Stark House Press Newsletter

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STARK HOUSE PRESS

Newsletter, Vol. 14, Number 5

May 2025

Lionel White published his first novel back in 1952, a rather lurid thriller called Seven Hungry Men. By 1967, 15 years later, he was still cranking out stories of murder, mayhem and hopeful heists and still competing well with anything else on the market. This month we’re reprinting two of these latter-day White crime novels, The Crimshaw Memorandum and Hijack.

This is the first paperback publication for Crimshaw, which was originally published by E. P. Dutton, and turned out to be one of White’s last hardbacks. Harry Crimshaw, who seems to have fallen from his boat, is presumed drowned. Lt. Richard Martingale is assigned to help an insurance investigator confirm the missing man. It seems simple enough, except that Martingale senses something wrong about the situation. Crimshaw’s wife, Marguerite, is set to receive $150,000 from his insurance policy, but seems curiously unconcerned about her husband. Crimshaw’s boss is outright hostile, more concerned for Marguerite than the missing Harry. Martingale’s casual assistance turns serious when the insurance man is severely beaten. Then it becomes personal when he himself is also attacked. But who could be behind these attacks… and why?

Hijack was first published as a paperback original in 1969, and it’s a heist to end all heists, and a hell of a plan. The four of them will kidnap the Boeing 707 that transports the old bills from L.A. to Denver for shredding. The easy part is taking over the plane. Scar, Handle, Sis and Dude are enough to manage the small number of passengers, with Red waiting for them at the landing. Dude, the Captain, flew in Vietnam, and has no problem piloting the plane to their desert rendezvous. The problem is the passengers. One of them is an alcoholic with an attaché case full of booze. One is a defecting scientist, another his CIA keeper. One of them has just robbed the bank where he is a teller. And one is a jet-setter with a bottle full of pills. What could possibly go wrong?

Lionel White

The Crimshaw Memorandum/Hijack

979-8-88601-141-8

$19.95

“White is an old pro—he doesn't waste a word or a minute.”—Kirkus Reviews.

Our second book for the month of May is Do You Know Me? And Other Aberrations by Bruce Elliott, a collection of quirky stories of murder, revenge and outright fantasy from the author of One is a Lonely Number.

Do You Know Me?: He only has one desperate need, to be known. He has asked many the question, but he never gets an answer. Now with his snap-knife in hand, he knows he has to try again to remove their masks, to see who they really are… and find someone who knows him at last.

Vengeance is Not Enough: First he loses his wife to cancer. Then, on the day they were going fishing together, his son Jimmy is killed by a hit-and-run driver. Now Timms is sitting in the doctor’s office, recovering from shock treatment—and trying to remember what day it is. But there are more shocks to come.

The Darkened Room: Garrow knows what it takes to commit the perfect murder. You just gotta arrange to be somewhere else. So he finagles his way into a drug bust. He figures ten days behind bars beats a murder rap. Yeah, it’s a perfect scheme alright.

Carnage in Calossa: A hophead, a girl and a human brute—they all spelled trouble for Tommy Winters. He should have been safe at sea instead of being on the beach in the worst pest hole in the South Pacific.

Death Lives in Brooklyn: Farrell is down to his last few coins when he witnesses a murder. But before he dies, the victim whispers something to him that changes his life forever.

These tales plus five more provide the perfect introduction to this most unusual storyteller. Elliott was a practicing stage magician who wrote several books on the subject. He also wrote 15 Shadow mysteries in addition to editing men’s magazines like Gent and Dude. He died relatively young in what some have called a death-by-cab suicide. As Nicholas Litchfield writes about him in his informative introduction, Elliott’s talents were wide-ranging, and he’s still very compelling today.

Bruce Elliott

Do You Know Me? & Other Aberrations

979-8-88601-143-2

$15.95

“…those of you on the fringes, happy with a loopy conceit and out-of-kilter inventiveness will find much to enjoy here.”— The Invisible Event

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already published ten volumes in our Film Noir Classic series but, yes, this month we offer #11: Night Cry by William L. Stuart, which was filmed by Otto Preminger as Where the Sidewalk Ends in 1950 with Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney and Gary Merrill. Night Cry is the story of a cop who makes one bad move…

Kendell Paine, a returned war hero, gets into a fight with another gambler, who is later knifed at their gambling club. It looks like Paine might be the guilty party. It’s Lt. Mark Deglin’s job to track him down. But Paine is in no mood for the third degree, and Deglin ends up accidentally beating him to death. Deglin knows he will never be considered for promotion with a killing on his record—accidental or not—so he sets out to cover it up. But Deglin doesn’t figure on Paine’s girl, Morgan, who is waiting for Paine to come back. She and Paine had argued that night but nothing so serious that he would completely disappear. And there’s Smith, the journalist who just won’t let the story go, and allies himself with Morgan. Now Captain Knight has put Deglin in charge of tracking down the missing man. As carefully as Deglin keeps covering his tracks, it all slowly begins to unravel.

