Before Harlequin became exclusively a romance publisher it released the same sort of mix as most of the other pulp houses of the day, typified by hardboiled thrillers with garishly suggestive covers. To honour its 60th anniversary, the firm has released half a dozen of those early titles in facsimile editions. They've matched the paper (even the smell!), the stained edges -- everything except the price (although I was content enough to lash out $6.99 for this one).

James Hadley Chase was author of the much better known No Orchids for Miss Blandish, the first film version of which scandalized at least one nation, 'way back when. He was one of those British authors who attempted to mimic the American hardboiled pulp style using a phrase book and a copy of Websters. So far as I know, none of these authors were actually any good -- Peter Cheyney was the other major name -- but in their own clunkily written fashi0n they had a certain odd charm, assuming you weren't put off by the body count and the appalling moral the stories seemed to be trying to convey. So I read I'll Bury My Dead with little more in mind than a nostalgic wander down Memory Lane . . . and I was absolutely right to have kept my expectations in check.

Plot? Oh, yes, it does have one of those. Nick English is an extraordinarily rich entrepreneur whose barely less thuggish and corrupt than the villains. Someone bumps off his estranged, blackmailing brother. Even though Nick regarded his brother as waste of space, blood is thicker than water -- or is it that Nick takes the murder as a personal affront? -- and so off he goes in quest of vengeance.
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