The telegram finally
caught Tagger on a dismal morning-after in a New Orleans brothel.
That’s the opening line in Ennis Willie’s excellent hardboiled mystery novel
THE TWISTED MISTRESS, published in 1963 by Merit Books and, to my knowledge,
never reprinted. And if you can read that and not feel compelled to keep
flipping the pages, you’ve got more self-control than I do.
Tagger is Lash Tagger (Willie’s protagonists always had great names). Years
earlier, as a runaway from the orphanage where he was raised, Tagger was taken
under the wing of Alex Beaumont, a textile mill owner who had worked his own
way up from hardship to riches. Beaumont has a son and daughter of his own, but
Tagger almost becomes like a son to him as well, until a falling-out between
them causes Tagger to take off on his own when he’s a young man.
Now several years have passed and Tagger is broke, but the telegram changes all
that. Beaumont is dead, and Tagger has to return to the town where the mill is
located for the reading of the will. When he gets there, he finds that not only
has he inherited a third of Beaumont’s fortune, but Beaumont has given him
control of the business as well and charged him with preventing the takeover of
the mill by a ruthless competitor. Needless to say, Beaumont’s grown children
don’t like this arrangement at all. The situation becomes even more complicated
and dangerous when Tagger discovers that Beaumont was murdered, and when he
starts poking around in that, somebody paints a target on his back, as well.
Oh, and there are three or four beautiful women involved, too, all of whom are
attracted to Tagger whether they want to be or not, and some of whom probably
can’t be trusted . . . but I probably didn’t have to tell you that.
THE TWISTED MISTRESS is just an enormous amount of fun for a fan of hardboiled,
slightly sleazy crime and mystery novels from the early Sixties. Willie’s prose
is so smooth and fast-paced that it’s a joy to read and you wind up flying
through the pages. There was a time I would have read this in one sitting, I’m
sure, and even though I can’t do that now because I don’t have as much time to
read, I still got through it quickly. Lash Tagger is plenty tough, not exactly
likable but certainly easy to root for. Maybe the women all fall for him a
little too quickly and easily, maybe the plot could have used one more twist,
but that doesn’t matter because this is a book designed to be gulped down. I
wish I could tell you to go out and buy a copy, but like I said above, it’s
never been reprinted and like all Ennis Willie books, it’s a little hard to
come by and a little pricey if you do. But if you ever see a copy, my advice is
to grab it.
By the way, I realize the cover says TWISTED MISTRESS, but the spine and the
title page add THE, so that’s the title I went with. And unlike the titles of
some of the books of this type from this era, the title actually does have
something to do with the story. The cover also says “Adult Reading”, but don’t
let that fool you. There’s sex in it, but very tame and mostly off-screen.
