Saturday, January 31, 2009

Saturday's Forgotten Book: Give Me This Woman, by John Jakes


Give Me This Woman is a sleazy P.I. story written by John Jakes and publishes by Monarch in 1962 as by William Ard. I've said to Charles Ardai that it would fit the Hard Case Crime line perfectly. Lou Largo, the private eye "hero" of the book, is very hardboiled and he's also a heel and a scumbag, which in my books makes for perfect reading. The book also features a journalist who's going on a honeymoon - with a dead lover's body in the trunk of his car!

Here's an Abebooks seller's description:

"Lou Largo thought he had a simple assignment when ex-mobster Charlie Danton sends him after his headstrong daughter, Cora, who'd runn off with Harry Talbot. The trail leads to Niagara Falls where handsome Harry is playing house with Cora - just long enough to collent 100 000 in ransom money from her anxious father. But theings start to get complicated when Joker Gallone turns up gunning for Harry to avenge the murder of his sister Rose. And when Sonia suddenly turns treacherous, the action gets violent and Lou finds himself facing two hate-filled killers and a dame with blood in her eyes."

An entry in Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books series.

2 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Ha! I'm at least as amused by the fact that Friday afternoon on this continent is at least verging on Saturday over there.

I've never read a Jakes I was completely satisfied with, much like McBain/Hunter/Lombino/Cannon...I should dig at least one of these.

Juri said...

Actually I did this on a Saturday morning here in Finland. On Facebook I did once a Monday's Forgotten Book (just a 160-mark status update, nothing more).

Give this a try, Todd, might satisfy your needs. I haven't read much by Jakes, one of his other fifties mystery novels, which was mediocre and some parts of his historical series, what's it now, the Whitakers? ("I must've put on too much of that new stuff, Colompl or whatever", said he, bemused by the words the machine was offering.)

Clearly time to go to bed.