Gil Brewer's _Three Way Split_

[Jay]

This may be the quintessential noir paperback original, if Noir takes one on a trip to hell. The epic fight between the narrator, Jack, and his “Old Man”, is hellish. His father drops into Jack’s life periodically, as a vulture might, appropriating (or trying to), his son’s women, money, and prospects, involving him as an accessory to murder..

In the fight, over a possible sunken treasure in the Florida Gulf Coast, shoulders were ripped from bodies, necks wrung, heads clubbed, both faces slashed, bodies bloodied. “It seemed we’d been fighting forever.” The scene reminds me of two people in a death embrace, like Holmes and Moriarty gong over Niagara Falls. Brewer’s skill at scene-setting further calls up visions of hell with greasy water, fierce heat, hit men, and deaths son, deaths by drowning, clubbing, shooting, and suffocating.

There is a skillfully-suggestive ambiguity regarding Jack’s frequent statements of disgust with his Old Man, regarding his eating habits, his unctuous conversation techniques, and his leering at Jack’s girlfriend Sally. His father is a criminal, but he may not be Satanic, at least according to Sally. She thinks the Old Man’s final deep dive to the boat containing the treasure seemed like a betrayal, but really was engineered to get the jackpot for his son.

Jack will have none of it. But he is too frustrated and trapped to be reliable. He has decided his father has betrayed him. This brings complexity to the struggle, and it also has a mythical aura. I thought of the Oedipus legend, and the Freudian primal conflict for a son to break his bonds of subservience to his father. Physical, financial, and erotic survival are all at stake. He does acknowledge, finally, that his Old Man “had been some guy.”

Jack is not a bad man. But like the protagonist in Charles Williams’ The Hot Spot, he is obsessed with gambling with trouble if it means money, b/c it is his way of breaking free from a destiny he is convicted will mark him as a loser. Brewer makes the reader decide whether the relief Jack feels, with money and marriage in the offing, means he is just not able to assess what has happened. That is the fate of a loser..
The excellent intro and afterword to the Stark House edition point out that Brewer was writing at a time when the noir thriller was becoming passé. He had to turn from Fawcett to smaller publishers, and pay careful heed to the newer narrative styles and subjects. Joseph Shaw and Dick Carroll recognized his talent and drive to write “straight and true.”

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Very interesting, Jay. I think a Gil Brewer group read is long overdue. Look for a poll coming next year.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan), Hard-Boiled]

I'm voting for a Gil Brewer month, too.
Bring it on!

[Jay]

Brewer was fortunate to have editors, Joseph Shaw and Dick Carroll, who believed in him. Crime and adventure paperbacks at the end of the1950s faced choices on how to proceed in view of liberalizing court decisions and resulting changes in subject matter and choice of language. The Stark House ed of 2 Brewer novels had interesting essays by George Tuttle and David L Wilson. There is a Gil Brewer appreciation society

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Brewer's books are mighty pricey on Amazon, but I'm willing to give it a go. Are there four titles that you would particularly recommend, Jay?

[Jay]

Melki:

Three Way Split

A Devil for O'Shaugnessy
(these two are in one Stark House volume

The Vengeful Virgin (this can't be expensive, I think it's a Hard Case Crime pbk)

--Jay

[Christopher]

The two I've read are Wild and The Bitch- both cheap for Kindle.I
I
(Wild is different from Wild to Possess, as far as I know)I
I
Second Vengeful Virgin.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan), Hard-Boiled]

I already have "Vengeful Virgin" , not sure how easy to find the others are, but willing to check if they win

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Okey-dokey. Looks like it'll be a Brewerific February.

[Simon]

I haven't read this book myself but I do remember seeing it at a public library many years ago. Good to know that it's quality material, then.