A Rage at Sea (1953) and A Party Every Night (1956) two novels by Frederick Lorenz.
Pulp fiction writing is often seen as bystro fare rather than cordon bleu and yet the best authors serve acute observations of life with their mystery platters. This is certainly true of Lorenz Heller, aka Frederick Lorenz, a prolific, but insightful crime writer, (bear in mind, the next meal/bottle often depended on the next story for the pulp scrivener). He understood people and how they mess up, how they function in extremis and how dark a place the world can become when you’re down. Sixty plus years on the vitality and energy of his novels still strike a chord. As Nicholas Litchfield’s introduction points out; it’s character which drives plot in Lorenz’s fiction. It’s feels like he moulds the plot from organic character confrontations, his writing is electric and alive with unpredictability. Both these novels are atmospheric and tense.
A Rage at Sea. Skipper Frank Dixon stumbles around Miami trying to drink the city’s bars dry. Frank’s gotten bitter, mean, and self-pitying since he lost his boat in a poker game six months ago. His girl, Helen, is about through with him. Then a slippery acquaintance, a ship steward named Addams, fixes him a birth as captain on a millionaire’s fishing/booze cruise to the Caribbean. Addams is trouble blackmailing alcoholic Frank and bullying young deck hand, Wirt, while plying the boat’s owner and friends with drink. The guests just want to party while Dixon can only think about staying sober and getting Helen back. From day one the trip goes wrong. As the seas and the weather threaten Dixon has to deal with sabotage, Addams sycophancy to the owner, his machinations and the increasingly erratic behaviour of the passengers. Alliances are forged, poisonous tensions erupt, violence breaks out. This is an intense tale of bad intensions where even trying to do right is destined to go wrong.
A Party Every Night. Perhaps it’s just coincidence that this title is a line in the first novel, there’s a lot of partying in Lorenz novels. Curiously, both stories open with a scene in which a good looking woman watches a man sleep; she contemplative, him drunk. Bar waitress Cora takes a shower and dresses while Vance lays sprawled on the bed, she angrily scrawls a message on the mirror in lipstick before leaving:
“You can keep your goddam Lina”
Hours later Vance surfaces, mystified by Cora’s crazy words, he’s nursing a hangover but it’s time for his bar shift at the Pelican Lounge. Cora is cold, she says he was murmuring ‘Lina’ in his sleep, but Vance can’t think who Lina is. The bar owner Tate resents Vance’s attitude, he only needs Cora because the barman won’t serve tables. However, Tate saves his best mean for simple soul Hully, the behemoth bottle washer. Customers arrive, the usual tension between Wes Elwood and wife, Madeline, fills the room. Madeline is beautiful, Vance feels for her, he’s carrying a torch, then he realises: Madeline – this is ‘Lina’. Later Vance offers to take Lina home, lush Wes has long disappeared to another bar. It’s not done for a barman to take advantage of a regular but he’s saying one thing to Lina and meaning a whole other thing. Lina says Wes is a fraud, he’s all front and she hates her life. She’s upset and scared but Vance agrees to take her searching for Wes. It’s a low odyssey of cheap bars and surly barmen, but no sign of Wes they give up. Vance accepts a nightcap at Lina’s place, they kiss…at dawn she kicks him out. There’s still no sign of Wes the next day, that’s when the cops come calling on Vance. He swears he had nothing to do with Wes’s murder but the cops hear rumours, Cora is still angry with Vance and looking for payback, Hully will do anything to protect his friend because Vance is the only one who’s nice to him and Maddie needs money – things ae just beginning to heat up. This is a spicy tale of robbery, infidelity, murder, revenge, a frame-up, lust and true love, (there are trace of James M Cain and even Orrie Hitt here).
In both novels the dialogue is crisp, the story edgy and populated by eccentric, volatile characters who just can’t get a grip on life.
Heller was a journalist, a seaman, and had various other jobs before becoming a writer. His life is pretty much a mystery in itself, he was born in 1910 and died in 1965; like so many pulp writers shuffling off early.
ISBN: 9781944520991 Stark House Press, paperback, May.
