Ed Lynskey asked yesterday for an opinion of 42 DAYS FOR
MURDER By Roger Torrey and it just so happens I finished the
novel that very day. I had picked it out as my 30s decade
novel and am so glad I did. It turned out to be the most
enjoyable reading I've done in months. What a blast!
Published in 1938 (and reprinted by Dennis McMillan in 1988),
this is the only novel by Black Mask regular Torrey. It
features private eye Shean Connell who fits the classic mold
of the hard-drinking, fast-talking, quick-fisted PI. Connell,
like the author, is also a barrel-house piano player who
plays well enough to take club jobs when the cover is useful.
Torrey has a nice, knowing touch when writing about the piano
work.
The setting is Reno, Nevada, then best known as the
divorce capital of the United States. In order to establish
residency and be eligible for the courts of Nevada, it was
necessary to live there for six weeks--hence the title.
The setting is also one of the great attractions of this
novel as the Reno lovingly described is nearly wide-open.
Torrey gives us this Reno with great texture as when he shows
us a hotel which both the crooks and the semi-corrupt cops
leave as a neutral zone that can serve as a meeting
place.
Or, the brothel with 48 cribs in the shape of a
horseshoe and the drugged-up whores who work there.
Connell is hired by a rich guy whose wife decamped on him and
moved to Reno in order to divorce him. Still in love ("...a
man in love is always a pitiful thing"), the client just
wants to talk with his wife but is prevented from doing so by
her lawyer who has considerable legal and illegal power in
Reno ("I've always hated the fat, smooth toad type and he was
the perfect example"). That is Connell's assignment but
nothing is as it seems and a complex but nicely worked out
plot builds from this simple base.
The action is incredibly fast-pasted. This thing moves! But
better than that is the running first person commentary of
Connell. He has a teenage sidekick named Lester. When the kid
falls for this huge brassy blonde, Connell gives him this
advice, "She's too big for you; she'd grapple with you and
take two falls out of three. Why, my God, kid, you could have
her, another cow, and a dozen milk bottles and start a milk
route."
Or the girl he ended up paired with through much of the novel
nicknamed
"Spanish." She was drop-dead gorgeous but he hated her voice.
"I don't expect them perfect, at my age, but I don't want
them saying sweet nothings in my ear and sounding as though
they had adenoids while doing it. It's not that I'm so fussy
but you can hear a voice even in the dark."
Or when Lester remarked on the youth of a prostitute (who
told the cops "Just a minute Chief. You ain't getting any
cherry; I been pinched before") that she hardly seemed more
than a child: "She's been further under the barn after eggs
than you've been away from home, kid. That's a tough
baby."
Or in commenting on the health status of a guy he'd shot: "My
slug had caught him just below the knee and ranged up the
whole length of his thigh. They dug it out up by his hip but
they had to cut off his leg to find it."
To repeat, from one who loves the old stuff from the 1920s
& 30s, this is a great read.
Richard Moore
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