An Eye for an Eye by Leigh Brackett
Before I start cleaning the house in preparation for tonight's party, I thought I'd whip off a quick review of this crime novel by Leigh Brackett, which was first published in 1957. It felt like an exploitation flick to me, sometimes reminiscent of Cape Fear. A married woman is kidnapped by a drunken lout, tied up and beaten senseless. Her husband is a lawyer who is handling the divorce case for the drunken lout's wife, who is in hiding from her abusive husband. The lout wants to trade one wife for the other.
The novel moves from one character point of view to another, chapter by chapter. The most interesting characters end up being the abusive husband, Al Guthrie, and his panic-stricken wife, Lorene. The insight into the controlling male psyche and crushed psyche of his no-longer-willing victim is quite vivid. The other characters are less interesting, although the lawyer apparently became the basis of a short-lived TV show called Markham (not the character's name in the book). The pursuit of the villain, especially once the cops get involved, feels very much like standard TV show fare. (Brackett may have been writing for TV by this time.)
It's hard-boiled, but in that sleazy way that I associate with the '50s and Mickey Spillane. It's short, too -- only 138 pages in the small-typeface setting of the 1961 Bantam paperback that I have. The constant point-of-view shifting leaves it feeling a little unfocused, but it's well-paced at the same time. Very efficient and compact.
I probably liked this better than the crime stories (and eponymous novel) collected in 1999 in No Good from a Corpse, but I'm still not feeling much love for her crime fiction. Not my cuppa, perhaps.
And now I've got to take a break from Brackett to prepare myself to write something about Homer Eon Flint. I do at least want to get back to Brackett's later science fiction, although I have one more crime novel by her and am interested in her Western, Follow the Free Wind, too.
Now, to the vacuum cleaner!
The novel moves from one character point of view to another, chapter by chapter. The most interesting characters end up being the abusive husband, Al Guthrie, and his panic-stricken wife, Lorene. The insight into the controlling male psyche and crushed psyche of his no-longer-willing victim is quite vivid. The other characters are less interesting, although the lawyer apparently became the basis of a short-lived TV show called Markham (not the character's name in the book). The pursuit of the villain, especially once the cops get involved, feels very much like standard TV show fare. (Brackett may have been writing for TV by this time.)
It's hard-boiled, but in that sleazy way that I associate with the '50s and Mickey Spillane. It's short, too -- only 138 pages in the small-typeface setting of the 1961 Bantam paperback that I have. The constant point-of-view shifting leaves it feeling a little unfocused, but it's well-paced at the same time. Very efficient and compact.
I probably liked this better than the crime stories (and eponymous novel) collected in 1999 in No Good from a Corpse, but I'm still not feeling much love for her crime fiction. Not my cuppa, perhaps.
And now I've got to take a break from Brackett to prepare myself to write something about Homer Eon Flint. I do at least want to get back to Brackett's later science fiction, although I have one more crime novel by her and am interested in her Western, Follow the Free Wind, too.
Now, to the vacuum cleaner!