PlanetMonk Books

Ed Lacy (aka Len Zinberg) wrote numerous hardboiled pulp novels in the 1950’s and 1960’s. “Dead End” (also published as “Be Careful How You Live”) is a terrific hardboiled novel that alternates flashback chapters with a present-day story of a crooked cop hiding out in a secret place with a cool million bucks waiting for the headlines to die down.

The flashbacks do a fantastic job of sketching Bucky’s personal history, going back to his childhood and finding out the man he thought was the greatest father in the world was really not his father.
Like many of Lacy’s novels, Bucky not only goes on to become a police detective, but has some back history as a boxer and is a big, hulking guy ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone who gets in his way. The flashbacks take Bucky through his life, his sudden decision to enlist, his quickie marriage, his regrets at his marriage, and his career as a lowly-paid flatfoot walking a beat, that is, until he got noticed by Doc, an older detective who took his under his wing and taught him the ways of the world.
Like the protagonists of many pulp novels, Bucky has a one-way ticket to self-destruction, but the story is told from his point of view and, as the reader, you don’t see him as really a bad guy, just another Joe plodding along, trying to make things work.

This is a really terrific read, both from the perspective of the coming- of-age flashbacks to Bucky’s partnership with Doc. This is a highly recommended read.… (mehr)

If you are looking for high minded literature like Shakespeare or Dickens do not buy this book. If you are interested in wild trailer park sleaze pulp in the early sixties, then perhaps you found it. Robert Silverberg wrote this under an early pseudonym. Given the title and the premise, it is clear that this book was designed to be tittilating in an era before the internet.

Basically, an innocent newlywed moves into a trailer park and all the common prejudices about trailer parks ring true. All the men in the trailer park are on the prowl for this new girl. The older jaded women are trying to make time with her husband. After the booze starts flowing, everyone is jumping in and out of beds. It is, however, not altogether joyful for the protagonist as she ends up sad, jaded, disillusioned. It wasn't her intention to become a tramp. It's just that she got tired of watching her husband disappear into other women's trailers and wanted to get even with him. The book is almost like a warning label to be placed on trailer parks. This was probably quite risqué for the time period.

The book is definitely meant for adult reading and the step by step description of Lenore and Jack's wedding night leaves little to the imagination. Lenore is a little taken aback by the free and easy life of trailer folk and how couples seemed to get together right after meeting. The book
was published in 1961, a few years before the free wheeling sixties. It almost prefaces the excesses of that era. Life in the trailer park wasn't all roses for Lenore. Within a week, she found that Harriet still had designs on her husband -- their new marriage notwithstanding - - and within eight days, Lenore found that Jack had already been unfaithful with a young blonde who didn't think it was a big deal. Within nine days, Lenore too became an adulterer just to even the score. This was not the life she had dreamed of.
… (mehr)