What do you think?
Rate this book
Mountain Girl
183 pages
First published January 1, 1952
3 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 12, 2019
Mountain Girl, an inexplicable title, tells the story of hard-boiled Rick Case who arrives in a remote mining town in Colorado to run a friend’s general store and is immediately beaten to a pulp. It turns out the the mine is owned by a cruel and ruthless woman named Crystal that has control of the whole town. Rick manages to fall in love with Jan, the wife of the mining boss, who he accidentally kills. Turn out that Crystal is illegally exporting uranium from the mine and an FBI agent named Wilson is quietly observing while posing as a tourist. Since Rick has the gumption to stand up to Crystal she decides that he would be a fine new mine boss, and Rick takes the job in order to assist the FBI investigation. This sets the stage for a terrific thriller with Crystal becoming increasingly psychotic and Rick playing both sides while keeping his romance with Jan intact. A unique and engaging story from the dependable Thomas B. Dewey writing as Cord Wainer.
September 21, 2024
Thomas B. Dewey wrote this under a pseudonym. I half wonder if he used the Wainer moniker to hide behind all the cliches and coincidences in the novel.
Ricky's a Chicago P.I. who lost his license and needs a new life. An old pal asks him to mind his shop in the Rockies. The air's clean and the fishing is good. Day one, Ricky gets his ass beat by some locals and is told to get out of town. But Ricky's not going to go, especially because he has an instant crush on the buxom girl who nursed him back to health. Should I also mention he accidentally kills her husband? Or how 'bout that the town is under the control of, Crystal, the mine-owning Mountain Girl of the title? Crystal wants Ricky to take the dead husband's place at the mine, which pretty much means digging out dead miners, keeping quiet about who her clients are, and beating her with a crop because she's into S&M.
Yikes. See what I mean?
You get the impression that Dewey (as Wainer) was almost trying to write a parody of the kind of thrilling trash Gold Medal published. It is almost self-consciously over the top. The girls get naked. The guys pound each other to pulp. There's daring escapes, hidden G-men, and a plenty of manly derring do and fishing. But under all that Velveeta, there's layers of gruyère—the good writer that Dewey truly was, peeking through the haze of sex and violence—which made the Velveeta go down easier.
Ricky's a Chicago P.I. who lost his license and needs a new life. An old pal asks him to mind his shop in the Rockies. The air's clean and the fishing is good. Day one, Ricky gets his ass beat by some locals and is told to get out of town. But Ricky's not going to go, especially because he has an instant crush on the buxom girl who nursed him back to health. Should I also mention he accidentally kills her husband? Or how 'bout that the town is under the control of, Crystal, the mine-owning Mountain Girl of the title? Crystal wants Ricky to take the dead husband's place at the mine, which pretty much means digging out dead miners, keeping quiet about who her clients are, and beating her with a crop because she's into S&M.
Yikes. See what I mean?
You get the impression that Dewey (as Wainer) was almost trying to write a parody of the kind of thrilling trash Gold Medal published. It is almost self-consciously over the top. The girls get naked. The guys pound each other to pulp. There's daring escapes, hidden G-men, and a plenty of manly derring do and fishing. But under all that Velveeta, there's layers of gruyère—the good writer that Dewey truly was, peeking through the haze of sex and violence—which made the Velveeta go down easier.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews