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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brutal noir delivered at breakneck speed! A masterpiece,
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This review is from: A killer is loose: A Gold medal original (Gold medal book)
Wow! Gil Brewer's A KILLER IS LOOSE is one of the all-time best noir novels ever written. Steve Logan, an out of work ex-cop with a pregnant wife and too many bills to pay finds has his life turned upside-down by a chance meeting with insane killer Ralph Angers. Logan saves him from being hit by a bus, not knowing the man is a dangerous lunatic, and Angers repays him by abducting him at gunpoint. They hook up with a hot stripper Angers has also abducted and then it's one violent killing spree after another as Angers drags them all over town in his mad quest to "save lives." He doesn't want to kill his two new pals but will if they don't do what he says. This all leads to a frenzied chase with all the cops in town after them and a brutal climax. This is easily one of my favorite noir novels and another winner by Gil Brewer, who previously knocked me out with THE THREE-WAY SPLIT. I'd heard Bill Pronzini claim A KILLER IS LOOSE is up there with Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 and he was right. Like Thompson's classics, it's a story full of shocking, explosive violence dominated by a single-minded maniac. The primary difference is that Brewer's first-person narrator is not the maniac, but his desperate victim, and I don't think the story could have worked any other way. Through little hints of Angers' backstory peppered throughout, you almost begin to feel sorry for him, and yes, even to root for him to win because, in his mad, mixed-up mind, he really does want to help people and will let nothing stand in the way of his dream. In this respect, the book reminds me of a twisted version of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.A KILLER IS LOOSE should have been turned into a film noir back in the '50s because it's all so incredibly cinematic, suspenseful and exciting. Not a word is wasted. The words and images hit you like a machinegun and just keep coming. I have no idea how a novel this good could have remained out-of-print for 56 years and counting. It's criminal, made all the more bizarre considering Brewer's fiction has been undergoing a slow revival. Stark House has issued a pair of Brewer double-features: Wild to Possess / A Taste for Sin (Stark House Noir Classics) and A Devil for O'Shaugnessy/ The Three-way Split. What I don't understand is why they have paired one great novel in each collection with a lesser work? Why not release his best stuff first and save the rest for later? Wouldn't that do more to secure his legacy, to build his reputation as one of the powerhouse bad boys of noir? Having to pay a small fortune to pick up the out-of-print Gold Medal 1st editions can get spendy fast and they are usually pretty beat-up and ready to fall apart, so I hope more publishers get on the ball and begin reissuing more of the best books by Brewer and other underappreciated Gold Medal authors like Bruno Fischer, David Goodis, etc. Note: Hard Case Crime has reissued another of Brewer's good ones: The Vengeful Virgin and New Pulp Press has The Red Scarf due to be released in September 20, 2010.
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