Another forgotten hardboiled crime fiction genre master is Harry Whittington. He was a pioneer of the paperback novel, with over seventy titles written under the Whittington brand, and under numerous pseudonyms as well. During his prime in the 1950s, he turned out as many as seven novels in one year, earning him the sobriquet "King of the Pulps".
Don't let the prodigious output deceive you. This was no wordsmith turned word grinder. Whittington's books are highly regarded for their careful characterization, ingenious plotting and careful attention to setting.
Web of Murder, a Whittington novel I recently finished, lives up to the author's reputation.
Brower is a hotshot lawyer who is having an affair with Laura, his assistant whose reserved manner conceals a firecracker eroticism that Brower is helpless to resist, or so he has convinced himself.
One problem, though: Brower is married, unhappily, perhaps, but still married to Cora, a woman he thinks he has grown tired of.
What to do? This being the grey zone of hardboiled noir fiction, a murder plot is in the offing and Brower, putting his brilliant legal mind to work, hatches one he thinks is unbeatable.
To conceal his lust for Laura, he makes it grossly obvious to the nosey Parkers of Summit, the Zenith-like city which he calls home, that he is seeing and probably bedding Victoria Haines, a politically-minded socialite whose upscale connections could coincidentally help him land a judgeship if he plays his marked cards right. Yet, too bad for our ambitious counsel, he loathes Victoria because of her oily, perfume soaked imitation of charm and class - his "love" scenes with Victoria almost evoke the dreaded concept of vagina dentata in their revulsion. He stokes the fires just the same, and soon, things are in place for Brower to strangle Cora as she sleeps and then drive her corpse to a forsaken field in Kansas, where he abandons both corpse and car. He assumes the long arm of the law, confused by the mysterious origins of the body, as well as the car's stolen licence plates, will never reach Summit.
Meanwhile, as the plot grinds into motion, Brower's mistress Laura is away in Florida posing as Cora and filing for a quickie divorce and posting a letter supposedly penned by Cora saying she is running away to South America, thus allowing Brower and Laura to live together lustily ever after.
Got that? It doesn't matter really. The breathless pace at which the tale unfolds, the delusional self-assurance with which Brower convinces himself that the plot will work, as well as his memorable asides - "You'll never be so lonely as on a highway driving with a corpse on the back seat" - help to smooth over some of the story's more outrageous aspects.
Besides, Brower's web of murder soon entangles him. He regrets killing Cora and remembers her with bitter nostalgia. His loathing for Victoria grows, he learns that Laura has been up to some especially dirty tricks of her own and a self-righteous local cop with a bad case of tabloid op-ed page morality is on his case, convinced that Brower is up to no good.
Web of Murder is an entertaining, well-written story that makes me want to find more Whittington. Unfortunately, only about seven of his novels are still widely available. Perhaps more will eventually surface in the cyberpulp world of e-books.
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