Earlier this year I read Lawrence Block's TV tie-in novel
MARKHAM. Here's what I said about it on my blog:
This is a book I've had on my shelves for many years, and
I've finally gotten around to reading it. It's a tie-in
novel, based on a short-lived series that ran on NBC in 1959
and 1960, starring Ray Milland as New York-based private eye
Roy Markham. Now, if Ray Milland isn't exactly your idea of a
hardboiled private eye, well, I feel pretty much the same
way. Maybe a lot of other people did, too, and that's why the
series didn't last long. This novel didn't come out until
1961, after the TV series was over. I guess Belmont had it in
inventory already and decided to go ahead and throw it out
there. Lawrence Block wasn't a big name at the time, so that
wasn't the reason (as it probably was a few years ago when
this novel was reissued under the title YOU COULD CALL IT
MURDER, with no mention of the TV series or its original
Belmont edition).
As for the book itself, it's pretty standard PI stuff. As a
favor to a friend, Markham takes on a wandering daughter job.
The girl has disappeared from the fancy private university
she attends in New Hampshire. Markham starts investigating
and then gets roped into what seems to be a completely
different case - but you know the jobs will wind up being
connected, and sure enough they are. There's a lot of
small-town college scenes, some late Fifties/early Sixties
hipster stuff, a suicide that might be murder, some other
deaths that are definitely murder, blackmail, gangsters, and
lots of drinking and smoking. Everybody in this book spends a
lot of time taking out cigarettes, lighting up cigarettes,
putting out cigarettes, etc. Markham gets hit on the head and
knocked out. Eventually he untangles everything and exposes
the killer, of course.
Not surprisingly, despite the generic plot Block's use of
language is excellent, as always. Even though this book came
early in his career, he could already put sentences together
in a consistently interesting and entertaining fashion. I
didn't really see anything in this book that was a precursor
for, say, the Matt Scudder books. (There is a minor character
named Keller, however.) It's worth reading, although it's not
on the same level as his other early books that have been
reissued by Hard Case Crime.
James Reasoner
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