I read this last week, when I couldn't find any of Mr.
Ramos's recomennded books at the bookstore or my local
library. It's an early (1955) John D. MacDonald novel, and
slightly unusual for not having an ultra-competent guy as
hero. The lead is a veteran of the Korean War who spent some
hard time in a rough POW camp, where a friend died but first
told him about
$60,000 he'd embezzled. (That's $400,000 today, I looked it
up. ("This is genuine coin of the realm. With a dollar of
this you can buy ten dollars of talk.")) He heads to the
friend's home town and gets beat up right away. He does some
detecting, runs into the cops, gets in trouble, meets a
beautiful good girl and a beautiful bad girl, and you can
guess who he ends up with. It's a solid example of JDM's
craftsmanship and paperback originals of the time.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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