Bottled in Blonde

Rating:
Summary: The whodunits are involving and packed with life
Review: Bottled In Blonde is an old-fashioned detective collection features Peter Kane, a 'hard-boiled' detective who miraculously solves crimes while battling hangovers and hoodlums. Cave's sleuth is no righteous lawman but a human being with many failings but a gift for swift problem-solving. The whodunits are involving and packed with life.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Pulp, Aged-in-the-Bottle!
Review: Hugh B. Cave was one of the most prolific and popular authors writing during the pulp era of the 1930's and 1940's. While the bulk of his pulp output was in the form of so-called "weird menace" stories, Cave was also responsible for a not inconsiderable body of hardboiled detective fiction. Those latter stories, although relatively few in number, eventually saw print in two of the more famous pulp magazines of the era, BLACK MASK and DIME DETECTIVE. One of Cave's most notable creations from that period was Peter Kane, ace shamus of Boston's Beacon Detective Agency. Kane, an ex-police detective, was featured in nine separate stories that appeared in DIME DETECTIVE between 1934 and 1942. BOTTLED IN BLONDE collects for the first time all of the Peter Kane stories published during that time.

What set Kane apart from his contemporaries was the fact that he was a lush: a fall down, stop-by-the-side-of-the-road and puke drunk! Far from being concerned about his habit, Kane gloried in it. In fact, it was not until Kane really began to "get a load on" that his thought processes kicked into high gear. While Kane's alcoholic antics would in no way be considered politically or socially correct by today's standards, they make for some decidedly interesting and exciting reading.

While they just might offend the more tender sensibilities of some readers, the Kane stories in BOTTELED IN BLONDE are loads of fun. While obviously lacking the depth and sophistication of, say, Chandler or MacDonald, the characters in Cave's tales are engaging and the plots are intriguing. In one case, we see Kane solve the murder of two young women who are killed by flechettes dropped onto their heads from the roof of a nearby building. In another, our pickled PI looks into the weird goings-on at a haunted fun park. In "Ding Dong Belle," perhaps the strongest story in the collection, Kane races his arch-rival, Lieutenant Joseph Moroni, to uncover the killer of a rich socialite who is found dead under a ping pong table wearing a "ravishing white bathing suit." Failure here could mean the end of his best friend Captain Moe Finch's career with the Boston Police Department. The pompous and headline-loving Moroni is banking on using his success in this high-profile case to usurp his superior's job.

Although they vary somewhat in quality, the stories in BOTTLED IN BLONDE are consistently entertaining. Taken on their own terms, as pure escapist literature, these tales are almost certain to please both hardboiled devotees and more casual readers alike. They are, as Don Hutchison writes in his introduction to the collection, "all 100-proof and aged-in-pulp." Cheers! (James Clar - MYSTERY NEWS)