Haven for the Damned – Ennis Willie (Merit Books, 1963)

Okay, back to the books…

Haven for the Damned starts off really good but slips into a common and cliched set-up about 1/3 of the way through.

Our hero, ex-hitman for the Syndicate Sand, is recovering from the latest attempt by the mob to ice him; he has been shot four times in the torso and somehow managed to survive. To gain time to recuperate, he heads to unknown lands, probably Europe, to a castle/hotel run by The Count: a place off-limits to the law and the Syndicate, where criminals and those on the run, or wanting to hide, can find refuge, as long as they can afford the high price for protection…it is indeed a haven for the damned…there Sand meets with Lena, who is hiding from her estranged husband who wants to have her committed to the loony bin and have control over her family wealth. She is also a highly sexually charged nympho…

…as are all the women Sand crosses paths with at the castle. This is a Merit adult novel, after all, a universe where all women are beautiful, sexy, horny and kinky.

There is a village outside the Count’s lair, where the Count finds young women to become part of his concubine: they are paid well, live in luxury, and are required to spend quality time in the Count’s bed…but the Count is an ugly little hunchback with curious sexual desires.

Sand notes one new girl, Gretchen, 18, gorgeous and not looking like she is pleased to have to please the Count…and then she winds up murdered with two swords poked into the her eyes and coming out of the back of her head.

Lena thinks she did it, as she has blackouts and does violent things when she blacks out…she does have some psychiatric and mental issues, which is how her husband can institutionalize her.

Then more young women are found murdered over the days and nights…Lena still thinks she is the killer but Sand has his doubts, he believes she is being set up; he sets out to solve this case. The real killer is too obvious in the end, making this “Sand shocker” not so shocking and entertaining as previous books.

Passion Has No Rule Book by Ennis Willie (Merit Books, 1964)

This is one of the better Sand books, or better than the two we have discussed here, Aura of Sensuality and Warped Ambitions, which were okay…then again, maybe they were read out of order.  Ex-hitman on the run, Sand, as well as Ennis Willie, have quite the uinderground following, and seems to have influenced a number of writers, from Ed Gorman to Wayne Dundee to Bill Crider…and now we are convinced that Andrew Vachss modeled his anti-hero, Burke, after Sand: similar voices and tone, similar colorful characters popping up…like Sand, Burke lives on the edge of society and the law, but operates on a curious moral compass of justice and a code of honor found only in the mean streets of crime noir, with the occasional over sensual beauty entering the anti-hero’s life.

Passion Has No Rule Book is a dumb title for this short novel, which is why Willie has re-titled it Death in a Dead Place for the recent omnibus from Ramble House, Sand’s Game. It opens with Sand catching a bullet from a Syndicate snuper but surviving. He has been hiding out as a homeless man, making friends on the street…one is an old man named Sticky, who lets Sand rest at his niece’s place. His niece is shocked, but soon falls for Sand and they spend three days in bed — strange? Well, passion has no rule book as the title says, and women always fall for the tall blonde Sand in these books.

Uncle Sticky then turns up dead in a dark rented room with strange growths all over his body — just as Sand arrives, a man in a suit is there and tries to shoot Sand and Sand takes the gun and kills the man.  Seems Sticky had stolen an attache case belonging to this man, and inside were liquid viles, but they did not contain booze…

The man Sand kills has a foreign passport. He knows this isn’t a hit man from the mob.  He puts two and two together and comes up with a bio-terrorism plot that Sand’s inside guy at the police station thinks is a crazy idea, so Sand decides to do his own investigating — he cares less about the terrorists, he wants to avenge the death of his friend, which is the motivation behind the other two Sand books we looked at here.

The terrorists and their plot is a bit far-fetched, but who knows these days, maybe possible and plausible, and as Sand kills off more hit man on his tail, he winds up saving millions, and probably the world, something he will never get credit for…

Damn good read with an ending Mickey Spilliane would give two thumbs up.

Recommended: Sand’s Game by Ennis Willie (Ramble House, 2010)

Over the years there has been talk of this publisher or that reissuing the Ennis Willie books. We figured Stark House would step up to the plate, and maybe they still will, but Ramble House has just released this fine ditty, with two Sand novels (or “Shockers,”  which always tended be be short, about 25-30K words), a handful of stories, an interview with the author, and commentary from Max Alan Collins, Waynde Dundee, James Reasoner, Bill Pronzini, et al., about an author who influenced many and was published almost in a void by Merit Books (Camerarts).