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Angel's Flight
The first time Ben Parker meets Johnny Angel, Ben is blowing bass with Daddy Halloway and the Hot Babies. Angel angles into the band by acing out the drummer. Parker's got a bad feeling about Angel, but has to hire him anyway. Johnny Angel, raised from the school of hard knocks, doesn't let anyone or any scruple get in his way. First, he steals Daddy's band, then he steals his daughter, Blanche.
Then WWII happens--Parker serves, but Johnny cops a gay plea and gets out. When Parker gets back he hooks up with a talented but tubercular composer named Con Conners. And a sultry singer, Ginger. But Johnny Angel is right behind him, ready to do whatever it takes to climb to the top on someone else's talent, be it beg, borrow or steal... even kill. This is the ruthless story of the music business told from the inside, starting from the days of swing jazz to bebop, all the way to rock'n'roll.
Then WWII happens--Parker serves, but Johnny cops a gay plea and gets out. When Parker gets back he hooks up with a talented but tubercular composer named Con Conners. And a sultry singer, Ginger. But Johnny Angel is right behind him, ready to do whatever it takes to climb to the top on someone else's talent, be it beg, borrow or steal... even kill. This is the ruthless story of the music business told from the inside, starting from the days of swing jazz to bebop, all the way to rock'n'roll.
233 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 14, 2018
This book was originally published in 1960 by Gold Medal.
It features a be-bop, hep-cat, gone-daddy-gone first person narrative.
Our narrator is a jazz musician - a bass player keeping the rhythm somewhere close to the ground and the episodic tale of woe he has to unload unfolds over two and a half decades and twice as many variants of Jazz, from Trad to Bop and beyond.
As paperback original noir-thrillers go, this one is an epic with a cast of thousands and a dash of the macabre.
This was Lou Cameron's 1st novel. He would go on to write hundreds more novels. He created the long running "Longarm" Western series of paperback originals under the house name "Tabor Evans".
If you're intending to read the Black Gat edition from Stark House Press, please don't read Gary Lovisi's excellent introduction until you've finished the novel.
It features a be-bop, hep-cat, gone-daddy-gone first person narrative.
Our narrator is a jazz musician - a bass player keeping the rhythm somewhere close to the ground and the episodic tale of woe he has to unload unfolds over two and a half decades and twice as many variants of Jazz, from Trad to Bop and beyond.
As paperback original noir-thrillers go, this one is an epic with a cast of thousands and a dash of the macabre.
...A lot of jazz men won't admit it, but a classical background never hurt a guy's style none. A lot has been made of the African rhythm and blues tonality elements of jazz. But without European atonated melody, Dad, all you've got is a lot of cats beating on hollow logs.
This was Lou Cameron's 1st novel. He would go on to write hundreds more novels. He created the long running "Longarm" Western series of paperback originals under the house name "Tabor Evans".
I don't know if it's fair to blame my joining up on the girl with the lavender eyes. I guess I'd have gotten into the war sooner or later anyways. Just about everybody did.
If you were around at the time, you know about the war. If you weren't, you might look through about two hundred back issues of Life, or read Tolstoy. He said everything there is to say about war and this is a story about music.
So smoke a cigarette or something while you picture the time lapse and join me along about the spring of '46 in the rest room that used to be under Duffy Square.
If you're intending to read the Black Gat edition from Stark House Press, please don't read Gary Lovisi's excellent introduction until you've finished the novel.
December 11, 2017
Book Review: Angel’s Flight by Lou Cameron
Before his 2010 death, Lou Cameron was the author of over 300 genre novels. He was a post-war pulpster who specialized in tawdry action stories with tightly-wound plots. Think Longarm. Think Renegade. Lou Cameron knew his way around a standard story arc.
This fact is what makes Cameron’s 1960 debut novel, Angel’s Flight, such a delightful curiosity. Although it was released as a Gold Medal crime novel - and was recently re-released by Black Gat Books - the story captures the tone and scope of literary fiction. Yes, it seems Lou Cameron started out aspiring to be serious author writing a serious book. And it worked.
Although Angel’s Flight is a lean 233 pages, the story spans about 17 years time between 1939 and 1956 - from the Jazzy Great Depression to the dawn of Rock-n-Roll. Our guide through this era is our narrator, an honest and earnest journeyman jazzman named Ben Parker. Ben’s narration is written in a be-bop jazz lingo that was later adopted by James Ellroy in American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand. The prose sings throughout the readable novel.
