Pulp Poem of the Week

A hostage,

was a chance.

          Gil Brewer
          Memory of Passion
          1962 

Pulp Poem of the Week

He clenched his teeth.

He’d like to get her
to dance for him,

you know?

Yeah.
Then give it to her solid.
Then the rest.
And when he was really pumped up,
give it to her right.

          Gil Brewer
          Memory of Passion
          1962 

Book Note: Noir Erasure Poetry Anthology (2013)

Silver Birch Press has just published this really cool collection of noir erasure poetry that you should purchase by following the link that is this entire sentence. I contributed a poem from page 85 of Gil Brewer’s Hell’s Our Destination (1953). To read my poem from page 85, you have to buy the book. For free, you get to read poems that I made from the copyright page and page 145:

Pulp Poem of the Week

He might be
married;
he had a
worried look about him.

          Gil Brewer
          Memory of Passion
          1962

Pulp Poem of the Week

The cross-eyed gods of
the universal cash register had
punched the No Sale key, and
the drawer was wide open—
waiting.

          Gil Brewer
          Nude on Thin Ice
          1960

Reviews: Gil Brewer, Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories (2012)

Here are links to all the various reviews, blog posts, etc., that have popped up around the web for Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories.  Newest at the top, oldest at the bottom:

Los Angeles Review of Books

Seattle Times

Palm Beach Post

Woody Haut's Blog

Gainesville Sun

Read @ MPL

The Florida Bookshelf

Jeff Vorzimmer's Dig It, Daddy-O

James Reasoner's Rough Edges

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine

George Kelley

Pulp Poem of the Week

I’m an alcoholic,
will somebody
buy me a beer?

          Gil Brewer
          A Killer Is Loose
          1954

Pulp Poem of the Week

I never knew a man
with a conscience
made a good con man.
And I never knew a conscience
to quit, either.
If anything, it grows on you
like some kind of
Mesopotamian wart.

          Gil Brewer
          A Devil for O’Shaugnessy
          1973

Book Review: Gil Brewer, A Devil for O'Shaugnessy (1973)

(The following review does not contain spoilers; the plot element described below does not appear in the published version of A Devil for O'Shaugnessy.) In 1973, with his career in decline for more than a decade, Gil Brewer completed a new noir thriller, A Devil for O’Shaugnessy. A throwback, the novel would have fit as one of his lesser Gold Medal paperbacks of the late 1950s, memorable primarily for the appearance of a deranged pet monkey as a major character. Brewer’s agent submitted the manuscript to Coward, McCann, and the publisher sent detailed suggestions for revision, including the possibility that “there might be a neater ending in which Fisk and Miriam are killed together (in a chase scene, for example).” Brewer dutifully responded to the publisher’s criticisms, only to have his revision rejected outright. In their kiss-off letter, Coward, McCann made substantial (and legitimate) objections to aspects of the plot that they had implicitly endorsed previously. As well, they panned Brewer’s new ending, complaining that “the car chase, another cliché, seems an awfully familiar device. Haven’t we seen this already too many times before?” Feel Gil Brewer’s pain. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

You had to
tell lies after
three years.

     Gil Brewer

     “Swamp Tale”

     1976

Pulp Poem of the Week

He wanted to
grab her,
squeeze her
into a ball,
hammer her
into his heart.

     Gil Brewer
     “Love-Lark”
     1975

Pulp Poem of the Week

contaminated
with need

     Gil Brewer
     “Investment”
     1974 

Contents: Gil Brewer, Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories (2012)

Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories (ORDER NOW!) collects the best stories from Gil Brewer’s glory decade of the 1950s:

With This Gun— (Detective Tales, March 1951)

It’s Always Too Late (Detective Fiction, April 1951)

Moonshine (Manhunt, March 1955)

My Lady Is a Tramp (Pursuit, May 1955)

Red Twilight (Hunted, October 1955)

Don’t Do That (Hunted, December 1955)

