Benjamin Appel’s SWEET MONEY GIRL / LIFE AND DEATH OF A TOUGH GUY is another fine collection from Stark House Press, which really gives you your money’s worth when it comes to picking up reissues.
This is its second collection of Appel’s work, and fittingly enough, we get a nice introduction by his daughter Carla, who explains how she should have paid more attention to her dad’s advice when he spoke of writing, and how he would incorporate friends’ and family members’ names into his stories. She also discusses how vastly different the two included novels are from each other, closing out with how she probably could never have gotten through them as a kid. But now, as an adult, she has more respect for her father’s work. Stark House again pulls out all the stops with its extensive bibliography, then it’s off to the races.
From 1954, SWEET MONEY GIRL is unlike anything I’ve read before from Stark House. There are no gun battles or major crimes, but it’s still a hard-boiled tale of unrequited love and regret. The story is about old Army buddies Maxie and Hugh, and Hortense, the woman who comes between them.
With each new chapter, we hear their story from another perspective — not in the way of rehashing what the others have said, but watching the story progress through a new pair of eyes. Maxie is a big lovable lug who lives with his mother and pines for the dance instructor Hortense. Hugh is a former Army pal who comes to live in the big city, staying with Maxie and his mom in their brownstone.
Hortense is only after one thing: a giant payday. She only sees dollar signs with whomever she meets. Once Hugh meets Hortense, he thinks it’s true love, while she just strings him along. He becomes infatuated with her. Unlike Maxie, Hugh sees her for what she really is, but he doesn’t care.
As the story progresses, Hortense has had enough of trying to part saps from their money, so she figures she can become a call girl, while Hugh wants to play her protector. She relates a typical night in her life as she tries to give a final brush-off to both of these men, but Maxie still comes back like some lost little puppy, making a plan to cash out and run off with her.
For those expecting some giant conclusion with violence, skip to the second story. This is more of a character piece with three people who should have never been placed together. Appel paints them as well-defined and three-dimensional. As much as the reader would like to shake them and smack some sense into them, we don’t get a chance, as Appel has mapped out their stories all too well. This is a fantastic work that really shows the depth of his writing, and that not everything from Stark House needs a body count.
One year later, Appel wrote LIFE AND DEATH OF A TOUGH GUY, about how a small Jewish kid became a dangerous figure in the local mob. That’s your quick, one-sentence summation.
We follow the life of Joey Kasow, starting with his early days of being picked on by the Irish kids in his neighborhood, including almost getting tossed off the roof of his tenement building. One day, he finally fought back and gained the trust of these up-and-coming thugs. He still would get grief for being Jewish, but he proves himself more times than not that he can stand with the best of them.
Joey’s star rises as he takes his place in a local gang called the Badgers, run by Spotter, the brains behind the operation who plans heists for his crew. Spotter has a bad ticker and can’t take part himself, but it seems he has plans of expanding his group into other operations, all the while using Joey to the best of his abilities, even when Joey is captured after one of their raids by a rival gang. Joey never gives up his crew and points the blame at others, forcing him and his childhood pal Georgie to lay low for a while.
As Joey gains stature in Spotter’s slowly building organization, he still has to deal with the racism of other members, which builds to the point that forces Joey into murder. He tries to keep his personal life separate from this gang lifestyle he has fully embraced since the day he was kicked out by his own family, especially after meeting a Jewish girl named Sadie who he wants a future with. Sadly, that is not his future, if Spotter has anything to say about it.
The title is a bit misleading in that the death is more a lifestyle than actually death, since the story is left wide-open what happens to these characters. All of them change vastly from their introductions, especially Sadie, who starts out as quiet and reserved girl and grows into a full-blown drunk Joey tries to save while he has to figure out his own escape.
As with SWEET MONEY GIRL, Appel flexes his writing skills thoroughly in TOUGH GUY, as we watch a poor, little, picked-on kid evolve into a man who could take over the gang himself. This story is also known under the reprinted title TEENAGE MOBSTER. —Bruce Grossman
