Just Finished Reading: The Peddler by Richard S Prather

Tony Romero is a kid on the make, he’s going far and becoming rich – if only he could find a way of doing it! Its then he bumps into sometimes ex-girlfriend and all round good time girl Maria Casino. When they catch up on old times over a few beers Maria tells him of her new life as a call girl. When she tells Tony how much money she’s making and how much of that she pays to her minder he realises that he’s found his way to earn lots of money quickly. Using her as an ‘in’ to the local organisation Tony makes himself indispensible to those above him but for a kid with his ambitions enough is never quite enough. Using every tool at his disposal Tony becomes boss of a whole San Francisco district faster than anyone else in the history of the Organisation but even that isn’t enough for his ever growing aspirations. He has his eye on the top job itself and he won’t let anyone or anything get in his way even if that means he has to kill his way into the top slot.

Written in 1952 this is pretty good Noir fiction. Tony is a totally disreputable character without an once of compassion but with enough naked ambition for a car full of people. He’s driven by greed and the ever present fear of falling back into poverty and inconsequence. He wants, above all else, to be respected and feared by those around him – even by the girl who has stuck by him throughout his meteoric rise and his descent into violent paranoia. It is his character than drives the narrative – so much so that most of the other characters are paper cut-outs – and he is the central focus of the book. But despite his obnoxious nature you can’t help but feel sorry for him. His is a lost soul without the eyes to see or the brain to understand what could be his if he paused for a moment to examine his all consuming drive to succeed. The inevitable fall is pretty certain from page one and despite both external and internal warnings he almost embraces his tragic trajectory for want of anything else to hold on to. As crime fiction goes this is a pretty good example of the genre and I’m not surprised by the number of books this author has sold. An above average read. One of the Hard Case Crime series.