River Girl

Charles Williams
River Girl

Gold Medal, 1951

A part of Forgotten Friday Books

Jack Marshall is a deputy sheriff in a small town. The judge's son, the young Jack is in good standing with the citizens, especially those who run the dens and brothels. Sheriff and Jack allow homes of sins exist and prosper, but for taking a bribe that Jack accurately collects every month. An active member of the Christian organization wants to close all brothels, at the same time sending crooked cops to jail.

But the problems with the grand jury for the deputy sheriff go to the background when the meets a beautiful woman with a funny haircut, living in a small house on the river bank with a suspicious husband. Jack and "river girl" by the name of Doris fall in love, and Jack starts to come in the evening to the river to see Doris. Lovers are going to run away together when her Doris’ husband, Shevlin, finds them in his house. In the struggle Jack kills Shevlin and comes up with a plan to cover up the murder and escape with Doris away.

It is not hard to guess that everything goes completely wrong, not as Jack has planned. In noir a perfect murder does not happen. River Girl is one of those noirs, which are written in the first person, and where the reader's own throat starts to feel a noose on his neck, tightening.

Williams treats the reader gently. The reader sympathizes with the protagonist, despite the fact that the protagonist is a real bastard. Sympathy for Jack covers the fact that he was cheating on his wife, without batting an eye, kills an unarmed man, takes bribes and has no qualms.

The novel, however, is not without drawbacks. It suffers from a large volume, and the motives of the characters are sometimes not clear. If the reader is willing to forgive the author the plot holes, he will receive a tense novel.

I had problems with a few episodes. When Jack kills Shevlin, who is an escaped convict, living in the swamp, he could not have any plans to cover up. The disappearance of practically an unknown man from the backwoods would have noticed no one, especially since Shevlin is constantly on the run, changing the place of residence. And the representative of the law Marshall would had to think about it before he acted rashly.

Later in the book for Jack another woman falls, Dinah, the sheriff's mistress, which saw in Jack «excitement». But at that time Jack was exhausted with problems, always worried because of the murder and the grand jury, and at first sight to have seen something exciting in him would be doubtful.

But it is my grumbling. In fact, River Girl is a classic of noir.

Soon to be reprinted by Stark House Press

A House in Naples

Peter Rabe
A House in Naples

Gold Medal, 1956

Charley and Joe are two American deserters that during World War II escaped from the army. They remained in Italy, have engaged in the transportation of goods from the black market and generally well settled there. Only Joe, though stupid one, made homself new documents, and Charley didn’t. So when the police stopped his truck, Charlie fled, but with a wound and the face now known to all carabinieri. Now, if he is caught, he will go staright to prison (or noose), and Charley urgently needs to get new documents.

Rabe with each novel increasingly shows his passion for travel. In his first novel, the action took place in the United States, in the second Italy flashed somewhere in the background, the half of the action of the third has been placed in Germany, and the fourth is purely Italian. The protagonist is always a crook, smart and savvy to a degree, but again, short-tempered and jealous. Rabe gave his character an unusual habit: he does not drink, but all the time sucks aspirin.

All elements of the previous work of the writer are again present, but A House in Naples is a more private story. This novel is a kind of rural noir, as Rabe understands it.

A Shroud for Jesso

Peter Rabe
A Shroud for Jesso

Gold Medal, 1955


A part of Friday Forgotten Books

Jack Jesso is doing work for the syndicate alone and fast. Jesso does not realize that such arbitrariness could cost him his job, and even his life. After another "business trip" to Vegas, where Jesso works out the situation with his fists, his boss Gluck gives Jesso a chance to improve – to do a job for a mysterious German Kator. Because of his obstinacy Jesso alone finds for Kator his escaped associate, but violates several Kator’s requirements. So Jesso signed his own death ticket.

As in the two previous novels, the main character of Peter Rabe books is self-confident mid-level hood, tough and overestimating his own strength. This hood invariably goes against the rules and against the bosses, but such attempts to protest rarely lead to targeted results.

In A Shroud for Jesso Rabe wanders into the territory of a spy novel, and one can not say that it turns out well. It seems that Rabe does not quite know about matters he writes. There are several memorable scenes, but the plot is largely based on coincidences.