Many changes were made in the transition from book to film, and Curtis Evans writes about them as well as Stuart himself in his introduction. Critics loved the book when it was first published in 1948, calling it “hard-bitten” and “boiling with action.” Don Crinklaw in Booklist had this to say about our new edition:

“Stuart seeks to spare us the romance by giving us a hard-edged detective seething with bitterness after losing a prized promotion. His attempts to hide the results of his sourness are the meat of this short novel and the writing is so rich it’s impossible to look away.”

It doesn’t get much more noir than this.

William L. Stuart

Night Cry (Film Noir Classic 11)

979-8-88601-153-1

$15.95

“The streets are dark and the pages are full of fog, rain, and shadows… a psychological noir thriller that grabs you from page one…”—August West, Vintage Hardboiled Reads

And finally, our Black Gat book of the month—our 70^th, no less—The Wicked Streets by Wenzell Brown. Brown was a mainstay of Gold Medal and Popular Library back in the 1950s, and his books pulled no punches. They still pack a whallop today.

Diane braves the jungle that is Times Square to be with Buzz. He’s beating the keys in a jazz combo tonight. But later he’s going to be peddling snow to the addicts in the neighborhood. To Diane, he’s everything exciting that she doesn’t have in her uptown life. She wants to be with him. He’s danger, a thrill she can’t resist.

But Buzz has got problems. Nucci is out of jail and he’s looking for him, his blade ready for revenge. Buzz stole Nucci’s territory, and put him behind bars. So no matter how he feels about Diane, avoiding Nucci is the primary concern. And he definitely feels for her—she’s got the life he wants for himself. But as Buzz aims for the heights, all he does is drag Diane into his own personal hell—where nothing but death waits on the wicked streets.

Wenzell Brown wrote a lot of juvenile delinquent fiction, one of his more famous books being Run, Chico, Run. This one doesn’t concern itself with wild youth so much as the world of hustlers, junkies and hipsters. Nearly 70 years later, it’s still a dark journey.

Wenzell Brown

The Wicked Streets (Black Gat #70)

979-8-88601-144-9

$12.99

“What lies behind a fairly innocent looking cover is a very dark book full of violence, sex, and drugs.”—GoodReads

As usual, we will be shipping the Lionel White novel automatically—and the Black Gat book to those with a standing order—to Stark House Crime Club members. Substitutions and additions are always welcome, but you really can’t go wrong with White.

And for those who enjoy a bargain, we got a handful of sale books below.

In the meantime, enjoy the new books of May, and we’ll be back next month with more criminous treasures…

Cheers,

Greg Shepard, publisher

Stark House Press

Besides our usual $7 website sale books, here are a few slightly damaged returns and overstock titles, offered as usual on a first come basis. If you’re interested in any of these sale books, write to [email protected]. You will be charged the sale price plus media mail shipping, and billed via Paypal (checks accepted, too).

The Body in the Bed/The Body Beautiful by Bill S. Ballinger - $5

Rogue’s Moon by Robert W. Chambers - $5

Seven Shoes by Mark Davis - $5

Death in the Reeds by John Gibson - $5

The Folly of Eustace & Other Satires & Stories by Robert Hichens - $5

Repeat Performance by William O’Farrell - $5

The Color Red by A. M. Potter - $5

Murder Needs a Name/Murder Needs a Face by Ruth Fenisong - $6

Murder in Monaco/Death’s Lovely Mask by John Flagg - $6

Wild is the Woman/Lovers Don’t Sleep by Lorenz Heller - $6

Bleeding Scissors/The Evil Days by Bruno Fischer - $7

Footsteps on the Stairs/The Troublemaker by Jean Potts - $7

The Cut of the Whip/Bring Me Another Corpse/Time Enough to Die by Peter Rabe - $7

Trouble Rides Tall/Cross the Red Creek/Desert Stake Out by Harry Whittington - $7

The Sailcloth Shroud/All the Way by Charles Williams - $7

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