The twofer MY LOVELY EXECUTIONER / AGREEMENT TO KILL is the fourth book of Peter Rabe’s writings published by Stark House Press. Rabe wins the cool points right away for being the first noir author I was exposed to – not from a mystery book or anything like that, but from his writing two episodes of a TV show I watched every morning before school as a kid: BATMAN. To find out which ones, read this book’s introduction.
Unlike other books I’ve covered in the Stark House oeuvre, 1960′s MY LOVELY EXECUTIONER does not grab you by the throat and hit full-tilt until the story was over. No, this story is more of a slow burn for readers, as we’re slowly fed the information we need; Rabe gives it out in drips and drabs all the way to the end.
Jimmy Galvin, a convict counting the days until he gets out from his seven-year sentence, has only has three weeks to go. Then he’s forced to participated in a prison break by a group of criminals anxious to extract some information they believe exists in his head. Galvin is just disgusted that he is dragged along in this escape, for reasons they don’t reveal until much later.
Even free, Galvin still feels like a prisoner, since the group that broke him out keeps him on a short leash. It seems one of Galvin’s former cellmates might have passed along some info about a hiding place. Rabe plays this book like a Camus novel, since at times his protagonist makes decisions that will affect his future in a big way. For those who want a more of a think-piece type of noir, EXECUTIONER will fit you just fine.
From 1957, AGREEMENT TO KILL deals with another ex-con, Jake Spinner. Having served three years in the joint, he’s ready to restart his life on the family farm, but there are people in town who just won’t leave well enough alone – particularly Dixon. In charge of the town since he’s the man with the money, Dixon has a long-standing hate for Spinner (and vice versa), so it’s only natural that when Dixon winds up dead, Spinner becomes the prime suspect.
One might think the rest of the book will be Spinner trying to prove his innocence, but come on – this is Stark House – they don’t take the easy route with the books they reissue. Instead, Spinner escapes from jail, only to run into the actual killer, a trigger man hired by some criminal outfit to take care of Dixon cleanly. Spinner figures that he has a better chance of a life if he joins up with the killer, so off they go to a syndicate hideout, where Spinner is offered a job.
But Spinner has grave reservations, and again, Rabe gives you a story that takes the slow-build approach. You expect it to go one way, but he paces himself and takes the reader down an avenue you wouldn’t expect.
As for Stark House’s usual “extras,” we get a brief introduction by Rabe’s former agent Max Gartenberg, followed by a lengthy history of Rabe’s career by George Tuttle. Following both novels, the book concludes with a amusing essay by some little-known crime novelist Donald Westlake, who says it best in his first sentence: “Peter Rabe wrote the best books with the worst titles of anybody I can think of.” Some of these, Stark House has reprinted already; any Rabe is well worth grabbing, awful title or not. –Bruce Grossman
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Related posts:
- Wild to Possess / A Taste for Sin
- Learning to Kill: Stories
- A Night for Screaming / Any Woman He Wanted
- Kill All the Lawyers
- An Air That Kills / Do Evil in Return
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