Three Must Die! (Dan Gregory, 1956)

The last post was something like War and Peace, but I just couldn't stop myself. I'm redeeming myself with this short one.

An amateur detective in a small town with his romantic interest as a sidekick is most definitely not my cup of tea, but this one is all right. Nothing exceptional about it, but also nothing awful, except the prolonged ending with a whodunit resolution that one figures out five chapters in advance.

Our main man can be annoying at times with all his wisecracking, but that shit was still within my tolerance limits. His aspiring journalist, wanna-be girl Friday, is cool, and not at all some dumb blonde bimbo who would throw herself at our guy. In fact, it is he who tries to impress her. The plot is simplistic, but still decent. Some characters are dull, but some are great (see the 'Bad Guy' section of the facts below). No femme fatales, but there is one nicely bitchy dame. Cops are neither totally stupid nor completely absent.

It has a naive quality and would probably be best suited for the so-called young adult market these days. It's not scarce on eBay and is pretty affordable, so if you have teenage kids around that you want to corrupt with pulp fiction, you may consider gifting this paperback. They would appreciate more Raymonds and Dashiells and the like. Also, it wouldn't be a bad way to start a collection with such a badass cover.

Quick, forgettable read. I speculate that this reflected in sales, as this seems to be the only thing published by Mr Gregory. However, it deserves its place in the digital world. If nothing else, check out the killer cover!

3/5

Facts:

Hero:

Dinny Powell

"I'm not a newspaperman. The paper I run is a shopping guide, purely and simply, and I don't want anything to do with the new."

The bad guy(s):

Junior Thorpe, the old man's son, is by no means the sort of bad guy that we are used to on this blog, but he is such a delightful asshole that he deserves a mention.

He had sailed a schooner around the world, had gone through three or four wives, each one of them fabulous enough to have satisfied the average man for life, had served with distinction in World War II and the Korean one, and had taken up Hollywood.

How can one not like an eccentric who spent six months in the Caribbean shooting a definitive (short) documentary about game fishing (whatever that is) and blowing 200k (of his father's) dollars in the process? 

He just sold it to MGM and now expects to win an Oscar. Even though he couldn't get Hemingway to do the narration, which is his only regret about this masterpiece

Dames: 

Elizabeth Ressler, aka Libby. His assistant/secretary and his future wife.

She was a beautiful girl, and if I said that her figure made the De Milo Venus look like a handful of unbaked hot cross buns, it would be only the simple truth. She had green eyes and shoulder-length hair that could have been used to advertise St. Petersburg, Florida, the Sunshine City. All the art in the Metropolitan Museum couldn’t have decorated the office with greater effect than Libby.

Junior's cousin Nancy Schuyler from Philadelphia. The mildest term for her was "international whore." At times the old man was surprisingly acute.

She had the kind of figure that made you think of all the other expensive things in the world you couldn't afford either. Her skin was clear golden tan, not the mahogany that looks so well on Duncan Phyfe tables and terrible on women. Her face had a slim, remote loveliness, like that of a beauty in the court of Louis XIV who had remained untouched by the passing of a hundred lovers.

But it only takes a couple of pages for Dinny to get less impressed with her:

I revised my first impression of her. She had the voice and body of a sultry courtesan, but her eyes reminded me of the dark gleam of the spring of a bear trap.

Location:

A horse-town called Rocky Hill in Bucks Valley

Body count:

3 (one is a lawyer, but I counted him in anyway)

The object of desire:

"Honey," I said, "all the police would get would be the briefcase. I want the killer. We both know he considers me fair bait. I don't think a man who murders people should get away with it. I'll drop a few hints around, once I have the loot, and the murderer will come to me. I won't have to look for him."

There's a multi-million-dollar will in this briefcase that some interested parties are eager to obtain at any price; they are even willing to pay in redheads!

Why are you holding out? You asked for a hundred thousand and I'm moving heaven and earth to get it together. You can have it any way you want—in redheads, dollar bills or yachts. You name it and it's yours. Don't say anything now. You're hot. Think it over for a day. Think it over for a couple of days. But let's get it settled. I'm going crazy.

Blackouts:

Pretty standard rockets thing:

Something came down heavily across the back of my neck, driving me forward and down to my hands and knees. From a far distance I heard a tiny scream from Libby. I tried to call to her, but my voice sounded like the echo of a tinkle. I was again on my feet, reeling in a tarry blackness. I stumbled and my forehead struck something that exploded in a brilliant fountain of sparks, like a skyrocket.

Coming out of it is better:

Light stabbed into my brain with a thousand blades. I closed my eyes and groaned. My head felt like the inside of a bass drum during the St. Patrick's Day parade.

Technically, there's another one. He faints again in that same scene once he sees the corpse's blown head. 

And, for completion's sake, I'm including this one, too:

Whereupon a ton of bricks fell on my head.

I didn't exactly pass out. I know that because I can still remember the stars I saw and the blaze of incandescence that let me know someone had switched on a lamp. 

References:

“You mean, where there’s a will, there’s a slay?” she asked brightly. “You know—I think that kind of stuff went out before Agatha Christie. We’re supposed to be dealing with fact, not fiction.”

Title:

Sounds cool, but it is totally inaccurate. True, there are three witnesses to the fatal car "accident", but they only receive a threatening note advising them to "just go on keeping your lip buttoned and you won't have nothing to worry about". Nobody tries to kill them.

Edition:

Graphic Mystery #143

Cover:

A gorgeous, and totally badass one, by Roy Lance. The guy seemed to have a thing about blondes with guns. This one is cool, too, and that book is not bad either.

Not that it matters, but, like the title, it's also completely inaccurate. No blonde shoots the guy in this one.

Cool lines:

"Are you drink, Powell?"

"No, but I could be talked into it."