Saturday, August 17, 2019

A Killer is Loose by Gil Brewer

(pb; 1954: novella)

From the inside flap

“Ex-cop Steve Logan is down on his luck. With a baby on the way, Logan decides to pawn his last pistol to a bartender friend. On his way, he rescues a stranger, Ralph Angers, from being hit by an oncoming bus. Angers is an eye surgeon and a Korean War vet, and he has plans to build a hospital in town. Unfortunately, he is also prepared to kill anyone and everyone who gets in the way of his plans. So when Angers manages to get a hold of Logan’s Luger, he also drags his rescuer into a nightmare of murder and insanity. Logan becomes a hostage to Angers’s plans, and there will be no mercy to anyone who gets in his way.”


Review

Killer is an excellent, immediate-action-and-desperation tale, where its protagonist is thrust into bad-to-worse situations, with a delusional psycho who’s flick-of-the-switch wild. The body count is high in Brewer’s hard-to-set-down pulpy read, each killing horrific in its casual, fast-shot execution. Killer delivers the goods on all counts, even with its lapses into sexist attitudes and pat-happy ending (remember this was written in the late 1950s, not 2019). Worth owning, this.

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The resulting film, La machine à découdre, was release in France on May 7, 1986. It was directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky, who also wrote the screenplay and played the character of Ralph Enger.

Patricia Barzyk played Lilane. Piere Semmler, billed as Peter Semmler, played Steff Muller. François Michaud, billed as François Michaux, played Betty.

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