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

my thought. But—you raise one hand . . . an' I'll cop ya through the noodle." ( The Tag Murders )
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    Nearly all Daly's novels and short stories deal with bootlegging, gang warfare, crooked politics, blackmail and mayhem among the corrupt upper classes, and lunatics bent on domination of organizations, cities, and, in one instance, the world (the villain in Murder from the East is a Eurasian megalomaniac of Fu Manchu dimensions). Daly's one obsessive theme is the evil wrought by a lust for power. In Tainted Power (1931), Williams himself almost succumbs to this lust when, after wiping out a blackmail ring and coming into possession of all its documentation, he is tempted by The Flame , "the Girl with the Criminal Mind," to join in the foundation of a criminal empire. Williams, however, comes to his senses just in time: "Let's be charitable, even to ourselves. Maybe my brain cleared then, and I was a sane man again. Maybe it had been greed. Maybe it was only loss of blood." And he would have thrown The Flame over, too, just as Sam Spade does with Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon , if she hadn't managed to flee down a convenient fire escape.
    With a few exceptions, there was not quite so much relentless vigilantism in other private eye novels of the thirties and forties. Most writers seemed to prefer the freewheeling, wisecracking style which evolved in the pulps, to no small degree because of a consistent misunderstanding that the wisecrack was an integral factor in the success of such writers as Hammett and Chandler, and of why those writers used the occasional flip remark in the first place. In Chandler's work especially, wisecracks helped mask Philip Marlowe's emotions; they gave him time to think and they helped him put people off their guard. They are a distinct character trait, like picking one's nose in public or drinking four quarts of whiskey a day – not a deliberate attempt on the part of the author to inject either toughness or humor.
    As a result of this misunderstanding, too many private eyes became what can only be called smart-asses, an annoying convention which unhappily continues in the work of some contemporary writers. Among the first wave of thirties smart-asses was one named Tip O'Neil, who stars in James Edward Grant's The Green Shadow (1935).
    According to a biographical sketch at the back of the book, Grant was the son of the Chief Investigator for the State Attorney of Illinois, a former prizefighter, the manager of boxers and a "toe dancer", and the author of a syndicated newspaper column out of Chicago called "It's a Racket," which "led him into a personal acquaintance with most of Chicago's boom-boom boys" and "caused such a stir in the Chicago underworld that several prominent mobsters left town."
    The plot of The Green Shadow can more or less be summed up by quoting the jacket blurb: "The Harding Case was no pushover—even for Tip O'Neil. He could see that the minute he arrived on the scene, for the whole family was screwy from the poker-playing, Scotch-soaked, maiden-aunt Amelia down to Nancy of the round heels, the amateur tart who tried to seduce her father's own investigators while they fought to break the case. Corinne, the other daughter, was the only really normal one of the lot—and she vanished from a crowded city street in broad daylight. Leland, her lover, stacked up all right, or seemed to, till Tip O'Neil got ideas and manhandled his own private skeleton out of the closet. And Paul himself—well, any man who can sit and watch the exquisite torture of another's body and never bat an eye, then roar with laughter when the victim's legs are broken, ought to qualify as patient in a crime clinic, hands down. Tip's right bower, Lilly—and don't get the idea he was one—had it right when he said: 'The whole thing's a cockeyed maze.'"
    Here is Tip O'Neil being a smart-ass:
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"This is Senator Wafflepoop," I said, "here's a tip. There's a couple of