Fiddle Player Alexander Roth Takes an Unfortunate Detour on the Way to California During the Great Depression

Towards the end of the Great Depression in the late 1930s, fiddle player Alexander Roth leaves New York City, hitchhiking to Los Angeles. Sue, a night club singer with whom he was living in New York has decided to follow her dreams and go out to Hollywood in the hope of becoming a star. Still in love with Sue, after a few weeks of living without her, Roth decides to follow her to the Coast. He hopes to reconnect with Sue and to find a job himself. He's been told that it's easy for musicians to find work in Hollywood.

In the meantime, he's almost flat broke and is having trouble getting rides. Finally somewhere out in New Mexico, he's offered a ride by a well-dressed man driving a powerful and expensive roadster. Even better, the guy says that he's going all the way to L.A. Roth figures that he's now got it made and will soon be reunited with Sue. Just out of Phoenix, though, the driver says he's not feeling well. They switch places and while Roth is driving, the guys dies. Roth has no intention of taking illegal advantage of the situation, but in attempting to help the man out of the car, the guy slips out of Roth's grip and his head cracks off the pavement in such a way that it now looks like Roth may have hit him over the head and killed him.

In short, this is a classic noir setup in which an innocent man suddenly finds himself in an impossible situation. Roth fears that if he tries to tell his story to the cops, they won't believe him and will arrest him. So he attempts to make the best of a bad situation by hiding the guy's body, appropriating his car, his money and his identity and heading off to California.

Things will naturally go from bad to worse.

The story is told mostly from Roth's point of view with some alternating chapters describing Sue's life in California. She still loves Roth and is having trouble being discovered. We learn about her problems attempting to make a success of her life, and Goldsmith describes very well the nasty underside of the Hollywood dream which consumes most of the innocents like Sue who come to the Coast seeking fame and fortune.

The Sue chapters are interesting, but they tend to break the tension of the chapters describing the trials and tribulations that Roth is enduring, and the book is a bit weaker for that. Still, it's a very entertaining read and fans of noir fiction are sure to enjoy it. It's nice to see the book back in print.