FFB: Any Woman He Wanted -- Whit Harrison (Harry Whittington)

A post about this book on Detectives Beyond Borders made me pull it off the shelves and reread it.  There's an interesting story behind it.  Whittington submitted it to Gold Medal books as a sequel to one of my favorites among his many novels, Brute in Brass.  For some reason Gold Medal turned it down and it was sold instead to Beacon Books, of all places.

Note the quotation from Joseph Moncure March on the cover.  It has nothing at all to do with this book.  No sex acts occur here, not a one, though there's some disrobing and near-sex, along with plenty of references to women's bodies.  How much of this was added for the Beacon publication is anybody's guess.  This isn't a sex novel.  It's a crime novel through and through.

Mike Ballard is a cop who's just trying to get through the day and do as little as possible.  In the past he was branded as crooked and although his job was saved, he no longer seems to care.  The town where he works is as crooked as they come, and the DA wants Ballard's help in cleaning it up.  The DA, by the way, is married to Ballard's former fiancée.  Ballard turns him down.  People start to die, beginning with the DA.  Ballard stays out of it.  He's thoroughly tough, disillusioned, disaffected.  He wants no part of anything.  But of course . . . .

Any Woman He Wanted (the title has no more to do with the book than the quotation from March) is hardboiled and dark all the way through, almost.  The ending is something you have to read to believe.  I'm sure it wasn't the original ending, and maybe we'll never know what that was.  I'd bet the house it wasn't the one in the book, however.

I don't know why Gold Medal rejected this book.  It's topnotch Whittington, and that means it's very good, indeed.