The Book You Have to Read: “I Like It Cool,” by Michael Lawrence

(Editor’s note: This is the 187th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.)

By Steven Nester
When it comes to hip, beatnik-era private investigators, Korean War veteran Johnny Amsterdam talks the talk and walks the walk. Referred to as “the eye with a beard,” this hirsute leading man in Michael Lawrence’s second Amsterdam outing, I Like it Cool (1962), possesses the street cred and gravitas that get respect and acceptance from the hip as well as the squares, allowing him to navigate between bohemian party pads and the penthouses in the toniest Manhattan neighborhoods with confidence, aplomb—and of course, plenty of cool.

To author Lawrence’s credit (and readers will surely appreciate this) is his ability to describe people, places, and situations with Chandleresque efficiency and wit. It’s difficult to imagine he wasn’t enjoying himself as he came up with I Like It Cool’s cast, hard-boiled descriptions, and tough-guy talk. And like many P.I. novels, this one begins with a damsel in distress.

Sandra Tyson is a hip torch singer with monumental daddy issues; her father is Mark Tyson, the rich and renowned creator of Jeff Noble, a “hard-fisted, steel-jawed adventurer” who started out in comic strips, but eventually became popular (and profitable) on radio and television, as well as in movies. Never much of a father, Tyson abandoned his young family to live a life of “debauchery in the chic, café society bunch who mattress hopped and made the scandal columns.” After years of neglect, Sandra finally wants her piece of the Jeff Noble pie, to which she believes she’s entitled—and says there’s proof.

She’s awaiting the arrival of her friend, successful Los Angeles fashion model Helen Tate, who apparently has a cache of letters written by Mark—letters disputing his long-standing assertion that he was the progenitor of Jeff Noble, and acknowledging Sandra’s mother’s contribution. Quite plainly, Jeff Noble was mom’s idea. This would blow the lid off Tyson’s cartoon empire, as well as the door off his bank vault. Unfortunately, Sandra discloses her plans to Mark, and when Helen’s arrival is overdue, Sandra frets for her safety. With so much at stake, she hires Johnny Amsterdam (her late brother’s old army buddy) to track the model down.

The pair meet at a place called the Purple Pad in Greenwich Village, where Sandra is performing, and she makes quite an impression on the gumshoe: “She had a nice voice, not great, but loaded with enough of the sexual moxie to stop all conversation in the bistro.” It doesn’t take long for her to bed Johnny, on top of buying his help.

The missing Helen, Johnny observes while looking at a photograph of her, was “the sort of doll who could smile you into bankruptcy and make you enjoy it.” But when he does finally locate her, in a Manhattan hotel, she’s been beaten to a pulp, and is almost recognizable and barely hanging onto life. And the letters? Well, they’re nowhere to be found! This gives author Lawrence the opportunity to gather all of his characters on stage in order to judge their level of involvement in these sordid affairs and weigh their motives. One thing seems clear: Everybody has a beef with Mark Tyson, and it doesn’t take long for a missing-person case to become something worse.

(Left) Cartoonist-author Lawrence Lariar.

Drawing Amsterdam’s particular wariness, as well as that of his talented but unremarkable-looking business partner, Dave Gross (who, we’re told, could “tail a man into his own living room without being noticed”), is slinky Sandra. She blames Mark for beating Helen, and then she threatens him—gun in hand—with murder. This does nothing but get her onto the hot seat when Mark is later found dead in his office, killed while dictating into a tape recorder. Next on the list of suspects is Hiram Barrett, owner of Jeff Noble’s syndication company. Barrett is a man “who knew how to throw his weight around. A seasoned top dog.” Barrett’s daughter is Joan, “the gilded gal of madcap headlines,” whose lusty overtures to Mark angered her father, though Mark paid no heed to his warnings to stay away. Another notable player in this consuming drama is Lieutenant McKegnie of the New York Police, who possesses the usual crime-fiction bias toward private dicks and their work. “Ethics are for doctors and lawyers and preachers, not detectives,” he tells Amsterdam. However, it’s the secondary characters, the assistants and the artists, the sycophants and the unrequited admirers, who (you ought to know by now) are the one that readers should really keep an eye on.

As this story is written with focus and concision (it takes place over several days), you might not be shocked to learn that Michael Lawrence was a pen name, that of Lawrence Lariar, who happened to be a cartoonist himself. That art form demands economy, and the author wastes no time driving his narrative to its conclusion, with just the right number of red herrings and clues hidden in plain sight.

Lawrence/Lariar possessed quite the résumé, which should put to rest any pejorative comments concerning cartoonists and their talents. He developed comic strips (among them Barry O’Neill and The Thropp Family), drawing them as well as scripting them. Jewish by heritage, Wikipedia says “he created Yankee Yiddish Cocktail Napkins, which featured cartoons illustrating puns on Yiddish words and expressions.” Lariar served for many years as the cartoon editor for Parade magazine, following his similar role at Liberty. He also edited the annual Best Cartoons of the Year series. The Golden Age of Detection Wiki notes he was a former Disney studio “story man,” and Lariar went on to script several episodes of the 1950s TV show Rocky King, Detective.

Generous with his time and talent, Lariar was a mentor to budding cartoonists and illustrators, teaching and advising them, and fit more into a working day than seems possible. Perhaps those pursuits prevented him from writing further Johnny Amsterdam novels; interested readers will have to be satisfied with only one other entry in the series, Naked and Alone, which dropped in 1953. Yet Lariar did pen additional detective novels, not just as Lawrence, but as “Adam Knight” and “Michael Stark,” too. Homer Bull, Steve Conacher, and Sugar Shannon numbered among his other protagonists.

The author of almost 100 books, this unsung hero of American pulp fiction died in 1981 at the age of 72.

READ MORE: “Whodrewit? I Like It Cool, by Michael Lawrence,”
by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).