QUICK SHOTS: Hardman #1: Atlanta Deathwatch by Ralph Dennis

 

I've been in a reading slump, nothing to worry about it happens time to time. I start a new book, and it won't grab me. Maybe it's the books' fault, maybe it's my fault. But I had to get it squared away. I'm a read after all. So, I turned to my old buddy Jim Hardman and his old buddy Hump. 

Right out of his college days, my buddy and me ended up in Jacksonville Florida. I was still drifting in and out of colleges back then about to take up a criminal justice degree that would later turn out to be fairly useless. Well, expect maybe as a crime writer. Anyway, he wanted to go down to Florida for some sort of job fair and had a free ticket. I soaked up free booze and food, rode a monorail like that one in that Simpsons episode, hit the bookstores and loafed.

I had heard of the Hardman books before that from my lurking around the Thrilling Detective website. They sounded up my alley. I was on the lookout for something to bring up the James Crumley feeling that Joe R. Lansdale feeling. Something low-down and mean. That cynical 70s-thing that so many try to replicate but came easy back in the day. I hadn't really dipped my toe into the Men's Adventure world at the time, so the numbers on the covers worried me a bit. But I knew I liked private eyes and action and, hell, that's what it promised on the cover.

It was also before I really bought books online. I remember thinking spending four bucks on a book with free shipping sounded like a ripoff. the young me would certainly look cross at me for how much I've spent on online book purchases now. So, my purchase pool was small, and I never came across a Hardman book. But it turns out this bookstore was a good one and it had a whole stack of them, for something like two bucks a piece. What a score. 

After humping back to my hotel room with a bag of books and a few quarts of beer I read Atlanta Deathwatch while my buddy sat in seminar and my mind was blown. Ralph Dennis's work was something special. It was different, hard-boiled as hell but Jim Hardman himself wasn't a cartoon character. He lived and breathed, (and drank) he was fallible but got his man and was tough but knew his limitations. And his partner Hump was cool, confident and a real buddy. A good guy to have in your corner. They had a certain vibe or a certain music to them. They felt like a good Guy Clark album or a riotous live country show, hard-bitten with a few lines of pure poetry. Things I know well. 

What really struck me is, like Joe R. Lansdale's Hap and Leonard books is that they felt like men I knew and grew up with. Being from a small KS town, I didn't feel much connection to New York or L.A., but Atlanta didn't seem too far away, and the restaurants and bars seemed like they could be familiar. I really understood the small towns that Hump and Hardman would go to from time to time, which I imagine would be alien to some city folk. It was a nice change of pace.

So, I eventually tracked them all down, a few more added from a Gardner's Used Books in Tulsa with a few of Ralph's stand-alone books, one picked up on the road in a truck stop along with a few Bruno Rossi Sharpshooters, the rest on online. They were a secret to me then, a series of books that only I seemed to know about and dig. I read a good chunk of them while working as Pinkerton guard at an aircraft plant. Eventually Lee Goldberg found out he loved them too and got them reprinted and I wasn't alone, a lot of people found out how good Ralph was. 

Atlanta Deathwatch is the one I started with, and it's been the longest since I read it, so I pulled it off the shelf. It was a good choice; I read it with ease and enjoyment rather quickly. I forgot how rough and tumble this first one is, some of the edges are smoother (just a bit) as the series goes on. Maybe it's Ralph or Hardman getting slightly older, maybe its Marcy, Hardman's complicated girlfriend. But they're a tour of the mean streets of 70s Atlanta with detours to the rich dudes as Hardman and Hump investigate the death of a co-ed who was tangled up with The Man, a black mobster. There're beatings, killings, shoot-outs and sieges, you know all the good stuff. It's a twisty mystery to boot. It's really just a helluva book.

So, I'll probably re-read them again, this time fully in order (I had to read what I had the first time) and since I remember only the feelings not the plot by this point, it'll be as close as new to me as I can get. 

And my now traditional sign-off, my first novel Gunpowder Breath is available on Amazon as an eBook!

Me, Ralph Dennis and Hardman #8: The Deadly Cotton Heart

They're like an old bar-friends at this point, familiar on the surface but the details of past encounters are lost. That's the Hardman novels now. It's a wonderful thing, I almost get to read them again for the first time. Ralph Dennis's Hardman books were a turning point for me in a lot of ways. They made me realize that there might be good shit (real good shit) in those old paperbacks with numbers on the covers. They clued me in to detective novels in settings that weren't New York or L.A. And they taught me a lot about clean, tough writing with hard-bitten action that moves swiftly, makes sense but isn't too showy. They're all gems. Dennis should have been a major mystery writer after knocking out twelve of 'em in the FOUR YEARS. That's some damned fine writing to be squeezed out between beers in that short of a time span.

