HOME IS THE SAILOR is perhaps the quintessential Gold Medal novel. It has all the elements: the tough, somewhat dim hero who stays drunk for much of the story; the beautiful girl who may or may not be what she seems; the dead body that has to be disposed of; and finally the hero on the lam from the cops, charged with something that he didn’t do. Just when poor Swede Nelson thinks his situation can’t get worse, Things Get Really Bad. It all adds up to a fast-paced, maybe not entirely believable novel that’s a heck of a lot of fun to read. If anybody was ever to ask you, “What were those old Gold Medals like, anyway?”, you could do a lot worse than handing them a copy of HOME IS THE SAILOR.
(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on March 26, 2005, making it one of the earliest reviews that I've rerun. As you can see, my reviews were shorter and punchier back in those days! When I posted it, the Hard Case Crime reprint of HOME IS THE SAILOR had been published recently, and that was the edition I read, not the classic Gold Medal pictured above with the great blurb: "And Swede's troubles began." Now, as far as I can tell, the Hard Case Crime edition is also out of print, but copies of both versions can still be found for sale on-line for fairly reasonable prices. This is one of my favorite Day Keene novels, so if you haven't read it before, I think it's well worth your time.)
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