Catch a Falling Clown by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1981)

The gorilla was sleeping.

When he woke up he’d find a clown in his cage. There would be no reasoning with Gargantua. He was not a reasonable gorilla. Maybe there are no reasonable gorillas. This was the only nonhuman one I had ever met, and if fate didn’t step very gently in and let me out, it was the only gorilla I would ever meet.

His keeper had told me that Gargantua was so mean that they had to throw live snakes into his cage just to get him to move out so they could clean the floors.

“But gorillas, they don’t eat people,” said the keeper, a knotty twig named Henry Yew. “That is a misnomer. They rends ’em apart or chomps ’em sometimes, but they don’t eat ’em.”

So when Gargantua woke up looking for some succulent head of cabbage to bend or chomp, he would find instead a private detective named Toby Peters. With the war in the Pacific going badly and reports of the Japanese bombing Los Angeles and Seattle, I’d just make a curiosity item in the entertainment section of the Los Angeles Times: FAMOUS CIRCUS GORILLA RIPS PRIVATE DETECTIVE. “Maybe the Times would wonder why I had been in his cage dressed as a clown. Maybe not.

High Midnight by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1981)

Both the sun and Mrs. Plaut were in my room when I woke up. The sun was full of energy and pride, having broken through a week of stubborn, cold clouds. Mrs. Plaut’s energy “was no less determined. She stood on a wooden chair and was either adjusting or removing the portrait of Abraham Lincoln from my wall.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Fortunately she didn’t hear me. As it was, she nearly toppled from the chair.

“What are you doing?” I shouted when she made it safely to the floor, portrait in hand. She heard that and turned to me with her lips in a straight, resolute line.

“I am removing the portrait of Uncle Ripley,” she said. “I am also removing the bedspread and the doilies from the sofa. These are precious items for me, and it is not safe for them in this room, especially if you plan to continue to stab people and do who knows what else.”

She scooped up the doilies and the bedspread. I was happy to see them go.

“And another thing,” she said, marching to the door. “You will have to buy your own knives.”

The Chinese Detective by Michael Hardwick (BBC Books 1981)

It was the main hall of one of the East End of London's Victorian-built breweries. The big ones - Charrington's, Watney's, Truman's - still prospered, almost the only remaining relics left of East End industry. This smaller one, on the corner of Milsom Street and Warner Street, would produce no more sustenance for the workers and solace for the unemployed. It was as deserted as the docks nearby, the brewing towers already partly dismantled, the rest of the building to go soon.

The young man's body was slight, but when he moved again there was a hint of great energy and purpose about him. His short hair was dark and his features boyish. An onlooker from down the length of the hall would have thought he was a local kid, looking for something to nick or smash.

They would have been only partly right. He was local. At twenty-two he was little more than a youth. A closer inspection of his good-looking features would have revealed them to be of Chinese cast. But a look at the identification card he carried would have revealed him to be Detective Sergeant John Ho, Metropolitan Police.

Grange Hill For Sale by Robert Leeson (Fontana Lions 1981)

'Listen, Benson, you . . .'

'Oh, what are we going to do about it then?' Benson took Alan's jacket in his hand and fingered it. 'Maybe my mate can have you. I want Jenkins.' He turned back to Tucker. 'I bet you can still feel it in your ribs, where I gave it to you last time. You're going to wish I'd finished it off then.'

Tucker's stomach chilled. Then he braced himself. Whatever happened he was not going to let Benson work him over again. But what he'd do and how, his mind wouldn't tell him. It had seized up.

Suddenly there were more footsteps from below. Three more figures appeared on the landing. The torch swung round. Now it was Alan's turn to go cold in his innards. The first figure was Eddie Carver. He heard Susi draw a quick breath behind him. This was the night of the long knives all right. If Benson owed Tucker for blowing the whistle on him over smashing up the school, then Carver owed Susi and him for that fight in the woods at school camp. Carver still had the mark on his skull where Susi had felled him with a half brick.

The small landing was crowded. Carver's two friends stood a pace or two behind him on the stairs. They couldn't even make a break for it, thought Alan desperately.

Carver spoke. His voice was calm, easy.

'Which flat are you using, Jenkins?'

'The - top one.'

'That's all right then. I thought we'd been screwed for a minute. We're somewhere else.' He came closer. 'You stick to your place, we'll stick to ours. You haven't seen us, we haven't seen you. O.K.?'

His eyes rested for a moment on Susi, then on Alan. But he said nothing more, but turned to Benson and jerked his head towards the upper stairway.

