This pair of hitherto hard-to-find mysteries come in a new volume from those very nice people at Stark House Press, the imprint specialising in new and classic crime fiction. Dixon is an author that seems really ripe for rediscovery, much of his work buried in the avalanche of often luridly illustrated paperbacks published by Fawcett in the 1950s. Here we have two very different books: a small town police procedural and a story of a recovering alcoholic and a reputed femme fatale in San Francisco’s high society.
I offer this review for Patti Abbott’s Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at her fab Pattinase blog and Bev’s Vintage Scavenger Hunt.
“We haven’t had a lynching in California in a good many years, but that’s no guarantee we couldn’t have one if you start walking around loose …” – Cry Blood
Both published by Fawcett in 1956, these two books offer a fascinating contrast in style and content. Cry Blood is a story of a man wrongly accused when a fourteen-year-old school girl goes missing the same weekend that he was away at a secluded cabin, unable to account for his whereabouts. First her shoes and then the rest of her clothes are recovered from his basement and soon he is being held for the crime and the whole town turns against him. Even his wife gives up on him immediately and as evidence stacks up against him, we have to decide if he is guilty or being set up – and if so, why and or course, by whom? The characterisation, despite a lot of naiveté on the part of the protagonist, is quite satisfying and complex – in the married couple we are given a compelling personal history that ends up having a bearing on the case as their inability to have children, due to a botched termination, is then used against the protagonist to suggest he was frustrated by this – and the couple’s subsequent lack of ‘marital relations.’ As the situation pushes the husband and wife further apart, she only seeing the situation from her own point of view in terms of loss of social standing, there is a hilarious scene in which her selfishness even gets the goat of a cop who thinks the husband is guilty:
“Mister,” he said slowly, biting off each word, “right alongside that restaurant is a cliff that drops three hundred feet straight down to the ocean. Policeman or not, by God, I’ll turn my back if you’d like to kick your wife over the edge of it.” – Cry Blood
It is a common theme – the small town that becomes a mob when it rounds on one of its own – but is handled very well and at various moments I certainly really shared the sheer anguish of the protagonist’s plight. The eventual resolution is a bit predictable as the hunter becomes the hunter, but there is a pleasing ambiguity in the depiction of the lynch mob mentality that is unexpected and welcome.
“He was certainly different from any other alcoholic she had ever known.” – Killer in Silk
Killer in Silk is a very different sort of book
, telling the story of an alcoholic writer who reaches rock bottom in San Francisco after running away from too many binges in Hollywood. He gets sent to Irene Wilson, a rich heiress who takes in drunks and helps them recover, apparently out of guilt for having driven her husband to drink – this before she accidentally shot him. But was it accidental? Of the two books I found this to me the most satisfying and, as I discovered from Donald Napoli’s ver informative introduction, it does seem to be much more in line with Dixon’s output which tended to focus on young men on the make causing a stir in rich society. Here we have a plot on which an author of tough and unsympathetic novels meets a member of the elite who may or may not be guilty of murder (imagine Patricia Highsmith or Ruth Rendell meets Claus von Bulow or Oscar Pistorius with the genders reversed) and result is highly compelling. Of the two novels in this collection, Killer in Silk is my favourite (despite the terrible title), playing to the author’s strengths in drawing strongly defined contrasts in high society, while also being a bit less conventional as we see the story from the point of view of both the broken protagonists. Both offer emotionally involving stories of men and women thrown into a chaos not entirely of their making – while the plot mechanics of the crime plots are not all that plausible, they are more than adequate and bring both stories to a satisfying climax, just like they were supposed to..
