I just finished an essay on Charles Williams by Ed Gorman in
MURDER OFF THE RACK. Since Williams's RIVER GIRL is the only
Gold Medal I own besides Rabe's THE BOX, I thought the essay
was worth mentioning as Gold Medal month slips away.
The essay is a disappointingly mediocre collection of 15
impressions of Williams. It doesn't say a whole lot about his
writing or his life.
He was born in Texas in 1909, married Lasca Foster in 1939,
had one daughter, and committed suicide in 1975. He tried to
get his first book published with Simon and Schuster in the
late 40's but the plot was deemed too commercial for
hardcover. After circulating around various publishers, the
book was published in 1951 as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback
entitled HILL GIRL.
Over the years he churned out a bunch in this manner, but by
1958 the demand for suspense mysteries shifted towards series
writing, which Williams refused to do. An effort was made to
break him loose from the paperback world, and SCORPION REEF
came out as a Macmillan hardcopy in 1955. I've got a Viking
Press 1963 hardcopy of DEAD CALM sitting on the shelf waiting
on me, and inside the cover it mentions simultaneous
publishing in Canada by Macmillan.
His wife died in the early 70's and he bought some land in
the Pacific northwest and lived in a trailer up there by him-
self. With help from Nona Tyson, a friend who was also Steven
Spielberg's assistant, Williams published his last book, MAN
ON A LEASH, in 1973. A couple years later his agent Don
Congdon opened a letter from Williams that was a suicide
note. Williams was dead. I believe he drowned himself.
Details of Williams life seem hard to come by. I would
appreciate any pointers to where I could go to find out more
about his life. To my knowledge, no biography of him has been
written.
His writing? All I've read is RIVER GIRL, and it was spec-
tacular. It's well-written and the characters are skillfully
drawn. The plot somewhat parallels Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS
RINGS TWICE, with a man and a woman trying to cover up the
husband's murder. The tension and suspense and desperation
roll off the pages. You can smell the sweat. RIVER GIRL is a
fine piece of noir writing.
miker
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