Thought I'd squeeze this post in between the many on Marxism
in hardboiled crime fiction.
Well, my summer of Charles Williams has come to an end. The
last three I read where Girl Out Back, Gulf Coast Girl
(Scorpion Reef) and Go Home, Stranger, I include here a brief
overview of the three books.
Girl Out Back This is one of his best books. It has elements
of River Girl and A Touch of Death and is every bit as good,
which makes this the best of the novels that haven't been
reprinted in recent years. The last twenty pages are among
the best of any hardboiled crime book I've read. The Williams
irony is in full force. This book gets five stars.
Gulf Coast Girl This was a Dell paperback reprint of his
first hardbound book. It was also his first "sea" novel.
Although this was probably my least favorite of the dozen or
so books I've read by Williams it still was a good
read--maybe three out of five stars.
Go Home, Stranger Another book that was good, but not great.
It has lots of suspense. Not so typical of Williams. No femme
fatale. Not as much irony. Not his usual kind of ending.
Still three out of five stars.
Williams best novels of those I've read are: Nothing in Her
Way, A Touch of Death, Girl Out Back, Talk of the Town and
River Girl. I also loved the Diamond Bikini. All five star
books.
Finally, I rented The Hot Spot, the film version of Hell Hath
No Fury. I must say that I quite liked it. It was not nearly
as bad as some reviewers have said. It's very erotic and
worth renting just to see Jennifer Connelly and Virginia
Madsen in the buff. Like the locale of most of his novels, it
was shot in Texas--in the Hill Country. In fact there's a
skinny dip scene In Hamilton Pool, which is a beautiful
swimming hole not far from Austin. It's been so long since I
read the book, I couldn't tell you how faithful it was to
it.
And for you Williams fans that have read this post this far,
here's something for you. It's a short, short story of his
entitled The Strike from Cosmopolitan, January 1954. It's the
only short story of his I've found that wasn't a
serialization of one of his novels. http://tinyurl.com/h656p
Jeff
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