Take Me As I Am - William H. Fielding (Darwin Teilhet)

The latest Black Gat Books reprint, TAKE ME AS I AM, was published originally by Gold Medal in 1952, so you know with that pedigree it’s almost certainly a good book. The author is Darwin Teilhet, who wrote it under the pseudonym William H. Fielding. I’d only vaguely heard of Teilhet and have never read anything else by him. The cover art is very familiar from having been used for fake books in countless memes, but it’s a classic image and fits this novel very well. I feel like I should know the artist, but I don’t.

As so many hardboiled and noir novels do, TAKE ME AS I AM starts with a crime. And it’s the proverbial humdinger, an armored car robbery that’s violent, fast-paced, and very effective. The crooks, led by a guy named Monk, get away with what’s supposed to be a million dollars. Unfortunately, when they pass off the loot to an accomplice, a beautiful blonde named Alma who’s supposed to deliver it to the gang’s leader, they find that it’s only a hundred thousand. Somebody’s double-crossing somebody. (To quote Steven Wright: “They offer you a penny for your thoughts, but then you have to put your two cents’ worth in . . . Somebody’s makin’ a penny.”)

Anyway, on her way to meet the big boss and hand over the hot money, Alma picks up a hitchhiker, a brawny 18-year-old guy named Bill Evans who’s got his own demons chasing him. As they travel west from Iowa (where the armored car stick-up took place) through Nebraska, odd things happen. Bill runs into a couple of other beautiful blondes, one of whom winds up dead and the other one almost meets the same fate. Coincidences and plot twists abound. Bill, who is actually a fairly bright guy but out of his depth, winds up in the hands of the bad guys but gets away. By now Alma wants the stolen dough for herself and doesn’t care what she has to do in order to keep it . . . or does she? Could she actually be falling for Bill?

Steve Lewis reviewed this novel several years ago on his great Mystery File website and compared it to the work of Cornell Woolrich. I can see that. Woolrich was from the one-damned-thing-after-another school of mystery writing, too, and that’s certainly an apt description of TAKE ME AS I AM. The plot twists pile up and take unexpected turns. The writing isn’t quite as smooth and compelling as Woolrich’s work, but it kept me turning the pages, that’s for sure. I really enjoyed TAKE ME AS I AM and galloped through the last quarter or so of it, unable to put it down until I’d finished. Great hardboiled storytelling and a great cover add up to a high recommendation from me. It’s available in both print and e-book editions.