Just Finished Reading: The Vengeful Virgin by Gil Brewer

Shirley Angela has a problem. Her stepfather is dying – just not quickly enough. Shirley is 18 and just wants to have fun. Unfortunately she’s tied to her stepdads bedside looking after him as he slowly slips away and waiting in the bank is over $300,000 held in trust. Enter Jack Ruxton, a down at heels TV repair man desperately trying to shrug off a clinging ex-lover and keep his business afloat. Shirley has a plan to help her stepfather slide into that cold night and with Jacks help that’s exactly what she intends to do. Using her more than ample charms Shirley blinds Jack with passion until he agrees to help her. But once the deed is done things inexorably spiral out of control until the only thing to do is run.

Originally publishing in 1958 this is classic pulp noir. The characters are pretty much doomed from the start. Each has a tragic story to tell and each is on a clear trajectory from the gutter to the electric chair. Both Shirley and Jack see themselves as victims even before any crime is committed and apparently cannot help themselves as they scheme to recover the money. Shirley herself is part complaining child and part alluring woman and as such is irresistible to Jack who thinks that something – anything – needs to go right in his life. What he doesn’t see is that the problems he’s had are of his own making with bad decision piled onto of bad decision. Inevitably – as is the overarching theme of such things – plans fail and the more they struggle against what is clearly their fate the worse things get. Clearly a morality tale of sorts this was a well constructed though deceptively simple story or lust, greed, jealousy and rage. A real page turner and highly entertaining. This was my second foray into the Hard Case Crime series and certainly won’t be my last.