One of these affairs is with Pauline Delos, the mistress of his publisher, Earl Janoth, and when Stroud is seen-but-not-recognized leaving Pauline’s place, it precipitates an argument that results in Janoth murdering Pauline. George Stroud starts off the novel as a thoughtful hedonist he enjoys books, paintings, colorful characters, his family, a comfortable job editing a crime magazine, good liquor and the occasional affair. Clock is built very nicely around a clever gimmick that sustains it as a thriller, but there’s an undercurrent - a very subtle one - that surfaces now and again to hint that there’s more going on here than we think. The other day I was in the re-reading mode, and pulled Kenneth Fearing’s 1946 novel The Big Clock off the shelf. Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester Screenplay: Jonathan Latimer, based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing. Also published as No Way Out (Perennial, paperback, 1987).
A condensed version first appeared in The American Magazine, October 1946, as “The Judas Picture.” Reprinted many times, including Bantam #738, paperback, 1949 and in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s, Library of America, hardcover, 1997.
0 kommentar(er)
