“Hi, I’m trying to sell a car.”
“Hi, person I’ve never met, do you want to find a pile of stolen money and split it, and trust each other completely?”
“Yup!”

Another Hard Case Crime book that begins with a person changing their whole life immediately after meeting a complete stranger! And then, shocker-of-shockers, the stranger pulls a double-cross! As much as I like this genre of books, I have to wonder - was this something that actually happened in the past? Or is it just the formula for these types of stories? Either way, it’s a strange way for people to act. In my opinion.

This book was okay, lots of double-crosses and running around. The main guy was pretty unlikeable, so I didn't really care much about what happened to him and I was sort of rooting for him NOT to get the money. However, the last chapter is pretty good with the madness and all! Sort of like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart"!

“If she wanted ice water, I thought, all she had to do was open a vein.” ( )

Pulp Perfection
If you choose to read just one pulp novel in your lifetime, this would be an excellent choice. Guaranteed you will choose to pick up another one or two. Charles Williams was one of the top authors of the pulp era of the fifties. He is not to be confused with the other Charles Williams, who wrote theological books and was often linked with C.S. Lewis. This Charles Williams wrote in a smooth, flowing style that had wider appeal than just the pulp audience of many other authors. This book is not some dark and dreary crawl through the gutter of life by some two-bit punk who ran off with the boss's wife and money. Rather, it is a well-executed, well-plotted masterpiece that is worth reading more than once. It is obvious why Hard Case Crime chose this book from among Williams' work to feature in its crime series.

Here you have an ex-college football player (Scarborough) reduced to selling door-to-door who explains that "You can't eat six-year-old football scores." He's soured and possibly has run out of dreams at the ripe old age of twenty-eight.

You have Diana James, a brunette "sunbathing in the bottom part of a two-fragment bathing suit" who offers him a chance to walk off with a piece of $120,000. She was no bimbo, though. "She was sharp." "She had it figured out from every angle." She gave him a chance to think about the reward first and, when he got used to that, "you could let your ideas grow a little. You didn't have to jump in cold. You waded in."

You have a second femme fatale at war with the brunette. This one, Madelon Butler, was also a brunette, "with a magnolia complexion and big, smoky-looking eyes. And a bitch right out of the book." "She was almost unbelievably beautiful, and she was drunk as a lord." She scared the living hell out of him. "An icicle walked slowly up my spine and sat between my shoulder blades." Even when she's in his arms, she is like "a beautiful and enraged wildcat." "If she wanted ice water, I thought, all she had to do was open up a vein." Wow! "God knows what went on inside that chromium-plated soul of hers, but no human being born could go on taking that kind of pressure forever without breaking."

So you have two crazy, gorgeous women, a hidden fortune that had been embezzled from the banks, a man who was probably dead, although his body was never found, married to one of these women and having an affair with the other. Once you mix that together, boy, do you have a tale to tell. He had warned James that he did not want any "wild-haired babes blowing their tops."

Scarborough isn't sure how he fits in here and wonders if he is being set up as a patsy or a "dead duck." James is setting him up as a "sucker" and, if he can't pull off the job, she would just send out the next sucker. "I'd been played for a sucker by a smooth operator," he explains. These two women are both lying to him and throwing him curves, left and right. Throughout the story, there is suspicion and distrust and he constantly wonders if the knife will end up in his back or the scissors in his throat.

Scarborough is never sure who all the players are or who is setting up who. Not even when the ash blonde with the angelic face pays him a visit.

This book has it all, murder, kidnapping, snipers, police dragnets, and, most of all, it has it all turning to hell as Scarborough starts to become more and more unglued. He had been warned about her, hadn't he? He would never get any of the money, he'd been told. "I wished she were dead. I wished she'd never been born, or that I had never heard of her," he says. "

This novel is so well-written that the pages literally melt into your hands as you read them. It is narrated in such a perfect pace that the reader doesn't stumble over long flowery descriptions or complain that there is too much action or too many players.

