When it comes to grabbing some books and I’ve got a choice between a painted cover and a photo one, I’ll usually grab the photo cover, especially if it features some girl in a suggestive pose. Lord, how I miss the ’70s sometimes! So this week, all the covers are of the photographic variety, featuring forgotten beauties. And for those who prefer the painted covers, be patient; there’s a column of those coming up soon.

THE CLOWN by Carter Brown – Brown’s novels are perfect laundry reading, because I can crank through 70 percent to 80 percent while I wait for load to be done. Try it yourself – it passes the time and gives you escapism instead of watching whatever is droning on the laundromat TV.

This 1972 novel is another of his Lt. Wheeler mysteries. Here, Wheeler is called upon high society to a home where a woman named Nina Janos has made a grisly discovery: a clown with his throat slit. I know everyone who hates circuses must be rejoicing about now, but sadly, he is not a real clown.

At first, Wheeler and Nina think the dead man is her abusive psycho husband, but that theory is proven wrong right away when he bursts in, thinking that the two are having an affair. Like I said, the guy is not the most stable. It turns out the dead clown is actually a business associate of the hubbie, leaving Wheeler to find out why the associate, why a costume, and who could have killed him.

This like all other Brown novels, flying by at such a clip that you might lose some of the important info if you read too fast, because there is a big surprise moment in the book, not to mention a very ’70s-esque party, a little S&M, and of course, the many attempts of women making passes at Wheeler. Highly enjoyable for all of the hour and half it would take you to finish.

TRY ANYTHING ONCE by Erle Stanley Gardner – Bertha Cool and Donald Lam make a return appearance to this column, for the simple reason their books just rule all kinds of mystery ass. It might just be because Gardner – under his A.A. Fair pseudonym –  writes Lam as a total smart-ass, and I can relate.

This 1962 book opens with a man named Mr. Allen offering a pretty cake job to the twosome: Have Donald spend the night in a hotel room with a lovely girl named Sharon Barker. Why? That’s what grinds Donald’s gears in a major way.

Mr. Allen is married and the girl is single, but he spent some time with said young lady in the same motel where a deputy DA turned up dead, floating in a pool. Now the cops want to interview everyone who was there that night, but since this is Donald Lam, nothing goes right and way too many people – including cops – are giving him grief.

This is typical Gardner: a simple case leading to accusations of blackmail and rape against – you guessed it – Donald. For those who’ve never read any of Gardner’s non-Perry Mason books, you have no idea what you are missing. This is not Spillane-like hardboiled detectives; it’s more like if Mason decided to chuck his law practice and went to work for Rosanne. This is a fine addition to this series, if a little rushed at the end to tie it all together, but I’d take any Cool/Lam book any day over some of the other dreck out there.

CAGE #4: THE SILVER PUMA by Alan Riefe – You get what you pay for sometimes, so for my 50 cents I spent on this 1975 book, I was expecting so little. Guess what? I was charged a quarter too much.

Ever read THE PRISONER OF ZENDA or seen that really awful movie MOON OVER PARADOR? Combine the two and you get this: a part of a series with twin brothers who are also super-sleuths, which is really funny, since there is no mystery at all to be solved here.

One of the brothers is hired to escort a body of a dead South American president back to his country. What seems like a really simple job, however, makes Hunt Cage suspicious, so he tries to get his brother involved. His brother lives over the river in New Jersey, and neither will go to the other’s state unless in disguise, so they can use the whole identical-twins angle to their advantage.

I so wish I was making this all up. Well, guess what, folks? That dead body he is escorting is just that a trap; the bad guys are going to use Hunt Cage as a patsy and blame the revolutionaries. This book is just a total time-sucker, plus it hits the point of parody with a court sequence that would make Perry Mason ill: a man with no law background running circles around a prosecutor, and all of it taking place in English in a foreign land.

You really don’t see many of the Cage paperbacks floating around, and that’s a good thing, because if the rest of them are just as preposterous, I’ve saved everyone who reads this a lot of frustration and time. Final note: Nothing on the cover deals with anything in the story.

Next time: Say good night to the bad man. –Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE BIGGER THEY COME by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASE OF THE HESITANT HOSTESS by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE CASEBOOK OF SIDNEY ZOOM by Erle Stanley Gardner
• CROWS CAN’T COUNT by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE EVER-LOVING BLUES by Carter Brown
• MURDER IS A PACKAGE DEAL by Carter Brown
• THE NEVER-WAS GIRL by Carter Brown
• SOME SLIPS DON’T SHOW by Erle Stanley Gardner
• THE WANTON by Carter Brown