How'd you like to have gotten this blurb on your first novel? "The best first mystery novel I've read in the thirty years since The Big Sleep" -- Ross Macdonald. Wow. However, I have to say that Afternoon of a Loser, while a dandy book, doesn't quite live up to that commentary.It's the story of a couple of cousins, Sam and Mark Donaldson. Mark has just been released from prison after serving 9 years for a murder he says he didn't commit. In the meantime, Sam has married Mark's ex-wife, the woman for whom lots of people believe Mark took the fall. Maybe even Sam believes that, because if Mark's innocent, who's guilty?
The setting is central Florida, not far from the Sebring race track, where Tom and Mack both once drove. There are some fine racing scenes and plenty of other well-done local color. Lots of tension and suspense, too. In fact, this book is so good that reading it is almost like finding a John D. MacDonald novel you've never read before. (MacDonald gave Pace a rave blurb for a later book.)
I suspect that Afternoon of a Loser is a truly forgotten book and that very few people other than me remember reading it forty years ago in its first edition. It's well worth picking up if you see it lying around in some dusty bookstore.
5 comments:
I think it would be hard for any book to live up to Ross MacDonald's blurb. But it does sound pretty good, I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled next time I'm at the bookstore.
Tom Pace definitely sounds familiar...if he wrote several with auto-racing connections, and a great by-line for that, my father particularly might've picked one up in the late '60s, early '70s...and it might've gotten away before I got to read it.
Some forgotten, out of the way and dusty bookstore is right. While there are 28 copies of the hardcover editions, there are NO copies of the paperback offered on ABE right now.
Nor do I have a copy. I don't think I've ever seen a copy.
Pace wrote a couple of other crime fiction novels, both with a guy named Ben Garden in them. If he's still alive, and Al Hubin doesn't say otherwise, he'd be 80 this year. (Tom Pace, that is.)
From your review, it sure sounds like a book that somebody like Hard Case Crime ought to look into, if they're listening?
--- Steve
I actually bought this one in hardback 40 years ago. Ran across the paperback the other day and picked it up, which spurred me to re-read it for the review.
Friends, this book is an absolute train wreck. The Ross MacDonald blurb makes me wonder if he owed Joan Kahn a really big favor. It's almost impossible to believe that Joan had a hand in this mess. The writing is sophomoric, with a ridiculous adverb in almost every sentence. I found something on each page to make me roll my eyes. The characters--all male, except one--are wooden. They do nothing but drink alcohol and make ominous comments to each other. Because the author can't write, he substitutes grinning, smiling, and laughing for any semblance of emotion, making the characters seem completely disconnected from humanity. The one female character, ostensibly the Uber Woman who drives the plot, is a big zero. Much of the book is taken up with a car race that has nothing to do with the nonexistent plot. There's no build-up, no suspense, and a ridiculous last chapter stolen from a du Maurier book. When I turned the last page, I was so traumatized that I came to the Web to find reviews; there are few. Usually I can find something good to say about a book even if I didn't like it, but that's not the case here. Some books are best forgotten, and this is one of them. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to vent.
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