Grifter's Game by Lawrence Block:
The first book ever published by Hard Case Crime is one that might have turned me off if I had picked it up as the first book I ever read under the imprint. Lawrence Block is one of those authors that is, what might be termed as, an "acquired taste". At least from my experience, having picked up a few more of his books since reading this one.
The problem I have with Block is he never pulls punches. Even his heroes, like the Matthew Scudder series, seem to have very few redeeming social values. (Although in later books Scudder became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, which gives me a frame of reference to be aligned with him, at least on that level).
Chalk it up to being weaned early in childhood on Hardy Boys, but before my foray into the Hard Case Crime imprints, I tended to like my heroes to at least have some sort of conscience, little as it may have been. Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe may not have been saints, mind you, but at least they had a sense of what is acceptable in mainstream society.
Here, we don't even have a hero, more like an anti-hero. The main character, Joe Marlin, is a malcontent who manages to sponge his way cross the country, posing as someone new and racking up whatever he can in the process. At the start of the novel he has just realized that he is about out of luck on his current identity and has to fold up tents and move on. He was posing as David Gavilan, but his welcome in Philadelphia is about to come to an end because he has been living on credit to the tune of about $600, but he only has about $100 to his name. Time to move on. Next stop Atlantic City.
In the process of picking up a new identity, he steals a couple of suitcases in the train terminal with the initials of L.K.B. imprinted on them, so he decides his new identity is "Leonard K. Blake". While on the beach in Atlantic City he meets up with an attractive woman named Mona who is just as interested in him as he is in her. But Mona is married and so their liaisons have to be in secret.
But who is the real L.K.B.? It turns out he may be someone more in line
with Joe's world than in the legitimate world, because on inspection of
the suitcases, Joe comes across a box containing a batch of pure uncut
heroin. And, oh yeah, it turns out that Mona's husband, Keith, is the real L.K.B... L. Keith Br
Now we get into the meat of the story. Joe and Mona begin a relationship that in the 60's was still shocking, but by the 2020's has become so common on the big screen and in print that the public is almost inured to it. In the process, Mona discovers that Joe, whom she currently knows as Lenny, has Keith's bags. She's Keith's wife, so sure she would recognize his bags, right?
Joe then tells her the truth, that he is a con man and also that her husband is apparently a drug dealer. Mona expresses her love for Joe and her desire to leave Keith, so in the tradition of movies like Double Indemnity, the two decide that the best solution is to kill off Keith. And thus, the plot is set in motion.
Referencing Double Indemnity is not just coincidental in this case. There are several parallels that come out over the course of the novel, not the least of which is that Mona may not be the innocent little woman that Joe thinks she is.
Grifter's Game, as I said in the beginning, is somewhat disturbing, especially the denouement, which may even shock the most jaded reader by the time he/she reaches it.
Grifter's Game: 3 stars.
Thanks for reading.
Quiggy
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