Review: Love Me - And Die

Love Me - And Die by Day Keene
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Although published under Day Keene's byline, this was Gil Brewer's first novel. As David Rachel describes it in his introduction to Redheads Die Quickly, the collection of Gil Brewer stories he edited, Keene was awash in material and commissioned Brewer to turn his novella "Marry the Sixth for Murder!," which had been published in Detective Tales, into a novel. Which Brewer did using Keene's original story as an outline. It was published in 1951 by Phantom Books in digest format, with cover art by George Gross. After reading Rachel's review of this one I had low expectations, but was still disappointed. Basically this is just a poor Raymond Chandler imitation. The plot moves randomly and the hard-boiled dialogue is clunky. It reminded me quite a bit of what Orrie Hitt tried to do (also poorly) in Love or Kill Them All, his attempt at hard-boiled under the Nicky Weaver pseudo. This one is interesting (and collectible) only because it was Gil Brewer's first novel.

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Review: —And the Girl Screamed

—And the Girl Screamed by Gil Brewer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those books where I wish Brewer had spent the time to revise instead of cranking it out in five days because it is just completely uneven. Incredibly written scenes are followed by stretches of lackadaisical writing. The beginning was atypical for Brewer, just a grindingly slow setup. And then blammo! Finally, at the start of chapter four, the girl screamed and the novel got going, as ex-cop Reddick witnesses a murder but manages to become the prime suspect and while the police are searching for him he is trying to find the murderer. Unfortunately Brewer didn't then go back and trim the first three chapters down to five pages! There's some really great stuff in this one but you also have to wade through some crap.

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Review: The Girl from Hateville

The Girl from Hateville by Gil Brewer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This one is such a mess it is almost incomprehensible how it got published in this fashion. Even if it is a one of Brewer's first-draft-written-in-three-days novels, the lack of editing is astounding. The basic plot line is that Al Harper returns to his home town after being away for eight years only to find that everyone hates him because his father, the town's banker, apparently cleaned out the bank vault with everyone's savings before committing suicide and leaving everyone to default on mortgages etc. That plot line has some truck as it puts Harper in harms way immediately after he hits town. From that point on, though, the writing is chaotic. Too many characters just start showing up for no reason and Harper starts doing one thing and then changes to doing something else in mid-course for reasons unexplained. The best writing is found in the scenes where Al is getting the crap beat out of him, and there are three or four of those scenes, so Brewer was on his game for those at least. The novel could have been OK with a decent edit, but it would have taken a complete rewrite to get it up to the level of Brewer's other novels.

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Review: So Rich, So Dead

So Rich, So Dead by Gil Brewer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was Brewer's second novel and it reads fast and loose. Early on Brewer is channeling The Maltese Falcon: A private investigator with a dead partner, weird criminals trying to find loot, multiple femme-fatales. The descriptive writing is better than in some of his later books. The dialog, however, is clunky and doesn't move the story forward very well, in fact it is actually evasive. At first I thought it was just bad dialog, but I've seen this in other Brewer books and it is actually a tease and deny technique he uses. The dialog is rarely on the nose, the right questions are rarely asked, and any answers avoid communicating. Gets a bit frustrating in this one at times, but that's kind of OK because there is constant action as Bill Maddern is caught and then gets away, over and over again. He's jumping out windows, off roofs, and running a lot. Ultimately, this is a whodunnit where it is not too hard to be smarter than the investigator, so the concluding wrap-up is no surprise.

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Review: Sugar

Sugar by Gil Brewer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Uneven - at times exciting and propulsive, yet also frustrating because I can feel Brewer making this up as he goes. Was starting to lose interest and then just before the midpoint, in pages 60-68, blammo! Two major plot twists and Brewer has the story off and running again. Not without some more wheel-spinning though, as if Brewer couldn’t quite figure out where to take things - including a scene that literally involves a car stuck in the mud spinning its wheels (yes, the unconscious is a cruel master!) - but the last 70 or so pages (160 total) really rip as it is one complication after another and the first-person narrator is in a constant state of agitation. Brewer at his best brought the hallmarks of Woolrich and Poe - narrators consumed with obsession, paranoia, agitation, all converted to tension and suspense - to noir. His style tends more to short paragraphs than Woolrich and Poe, and that gives a propulsive pace to Brewer's books. This style is ever-present in Sugar as we have Jess Cotten, who owns a business selling and installing air-conditioners, in the throes of desperation because he needs money, money, MONEY. He's the everyman who crosses the line into crime when he meets the minx Selma and she asks for his help to get the MONEY she and her murderer boyfriend stole and hid. Brewer is so good at describing the sexual tension when he has his everyman and femme-fatale alone in a room, but rarely is this tension consummated. There are 4 or 5 of these tease and deny scenes in Sugar. Too bad Brewer didn't write for Midwood or Beacon or some of the other sleaze publishers!

