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Built For Trouble
CALL ME SUCKER
Her name was Nola, but the first time I saw her the names and games were still to come. I don't impress easy - after all, I'm a lifeguard on the L.A. beaches, where the talent comes by the gross.
But this one - thin-waisted, stacked high, black hair billowing over bare white shoulders - was something to make an Egyptian mummy sit up and unwind his linen. She bothered me.
A few hours later she bothered me more. I was out of a job, dear-Johnned by my girl, and a prize patsy in one of the neatest and nastiest sucker games since Adam met Eve.
Her name was Nola, but the first time I saw her the names and games were still to come. I don't impress easy - after all, I'm a lifeguard on the L.A. beaches, where the talent comes by the gross.
But this one - thin-waisted, stacked high, black hair billowing over bare white shoulders - was something to make an Egyptian mummy sit up and unwind his linen. She bothered me.
A few hours later she bothered me more. I was out of a job, dear-Johnned by my girl, and a prize patsy in one of the neatest and nastiest sucker games since Adam met Eve.
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1958
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 5, 2025
Salaway must have had a background as a lifeguard or perhaps was just fascinated by the Southern California beach lifestyle. Of the handful of crime fiction novels that he wrote, several of them feature a tanned beach lifeguard as its lead character. Here, that lead character is Eddie Baker. As he sits on his lifeguard tower on Playa Del Rey beach, you can hear the driving surftones beat of the Ventures.
As the story opens, Baker first sees “a black, skin-tight, two-piece bathing suit molded over a shape that would make an Egyptian mummy unwind his linen and start panting.” He can’t place her but she seemed like a magazine cover girl or a movie starlet. Then, he watched her paddle out far and start to flail a little bit as she came back. Immediately, Baker knows she’s in trouble and grabs his paddleboard and goes after her, only to reach her out of breath and dive for her when she didn’t surface. Almost out of air, Baker feels her grab around his stomach from behind and appear to squeeze him.
The next thing he knows he is publicly humiliated because he comes to, having been rescued by the bikini-clad Princess, a rescue photographed by a waiting professional photographer. Nola Norton, an aspiring actress, makes the cover of all the newspapers and Baker is the butt of jokes and an inquiry into whether he is prone to blackouts and a man end to his life guarding career as well as getting dumped by his girlfriend.
It is only when his supervisor is murdered weeks later that Baker smells a rat although he can’t figure out how it was worked out. He only knows Nola’s publicity stunt took her to a Hollywood contract and left him alone and unemployed and humiliated.
Generally, what you as a reader expect next is Baker to become the amateur sleuth out to clear his name, but Salaway does not have Baker play goody-two-shoes. Instead, he finds evidence of foul play and commences to blackmail Nola and her accomplices. He is a very demanding blackmailer who faces off against a grim femme fatale who will do anything to silence Baker. After all, what’s another murder at this point? Their sparring and intimate scenes seem tailor-made for a Hollywood movie, which perhaps was the ultimate goal of this novel.
As the story opens, Baker first sees “a black, skin-tight, two-piece bathing suit molded over a shape that would make an Egyptian mummy unwind his linen and start panting.” He can’t place her but she seemed like a magazine cover girl or a movie starlet. Then, he watched her paddle out far and start to flail a little bit as she came back. Immediately, Baker knows she’s in trouble and grabs his paddleboard and goes after her, only to reach her out of breath and dive for her when she didn’t surface. Almost out of air, Baker feels her grab around his stomach from behind and appear to squeeze him.
The next thing he knows he is publicly humiliated because he comes to, having been rescued by the bikini-clad Princess, a rescue photographed by a waiting professional photographer. Nola Norton, an aspiring actress, makes the cover of all the newspapers and Baker is the butt of jokes and an inquiry into whether he is prone to blackouts and a man end to his life guarding career as well as getting dumped by his girlfriend.
It is only when his supervisor is murdered weeks later that Baker smells a rat although he can’t figure out how it was worked out. He only knows Nola’s publicity stunt took her to a Hollywood contract and left him alone and unemployed and humiliated.
Generally, what you as a reader expect next is Baker to become the amateur sleuth out to clear his name, but Salaway does not have Baker play goody-two-shoes. Instead, he finds evidence of foul play and commences to blackmail Nola and her accomplices. He is a very demanding blackmailer who faces off against a grim femme fatale who will do anything to silence Baker. After all, what’s another murder at this point? Their sparring and intimate scenes seem tailor-made for a Hollywood movie, which perhaps was the ultimate goal of this novel.
June 6, 2019
Hero just wanted a nice working class life with his girlfriend, making a good living as a year-round lifeguard. But Nola, a gorgeous gal with big movie star dreams, has a scam going that will cost hero his job and his girl.
The result, a darn good pulp which becomes a duel of wits between a pretty smart hero who is bent on revenge and a really smart paperback bad girl. The two murders that happen along the way are pretty incidental. The attraction here is the scheming and counter scheming that will destroy at least one of these characters by story’s end.
Good enough to have me seek out other books by this author.
The result, a darn good pulp which becomes a duel of wits between a pretty smart hero who is bent on revenge and a really smart paperback bad girl. The two murders that happen along the way are pretty incidental. The attraction here is the scheming and counter scheming that will destroy at least one of these characters by story’s end.
Good enough to have me seek out other books by this author.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews