Fifty-Two Pickup (52 Pick-Up) by Elmore Leonard: First Edition (Secker & Warburg, 1974); Book Review

NB: Linked in this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

I hadn't planned on returning to Elmore Leonard quite so soon after completing that long series of posts on him; even though I'm still on the Leonard kick that started, ooh, I guess over three months ago now, I'm no longer reading him to the exclusion of all others, and there are a number of authors I'm itching to blog about besides Leonard. But then the bugger went and died on Tuesday, and so it seems only right and proper in the week that he passed away that I should take a look at an acknowledged Elmore Leonard classic:

Fifty-Two Pickup, first published in hardback in the UK by Secker & Warburg in 1974, the same year as the American Delacorte first. Like all the Secker editions of Leonard's novels – the publisher issued four of the author's works in the 1970s – Fifty-Two Pickup is becoming quite scarce and consequently fairly pricey in British first (and likely to become even more so now I expect). Obviously the print run would have been much smaller than the American edition, but there's the dust jacket design too: the Delacorte jacket is largely typographic, whereas the Secker one features an evocative photograph by Graham Miller, and is really rather good and quite distinctive I think; compare Miller's Fifty-Two Pickup wrapper with his one for the Heinemann edition of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game from the same year.

Certainly the cover is in keeping with the novel – a dark entry in the Leonard canon, in which Detroit factory boss Harry Mitchell is targeted by a trio of blackmailers who kidnap his stripper girlfriend and threaten to reveal his illicit affair to his wife if he doesn't pay them over $100,000. Given that thereafter the novel features a gruesome caught-on-camera killing, multiple murders and a heroin-assisted rape, it's perhaps surprising that for Leonard it was one of the novels where he felt he began to introduce more humour into his work. In 2002 he told The Onion A.V. Club:

I think the turning point was in the '70s, with Unknown Man No. 89 and Fifty-Two Pickup and those. That's when I finally got the confidence to let it go and have some fun with it. Before that, in the Westerns especially, there's no humor at all. There's no irony to speak of, and that's all the humor is. It's my humor. Because all these guys are serious. They can be funny, but they're serious when they deliver their lines. It's just that they're kind of out of context with what they're talking about. 

Of course, there is humour in Fifty-Two Pickup, but it's humour of a very black variety, born of the lethal bungling of the inept blackmailers and epitomised by an explosive climax involving an attache case packed with dynamite. Rather than a crime caper, then, the novel might be better viewed as a meditation on the decline of the city of Detroit – overwhelmed by vice, its manufacturing base crumbling. It's a theme that has as much resonance today as it did forty years ago – a mark, I'd suggest, of the way Leonard's fiction has remained relevant over the years, in turn helping to explain why his older books are still so popular – and one the writer would return to again and again throughout the 1970s in his "Detroit cycle": Unknown Man No. 89 (1977), The Switch (1978) and City Primeval (1980). And I'll have more on those last two novels anon.

Elmore Leonard, 1925–2013

Damn. Just this minute seen the sad news that Elmore Leonard died this morning, aged 87. (Update: head to The Rap Sheet for links to obituaries and a terrific homage.) Leonard had suffered a stroke a few weeks back and had subsequently been hospitalised; on the author's Facebook page, Gregg Sutter, Leonard's researcher and webmaster, reports:

The post I dreaded to write, and you dreaded to read. Elmore passed away at 7:15 this morning from complications from his stroke. He was at home surrounded by his loving family. More to follow.

Anyone who reads Existential Ennui on a regular basis will know that I've been on a Leonard kick of late, recently posting a string of reviews of the writer's novels. They weren't intended as a tribute to Mr. Leonard, and certainly not a eulogy – just my thoughts on his work; but under the circumstances, well, I guess a number of them – and a handful of older posts – go some way towards expressing my admiration for his brilliant, beautifully written books:

Last Stand at Saber River (1959)

The Moonshine War (1969)

 The Big Bounce (1969)

Valdez is Coming (1970)

Mr. Majestyk (1974)

Fifty-Two Pickup (1974)

 

   Unknown Man No. 89 (1977)

The Hunted (1977)

The Hunted (1978)

The Switch (1979)

Gold Coast (1980)

City Primeval (1981)

Split Images (1983)

  Stick (1983) and Stick (1984)

  LaBrava (1983)

Swag (1984)

Dutch Treat (1985), feat. Mr. Majestyk, Swag and The Hunted

Cat Chaser (1986)

Killshot (1989)

Get Shorty (1990)

 Pronto (1993), Riding the Rap (1995), Fire in the Hole (2002)

Out of Sight (1996)

Cuba Libre (1998)

Road Dogs (2009)

Raylan (2012), Elmore Leonard's final novel.

