Publishers Weekly
★ 01/25/2021
Originally published in 1946, this standout noir from Hughes (1904–1993) opens with Sailor, a Chicago gangster, arriving in Santa Fe, N.Mex., where he has learned former Illinois senator Willis Douglass now lives. Back in Chicago, Douglass hired Sailor to murder his wife, but failed to pay Sailor the agreed-upon amount. To complicate matters, McIntyre, the head of Chicago’s homicide bureau, is in Santa Fe, apparently also on Douglass’s trail. Just how the crossing of paths of the politician, the cop, and the hit man will play out generates a high level of suspense. Though Sailor has many unappealing qualities, including his racism, Hughes manages to make him sympathetic. Evocative prose is a plus (“The bus traveled further across the wasteland; miles of nothing, just land, empty land. Land that didn’t get anywhere except into more land, and always against the sky the unmoving barrier of mountains”). Readers familiar with Hughes only from In a Lonely Place, filmed with Humphrey Bogart, will want to check out this entry in the American Mystery Classics series. (Mar.)
The New York Times Sarah Weinman
"It’s a particular pleasure to recommend this novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, my favorite crime writer, which returns to circulation this month with a new (and insightful) introductory essay by Sara Paretsky."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Nobody but Dorothy Hughes can cast suspense into such an uncanny spell, and she’s never done it better."
New York Times
"[An] excellent novel . . . A sympathetic study of the development of a criminal."
Kirkus Reviews
2021-01-13
Otto Penzler’s reprintings of Hughes’ suspense novels continue with her ninth, originally published in 1946.
The man whom everyone, including himself, calls Sailor has traveled from Chicago to Santa Fe in pursuit of former Sen. Willis Douglass. During the Sen’s tenure, Sailor was officially billed as his private secretary, but it’s clear that he was also his bagman, fixer, and whatever else. He’s followed the Sen to Santa Fe to demand money due him for services rendered in the shooting of Eleanor Douglass, the Sen’s well-insured wife. Sailor’s already been paid $500, but he thinks he’s due $1,000 more. Unfortunately for him, there are several bumps in the road. He’s not the only one with his eye on the quarry: McIntyre, the chief of Chicago Homicide, is also in town. The Sen, who’s already moved on to the companionship of society heiress Iris Towers, naturally denies owing his ex-employee any more money. And his visit coincides with the three days of Fiesta, during which there isn’t a hotel room, and scarcely a bathroom, to be had in town. Sailor’s befriended by a group of locals who range from Don José Patricio Santiago Morales y Cortez, the carousel operator Sailor dubs Pancho Villa, to a gaggle of schoolchildren whose hard childhoods remind him inescapably of his own earliest memories, very different but equally troubled. Hughes (1904-1993) burrows deep into her antihero’s mind and stays there, with conversations and pivotal events mostly erupting as breaks in his stream of consciousness. The effect is gripping and oddly touching.
An unforgettable portrait of a hireling who dreams of making it big even though he knows he’s no good.
