No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase

"One of the important facts of life that Paula had learned the hard way was not to keep any man waiting."

This novel does nothing for feminism. Women are whores or helpless beauties to be rescued. It is a typical pulp noir, a violent, seedy city’s underbelly where everyone is on the make. When attempting to steal her diamond necklace a criminal gang kidnap the titular Miss Blandish in an attempt to increase their profit.

Her stunning looks prove too much for a rival and much more violent gang and all of a sudden, Miss Blandish becomes the captive of the unhinged son of gang leader, Ma Grisson. He’d shoot you, just as soon as look at you and has never before displayed an interest in women.  That’s changed and now he drugs and tortures his prisoner, while her millionaire father believes her to be dead.

Hiring Dave Fenner, ex journalist and now private eye, to find out what happened to his darling daughter, seems like a last-ditch attempt by her father Mr Blandish. Violence ensues. Lots of violence, lots of implied sex. The book was met with huge success and deemed rather scandalous for its time. The novel was adapted as a film in Britain in 1938 and Variety reviewed itas “A lurid bestseller has been converted into a deplorable picture”. In 1971 it was revisited again as The Grissom Gang by Robert Aldrich, about which Roger Ebert said “Everyone screams, shouts, flashes knives at each other and sweats a lot”, which to my mind rather reflects the source novel.

The characters are formulaic, rather than well developed. Slim is characterised by his violence. The reader’s sense of him is a creepy guy who seems developmentally challenged, yet deadly. His mother is the leader of the pack but a barely-there sketch of a dangerous old lady. They seem like carbon copies from another, better written novel. Chase is no Chandler… he’s Chandler lite with added blood and guts.

That’s not to say its not thrilling. You’ll read on, eager to see whether Miss Blanchard will escape or not, even if you’re lukewarm about the other characters.

3 out of 5, avoid the idiot son.