For those who devour pulp paperbacks old and new, odds are even you’ll enjoy FIFTY-TO-ONE, the 50th novel from Hard Case Crime which also doubles as author Charles Ardai’s tribute to the 49 books before it, if not the entire genre.
Trixie is a new arrival to New York City who’s barely set foot inside Grand Central Station when she’s cheated out of her money by a wiry little guy who claims he can get her a room to rent for just $36. Defeated, she seeks work at a “talent agency” which promptly bleaches her hair and gets her a gig working as a dancer at a mob-run club.
Across the hall from the agency’s office is Hard Case Crime, a two-bit paperback publisher which barely has two bits to rub together. It’s a one-man operation, and that man is Charley Borden, a wiry little guy who, yep, is the same one who grifted our gal Trixie. When they’re reunited, she forces him to pay back her money with $5 interest.
In exchange for that interest, he asks if she can write him a nonfiction exposé of the club where she works and its gangster proprietor, because Hard Case is in dire need of a hit to be put on the map. She digs for dirt, but comes up with nothing, so Trixie simply makes it all up, receiving help on a heist plot by two struggling authors just for plying them with free alcohol.
Their contribution does the book good … perhaps too good, because the mob man ends up being robbed of millions exactly as it happens in the anonymous novel. So when the crook realizes he’s been cheated, guess who he comes looking for first?
The rest of FIFTY-TO-ONE can’t be discussed in specifics without spoiling its many twists. Those keep you engrossed in the self-reflexive book, as does Ardai’s unique structure. The novel is divided into 50 chapters, each named for a Hard Case title — in chronological order, no less. How exactly Ardai pulled this off and came out with hair intact is beyond me, because the titles actually relate to the content; for instance, “The Colorado Kid” refers to a boxer, “Lemons Never Lie” takes place at a used car lot, and “Plunder of the Sun” references the club that gets robbed.
Further fun is to be had in the cameos of real-life Hard Case authors, especially in figuring them out before you’re told who they are. Ardai even goes one step further in ending on a note that bravely bridges into the next Hard Case novel, Lawrence Block’s KILLING CASTRO. In other words, it’s a treat for those who have read any of the Hard Case output on a regular basis, with an added bonus of an eight-page, full-color cover gallery stuck in the middle.
At more than 300 pages, it’s about a third longer than most of the line’s offerings, so it’s not quite as thrifty in pace as the pulps to which it pays homage, but the love and the spirit are there, carrying the torch. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE RETURN OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS by Isaac Asimov, edited by Charles Ardai
• SONGS OF INNOCENCE by Richard Aleas
Related posts:
- Stone Rain
- Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense
- Hard Case to PEDDLE Prather
- Wanna be on a Hard Case Crime cover?
- Hard Case falls for 50-year-old VIRGIN
