The girl of the title in this book is Lucinda Perky, a beautiful young blonde who lives at a fishing camp on Lake Okeechobee in Florida that’s run by her husband Russ. Unfortunately for Lucinda, she’s dead before the book even begins, raped and murdered, and her husband has been arrested for the crime.
Living not too far away are Dan Waxman, a scientist from New York who has come
to Florida to try to perfect a new system of hydroponic farming, and his wife
Martine (who goes by Marty), a lawyer who has given up her practice to
accompany Dan to Florida. The Waxmans are acquainted with Russ Perky and his
wife, and Marty decides she’s going to be Russ’s lawyer and defend him against
the charge of murdering Lucinda. The rest of ANY MAN’S GIRL, a novel by Basil
Heatter published originally by Gold Medal in 1961, revolves around Marty’s
investigation into the case and her gradual uncovering of Lucinda’s past and
several other suspects, all of it leading up to some extremely suspenseful
scenes at the end that really had me turning the pages to find out what was
going to happen.
Heatter, the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter, does a fine job cutting
back and forth between his large cast of characters. Marty Waxman is the
nominal protagonist of ANY MAN’S GIRL, but Heatter takes the reader inside the
head of just about all the other characters involved in the story. This is a
well-written book that does a fine job of capturing the setting and the people.
Heatter does seem to be a bit biased against the South and Southerners, but I
suppose given the time period and the fact that he was New England born and
bred, that’s understandable.
This is a well-constructed suspense novel with some really nasty plot twists
along the way. I never read anything by Heatter, although his name is familiar.
I plan to give some of his other books a try. ANY MAN’S GIRL is being reprinted
by Black Gat Books and is available for pre-order on Amazon. It’s a really good
yarn, and if you’re a crime fiction fan, it’s well worth reading.
4 comments:
Heatter also wrote THE MUTILATORS and VIRGIN CAY for Gold Medal.
I liked this one enough that I'm going to check my shelves to see if I have anything else by him. I've already ordered a copy of his first novel, THE DIM VIEW, a World War II yarn based on his experiences as a PT boat skipper.
The Virgin Cay is excellent. Stark House has a reprint of it with A Night Out, which I haven't read yet. - Daniel Rafe
I bought the e-book of that Stark House double volume. Looking forward to it!
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