“You mean to tell me she keeps a scrapbook about her accidental killing of her own husband?” – Killer in Silk
This handsome volume has just been published in an omnibus edition by Stark House Press, and many thanks to them for supplying the review copy. In comes with a new introduction by Donald S Napoli, who previously reviewed both of these novels at his unmissable blog, Reading California Fiction. The book is available directly from Stark House Press and from all the usual outlets too – here are the details
Cry Blood / Killer in Silk
By H. Vernon Dixon
ISBN: 978-1-933586-79-3 (paperback), 292 pages, $20.95
www.starkhousepress.com/
I submit this review for Bev’s Golden Vintage Cover Scavenger Hunt, the two covers (the Stark House one is taken from the Fawcett original for Cry Blood), fulfilling the ‘two people’ and ‘blonde’ items:
Tipping My Fedora 
Kudos to you, Sergio, for sharing the work of someone we don’t know well enough. I really enjoy learning about new-to-me authors who really deserve more attention. Kudos, too, to Stark House for making these works available. And this looks like a nice example of the classic mystery, too. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Margot – really enjoyed both of these and meeting an author I had never heard of before.
Good stuff, Sergio — putting this one on my wish list. Have to love these Stark House doubles, too… saves me the trouble of tracking down not one but two of those hard-to-find old paperbacks. Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure Chris – I hope Stark House go on forever 🙂
These look fantastic. Stark House is doing a truly admirable job bringing back pulp classics like this from the dead. All power to them.
Right on brother! They are both very interesting for the way that the crime element is there right at the beginning but really doesn’t come back properly until the solution, simmering along behind all the character stuff in between, which is an approach I really approve of.
These do sound like great mysteries, Sergio. I had read about the author in Paperback Confidential, and it even mentions the Reading California Fiction website, but I had not looked into it at all. Very interesting. I will look out for this book. My local independent bookstore often has some Stark House books.
Thanks Tracy – a couple of really interesting reads I must say.
I really do like the sound of these two contrasting mysteries – good job flagging hem up here.
Cheers mate – they are very much products of their time, but undoubtedly superior ones.
The vintage is neither here nor there for me – they come across as entertaining, and that’s good enough.
Good man! 🙂
I have CRY BLOOD/KILLER IN SILK sitting near the top of my READ REAL SOON stack. I’m a big fan of STARK HOUSE as you’ll see in the coming weeks of FFB. A whole new audience now has access to their works.
Great stuff indeed – look forward to reading your posts George 🙂
Several of Dixon’s titles are also published by Prologue Books, which has Kindle editions at $4 (a lot cheaper than the prints). Enjoyed your double-feature review, Sergio. Killer in Silk sounds like one I would like.
Thanks Matt – I don’t have an e-reader yet, so for now it’s paper or nothing!
I have access to my housemate’s Kindles, but still don’t like the e-reader experience so much…I prefer even PDFs. Seems like the first one is imbued with the misogyny of too much of ’50s hardboiled, but I’ll buy its still a compelling read. Glad that Stark House, who are doing good work indeed, is sending bloggers review copies…I suppose I could feel sad no one’s sending me review copies, despite being A Friend to “Lost” Literature of some standing by now, but I sure did get my share of Mysterious Press and a few other items back in the day when reviewing for papers and ‘zines.
Thanks for that Todd – well, in the first book we have a ‘bad’ wife counterbalanced by a ‘good one’ – in the second we have roughly the same. It was a trope if the time (and of course still is a bit) but the men come off far worse (though admittedly for different reasons, there’s the rub). I shall send you the contact details at Stark!
Extremely interesting. I too had never come across this author, but you’ve made me want to read these books.
Thanks very much Martin, very kind.
Completely new to me too, but you make them sound terrific….
Thanks Moira – always glad to spread the good word 🙂
Fascinating stuff, Sergio. Both the books are intriguing and with good suspense.
Thanks Prashant – this volume was a very welcome surprise.
Cry Blood is based on the true story of the 1955-56 Burton Abbott Stephanie Bryan case. From Dixon’s viewpoint of the book’s protagonist, it’s clear he was among those who felt that Abbot was an innocent man who had been set-up to take the fall. It’s interesting in that Dixon would have been writing the book simultaneous to the events happening in the news then and as the trial was unfolding.
Abbott was executed under highly controversial circumstances the year after the publication, right? Certainly gives the book an extra edge – thanks for that Chip!