Fifty-to-One (Charles Ardai, 2008)

There can be no other book that represents the 50th entry of this blog. It's a special edition celebrating the 50th publication of our favourite Hard Case Crime publishing house, written by its editor and co-founder, Charles Ardai. Taking place 50 years ago, this cleverly constructed work is comprised of 50 chapters, each titled using the titles of HCC published books (in consecutive order). And it is not limited to this "anniversary" edition just in terms of form, also (and more importantly) its content is well aligned too, since the plot's primary vehicle is the publication of a "dangerous" book. And yes, it is published by Hard Crime, and yes, one of our main heroes is the publisher himself!

But I wasn't exactly blown away by this one, maybe because I had expected too much since Little Girl Lost (first entry of this blog, btw!) was so brilliant. I also like tough professionals as protagonists, and I'm definitely not much into this "some shit happens to an average person" kind of stuff. The first question that usually comes to my mind and usually stays unanswered is, "Why the fuck doesn't she simply call the cops!?" Sorry to say, but Fifty-to-One is no exception to this rule.

For the apparent reason, it's long. And too fast moving - Tricia runs around frantically from point A to B to C to D and back to B and so on. Sometimes alone, other times accompanied by Erin, Coral, Mike, or Charley, and bumping into all sorts of criminals and shady characters. It sounds good, but it doesn't work terribly well, especially in the second half, when things start to get repetitive and at times even confusing. I'm surprised that Ardai wrote it in this linear fashion and concentrated so much on his leading lady heroine. True, there are two exceptions (a literal transcript of a chapter from the book describing the burglary and Mike's report to Tricia), but the whole thing would turn out more suspenseful if the chapters were told by different narrators. At least it is written very well and features a lot of dialogue, so it never gets boring. The plot isn't exactly watertight, but it was interesting enough to make this quite a page-turner.

Enough of this criticism, what the hell is wrong with me!? I shouldn't say anything negative about this special issue. It is Ardai's love letter to his 10+ years ongoing project and to pulp novels in general. I had immense pleasure in discovering cleverly disguised characters from previous books and HCC inside jokes (like the origin of unusually long feet on some covers). It brought back so many pleasant memories, and when I checked out the gallery of covers, I was surprised to find that I had actually read just 25 of those first 50 books. Which is good, as it leaves me lots of great stuff in the future.

3/5 for the book, 5/5 for the effort and concept and 10/5 to Hard Case Crime publishing!

Facts:

Hero:
Tricia Heverstadt, aka Trixie. Although the true hero is, of course, our editor, Charley Borden. At the end, he is considering changing his name, and Tricia suggests something easy to remember, such as Gordon or Arden. May I suggest "Ardai"?

Location:
NYC, late 50s

Body count: 
10, probably a stiff or two more because there are two shoot-outs (good guys vs. bad guys and bad guys vs. law enforcement) at the end, and it's hard to keep an accurate body count.

Dames:
Lots of them - Tricia and her sister Coral, Erin (I liked her a lot, she was a bit underused in my opinion), Renata, Heaven, Reenie, and a few other dancers/boxing fighters, etc

Blackouts: 

/

Title: 
Another example of clever writing is disguising a title into the "50" concept. Fift-to-One is a sadistic game of cards that the main villain plays with his victims. He picks up a single card from the deck and leaves his co-player with 50-1 odds to name the next one. You can, of course, imagine what happens with them in case it's not the right one... 

Cover:
Totally accurate, it describes Erin and Charley from the scene on page 36. Another great one by Glen Orbik

Cool lines:  
"Ladies, ladies, if I can interrupt this little tea party," Borden said, "we've got a big problem here. There are men - large men, angry men - who would be happy to do me great physical harm if I don't give them a piece of information you're telling me I can't give them. This is not an acceptable situation."

"Where are we going?"
"Brooklyn."
"What's in Brooklyn?"
"Cheap rent," Erin said. "And plenty of bars. And what do you find where there's cheap rent and plentiful booze?"
"What?"
"Artists," Erin said.
"Stella's  not an artist."
"No, Stella's a model.And who knows better where to find a model than artists?"