Many people think the 1937 version is superior to this one, but I'm here to speak a good word for it. Oh, and they hired different actors, too. When The Prisoner of Zenda was remade, they just dusted off the old script, spiffed up the soundtrack, and filmed it in color. Back in 1952, Hollywood hadn't started to "reimagine" movies. Last week I did a post on the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda, and this week we have the 1952 version, which is the one I saw in the theater when I was a kid. He also wrote some Mafia novels and auto-racing novels for Signet that I haven't read. I read it long ago and remember nothing about it. Garrity did another one ( Cry Me a Killer) for Gold Medal before moving to Signet, where he published a private-eye novel about a character named Peter Braid. Not one of the best Gold Medals, but enjoyable enough and a quick read.
#THE PRISONER OF ZENDA BANTAM 1946 FULL#
Carey is hardboiled and tough, the book is full of action, and the resolution is very much of a Spillanean nature. Luckily he meets a hat-check girl named Sherry, who falls for him immediately, as often happens in this kind of book, and who helps him out. The cops are after Carey, the local rackets guys are after Cary, and it's all he can do to keep ahead of them. She claims she still loves him, and there's a passionate reunion, after which she turns up dead. He goes looking for her to get revenge, and after a long search (three years) he finds her in one of those Florida towns that crops up in a lot of paperback crime fiction, corrupt to the core. Finally he weakens, and almost as soon as he gets the boot, his wife leaves him. He's been honest for most of his career, but his wife is very demanding, and he needs more and more money. Max Carey is an ex-cop, booted off the force for taking kickbacks.
Kiss off the Dead was Gerrity's first novel, and it's very much in the Spillane vein. He was pals with Mickey Spillane, who helped him get into the writing game and who provided blurbs for some of Gerrity's later novels, which were put out by Spillane's paperback publisher, Signet. I love the reprints, but it's fun to meet new writers with interesting books. It's good to see Stark House taking a chance on original fiction. The final job and its results surprised me, although maybe they shouldn't have. She becomes more human and develops a relationship.Īll this might seem pretty standard, but it's done well, and it didn't give me any idea of where the book was headed. Along the way we find out more about her background, about why she killed the man in the hot tub, about her past. She has no real choice, so she does.įollowing that we see her training, her first job, which goes okay, and her second, which goes badly wrong. She thinks she's gotten away clean, but she's picked up by members of a shadowy government group known as The Enterprise, whose job is assassinations, and they want Smith to join. The story opens with Smith killing a man who's having fun in a hot tub. There's no way to talk about this book without giving away something that the author doesn't want you to know in the first chapter, but that's okay. " The lama replies, "That also, my son, is the doctrine of Shangri-La." : What's the secret of Shangri-La? When Conway says, "Perhaps the exhaustion of the passions is the beginning of wisdom. I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. Aside from that, this short novel kept me entertained all the way. There's nothing in the book to make him attractive in the least (or not to me, anyway). To me, that was the weakest part of the book, not that that the character didn't like the idea of Shangri-La but that the protagonist, Conway, has such an affection for a querulous and complaining young man. That didn't matter to me, however, because there are secrets and a well-developed plot, the conversations and ruminations were interesting, and the idea of Shangri-La is as appealing as ever to me, although not to one of the characters in the novel.
#THE PRISONER OF ZENDA BANTAM 1946 SERIES#
What follows after the plane sets down and the four passengers are rescued is mostly a series of conversations and ruminations. There's a prologue that is mostly a conversation between three old school chums, followed by an airplane hijacking. It also turns out that almost nothing happens in the novel. There's not likely to be a lot of suspense involved in the reading.
You've heard of it all your life because it was so famous at one time, even though it wasn't a success on its original publication. The problem with reading a book like this when you're my age is that even if you've never read it before or seen the movies, you know what it's about.
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