Benson hesitated.

'Come on.'

Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Melville International Crime 1981)

'Put them with today's.'

The girl did as Santos said, and Julian Mir returned to his duties as chief steward, casting eyes over the movements of his red-armbanded subordinates.

'We'll have an unpleasant surprise one of these days. I don't like this place.'

Santos met Mir's critical ill-humour with a nod that could have indicated either agreement or disapproval. He had been using the same gesture with Mir ever since the days of the Fifth Regiment. Then, Julian had never liked the evening shadows, which had seemed pregnant with Franco's soldiers, nor the morning light that opened the way to advance parties of Regulares. Later, he had not been fond of the Tarn fruit groves, which seemed to have borne the shape of German patrols ever since the Pleistocene. Later still, he had not liked his missions inside the country, although he carried them out with the haughty assurance of a Western film hero.

'Many problems?'

'Four fascists died of fear,' Mir had invariably replied on his return from a trip to Franco's Spain.

He had always been like that. Probably born that way, thought Santos, and he was suddenly surprised that Julian Mir had once been born: so long ago; too long. The time was now stored in his stiff white hair and his old athlete's musculature that made him look like a chicken spoiling for a fight.

'I don't like this place.'

'Here we go again. Where would you like to hold the central committee?' asked Santos.

'There are too many little offices dotted everywhere. That's what I am complaining about. There should be a fine central headquarters like every proper Communist Party has got. Does it seem right to you? Just yesterday, the Anabaptists from Torrejón de Ardoz held a convention here. Look at what's written on that poster.

'I'd have to put my glasses on.'

'Oh yes! You've been losing your faculties ever since you became a pen-pusher,' Mir said. 'I can read it all right: "The way of the spirit in the path of the body", by Yogi Sundra Bashuarti. That was here yesterday. I can't tell anymore whether this is a central committee meeting or a gathering of fakirs. Communists in a hotel—as if we were tourists or underwear salesmen.'

'You're in a right old mood.'

'And one day they'll sneak in a commando disguised as a tropical orchestra. Sometimes you can even hear the music from the dance-hall.'

'It's quite atmospheric.'

The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette (City Lights Books 1981)

Martin Terrier had no visible reaction when he grasped that Anne had left for good (if indeed he grasped it). During the night, he had audible reactions: he moaned or maybe groaned in his sleep, making that noise that others had called blabbering and had even tried to decode.

Every now and then, these days, Terrier still blabbers in his sleep. Otherwise, as a waiter in a brasserie, he is normal. He performs his duties properly, even if he is sometimes physically clumsy. It has recently been noted that his clumsiness increases when he drinks. Late at night, young people occasionally have fun buying him drinks until he behaves in an eccentric manner. He has even climbed up on a table and bleated like a sheep, interspersing this with grand operatic arias. Each time he is brought to such extremes, he gets angry and violent immediately afterward. But he is not dangerous, for he has indeed become so very clumsy that when he tries to hit someone, he succeeds only in falling on his face.

He lives in a small apartment.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - A True Story by Cameron Crowe

In the summer of '79, I had just turned twenty-two. I discussed the idea for this book with my New York publisher. Go back to high school, he said, and find out what's really going on in there with the kids. I thought about it over a weekend, and took the project.

I had attended Ridgemont Senior High School in Redondo Beach, California, for a summer session seven years earlier, and those eight weeks had been sublime and forbidden days, even if it did mean going to school in the summer. I normally attended a rather strict Catholic school, and there were many of us who believed that all our problems would be solved, all our dreams within reach if we just went to Ridgemont public high school.

In the fall of '79 I walked into the office of Principal William Gray and told him the plan. I wanted to attend classes at Ridgemont High and remain an inconspicuous presence for the full length of the school year. The object, I told him, was to write a book about real, contemporary life in high school.

Principal Gray was a careful man with probing eyes. He was wary of the entire plan, and he wanted to know what I had written before. I explained that I had authored a number of magazine profiles of people in the public eye.

"Like who?" he asked.

I named a few. A president's son. A few rock stars. A few actors. My last article had been on the songwriter-actor Kris Kristofferson.

Principal Gray eased back in his chair. "You know Kris Kristofferson?"

"Sure. I spent a few weeks on tour with him."

"Hell," said the principal. "What's he like?"

"A great guy." I told him a few Kris stories.

"Well now," said Principal Gray, "I think I can trust you. Maybe this can be worked out."