Parker’s foil is the vapid and conniving fellow jazzman, Johnny Angel, whose ambition for success well outpaces his musical talent. Like many of the colorful characters in Parker’s life, Angel comes and goes. He starts out as an irritant and evolves into an existential threat.
Angel’s Flight is a real masterpiece of storytelling that holds your attention even though there isn’t much of a standard story arc. It feels like the literary equivalent of a Martin Scorsese movie - like Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall Street - that tracks a single character through the ups and downs of a remarkable life.
This storytelling approach is surprising coming from Lou Cameron, whose body of work relied on an economical approach to plotting. Cameron’s knack for creating colorful characters is on high-display, and readers will come to adore Ben Parker and the women and friends who float in and out of his life.
Although the novel has murders, mafia, payola, and betrayals, it’s doesn’t feel like a normal Gold Medal crime novel. It feels more weighty and significant - like a story of the Jazz age that needed to be preserved because it captured an important era in America’s cultural history. To that end, Black Gat Books has done America a real favor by preserving this piece of important art.
Highly recommended.
Before his 2010 death, Lou Cameron was the author of over 300 genre novels. He was a post-war pulpster who specialized in tawdry action stories with tightly-wound plots. Think Longarm. Think Renegade. Lou Cameron knew his way around a standard story arc.
This fact is what makes Cameron’s 1960 debut novel, Angel’s Flight, such a delightful curiosity. Although it was released as a Gold Medal crime novel - and was recently re-released by Black Gat Books - the story captures the tone and scope of literary fiction. Yes, it seems Lou Cameron started out aspiring to be serious author writing a serious book. And it worked.
Although Angel’s Flight is a lean 233 pages, the story spans about 17 years time between 1939 and 1956 - from the Jazzy Great Depression to the dawn of Rock-n-Roll. Our guide through this era is our narrator, an honest and earnest journeyman jazzman named Ben Parker. Ben’s narration is written in a be-bop jazz lingo that was later adopted by James Ellroy in American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand. The prose sings throughout the readable novel.
Parker’s foil is the vapid and conniving fellow jazzman, Johnny Angel, whose ambition for success well outpaces his musical talent. Like many of the colorful characters in Parker’s life, Angel comes and goes. He starts out as an irritant and evolves into an existential threat.
Angel’s Flight is a real masterpiece of storytelling that holds your attention even though there isn’t much of a standard story arc. It feels like the literary equivalent of a Martin Scorsese movie - like Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall Street - that tracks a single character through the ups and downs of a remarkable life.
This storytelling approach is surprising coming from Lou Cameron, whose body of work relied on an economical approach to plotting. Cameron’s knack for creating colorful characters is on high-display, and readers will come to adore Ben Parker and the women and friends who float in and out of his life.
Although the novel has murders, mafia, payola, and betrayals, it’s doesn’t feel like a normal Gold Medal crime novel. It feels more weighty and significant - like a story of the Jazz age that needed to be preserved because it captured an important era in America’s cultural history. To that end, Black Gat Books has done America a real favor by preserving this piece of important art.
Highly recommended.
March 10, 2017
This book was doubly hard to put down. Not only is the story compelling, but the language is so lively you’re anxious to see what surprises the next paragraph will bring. It’s sort of like Dashiell Hammett on steroids, except the focus is not on crime, but on the jazz scene of the '40s and '50s.
A Gold Medal original back in 1960, it's been out of print ever since. Until now. The book I read was a cool new edition from Black Gat Books, a new line of mass market paperbacks from Stark House Press. (And be advised--this ain't your father's mass market pb. The premium paper is bright white, and the book feels mighty substantial in your hand.)
Our hero for this one is Ben Parker, a bass player striving to make his way in the music business without selling his soul to the devil or the mob. On the flip side is one of the most purely evil dudes you’ll meet anywhere in fiction—a psychopath who calls himself Johnny Angel. Near the end of the book, Angel boasts that the only crimes he has yet to commit are incest and treason. And he’s not finished yet.
Parker and Angel represent the two extremes of the music business. Parker is a true talent, scrupulously honest and in it for the love of music. Angel is a blood-sucker, leeching off the talent of others and using every dirty trick imaginable to get rich and rise to the top.
The title of the book comes from a fictional song (stolen by Johnny Angel, natch) and named after the two-block-long railway that ran up and down L.A.’s Bunker Hill. While reading the book, I saw a news report that the railway, closed for safety reasons in 2013, would soon be back in service. Cool.
