A few days ago, Bill Crider and Ed Gorman discussed this novel by William P. McGivern (under the pseudonym Bill Peters), so I decided to read it, too. I’ve had two copies of it, the original paperback edition and a later edition (pictured), on my shelves for years, long enough that I don’t remember where or when I got them.
This is a good hardboiled novel about Philadelphia private eye Bill Canalli, who goes to visit a girl in Chicago and winds up in the middle of a vengeance quest to bust up the largest drug ring in the Midwest. I know it’s a cliché, but I like a private eye book where the hero gets hit on the head, and Canalli gets clouted several times in this one. There’s plenty of action, some nice observations on human nature, and a twisty plot. The surprise ending isn’t really much of a surprise, but it’s still effective. This is actually the first mystery novel by McGivern that I’ve read (I read his World War II novel SOLDIERS OF ’44 several years ago). BLONDES DIE YOUNG is good enough that I want to read more of his hardboiled stuff.
2 comments:
The ending's not much of a surprise, true, but it's a nice twist on what the Spillane ending for the same book would have been, don't you think?
Yeah, the last couple of pages really are kind of unexpected, and very satisfying.
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