Author: George Axelrod
First Published: 1952
File size/Pages: 394KB / 202pp
Ebook Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Ebook Date: November 2011
Let me make it clear that the publishers of Hard Case Crime books introduced me to Crime novelists and books that I might never have known about. This range of books and the Facebook Group Men's Adventure Paperbacks of the 20th Century are the reason I got back heavily into noir and genre fiction a few years back.
Although I had always greatly admired Chandler and Hammet, I never had the opportunity or knowledge to seek out or source more books in a similar vein. It wasn't until I saw some of their great covers on the bookshelves of a Waterstones in central Manchester that my interest was able to be satisfied by new stories by Block, Westlake and Goodis. This lead me to searching the internet with the names of some of the authors, and suddenly I was finding reviews by bloggers, articles on web-sites and reading posts from people on Facebook talking about the same kinds of books, their authors and other types of novels I might like. Joining the brilliant Facebook Group Men's Adventure Paperbacks of the 20th Century was a turning point and really opened my eyes to the fact that so many other stories were being published in eBook format and even reprinted in paperback by other publishers such as Black Gat.
Blackmailer by George Axelrod, was reprinted by Hard Case Crime in 2007 with cover art by Glen Orbik. It was the thirty-second book to be issued by them, and is presented as being 'complete and unabridged' (although at only just over two hundred pages, unabridged is not much of a stretch). It was his only published crime novel.
George Axelrod was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer and film director from New York whose most influential period of output was during the fifties and sixties. he was the son of a real estate agent and a silent film actress. After serving in the Armed Forces during the second world war he went into radio, working on scripts and eventually worked his way into television.
His break came with the 1952 play The Seven Year Itch, famously made in to a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe. This was followed by another succesful play turned into a 1956 film, but the result pretty much abandoned all of Axelrod's ideas and characters (with the exception of the role played by another platinum blonde, Jayne Mansfield, who got to play the part both on stage and screen). He would be involved with Monroe again as screenwriter for 1956's Bus Stop.
By the late fifties and sixties he had become one of the best paid screenwriters in Hollywood, also nominated for his screenplay of Breakfast at Tiffany's (I'm surprised that Hard Case Crime didn't put this on the cover blurb of their edition). He also adapted Richard Condon's novel of The Manchurian Candidate into a 1962 screenplay starring Frank Sinatra (more on Sinatra next time). In his later career he had involvement in the screenplays of the novels The Holcroft Covenant and The Fourth Protocol.
Blackmailer is a typical first person narrative crime noir novel of the fifties. It concerns the story of Dick Sherman, a partner in a small independant New York publishing company whose biggest selling success has been a crossword puzzle book by an alcoholic woman who loves to frequent the trendy bars and restaurants downtown. Sherman is visited by your classic femme fatale, who claims to be selling the last manuscript of a Nobel Prize winning author, Charles Anstruther, recently killed by his own hand while cleaning a rifle (yeah right). The only thing is, she needs a fast sale and cash.
Sherman doesn't bite and says he needs to look into things first. Later he receives a phone call from an agent called Max Shriber also claiming to have the one only copy of Anstruther's final novel. The next day he gets a visit from the femme fatale, Jean Dahl, pushing for a deal. Suddenly two men break in to his apartment and the pair are forced to watch as the heavies tear Sherman's place apart looking for something. Dahl escapes, but Sherman is left alone and comes out worse for wear.
Next day Sherman is attending a swanky New York socialite party held by Walter Heinemann (it's part of the job) when he bumps into an old flame who is now a famous film actress, Janis Whitney. They had met a few years back when Sherman was a struggling screenwriter, fallen in love, but gone their seperate ways. Also at the party is Dahl, trying to avoid him. During the night Sherman gets involved with one of the girls. And then someone dies.
Sherman is left with a mystery to solve. He wants the manuscript, but it's clear there has been some shady dealings surrounding its acquisition - and Anstruther's death is just too strange to be true.
Axelrod produces a compact, fast-paced and fascinating crime story. It is also a claustraphobic affair. Due to the limited word-count he restricts the plot to a very small number of settings, with some being revisited on a number of occasions. I guess that's the screenwritier in him, potentially limiting the number of set-ups required if this were adapted into a stage play or motion picture. This is felt in the dialouge and descriptions too, short sentences and snappy one-liners.
There is no mistaking that there is a lot of Axelrod in this book; a failed screenwriter, famous starlets, stage actors and actresses, socialites and seedy gangsters. You can't but help imagine that this might have been the company he kept at the time (or the company he wished he kept!). The novel came out before his big break in theatre, so it could very well have been a failed play that he turned into a book to earn some fast money - it isn't a bad effort. I was suitably engaged to plough through the novel in a couple of days, which is very fast for me. Some of the characterisations are a tad stereotypical, but none of them are boring or comical. The plot develops nicely, albeit a bit conveniently, and I think this is down to Axelrod's original intent of it being a play.
It's a pity he didn't write anymore crime novels of this type because he might have turned out a classic with further attempts. For me, this one, although very enjoyable, doesn't reach the quality of some of the bigger names such as Brewer and Marlowe. However I would recommend it if you want a fix of a well written fifties noir crime story set in New York.
