Book 17: House Dick

A brief bit of time away to start re-watching Battlestar Galactica from the beginning again now that it's finally wrapped caused a bit of a delay in finishing this incredibly short book by Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt.

The book was put out by the Hard Case Crime Library, a specialist line from Dorchester Publishing, the company responsible for the excellent Leisure Horror line, which has two books in competition for Stoker Awards this year (neither of which I've read and peeking through them didn't really stir much interest, but I'll check actual reviews to get past the marketing). Hard Case Crime re-introduces old crime and detective fiction which has been out of print and also publishes new works in the old styles. They offer a subscription service where you can get the books for $4 (plus $2 shipping) versus the list price of $7, which is how I get their books.

So far, I've been rather happy with the service. I've only been a member since late last year, so I've only gotten a handful of books, but all of them have been pretty excellent. This is the first one I've read for this project so I haven't really discussed the line before. But if you like "Noir" (which I don't think works as a fiction genre name), you could do much worse than looking into this line. For the moderns check out Money Shot, which is traditional genre conventions told with a female twist. As an aside if you want a real gut shot, check out Murdaland (site contains music).

"Not everyone gets to die at the Tilden. Poor people, they die where ever they can."

House Dick is the story of Novak, a hotel detective whose job it is to keep things under control, a function which now would most likely be contracted to an outside agency. But in 1961, he was all that stood between the poodle in room 403 and chaos.

The book is short, but excellently put together. It has a rich matron, her dead husband, missing jewels, mob heavies, the husband's mistress, the mistress's ex-con husband, a mescaline dealing quack, a few fights, a shoot out, a world weary detective who behaves in a smart, realistic way. While it manages to cram all of these elements into the short book (204 pages), the book never loses its way nor does it leave anything unresolved. There's some excellent dialogue and it's clearly written by someone familiar with DC and the loneliness inherent in a position like a hotel detective.

If you have a few hours to kill and just want a good, intellegent jaunt, you could certainly do worse than this.