Forgotten Books: ONE FOR HELL -- Jada Davis

This is a repeat of a "Forgotten Books" post from 2008. I'm repeating it because there's some good news. Stark House will reprint this book in October. You know you'll want a copy.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Revenge by Jack Ehrlich was in a class with Jim Thompson's work and Dan J. Marlowe's Vengeance Man. Another book that can sit proudly on the shelf with those is One For Hell by Jada Davis.

Here's what I said about it a while back on The Rap Sheet's special issue on overlooked books: One for Hell (1952), by Jada M. Davis. “I sometimes think the only reason this book hasn’t received a lot more attention is that Fawcett published it in a Red Seal edition rather as a Gold Medal Original, probably because it’s a bit too long for the GM format. A boxcar bum named Willa Ree enters a small town with the intention of picking it clean, and in the process all kinds of secrets and corruption come to light. It’s a fine noir story with a powerful ending that Jim Thompson would have been proud to have written.”

I don't think I can improve on that description. I'll add, however, that Jada Davis was the brother of Jack Davis, with whom I collaborated on that American classic (and, I have to say, justly overlooked) The Coyote Connection.