Jim Hardman and Hump Evans. Yeah, it's a bit funny when you say it out loud. I can see why some folk might have past them up, not quite Pepperoni Hero level of goofy names but it's just shy of it. The awesome action-packed covers were a bit of a lie too. Hardman wasn't a squared jawed man of action, but a pudgy ex-cop who I suspect looked a lot like Ralph Dennis. Hump was pitch perfect on the covers though. There was action but it's not an "Executioner" or a "Death Merchant." It's a dark alley in a Men's Adventure world. Spillane but a bit less of a fever dream. Hammett in leisure suits. What the Hardman books really are, and they are the closest thing to a pulp-version of the work of James Crumley. C.W. Sugrue and Milo Milodragovitch would throw back massive amounts of booze with Hardman and Hump. 

I've said before I came to mystery fiction via Joe R. Lansdale, Lansdale does an intro for Brash Books reprints (doing the Book God's work), and he says that there's a little bit of Hardman and Hump in my good buddies Hap and Leonard. I've known plenty of beer-drinkers and hell raisers. See, I'm a Kansas guy. That ain't the south, we're kind of a different breed up here. John Brown, flat-fields, western scenery and all that. But you grow up in a small town in Kansas you know guys like Hap and Hardman. Hell, my dad was like Hap in a lot of ways: an overgrown hippie country boy, I guess I didn't fall too far from the tree. You don't often get authentic take in crime fiction about a guy who you've sat next to on a bar stool and drank the heart of a fine spring day. 

Back then I had been on the hunt for the Hardman books for a while, tipped off by the always useful Thrilling Detective Website, but even back then they were hard to come by. Now it's nearly impossible. I found myself in Jacksonville, Florida in a fine Hawaiian shirt bumming my way around a conference on sports broadcasting that I had no business being there for. But the ride was mostly free and so was a lot of my time. I stumbled around town, rode a monorail and found myself in a book shop. At the end of the trip, I left with a nearly overflowing suitcase full of books. A lot of them were by Ralph Dennis. I scored most of the series in one foul swoop and read three or four of them that weekend in a hotel bar or a conference hall while fleecing cocktail shrimp. They seemed like the book I had wanted to write since I started liking private eye fiction (I've written a couple, I'll get around to getting it printed this year, hopefully) and there it had been done for years. 

"The Deadly Cotton Heart" was read in that lost-booky weekend. Luckily that was many moons ago and most of it was lost in my brain, so it was a nearly new book for me. Boasting one of the best titles in the series "Cotton Heart" is a strong entry in a very strong and consistent series. Jim is asked to play the part of an out-of-town-killer for a police sting operation. He doesn't want to, and he's got the right idea cause that's where the trouble starts. The sting goes wrong, puts Hump and Jim in the hot-seat and sets them off looking for a missing wife. They head on down to Tennesse to get into more trouble with a road-side madam, local police, racists, and an old murder. It's a pleasant twisty little action/mystery the way they don't make 'em anymore. 

It's nice to know I got all of the Hardman's to re-read again and again. They were getting hard to come by, but the always excellent Brash Books re-released them not too long ago in handsome paperbacks and eBooks. Ralph Dennis was sadly under-appreciated in his own time, but luckily nowadays he's getting the love he deserved, thanks to Lee Goldberg and Brash Books. Hardman and Hump are companions for my writing life, I often think of Ralph Dennis's clean, hardboiled writing when I'm doing my typing and I try to learn something.

"All Kinds of Ugly" The Long-Lost Final Hardman Novel by Ralph Dennis

Can you tell it's my favorite?

My memory is fuzzy. Jim Hardman and Hump Evans either found their way onto my bookshelf with a blind purchase of a gaudy paperback or I might have stumbled onto them via Thrilling Detective either one is possible. I was a teenager and reading private eye novels which I had developed a Jones for after getting hooked on Joe R. Lansdale's Hap Collins and Leonard Pines novels through his horror fiction. Hap and Leonard pressed their world views into my brain, they became a personal thing, tough guys who stood up for things and bantered like an old married couple. Hap and Leonard sent me looking for more and more and suddenly I was in a flame red El Camino between Montana and Texas with a Vietnam Vet named C.W. Sughrue ("Sug as in sugar and rue as in 'rue the goddamned day'") and the road was full of dirty wit, shocking  violence and deep sadness. I knew I wanted to be a writer then. I have a lot of writers that I like, some mean a whole hell of a lot including the oft quoted "Holy Trinity" of mystery writers: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald (though Mickey Spillane is much higher on my list then MacDonald) but they weren't my personal "Holy Trinity." The three guys I'd pick are Lansdale, Crumley and Ralph Dennis.

