TALES OF THE WOLF

Best-seller Sanders digs up some of his pulpier roots in these 13 violent, sexist, hard-boiled crime tales (Mass Market, 1986) originally penned in the late 1960's but just now making their hard-cover debut. Wolf Lannihan makes a living cracking causes of insurance fraud, usually with murder and a beautiful woman thrown in. In one tale (Handle), he uncloaks (literally and figuratively) a nymphomaniacal 16-year-old who has poisoned her father and pinned the murder on her stepmother. In another (Manhattan After Dark), a sleazy blackmailer forces his luscious victim to fake a jewelry heist, a scheme foiled when Wolf slaughters the crook (His eyes pleaded. . .I shot his eyes) and beds the beauty. A fellow insurance agent gone sour (The Rogue Man), a coldblooded bisexual murderess who betrays one lover to win another (The Bloody Triangle), a bitter old military officer who implicates his daughter-in-law in art forgery (The Case of the Missing Nude), and a murder-with-misidentified-corpse scare cooked up by a high-fashion model (Death of a Model) are among the other well-oiled clockwork plots. Usually, Wolf tumbles on the solution after heavy pondering in bleak motels, smoothed along by plenty of cigarettes and prime Scotch. In this neo-adolescent world, women ooze availability (She was all over me like a wet sheet), gays swish and titter, and Lannihan's tough-guy brutality invariably saves the day (I really did a job on him, using my steel heel plates when I worked over his eyes and mouth). Only 20 years old, but positively prehistoric. Passable cave-man fun.