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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another winner from Hard Case Crime, December 27, 2006
This review is from: Peddler (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
"Don't give me this crap about I don't deserve nothin' because I only been working a year or so.... You might as well try to tell me the guy that's been in the Army longest oughta be Chief of Staff, or the guy's been in politics longest oughta be President, or the guy's been goin' to church longest oughta be Pope. Jesus Christ, I seen guys could make doughnuts all their life and never learn where the holes go." -- from The Peddler
How does a man who was one of the country's best-selling authors -- who sold over 40 million copies of his books -- become an unfamiliar name to an entire generation of readers? I guess one way is to go 20 years without publishing a new book. At least that's what Richard S. Prather did. But now it's time to bring his name back into the limelight with the rerelease of his 1952 novel The Peddler, which also reunites him with artist Robert McGinnis, the cover illustrator of many of Prather's books.
Most of Prather's novels comprised a series starring his ex-Marine character Shell Scott, but The Peddler (originally published under the name Douglas Ring) is the story of Tony Romero. Romero is a twenty-year-old ambitious up-and-comer who finagles his way into the company of the local crime organization and steadily connives his way up its ranks. Of course, this being a Hard Case Crime novel, things eventually get very difficult for Tony, but that comes later.
I had some difficulty myself getting into The Peddler, as the early dialogue sounded unrealistic to my mind's ear, but things got very interesting by the end of Chapter Two, and it was easy going from that point on all the way through to the most shocking conclusion I've come across since Lawrence Block's Grifter's Game -- coincidentally, another Hard Case Crime release. (The dialogue is especially forgivable when you realize Prather was churning out multiple novels per year and probably didn't have much time for things like revisions.)
An artless style almost conceals Prather's true talent for delving into the darker portions of human nature and using that to keep the plot moving. When a man filled with ambition (as Tony Romero is) gets in over his head and gets himself put into a situation where he can no longer pursue those ambitions, he gets bored and angry and stops thinking straight -- and that can only lead to trouble. And that's where Prather and The Peddler really shine. I have to respect any writer who can make a nearly silent poker game into one of a novel's most gut-wrenching scenes.
The upshot of this is that The Peddler is yet another winner from Hard Case Crime, and Richard S. Prather is yet another author for me to pursue in used book stores to the detriment of my wallet. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to open a book store of my own as a front for all the books I'll be buying.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
scorching!, January 13, 2007
This review is from: Peddler (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
Tony Romero is a certified class I bad guy. You wouldn't want to make him mad and you wouldn't want your daughter to be within ten feet of him. In fact, he's an almost completely rotten kid but Richard Prather made the character so fascinating that I couldn't stop reading. Bit by bit you get to see that there is a glimmer of hope for Tony. He has one chance to get out of the life of pimping and organized crime but will he take it?
The ending of the book is particularly outstanding. It was not what I was expecting and it left me saying "Wow!"
This is a superb Hard Case selection.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic, unforgettable tale, December 20, 2006
This review is from: Peddler (Hard Case Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)
Being the somewhat precocious child that I was, I went straight from the Hardy Boys to Shell Scott --- or, as I'm fond of saying, from Bayport to Babes. Shell Scott, an ex-Marine turned private eye, was the creation of Richard S. Prather. The paperbacks were readily identifiable by their covers, which always featured Scott's crew-cut countenance set in a confident leer, and a woman dressed in a come-hither look and little else. The series, some four to five decades later, rereads uniformly well; I can honestly say that one of the saddest days of my life occurred when I realized that, for one reason or another, there wasn't going to be a new Shell Scott novel.
So one of the happiest days of my life occurred recently when THE PEDDLER hit the doorstep. A stand-alone work first published in 1952 and long out of print, it is a classic noir read from first page to last. Tony Romero, the book's protagonist, is an unabashed bad guy, one whose moral compass isn't damaged or askew; he simply doesn't have one, at least when we meet him as a 19-year-old in San Francisco, looking to break into crime in a big way. Romero parlays some old relationships to be a peddler, but he's not selling vegetables or tin pots. Instead, he becomes a pimp and is looking to work his way up as fast as he can. He will stop at nothing, and crawl or step over anyone, to get to where he wants to go.
It is obvious, not only from what he wants but what he is willing to do to get it, that Romero is damaged goods. And it is never more apparent how truly broken he is than when he is offered one last chance at salvation and turns it down, eschewing what he needs and wants most for what he desires right now. Prather is nothing less than masterful here, creating a penultimate moment when Romero turns away from life and love, heading instead for almost certain disaster.
While the plot is riveting, the novel is character-driven. Prather's protagonists --- uniformly strong, hard males --- use people as a means to an end. While women in his books were objectified, they also wielded a subtle and ultimate power that influenced the denouement of the protagonist --- this at a time decades removed from the ascendancy of the feminist movement into popular culture.
THE PEDDLER is a classic, unforgettable tale from an author incapable of bad writing whose influence over the genre in which he worked continues to this day, even as he remains relatively unknown and wretchedly under-appreciated. When actively writing, Prather was almost always ahead of his time and in many ways still is today.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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