Review: A Touch of Death

A Touch of Death by Charles Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The beginning is quite clever as ex-football star Lee Scarborough responds to an ad of someone looking to buy a car and completely by chance meets up with Diana James who sizes him up and recruits him to help her find $120,000 in stolen money. Williams also uses a clever plot device when about a quarter of the way through the novel Scarborough, who started out scheming with one femme-fatale, takes up with another. This switch adds an extra kick to an already fast moving storyline. Plenty of action and suspenseful plot points keep the pages turning to find out who gets the money and who lives or dies. To provide more specifics risks a spoiler, but this novel has most of the archetypal film-noir elements, and it is surprising that, unlike twelve other of Williams’ novels, that this one was never made into a movie.

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Review: Go Home, Stranger

Go Home, Stranger by Charles Williams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a mystery-thriller rather than a noir-thriller and it loses quite a bit of the edge that Charles Williams novels usually have because it sticks to the conventions of the mystery genre. The basic plot is that the protagonist - Pete Reno - needs to solve the mystery to save his sister who's facing the electric chair. So right from the start this story is somewhat tepid because we don't have the urgency of Reno trying to save his own skin. The third-person narration also pushes us a bit farther away from Reno and is another drop in urgency. These are perhaps subtle points, but all you need to do is read Williams' A Touch of Death to feel the difference. Williams wrote such great action sequences so it is hard to dislike this novel even if it does seem one of his weaker ones. You have car chases, boat chases, gun battles, and plenty of lurking about in the bayou. So, better than OK. And it also makes one realize how great his best novels are if this is a weakling.

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Review: A Touch of Death

A Touch of Death by Charles Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ex-jock narrator falls for a cute bikini woman’s scheme to help rob some stolen cash from an uninhabited house, but then he unexpectedly finds it occupied by a drunken hottie who turn out to be even more devious than the first. A great opening sets the stage for a taut rollercoaster of a noir that never fails to keep ramping up the tension as the narrator keeps digging himself into a deeper hole. Williams expertly unwinds the story of the stolen cash and the players involved in a way that doesn't make the complex plot feel that way. The puzzle pieces fall into place forcing the beleaguered narrator to keep continuously adjusting his plans. Terrific dialog, clever plotting, and some very interesting characters make this one a masterpiece of 1950s paperback noir. Highly recommended.

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Review: Hell Hath No Fury

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’d forgotten just how subversive this 1953 Williams noir was. Unlike some of his other blackmail driven plots - The Big Bite and A Touch of Death, for example - which both feature an everyman protagonist narrator driven to crime by hard luck and the lure of a sexy woman, Harry Madox is a criminal from the get go. In this novel Charles Williams and Jim Thompson are simpatico. The other writer I kept thinking about when casting for comparisons, however, is Cornell Woolrich, because for much of the novel we have unrelenting fear, dread, paranoia, and a mind threatening to unhinge with the ticking clock. Plenty of reviews describe the plot, so I will just give you the ingredients: a smooth-talking amoral drifter; a reckless femme-fatale; a nice girl hiding nasty secrets; a scummy blackmailer; a crafty Sheriff; a sultry small town in Texas; and a bank begging to be robbed. There's a 1990 movie version titled The Hot Spot. Directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Connelly. The movie is pretty darn faithful to the novel, which is not so surprising as the screenplay was originally written by Charles Williams (with Nona Tyson) in 1962. The scenes are all there. The only thing the movie really couldn’t duplicate from the novel is the narrative interiority, and not having that to amp up the in-between scene tension made the movie a bit flatter than the novel. What the faithful scene rendering of the movie does is reflect back how many great scenes the novel has. An awesome noir not to be missed.

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Review: All the Way

All the Way by Charles Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one takes off with a hard-charging start as Jerry Forbes, whom we know initially as George Hamilton, is completely played by Marian Forsyth and quickly finds himself enmeshed in a robbery scheme. He's a shallow-conscience ex-adman and she's a femme-fatale: a perfect match. After telling Forbes her plan to steal $75,000 from her ex-boss's brokerage account, she ups the ante to murder. By this time, Forbes, in classic noir fashion has gone off the deep-end for her and is quickly drawn into the murder plot, which involves him impersonating the man to be murdered. What's Marian's motive, you might ask? No it is not just the money: "Money is important to me. I like success. I poured everything I had into making him one, thinking I was doing it for both of us. Do you think I'm going to move aside now and give it up? Let him hand it all to some simpering, feather-brained little bitch who can't even balance a checkbook?" So it's game on and Williams concocts an intricate and incredibly detailed plot where half the book involves Forbes covering tracks and planting false clues and all the while we just know he's going to get crossed . . . or will he? No more spoilers from me as there are plenty of neat twists to keep you guessing all the way to the end in this top-notch noir. The paperback edition is tough to find but there's an eBook version with a different title - Concrete Flamingo - so check that out.

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Review: Talk of the Town

Talk of the Town by Charles Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fast-paced, with plenty of action. Less character development than a lot of Williams's books and the barest of plots. That's okay, though, as it rips along from one complication to the next. The basic story is a stranger comes to town and has the bad luck to get in a car accident. In the three days it takes to get his car repaired he becomes enmeshed with a woman whom the whole town suspects murdered her husband. The stranger, however, is an ex-cop and he just can't help himself from investigating, which quickly turns the town against him, too. Will he survive long enough to solve the murder? That's the question the novel poses. All the action takes place over three days and there is barely a let up from start to finish.