Ralph Dennis didn't have the luck the other two and some of everything is luck. Dennis wrote his Hardman books with Popular Library a mid-level publishing outfit. Not Pinnacle or Gold Medal, but usually a bit above some of the other paperback places. They didn't set the world on fire but he must have burned through type writers cause he wrote 12 of them in three years or so. More importantly they are each a hard bitten little diamond in the Atlanta rough.  Dennis knew he was writing pulp, there's enough ass-kicking and gun-fights to keep anyone interested but the characters are a lot deeper then their kinda silly named suggests. Hardman and Hump always makes my wife giggle. Hump and Hardman's relationship; a white pudgy ex-cop and a black former NFL player in the South in the 70's was certainly not the norm. Dennis was ahead of the curve and there's less of the usual racist and sexist stuff in the books then the average Men's Adventure tales. Partly cause they aren't Men's Adventure, they are simply crime tales with a lot of action and thrills. Hump and Hardman grow closer and become the only family either of them has that fully understands. Not that they'd say that to each other. They show it to each other in their actions and these a hard-drinkin' 70's men who wear their emotions buried deep in their heart.

After 12 Hardman's Dennis wanted to break away from the character. That's understandable, that's a lot of writing and he wanted that hardback life and some respect that he deserved. He didn't really make it. He wrote other books and the world remained unlit, so flame-less that they stopped getting published. The years passed and Hardman and Hump seemed to be forgotten. I never thought anyone else really loved them the way I did. Boy, I was wrong.

Lee Goldberg, a hell of a writer his-own-self did the Paperback God's good work and did that long play to get Hardman republished by his Brash Books, who reprint a lot of the good stuff. Eventually there was the unpublished books, a sequel to "Deadman's Game," a ultra-hard-boiled spy novel, another espionage tale "The Spy in the Box," and a standalone mystery called "Dust in the Heart." And in a twisting mystery tale of it's own (I won't spoil it, buy the damned book and read the afterword when you're done) a book called "The Polish Wife," which became "All Kinds of Ugly," the damned-near lost final Hardman novel.

It was a long work week. A week of shiftless reading, the kind where you pick up books and they don't grab you. Honestly I had bee avoiding the final Hardman, that'd be a special occasion, like a expensive bottle of whisky. Though, I had finally gotten around to buying the paperback so it was in my house lurking and calling my name from the shelf. It found it's way to my armchair and there was a bottle of beer on the upturned plastic wooden barrel I keep beside it for remotes. Then BOOM! I'm halfway through the book and two beers in.

Hardman goes to London to find a rich kid and escape his romantic problems. Marcy one of the only reoccurring characters in the books has left him and multiple beers at George's Deli haven't helped. Maybe a little work will and change of local. That's the jumping off point and Hardman meets the Polish wife of the would be title and gets buried neck-deep into a rich families problems. There's murders and tough-guy scenes, a lot of local color and a man who's growing older and sadder and doesn't think things are going to work out the way he wanted. The action starts in Atlanta and then moves to London. I didn't know what I'd think about Hardman in a different locale, so much of Hardman IS Atlanta, but my doubts all faded away. Hardman just drank in pubs instead of bars and his nose still got stuck in places it shouldn't. Hardman quickly finds the missing guy dead and is back in Atlanta with the Polish Wife in tow. There's echos of Ross MacDonald's Archer in the probing of the family but it's ultimately not about the rich family and a dash of classical "locked room" mystery even if it's in a horse stable instead of the parlor. It's about Hardman and the Polish Wife both brutally scrambling for what they want and knowing its the last shot they will ever have. The Polish Wife herself is a interesting and fairly likeable and relatable real human version of the "femme fatale."  You understand exactly why she does what she does and falls the way she falls. That's the beauty of Dennis's writing: pulp with real people. Everybody is someone you know, know of or don't want to know.

And in one evening, barely moving from my chair with four beers drank; the book was done. The last Hardman was read and that sure is something. 

Maybe it wouldn't mean as much without the benefit of the previous twelve books but it's an ending and you should probably read it last. It's not as action-orientated as some of the other books and there's a little bit too little Hump (isn't there always?) but it's a full-blown miracle that it exists. So, Lee Goldberg will have my eternal thanks, all of Ralph Dennis's library is easily purchased in paperback or ebook from Brash Books. The Hardman books are some of the finest examples of crime fiction in the 70's and finally some light it getting shown on them and it's about good-god-damned time.

