Spine # 354
“They’d find him somewhere tonight. Walking on a dark street between the hills. In his bed. Sitting alone in his room with a bottle. Sitting alone and laughing, with the brown cigarette cupped in his hand, the weed-smell thick in the room. Maybe now an officer, hand on his holstered gun, was walking toward Buddy Brown in the lonely Greyhound waiting room at Salinas while the heavy-eyed soldiers and huddled Mexicans watched. Maybe a state highway patrol car was flagging down the MG on 101. Night thoughts. Night thoughts on a bunk, scratching flea bites.”
John McPartland; Big Red’s Daughter
Freshly stateside from service in Korea, Jim Work had plans on starting his civilian life in sunny California until a minor traffic accident threw his life into chaos.
A sporty MG, driven by a young hardass named Buddy Brown, bumps into Work’s Ford. The two drivers step out, trade words and punches. Buddy is one of those guys who knows exactly where to throw and when to dodge. Jim gets his ass kicked. And if that weren’t bad enough, it all happens in front of Buddy’s gorgeous passenger.
Wild Kearney, a bombshell whose looks yield more TNT than an atomic bomb, dazzles Jim’s with her beauty. He’s hooked and follows Wild and Buddy to a party. A second round of fisticuffs doesn’t turn out any better for Jim. But finds himself alone with Wild and things are fine. Until she asks him for a favor.
Next thing Jim knows, he’s waiting for Wild’s father at the airport where she’ll introduce Jim as her love. It’s a swell dream for him but the reality turns out to be a nightmare. Her old man is Red Kearney. A professional gambler with a notorious tough guy reputation and connections to the mob.
It doesn’t take long before Red sniffs out their bullshit.
What follows is a rocket ride through postwar Carmel-by-the-Sea that plunges Jim into an underworld of bruisers, drug peddlers, and silver-spooned brats. His obsessive fantasy of winning Wild’s love will keep him going through all the beatings, jailings, and close-calls that the small beach town has to offer.
John McPartland was a master of redlining a novel’s narrative engine from the first page all the way through the story’s last line. And it never gets away from him.
It’s all plot. It’s all fun.
And it’s only 156 pages.
Bravo.
C.D. Baxter’s Quick Review of Big Red’s Daughter
Story – Great
Cover Eye Candy – Near Great
Reprint Available from Stark House Press
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