(1915-2000)
Norman is known for his Kill Me In series of paperback novels, all concerning the case files of Burns Bannion, a “great big six-foot, slightly overweight bastard” American private eye based in Japan. As the corny, alliterative name of his hero suggests, Norman’s approach to the tough-guy thriller was sometimes straight out of the old pulp magazines like Spicy Detective, circa Robert Leslie bellem’s heyday. Indeed, the topics were not expected to do more than grab some of Shell Scott’s or Sam Dur-rell’s readers and give them a few hours of light entertainment. However, the all-Asian settings and accoutrements, a combination of exoticism and matter-of-fact authenticity, gave the Bannion topics their edge over the typical paperback intrigues. The author was himself an old Japan hand, having been a longtime resident of the country and well-connected member of the post-World War II American occupation and the international community. Norman’s expatriate adventures included periods as liaison for Hollywood productions shooting in Japan, including The Barbarian and the Geisha. He was reported to have become a steady drinking partner of that film’s star, John Wayne.
Burns Bannion is no unabashed Japanophile, however. The topics are filled with stereotypes and caricatures, and the Japanese women are treated with an outlandish chauvinism, as if the country were one giant geisha house. Thomson’s most thrilling use of “local color”—aside from the descriptions of the hero’s rampant sexual conquest of Japanese females—is in the many scenes of hand-to-hand combat. Bannion is an advanced student of karate. Before the spy craze of the ’60s made martial arts and fistfights a cliche, the karate displays and the inevitable bone-crunching fights that ensued were most enlightening and fun to read.
In later years Norman returned to the United States. He died in California.
Works
- Kill Me in Atami (1962);
- Kill Me in Hong Kong (1976);
- Kill Me in Roppongi (1967);
- Kill Me in Shimbashi (1959);
- Kill Me in Shinjunku (1961);
- Kill Me in Tokyo (1958);
- Kill Me in Yokohama (1960);
- Kill Me in Yokosuka (1966);
- Kill Me on the Ginza (1962)
