Short Story: The Case of the Wandering Redhead by Leigh Brackett

I’d never read Leigh Brackett until now, and I’m glad I finally did. I discovered her short story, The Case of the Wandering Redhead, in the February 1951 issue of New Detective Magazine and thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is the introduction to the story.

“Here is the most ruthless man you’ve ever met—a filler whom death could not soften nor bullets stop—yet whose relentless fists battered to their last futile gesture that softest thing a man ever finds—the heart of a woman in love. It is with a definite sense of accomplishment that we welcome Miss Brackett to these pages—which many of you will find unforgettable!”

The “ruthless man” is Marty James, a territorial gangster who lives by his guns and fists and serves as the story’s narrator. He is hopelessly in love with Sheila Burke, a stunning redhead he is determined to marry, even though she detests the very idea. Sheila rejects him outright—just as decisively as he would gun down an adversary. And she has every reason to want nothing to do with him.

“Can I get it through your head? I hate you, Marty. I hate everything you stand for. All I want out of life is decency and peace and maybe a little happiness. You can’t give me any of them.”

But Marty has no intention of leaving Sheila alone. In fact, he is trying to force her into marriage when his sidekick summons him away on urgent business, only to betray him to a rival gangster eager to seize his territory. Marty fights and shoots his way out of captivity before returning to Sheila, carrying a cracked rib and two bullet wounds in his thigh.
 
"Six flights, with thin snow beginning to fall, thinking of Sheila’s voice saying, There’s blood on you, Marty. You’re not in my world.

"I thought, All right. That’s the way it is, Sheila. That’s the way we’ll play it. I was colder than the snow, and numb."

The Case of the Wandering Redhead is a cracker of a story. Its two central characters, Marty and Sheila, are vividly drawn. Marty may be a ruthless gangster, but he is also, in his own words, "human enough to go crazy over a girl."

"I looked at her. She was beautiful. She was like something the wind might cut out of a snowbank, with the red fire of her hair on top. Her eyes met mine, and there was an awful coldness in them, like I’d killed the spark inside her."

The story is a fine example of hard-boiled crime fiction from the Golden Age, though I still have plenty to explore and read in the genre.

Book Review: Stone: M.I.A. Hunter by Stephen Mertz

Stone: M.I.A. Hunter by American thriller writer Stephen Mertz is the first novel in the adrenaline-soaked Mark Stone: MIA Hunter series, which spans seventeen books. The series was created and plotted by Mertz, who collaborated with Joe R. Lansdale, Michael Newton and Bill Crider on the novels. Mertz and Newton also wrote several instalments of Mack Bolan: The Executioner, the long-running action series created by Don Pendleton.

My Kindle edition of Stone M.I.A. Hunter is a reprint of the first M.I.A. Hunter novel, retitled Leave No Man Behind and published in September 2017. 

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As the series title suggests, the M.I.A. Hunter is Mark Stone, a tough-as-they-come former Green Beret whose mission in the years following the Vietnam War is to locate American POWs forgotten by the government and officially listed as MIA or KIA, and bring them home. He knows he cannot rescue them all, but he is determined to save as many as he can.

Stone conducts his MIA-hunting missions in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos, and in other trouble spots around the world, accompanied by two trusted and battle-hardened companions: the six-foot-four Texan Hog Wiley and former British commando Terrance Loughlin. They rarely question Stone or his decisions, even when they lead them straight into hell and force them to fight their way out. Their loyalty to one another is absolute. 

Although Stone works for the CIA in an unofficial capacity, he often operates independently through Stone Investigative Consultants, a Los Angeles-based private investigation agency that provides a convenient cover for his missions.

M.I.A. Hunter begins in the Laotian jungle. Stone and his men, aided by anti-communist Laotian guerrillas, rescue a US Navy pilot and several other POWs who have been held by the Viet Cong since the end of the war. After fighting their way through more than a hundred miles of hostile territory, they finally reach their pickup point. But the waiting helicopter brings an unwelcome surprise: CIA operative Alan Coleman, a man with an agenda of his own. Coleman despises Stone and promptly places him and his companions under arrest for violating US law—or, as Stone sees it, for making the intelligence community look bad.

