Review: The Face of Evil - John McPartland
John McPartland died young and wasn’t very prolific, only adozen novels during the Fifties, a couple of them published posthumously. Buthis work was well-regarded and movies were made from several of his books. Thefine folks at Black Gat Books have just reprinted his novel THE FACE OF EVIL,originally published by Gold Medal in 1954 with a cover by Ray Johnson, a greatcover artist but not one I particularly associate with Gold Medal. I’d read andenjoyed several of McPartland’s novels, so I was eager to give this one a try.
The narrator/protagonist is Bill Oxford, a former newspaperman who works for apublic relations agency in Los Angeles. However, Bill’s real job is as a fixer,a guy you can call on to get you out of a jam—or get one of your enemies intoone. His specialty is framing political or business figures for some sort ofcrime and then blackmailing them into doing what his employers want. As thisnovel opens, he’s been sent to Newport Beach to stop a crusading lawyer fromrevealing damaging information about a candidate for public office. McPartlandnever delves deeply into the specifics of any of this, and he doesn’t need to.It’s enough for us to know that Bill is a pretty shady guy who’ll stoop to justabout any dirty trick to accomplish his ends.
Unfortunately for Bill, he still has a tiny shred of decency in him, and it’sabout to be tested when he falls in love with the widow of his target’s ex-lawpartner and also has to deal with the reappearance in his life of a young woman he diddirty several years earlier.
The action in this book takes place in about twenty-four hours, and it’s roughlydivided between Bill wrestling with his conscience, dealing with varioushitches in his plan, trying to figure out the romantic triangle in which hefinds himself, getting mixed up in brutal fistfights, and going on the run fromthe law. It’s all very well-written, and McPartland spins his yarn at a breakneckpace that really had me flipping the pages. And I honestly didn’t know how hewas going to resolve Bill’s various dilemmas, which is always nice.
Speaking of resolutions, I have to admit there are a couple of late plotdevelopments that strike me as deus ex machina, which slightly lessensthe impact of this novel. But it’s still very, very good despite that, withgreat characters, a vividly realized setting (Newport Beach during what’s nowknown as Spring Break, although McPartland never uses that term), and plenty ofaction and drama. I had a great time reading THE FACE OF EVIL, and if you’re afan of hardboiled fiction from the Fifties, I give it a high recommendation. It's available from Amazon in print and e-book editions. There’s a lot in this one I feel like I’m going to remember for a while.