Ebook Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Ebook Date: November 2011
Let me make it clear that the publishers of Hard Case Crime books introduced me to Crime novelists and books that I might never have known about. This range of books and the Facebook Group Men's Adventure Paperbacks of the 20th Century are the reason I got back heavily into noir and genre fiction a few years back.
Although I had always greatly admired Chandler and Hammet, I never had the opportunity or knowledge to seek out or source more books in a similar vein. It wasn't until I saw some of their great covers on the bookshelves of a Waterstones in central Manchester that my interest was able to be satisfied by new stories by Block, Westlake and Goodis. This lead me to searching the internet with the names of some of the authors, and suddenly I was finding reviews by bloggers, articles on web-sites and reading posts from people on Facebook talking about the same kinds of books, their authors and other types of novels I might like. Joining the brilliant Facebook Group Men's Adventure Paperbacks of the 20th Century was a turning point and really opened my eyes to the fact that so many other stories were being published in eBook format and even reprinted in paperback by other publishers such as Black Gat.
Blackmailer by George Axelrod, was reprinted by Hard Case Crime in 2007 with cover art by Glen Orbik. It was the thirty-second book to be issued by them, and is presented as being 'complete and unabridged' (although at only just over two hundred pages, unabridged is not much of a stretch). It was his only published crime novel.
George Axelrod was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer and film director from New York whose most influential period of output was during the fifties and sixties. he was the son of a real estate agent and a silent film actress. After serving in the Armed Forces during the second world war he went into radio, working on scripts and eventually worked his way into television.
His break came with the 1952 play The Seven Year Itch, famously made in to a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe. This was followed by another succesful play turned into a 1956 film, but the result pretty much abandoned all of Axelrod's ideas and characters (with the exception of the role played by another platinum blonde, Jayne Mansfield, who got to play the part both on stage and screen). He would be involved with Monroe again as screenwriter for 1956's Bus Stop.
By the late fifties and sixties he had become one of the best paid screenwriters in Hollywood, also nominated for his screenplay of Breakfast at Tiffany's (I'm surprised that Hard Case Crime didn't put this on the cover blurb of their edition). He also adapted Richard Condon's novel of The Manchurian Candidate into a 1962 screenplay starring Frank Sinatra (more on Sinatra next time). In his later career he had involvement in the screenplays of the novels The Holcroft Covenant and The Fourth Protocol.
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| George and Marilyn on the set of Bus Stop, 1956 |
Blackmailer is a typical first person narrative crime noir novel of the fifties. It concerns the story of Dick Sherman, a partner in a small independant New York publishing company whose biggest selling success has been a crossword puzzle book by an alcoholic woman who loves to frequent the trendy bars and restaurants downtown. Sherman is visited by your classic femme fatale, who claims to be selling the last manuscript of a Nobel Prize winning author, Charles Anstruther, recently killed by his own hand while cleaning a rifle (yeah right). The only thing is, she needs a fast sale and cash.
Sherman doesn't bite and says he needs to look into things first. Later he receives a phone call from an agent called Max Shriber also claiming to have the one only copy of Anstruther's final novel. The next day he gets a visit from the femme fatale, Jean Dahl, pushing for a deal. Suddenly two men break in to his apartment and the pair are forced to watch as the heavies tear Sherman's place apart looking for something. Dahl escapes, but Sherman is left alone and comes out worse for wear.
Next day Sherman is attending a swanky New York socialite party held by Walter Heinemann (it's part of the job) when he bumps into an old flame who is now a famous film actress, Janis Whitney. They had met a few years back when Sherman was a struggling screenwriter, fallen in love, but gone their seperate ways. Also at the party is Dahl, trying to avoid him. During the night Sherman gets involved with one of the girls. And then someone dies.
Sherman is left with a mystery to solve. He wants the manuscript, but it's clear there has been some shady dealings surrounding its acquisition - and Anstruther's death is just too strange to be true.
Axelrod produces a compact, fast-paced and fascinating crime story. It is also a claustraphobic affair. Due to the limited word-count he restricts the plot to a very small number of settings, with some being revisited on a number of occasions. I guess that's the screenwritier in him, potentially limiting the number of set-ups required if this were adapted into a stage play or motion picture. This is felt in the dialouge and descriptions too, short sentences and snappy one-liners.
There is no mistaking that there is a lot of Axelrod in this book; a failed screenwriter, famous starlets, stage actors and actresses, socialites and seedy gangsters. You can't but help imagine that this might have been the company he kept at the time (or the company he wished he kept!). The novel came out before his big break in theatre, so it could very well have been a failed play that he turned into a book to earn some fast money - it isn't a bad effort. I was suitably engaged to plough through the novel in a couple of days, which is very fast for me. Some of the characterisations are a tad stereotypical, but none of them are boring or comical. The plot develops nicely, albeit a bit conveniently, and I think this is down to Axelrod's original intent of it being a play.
It's a pity he didn't write anymore crime novels of this type because he might have turned out a classic with further attempts. For me, this one, although very enjoyable, doesn't reach the quality of some of the bigger names such as Brewer and Marlowe. However I would recommend it if you want a fix of a well written fifties noir crime story set in New York.
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