 "Masquerade
In Blue"
by Glenn M. Barns
Ace Books, 1956
The back cover reads: "Every minute he wore
that uniform he lived a mockery!
The last thing Jim Garland wanted to be when he got out of jail was
a cop. Yet when he returned home, the badge was waiting for him. It was
the way his police-chief step-father used to keep this 'black sheep' in
check. Jim had to take it or leave--and he took it.
But Jim still had links with the underworld he couldn't sever, blue
uniform or not. And when beautiful Marge Rivers insinuated herself into
his life with promises of love and money--enough for a new start--and he
needed a girl--badly. So Marge, with her big-time ideas, led Jim to the
one man who could supply their needs, the one man who stood between them.
An unusually exciting novel of a wayward son torn by new temptations."
It's not very often you see an uniformed police
officer as the hero of a pulp story, but in "Masquerade in Blue"
that's just what you get. The book skirts past being too square by making
the hero, Jim, an ex-con. (We are to assume that small police departments
in the 50's never heard of background checks.) At first, he doesn't really
want to be a cop but does it to please his dying mother. But, as in most
novels of this ilk, he quickly becomes a local hero. Jim's criminal does
past comes in handy in his new career. He knows how criminals think...and
knows they must be brought to justice. Throw in an old crime buddy,
some big-shot gangsters, and a femme fatale and you've got your classic
crime pulp novel. Granted it's a Republican leaning, pro establishment
pulp novel...but a pulp novel none the less.
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