THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH - Dan J. Marlowe

'Roy' and 'Bunny' (these are the names they know each other by but not likely to be their actual names) are bank robbers. In their latest heist things don't go as smoothly as they'd hoped in Phoenix and Roy, who killed three men, gets clipped, taking a bullet in the arm. The duo split up so that Roy can lay low and recover (and to throw off the search for two men).

There's a contingency plan for just such an event - Bunny heads east with the money and the two will meet up later to divide their loot.  Until they meet, Bunny sends regular checks to Roy so that he can stay where he is until he's ready to travel. Roy just needs to stay out of sight and avoid the dragnet looking for the bank robbers, then travel 2000 miles and meet up with his partner in crime. Nothing to it.

But the checks stop coming and Roy learns that something has happened to Bunny and their money. Roy has to travel incognito to the rural town that Bunny was supposed to be in and find out what happened and where his money is. To do this, thought, Roy has to take on the role of a traveling laborer so that he can take stock of the people whom Bunny interacted with.

When I think of the dark, hard-boiled, shoot-'em-up thriller novel (not the hard-boiled detective books), this is exactly the sort of book I imagine.  We're in the life of someone you probably would never want to hang around with. A bank robber ad a killer with very little moral compass. And yet ... we want to know what's happened.

We easily get caught up in the mystery of what happened to Bunny and the money. Whether Roy ever reunites with either really isn't as important as just knowing.

It's a short book (not even 150 pages) which was fairly standard for pulp, paperback fiction of this sort (I tend to think of this as 1950's hard-boiled fiction, but this book was published in the very early 1960's). Even so, we manage to get into the psyche of Roy Martin and know what he's capable of, so his descending on the small town is rife with tension and danger.

Author Dan J. Marlowe's prose is tight and gritty, suiting the story perfectly. I wondered why I wasn't more familiar with Marlowe's work but a quick Google search filled me in a bit as to why he didn't make it bigger (even though this is considered a classic in the genre).

You can't be squeamish and you can't be prudish to read a book  like this.  There's plenty of violence and sex as you would expect (hope?) in such a story. But it's this enigma of a character, Roy Martin (aka Chet Arnold, aka ...), who holds the story together, despite (or maybe because of) his darker side.

Looking for a good book? The Name of the Game is Death by Dan J. Marlowe is a classic in the hard-boiled fiction genre. Sharp writing and wicked characters with lots of sex and violence define the genre and the book.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, in a collection of novels, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

* * * * * *

The Name of the Game is Death

author: Dan J. Marlowe

publisher: Vintage

ISBN: 9780679738480

paperback, 138 pages

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VINYL RESTING PLACE - Olivia Blacke

Image
 Juni Jessup and her two sister, Tansy and Maggie, have gone into business together in their hometown of Cedar River, Texas, opening a combination record store and coffee shop. Vinyl LPs are making a comeback after all, despite critics thinking the medium was dead.  But speaking of 'dead' ... finding a dead body in the supply closet just as they are looking to have a grand opening is not part of the plan.  Juni's life gets more complicated when their uncle, Calvin, already a suspect in the murder, disappears. And the police officer leading the investigation is Juni's EX-boyfriend (who passive-aggressively keeps putting himself back into her life). Convinced that her uncle would never murder anyone, Juni sets out to prove his innocence - which isn't easy since he's making himself look guilty - because Calvin is family and family is EVERYthing to Juni. As readers of my blog know, I'm not a big fan of most cozy mysteries, but the setting caught my eye and my in...
Read more

THE WALLED CITY - Ryan Graudin

Image
  Jin and her sister, Mei Yee, were taken and sold and then sent to the lawless Walled City to serve as prostitutes or slaves to anyone willing to pay. Jin managed to escape her captivity, but not the Walled City and she now lurks about, disguised as a boy and is trying to track down the brothel where her sister is still captive. Jin will work odd delivery jobs to earn a small bit of money and hopefully have a legitimate means of coming in contact with her sister's captors.  This is how she meets up with Dai, a mysterious boy who has somehow managed to avoid running with any of the gangs in the city but he seems to have his own unusual connections, which Jon could desperately use if she has any hope of finding Mei Yee. But Dai has his own desperate needs.  The story is told from the different perspectives of each character and we do bounce around quite a bit as the chapters are generally short. This never bothered me, which is slightly unusual as often I find this techni...
Read more

THE RAVEN THIEF - Gigi Pandian

Image
 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - ...
Read more