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He remembered one time
in Cincinnati. It was Hallowe'en
and the streets were crowded
with masqueraders. He was broke,
flat broke. He hadn't shaved
for two days and he looked tough.
Someone accidentally tripped him
and he bumped into a pretty girl
in a clown suit. The man with her said:
"What the hell you trying to do,
you dirty bum!" He knocked the man
down and ran. Several of the man's
friends chased him, but he got away.
W. R. Burnett
The Silver Eagle
1931
The Silver Eagle is the follow-up to W. R. Burnett's groundbreaking gangster-novel debut, Little Caesar (1929). Businessman Frank Harworth is just smart enough, just persistent enough, and just lucky enough to have earned a place among the nouveau riche of late 1920s Chicago, but he isn't satisfied. Frank wants to be accepted by the old(er) money of the city, and he wants to make even more money himself. The former desire leads to romantic entanglements; the latter, to mob entanglements. Frank's character is sympathetic but not sufficiently complex to sustain much interest. Grade: C
A direct descendant of W. R. Burnett's Little Caesar (1929), Ed McBain's Big Man tells the story of Frankie Taglio, a young man in New York who falls in with the wrong crowd (or right crowd, depending on your point of view) and soon finds himself a career mobster. Frankie's rise through the mob hierarchy is somewhat difficult to explain: There are strangely few gangsters between him and the top, and Frankie doesn't seem to have much going for him other than a bit of intelligence and the willingness to use a gun. (Then again, maybe that's all any gangster really needs.) Big Man has a fair amount of action, but its drama is driven less by the crimes that Frankie commits than by the changes in his character as he ascends the mob ladder. Grade: B
The strong
travel light.
W. R. Burnett
Little Caesar
1929
In Little Caesar, author W. R. Burnett, who had in a minor way infiltrated the Chicago underworld, strove to capture the career criminal, his milieu, and his idiom. Much of what was innovative in 1929 may seem quaint today; as a result, it can be easy to miss that Burnett was fomenting a revolution in crime fiction that would culminate 45 years later in the works of George V. Higgins and Elmore Leonard. But the highest praise for Little Caesar is to note that it is still a potent read. The story of the young gangster, Rico, moves quickly, but because Burnett values language and character over plot, readers may want to force themselves to slow down. Little Caesar's prose is so skillfully terse that it encourages speedreading. Grade: A
1. Bill S. Ballinger, Portrait in Smoke (1950)
2. James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (1936)
3. James McKimmey, The Long Ride (1961)
4. John D. MacDonald, Soft Touch (1958)
5. Gil Brewer, The Brat (1957)
6. Bill S. Ballinger, The Tooth and the Nail (1955)
7. Marvin H. Albert, Devil in Dungarees (1960)
8. W. R. Burnett, High Sierra (1940)
9. Harry Whittington, Hell Can Wait (1960)
10. Paul Tremblay, The Little Sleep (2009)
Part crime novel, part character study of a gangster in winter. The wooden dialogue is predictably quaint. The rambling plot feels surprisingly realistic. The aging gangster is unexpectedly affecting. All this, and a beautiful young blonde with a clubfoot. Grade: A-
What can a man do
when a girl
grabs him like that?
A man has to be
polite.
W. R. Burnett
High Sierra
1940
