Born in Iowa in 1902, Paul Cain became a writer for the Black
Mask pulp magazine in 1932, when the magazine was at the
height of its popularity. Although he claims to have traveled
around the world as both an artist and a gambler, almost no
hard factual information on his life exists before he started
at Black Mask. Four hardboiled stories for Black Mask formed
the basis of his only novel, FAST ONE. Cain left the magazine
in 1936 when Shaw was fired. Like many of the hardboiled
writers of the time, he took up scriptwriting. Unlike some,
he was successful at it, and wrote many scripts for several
studios. He died in 1966.
FAST ONE is the fast-paced story of tough guy Gerry Kells,
who has recently left New York and moved to Los Angeles,
where he profits by placing bets on fixed horse races. He
gets caught up in the middle of gangster war over control of
the city, and makes the decision to take over the town for
himself.
Told in a third person narrative in terse, lean sentences,
the book is not only very hardboiled, but also noir. Gerry
Kells's pitting of all the factions against one another is
reminiscent of Hammett's RED HARVEST. When I first read the
book, it seemed like the tempo was jerky, the quick scene
transitions awkward, producing the literary equivalent of
whiplash. Upon revisiting the first part, it seems even
worse. Also, credibility is stretched thin by the three times
Kells is knocked unconscious and, upon awakening, springs
into strenuous action.
But these are slight complaints really, and no reason to miss
out on hard-driving action and a hell-bound plot. Raymond
Chandler called FAST ONE the "high point in the ultra
hardboiled manner." He had high praise for the ending,
describing it "as murderous and at the same time poignant as
anything in that manner that has ever been written."
Besides the novel, seven stories are collected in the out-
of-print SEVEN SLAYERS. Crippen and Landru will be coming out
this month with a collection of 14 independent (not the four
that made up FAST ONE) stories, appropriately named FOURTEEN
SLAYERS. See http://www.crippenlandru.com
for details.
Note: Biographical information came from William
Marling's excellent hardboiled detective site: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/marling/hardboiled
miker
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 07 Nov 2002 EST