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Review: Sin for Me

Sin for Me by Gil Brewer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

One of Brewer’s last books before he started writing knock-offs and TV Tie-ins under psuedonyms. The opening chapters are some of the worst writing I’ve read of Brewer’s but I skimmed ahead because at his best he is one of my favorite crime/noir writers. Written by anyone else, though, I would haver put this one down. Unfortunately it did not get better. Some of the action scenes are pretty good, with Brewer’s signature fast-paced yet descriptive style, but that’s the best I can say.

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Review: Play it Hard

Play it Hard by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Awesome. Brewer totally channels Cornell Woolrich in this paranoia driven narrative. Steve Nolan wakes up from a bender-fueled honeymoon to find a woman claiming to be his wife who isn't the woman he'd just married. No one believes him, though, and the chase is on as Nolan tries to figure out what happened. The prose is Brewer at his propulsive best. Nolan's mind races and we are tethered tight to that paranoia from beginning to end. I wasn't sure how Brewer would wrap this up and have it make sense, but I think he pulled it off. Great also that it ends with an action scene rather than drawing room summary. The "wife" is one of Brewer's better character creations and he lavishes some of his best descriptive writing on her. Sexes it up in this one, too. Recommended.

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Review: 13 French Street

13 French Street by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was Brewer's big seller—with more than 1.2 million copies sold on its original Gold Medal print run—and, from a literary standpoint, it certainly has some of his best prose. Although I'm more partial to Brewer's propulsive out-of-control style, the best example being A Taste For Sin, but 13 French Street has plenty of forward energy. Overall, I give it 4.5 stars, with the deduct being mainly for repetition, and that is partly by design as the bulk of the action takes place claustrophobically on the second floor of the house. As with Brewer's Satan Is a Woman, the femme fatale spends the first half of the novel teasing the protagonist - Alex Bland - into an obsessive and near insane frenzy. Once he's hooked, the murders begin. A brilliant noir depicting Bland's self-destruction as his conscience is eroded by desire, at first reluctantly, then willfully, and finally under a haze of alcohol as he deliberately tries to drive away the pain he's caused himself by jettisoning his conscience.

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Review: The Squeeze

The Squeeze by Gil Brewer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Finishes strong after a clunky setup requiring major suspension of disbelief. The squeeze of the title is that everyman accountant Joe Maule loses a bundle gambling and has to repay a mobster by tracking down 260K stolen and hidden by another guy. As I said, major suspension of disbelief required with this plot. It gets even harder to believe following a twist Brewer introduces. But once you get passed that in the first third of the book the action picks up and the story rips along to the end. The dialog seemed out of whack at times, with the mobster sounding like something from a B-movie, and our protagonist - as Brewer's protagonists often are - mostly uncommunicative. What this novel has, however, is another of those great extended series of scenes involving the disposal of a body. Ranks up there with similar scenes in Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin and Satan Is a Woman. Mid-tier Brewer, but the body disposal sections are top-notch and make this one worth tracking down.

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Review: Shadowland

Shadowland by Elaine Evans
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gil Brewer is one of my favorite crime/noir writers and late in his career, writing as Elaine Evans, he wrote four gothic novels, of which Shadowland, published in 1970, is the only one I've been able to find and read. Brewer fully delivers on the gothic atmosphere and paranoia and that is the best part of this novel. Fast-paced action scenes were always a strength of Brewer's and there are plenty of them here, too, usually with the protagonist running, which is another gothic trope Brewer nails. And he also showcases his scenic abilities with a lot of set-piece verbal confrontations between characters. The challenge is that Brewer makes a less than minimal attempt to guide the reader through a plot that doesn't make any sense. Lacking even a skeleton of a story as support, atmosphere and action alone fail to hold this novel together. It's an interesting read for Brewer collectors and completists, but my recommendation doesn't go beyond that.