Die, Darling, Die (Justice, January 1956)

The Black Suitcase (Hunted, February 1956)

Shot (Manhunt, February 1956)

The Gesture (The Saint Detective Magazine, March 1956)

Home (Accused, March 1956)

Home-Again Blues (Pursuit, March 1956)

Mow the Green Grass (Pursuit, March 1956)

Come Across (Manhunt, April 1956)

Cut Bait (Pursuit, May 1956)

Matinee (Manhunt, October 1956)

The Axe Is Ready (Trapped, December 1956)

On a Sunday Afternoon (Manhunt, January 1957)

Prowler! (Manhunt, May 1957)

Bothered (Manhunt, July 1957)

Smelling Like a Rose (Mr., July 1957)

Death of a Prowler (Trapped, April 1958)

Getaway Money (Guilty, November 1958)

Redheads Die Quickly (Mystery Tales, April 1959)

Harlot House (Mystery Tales, August 1959)

25 stories in all!

Gil Brewer Appreciation Society

If you’re a Gil Brewer fan
and you do Facebook,
please join us
by following
the link below.

Entire Cover: Gil Brewer, Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories (2012)

(click on image to see it all!)

ORDER NOW!

Pulp Poem of the Week

Why don’t
people go to
the police?

     Gil Brewer
     “Home-Again Blues”
     1956

The Best (and Worst) Novels of Gil Brewer

Between 1951 and 1967, Gil Brewer published 30 noirboiled novels.  Here are my picks for the must-reads and the must-avoids:

The best . . .

Hell’s Our Destination (Gold Medal, 1953): Brewer found his voice in his fifth published novel. Bleak House in the Florida swamp.

A Killer Is Loose (Gold Medal, 1954): Brewer thought that this tale of an everyman and a psychopath was his best novel. He may have been right.

The Brat (Gold Medal, 1957): The title character is perhaps Brewer’s most memorable femme fatale—and she’s got a lot of competition.

A Taste for Sin (Berkley, 1961): Or maybe this novel contains Brewer’s most memorable femme fatale. Conveniently, she happens to be married to a bank clerk.

Memory of Passion (Lancer, 1962): An ambitious narrative blending a busted marriage and a serial killer.

The worst . . .

Some Must Die (Gold Medal, 1954): Brewer’s attempt at a western. Much of the prose is incoherent.

The Angry Dream (Mystery House, 1957): Thin plot with a laugh-out-loud ending. Also published as The Girl from Hateville.

Appointment in Hell (Monarch, 1961): Even a plane crash in the wilds of South America cannot dampen the horniness of the human spirit.

Sin for Me (Banner, 1967): Brewer running on fumes, lurching his way to one last noirboiled paycheck.

Pulp Poem of the Week

If

the money existed

Gil Brewer

The Tease

1967

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Sin for Me (1967)

Sin for Me marked the thudding end of Gil Brewer’s seventeen-year career as an author of noir paperback originals (1951-1967). Conventional wisdom says that the 1950s were Brewer’s artistic glory years and that his 1960s output was spotty at best. More accurate is to say that Brewer was more prolific in the 1950s and therefore wrote more good novels in that decade. (He wrote more stinkers in the 1950s, too.) Sin for Me has all the elements of a top-tier Brewer novel patched together ineptly. A pair of femmes fatale and $400,000 in stolen cash upend the life of Jesse Sunderland, an everyman realty agent whose woodenly introspective first-person narration plays a major part in spoiling the fun. Brewer justifies each turn in the narrative with a three-part formula: (1) Jesse has an intuition about a character or an event; (2) Jesse immediately decides that his intuition must be true; (3) therefore Jesse’s intuition is true. At times, you can almost hear Brewer whispering into Jesse’s ear, “Come on, man, we can make that word count—I know we can!” An unfortunate end to a great run. Grade: D

Advertisement: Gil Brewer, Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories (2012)

from the Winter 2012 catalog of the University Press of Florida
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