4 crampons out of 5

This is Hard Case Crime 001.  You start here. I didn’t, though.  I started in the 30’s or 40’s somewhere, whatever was new when I first read about the series in the back of a Brubaker comic book.  I really enjoyed what I read, and it was what I had expected and hoped for – some pulpy, down and dirty crime novel.  I knew I wanted to collect the series, so I went back and started here.  When I first read Lawrence Block’s ‘Grifter’s Game,’ I had no idea what I was in for.  The setup plays straight enough, but the ending – still, reading it through a second time – is one of the darkest things I’ve read, and that initial time through the book it was quite a leap from where it started.  I loved it, but it was bleak stuff.  On my second trip through, some years later, the themes are a lot clearer in the story, and the plummet not so steep, but it’s still a devastating read. Meet Joe.  Or Leonard, or David, or whatever name he’s using.  To skip out on a bill, to woo someone away from their money, whatever.  Joe’s a professional grifter.  We run into him as he’s living a posh life in a nice hotel, ready to leave town before anyone can realize he has no intention of paying for his room.

Cue the noir: Joe steals some luggage in a new town and the luggage contains a whole lotta’ heroin.  Cue the dame: Mona is a lonely lady who chats Joe up.  They fall in love.  She’s also married to the guy who owns the luggage.  She wants to be with  Joe but she admittedly doesn’t want to leave the money which her husband has.  What’s a gal to do?  And if you’ve read or seen any of these style books/films before, you know what’s a gal to do.

But Block has some tricks up his sleeve.  He drops the hints here or there to keep you reading, and when the shoe drops you’re just zipping through the pages.  Then the other shoe drops…

The writing is what makes or breaks these stories, and this is a deservedly awesome intro to the Hard Case Crime series.  Joe is informative and evasive with his words all in one sentence, but just as he’s charming with a grift, you’d never be able to tell.  It’s a mix of honesty and misguidance (with the reader, with himself) that feels like this guy’s talking to you.  Which he does for most of the book.  There’s very little dialogue save Joe’s exposition to the reader about what’s going on and what it makes him feel.  The story, being originally from the ’50’s, isn’t dated, but some of the attitudes are.  But it’s glib in the same way that movies from the era are, where ideas were ‘simpler’ because they weren’t caught up in ideological wrangling.  However, it allows the relationship between Joe and Mona to take on a very (seemingly) black and white and fluff-filled nature.  It would be played the same way if the story were written today, but the exchange might be a little more coy.

The lack of coyness is what keeps this from being flawless.  All the cards are out.  The story turns aren’t twists, they’re just beats in the story.  Which is fine.  But how we’re supposed to feel is echoed pretty well by Joe, leaving no silence for the reader.  Block also tells us that Joe “becomes a machine” when it’s time to get a job done, and there are little references to past jobs he worked as a heavy.  It works for glossing over explanations for how he knows how to do what he does, but he comes across a bit too much of a superman, switching from the get outta’ dodge persona of a grifter to a tough-as-nails brawler with nary the bat of an eye.

Still, look at that cover.  How can you not be reading this right now?

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