I thought I might as well read Wade Miller's THE TIGER'S WIFE
(1951) for a very good reason: I'd never read it before. I'd
read several others by the Miller team, though, including the
one that's probably my favorite of theirs, THE BIG GUY
(1953). Before reading THE TIGER'S WIFE, in fact, I scanned
THE BIG GUY to see if it was as good as I remembered. It was.
Great opening: "Joe Drum glanced dispassionately at the blood
on his knuckles. It was not his own blood. Even if it had
been, the mere sight of blood would have lighted no fire of
emotion in his eyes, which were a rusty-brown color like old
armor plate. Noe one ever knew what went on inside Joseph T.
Drum, and he was proud of that. He dried his knuckles on the
clothes of the mand held pinioned before him." And there's an
even better ending, which really impressed me Back in the
Day. I read it again, and it's still good. I won't quote it
because it's a spoiler. I wonder, though, if Peter Rabe
didn't go to school on Wade Miller.
But I digress. Back to THE TIGER'S WIFE. Another classic GM
situation: a guy meets a beautiful woman and they marry in
haste. As the book goes along, he begins to discover that she
isn't at all what he thought she was. That's the case here.
Lucius Bohy is a knockaround guy, gun-runner, soldier of
fortune, nicknamed The Tiger. You know the type from other GM
books. He meets Jill Spring and before he realizes it, his
life is really changed. This is definitely not a feminist
tract. Maybe it's the reverse, but again I don't want to give
away too much. Readable and slick, and if there's way too
much of that irritating love talk, there's a good reason for
it. The psychology is very 1950s, but that's part of the
book's appeal for me. There's some hot (for the early 1950s)
sex, some of it just a little kinky. And another great
ending.
If you have any of these early Miller books in your
collection, give one a try.
Bill Crider
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