The novel follows Ben Parker’s career as a player, a band leader and record producer. At almost every turn, Johnny Angel rears his ugly head, performing new acts of infamy. Along the way, we meet torch singers, composers, drug addicts, mob thugs, movie producers, dirty deejays and an artists’ model who can’t her clothes on. We also get inside looks at the evils of payola, the birth and death of bop and the difference between hipsters and beatniks.
Like me, Cameron is a fan of pop culture, and the book is peppered with references to such icons as Dick Tracy, Tom Mix, Jimmy Durante, Raymond Chandler, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Hopalong Cassidy, Lon Chaney, Tinker Bell, Elvis the Pelvis, Buck Jones, Jack Benny, Little Orphan Annie and the Wizard of Oz. It's a blast, in more ways than one.
In the background, sort of on the edge of consciousness, World War II begins and ends and things heat up in Korea. Ben Parker does his part, and sums it up in four paragraphs:
- - I don’t know if it’s fair to blame my joining up on the girl with the lavender eyes. I guess I’d have gone into the war sooner or later anyways. Just about everybody did.
- - If you were around at that time you know about the war. If you weren’t, you might look through about two hundred issues of Life, or read Tolstoy. He said everything there is to say about war and this is a story about the music field.
- - So smoke a cigarette or something while you picture the time lapse and join me along about the spring of ’46 in the rest room that used to be under Duffy Square.
- - The world was once more safe for democracy, the American way of life, the girl next door and Mom’s blueberry pie. I’d changed my ODs for a new set of blue threads and the only way you could tell Benny Parker had been away was that I’d traded my left knee cap for a brand new silver plate, and three or four gray hairs were sprouting over each ear.
Angel’s Flight was Lou Cameron's first novel, and I was pleased to learn he wrote many more – some thrillers, some westerns and some movie tie-ins. Among those I look forward to checking out are the first in the Longarm series (he went on to pen about fifty of them), the Stringer western series, and all thirty-six books of the Renegade western series (as by Ramsay Thorne). I have a lot of reading to do.
A Gold Medal original back in 1960, it's been out of print ever since. Until now. The book I read was a cool new edition from Black Gat Books, a new line of mass market paperbacks from Stark House Press. (And be advised--this ain't your father's mass market pb. The premium paper is bright white, and the book feels mighty substantial in your hand.)
Our hero for this one is Ben Parker, a bass player striving to make his way in the music business without selling his soul to the devil or the mob. On the flip side is one of the most purely evil dudes you’ll meet anywhere in fiction—a psychopath who calls himself Johnny Angel. Near the end of the book, Angel boasts that the only crimes he has yet to commit are incest and treason. And he’s not finished yet.
Parker and Angel represent the two extremes of the music business. Parker is a true talent, scrupulously honest and in it for the love of music. Angel is a blood-sucker, leeching off the talent of others and using every dirty trick imaginable to get rich and rise to the top.
The title of the book comes from a fictional song (stolen by Johnny Angel, natch) and named after the two-block-long railway that ran up and down L.A.’s Bunker Hill. While reading the book, I saw a news report that the railway, closed for safety reasons in 2013, would soon be back in service. Cool.
The novel follows Ben Parker’s career as a player, a band leader and record producer. At almost every turn, Johnny Angel rears his ugly head, performing new acts of infamy. Along the way, we meet torch singers, composers, drug addicts, mob thugs, movie producers, dirty deejays and an artists’ model who can’t her clothes on. We also get inside looks at the evils of payola, the birth and death of bop and the difference between hipsters and beatniks.
Like me, Cameron is a fan of pop culture, and the book is peppered with references to such icons as Dick Tracy, Tom Mix, Jimmy Durante, Raymond Chandler, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Hopalong Cassidy, Lon Chaney, Tinker Bell, Elvis the Pelvis, Buck Jones, Jack Benny, Little Orphan Annie and the Wizard of Oz. It's a blast, in more ways than one.
In the background, sort of on the edge of consciousness, World War II begins and ends and things heat up in Korea. Ben Parker does his part, and sums it up in four paragraphs:
- - I don’t know if it’s fair to blame my joining up on the girl with the lavender eyes. I guess I’d have gone into the war sooner or later anyways. Just about everybody did.
- - If you were around at that time you know about the war. If you weren’t, you might look through about two hundred issues of Life, or read Tolstoy. He said everything there is to say about war and this is a story about the music field.
- - So smoke a cigarette or something while you picture the time lapse and join me along about the spring of ’46 in the rest room that used to be under Duffy Square.
