BLUE CITY

This has everything for a modern penny dreadful, yellow back thriller, except that the number of obscenities is limited- or indicated by dashes. There's everything else,- a regular Hairbreadth Harry hero, in a returned veteran who fancies himself hardened to slaughter, and who is witness to a number of violent deaths for which he could be suspected, before he achieves his goal. That goal starts as a search for his father's murderer, and winds up as an attempt to clean the Augean stables of the town where his father, its bo met unexplained death. His investigations unearth a sordid lot from younsters to pimps, through blackmailers, indifferent police, sadistic homosexuals, on to the holier-than-thou mayor, who turns out to be the arch criminal. A touch of romance is inadequate to salve the rawness.