Women Hate Till Death
By Hank Janson 

     Step into the hardboiled world of tough Chicago Chronicle reporter Hank Janson; it's a postwar world of gangsters and dames, PIs and tommy guns. Covers featuring scantily clad women in distress and plenty of deadpan dialogue and action paced all packed into a slim volume. Pulp fiction? Yep, and why not; good on Telos for allowing readers today a glimpse of how fiction used to be and a chance to lap up all that straightforward old fashioned action.

     The plot? Reporter Hank Janson is attending an event to launch a new car when he meets the Langham girls. Doris appears normal enough, but her cousin Marion is tense and on edge - an edge that she is tipped over when she suddenly sees someone she recognizes. Then one of the car manufacturer's staff is killed and Hank is on the case. But this is not an ordinary case for its roots go back to wartime Poland, and the Langham's terrible sojourn in a concentration camp.

There is a lot more in here than just a detective story, and anybody interested in the early 1950s ought to be fascinated in this evocation of the way it really was. Telos have left the text untouched so prepare yourself for something refreshingly non-pc. To call this pulp fiction is rather unfair as Hank gives a very graphic and tangible description of life in a concentration camp, told in unvarnished detail by Doris. The detective story really takes a back seat in this particular story, and serves as a peg on which to hang a genuinely moving and harrowing narrative. Not the standard Hank Janson novel in fact - but a worthy entry in the series of 58 novels. More from Telos soon with this "new" series, and top marks for having the imagination to reprint something like this.