Stark House unearths rare Harry Whittington noirs

As a crime fiction fan who feels as if he is just now scratching the surface of the genre’s history thanks to folks like Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime and authors Craig McDonald, Bill Crider and Ed Gorman, I know I have a lot of catching up to do. The folks at Stark House Press, or rather, publisher Greg Shepard, are helping and/or adding to that task by unearthing some lost classics. Stark House’s latest find is a trio of books by Harry Whittington, rightly called “the King of the Paperbacks” (Note right off the bat that this is not the same Whittington who was shot in the face by Dick Cheney).

Whittington wrote around 200 books in his life (1915-1989), and while they’re hard to track down, they are worth it. Stark House makes it easy to dive in, gathering three in one new book: To Find Cora, Like Mink Like Murder and Body & Passion. Before diving into those, a little history, thanks to David Laurence Wilson, the man who found these books and, in the case of at least one, significantly edited it to return it to Whittington’s original form.

In an illuminating essay that reads a bit like bracing crime fiction itself, “Harry and his Bastard Children,” Wilson details his quest to identify and locate 39 books Whittington alluded to but never revealed. Midway through his career, Whittington signed a deal wherein he would write one 60,000-word novel each month for $1,000. He did this for 38 or 39 months (reports seem to vary). He wasn’t proud of these, and they certainly wore on him: “The novel a month with the other work I was trying to do, plus the tensions and the debts, exhausted me. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically. I cried at weather reports,” he wrote in the essay, “I Remember It Well,” which was printed in 1980s Black Lizard reprints of his books.

Wilson recounts his efforts to locate these books, and I won’t spoil it by sharing details, but suffice to say much of his effort was rewarded. One of the books he uncovered is the second one in this volume, Like Mink Like Murder. Rejected by U.S. publishers, it was issued in a different form in France in 1957 as Ta’s Des Visions! loosely translated as, “you’re seeing things.” It made it to English audiences in yet another form as Passion Hangover in 1965 (under the pen name J. X. Williams). Wilson edited it for this edition, trying to capture Whittington’s original intent: “Distracting add-ons were removed. it was a feat of subtraction, bringing Like Mink Like Murder into the main current of Harry’s storytelling. Everybody was always ‘gazing’ and ‘srugging’ in the (1965) novel. You will find less of that here.” Wilson cut it from 55,000 words to 36,000, and the result is a taut thriller that does everything a Whittington book should do, placing an average guy who has made some dumb choices directly in the path of trouble, and then watching him try to extricate himself.

The other books, while not as rare, certainly were difficult to obtain before now and are real finds. To Find Cora is a 1963 book original published under the misleading title, Cora is a Nympho! (They loved their exclamation points back then), while Body & Passion was published in 1952 under the pen name Whit Harrison (one of several, including Harry White,Hallam Whitney and Henri Whittier used by Whittington).

All three are great reads if you’re a fan of 1950s and ’60s pulp. When you’re done with those, Stark House has an earlier book that collects two more Whittington’s: A Night for Screaming and Any Woman He Wanted. Others are available if you dig. I picked up Web of Murder online, and grabbed Ticket to Hell on a recent visit to Once Upon a Crime in Minneapolis. Yes, that means I’ve only read five out of nearly 200, but it also means that any time I want a quick dose of vintage crime fiction, there will be plenty from which to choose.