RARA-AVIS: Howard Hunt

From: Jeff Vorzimmer ( jvorzimmer@austin.rr.com)
Date: 23 Feb 2008


> . . . we've got a terrific hard-boiled detective novel called HOUSE DICK
> about
> skullduggery in a Washington D.C. hotel, written by none other than...E.
> Howard Hunt. Yes, *that* E. Howard Hunt. (If you're too young to
> remember
> him, look him up online. Just know that though he achieved notoriety for
> other
> activities, he was also one of the most prolific and consistently engaging
> crime
> writers of the paperback era.)

I just got Charles' email and noticed near the bottom that he's publishing a Howard Hunt novel and it just so happens I'm reading Hunt's The Violent Ones. Irrelevant cover and title, but surprisingly engaging. It's about a guy who beats up his wife's lover and paralyzes him and is sentenced to 2 years in prison, gets out early on parole, but then leaves for France at a friend's behest (how he can leave the country while on parole is never explained) and gets involved in a plot to steal gold left over from the war
(it was written in 1950).

This is an early Gold Medal title that I see a lot of and, judging from what I can tell of its reprint history, it must have sold over a million copies.

Jeff



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