Tiger By The Tail is a novel by American writer Charles Mergendahl - a dark story of one man's downfall, leaving life as he knew it behind. As usual, the cover promises something else, and you'll be disappointed if you think this is a sexy read. It may have caught your eye, but this is actually a darker, more desperate noir of damaged lives.
Ben Maddick comes home to his sleepy commuter town from New York City to find his wife blackout drunk and a dead man on his rec room floor, his neck slashed open. She suffers from bouts of depression, violently lashing out, and the family had planned to commit her that next morning. Not knowing the story, but wanting to protect his wife, he bundles the body into the man's car and pushes it over a nearby cliff. The police are not fooled, they know it was murder. All signs point to the man's wife - a tall dark beauty who Ben knows is innocent, so he corroborates her story with the police. His wife Kitty is confined to the sanitarium and works with the doctors on her past, not fully disclosed but family abuse is hinted at. Meanwhile, the man's wife Lori contacts Ben to thank him. With coal black hair and eyes, a scarlet lip, and tight white toreador pants, she is hard to resist, especially when he misses the last ferry home from her Fire Island cottage. He begins to ignore his work, choosing to hang out drinking with her at beatnik beach parties, and turning his usual three Gibson afternoons into four or five. Saddled with a wife he no longer understands and drawn to Lori's open bed, Ben spirals into alcoholism, fuelled by blackmail notes from someone who knows the whole story of the night the man died.
This is the story of an advertising man who seems to have it all - a beautiful wife and young daughter, a suburban home in a quaint town, a bright future if he can stop drinking and apply himself. Kitty's trauma is seriously discussed, and there is much agonizing whether he should ever see Lori again. They are both doomed, and when something happens to Lori that is shocking, Ben's life spirals irretrievably into the bottom of the bottle. This is a dark noir about murder, adultery and blackmail - and most of all alcoholism, with an unsettling epilogue that pushes Ben further into the grave.
I reviewed Tonight Is Forever by Mergendahl, and prefer the style of this; an intense focus with a breezy fast pace you'd expect from just 159 pages, the characters well drawn and inventive. Despite the cover promising sexy-time on the beach, this story delivers enough grit and passion which should have been be illustrated instead.
A satisfying and realistic read.
My other reviews for Charles Mergendahl:
1958 / Paperback / 159 pages
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