Parker Score: Richard Stark's The Steel Hit (alias The Man with the Getaway Face) (Coronet, 1971) and Raymond Hawkey's Bullet Hole Cover Design

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

Plucked from atop the Parker Mega Score stack – i.e. that haul of British Coronet/Hodder Fawcett paperback editions of Donald "Richard Stark" Westlake's Parker crime novels I recently acquired – comes this:

The Steel Hit, Coronet's title for the second Parker outing, The Man with the Getaway Face (the publisher retitled a number of the Parkers, as we'll see in a later post). Published in paperback by Coronet in the UK in 1971 (originally published in the States in 1963), this was the first time the novel had been issued in Britain, four years after The Hunter – or rather Point Blank, it being a movie tie-in – had made its British debut. In the interim Coronet had published a further five Parkers, but these dated from later in the series (Coronet was loosely following the pub programme of its American sister company, Fawcett/Gold Medal). It wasn't until 1971 that the publisher began filling in the gaps, over the next year or two issuing the Parkers from The Man with the Getaway Face to The Handle (Parker #8). And when they did, it was under highly unusual covers...

Up to this point, the covers of the Coronet paperbacks had sported either film stills (Point Blank, 1967; The Split, 1969), illustrations (The Rare Coin Score, 1968; The Green Eagle Score, 1968; The Black Ice Score, 1969; The Sour Lemon Score, 1969) or posed photos (the 1970 reprints of Point Blank and The Rare Coin Score). But in '71 the publisher introduced a new cover concept: the "bullet hole" design. Created by Raymond Hawkey – the man behind the iconic dust jackets for Len Deighton's novels – the bullet hole covers were in effect a double cover: a metallic-finish card outer cover featuring, on the front, the author's name, the legend "a novel of violence" and a rough-edged "burnt" die-cut hole, through which the novel's title could be seen. Open it up:

and the thinner inner cover is revealed, bearing the text "Parker is in" and then the title. It was an innovative approach to paperback cover design, but actually typical of Hawkey, who already had form both with bullet hole-style designs and die-cuts on paperback covers – witness his cover treatments for the 1963 Pan edition of Ian Fleming's Thunderball and the 1967 Pan edition of Len Deighton's London Dossier.

But for Parker/Stark/Westlake fans, it's the back double-cover that might be of more interest. The outer cover carries the usual sort of stuff: description of the novel, ISBN, price, a blurb from the New York Times about Stark. Flip it open, however:

and there's a photo and short bio of Donald E. Westlake on the inner cover. Now, considering Richard Stark's true identity was still being kept a secret by his American publisher, Random House, even by the time Butcher's Moon was published in the States in 1974, it's notable that in the UK, by 1971 he'd already been "outed" as Westlake by Coronet. Although I don't believe they got there first; legend has it that it was the critic Anthony Boucher who unmasked Westlake as Stark in his New York Times "Criminals at Large" column – which presumably is how Coronet got the idea it was OK to do the same on their (inner) back covers: that New York Times quote on the back of The Steel Hit is taken from a Boucher review.

Copies of The Steel Hit are currently very thin on the ground; there are a couple on AbeBooks going for around £20 a piece, but that's about it – this despite it being reprinted in 1972 (with minor amends to the cover – see above). Indeed, the Coronet Parkers have become quite collectable in some circles – something I'll be exploring in the next Parker Score post.

Parker Mega Score Prelude: Richard Stark British First Editions (Coronet Paperbacks, 1968–1977)

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

Good lord, has it really been nearly four months since I last posted something over at The Violent World of Parker? Tsk, I dunno: anyone would think I'd recently become a father or something. (Let's not get into the fact that I've managed about a dozen Existential Ennui blog posts on Elmore Leonard in the interim. Ahem.) Anyway, obviously my absence represents a dreadful dereliction of duty, for which I shall attempt to make amends by unveiling a shitload of Westlake Scores over the coming weeks. Or rather, Parker Scores; because all of the books I'll be blogging about are Parker novels – British paperback editions to be precise, published by Coronet/Hodder Fawcett in the late 1960s and early '70s. And all of them came from a single source...

