Gun in Cheek by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page A

Race Williams novel, The Snarl of the Beast , was published in 1927, two years prior to the book publication of Red Harvest and The Dam Curse and to Hammett's invention of Sam Spade and The Maltese Falcon .)
    If Hammett's work can be said to have inspired Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and other of the best practitioners of the private-eye story, then Daly's work can be said to have inspired a number of writers who produced alternative classics. It is in his footsteps and those of Race Williams that Mickey Spillane (a confessed admirer of Daly) and Mike Hammer, Richard S. Prather and Shell Scott, and dozens of other writer-detective teams have walked over the past fifty years.
    Both Daly and Williams were amazingly popular during the twenties and early thirties, in particular among the readers of Black Mask . In a poll conducted by editor Shaw in 1930, Daly was judged the magazine's favorite writer; Erie Stanley Gardner was the runner-up, with Hammett a somewhat distant third in the voting. The reason for Williams's popularity, it may be supposed, is that he was a man of action, with no compunctions and no real vulnerabilities (not even women, whose company he eschewed in favor of his own pair of .44s). He didn't mind killing people if it was in the public interest; in fact, he rather enjoyed it. He was the classic fantasy figure of that type of individual who believes violence is best fought with violence—the Charles Bronson figure in the film version of Brian Gar-field's Death Wish , the kind of "hero" such a person would be himself if only he had the courage. Besides which, Williams was forever taking the reader into his confidence, talking to him in personal asides, as if the two of them were confidants.
    This is Race Williams:
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For once my control of myself seemed to desert me.
I tried to sleep—but I couldn't. I just lay there and planned, while Gregory smoked and watched me. But all my plans were grim and strange. There was the burning desire to strike and maim—and kill. Kill! That was it. I never felt like that before. ( The Tag Mu rders)
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I'm not much on the sex stuff, nor the lithe slenderness and gracefulness of women. Still, there was a suppleness to her body that made her seem to creep in and out of my arms without actually ever doing it. Get what I mean? The best way I can describe it is, that she clung to me like a wet sock. ( The Tag Murders )
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. . . The Flame had many admirers. Many men had loved her. Some there were who had held her in their arms. And—those men were dead—even to the last one.
I'm not saying that The Flame had anything to do with it. I'm not even trying to judge her. But there is no discounting the fact that they were dead. With me, then, although I've always denied I had any, but I guess it was just plain superstition. Ashamed of it? Of course I am. But it was there, just the same. I had an overpowering belief—almost an obsession—that to hold The Flame in my arms—that to crush that wondrous, beautiful body to me spelled death. Yes—laugh if you want. We all have our weaknesses, I suppose. That was one of mine. To love The Flame meant my death. And that's that. Foolish! Childish! Ridiculous! Sure, but truth is truth, just the same. ( Tainted Power )
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"You're Williams?" he chirped, through the side of his mouth as he spat on my new rug. I frowned slightly. I felt that we were not going to get along—decidedly, I did not get that psychological impression that here was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
"Name of Little—Paul Little." He pounded himself on the chest. "From Chi—want to know more?".
I leaned back slightly and laughed. An ordinary gunman, this. Real cheap stuff.
"Ya needn't laugh it off." Thick lips curled. "You've bluffed it out with the New York boys, maybe—but I'm a different lad again. I ain't aimin' to harm ya none, and perhaps I'll even slip ya a little change—though that part weren't