The Distance: A Crime Novel Introducing Billy Nichols [Hardcover]

Eddie Muller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002

It's 1948, an era when newspapermen were stars -- and San Francisco sportswriter Billy Nichols is no exception. Known as Mr. Boxing throughout the city, he is the West Coast's answer to Damon Runyon -- an insider's insider who plucks and polishes his pearllike stories from the nonstop hustle of the city's nightclubs, gambling dens, and ringside seats.

Billy Nichols is right where he wants to be, until he stumbles onto a shocking crime scene. Heavyweight boxer Hack Escalante has killed his manager, and for reasons Billy doesn't fully understand, he makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to protect the prizefighter. Soon Billy's in too deep, caught in a conspiracy of desire, deceit, and betrayal, and he sets off a chain of events whose consequences may cost him his beloved career -- and his life.

As Billy himself struggles to escape suspicion, he must square off against relentless police detective Francis O'Connor, carry on business as usual with his colorful cronies in the boxing world, and resist his overwhelming passion for a woman he dare not love.

Billy soon discovers that he's not the only yarn spinner in this nefarious netherworld: many of the characters inhabiting his well-honed newspaper columns have crafted their own alternative life stories, hiding scores of secrets. Whose story will emerge as "truth"?

As richly ambient as James Ellroy's "L.A. Confidential," this debut novel brilliantly brings to life another time -- when pride and professionalism are sometimes more important than life itself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, January 2002: This debut mystery is by an author who already has a claim on the hearts of his audience: he produced two splendid works of nonfiction that are must-haves for every mystery lover's library, Dark City Dames and Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. Both take readers down new paths into a familiar, haunting landscape--that of the 1940s and '50s films that brought such a paradoxical blend of artifice and authenticity to the small, claustrophobic world of crime.

As the son of a West Coast boxing writer, Muller is writing from strength when he makes his protagonist, Billy Nichols, a newspaper boxing columnist who easily keeps pace with the mugs and thugs he covers. The setting is post-World War II San Francisco and Nichols is a journalist who pounds out his stories, stopping only afterward to ask the right questions.

His relationship to the heavyweight Hack Escalante takes a startling turn early in the story as Billy finds himself an accessory to a crime that it seems Hack has just committed. Gig Liardi, Hack's manager, is lying dead on the floor of his apartment, less than a half-hour after summoning Billy over for a scoop, and Hack's knuckles are bloody, though his eyes are wet. "This boy should never have been a fighter," Billy thinks, watching him. "Now he was a killer. A couple of his tears dropped on Gig's face."

Even if prizefighters do cry, this scene is still only one high point in a tough, vivid re-creation of a lost era of urban sports history that swaggers on for almost 40 more chapters. More mystery novels featuring "Mr. Boxing," as Billy Nichols is known, will certainly be welcome by mystery fans, but come early to the series now and get a ringside seat! --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

In his first crime novel, Muller gives an authentic if depressing view of San Francisco's downtrodden neighborhoods in the late '40s, when boxing was the way to fame and fortune. Billy Nichols, sportswriter for Hearst's Inquirer (aka "Mr. Boxing"), knows something is wrong when he finds promoter Gig Liardi's apartment door cracked open. Inside is rising fight star Hack Escalante, who has just beaten his manager to death for some unexplained insult to his wife. With the crime and the criminal apparently known at the outset, the two "go the distance" together and bury Liardi's body in Golden Gate Park. Nichols then shields his young prot‚g‚ from the police until the final championship bout. Det. Francis O'Connor works slowly and deliberately, while we meet numerous minor characters from the "fistic fraternity," most with little connection to the case. There is romance, graphically described, when Nichols has an affair with Escalante's wife during the young boxer's brief Navy stint. Muller knows Frisco's boxing scene well, and takes us through seedy arenas and nightclubs as his narrator (and maybe the reader) get "lost in the circuit" of unsavory bookmakers, gamblers and politicians exploiting young men eager to be written up in Nichols's columns, excerpts of which are interspersed between chapters. Those with an interest in boxing and a desire to know better the grim ambiance of the ring and locker room will be intrigued, but for others, the technical terms and sleazy characters in this sordid underworld may be too much to fathom. (Jan. 18)City: The Lost World of Film Noir, among other noir-related titles.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743214439
• ISBN-13: 978-0743214438
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,007,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Vivid Book Noir Debut, June 4, 2002

By 

Yvette (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Distance : A Crime Novel Introducing Billy Nichols (Hardcover)

Read this recently and am wasting no time in recommending Muller's vividly drawn debut to those of you who're looking for something a little different, a little complicated, and a lot
terrific.

