“A
man can get into a lot of trouble if he’s lonely. If he’s just lonely enough
and has time on his hands. That’s a combination made for trouble.”
Burt Keating is from New York—just outside
Buffalo—where he manages a small savings and loan branch. He is in his
mid-thirties with a beautiful wife and a very comfortable life. That changes
when his wife leaves on an icy night for some butter, and a few blocks from
their house she is crushed between a Buick and a tree. Burt can’t seem to
function anymore. He sells the house, takes a leave of absence from his job and
purchases a new car—
“I
wanted to flee to a new world and I knew that short of some South Pacific
island, southern Florida was as close as you could come. After a few restless
days in Miami, I took an apartment on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale some twenty
miles away. It was a place called the Tropic Moon Apartments.”
Unfortunately the miles and warmer clime can’t set
Burt’s mind right. The only thing that has any meaning is the memory of his
dead wife and the life they had, but that is over and there is nothing he can
do to change it. Then he meets Alicia Shafton. A woman who seems as lost and
lonely as Burt, but she has a secret. Her husband, a gambler and shyster, died
and left a lockbox with a note attached. It instructed her to sell the box to a
man named Ralph Emory for $200,000. The only problem: Everything goes wrong and
Burt can’t help but get involved.
The
Quaking Widow is the first work by Robert Colby I
have read and it won’t be the last. It hit a note with me—the story, setting,
characters—that many works of fiction don’t. It opened with a blast—an
immediate and drastic change for a protagonist with an uncertain future—and
cruised forward into ever increasing peril. The characters were the expected:
sleek, beautiful, mysterious, and good and bad in varying measures.
The setting is drawn marvelously. As I read, I
mourned the Florida that was. The pre-Disneyland and Miami Vice Florida that
was one part hillbilly and another parts chic, wealthy and dangerous. A Florida
that a person can get lost in. The same Florida that was painted in the novels
of John D. MacDonald with his vivid and beautiful flashes of prose.
The plotline is the expected—the dangerous and
unknown femme, murder, a wildcard nympho and mysterious opponents that will
stop at nothing to get the prize. In this case the box and its contents. I
guessed the major plot turns before they were revealed, but it didn’t bother me
because the story, while plot-driven, is textured with enough humanity to keep
it more than interesting. The pacing didn't hurt either. It is perfectly
developed with a well-balanced mixture of action and suspense, with a dash of
romance and mystery. The prose is hardboiled and, at times, clever and rich:
“She
turned around and walked briskly across the room, her high, firm buttocks
waving an insolent goodbye.”
The
Quaking Widow is worth tracking down. It is
fifty-three years old, but it is more than just nostalgia. Heck, I wasn't even
on the radar when it was written. Instead it is a fine example of a linear and
well-told tale that is both entertaining and exciting.
It was published by ACE (D-195) in 1956, and coupled
with Owen Dudley’s The Deep End.
This is a repost. It originally went live August 10, 2009. Since I wrote this review I have read several more Robert Colby novels, and he has become one of my favorite pulp writers.
No comments:
Post a Comment