick off the working week with a Westlake Score:

That's a UK paperback of Tucker Coe's A Jade in Aries, published by Sphere in 1975 (originally published in hardback in the UK by Gollancz in 1973; originally published in the US in 1970). It's the fourth of the five books Donald E. Westlake wrote under the pseudonym Tucker Coe, all of which star disgraced ex-cop Mitch Tobin – I blogged about the first one, Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, here. In A Jade in Aries Tobin has to work out who's murdering a group of gay friends; there's also an astrology aspect to the story, a belief system Westlake/Coe states in a short note at the start of the book he neither believes nor disbelieves – it's just an aspect of the plot.

Sphere only published two of the Coe novels, the other one being the third one, Wax Apple, which they also published in 1975 and which sports a very similar green hued cover (no idea who the artist for them both was/is). One thing that's remarkable is that, even today, there are still lots of people who haven't realised Coe was Westlake: I picked up this paperback of A Jade in Aries for a quid from a dealer who'd simply listed it on eBay as being by Coe, with no mention of Westlake, and if you search for Coe on AbeBooks you'll find that at least as many sellers don't mention Westlake in their listings as do. Seems Tucker Coe is still a fairly well kept secret.

Westlake Score: Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death by Tucker Coe

What's this? Blogging on a Saturday? This is unheard of! Whatever is the world coming to?

Well, I figured I'd round off Westlake Week Mark II with one last Donald E. Westlake Score, in the shape of this:

It's a UK hardback first edition of the first of Westlake's series of five novels written under the pseudonym Tucker Coe, Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, published by Souvenir Press in 1967 (originally published in the States by Random House in 1966). All five of the Coe novels star disgraced ex-cop Mitchell Tobin, and are more serious in tone than many of the books Westlake wrote under his own name. The dustjacket on this one is by S. R. Boldero, who illustrated a number of dustjackets for Souvenir Press, including a Modesty Blaise novel, as well as loads of paperback cover for Pan, Arrow, and more besides. As ever, the redoubtable Steve Holland has the most comprehensive guide to Boldero's work at his Bear Alley blog.

I had to go all the way to Australia for this one. Not literally, obviously: I mean I bought it off a dealer in Australia; the only copy listed for sale in the UK should have been de-listed, as it sold a while ago. No matter though; even with the postage it was still pretty inexpensive, and it's a nice addition to the collection.

NB: Go here for my review of the novel.