Customer Reviews

13 French Street (Lythway Large Print Books)

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There's an old saying that says if you want to boil a frog put it in a pan of cold water and slowly turn up the heat. This is what Gil Brewer does in 13 French Street --- to both the protagonist and the reader. 13 French Street examines passion and loyalty, and as in many Brewer stories, alcohol is the fuel that runs the engine, enabling dangerous situations to become more so. On the surface, the story is a simple one: Alex goes to visit his old war buddy, Verne, and meets his wife Petra. What starts out as a simple vacation and a trip down memory lane, turns into two weeks of danger. Alex simply cannot resist Petra who has set a plan in motion, with Alex playing a key role. This is the third book Brewer wrote, and the first to be published. It has the strong first-person voice that his best work features, and fine descriptive passages that set the mood and tone for what is to come. Consider:

I went over and leaned out one of the side windows. Fields, trees, hills --- and way over there was town. Allayne. I could see the road winding through the hills, dipping into the town. The hills were savage with color in the failing twilight. Almost as I watched, night began to creep along the sky, tugging a black blanket in its teeth. The wind began to die. It was very still out there, almost as if the evening were holding its breath.

"Tugging a black blanket in its teeth." What a great line. Foreboding? Yes. Foreshadowing? Absolutely. The author is promising a dark painful ride for the protagonist --- one that will be gripping for the reader. 13 French Street is more character driven, than plot driven, though there are enough twists to keep the pages turning with the question, What will happen next? Every scene promises more around the corner, even in the quiet beginnings. Consider this passage from Alex's first night at 13 French Street:

The house was very still. Night and moonlight sighed in the windows, billowing the curtains. Somebody walked quietly down the hall. Whoever it was wasn't tiptoeing, wasn't trying to be especially quiet. But the footsteps paused at my door.
Then they went on down the hall. I realized I'd been holding my breath. I got out of bed and opened the door.
I'd recognize that perfume anywhere.
Plenty was wrong, cockeyed wrong. I had to get back to Chicago.
I went back to bed. The footsteps came back along the hall and paused at my door again. I held my breath again. She waited longer this time. Then she went on.
Chicago. Chicago. It was like the wild beating of surf against rocks. Chi-ca-go ... Chi-ca-go ...
"My door opened. "Is everything all right, Alex?"
"Yes. Fine."
"Just wanted to make sure." Her voice was a whisper. She closed the door very quietly. Some of the perfume remained in the room.

Alex is a straightforward "everyman" kind of guy. He considers himself trustworthy, loyal to his friends, dedicated to his job, in love with his fiancé. His last name is Bland, if that tells you anything. Within a few hours of meeting Petra, Alex realizes he may not be the moral guy he thought he was, and his vacation may not be what he expected, and more than he can handle. Fingertips brushing his hand, eyes searching his, intimate words spoken. Petra has Alex's number and you sense there will be no escape. Heck, you don't him to escape! Alex knows he should leave, but can't. While he wrestles with his conscience, Petra turns up the heat. Gradually, slowly, deftly. Like the water heating up the frog, Petra uses her knock dead gorgeous body, her charm and wiles to heat up Alex to make him pliable to her wishes, including some nasty possibilities. Consider:

I went upstairs and into her room and started going through the drawers in her dresser. Then I went over to her dressing table. There hadn't been anything. That's the way it would be with her. Only in the top right-hand drawer of her dressing table there was a .32 Savage automatic. A deadly little thing. I stared at it. There was a full clip in it.

13 French Street is out of print, so you will have to track down a used copy. So, what are you waiting for?

Gil Brewer's 13 French Street is a predictably pessimistic tale of corruption, adultery and murder in a suburban household. Written in 1951, it was Brewer's first success, and sold a million copies over the course of eight printings. Brewer went on to be one of the key authors in the Gold Medal line, and developed a distinct and interesting voice as a writer.

However, as an early effort, 13 French Street, although one of his best-selling works, is also one of his worst.

The story begins on a (alas, not dark and stormy) night. Alex turns up at his friend Verne's door, a visit encouraged by Verne's wife, Petra. Although a surprise, Petra answers the door in her boobs...er... slinky black dress. Verne turns out to be an alcoholic wreck of a man. Although Verne blames his business struggles for his fragile emotional state, Alex quickly discerns that Verne simply isn't man enough for his wife and her spectacular boobs.

The tension between Petra and Alex is palpable. Alex can't get a drink of water without Petra chucking her rack at him, and a simple driving trip to town becomes an athletic exercise in thigh-pressing. Whatever tiny bit of resolve Alex possesses (and it isn't much) is quickly overwhelmed by the sheer force of Petra's attentions (boobs).

The descent into adultery and, eventually, murder is inevitable. Brewer doesn't try to avoid any conventions of the genre as much as wallow in them. Rather than any plot twists, his goal seems to be to horrify the reader by illustrating the shame and corruption of the situation.

Unfortunately, this strategy falls down in two places. First, the reader never actually empathizes with Alex, who is an uninteresting and unappealing character. Second, Brewer's own terse writing style is poorly suited for illustrating scenes of sweeping emotional despair. The author tries to illustrate Alex's forlorn state of mind and his bleak periods of self-loathing, but the attempts fail, bogged down by awkward, forced intensity.

There are a few redeeming moments - Alex has a few flashbacks of his war experiences with Verne that almost ignite a bit of reader empathy, and Verne's ghastly mother makes for a couple humorous scenes. But all goodwill is quickly extinguished the next time Petra walks into the room - a pair of boobs and some laughably sinister wiles. Alex comes off as a cad, Petra is a repulsively shallow and obvious character and Verne is a non-entity.

By the time the story trickled around to the inevitable conclusion, I was simply relieved to be done with the lot of them.