The Hungry One

by Gil Brewer

Genres: Noir

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Florida writer Gil Brewer 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. Brewer wrote some 30 novels between 1951 and the late 60s – very often involving an ordinary man who becomes involved with, and is often corrupted and destroyed by, an evil or designing woman. His style is simple and direct, with sharp dialogue, often achieving considerable intensity.

Brewer was one of the many writers who ghost wrote under the Ellery Queen byline as well. Brewer also was known as Eric Fitzgerald, Bailey Morgan, and Elaine Evans.

http://www.gilbrewer.com/

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is territory that Gil Brewer usually does really well with—the femme fatale. But Brewer can't seem to decide if that's what 16-year-old Joy really is. She believes she's the perpetrator, but she's really the victim, being used or ignored by the men she tries to control.

When the story opens joy has met Danny Rill and has talked him into a scheme to orchestrate her own kidnapping. To this, she and Danny add to the mix the unwilling accomplices Herb and Wilma, a couple on their way to Tampa where Herb is starting a new job.

Decent middle-tier Brewer, but not great. There are at lease a dozen better novels of his.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the way this one gets going. Husband and wife driving late at night looking for a motel. She wants to just continue driving, he wants to stop. They end up with the last room at a seedy motel that is hosting some wild-ass convention. She wants to leave. The room door won't lock. And now Brewer has got this whole horror-novel vibe going. They hear gun shots and the door bursts open and it's a naked girl and a man with a gun. Next they have jumped into bed with our protagonist couple while the police are searching rooms. Tough to top a beginning like that, but Brewer gave it a good go. Turns into a kidnaping plot, but first naked-girl and gun-guy rob a drug store. She's on the downers and he's on the bennies and that dynamic keeps the edgy vibe going. My only real complaint is that Brewer stretched the timeline of the kidnapping - the ransom calls, etc. - out too long and that took some of the tension out of the middle section. And I think he really missed an opportunity by not giving more of a role for the narrator's wife. It's like half the time Brewer forgot he had another character on the scene. Not his best overall, but far from his worst, and that opening sequence is right up there with his best stuff.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Herb Forrest and his wife Wilma are traveling to Tampa, where a new job awaits Herb. They stop for the night in perhaps the world's sleaziest motel, and, in the novel's most memorable scene, find their room invaded by Danny and Joy, a couple of speedfreaks. Danny/Joy kidnap Herb/Wilma and force them to participate in the fake kidnapping of Joy, an effort to get a suitcase of loot from Joy's rich father. On the whole, not bad when one is running out of Brewer novels to read.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Hungry One" is a fairly short - 128-page pulp novel -- by Gil Brewer. This isn't one of his better known pulp novels, but it is an enjoyable, quick read.

The plot is simple and lacks some of the twists and turns of Brewer's more complex work, but it consists of a square married couple on their way to an important business meeting running smack into a hopped- up pair of counter-culture hooligans. The counter-culture pair includes a rich girl who wants to get back at daddy and her streetwise violent boyfriend. The plan is to tell Daddy that Joy, who just happens to have the hair color and voluptuous body of Mansfield and thinks everything is just for kicks, has been kidnapped and collect the ransom. Wilma and Herb fall into their hands and they are going to use them to collect the loot.

It is a story of the shock of two diverse lifestyles banging against each other and the terror of this square couple held against their will at gunpoint. While the story may not be unique, Brewer is always a master storyteller and turns this dime store paperback into a compelling read that is really hard to put down. While it is generally not considered one of Brewer's greatest hits, it's a worthwhile read.

[Alex Budris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competently executed, but lacking the sense of sweaty desperation that marks Brewer's best work. When in form, he wrote with 101 proof piss and vinegar, and the reader can smell it from the story's pores. Albeit a tale of robbery, kidnapping, and murder, The Hungry One feels kind of sanitary, the characters two-dimensional - as if taken from a template rather than the spleen. Most Brewer novels contain sex as part of their genetic makeup - they are imbued, they drip. Here, it seems as if vaguely not-so-steamy instances and innuendoes have been mechanically inserted in an effort to spice things up. It's a little choppy. Brewer as imitating Brewer - as his career, along with his private life, begins to dissipate - in attempts to please a disappearing market. The ending? Bland and tidy. Exactly three stars.

[Alexander Petretich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of his best. The story inside doesn't match the awesome cover. It's a bit undercooked bit still pretty enjoyable for a sleaze crime novel.