Wild to Possess

by Gil Brewer

Genres: Noir, Crime

156 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 1959

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

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

It begins with Lew Brookbank drunkenly driving up the Florida highways in the middle of the night with a bottle of gin and a bunch of signs. The mood of this piece starts right at the beginning. "The bottle is on the floor of the car. He reached in, brought it out, uncapped it, and read the label." He hated Florida and wished he could get away from it -from "every last flat wet stinking acre." "He drove sullenly now, feeling the rotten core of what was always with him, down inside his vitals, squeezing and tugging at his heart."

He has plenty to drink about. It had been four months earlier "when he had swum out to Clarkson's yacht, the Bayou Belle, and found his wife, Janice, and that pop-eyed Lousianan on one of the bunks in the deck cabin. Thinking of it again, remembering the everlasting pain, his heart seemed to squeeze dry like a sponge. Like a scream."

And with that, the reader is lost inside Lew's world - Lew's painful, alcoholic, depressed world. Of course, he didn't just catch Janice in the act, but remembered: "Janice's face was frozen in the throes of her lust. Whether or not death changed things, her eyes were glazed with that wild, wanton, uncaring passion."

He left that city and found another town, another name, another life. Made a sort of living painting signs and drinking. Until one night, he overhears a couple plotting what might be a kidnapping and murder of a man's wife and thinks he can figure out a way to cut himself into the boodle that is going to paid in ransom.

“Somehow she didn't' appear to be the type of dame who would plot murder. Her face was faintly heart-shaped under a dark blonde mass of rich ringlets, swept up around her head." "She walked a shade on the balls of her feet, her behind bouncing, her skirt clinging tightly to her hips and thighs. It wasn't overdone, but it had tremendous sock and she knew it."

It is a terrific story. It is solidly noir. It is dark, foreboding, depressing, miserable. Boy, can Brewer write. This story just sails along and it is filled with intense emotion and solid description.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel opens with a neat but pretty unbelievable premise where a lonely, drunk sign-maker overhears a couple of strangers plan a kidnapping plot and decides to get in on the action. It's basically a noir-within-noir structure where the main character has his very own James M. Cain story playing out in front of him and he decides to write a role for himself, interrupt the whole shebang and take off with all the ransom money, while trying to also deal with a horny girlfriend, and a man that shows up knowing all of the dark secrets of his past.

The events that follow were difficult to buy into and I was never truly engaged beyond the surface action. It just felt too "conceived," like I could see the uneven gears of Brewer's plot turning. Thankfully, Brewer's trademark pacing kept things going at a quick clip and there were a few tense scenes. But then things just fizzled out with a weak climax and a forgettable resolution. Next Brewer book up: A Taste for Sin. Read as part of Stark House Press's gorgeous two-fer edition: Wild to Possess/A Taste for Sin

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled with darkness and discomfort. Lew gets on to a crime through some very convenient, maybe unrealistic, eavesdropping. He is determined to acquire money through robbing the thieves. He goes all out to this end, only getting himself deeper in trouble. The book's climax, on a boat running into (literally) a busy regatta, stood out to me.
Based on what I have read by him, Gil Brewer is the Russ Meyer of writing. Every female character is extremely buxom.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

50s pulp thriller discovered after recently seeing a truly terrible modern adaptation titled 3-way. Awful name too. Gil Brewer was a prolific Gold Medal paperback author in the 50s and his name popping up in the credits got me fully intrigued. The source material makes a whole lot more sense than the movie and is loaded with despair and tension in equal measure.

A raging alcoholic hides out in small town Florida, drowning his memory of finding his wife dead in another man's arms. Unable to put down the mother's ruin for more than a few seconds he stumbles on to a beautiful new girlfriend, a callous plot to kidnap a rich wife and is hunted by a blackmailer out to pin a murder on him.

Naturally being drunk at all times leaves the pathetic sign painter making terrible decisions, nothing unusual about a pulp protagonist doing that but at least Brewer was sensible enough to give him a legitimate reason for being a total fuck up, but also it makes for interesting reading, almost the opposite of the scheming intelligentsia of Thompson's The Grifters you're instead faced with obviously stupid decisions made by people thinking with their avarice and not much more.

[WJEP · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slapdash suspense story is about a gin-fueled knucklehead. Lew got himself into some hot water in Miami and fled to the Gulf coast where he stumbles into a snatch job. Both problems boil over at the same time.

Reflecting on Lew's plight, the author confesses his diabolical method:

"It was as if he were in the unrelenting hands of some Devil, whose horrifying game was to make each capping moment that much worse than the previous moment, until the final demolishment."

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gil Brewer's Wild to Possess is Everyman noir with an unapologetically implausible plot. Lew Brookbank, a sign painter who has hit the bottle hard since finding his wife and her lover murdered, happens to overhear a man and a woman plotting a kidnapping. (Imagine the kidnapping plot in Fargo, and you're not too far off.) Feeling that he has nothing left to lose, Lew decides to inject himself into the kidnapping in hopes of getting away with the $250,000 ransom. From here, most of Lew's decisions are made with the standard noir justification of there-was-nothing-else-I-could-do. Of course, there are many other things that Lew could have done, as he realizes during his occasional moments of sobriety, but most of the time he is drunk and doesn't give a damn. On the whole, Wild to Possess is fast and entertaining with a number of nice twists and turns, and though Brewer does not find an artistically satisfying way to conclude things, the ending is not bad enough to qualify as a full-blown ruination.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another of Gil Brewer's relentlessly paced noirs, although it is not hard to keep it fast-paced when the main character is either running or racing around in cars for half the book. That's a key part of Brewer's technique, keep the characters always in motion. The plot requires some suspension of disbelief: Lew overhears a couple plotting a kidnap/murder/ransom and then spends the first part of the book trying to track them down so he can cut himself in on the action. One of the great scenes is when he breaks into the woman's house looking for information only to have them come home and he is forced to hide in the bedroom closet while they sex it up a couple of times. In between the sex they discuss the plan and Lew hears all he needs to. From that point on he's a man on a mission to get his hands on the $250,000 ransom money. Brewer's typically sharp plot twists make sure that things don't go smooth for Lew, but he does a lot of the damage himself by pounding bottles of gin. The climatic seen involving boats was chaotic and fun and is a scene that's been done in movies many times since. The final two pages are just wrap up, but who cares at that point because we already had all the pleasure of the read.