Williams tells this tale perfectly, as Scarborough feels the noose tightening around his neck and the cage he is in gets smaller and smaller, the reader feels him breaking apart. ( )

A hard case I truly enjoyed....even though he was trying to get money an easy way, I dug the main character. The back of the book is right in describing the woman as one of the coldest out there. The ending reminds of me a surreal ending to a movie in the older days. A bizarre turnout but you couldn't help but be enthralled during the whole ride. Most of the time there was plenty of action going on, but during the moments when there wasn't - it felt like there was still much going on, primarily from Williams' awesome writing style. Highly recommended and fun for hard case crime noir buffs out there. ( )

The main character was vaguely like-able and vaguely unlikeable. Described both as a thugish meathead and a guy who had a certain amount of intelligence. Or, to put it another, smarter than his vulgar meathead appearance. Oh. Vulgar. People kept saying that. How vulgar Lee was. Those parts either not part of the conversations included in the book, or whatever it is that other people thought was vulgar just flew over my head.

And just what the heck is "long hair music" in 1953? I mean, I have an idea of what is meant now, but what I think of now didn't exist in 1953 (literally, since I think of it as the 1980s hair bands; guys with big poofy hair strumming guitars and screaming). Considering that the few times a name came it up in association with the music, and the name was one I recognized, apparently long hair music in 1953 was what I call classical music. Long hair? (if it had been written in 1963, long hair would have equated, to me, as hippie - then I'd have thought about whether or not they used the term then and all that, but the book is from 1953).

Lee's the only real character with lots of lines. So to speak. I didn't particularly like or dislike any of the others. Madelon Butler had a biggish part to play. But it wasn't from her point of view. Nor from a all-knowing narrator. But from Lee's point of view. Watching her. From his point of view she was a beautiful drunk with ice in her veins.

Oh, and I figure I should note that Madelon isn't the woman sunbathing with her bikini straps undone mentioned in the book description. No, that would be Diana James. She seemed like an interesting character, for the three seconds she was in the book (Diana, that is).

I feel like I should make some mention of the "sexual" action. Just some note. Like how Lee kept feeling up women then shrugging when they didn't respond appropriately. Three of them. Roughly forcing himself onto Diana, sliding his hand up the skirt of Cherise, fondling Madelon's breast. One of the three might have lead him to believe that something like that might be liked. One gave indications of something like that much much later. But not before he forced himself onto her. And the third he knew she had no desire for him, and, oddly enough, he had none for her. He just did it get her to squeak and flee. I probably have some point I wanted to make, but I can't think of what it might be.

Story wise . . . 1953 . . . what did Lee say, 5 or 7 years since he busted his knee and left the pros? It's just possible he was too young for WWII. He busted his knee in the pros, not college, and he played in college, so he should have a degree in something. I don't know, he didn't really seem the criminal type, but he seemed easily lead into it. For $120,000. In 1953. Which in today's money would be $1,055,334.83. Hmms. And he had $170 in the bank. Which, in today's money, would be $1,495. Sure he just left one job but . . something isn't adding up having him slid easily into a life of crime and "easy money." ( )

Lee Scarborough is an ex-American football player who has fallen on hard times following a leg break that forced his premature retiral from the game. In reduced circumstances, he now earns a meagre living in real estate and doing all kinds of shady odd jobs and finds himself having to sell off his car. Answering an offer he ends up at an apartment complex where he stumbles across a stunning brunette called Diana, sunbathing topless. He gets talking to her and is soon learning about a corrupt bank official and an embezzled $120k of cash, which is apparently hidden in a remote abandoned mansion. Diana cannot go to the mansion to look for the money, but she soon persuades Lee to take on the job. Lee is suspicious but Diana is persuasive and he soon finds himself roaming the dark mansion and subsequently plunging into a desperate, double-crossing game of greed and deception. Originally published in 1954 "A Touch of Death" by Charles Williams was republished in 2006 under the "Hard Case Crime" imprint. In many ways Williams’ story runs as a classic "couple on the run" story, albeit with a clever and nasty twist on the formula. The book is powerfully plotted with a serpentine approach and a desperate atmosphere of growing paranoia, dark cynicism and violent suppressed sexual desires. The dialogue is cool, clever and hard-boiled and in Madelon Butler, Williams has come up with one of the most memorable, beautiful, tough and deadly femme fatales in all pulp fiction. The relationship and the manipulations between Lee and Madelon, as the book reaches its perfectly pitched climax, are superbly written in taut, tight language that is melancholic and simmering with impending disaster. "A Touch of Death" is a masterly pulp novel – fast-paced and full of perverse amoral characters and situations that are guaranteed to create rampant paranoia. Exciting and suspenseful throughout, this is a first rate slice of hard boiled fiction from a master of the genre. ( )