Hello, all, and welcome to my snazzy new column here at BOOKGASM, where I delve into the seedy underbelly of crime, spies and sleaze. For those who cruise around the blog world, you might have stumbled onto my previous effort, The By-Pass Control. Let me state most of the books to be covered into this column will be of the secondhand variety. So get a pen and paper ready to write down titles and dig around your used books store. So, of course, with this being the first column, I’ll be reviewing three “new” books: DUTCH UNCLE, A TOUCH OF DEATH and THE LEVANTER.

First up is a tale from the fine folks over at Hard Case Crime: DUTCH UNCLE by Peter Pavia. Harry Healy is an ex-con trying to straighten out his life, but gets sucked back into crime. This book deals with Harry just tring to make a few quick bucks by making a drug drop for a “friend,” but things go from bad to worse really quick, with double crosses and gangland slayings. Now, to be honest, I found this book to be the weakest of any of the 10 Hard Case books I’ve read so far. Which is not a bad thing – I just found it a little lacking compared to the others. It seems to me the author was trying too hard to be Elmore Leonard. He introduces storylines that have no purpose or characters just to fill pages. Maybe instead of this, you might just want to pick up RUM PUNCH instead. Still, DUTCH has one of the cooler covers for the line.

To continue with Hard Case, we turn toward Charles Williams’ A TOUCH OF DEATH. This book hits all the marks when it comes to a noir-type story. You have two sexy femme fatales playing a guy for a sap. We are introduced to Lee Scarborough, a down-on-his-luck former college football hero. He meets up with a young woman who has a plan to get their hands on $120,000 (hey, it was written back in the ’50s). Lee thinks he is just going to make a quick score by doing a little breaking and entering to steal the money, but nothing could be further from the truth. He meets a woman by the name of Madelon Butler, who is just pure evil, making Barbara Stanwyck from DOUBLE INDEMNITY look like a nun. I’m not going to go into further details of this book, because it will just ruin the fun. But I can safely say you won’t see the ending coming. Also, you definitely will want to search out more work from Williams. While reading this book, all I could imagine as Madelon was Evangeline Lilly from LOST, and it works perfectly.

Finally, a book about a businessman’s foray into the terrorist world. This story deals with Michael Howell, who runs a dry-battery factory in Damascus. Slowly, it’s taken over by an extreme radical group of terrorists building detonators. Seems this book could take place today, but was actually written way back in 1972. This is the basic plot for THE LEVANTER by Eric Ambler, narrated by three different main characters, with Howell covering the bulk of the tale. He’s pretty much blackmailed into letting this group continue with their actions, or he and his girlfriend will be killed. Michael tries his hardest throughout the book to slow down any progress the terrorists make, either by trying to get his factory moved to an area he knows won’t help them or by seeking assistance from the Israeli goverment. This all builds to a climax on a ship headed towards Israel on a suicide mission. Like I stated earlier, if you changed a name here and there, this book could easily have been placed in 2006. This is part of the No Exit Press line, now celebrating 18 years. They have put out 18 of their top sellers with new covers in a limited run, all well worth seeking out. –Bruce Grossman