Who Is Ted Blaine And What Was He Involved In?
Marlowe was one of the great pulp writers of the sixties. His stories are filled with hoods and ruthless bank robbers and Treasury agents and dirty capers. In this one, Marlowe threw in everything but the kitchen sink and then some. You have the pretty young wife and the drunken sod of a husband who she can’t stand to spend another minute with and perhaps actually does something about it. You have a swampy, murderous small Southern town with all kinds of cheating and blackmailing and shenanigans. You have an amnesia victim in a sanitarium scheming how to get out. You have secret agents bent on outwitting nefarious characters. You have the demure librarian-type with a sadomasochistic bent. There’s a high stakes poker game and a cat and mouse game. There’s torture and gun battles and all kinds of desperate measures.
Marlowe took all these pieces and crafted a compelling pulp tale that is hard to put down. The only criticism is really that this isn’t just one kind of pulp story, but several different kinds sort of mashed together. It’s not purely a pretty murderess story or purely an amnesia tale or war story or poker story.
I happen however to really enjoy Marlowe’s writing. His prose is easy to read and his stories seem to race forward at breakneck speed. He gives enough details to make things interesting but doesn’t get bogged down in endless details.
In all, as with all of Marlowe’s fiction, simply hands-down great entertainment.
Pulp, Crime, & Mystery Books 