Originally titled Frenzy - no doubt the publisher reprinted the book with the new title (EXCLAMATION POINT and all) to attract the soft-core smut crowd - JUNKIE! is a straightforward whodunit that follows jazz musician Steve Harper as he tries to prove his ex-prostitute (ex-JUNKIE!) girlfriend is innocent of murdering his close friend and jazz horn mentor by tracking down the real killer. In typical pulp fashion, the bodies start piling up and the eyes of the law start focusing in on Steve as gets closer to the truth. Yes, there are junkies in the book, and there is talk of drug use and - GASP - nymphomania, but there isn't much lurid detail on either of these fronts, just a tour of the seedy underground of 1950's Washington DC. Jonathan Craig is the pen name of Frank E. Smith, who worked as a research analyst at the pentagon, which explains the atypical setting and occasional references to pentagon secretarial pools. If you can look past the misleading TITLE!, JUNKIE! is a decent pulp read. ( )

When you look up Jonathan Craig to see who he was, you see that Jonathan Craig is a pseudonym for Frank E. Smith and he is credited with having written over 100 books and perhaps 300 short stories and was one of the mainstays of the Manhunt magazine in the early to mid-1950's. His better known pulp-era books include So Young, So Wicked, The Case Of the Beautiful Body, The Dead Darling, Junkie, and Case of the Petticoat Murder. He was well-known for having written a police procedural series about the Sixth Precinct.

Junkie is a misleading title for this book and more than likely one that Craig's publisher stuck on the book to garner attention at the newsstand. The title and the original cover of the book lead one to believe that the story follows the downfall of a woman wracked by drugs and falling into oblivion. Instead, Junkie follows a more basic hardboiled pulp-era plot of a man and a woman framed for a murder that they didn't commit and racing against time to figure out who really committed the murder before the police and the bad guys catch up with them. It is a plot line that has been used in countless fifties-era pulp novels, but it is a plot that stands up well to the test of time and Craig has a different take on it than most writers of the era did.

Craig's hero in this book is not a detective or insurance agent. Rather, Craig's protagonist is Steve Harper, a jazz musician who works the various jazz clubs scattered around the Washington D.C. area. Nowadays, jazz musicians don't sound very scandalous, but in the fifties before rock'n roll really took off, jazz was very scandalous. Those clubs were where the action was, where the women were, and were the dope was. Harper has women chasing him left and right and had himself fallen into the temptation of dope. The undercurrent of this novel is the world of the jazz clubs, the world of call girls in Washington, D.C., and the world of temptation that assaults Harper. There is a driving jazz beat in the background of every page. The reader knows that it is nighttime in the city and that blondes in tight dresses are dancing to the jazz beat.

But it is a pulp novel and it is about murder and about being framed. As Craig explains in the opening line to the book, "It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better." If that doesn't give you the flavor of the book, then who knows what will.

The back story is that Harper had once had a relationship with Lois, but Lois moved on to her now-husband, who not being a jazz musician, had money and a future. Nevertheless, Harper was the man who Lois still had a torch for. After Lois, Harper met Kathy Mason. At the time, Kathy was a call girl and a junkie, but he had never met anyone like her. She was one in a million to him from the minute she walked into the hotel suite. He wanted to drive the highways with her with his arm around her. He got her back on her feet, away from the life, away from the dope. But, as the story opens, they had a falling out and were separated. Harper had fallen into temptation with another woman and Kathy couldn't stand it. He still carries a torch for her and it is all he can think about.

Harper comes home and hears jazz music playing in his apartment. Thinking he left the stereo on, he opens the door and sees that she was very blonde and very beautiful and that her clothes were all in a heap on the floor. But this is Lois, not Kathy, and he throws Lois out of the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Harper gets a call from his friend who is now a police officer, Mark, telling Harper to come to his friend Haynes' apartment because something has happened. Something, something like Haynes has been choked to death and the police received a telephone call from a woman who said she was Kathy Mason, that she had killed Haynes, and that she was going to kill herself. The officer asks Harper gently where Kathy is and what he knows and warns Harper that he better produce Kathy if he knows what is good for him.

Of course, any reader of pulp literature knows that Harper is not going to simply turn Kathy over to the police and let her be framed for this killing. Harper knows that Kathy, no matter what her past, is no murderer. Harper sets out to find Kathy and protect her and, on the way, stumbles into bar fights with Lois' husband who is upset about Lois being in Harper's apartment, knowing Lois really wants Harper. Harper stumbles over more bodies as a conspiracy is uncovered and he races against time to solve the mystery before the police dragnet closes in on him and Kathy.