Back in L.A., Stone overcomes his legal hurdle with the help of Carol Jenner, a close friend who works for the Defence Department in Washington, and a sharp lawyer. Out on bail, he helps the widow of a Vietnam comrade rescue her teenage son from a Mexican drug cartel and set him on the right path. Just when he’s hoping for some MIA action, a badly wounded stranger turns up in his garage with shocking news before dying: Rosalyn James, an army nurse and the love of his life—believed killed in a Vietnam medevac—is still alive. For nearly fourteen years, she has been held captive on the Laos–China border by a brutal, torture-loving drug lord known only as the General.

Stone goes back with Wiley and Loughlin, in what could well be the most important MIA rescue mission of his life.

Stone: M.I.A. Hunter delivers nonstop, edge-of-the-seat action. Mark Stone and his team use weapons and hand-to-hand combat with lethal efficiency. It’s classic vigilante fiction where the heroes are near-invincible. They are men of honour, integrity and sacrifice. For many readers, including myself, it works because it satisfies a simple sense of justice—someone has to uphold it, even if only in fiction.

Stephen Mertz does not disappoint in telling the story of the MIA hunter and the forgotten war heroes he brings home. I will be reading more books in the series.

Book Review: Drink with the Devil by Jack Higgins

I read Drink with the Devil—the fifth appearance of Jack Higgins' trademark hero Sean Dillon—before the lockdown and decided to finally review it during my sixth month of working from home. Somehow, I always seem to pick up a Higgins novel to revive my blog every few months. Maybe it's because he is my favourite action-thriller writer and also one of my comfort reads.

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In Drink with the Devil (1996), Higgins offers a glimpse into Dillon's early life—first as a disillusioned IRA assassin, then as a skilled mercenary for the PLO and the Israelis, the KGB and the Red Brigades, and finally as an operative for a highly secret British intelligence unit answerable only to the prime minister.

The story begins in 1985, London.

The IRA sends Sean Dillon—posing as Martin Keogh—to team up with legendary Loyalist militant Michael Ryan and his young niece Kathleen. Together, they hijack a truck carrying £50 million worth of gold bullion. The IRA wants to prevent Ryan from using the gold to buy arms and ignite a civil war in Northern Ireland. Fortunately for Dillon, things do not go according to plan. One night, while he and Ryan are transporting the bullion across the Irish Sea aboard a hired boat, the crew attempts to seize the treasure for themselves. The resulting confrontation ends with the boat being blown up and the gold plunging to the bottom of the rough sea.

Cut to 1995, New York State.

Michael and Kathleen have vanished from the radar of both the IRA and British intelligence. The gold has never been recovered. Michael is serving a 25-year sentence in a New York State prison for a botched bank robbery and the shooting of a police officer. Kathleen, now working as a nurse at a nearby hospital, visits him every day. Living under the names Liam and Jean Kelly, they are believed to have died years earlier. 

But news of the lost bullion reaches the mafia family of Don Antonio Russo, who strikes a deal with Michael and Kathleen: a share of the gold—now worth £100 million—in exchange for their freedom. The discovery also attracts the attention of the American and British intelligence services, the president and the prime minister, and the IRA.

Enter Sean Dillon. The former IRA hitman is given a single mission: prevent the gold from jeopardising the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland. A decade after their last encounter, he comes face to face with his old friends Michael and Kathleen once again—and that is where the real twists begin.

While I haven't read many of the nearly two dozen Sean Dillon novels, I can say that Drink with the Devil is not one of his best. The story moves at a steady pace and has enough action and dialogue to keep the pages turning, but the plot felt rather flimsy. At times, it seemed as though even an amateur could have got away with stealing the gold. I also found it hard to believe that British intelligence could not trace either the missing bullion or the whereabouts of Michael and Kathleen. They could hardly have disappeared without a trace.

In Jack Higgins' defence, however, Dillon, his boss Brigadier Charles Ferguson, who heads the secret unit known as the Prime Minister's Private Army, and Special Agent Hannah Bernstein do not enter the picture until much later. Their story starts in 1995, when the tale of the Irish Rose lying beneath the Irish Sea begins.

Drink with the Devil has all the hallmarks of Higgins' simple, direct and conversational storytelling style. The characters—including the appearance of his other endearing hero, Liam Devlin—and the charming Lake District setting in northwest England, with its pubs and cafés frequented by Republicans and Loyalists alike, make the novel a fairly entertaining read. As in many of his IRA-themed novels, Higgins weaves the Northern Ireland conflict and its assorted players into the narrative. As a history buff, I found those political and historical undercurrents particularly interesting.