See, a couple of months back, quite out of the blue, I received an email from the critic and crime writer Mike Ripley (author of the Angel series of novels). I know Mike a little bit, and Mike knows I'm a Westlake/Stark/Parker nut, and so having, as he put it, "acquired a job lot of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark titles, all paperbacks in remarkably good condition for their age", he figured I might be a likely candidate to take them off his hands, for the price of a small donation to charity. Mike provided a list of the books, fourteen in total; three of them were Coronet paperbacks of Westlake novels I either owned already in hardback or wasn't especially interested in, but the remainder were all Coronet editions of the Parker novels, and even though I already had a number of them (and of course have every Parker novel in one or another edition anyway), well, I couldn't resist:

Turns out they're all, bar one, first impressions – most of the Coronet editions went through two or three printings – which means that they're (almost) all the British first editions (and the one that isn't I have a first printing of anyway, so it's all good) – Coronet being the original publisher of the Parkers in the UK. They're also in near-fine, virtually unread condition, certainly the nicest copies I've ever come across, and are, for the most part, the "bullet hole" editions – i.e. the distinctive metallic finish die-cut double-cover concept designed by Raymond Hawkey and introduced by Coronet in 1971. (Prior to that the six Parker novels Coronet published – out of sequence, mostly following the Fawcett/Gold Medal publishing programme – bore a mixture of movie still, illustrative and photographic covers.)

So, over the next however-many weeks, I'll be taking a look at some of them – ruminating on what they are, what they represent, their place in the wider Parker publishing scheme of things, their collectability, and maybe even reflecting on the novels themselves. Beginning with the book on the top of that pile: The Steel Hit, alias Parker #2, The Man with the Getaway Face...

Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard: First Edition (Bantam Paperback, 1980); Review

NB: Featured in this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

In a 1991 interview with Elmore Leonard (published in the December 2012 issue of Contrapasso Magazine and available as a PDF here), interviewer Anthony May asked the writer what he saw as the distinction between the hardback and the paperback (a subject that's long been dear to my heart). Leonard responded: "...respectability, that's all. I have always been in hardback up until I chose, twice, the more recent time in 1978 when I went to Bantam, to be in paperback simply to make more money."

In actual fact, for a while there in the '70s, Leonard could more accurately be described as a paperback writer than a hardback author. Eight of the twelve novels he published from 1969 – when he resumed his fiction writing career after nearly a decade in the advertising wilderness – until 1980 – when Arbor House became his main American publisher with City Primeval (remaining so for the next ten years) – were issued as paperback originals in the States (a handful were published into hardback in the UK): The Big Bounce (Fawcett/Gold Medal, 1969), Valdez is Coming (Fawcett/Gold Medal, 1970), Forty Lashes Less One (Bantam, 1972), Mr. Majestyk (Dell, 1974), The Hunted (Dell, 1977), The Switch (Bantam, 1978), Gunsights (Bantam, 1979), and this book:

Gold Coast, published as a paperback original by Bantam in December 1980, cover photography by the Freelance Photographers Guild. The last of Leonard's novels to be published straight to paperback in the US, it's also significant in that it signalled a shift in locale in the author's stories. Up to this point, the majority of Leonard's contemporaneously set novels (not his westerns, in other words) had centred on Detroit and the surrounding area. In Gold Coast, though, the author moved the action down to Florida, where mobster's wife Karen DiCillia learns upon the death of her husband Frank that he's left instructions to the effect that if she wants to keep hold of his money, she can never be with another man again. It's a ludicrous scenario, but Leonard is less interested in the set-up than in the resulting chaos, as Karen is beset by mob hitman Roland Crowe – who has designs on both her and her money (or rather Frank's) – and enlists the aid of ex-con Calvin Maguire in helping her escape Frank's bizarre bequest and the unwanted attentions of Roland.

In truth Maguire, rather than Karen, is the novel's real lead; he's another in the long line of Leonard felons – see also Jack Ryan (The Big Bounce/Unknown Man No. 89), Ernest Stickley, Jr. (Swag/Stick), Chili Palmer (Get Shorty/Be Cool) and Jack Foley (Out of Sight/Road Dogs) – uncertain of or unhappy with their place in the world but unwilling to knuckle under and become Average Joes. Maguire may not know quite what he wants, but Leonard makes his confusion palpable, whereas Karen remains something of an enigma throughout: opaque, her intentions unclear (despite the misleading back cover copy on the Bantam paperback). It's only in the final few pages we start to get a sense of who she really is – or rather, who she might be.