[Felipemarlou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Con esta novela, al parecer y según ciertos expertos, Gil Brewer consiguió una de sus mejores obras. Sentía curiosidad, y la verdad, sin ser ninguna obra maestra, tampoco puedo decir que me sienta decepcionado. Es una novela que se lee del tirón, gracias a la fluidez narrativa que posee Brewer, y en la que, parafraseando el mundo de la dramaturgia escénica, "cuando en un acto termina con un clavo apuntalado en la pared, en el acto siguiente debe colgarse un cuadro". En este sentido, Brewer es un no parar, sin tiempos muertos, fluidez total, densidad narrativa pese a sus poco más de 100 páginas, gracias en parte a algunos saltos al pasado con los que modelar mejor la psique de los personajes y sus traumas. Aquí se nos cuenta la historia de un hombre, al que su mujer ha dejado por otro hombre, con recurrente uso al alcohol, y que se verá atrapado en una espiral de crimen, violencia y secuestro, y en donde Brewer, a partir de la interacción del prota con algunas de las féminas que aparecen (desde su fallecida mujer, hasta su actual y abnegada pareja, pasando por la propia mujer víctima del secuestro del título e incluso la amante del marido de ésta última implicada en la trama...) presenta nuevamente a personajes femeninos duros y con carácter, algunos positivos otros negativos (en el caso de éste último, a partir de la reelaboración de los modelos clásicos de la femme fatale legados por el universo de Cain y demás coetáneos de los 30's) y donde el sexo, más explícita o veladamente, juega siempre un papel importante. Los bellos parajes próximos a las costa de Florida, como en otras obras de Williams o Macdonald, acaban por conferirle el plus adicional de encanto a la trama. Es por tanto una novela que recomiendo y que me hace seguir adentrándome en este mundo tan fascinante y tan oscuro...lo de oscuro lo digo porque buena parte de su obra, como la de Charles Williams y algún otro con el que comparte ciertas afinidades temáticas, permanece hoy irremisiblemente relagada al triste olvido, con editoriales y librerías sacando a la venta por enésima vez la reedición de turno de El halcón maltés o El talento de Mr Ripley y olvidando a toda esta gente. Buena novela, seguiremos con este tipo muy interesante que es Brewer. Afortunadamente aún me quedan algunas novelas suyas por leer.

[Prateek Rath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wild to possess by Gil brewer is another alcohol infused descend into madness that Brewer is known for. Lew Brookbank is a man running from his sorrows by drowning himself in gin, until one night he overhears a couple planning to kidnap the man's wife in exchange for $250,000 and decides to cut himself in.


Barring a couple of improbabilities at the start, the book has a lot going for it. The pacing is brisk, never for once stalling and the prose is vintage Brewer laced with punchy one liners & brooding introspection. The twists in the plot are sudden and Brewer's writing heightens the suspense that much more. This dude sure can write.. When he's on he makes you feel as hopeless as the characters being described. That has always been his strongest quality and it's evident in plenty here. The action is  realistic and the struggle can be felt during those times. The dialogue is sharp & precise, the women treacherous & dangerous and almost every single character scheming & shady. It takes a little while for the stage to be set and then it's an inescapable never ending downward spiral that Lew gets dragged deeper into the more he tries to escape the nightmare.


The Brewerisms are sprinkled throughout and are hilariously bleak.


However with that said there are some flaws. The characters are woody and one dimensional, appearing suddenly with little explanation.As mentioned before there are a few improbabilities. No one notices a broken door in their own house even though it's never properly fixed. A pivotal character decides to taunt to the kidnapper instead of fleeing when the chance presented itself. Even though Lew is threatened hopeless circumstances a basic examination would give incriminating evidence about the real culprit. The ending is weak compared to the intense build-up.


Overall it's a very enjoyable and well written noir. It's a little weaker to his other books in my opinion. The Punchy prose, the bleak foreboding, the nail biting suspense and an impending sense of doom work in Brewer's favor and carry this bare bones story that ends rather abruptly.


7.0/10

Good Old School Noir.

[Freddie the Know-it-all · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many Lugers. I hate 'em. Should be banned.

[Adam Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read from Gil Brewer. Not as entertaining as Vengeful Virgin, with slightly less realistic characters. Always worth a mention, the cover is fantastic, although, as with many pulps, the cover and blurb focus more on what the publisher wants the reader to think the book's about rather than what's actually inside the pages.

Brewer is what pulp writing is all about: focussing on the characters and fast-paced action rather than droning on about descriptions of the scenery and the weather. It's just a shame there aren't more Gil Brewer books in print.

[Steve Isaak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sex, violence and human darkness suffuse every word in this fast-moving, addictive and aggressive noir novel, with Brewer's trademark twistiness livening up the disturbing and potent work.

Worth owning, this.

(This review originally appeared on the Reading and Writing By Pub Light site.)

[Alexander Petretich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty good. Not as great as the cover promises though.