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Tuesday, September 13, 2011 ( 9/13/2011 06:26:00 PM ) Bill S. ![]() The quartet of tales are narrated by Chief Van Eyck, a racing commission cop who hangs around the tracks, thwarting bookies and race fixers, catching the occasional killer. Described as “fat” by both Van Eyck and his seen-it-all secretary/girlfriend Elizabeth, Van Eyck is himself an inveterate gambler with a rep for honesty, though he's not above playing fast and loose with his good name if it can sucker some bad guys. In one memorable moment, he even plays at going “blood simple,” threatening to gas both a straight-laced homicide detective and a suspect to get the latter to confess to a killing. Fortunately, the homicide detective is a somewhat forgiving type. Three of the pieces in Horse Money are set in an undisclosed, probably West Coast city; the title tale places our hero on his own in NYC. In “Right Guy,” Van Eyck's attempts at stopping a race fix are waylaid when the culprits kidnap his gal pal Elizabeth; in “Heat of the Moment,” our man gets between a machine gun toting gang of crooks and the tong, which leads to gun play and a few twists on period stereotypes. In “Horse Money,” Van Eyck has his own betting winnings stolen with the help of a shapely chorus girl. Though he has his own brief night on the Wonderful Town, we never doubt that our hero won't be riding the rails back to his girlfriend at story's end. Wormser doesn't slather on the race track lingo as much as a Damon Runyon, though he can craft some snappy, if decidedly un-PC patter. Confronted with a knife-wielding thug named Snapper McGill, for instance, the racetrack copper tells the mug, “Guys named McGill ought to confine themselves to bricks. Racially, the knife is not your weapon.” Like all good hard-boiled dicks, Van Eycks is a hard-ass smart-ass. When one of his wounded underlings manages to crack wise, he even affectionately grouses back: “Stop trying to steal my stuff. The boss makes the jokes.” And so he does. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: pulp fiction # | |
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