Those of a certain age may remember the good old days of boxing, when the Gillette Friday night fights were all the rage. When cigar voiced announcers called each fight as though their very lives depended on the outcome. When the sound of the bell drew you into the living room and kept you there, glued to your seat, until the last punch was thrown.
Well, doesn't matter if you do or don't.
Because Eddie Muller has brought this fascinating world back to life.
His debut novel is set in 1948 San Francisco, when the fight business was still important business.
He brings to life Billy Nichols,
sportswriter for a major metropolitan newspaper. A guy with a pencil thin mustache, a fedora, and an attitude. Known in the trade as Mr. Boxing, Nichols has spent years building up his following and now at the pinnacle of his game, has a hell of lot to lose. But Billy's not just a hack, he is a very complicated fellow. In fact, he spends most of the book flailing away at a guilty conscience brought on by a bruisingly stupid act which takes place early in the book.

Bruisingly stupid and yet so understandably human, this act propels Billy into an out of control spin. Deception upon deception becomes an uncomfortable way of life.
How this guy still manages to keep his humanity, his honor and his life is a remarkable tale. I'm not spilling any secrets when I reveal that much, since this book, I understand,is the first in a series.

Muller's writing is so evocative, so vivid, that he pulls you instantly into Billy's garish world. The raucous boxing arena, the sweaty gym, the smoke filled bars and steamy bedrooms of this era before air conditioning, are there before you, thrillingly alive.

Dames with copper hair and blood red lips people this place.
Ham fisted cops with Irish faces, lumbering boxers with short tempers and hearts of gold, sleazy cigar faced managers, crooked politicos and hard hearted wives all live here. Murder, adultery, blackmail, doublecross upon doublecross weave in and out of this web which has ensnared Billy Nichols.

Muller has brought the film noir cult movies of the late forties and early fifties vividly back to life in this book.
I was captivated.
The Distance reads like one of those dark, deep shadowed, sharply photographed b/w movies of that time. Movies which always seemed to take place at night and usually starred John Garfield and Ida Lupino or Robert Taylor and Anne Sheridan or Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd or.......well, you get the picture.
This is one of the best debuts I've EVER read.
I can't wait to see where Muller takes Billy next.
And, by the way, I don't even like boxing.
So, that's how much Muller impressed me.
This is one ripe, juicy plum of a book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars And precious little whining ..., March 25, 2003

By 

Herbert D. Safford (Cedar Falls, Iowa USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Distance: A Crime Novel Introducing Billy Nichols (Hardcover)

Eddie Muller's THE DISTANCE is a wonderfully atmospheric noir tale of murder and passion set in colorful, corrupt, post-war San Francisco. [Note that the San Francisco of the late 40s was much closer in time and ambiance to the period of the great 1906 earthquake and fire than to the glistening "city on a hill" tourist mecca for yuppies and trans-gendered folk it has become today.]

THE DISTANCE combines two cultural elements which are now fading memories: professional boxing and the great newspapers. The Brown Bomber has retired to debt, and the heavyweight crown is available for a price. San Francisco is served by five daily newspapers. [Television is just coming on board and has not yet swamped the ship.] Men are men and women are women, and don't bet on the outcome.

Noir fiction depends for its success on authentic speech more than on highly cultivated plot, and Muller does a fine job of recreating the languages of the period. Just listen, and you can hear the color!

I liked especially that Muller mixed it up, but never went for the knockout. THE DISTANCE, as a title, reflects that long 15 rounds which were the nature of a life then, the grinding working class struggle to survive. And precious little whining.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Runyon-Hemingway Revisited, April 4, 2002

By 

Susan Newman, Ph.D. (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Distance: A Crime Novel Introducing Billy Nichols (Hardcover)

I am a mystery buff and first edition collector. I am not a fight fan, yet Muller has captivated me. He has written a period piece mystery which captures the late '40s era. His main character is believable, memorable, and sympathetic. To me, he calls to mind Damon Runyon as if written and scripted by Ernest Hemingway ("My Old Man"). There are some holes in the mystery, but they take nothing away from the terse machine gun style. I don't owe Eddie anything, but bring Billy Nichels, the hero, back.