But it could be argued that the real star of the show is Roland Crowe. A hulking lascivious hillbilly cut from the same cloth as the later Richard Nobles (LaBrava, 1983), Roland is the first in what would become a family tree of Crowes, its roots extending deep beneath Leonard's backlist. Roland's brother, Elvin, and his nephew, Dale Jr., both feature in Maximum Bob (1991), while another Crowe, Earl, pops up in the first Raylan Givens novel, Pronto (1993), and Dale Jr. makes a reappearance in its sequel, Riding the Rap (1995). The Crowes even make the leap to television in the form of Dewey Crowe, a recurring thorn in the side of Raylan Givens in the Justified TV show, although quite what Dewey's relationship is to the literary Crowe clan isn't made explicit.

Anyway, stone the Crowes (arf): I do believe I've reached the final post in this (over-)extended series on Elmore Leonard. Not that there won't be more from Mr. Leonard on Existential Ennui in the near future; I've further splendid first editions to blog about, and I'll be keeping an eye out for updates on Leonard's well-being (he was recently hospitalised following a stroke). But there'll be posts on other authors and books besides, starting with a Westlake Score...

Stand on the Saber (Last Stand at Saber River / Lawless River) by Elmore Leonard (Corgi, 1960)

This penultimate Elmore Leonard paperback – nearly done now – dates from the first phase of Leonard's career, i.e. 1951–1961, when he was writing nothing but westerns:

Last Stand at Saber River, the fourth of five western novels Leonard published over that period, issued as a paperback original in the States by Dell in 1959. Except, as you can see, this isn't that edition: it's the first British paperback edition, retitled as Stand on the Saber and published by Corgi in 1960 (Corgi #SW847). In fact the novel's title was changed twice for British publication: Robert Hale published it in hardback under the title Lawless River in 1959 (you can see a facsimile of the Hale dust jacket, along with jackets for others of Leonard's early westerns, at Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC), and Corgi changed it again the year after.

Copies of the Corgi edition are almost as scarce as the Hale edition – there are presently two Corgi paperbacks versus one Hale hardback on AbeBooks – but prices couldn't be more different between the two: less than a fiver for the Corgi; over two grand for the Hale. So you can see why I went for the Corgi edition – that and the rather nice cover artwork, which I've unfortunately been unable to identify, despite asking a couple of paperback experts. (A partial signature – "HARRY" in capital letters – is visible bottom right of the artwork, which prompted one of the experts to suggest it might be by American artist Harry J. Schaare, but Schaare tended to sign his work with his surname, lowercase, so I remain unconvinced.)

But the main reason I bought the book is I was curious to see how it compares to Leonard's later western, the terrific Valdez is Coming (1970), and indeed to his work in general in that second phase of his career from 1969 onwards, when he returned to writing fiction after an enforced break (the western market having pretty much dried up by the end of the '50s). Answer being, not especially favourably.

Oh it's not a bad novel, by any stretch of the imagination. The story of Paul Cable, a Confederate soldier who, having been injured towards the end of the Civil War, returns with his family to his homestead in the Saber River valley to find it overrun by a Union gang, it's a decent enough western, moves at a reasonable clip and has its fair share of tense standoffs and shootouts. But it's certainly not the equal of Valdez is Coming, nor of the non-western novels Leonard penned when he resumed his writing career (The Big Bounce, Mr. Majestyk, Fifty-Two Pickup, etc.). Though there are hints of the Leonard to come – notably the way he makes the ostensible villains of the piece at least as compelling, if not more so, than Cable – it lacks the economy, the subtlety, the depth of later Leonard – that wry, supple prose and ear for the vernacular in dialogue.

Leonard himself admitted as much in a 2009 Goodreads interview. "When I read those [early westerns]," he told the interviewer, "I would definitely say my style has changed. I think it started with one of the last westerns – I was trying to get a little more humour in it, but also to be more spare in the writing. [Prior to that] I was using pronouns and making a lot of noise with the writing." He was also, at least on the evidence of Last Stand at Saber River, using adverbs – something that would become strictly verboten post-1969, as outlined in Leonard's celebrated 10 Rules of Writing – number 4, to be precise, "Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said'... he admonished gravely." Which of course follows Rule number 3: "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue." Although if Last Stand at Saber River is any indication, Leonard learned his own lesson early there.

Right then. Just one final Elmore Leonard paperback to come: the last of his novels to be published as a paperback original in the States...