5 out of 5

HCC 017

HOT SHIT.

‘Kay, review done.

But also: Charles Williams is now my first HCC author who makes me want to actively hunt down his other books.  This ain’t to knock any of the great stuff I’ve read from the publisher, and almost every author in their stable I’d read something else if it happened into my lap, but Williams…?  I’m not going to wait for it.  I want more, now.  This book was beyond flawless.  It was brutal.  It did narrational loops with ease – spending pages on a character’s obsession without it getting tiresome, dealing with the slow passage of time without it getting repetitive – and totally subverted my expectations of the tough / femme fatale while absolutely staying within the confines of pulp.  The language is raw but never forced, and not one character or plot beat reeked of excess.  Yes, Williams is a big name in the circuit (news to me, but as I’m discovering), with a pile of movies made from his writing and some best-sellers under his belt, but HCC has plenty of top billers to offer – King, Westlake, Collins – and this is still, going in sequential order, the book that just pushed me over the edge into love.  (Although I suspect I’ll get there with Westlake / Stark as well, ‘Touch of Death’ was just more directly throat-pummeling awesome than ‘.361’.)

A slight tweak to the formula was evident right from our opening, when ex-nigh-sport-celebrity Lee Scarborough is buzzing apartments in a complex to try to get a specific someone’s attention.  This type of character intro is pretty standard – in the middle of a quest, interrupted by the plot – and it essentially follows suit in ‘Touch,’ with Lee wandering around to the back of the complex and finding Diana James sunbathing.  He asks James has she seen so and so, and she says no but… why?  And there we have our way into intrigue.  But the flow is natural – often these setups will be dealing with an ex-con roped into a play by an old contact – and Lee stays focused on his task for quite a few pages.  All he’s trying to do is sell his car to get some cash, and Diana takes the car out for a spin.  It’s only as this is going on that Lee notices some oddities that suggest she doesn’t need the car, and indeed, toward the section’s end, James admits she’s looking for someone level-headed – and Lee, you passed – to help her steal some cash from Madelon Butler.

The hook hits, and we follow Lee while it sinks in, then a plan is formed…  Which, as you’d expect, continually, continually goes wrong.  Or does it?  Williams keeps us and Lee on top of things, new sensible plans formed when the quirks to the original start showing up, and he writes it in a ridiculously magical way where nothing’s telegraphed or annoyingly withheld (‘I know my plan but I won’t tell you, reader, so you’ll be surprised’) – our writer keeps Lee’s thoughts moving forward as actions are occurring, so all feels paced appropriately, thought out, and current.  There are moves along the way I suppose I could have guessed, but we’re just as smart as all the crafty people we’re dealing with, so you’re never sure who knows what or how it will shake down, which Williams milks and milks for some of the most effectively awesome paranoia-wracked passages towards the book’s conclusion, when Lee is so wrapped up in that forever motivating God in the world of pulp – a briefcase full of cash – that he constantly has to check himself to make sure his plans are still sound.  It’s Charles nudging us with every sentence – are you still with me?  Are you still with me?  And damned if I didn’t want to tear through those pages with the same intensity as Lee’s boiling frustrations.

According to the wiki page, my astonishment at how terse and tough all of our leads were – guy or gal, put-upon or the putter-upon – was a known aspect of Williams’ writing, and here it certainly is what elevated the book to something more than just a genre thing.  A lot of times I love the language in this lil’ gems, but I’ll admit that it rarely feels fully natural through an entire book.  At some point, a dude will drop a slang-heavy line that’s just dime store fodder.  But every street-wise metaphor or tight-lipped deflection in ‘Touch’ rang true.  It helps that Lee – or Madelon, or Diana – don’t have the time or mind for silly stuff, so we’re told who’s beautiful and why, but without the sometimes fetishistic focus these guys will give to stocking, bosoms, etc. etc.  It’s all part of the style and we love it, but it’s awesome when someone comes along and puts their own spin on it.

Simply a brilliant book.  The depths of obsession explored are staggering, and just as sweat-inducing to experience today as they must’ve been over 50 years ago when this thing was published.