Bill Crider sed:
> Speaking of long books, as we were, a couple of
weeks ago I was in a
> Half-Price Books in Houston and saw a stack of an
edition of Charles
> Willeford's WILD WIVES, published by ReSearch
Publications in 1987. I
> bought one because my copy of the Beacon edition is
so brittle I've never
> read it. It checks in at 102 pages. Hard, fast, not
a wasted word. But
> I'll bet it would never be published today. But then
Willeford
> had to sell
> it to Beacon in the first place, so I guess none of
the other houses would
> take it even in the '50s.
>
I absolutely love this book!!! It epitomizes for me the weird
goofiness that lies behind the genre, not to mention the
double and triple cross of the noir world. It starts out as
almost a straight PI book, but then degenerates into this
exhilarating story of obsession and greed....with little
hints of degeneracy and ludicrous plot twists. Jim Thompson
meets Raymond Chandler. I just wish I could find the flip
side of the original double paperback, High Priest of
California. A great fun book!
Tribe
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