HARD BOILED NO MATTER THE SITUATON: DANA CHAMBERS' SOME DAY I'LL KILL YOU & TOO LIKE THE LIGHTENING

Albert Fear Leffingwell's name would not have fit with his series character Jim Steele. He had to pick something like Dana Chambers for his radio script writer who still carries his hard boiled history, proving to be no stranger to fists, bullets, or explosions. Stark House recently released his first two adventures, placing Steele in two wildly different situations, Some Day I'll Kill You and Too Like the Lightning.

Some Day I'll Kill You begins with many elements of a traditional mystery you could associate with a Leffingwell. Lisa, the married woman Steele still carries a torch for comes to him for help with some blackmail letters. He drives Lisa, to her and her husband's estate where they are hosting a party and soon one of Lisa's close girlfriends are murdered. Was the killer aiming for her or Lisa. With the police keeping everyone at the estate and putting their eyes of Lisa as the suspect, Steele goes to work.

It feels like Steele drags his hard boiled style into the classic drawing room mystery. Another murder happens and Steele contends with fist fights and shootouts. he also doesn't take crap off the cops or high society types in wise guy fashion. It almost feels symbolic when one of the first action scenes involves our hero crashing hough a garden window.

Too Like Lightning plays like a noir thriller. Written in 1939 as Hitler rose to power and took over Europe, Steele now has a vague job working for the government. His latest assignment is tailing a man with the help of a blonde. He wakes up with the blonde in his bed, a dead man in his tub, and no memory of what happened the night before. As he retraces his steps, he chased by some toughs and caught up in a Cornell Woolrich style plot.

You get the feeling the author read a pile of Black Masks and Dime Detective before he started writing (and that's meant as a compliment). Steele barely says anything says anything that isn't a sardonic quip and he's always ready to jump into action. The books provide a lot of reasons to jump, with plots that keep moving. They also find a way to give a touch of barstool pathos.

There were several Jim Steele books Leffingwell wrote as Dana Chambers through World War Two up to the time of his death. Stark House plans to reprint them all. This first collection comes with an intro by Curtis Evan, who clues us into the pseudonym. I'm curious about the other books, since Jim Steele can go anywhere.