STRANGE DESTINY by Hank Janson (1956)
When I was in my ‘vintage paperback collecting frenzy’ early in the 21st
century, I bought a lot of Hank Janson books from ebay. Like my
fascination with Badger Books, I wanted in on something that wasn’t very
well known to most
people who read, something that was a bit of a niche. Best known for the risqué paintings that adorned
many of his early books, Hank Janson was a pseudonym used by a number
of writers from the 1940s to the 1960s. According to many of their
covers, these books sold in their millions; as you can see, this one claims 'NINE MILLION SALE'. A bit vague. Is that 9 million of this book? or is it 9 million books by Hank Janson sold? The latter is probably more likely, but that seems hard to believe, as you hardly ever see Janson’s books in
second-hand bookshops, but who knows, maybe most of them were thrown
away after reading, or destroyed by angry mums who found them in their
son’s bedrooms. Alternatively, they may just be hoarded in book collector's stashes, up and down the land.
Although Janson is the nominal
author of these books, he’s also the main character, which completely
blows any credibility out of the water. Also, they are all about an
American character, and are mainly set in the US, but were all written
by British authors. Some of the books were published
in the US in the 1960s, but I don’t know how well received they were.
Strange Destiny is reasonably believable as an actual American novel,
and doesn’t read like a faux-yankee product of the Mushroom Jungle UK pulp explosion. It reads like a third-rate Raymond Chandler, rather more soft than hard-boiled.
In this torrid tale,
Janson, an investigative journalist who is always
getting into sticky situations, goes on a short holiday to meet an
acquaintance who thinks his life is in danger. When he gets there he
finds an empty house, a sexy young wife married to an older man with a
jealous temper, and a missing acquaintance. Other
elements include a tempting housemaid, some scuba diving and a lot of
spying with binoculars. Things unfold quite predictably, as these things
do, with a reasonable twist but a surprising lack of gunplay and very
little sexual activity, both of which are staples
of other Janson novels. A pretty straightforward Janson, missing some
of those more ridiculous or outrageous elements that make Jansons worth
tracking down.
