Customer Reviews

Wake Up to Murder

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I was alerted to Mr Keene by an article in The Fine Art of Murder by Ed Gorman ,on vintage pulp writers of the 40's and 50's which extolled his merits.I partly see why this came about for there is a slickness to plot and briskness of pace to this book that makes it readable.The book wastes little time in getting going and the pace is commendable in an era like now when books often strike me as too long.The propensity towards moral homilies is a little aggravating and the prose might politely be described as functional but otherwise this is a diverting Florida set mystery.
Its protagonist is Jim Charters,a lowly lawyer's messenger from Sun City whos is employed by ruthless hot shot lawyer Matthew Kendall and the action is condensed into a 24 hour period,around his birthday.It begins when he visits a condemned murderess in her death cell,one Pearl Matinover whose appeal against conviction and sentence has been refused by the governor.She has ,in his and others opinion,been convicted less on the evidence than on her disregard of sexual convention and a life style that is disapproved of in conservative circles.The evidence against her was not particularly strong.
Later that day he is summarily fired by Kendall and this brings to the surface his latent feelings of inadequacy and failure.He fights with his wife and storms out to a local bar where he gets drunk ,awakening in a motel room with Kendall's mistress and $10,000 in his pocket.
The money is from Pearl's brother who is a hitman for a local mobster.In his inebriated state Jim had boasted he could clear Pearl's name and the brother takes him at his word
In mounting desperation he seeks to do just that and sets out to try and clear Pearl's name -a quest that sees him embroiled with local mobsters ,his wife kidnapped and more bodies turning up.
It is quite risque for its period and ,as intimated earlier,briskly and proficiently despatched.There are traces of haste in the writing -a persistent problem with writers paid to keep churning it out.
One for devotees of paperback originals from the post war era and a good read for an hour or so