Book Review: Bruno Fischer, The Fast Buck (1952)

It may have taken me longer to finish The Fast Buck than any other Gold Medal novel I have read. The problem is that, for at least the first half of the book, Bruno Fischer's plot keeps resetting itself--every time events seem to be leading somewhere, things more or less start over. As a result, I never felt much compelled to pick up the book and read (or to read for very long once I had picked it up). The novel is narrated by Bert Peake, a somewhat likable lifelong hood (with time out for service in WWII) who wants to make some fast money and then maybe play life straight. He goes begging for work at the door of Ted Lumm, a childhood friend who is now a major player in organized crime. Lumm may or may not or may or may not have someone for Bert to kill, but he definitely has a memorable femme fatale, Lorraine Callender, to throw in Bert's path. The climax of the novel, when it finally does come, is not very climactic. My advice is to skip this one. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

What the hell!

Two hundred bucks a week,

and all I'd have to do for it

was occasionally kill

somebody for him.

"When do I start?" I said.

Bruno Fischer

The Fast Buck

1952

Book Review: Bruno Fischer, Fools Walk In (1951)

Generally, noir plots are not particularly believable, so the noir writer must be skillful enough either to make you believe in spite of it all or to make you not care whether you believe in the first place. (Jim Thompson specializes in the former; Cornell Woolrich specializes in the latter.) This time, Bruno Fischer did not quite succeed in making me believe. Fools Walk In is an example of transgressive noir, the subgenre in which the protagonist, presumably someone not much different from the reader, crosses over to the noir side. Usually the protagonist is driven by financial temptation, but in Fools Walk In, Larry Knight is motivated by the simple desire to escape his miserably unexciting life.

When the novel begins, Larry is driving home to New York from Kentucky, where he has been visiting his brother, George. Larry lives with his sister--a shrill, self-pitying, dominating old maid--and he had hoped to convince George to take her. Of course, he had no such luck. Add to this the fact that Larry is toiling in the world's most pathetic job--he's a high school English teacher, for God's sake!--and he is ripe to transgress when he picks up a gangster's moll who is on the run with $20,000. Larry soon finds himself in hiding with gangsters of the sort who talk earnestly about "capers," and, for a high school English teacher, he proves to be unaccountably attractive to gangster women. If only all English teachers had such latent powers! Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

It was a very short distance

from where I sat on the bed,

and he stood at the foot of it

with his face turned from me.

Seven bullets couldn't miss him.

Some of them didn't.

Bruno Fischer

Fools Walk In

1951