Published in 1953, this curious little book is the first novel by Charles Willeford who would ultimately go on to write a number of excellent hard-boiled crime novels, including a great series featuring Florida homicide detective Hoke Moseley. This is not a crime novel in any traditional sense, although there are a number of crimes committed during course of the story, the bulk of them by the protagonist, a very sleazy San Francisco used car salesman named Russell Haxby.
By day, Haxby cheats both his customers and his boss at the used car lot where he works. By night, he pursues a mysterious and apparently frigid married woman named Alyce Vitale. He is determined to get her into bed by any means, fair or foul. The blurb on the cover of the book promises that "No woman could resist his strange cult of lechery!", but Alyce manages to do so for quite some time.
Haxby is a truly repulsive protagonist who exploits, cheats, and demeans practically everyone he meets. It's impossible to root for the man in any way, shape or form, but it's still a very interesting and entertaining read if just for the glimpse we get of Willeford in his early career. Even then the guy clearly had the chops, and the book is well worth reading simply for some of the great lines he offers, as in, "I took her elbow and guided her through the crowd to the floor. We began to dance. She was a terrible dancer, and as stiff and difficult to shove around as a St. Bernard."
Or, "She was a tall woman with shoulder-length brown hair parted in the center. She looked as out of place in that smokey atmosphere as I would have looked in a Salinas lettuce-pickers camp."
They just don't write 'em like that any more...
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