McGinnis Nine-Nine: “Some Like It Cool”

Part of a celebration of Robert McGinnis’ XCIXth birthday.

Some Like It Cool, by “Robert Kyle,” aka Robert Terrall (Dell, 1962).

After crime novelist Robert Terrall died at age 94, breathing his last at a Connecticut retirement community back in 2009, I went looking for as many of his books as I could locate. A number of them were out of print, while others had never been widely credited to him (including 20 or more Mike Shayne yarns he ghost-wrote under the Brett Halliday byline). In the end, I think I acquired perhaps a dozen titles, including a couple of his Shaynes, a handful of his standalone novels, and his complete series starring New York City shamus Ben Gates.

Some Like It Cool, with its vivid Robert McGinnis-painted front, was the fourth of five Gates tales Terrall published during the late 1950s and early ’60s, all originally appearing under his Robert Kyle pseudonym. It’s also the only one of those that I have not yet read.

Which I admit is puzzling, given that the plot of this 160-page mystery burgeons with appealing ingredients: a proposal pending in the New York legislature to set up off-track betting stations in the state; bookies who are concerned for their jobs if the bill passes, and gambling prohibitionists adamant that it should not; plus bucketfuls of cash being flourished by both sides to sway votes. The sharp-witted, cigar-smoking Gates is brought into these matters initially to help publicize the bookies’ palm-greasing tactics, but a dark-tressed knockout from his past, as well as blackmail, murder, and the occasional gun being pointed in his general direction (or else wielded at his skull) keep him in the mix till the end. In its review of Some Like It Cool, Mystery*File questioned the drive and drama of Kyle/Terrall’s hard-boiled storytelling, but conceded that he “does have a sense of humor about the whole thing, which makes it go down a whole lot more easily.

Example: All of the suspects are gathered together a couple of chapters [before] the end to help close up the case. Nothing new about that, you say, and you’d be right, but have you ever read about one that takes place in a public ladies’ room? With an unfortunate woman unfortunately trapped in one [of] the stalls the whole time, with Ben Gates asking [her] often whether or not he’s making everything clear to her.

OK, maybe I need to move this vintage paperback up higher in my to-be-read pile. The late crime-fictionist Ed Gorman once described Robert Terrall as a “really fine craftsman” who was “especially good with dialogue,” and whose “sex scenes are really sexy and they’re good clean fun as well.” I won’t disagree with any of those points.