I think there was a brief discussion of VIOLENT SATURDAY a
year or two back on rara-avis. I had just read the book,
drawn by my fondness for the film version (Victor Mature,
Sylvia Sidney, and Richard Egan {as Boyd, below}). I liked
the book very much, but it seems to be the only book of its
sort that Heath wrote, as far as I can tell. Searches I've
done for other books by him have turned up mainly children's
books and teen-oriented stuff. I highly recommend both the
novel and the film.
Jim Beaver
> Doug Bassett talks about VIOLENT SATURDAY, one of my
favorites. There's a
> scene near the end of the book where a distraught
man, Boyd, describes his
> murdered wife to a couple of his friends, that to my
mind captures the
> essence of hardboiled/noir in a few short
paragraphs. Here's a sample:
>
> "I was holding her hand when she died," said Boyd.
"Did I tell you that?
> About holding her hand? She wasn't able to talk, but
I could tell she
> wanted me to hold her hand. She must have known she
was going." He
leaned
> forward and laced his fingers together. "Like this,"
he said, "with our
> fingers interlocked, the way you'd hold a girls hand
at the movies. She
> died alone, though. That's one thing you do all
alone, even in a roomful
of
> people. It's too bad, too, to have to die in front
of a lot of people.
> Emily was scared. She was scared to death, and I'm
afraid it didn't help
> much for me to hold her hand. You can't help anybody
die."
>
> And:
>
> "She didn't look like she'd ever been alive," Boyd
said. "She didn't look
> like she'd ever spoken a word or moved or ever heard
a sound. She was
like
> something--I swear I can't describe it. Even her
hair looked dead where
it
> was parted. Nothing could ever lie as still as she
was lying. I could
have
> screamed at her or shot off a stick a dynamite in
that room and she'd
never
> have known it, you know that? When a person's dead,
they're really dead,
I
> can tell you. I never dreamed how still and how much
like wax. I've
often
> heard that word used about dead people, that they
looked like wax, and
they
> do. They look exactly like wax."
>
> W.L. Heath bought a little piece of immortality with
this one.
>
> Pelecanos
>
>
>
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