- - The world was once more safe for democracy, the American way of life, the girl next door and Mom’s blueberry pie. I’d changed my ODs for a new set of blue threads and the only way you could tell Benny Parker had been away was that I’d traded my left knee cap for a brand new silver plate, and three or four gray hairs were sprouting over each ear.
Angel’s Flight was Lou Cameron's first novel, and I was pleased to learn he wrote many more – some thrillers, some westerns and some movie tie-ins. Among those I look forward to checking out are the first in the Longarm series (he went on to pen about fifty of them), the Stringer western series, and all thirty-six books of the Renegade western series (as by Ramsay Thorne). I have a lot of reading to do.
April 8, 2024
Angel’s Flight was originally published in 1960 by Fawcett Gold Medal (# s1047) and reprinted by Black Gat in February 2017. While there were a number of books that came out around the same time purporting to offer a glimpse into the jazz lifestyle, Angel’s Flight, of course named for the funicular railway in Los Angeles between Hill and Olive Streets that still stands today, is told in bebop jazz vernacular and feels so damn authentic. The story plays out over several decades and the two main characters are Ben Parker, through whose eyes the story is told, and Johnny Angel, who represents the inauthentic, money-grubbing, self-absorbed characters found in the music and film businesses who are not necessarily world-burning talents, but rise to the top because they have no conscience and no feeling for those who they stepped on as they climbed to the top.
From the very first line, Cameron dips the reader full-on into the jazz vernacular: “First time I ever saw Johnny Angel was ‘way back in 1939 A.D. when I was still blowing bass with Daddy Halloway and his Hot Babies.” “We just blew ho. As hot as we knew how. And Daddy blew the hottest.” And, he tells us, “We had some good boys in that band. Daddy hired by ear. Didn’t matter your complexion or sex life to old Daddy as long as you blew good.” Cameron addresses color barriers so well with a comment here and there as well as any issues regarding sexual preference.
Don’t act surprised as Johnny pushes first one than another out of the big band and eventually takes control for himself. Don’t be surprised when Johnny makes Big Daddy’s daughter Blanche and tosses her aside as he gets contractual control even when she starts showing pregnant. Don’t be surprised when Johnny takes writing credit with ASCAP for every hit no matter who wrote it or throws even his nearest or dearest under the bus.
But what makes this novel so magical is that Cameron tells it like you are there hearing the music and every page is gold, solid gold.
From the very first line, Cameron dips the reader full-on into the jazz vernacular: “First time I ever saw Johnny Angel was ‘way back in 1939 A.D. when I was still blowing bass with Daddy Halloway and his Hot Babies.” “We just blew ho. As hot as we knew how. And Daddy blew the hottest.” And, he tells us, “We had some good boys in that band. Daddy hired by ear. Didn’t matter your complexion or sex life to old Daddy as long as you blew good.” Cameron addresses color barriers so well with a comment here and there as well as any issues regarding sexual preference.
Don’t act surprised as Johnny pushes first one than another out of the big band and eventually takes control for himself. Don’t be surprised when Johnny makes Big Daddy’s daughter Blanche and tosses her aside as he gets contractual control even when she starts showing pregnant. Don’t be surprised when Johnny takes writing credit with ASCAP for every hit no matter who wrote it or throws even his nearest or dearest under the bus.
But what makes this novel so magical is that Cameron tells it like you are there hearing the music and every page is gold, solid gold.
August 18, 2021
Mid-2oth Century North American Crime and Mystery
Countdown: #6 (of 250) The most shocking thing here is that this novel, here on goodreads, has just 14 ratings. They average 4.43. But this is classic American crime.
As the song goes (not from this book and probably not what the songwriter intended):
"Franky and Johnny were lovers, Oh Lordy how they could love.
They swore to be true to each other, just as true as the stars above."
But Franky is a mulatto drummer in a jazz band and when Johnny, "a tall blond kid in a cream sports jacket...sharp and good looking", walks into a jazz bar, they can't take their eyes off each other. Fireworks explode: one guy wants the other guy's job. There will be buckets of blood and heartaches to heaven in this 1960's noir masterpiece.
Hook=4 stars: "First time I ever saw Johnny Angel was 'way back in 1939 A.D. when I was still blowing bass with Daddy Halloway and his Hot Babies". If you know and love music, this one is for you. If not, you may not be hooked instantly.
Pace=5: The music changes (jazz, progressive jazz, be-bop, R&B,etc) page by page as does the plot. Non-stop action just sounds stunning here.
