Wild to Possess by Gil Brewer

(pb; 1959)

From the inside flap:

"Lew Brookbank is running away from his grief.   His wife had left him for another man, and he had discovered them together - murdered.  Drowning himself in gin, one night he stumbles across a parked car where a man and a woman are plotting the kidnapping and murder of the man's wife.  At first he thinks he should turn them in, but there is some real money involved here, and he makes the liquor-fueled decision to follow them and work a double-cross of his own.  But Lew doesn't figure on Clarkson, brother of his dead wife's lover.  Clarkson wants to bring him back to pay for the death of his brother.  But there's no turning back on the plan now - Lew has got to see this one through to the end."


Review:

Sex, violence and human darkness suffuse every word in this fast-moving, addictive and aggressive noir novel, with Brewer's trademark twistiness livening up the disturbing and potent work.

Worth owning, this.

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This novel was adapted into a film, Three Way, in 2004, and released stateside the same year.

Dominic Purcell played Lewis "Lew" Brookbank.  Joy Bryant played Rita Caswell.  Ali Larter played Isobel Delano.  Desmond Harrington played Ralph Hagen.  Dwight Yoakam played Herbert Claremont/Clarkson.  Gina Gershon played Florence DeCroix Hagen.  Roxana Zal played Janice Brookbank. 

Scott Ziehl directed the film, from Russell P. Marleau's screenplay.