I'll Bury My Dead - James Hadley Chase (Rene Raymond)

James Hadley Chase was actually Rene Raymond, an English author who wrote mysteries and thrillers under several different names, but Chase is certainly the best-known and most successful of those pseudonyms. His novel I’LL BURY MY DEAD was published originally in hardcover in 1953 in England by Robert Hale and reprinted in paperback by Harlequin in 1954. It was published in the United States in hardcover by Dutton in 1954 and then reprinted in paperback by Signet in 1955. Finally, the Signet paperback had a second edition with a different cover published in 1963, and that’s the edition I read. That’s my copy above. On-line images of the other editions are at the bottom of this post.

The protagonist of I’LL BURY MY DEAD is Nick English, a promoter who backs theater and nightclub shows, boxers, and assorted other enterprises. He’s something of a shady character who’s mixed up in some political corruption as well. But he’s not a bad guy, and in a nice twist, he’s also an inventor who got his start by coming up with a gyroscopic compass he was able to patent. He’s also a philanthropist who financed a new hospital in New York City, which goes by a pseudonym itself in this novel, as Chase/Raymond refers to it as Essex City, but it’s obviously New York.

Nick has a mistress who’s a nightclub singer, a beautiful secretary who’s in love with him (although he doesn’t realize that, the reader does), a tough chauffeur/bodyguard, and a ne’er-do-well brother who’s a private eye. It’s the brother’s suicide that kicks off the action in this book . . . but did he really kill himself? Nick doesn’t think so, and when the brother’s secretary also winds up dead, another apparent suicide, the same night, Nick is convinced something sinister is going on. He doesn’t trust the cops to find out who’s responsible for these deaths, so he sets out to do it himself. This investigation sets off a chain of even more murders.

Then halfway through the book, Chase springs a twist that I didn’t see coming at all, and the second half of the novel is less mystery than thriller as Nick battles against a brilliant but deranged killer who seems to always be a step ahead of him.

I’ve read maybe a dozen James Hadley Chase novels over the years, and I’LL BURY MY DEAD is one of the best of them. Nick English is a good protagonist and the other characters are handled well, especially the killer, who’s really creepy and despicable. There are some very brutal scenes in this novel, and not everyone survives who you might expect to. The pace never slows down for long and I had to keep flipping the pages all the way to the end. Since Chase was English and this book, like most of his others, is set in America, there are a few bits of dialogue that don’t sound quite right, but overall he does an excellent job of making things ring true.

I really enjoyed I’LL BURY MY DEAD and give it a high recommendation. One word of warning, though: Harlequin reprinted this and several other hardboiled novels back in 2009 as part of what they called their Vintage Collection, but the editors there took it upon themselves to delete what they considered objectionable material from those editions. I don’t know the extent of the cuts they made to this novel, but I suspect they toned down some of the violence and possibly the sex. Just on general principles, though, I’d avoid that 2009 edition and look for the original Harlequin edition or one of the Signet editions if you decide to read it.

Bonus points: Which is the best cover?

UPDATE: The much better scan of the cover from the original Robert Hale edition comes to us courtesy of Keith Chapman. Thanks!