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses, it is always a pleasure to read Jack Higgins.

How a bus chase became an accidental film festival

Last Thursday, February 6, I learnt an important lesson: if you've crossed fifty, never run to catch a bus. Instead, wait for the next one, take an autorickshaw or call an Uber. 

That evening, I ran, ducked, leaped and dodged like an African gazelle to catch a bus leaving the railway station in suburban Mumbai, when my knees buckled and I nearly fell. A sharp pain shot through my leg, as if someone had struck me hard with a stick or fired a bullet into my calf. A couple of passersby helped me up and I managed to hail an autorickshaw home. By then, I was in agony and fighting back tears.

The injury forced me to stay home—or rather, work from home—for nearly two weeks. I was advised complete rest: no travel, no unnecessary movement, and no yoga either. The physician didn't think it was a tear and therefore didn't recommend an x-ray or scan. He prescribed ice and heat packs, painkillers and anti-inflammatory medication, a pain-relieving balm, my trusted homoeopathy, and plenty of pampering from the family. The calf is still sore, but it is much better.

With little to do, I spent my days at home reading, watching movies and listening to old music. Here is a recap of the films, mostly from Netflix and a few from cable TV.

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Red Joan, 2018: Loosely based on a true story, the film follows widow Joan Stanley (Judi Dench), who is interrogated by British intelligence decades after allegedly passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets during WWII. Convinced that she was acting in Britain's best interests, Joan believes that maintaining a balance of power between the Americans and the Soviets would help preserve peace. Told largely through a series of flashbacks, Red Joan makes for an interesting watch.

Beirut, 2018: Set in war-torn Beirut in the 1980s, the film follows Mason Skiles (Jon Hamm), a widowed and washed-up former US diplomat who is drawn back to Lebanon to negotiate the release of a friend and colleague being held hostage by a PLO faction. I liked the film partly because I have followed events in the Middle East since the 1980s.

We Bought A Zoo, 2011: Rich widower Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) and his children buy a country estate, only to find that the deal includes the zoo that comes with it. The film also stars Scarlett Johansson as his love interest and Thomas Haden Church as his brother. Based on the book by Benjamin Mee, We Bought A Zoo is a warm and enjoyable family drama. 

The Kominsky Method, 2018: This is the kind of story I'd like to write. The series follows two ageing friends—acting coach Sandy Kominsky (Michael Douglas) and his longtime agent Norman Newlander (Alan Arkin)—as they navigate the ups and downs of life together. With humour, wit and warmth, they confront old age, cynicism, loneliness, illness and personal loss. It was one of the best things I watched on television during my enforced stay at home.

Lucky, 2017: Harry Dean Stanton was apparently 91 when he played Lucky, a reclusive Navy veteran living in a small Arizona town. The film follows his rigid daily routine until one day he collapses at home. Although remarkably healthy for his age, the incident forces him to confront the realities of ageing and mortality. Lucky offers a profound insight into one man's philosophical journey and features some memorable dialogue along the way. Stanton, who died before the film's release, looks every bit his age, and that makes the story poignant from the start.

The Big Short, 2015: Another true-life story about the 2007–08 US financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of the housing market. Remember subprime mortgages? This one largely went over my head, though it is based on Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

The Hard Way, 2019: Payne (Michael Jai White), a retired soldier turned bar owner, travels to Romania to avenge the death of his brother, a secret operative. He finds a capable ally in Mason (Luke Goss), his brother's former teammate. Avoidable.

Boy Erased, 2018: Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges), the son of preacher Marshall Eamons (Russell Crowe) and Nancy Eamons (Nicole Kidman), is forced into a church-backed gay conversion programme. I found the film rather disturbing. How can parents do such a thing to their children? Accepting and loving one's child should never be a parental issue. The film's emotional climax comes when Jared tells his father: "I'm gay, and I'm your son. And neither of those things are going to change. Okay? So let's deal with that!" By that point, it is hard not to wonder who really needs 'conversion' therapy? The film is based on Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family by Garrard Conley.

In the end, what began with a painful dash for a bus turned into an accidental film festival at home.