Bruno Fischer's THE LADY KILLS (#755, 1951) is the first
Fischer I'bve read. "Mr. Fischer's writing is well motivated,
a nice balance of of physical and cerebral action--all
markedly satisfactory. --New York Times" says the front
cover. My copy is the second printing, 1958, and the cover is
a a woman with a black cloth wrapped around her, in front of
fiery orange swirl. The original cover was racier:
http://goldmed.virtualave.net/fischer.htm
THE LADY KILLS isn't top-rate Gold Medal stuff, but it's
fast-moving and enjoyable. It's a mix of some familiar HB,
noir and pulp/PBO elements: the newspaperman (who's not a
hard drinker here), the bewitching but evil beauty, the
corrupt town boss, the hick family with the handsome brother
and younger sister who runs away in her underwear after her
father whips her and her dress comes off.
The hero is the newspaperman, who's just been hired as the
city editor at a paper in Nowheresville. His boss rails
against corruption daily, and his boss's daughter is the one
who answers the door in a skimpy bikini. The hero falls for
the daughter and acts pretty stupid about her, especially
since her amazing seductive powers aren't very well described
and he just looks like a loser. There's a twist in the
middle: he's in some deep trouble with her, but instead of
going deeper, he blows town and stays away. But when his old
boss is dying and calls for him, he comes back, and soon
enough he's acting a bit stupid again. It all ends happily,
though.
This and WHIP HAND by Charles Willeford and W. Franklin
Sanders (also known as DELIVER ME FROM DALLAS!) both have
whips. I don't think they were uncommon to Gold Medals.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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