Plot=5: See, Franky and Johnny they was lovers...and then...well, this is one explosive story.
People=5: Daddy. Franky the Drum. Tommy the Axe. So many more.
Place=4: Most of the action takes place in clubs and recording studios, with music as background. If you can here the music, you'll be immersed, but you need to know a little bit about "12 to a bar", things like that. You need to know jazz, jazz vocals vs. rock vocals, recording methodologies, etc. If you don't, you'll lose a bit of the atmosphere. This one is written for music lovers.
Summary: 4.6. This is a masterpiece for music lovers/noir readers. It's a better book about music than about crime, though. Still, it's great entertainment and one sensational surprise.
Countdown: #6 (of 250) The most shocking thing here is that this novel, here on goodreads, has just 14 ratings. They average 4.43. But this is classic American crime.
As the song goes (not from this book and probably not what the songwriter intended):
"Franky and Johnny were lovers, Oh Lordy how they could love.
They swore to be true to each other, just as true as the stars above."
But Franky is a mulatto drummer in a jazz band and when Johnny, "a tall blond kid in a cream sports jacket...sharp and good looking", walks into a jazz bar, they can't take their eyes off each other. Fireworks explode: one guy wants the other guy's job. There will be buckets of blood and heartaches to heaven in this 1960's noir masterpiece.
Hook=4 stars: "First time I ever saw Johnny Angel was 'way back in 1939 A.D. when I was still blowing bass with Daddy Halloway and his Hot Babies". If you know and love music, this one is for you. If not, you may not be hooked instantly.
Pace=5: The music changes (jazz, progressive jazz, be-bop, R&B,etc) page by page as does the plot. Non-stop action just sounds stunning here.
Plot=5: See, Franky and Johnny they was lovers...and then...well, this is one explosive story.
People=5: Daddy. Franky the Drum. Tommy the Axe. So many more.
Place=4: Most of the action takes place in clubs and recording studios, with music as background. If you can here the music, you'll be immersed, but you need to know a little bit about "12 to a bar", things like that. You need to know jazz, jazz vocals vs. rock vocals, recording methodologies, etc. If you don't, you'll lose a bit of the atmosphere. This one is written for music lovers.
Summary: 4.6. This is a masterpiece for music lovers/noir readers. It's a better book about music than about crime, though. Still, it's great entertainment and one sensational surprise.
February 11, 2018
Contrary what some people say, this is not a super grim bop noir (the protagonist is a trad/mainstream bassist!) but a jazz take on What Makes Sammy Run? Somewhat rambling and episodic, but the these defects are more than compensated for by brisk pacing, a vividly-realized mid century music background (heroin! Strike! Payola!), and concision no doubt due to the original publisher's (Gold Medal) constraints. Recommended.
May 26, 2025
These Black Gat Books (an imprint of Stark House Press) really provide you with a lot of bang for your buck, pun intended. This is the story of almost three decades in the life of jive talkin' musician Ben Parker - the only seeming honest man in a business rife with violence and greed. There's darkness and death in this book, as occur when time passes... And it is, after all, noir... But Parker possesses a stoic resilience (which is not to say he's without heart, quite the contrary) that thrusts him unwittingly into the role of the 'good guy' - a character-type that is not always so clearly cut in these type of books. That's not to say it's without grit - there's plenty of hard drinking and dames with low morals in these pages. And I think I mentioned violence and death. But in this one the reader has someone to root for. In this instance the effect works. A solid read. Three stars.
November 21, 2023
Nobody reads my reviews anyway, so I'm just here to say, "Great dialogue, great characters, great narrator, great writing!" Great great great!
Lou Cameron illustrated Classic Comic Books before he began writing. Angel's Flight was his first book, and I'm ready to read the other 299 books he wrote. Why haven't we heard more about this guy?
Lou Cameron illustrated Classic Comic Books before he began writing. Angel's Flight was his first book, and I'm ready to read the other 299 books he wrote. Why haven't we heard more about this guy?
July 6, 2024
This novel's being touted as the great lost noir novel but it just reads like a standard Fifties lurid paperback timekiller. The main character is a bassist named Ben Parker who keeps telling us how much he wants to deck Johnny Angel, the sniveling, reptilian drummer who bests him at everything. Parker loves Dixieland jazz and swing music and thinks those bebop bastards have gone too far with their dirty racket. Nothing really happens in this novel that you'll remember after you close the book. I want my ten dollars back.
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