This novel is interesting in how it shows where Donald Westlake as a writer came from. A hood on the instructions of the boss looking for an another missing hood - Westlake later used this scheme in his several earlier novels, in The Cutie and Busy Body. The scenes in the house of Kator resemble similar scenes from 361. Jesso, of course, is not Richard Stark's Parker, but in the dialogues, in my opinion, you can hear the Parker notes.

Compared to the previous two Rabe novels this is less successful, but you still can find a lot of fun here.

Big City Girl

A part of Friday Forgotten Books

Charles Williams
Big City Girl

Gold Medal, 1951
(Open Road Media eBook, 2013)

On a dilapidated farm to her husband's family comes a big city girl from the title of the novel. Her name is Joy, she has no money, and the farm becomes her last refuge. Joy’s husband - Sewell Neely, the eldest son of the owner of the farm Cass Neely – was convicted for a series of armed robberies and murder, and while in jail laughed in the face of his wife, who had time to cheat on him. Relatives of the outlaw son take Joy in different ways: the father and youngest daughter kindly, but Sewell’s brother despises city girl. The situation on the farm gets darker and darker, and at this time Sewell, who was being escorted to prison, escapes, killing two policemen. Coincidentally, he escapes just in those places where their family farm is.

If in his debut Williams depicted family tragedy with a country background, then in his second novel, he adds to the country theme "escaped convict" type of noir. Fortunately for the reader, the convict is a psychopath, in fact even violent psychopath, and the story rushes ahead without a stop (especially in the second half ).

The book's title may be somewhat misleading: city girl Joy is not the central character here. Williams switches from one character to another in a single chapter, the point of view is constantly changing, and you can watch the family drama from all sides.

Noir story isspiced with black humor here - in the face of nutty Cass Neely: the old man has been led to madness, who would have thought, by the radio. A rarity in the village at the time, indeed.

One of the best Gold Medal books that I have read.

Hill Girl

Charles Williams
Hill Girl

Gold Medal, 1951

A part of Forgotten Books Friday

Bob Crane after college comes back home to the farm inherited from his late grandfather. Bob’s father nicknamed the Major did not leave the youngest son a cent , but had written everything to his oldest, Lee. While Bob was away, Lee married a patient girl whom he had known since high school, though hadn’t started to do something serious with his life. He remained the same drunkard and womanizer like he had always been. Family life hadn’t brought him to reason.

Soon after meeting after a long separation, the brothers immediately make a journey to the farm of a local hunter Sam, who moonshines selling whiskey under the counter. Buy a jar of whiskey is just an excuse to go to Sam's house. He has an older daughter, Angelina, who the farmer hides from the men's eyes better than his whiskey from the eyes of the sheriff .

«So this was Angelina. This was the scrawny little girl with the thin arms and legs and chapped knees and the wide, frightened brown eyes I remembered. I felt myself growing uncomfortable and tried to take my eyes off her.

It wasn't that she had grown so much. She wasn't big, even now. But it was as if she had received twenty-five pounds or so in the mail with instructions to put it on where she thought she needed it most.»

Lee has already heard about the 18-year-old angel, who lives as in prison, and intends to do more than just stare at her. Younger brother warns him than nothing good will come out from the affair with the hill girl, but the older brother isn’t listening. And nothing good really will come.

The debut novel by Charles Williams is a successful blend of noir fiction and the Southern fiction. After the first visit to the farm to Angelina and her father it becomes clear where things will go, and you should only watch as Williams is unfolding this play in rural scenery. Bob Crane is hardly a typical noir hero: he's not very good-looking, large, sharp-tongued, but with a bright head on his shoulders and a clear conscience. And it is his rackety brother, who will only brings problems and try to drag the protagonist to the bottom.

Details of the novel, I should say, are a little dated: several plot twists are entirely of this kind that another five years, and the whole structure of the novel would have ceased to have sense at all. But this should not be an obstacle to get the pleasure out of reading this book.

The Sour Lemon Score

Richard Stark
The Sour Lemon Score

Gold Medal, 1969


A part of Forgotten Books Friday


Parker and three accomplices robs the bank and then go to an abandoned farm, where they have to sit out and share the loot. In the house one of the accomplices, George Uhl, kills two others and almost kills Parker, but Parker manages to jump out of the window, however, losing his gun. Hiding in the woods, Parker, unarmed, can only watch as Uhl sets fire to the house and one of the cars, and leaves on the other.

