First published in 1953, this is a novel in the classic pulp school. A gang of kidnappers abduct the young daughter of a very wealthy Connecticut man and take along the girl's nanny as well. The gang asks $500,000 in ransom money, which would have been more than a small fortune in that day and age, and goes into hiding along with the hostages in a beach house on Long Island during the off-season when no one else is around.
The gang members have a very elaborate plan for collecting the ransom and returning the daughter, but they are divided about whether or not they can let the nanny go as well. There are other tensions on top of that: One of the gang members is a woman, who may or may not be in the process of switching her affections from one of the male gang members to another. Additionally, the nanny is a delectable young woman, and that won't help matters either.
These people are all cooped up together in a small house for several days as the plan unfolds and inevitably tempers will boil over, divisions will erupt, and the question will be whether the gang can stick together long enough to collect the spoils of their effort.
This is a pretty good example of the genre, and it will remind some readers of Richard Stark's Parker series, which came along a little over ten years later. The Parker novels are generally much better done, but for fans of old-school, hard-boiled crime fiction,The Snatchers is worth seeking out. A couple of years ago, Stark House re-released the book in a single volume along with White's Clean Break, from which the movie "The Killing" was made. That is also a good read and so both books are now readily available again.
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