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Review: The Bitch

The Bitch by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once this one gets into gear it is a typical Brewer nitro propelled plot of robbery, murder, chase and evasion. Starts a bit slow compared to most of Brewer’s other novels, but the slow setup actually pays huge dividends. Tate and Sam Morgan are brothers and partners in a private detective agency and as the novel starts we glean that it is not all brotherly love between them. The plot picks up quickly when we learn that Tate is planning a robbery with Thelma, “the bitch” of the title. There is the usual late 1950s misogyny at work here, but the book could just as easily have been titled “The Bastard” as our narrator Tate has no illusions about what he is. I thought the effort put into character development, although it slowed the pace at times, made this a much stronger and deeply felt book than some of Brewer's more breakneck noirs.

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Review: The Brat

The Brat by Gil Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Surprised this one was never made into a movie because it has everything: robbery, murder, double-crosses, car chases, boat chases, gun fights, hot babes and hunky guys. The title is one of those misleading Gold Medal marketing ploys common in the 50s: Evis is no brat, but she is all femme-fatale, going at things “like a blitzkrieg in tight nylons.” The novel starts right in the middle of the action with Lee Sullivan showing up late for the robbery planned by his wife Evis and he quickly realizes that she is framing him for both the robbery and the murder of her co-worker. After a back story chapter describing how they met and the progression towards the robbery, the chase is on as Sullivan tries to track down Evis and the $100,000 with the police in pursuit. Plenty of action in this one with a fully realized narrative arc that is propelled by Brewer's relentless pacing.

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Review: Flight to Darkness

Flight to Darkness by Gil Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Noir paranoia and obsession at it’s finest. Eric Garth is a Korean War vet recovering in a psychiatric hospital and because this is a first-person narrative we readers are on an unstable foundation right from the start, never knowing whether his narrative is reliable or not. Brewer puts in some neat foreshadowings and doubts early on and that pays big dividends as the plot unfolds. Leda Thayer is the femme-fatale - and she has to rank up there near the top of the FF pantheon - and Brewer just buries Garth in his obsession with her. As the book begins she is his nurse at the hospital and is quitting her job as he is released. He has a big inheritance coming and she is all about that money, just needs to get him back home so he - they - can claim it. Garth, though obsessed, is also conflicted, at least until he finds himself locked up in another sanitarium. And, shall we say, game on?

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Review: 13 French Street

13 French Street by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was Brewer's big seller, with more than 1.2 million in sales and, from a literary standpoint, it certainly has some of his best prose. Although I'm more partial to Brewer's propulsive out-of-control style, the best example being A Taste For Sin, but 13 French Street has plenty of forward energy. Overall, I give it 4.5 stars, with the deduct being mainly for repetition, and that is partly by design as the bulk of the action takes claustrophobically place on the second floor of the house. As with Brewer's first novel - Satan Is a Woman - the femme fatale spends the first half of the novel teasing the protagonist - Alex Bland - into an obsessive and near insane frenzy. Once he's hooked the murders begin. A brilliant noir depicting Bland's self-destruction as his conscience is eroded by desire, at first reluctantly, then willfully, and finally under a haze of alcohol as he deliberately tries to drive away the pain he's caused himself by jettisoning his conscience.

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Review: A Taste for Sin

A Taste for Sin by Gil Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you are looking for a fast-paced noir thriller to lose yourself in for a few hours this Gil Brewer masterpiece is the one. Brewer removed the filter and just blew up the page. If you are a fan of crime-noir and haven't read this book yet, then you are missing out on a centerpiece of the genre.

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Review: Satan Is a Woman

Satan Is a Woman by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brewer's first novel starts with immediacy as Larry Cole is being questioned by two cops about his brother Tad who is wanted for murder and is hiding in Larry’s house while the police are questioning him. Enter the femme-fatale, Joan Turner, and poor Larry begins his roller coaster ride through various levels of hell. He falls for her quick: "If you’ve never felt the way I felt, O.K. It’s like standing on dynamite, with the fuse sputtering." One thing Brewer was a master of is depicting how thoroughly and obsessively these guys fall under the spell of a woman. Larry is hanging on every look, every touch, every word. He can’t keep his eyes off her and yet he knows he’s doomed, too, even as he resists her pressures to rob a nightclub. Brewer conjures one of his classic twists as Joan stabs an intruder and they have to dispose of the body. It is one of those fantastic and frenetic extended scenes (with an outboard motor tied to the body they row out into the bay in a storm), where Brewer just amps the tension and milks the suspense with great pacing, description, and psychological torment. This one has all the noir elements and the extended character development certainly makes it a more rounded read. But that well-roundedness also detracts a bit from the propulsive pacing at times and that keeps this from a five-star rating.

