The Vengeance Man / Park Avenue Tramp / the Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed: A Trio of Gold Medals [Paperback]

Dan J. Marlowe (Author), Fletcher Flora (Author), Charles Runyon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 2007

VENGEANCE MAN: Jim Wilson has a problem. His rich wife takes a fiendish pleasure in banging every guy in town. But Jim has a plan. He hires a detective to follow her. And the next time Mona steps out on him, he's ready. Because Jim is a man with a bigger plan than dealing with an unfaithful wife. Jim is thinking big he wants power, he wants respect, and if he can pull this one off, he just might be able to get it. Trouble is, the plan has to start with murder.

PARK AVENUE TRAMP: During one of her blackouts, Charity McAdams Farnese walks into a downtown bar named Duo's and into the life of Joe Doyle, second-rate piano player and a man with a bum heart. Yancy the bartender knows that she's trouble, a rich girl with an itch, but Joe won't listen. All he knows is that Charity wants to love him. But Charity has a husband Oliver Alton Farnese. Oliver is a creature of habit and allows Charity her flings. But when this fling turns serious, Oliver has his own way of dealing with the situation.

THE PRETTIEST GIRL I EVER KILLED: Accidents happen, but the town of Sherman seems to have more than its fair share of the fatal kind. Someone falls into a well, another drowns, another is killed by an exploding stove. Curt Friedland comes back to town to clear his brother of murder, convinced there is more to all these deaths than mere coincidence. Enlisting the aid of Velda, whose sister was supposedly murdered by Curt's brother, the two of them gradually begin to attract the attention of a very ingenious killer, a man well versed in the game of Death.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Three long-out-of-print novels originally published by Gold Medal Books in the 1950s and 1960s are reprinted here. Taking them in reverse order, Charles Runyon's The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killedis about a man determined to prove his brother is innocent of murder and who winds up in the crosshairs of the real--and manically determined--killer. Fletcher Flora's Park Avenue Tramplives up to the seediness of its title by telling the story of a married woman who falls in love, and her husband, who usually puts up with her wandering eye, decides he's taken quite enough. These two novels (by authors who are, sadly, largely forgotten today) are beautiful examples of pulp fiction: sardonic, fast paced, and tightly plotted, with tough-speaking men and beautiful, deceptive women. But it is Marlowe's magnificent The Vengeance Manthat is this three-in-one book's headliner, and all by itself it's more than worth the price of admission. The tale of a man so hungry for power and status that he will let no one, including his own wife, stand in his way is just plain riveting. Brutally violent, sexually explicit, and completely wicked, the novel reads like Marlowe was tapping directly into the dark side of his mind, the place where all the secret fantasies live, and where there is no such thing as inhibition or self-control. The novel is a masterpiece and deserves--no, demands--to be read by every mystery fan. David Pitt
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Review

"The Vengeance Man is his second best book, behind only The Name of the Game is Death. The corruption of virtually every important character in the book is thorough." --Charles Kelly, from his introduction

"Flora had remarkable range, successfully producing everything from hardboiled tales to police procedurals to straightforward whodunits to light whimsy to mainstream fiction. This range, as well as his abundant skills as a storyteller, is clearly in evidence in Park Avenue Tramp." --Bill Pronzini

"Charles Runyon wrote some of the most innovative and powerful paperback originals in the 1960s and 1970s. As a former crime reporter, his books have a savage reality; as a fiction writer, he is both grim and lyrical by turns. He deserves major rediscovery." --Ed Gorman

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Stark House Press (October 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933586141
• ISBN-13: 978-1933586144
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,468,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A 5 and Two 4's, February 24, 2008

By 

Jeff (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Vengeance Man / Park Avenue Tramp / the Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed: A Trio of Gold Medals (Paperback)

Stark House is to be commended for bringing out this compilation of noir fiction from the 1950's and 60's.

The first book, The Vengeance Man, is a 5 star effort with shamelessly selfish characters engaging in the typical noir web of intrigue that leads to bad outcomes at the end for all. The characters are well drawn, the dialog is tight, and the ending fully completes the circle drawn by the author.

I rate the second and third books 4 strong stars. Park Avenue Tramp, the second book has characters that are exceptionally well developed and elicit great sympathy. However, the plot borders on the melodramatic and is far too predictable. Still, the writing is deft and characterizations rich.

The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed is a bit misleading as it is seldom told from the killers' point of view. However, there is a heck of a plot here, which one can only appreciate at the end when it has all played out. Unfortunately, the characters are less well drawn than either the first two books.

All that said, this book was a great way to while away a rainy weekend.

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun novels done a disservice by sloppy editing, January 8, 2010

By 

Baron Von Cool - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Vengeance Man / Park Avenue Tramp / the Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed: A Trio of Gold Medals (Paperback)

This Trio of Gold Medal paperback reprints definitely did make me want to read more by authors Dan J. Marlowe, Fletcher Flora and Charles Runyon. All three of these guys can write! I really loved Park Avenue Tramp with each chapter told from a different character's perspective. I love books like that, whether it's George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) or Jim Thompson's The Criminal or The Kill-Off. Park Avenue Tramp was reminiscent of despair master David Goodis at his best. The characters are so doomed and desperate for love it hurts, yet you can't help but root for them to find some small measure of happiness in their bleak existence. The Vengeance Man reminded me a lot of Thompson's Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me; like them, it tells the story of a ruthless yet somehow likable redneck murderer in the first-person. The first few pages were pretty badly written; so hard to get into that I almost didn't bother to finish it (in fact, I saved it for last after making two aborted attempts), but I'm glad I came back to it because the story (and writing style) quickly warmed up and became red-hot after the first few clunky pages. The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed doesn't spend much time telling the story from the killer's perspective but it's still a fun whodunnit (and why) set in a sleepy redneck town. Unfortunately, the climax ends up being like a really good Lifetime Movie-of-the-Week (if there is such a thing) so I'd say that made it the weakest story of the three. Still enjoyable but not noir at all.

All three novels are fun reads but publisher Stark House needs to be reprimanded for their abysmal editing; typos are consistent throughout. For example, "be" is substituted for "he" and "clown" for "down," so you end up being yanked out of a perfectly good story by ridiculous lines like "be burned the house clown" instead of "he burned the house down." You also get lines like "the car turned the comer" instead of "...turned the corner" and "she angled the minor so I could get a look at myself" instead of "she angled the mirror..." This is my first Stark House book and the only thing that impressed me was their excellent choice of novels to reprint in this collection. I've been badly burned by Black Mask's series of reprints before (all horribly formatted with awful covers on top of all the typos!) so I was hoping for more from Stark House. Their books certainly look more professional, being nicely formatted and (mostly) sporting decent covers but so many typos makes me think twice about buying another book from them. Still, I'll probably give Stark House another chance. Wild to Possess / A Taste for Sin (Stark House Noir Classics) looks pretty cool...