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30th out of 80 books
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1 voter
The Vengeful Virgin (Hard Case Crime #30)
by
Gil Brewer
The Barnes & Noble Review
The depraved portrayal of the young, red-haired femme fatale in Gil Brewer's 1958 pulp classic The Vengeful Virgin -- a seductress "straight out of hell" -- is a fitting description for the novel's sexually supercharged and sordid story line. When Florida television repairman Jack Ruxton is called to the home of Victor Spondell, a wealthy inval...more
The depraved portrayal of the young, red-haired femme fatale in Gil Brewer's 1958 pulp classic The Vengeful Virgin -- a seductress "straight out of hell" -- is a fitting description for the novel's sexually supercharged and sordid story line. When Florida television repairman Jack Ruxton is called to the home of Victor Spondell, a wealthy inval...more
Mass Market Paperback, 220 pages
Published
April 3rd 2007
by Hard Case Crime
(first published 1958)
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Well, she was a virgin at some point...
The story is straight out of the James M. Cain playbook. Jack Ruxton, a broke TV repairman, hooks up with a teenage temptress, Shirley Angela. Shirley and Jack plot to rid Shirley of her invalid stepfather and get her vast inheritance. Almost immediately, things get shot to hell...
The Vengeful Virgin is a thrill ride of conspiracy, murder, sex, and insanity. Gil Brewer's prose is similar to Lawrence Block's and the suspense and desperation is very well done...more
The story is straight out of the James M. Cain playbook. Jack Ruxton, a broke TV repairman, hooks up with a teenage temptress, Shirley Angela. Shirley and Jack plot to rid Shirley of her invalid stepfather and get her vast inheritance. Almost immediately, things get shot to hell...
The Vengeful Virgin is a thrill ride of conspiracy, murder, sex, and insanity. Gil Brewer's prose is similar to Lawrence Block's and the suspense and desperation is very well done...more
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One of the hot'n'sweaty reprinted pulps in the Hard Case Crime series. You may wonder why the virgin of the title is called a virgin when she's doing it with a vengeance on the kitchen floor by about page 15---however, wait til the SHOCKING end and you'll see. I liked the hardboiled protagonist's voice. The book owes an obvious debt to THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE in its premise of a sex-susceptible dude helping a fatale whack her sugar daddy---BUT the pace clips along, and it's rather humorou...more
Gil Brewer’s The Vengeful Virgin was published in 1958 and, like so many of the titles from Hard Case Crime, has been out of print for years. It’s a reasonably entertaining if hardly startling piece of noir fiction.
Jack Ruxton is in his 40s and he’s always wanted to be a success. He’s tried various methods of achieving this goal, and now as a last resort he’s decided to try earning an honest living, as a TV repairman. He hasn’t entirely given up on the idea of easy money though.
He has built up...more
Jack Ruxton is in his 40s and he’s always wanted to be a success. He’s tried various methods of achieving this goal, and now as a last resort he’s decided to try earning an honest living, as a TV repairman. He hasn’t entirely given up on the idea of easy money though.
He has built up...more
According to Mickey Spillane "The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book." THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN is a pretty good example of this kind of writing. The book begins with Jack Ruxton, a lowlife TV repairman and Shirley Angela, an attractive 18 year old forced to take care of her cantankerous bed ridden stepfather, getting acquainted at a house by the sea. There is an immediate erotic epiphany for Jack and Shirley which leads them into a path of murder, greed, unfulfilled s...more
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The Vengeful Virgin is a good example of a type of artistically flawed noir that exists somewhere between Everyman noir and psycho noir. At the outset, such novels seem to be about ordinary folks--in this case, Shirley Angela, an eighteen-year-old giving twenty-four-hour hospice care to her rich stepfather, and Jack Ruxton, a TV and intercom salesman and installation man. But Shirley and Jack seem like Everyman and Everywoman for only a few pages until amour fou erupts and a murder plot is born,...more
A lot of reviewers took issue with the fact that the redheaded seductress in this story is called a virgin. I think I get it, she was a virgin before the protagonist got to her. But the vengeful part, I don't get. She wasn't taking revenge on anyone. I guess it just makes for a nice-sounding title. The story is quick paced and filled with sex. The characters are stupid enough to advance the plot. And the book is just the right length; it took me a couple of days to get through it. Not the best w...more
This is a terrific introduction to the works of one of the more "fevered" writers of Gold Medal originals. Next to John D. MacDonald, Gil Brewer is one of my favorites of that era. Brewer's books are singular in their pacing and suspense and Vengeful Virgin is a classic example. Hard Case Crime has chosen a good one here. Hopefully more of his work will find an audience.
Very gritty & well written for this type of novel, but the main characters were a bit too unreal for me, especially the girl. It was a good believable plot & everything got logically & wonderfully out of hand. Kind of depressing & I don't understand why it is titled the way it is. There wasn't a virgin to be found.