Serial Reflections: Hardman by Ralph Dennis

Ralph Dennis found me many years ago. I was in trouble. I loved private eye novels, but for my taste too many of them didn't pack enough punch. They didn't have real grit or well...hard men...

The world of number Men's Adventure fiction came to me via Ralph Dennis and Jim Hardman. Hump Evans was there too. They had guns, booze, chicks and problems following them. I was all in. These were real tough guys, they reminded me of the tough guys I knew in real life. Hardman had a beer gut, Hump may have played in the NFL but that didn't get him much past that. They did odd-jobs, the shit jobs that got people dead but maybe tipped the scale for the little guy too. They were tough guys but at the same time they were little guys punching up.

Jim Hardman is an ex-cop with a .38 Colt Police Positive in the closet. He likes to drink, grill, do a little gardening, get shot at and do some shooting. He's got a steady lady but he isn't too tied down and earns his dough through his rep as a guy who can get stuff done.

Hump Evans is his friend, they are close but neither of them would cop to being called buddies. They consider themselves "associates." Whereas Hardman simply does this line of work cause it's basically all he's qualified for Hump seems to do it pocket cash for spending on sweet women and some of the finer things but really Hump doesn't have any options either. His football days are past and it's the 1970's. It's a fairly forward-thinking partnership and its clear Dennis knew the racial issues he wasn't dwelling on in his books. He could just show you that two men who trust each other could do a dirty job together. Didn't matter what color their skin was.

The stories take place in Atlanta. I've only ever been to the Atlanta Airport, but I sure feel like I've walked the hot summer Georgia streets. Dennis knew his town and really knew his bars. Hump and Hardman (sounds like a comedy duo, I know) drink up the day when they are not working and when they are.  The book ooze the 70's pimps, dirty cops, drugs, killers, mobsters and hooker litter the pages. The duo aren't superheroes, hell they aren't heroes they are hard-boiled men in a hard-boiled world. I can't help but picture some small grimy picture from the 70's with Warren Oates as Hardman and Fred Williamson as Hump, would have been a helluva movie.

Though packaged like Men's Adventure and containing violent action, the books aren't mere "Executioner," stand ins. No, they are pure crime fiction, maybe if they were originally printed to reflect that Ralph Dennis would have had a bigger name and published more books. But either way the Hardman's became a cult darling of the paperback fiction world and yes it's as glamorous as it sounds. To me I was the only person who loved these books, there certainly wasn't any fanfare when I found them for cheap in a dusty used bookstore. But slowly the fire grew and people began professing their love for the books, mostly writers who counted Dennis as an influence. I count him that way too.

They hit me like only a few books ever have. They struck me like the first time I ever read "The Last Good Kiss" by James Crumley or got my first taste of Hap and Leonard from Joe R. Lansdale (a professed Hardman fan)  I burned through the books. Well, almost, I have one more book to read. I haven't read it on purpose for years, it something that clicks in my head. There was only one Hardman book in the world for me to read. I didn't think I could take not having anymore. So one sat unread. I reread but left that one, Hardman #5: Down Among the Jocks un-cracked having read the remaining. Here's a list cause you don't want to miss any, but they can certainly be read out of order.

• Hardman 1: Atlanta Deathwatch 
• Hardman 2: The Charleston Knife's Back In Town 
• Hardman 3: The Golden Girl & All 
• Hardman 4: Pimp for the Dead 
• Hardman 5: Down Among the Jocks 
• Hardman 6: Murder's Not an Odd Job 
• Hardman 7: Working for the Man 
• Hardman 8: The Deadly Cotton Heart 
• Hardman 9: The One-Dollar Rip-Off 
• Hardman 10: Hump's First Case 
• Hardman 11: The Last of the Armageddon Wars 
• Hardman 12: The Buy Back Blues 

Funny thing happened along the way to me being a weirdo and not reading ONE MORE BOOK. I joined a Facebook group, a lot of the people loved Dennis's books. One of them liked him enough t start a publishing company and spend a lot of time and effort to get these books republished. His name is Lee Goldberg and the company is Brash Books. If there's a Pulp God up there in a library in the sky Lee Goldberg is on its good side. All the books are back in print, ebooks and even audiobooks, including the rest of the Ralph Dennis library and his unpublished novels....

...and one long-lost Hardman book.

Time to read #5.