Free Gun in Cheek by Bill Pronzini

Avallone has published some 190 novels in the past four decades, nearly all of them paperback originals: P1 tales, Gothics, TV and film novelizations, juveniles, soft-core porn, espionage thrillers. He is also the holder of unconventional opinions on any number of topics, a zealous old-movie buff, a tireless self-promoter and letter writer, and his own greatest fan. Francis M. Nevins, in his profile of Avallone in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers , calls him "a true auteur, with a unique personality discernible throughout his work," and goes on to state, "Whatever else might be said about Avallone, one must say what Caspar Gutman said to Spade in The Maltese Falcon : 'By Gad, sir, you're a character, that you are!'"
    Avallone's fictional "eye," Ed Noon, has appeared in more than thirty novels since his first recorded case in 1953. On the one hand, Noon is a standard tough, wisecracking op with a taste for copious bloodletting and a Spillane-type hatred of Communists, dissidents, hippies, pacifists, militant blacks, liberated women, and anyone or anything else of a liberal cant. On the other hand, he is a distinctly if eccentrically drawn character who loves baseball, old movies, and dumb jokes, and who gets himself mixed up with some of the most improbable individuals ever committed to paper. For instance, a 6-foot-4-inch ex-circus performer named Tall Dolores, "the Shapliest Amazon in the World"—"a Glamazon, a regular Empire State Building of female feminine dame. And all woman besides" ( The Tall Dolores ). And a 440-pound female mattress tester, who leads him into mayhem and a Chinese restaurant that dispenses "wanton soup," among other savory items ( The Case of the Bouncing Betty ). And a gold-toothed, beret-wearing villain named Dean, who is on the trail of a statue called the Violent Virgin, "The Number One Nude," and who says things like "Your precipitous exodus from serene sanctuary propels me toward Brobdingnagian measures. Spider and I mourn for your misdemeanors but your palpitating perignations [sic] induce no termination of our grief" ( The Case of the Violent Virgin ).
    Noon's wildest caper, though, is probably Shoot It Again, Sam! (1972), which Francis Nevins, the compleat Noon-watcher, sums up as follows in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers : "The President [of the United States, for whom Noon is working at the time as a special investigator] orders Noon to accompany a dead Hollywood star's body on a transcontinental train ride. While the 'corpse' sits up in its coffin, Chinese agents raid the train, kidnap Noon, and use brainwashers made up to look like Gable, Cagney, and Lorre to convince Noon that he is none other than Sam Spade (as portrayed by Bogart of course). It's all part of the screwiest assassination plot ever concocted by a movie maniac."
    But, as is the case with so many writers of alternative masterpieces, it is Avallone's lurid, ungrammatical, and often hilarious prose style that distinguishes him and Ed Noon. Nevins again: "[Avallone] makes the language do flipflops, mangles the metaphors like a trash compactor." Noonisms, as they have come to be called among discerning aficionados, abound in each and every Noon title; indeed, in each and every Avallone title. One of these days, it is to be hoped, someone will publish a collection of Noonisms; there are certainly enough to fill a substantial volume. But until that happens, a sampling here of the more memorable will have to suffice.
    Â 
The next day dawned bright and clear on my empty stomach. ( Meanwhile Back at the Morgue )
    Â 
The whites of his eyes came up in their sockets like moons over an oasis lined with palm trees. ( The Voodoo Murders )
    Â 
My body felt as abnormal as a tuxedo in a hobo jungle. ( The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse )
    Â 
His thin mustache was neatly placed between a peaked nose and two eyes like black marbles. ( Assassins Don't Die in Bed )
    Â 
My stunned intellect, the one that found death in