Forgotten Books: THE HOT-SHOT -- Fletcher Flora

"My old man was a bum, and my old lady was a slob, and chances are I'd be a slob and a bum both if it wasn't for this God-damn crazy game."

So says Skimmer, the narrator of The Hot-Shot in the book's opening paragraph. This is sort of a crime novel, and in a way it's sort of like Revenge, the book I mentioned last week. It's narrated by a sociopath who thinks he's a fine person and who uses others any way he can to further his own ends. The difference is that he's a basketball player, a guy who discovers more or less by accident that he has a remarkable talent for the game.

And another difference is that Flora, in a move that amuses me now as much as it did when I first read the novel, pretty much steals the voice of Skimmer directly from Holden Caulfield, a neat trick if you can do it, and Flora pulls it off.

The book's only 127 pages long, but it has the tiniest print I've ever seen in a paperback. Avon did this a couple of times, including once in a Henry Kane novel. Don't let the print stop you, though. This one is black-hearted fun.

Patti Abbott will have a list of other folks blogging about forgotten books today.