2 likes · like · see review
This was my first introduction to Gil Brewer, and still my favorite. Everything that Brewer does well is here in top form-- the lust and greed, the betrayals, the razor-sharp tension and steamy sex. His books beg to be read, and they're impossible to put down.
This is part of my research, believe it or not, for my poetry thesis. Not that I wouldn't have read it anyway. I mean, come on. Look at that title.
So I've finished now, and while there are a few, er, gender complications due to the very nature of how pulps were written--let's face it, women never come off particularly well--it's still quite a ride. The way in which the rather idiotic plan starts to fall apart all around this dastardly duo manages to convey a good deal of suspense even though you...more
So I've finished now, and while there are a few, er, gender complications due to the very nature of how pulps were written--let's face it, women never come off particularly well--it's still quite a ride. The way in which the rather idiotic plan starts to fall apart all around this dastardly duo manages to convey a good deal of suspense even though you...more
More Hard-on Crime than Hard Case Crime, this is sort of a plumber's idea of a Harlequin Romance novel, a lot of making out and little crime going on. After the third squelch session in the book (Page 22) I started waiting for a real story to emerge, but it didn't happen. Anybody wanna buy a shabby make-out crime novel?
Pretty good read. I'm glad that this style of noir is still available, it's very different from the writing styles seen today. I'm excited to read some of the other Hard Case books.
Horny TV repairman meets barely legal heiress who wants to expedite her inheritance. Murder plot crumbles in record time. Good stuff.
quick read.
Nice mean little pulp novel.
It flows well and is the perfect length a fan of old noir style stories will probally enjoy. No one else though
Nice mean little pulp novel.
It flows well and is the perfect length a fan of old noir style stories will probally enjoy. No one else though
A hardboiled (and soft core!) tale of a television man seduced by a sexy 18 year old femme fatale and convinced to murder an invalid. It starts out in Cain territory (sex crazed couple contemplates murder) and ends up in the frayed sanity of a good Jim Thompson novel (money becomes a pretty powerful draw). Yet it all relies on a rather crucial idiotic move on the protagonist's part: why is murder the only option here? Because the two main characters are blinded by youthful passions (and greed),...more
This is the December book for Madison Murder Ink bookclub. A quick and strangely compelling read...this book epitomizes my understanding of a noirish mystery. All I could think was "Poor Jack" with all those crazy women he had to deal with in this book. The sane ones were only briefly mentioned, and they didn't have any intimate time with Jack (that I surmised). I can see why my hubby enjoyed Shirley Angela...and why he changed his mind at the end of the book. Overall, it was an enjoyable book t...more
A very entertaining novel, following a fairly classic pattern of plot, crime, collapse that is my favorite type of crime novel. Brewer has a particularly good sense of dialogue and grotesquerie that I think made this abou many books in this series. The characterizations of Shirley and Jack, as well as the well placed hints throughout the book of why this is all going to go to hell eventually add up to some surprising and fantastic twists.
Oct 11, 2012
Rebecca
added it
I came to the end of the book.
A rave review by Anthony Boucher in the New York times comparing a book to James M. Cain is a pretty good recommendation. This paperback pot-boiler by Gil Brewer pretty well lives up to the hype and expectation. The Cain comparison is apt as this one cribs fairly heavily from The Postman always Rings Twice. It does have a nice segue at the end to take it from firmly in the land of "everyman noir" in to a bit of "psycho noir."
A good solid noir. Short enough to read in a sitting or two.
A good solid noir. Short enough to read in a sitting or two.
This reprint from Hard Case Crime was first published in 1958. Gil Brewer captures the indvidual angst of a small time TV repairman in cahoots with an 18-year-old girl trying to fleece her step-father. You sweat blood with Jack Ruxton, and you have to keep an eye on Shirley Angela, the noir's one-of-a-kind femme fatale. Mr. Brewer at the top of his game.
A little slow until the murders are commited, but from then on it's a whirlwind in the same way The Red Scarf is, with some crazy situations funny for the reader but driving nuts the main character. Also there are two or three masterful scenes, like when Ruxton finds Victor's corpse, or the one with the doctor visiting Ruxton after the murders.
This is the Madison Murder Ink bookclub choice for December. Gotta like a girl who uses both her names - Shirley Angelina! ;)
A good mean, bleak pulp novel from the Hard Case Crime series which publishes old out-of-print pulp books as well as newer ones in the vintage style.
Not enough vengeance, not enough virgins.
fun noir classic
Craptastic.
May 18, 2013
Aryeh
marked it as to-read
May 08, 2013
Pat
marked it as to-read
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Florida writer Gil Brewer (1922-1983) was the author of dozens of wonderfully sleazy sex/crime adventure novels of the 1950's and 60's, including Backwoods Teaser and Nude on Thin Ice; some of them starring private eye Lee Baron (Wild) or the brothers Sam and Tate Morgan (The Bitch) . Gil Brewer, who had not previously published any novels, began to write for Gold Medal Paperbacks in 1950-51. Brew...more
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