The Cutie (Donald E. Westlake, 1962)

Okay, cutie is not really that good-looking chick on (as usual) a hard-case crime cover. It’s an expression that NYC's biggest crime czar uses for the murderer of some no-name starlet. Besides killing the poor soul, this cutie character also tries to pin the crime to some no-name stuttering junkie. And this junkie has apparently some connections in Europe, so czar is pissed off at cutie, and he wants him punished. And this is where his right man – our hero – Clay comes into the play.

Sounds far-fetched? It does, at least for me. But the good thing is that the story is masterfully told, and you don’t have time to think about how idiotic the plot really is in its essence. And so, for the first third, you are really involved, but then it unfortunately starts to fall apart. My main problem is the total lack of any real investigation or classical detective work. Because Clay basically just compiles a list of victims’ ex-husbands and boyfriends and then goes through it, eliminating them one by one. It gets pretty absurd when, at the end (pg. 221 to be precise), it even occurs to him “that it was just barely possible that the killer wasn’t on my list at all.” And he’s not a very skilful investigator in the first place, to be honest. He uses “organisation” to do most of the dirty work for him, but when he himself is interrogating suspects, he comes up with crazy shit like “I can’t think of any more questions. Can you think of any more answers?”

So you are not too disappointed/surprised by the ending. Without giving much away, let’s just say that the unfortunate girl wanted to hire a lawyer to handle her divorce, and out of all the lawyers in New York, she picked her own husband. Come on, Donald!

So, like in 361, it has a great start and a mediocre ending. Westlake is not really good at plotting, but he is excellent at language and characterisation. Although that Ella chick was a bit redundant for me. She didn’t contribute anything to the story and was used only (1) to show that our hero possesses at least some kind of morals and has second thoughts about his work, and (2) to also show at the end that he's too tough to afford having morals. Or something like that. Who cares anyway...

2.5/5

Facts

Hero: 
Clay. A long time ago, he was George Clayton; today, he is just Clay. He’s the right-hand and troubleshooter of Ed Ganolese, the “crime czar” (in the tabloids) with a finger in the pie. Any pie. To the cops, he is “penny-ante crook with half an education, half a conscience, and half a mind”

Location: 
New York, early 60s

Dames: 
2 victims + Ella, the first woman who makes Clay think about leaving his job.

Cover: 
Excellent, done by Ken Laager

Body count: 

4

Cool lines:

He kept shaking like an IBM machine gone crazy. (on junkie)

Billy-Billy doesn’t have strength to kill time (on the same junkie)

“Mavis St. Paul”. “Mavis?” He snickered again. “I’ll look for a broad named Mildred who came from St. Paul.”

His secretary, a big, well-busted, well-hipped blonde with an I-know-what-you-want-and-it-will-cost-you expression perpetually on her face, was just getting settled behind her desk.

Laura Marshall is easily described. It only takes four words. She’s a rich bitch suburban matron.