" Her game was passion - Mine was revenge"
Tom Matthews is a cop with a mission: to avenge the murder of his young son. It will lead him into a web of corruption involving the police force, call girls, kept men, and violent desire with a firecracker of a woman insatiable to love him.
Little Danny Matthews takes time in the school crosswalk, his legs handicapped by polio, when a car suddenly guns its engine and coldly runs him down. His father Tom Matthews is the lead cop on the Larsen murder case, and was warned to drop the investigation - this is the latest notice.
Tom moves into action quitting the force immediately, knowing they are understaffed and cases go unsolved; it would take an ex-cop who could bend the rules. His wife agrees and takes their daughter out of state - not even telling Tom where. He puts the furniture in storage and sells the house, leaving no trace.
The Larsen case was a gas station robbery that turned deadly when the owner was accidentally shot. The getaway car is traced back to Len Mercer, a call boy who hires himself out to sex hungry women; a blackmailer and embezzler who has a stand-up alibi. Tom's streetwise informants lead him to a familiar name from his past, back when she was lounge singer Julie Layne. They were an item until she threw him over for the owner of a chic bar, and is now Julie Veretti, the inheritor of Club 23. She was seen with Mercer; could her cash have funded Danny's death?
Julie not only holds a torch for Tom, she is boiling over with desire; his first impression of softness followed by the vibrant tremble of female vitality underneath. Julie seduces Tom, stripping in front of him and forcing him to make love. He will have to pay with sex to achieve any information - and has no choice but to submit, not this once, but whenever she likes. Although Mercer's car was found with the gun inside, he evades arrest, and Tom is targeted several times for a hit. When his place is broken into, his Detective Special is stolen and another murder committed. As the case slides quickly down a dark alley, Tom reveals connections between young call girls and violent boyfriends, running right up through the ranks of the police. The watertight Larsen robbery may be a targeted murder after all. The people you trust are about to overturn.
This may look like a common potboiler from the cover, but there is enough steam heat in here to fit the bill. It's a tough cop novel, with corruption and action to satisfy any pulp reader. It also adds the unusual twist of a free loving redhead so driven with lust she forces a man to have sex with her. It's a solid mystery as well, so, all around recommended.
These pulp novels can be hard to find, many bookstores thinking they are just junk paper, but I've found they have clever writing, fitting it all into about 160 pages. This had a complex plot, tough action, and steamy lovemaking - just what you were looking for and in just the right amounts, believable and not outlandish.
John Conway is a pseudonym for Joseph Chadwick, one of the most successful writers in the paperback book field, starting with syndicate newspapers in 1935 and novels in 1950.
(I found no other review on GoodReads. If you are looking for this book, I hope this helps.)
1959 / Paperback / 160 pages
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