Parker gets to the town, where there was a robbery, asks Claire to wire him money and leaves twon. Parker needs to find the son of a bitch Uhl and pick up the share that belongs to Parker. The search is complicated by the fact that Uhl is relatively new in the game, he was only in for six robberies and no one really knows him or anything about him.

This is a solid Parker novel, at the same time an example of that Parker has mellowed in Gold Medal books. For example, moneyless and gunless Parker does not have to rob and steal: Claire wires him money. He even buys, not steal cars. Or take a truth serum, first used on Parker and then by Parker. What are the chances that Parker would use serum instead of fists? This serum is clearly from the repertoire of Westlake, not Stark. I wil be silent about the finale, when Parker catches Uhl (spoiler, yeah, but this review is written for those who have already read the book).

If you do not pay attention to these "soft spots" then The Sour Lemon Score is quite a solid read. The plot has a few borrowings from the previous books, but it’s not really a shortcoming.

The Sour Lemon Score is often regarded as the best of the four Gold Medal Parkers, but I will name the best The Green Eagle Score, more unexpected and more violent book.

A Killer is Loose

Gil Brewer
A Killer is Loose

Gold Medal, 1954

The plot summary could be described within the three sentenses - even one, that is the title of the book. And obviously, the plot is not the most important here. It’s enough to know that the book includes a loser with a pregnant wife, empty pockets, barely seeing eye, and a psychopathic killer, whom almost until the very end we know nothing about.

Brewer feeds us the details of a psychopath in small portions, to keep us hooked. The book is a good illustration of the fact that even the most miserable existence can turn into a complete nightmare in one instant, though it’s impossible to think that things might be even worse.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m just telling you thanks. You saved my life. We’re buddies now, pal.”

The Captain Must Die

Robert Colby
The Captain Must Die

Prologue Books, 2012 (eBook)
(originally published by Gold Medal, in 1959)

Three former soldiers, 12 years after the war, return to town in Louisiana, where their former captain lives with his wife. The soldiers are looking forward to the meeting with Captain Driscoll, but not because they want to thank him for his good command. All three, on the contrary, are covered by hate and want to brutally kill the captain. Now Driscoll is a successful businessman, a father, a respectable and prosperous man, with still an attractive wife. Three soldiers do not just want to kill Driscoll, it would be too easy, but first, to scare him, knocking him from a measured pace of life, then take his woman, and then take all the money the captain, managed to save over 12 years of life and now he keeps them in a safe with the code. Brick, an organizer of a plan of revenge, is most eager to send a captain to hell - as retribution for a case during the war, for one incident, which nearly put an end to the lives of three ex-GIs.

Colby immediately initiates us into the plans of three, but not immediately lays out the truth about what happened 12 years ago. On the other hand Colby gives each character to speak. Everyone has their secrets, everyone has their attitude to the incident from the past, and each has its own plans for the future. Brick, fierce and angry man, suffered the loss of the family. Playboy Cal lost revenue work. Stupid Barney missed waiting with his bride.

I will not reveal a big secret when I say that all these 12 years, Brick, Barney and Cal spent in prison. But it is strange that Colby does not mention how prison term affected the three companions. Colby wrote that they were waiting for retribution and hoarded malice and hatred all the time, but the prison experience and the impact of prison on them - not a word about it, as if all these 12 years former soldiers were just waiting on the bench and not behind bars.

Colby is a little too simple, but he very skillfully creates an atmosphere of growing tension. Moreover, the author succeeds in achieving the effect where we stand on the side of the soldiers at the beginning of the novel. The positive hero is to be captain, but Colby uses in describing him such words and phrases that show the captain in an unfavorable light, as if he were the last bastard, making money on the failure of others. Three real bastards that are greedy for money and the flesh of women are the obvious anti-heroes, but before Colby reveals the secrets of the past, we are on the side of the inmates and ex-soldiers.

«The Captain Must Die» is written by all the canons of the genre, but it delivers the goods on all fronts.