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Review: The Hungry One

The Hungry One by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Love the way this one gets going. Husband and wife driving late at night looking for a motel. She wants to just continue driving, he wants to stop. They end up with the last room at a seedy motel that is hosting some wild-ass convention. She wants to leave. The room door won't lock. And now Brewer has got this whole horror-novel vibe going. They hear gun shots and the door bursts open and it's a naked girl and a man with a gun. Next they have jumped into bed with our protagonist couple while the police are searching rooms. Tough to top a beginning like that, but Brewer gave it a good go. Turns into a kidnaping plot, but first naked-girl and gun-guy rob a drug store. She's on the downers and he's on the bennies and that dynamic keeps the edgy vibe going. My only real complaint is that Brewer stretched the timeline of the kidnapping - the ransom calls, etc. - out too long and that took some of the tension out of the middle section. And I think he really missed an opportunity by not giving more of a role for the narrator's wife. It's like half the time Brewer forgot he had another character on the scene. Not his best overall, but far from his worst, and that opening sequence is right up there with his best stuff.

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Review: Wild to Possess

Wild to Possess by Gil Brewer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another of Gil Brewer's relentlessly paced noirs, although it is not hard to keep it fast-paced when the main character is either running or racing around in cars for half the book. That's a key part of Brewer's technique, keep the characters always in motion. The plot requires some suspension of disbelief: Lew overhears a couple plotting a kidnap/murder/ransom and then spends the first part of the book trying to track them down so he can cut himself in on the action. One of the great scenes is when he breaks into the woman's house looking for information only to have them come home and he is forced to hide in the bedroom closet while they sex it up a couple of times. In between the sex they discuss the plan and Lew hears all he needs to. From that point on he's a man on a mission to get his hands on the $250,000 ransom money. Brewer's typically sharp plot twists make sure that things don't go smooth for Lew, but he does a lot of the damage himself by pounding bottles of gin. The climatic seen involving boats was chaotic and fun and is a scene that's been done in movies many times since. The final two pages are just wrap up, but who cares at that point because we already had all the pleasure of the read.

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Review: Nude on Thin Ice

Nude on Thin Ice by Gil Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This might just be my favorite Gil Brewer noir thriller because he holds nothing back. The protagonist is about as unsympathetic as you can imagine, and yet all the other characters are just as sleazy so maybe, just a little bit, you root for Ken McCall to get his root of all evil: a big pile of money. The novel kicks off with McCall skipping out on his girlfriend and sticking her with the unpaid motel bill. He's received a letter from a rich dying friend who asks McCall to go console his wife and McCall fantasizes about turning it into a stupid rich score. Only when he gets to her house a menagerie of whack-jobs is already on the scene hoping to make a similiar score. The femme fatale - Justine - is sixteen and Brewer's description of how she teases McCall for the first 60 pages is pure art. She works him to a fever pitch and then the killing begins. And then that girlfriend McCall ditched shows up looking to cut herself in, too. What's a noir protagonist to do? The action gets steamy and it gets bloody and it all rips along with Brewer's typical frenetic pacing. A Nasty, brutish, and short page turner. Set aside a couple of hours when you won't get interrupted because this is one you'll want to race on through to the end.

Available from Stark House along with the excellent MEMORY OF PASSION.

Review: Memory of Passion

Memory of Passion by Gil Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Over and over as I was reading this book I would break out into spontaneous gleeful and admiring laughter because Brewer was so twisted, so out of control, and yet so in control of this propulsive bit of tease and deny pulp fiction. Totally channeling Poe and Woolrich at their obsessive best, Brewer, with a blistering style of short sentences and short paragraphs takes the foreplay of tension to the limit. The light is red, the tachometer is at the line, the tires are smoking - won't this light ever turn green?! - and then Brewer releases the clutch (plot twist!) and we blast forward and then quickly skid to a stop and do it all over again, engine racing at an impossibly high idle. Over and over and back and forth between multiple obsessed points of view. Bill, who thinks Karen, his old girlfriend, has contacted him after 22 years. Karen/Jean, stalker, stalking Bill. Walter, serial killer, stalking Jean. Louise, Bill's wife, having an affair. From one to the next we go, but always, the narration is from the view point of extreme obsession. Don't expect depth in this psychological noir. The minds, driven by Brewer's breakneck prose pacing, are racing way too fast!

Available with the excellent NUDE ON THIN ICE from Stark House Press