I once saw a fool pull the trigger on a rifle whose tip was
below water.
He wound up with a comic-book gun -- with the end splayed out
and
shredded. The barrel tip, where the pressure build-up would
occur with a
rifle bullet, is just where you would expect the failure
point to be.
Unless of course you're dealing with a grossly overcharged
handload,
which might cause the receiver to fail.
The cover to the first edition of _JRH_ (which I borrowed
via
inter-library loan) was designed by Lewis himself. Is that
Lewis sitting
on the kiln wall? It looks a lot like him based on a photo I
saw on the
back of his _Jack Carter and the Law_. This edition of _JRH_,
published
in the USA, had a one-page glossary at the front. I presume
this
glossary was included in UK editions as well; otherwise, I
think they
would have included a few other words ("owt" = anything, and
"nowt" =
nothing, which are unheard in the US) for
Americans/Canadians.
All in all, this is the kind of fast-paced (and short!)
hardboiled noir
I prefer. It was bleak enough to register as noir in my
mind.
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