It is an incredibly well-written book, deserving of far more attention and acclaim than it has received. The story moves at a breakneck pace as Harper races through the jazz clubs, reefer dens, garages, and apartments of the Washington, D.C. area trying to find Kathy and unearth how she is being set up and by whom. ( )

This book follows a basic hardboiled pulp-era plot of a man and a woman framed for a murder that they didn't commit and racing against time to figure out who really committed the murder before the police and the bad guys catch up with them. It is a plot line that has been used in countless fifties- era pulp novels, but it is a plot that stands up well to the test of time and Craig has a different take on it than most writers of the era did.

Craig's hero in this book is not a detective or insurance agent. Rather, Craig's protagonist is Steve Harper, a jazz musician who works the various jazz clubs scattered around the Washington D.C. area. Nowadays, jazz musicians don't sound very scandalous, but in the fifties before rock'n roll really took off, jazz was very scandalous. Those clubs were where the action was, where the women were, and were the dope was. Harper has women chasing him left and right and had himself fallen into the temptation of dope. The undercurrent of this novel is the world of the jazz clubs, the world of call girls in Washington, D.C., and the world of temptation that assaults Harper. There is a driving jazz beat in the background of every page. The reader knows that it is nighttime in the city and that blondes in tight dresses are dancing to the jazz beat.

But it is a pulp novel and it is about murder and about being framed. As Craig explains in the opening line to the book, "It was bad and he knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better." If that doesn't give you the flavor of the book, then who knows what will.

The back story is that Harper had once had a relationship with Lois, but Lois moved on to her now-husband, who not being a jazz musician, had money and a future. Nevertheless, Harper was the man who Lois still had a torch for. After Lois, Harper met Kathy Mason. At the time, Kathy was a call girl and a junkie, but he had never met anyone like her. She was one in a million to him from the minute she walked into the hotel suite. He wanted to drive the highways with her with his arm around her. He got her back on her feet, away from the life, away from the dope. But, as the story opens, they had a falling out and were separated. Harper had fallen into temptation with another woman and Kathy couldn't stand it. He still carries a torch for her and it is all he can think about.

Harper comes home and hears jazz music playing in his apartment. Thinking he left the stereo on, he opens the door and sees that she was very blonde and very beautiful and that her clothes were all in a heap on the floor. But this is Lois, not Kathy, and he throws Lois out of the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Harper gets a call from his friend who is now a police officer, Mark, telling Harper to come to his friend Haynes' apartment because something has happened. Something, something like Haynes has been choked to death and the police received a telephone call from a woman who said she was Kathy Mason, that she had killed Haynes, and that she was going to kill herself. The officer asks Harper gently where Kathy is and what he knows and warns Harper that he better produce Kathy if he knows what is good for him.

Of course, any reader of pulp literature knows that Harper is not going to simply turn Kathy over to the police and let her be framed for this killing. Harper knows that Kathy, no matter what her past, is no murderer. Harper sets out to find Kathy and protect her and, on the way, stumbles into bar fights with Lois' husband who is upset about Lois being in Harper's apartment, knowing Lois really wants Harper. Harper stumbles over more bodies as a conspiracy is uncovered and he races against time to solve the mystery before the police dragnet closes in on him and Kathy.

It is an incredibly well-written book, deserving of far more attention and acclaim than it has received. The story moves at a breakneck pace as Harper races through the jazz clubs, reefer dens, garages, and apartments of the Washington, D.C. area trying to find Kathy and unearth how she is being set up and by whom. ( )

Junkie concerns a jazz trumpeter trying to track down the murderer of his mentor and to un-frame his girlfriend, who woke up unconscious with the dead body, at the same time. After reading two Craig books in a row that have a lot of similarities, I will take a shot at identifying his strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

Strengths:
- He can write a good sentence. There's no fumbling around or anything that makes you cringe. In Alley Girl (Renegade Cop) he or his characters try to get profound a couple of times, but it isn't too jarring.
- There a lot of good interaction between the characters and some memorable scenes. The dialogue is good.
- There's an impressive noir atmosphere of excessive drinking, drugs, impossibly beautiful women, people getting hit on the head a lot, and questionable cops.

On the other hand, his weaknesses include:
- Plots that tie up much too nicely. If a character appears, you can bet he or she is somehow connected to the mystery at the center of the book and also related to the other characters, even if Craig never tells you how until the end of the book. This is really pretty annoying. The solutions to his mysteries aren't nearly as satisfying as taking the ride that gets us there.
- A lack of atmosphere, other than the overall noir feeling described above in strengths. Junkie takes place in Washington, DC, but there is really no feel for the place at all. It could be anywhere.

Junkie, like the first Craig book I read, has a lot of entertaining scenes and the story carries you right along. But at the end, you aren't quite satisfied. ( )