Sun 18 Jan 2015
GOLD MEDAL Review: RICHARD HIMMEL – The Rich and the Damned.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Characters , Reviews[11] Comments
RICHARD HIMMEL – The Rich and the Damned. Gold Medal s735, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1958.
Of the eight novels Richard Himmel wrote for Gold Medal, five of them recounted the adventures of Johnny Maguire, a hard-nosed Chicago-based lawyer who grew up in a working class, blue collar neighborhood. If we can take The Rich and the Damned as being representative of the earlier books, none of which I’ve read at any time less than 40 years ago, he’s still touchy about his background if anyone brings it up.
I’m not sure how representative this book is, though. It’s the last of the five, and even though the blurb on the front cover says, “Johnny Maguire is back, and once again mixed up with molls, and murder,” there are no molls in this, not a one, and no murder, either. In fact, there not even a crime in this book, even though (from the titles) all of the earlier books had him tackling crime of all kinds and all corners.
The closest that anything that resembles a crime in The Rich and the Dammed takes place is when a hoodlum from Maguire’s youth has him beaten up in a futile attempt to make him reveal the terms of a industrial mogul’s will after he dies.
In therein lies the story. Maguire has been a sometimes bedmate with the dead man’s daughter, but she’s not the only person set to inherit. One son (or stepson) is of the prodigal variety, and has been disowned. The other is a scholarly wimp (my word) who suddenly finds some legs to stand on, thanks to a new lady friend, whose eyes are probably more on the father’s fortune. The other daughter has been sheltered from the world, particularly men and it takes all of Maguire’s will power to resist when she begs him to show her what she has been missing.
The mobster is working on behalf of a competitor trying to take over the company, and the conditions of the will are important. Surprisingly to everyone, the will leaves equal portions of the stock to each of the four, even though it is Rourke, Maguire’s red-headed girl friend, who has ever shown any interest in the company, and in fact it is she who has been running the firm in recent years, having learned the ropes by starting at the bottom.
And Maguire, respected by all four of the beneficiaries of the will, is the one caught in the middle, and it is his working class background that formulates his philosophies toward the problems of the wealthy and well-heeled. Does he take advantage of the situation and make himself one of them, one of the rich and powerful? Or does he stick to his basic roots and let them go on squabbling and their not-so-merry way?
Believe it or not, Richard Himmel was a writer good enough to make all of this interesting, very much so. Johnny Maguire makes a decision, and the book ends. What happens from there, we’ll never know. This is the last anyone has heard anything about Johnny Maguire.
Bio-Bibliographic Notes:
The Johnny Maguire series —
I’ll Find You. Gold Medal, 1950.
The Chinese Keyhole. Gold Medal, 1951.
I Have Gloria Kirby. Gold Medal, 1951.
Two Deaths Must Die. Gold Medal, 1954,
The Rich and the Damned. Gold Medal, 1958.
There is little to be learned about Johnny Maguire on the Internet. I found a review of I’ll Find You on Bill Crider’s blog, and not much else. I don’t think Bill will mind if I quote from his comments, one line only: “Gangsters are involved, and there’s a murder, but this isn’t really a crime novel. In its own twisted way, it’s a love story in the Gold Medal vein, with the emphasis on speed, with lots of raw emotion, with plenty of melodrama.” Given that statement, maybe I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was at the lack of criminal activity in this book also.
As for the author himself, I found an online obituary for Richard Himmel to be very interesting. Besides being a writer, Himmel was for most of his life one of the country’s best known interior designers. Truth, believe it or not, is often stranger than fiction.
January 18th, 2015 at 7:45 pm
I read and liked THE CHINESE KEYHOLE, but none of the others ever crossed my path. MacDonald’s GM books weren’t always about crime either directly and several were about business as this was.
Sounds like a book I should read. I’m surprised Himmel didn’t aim for hardcovers and the bestseller list with this one since it is well within the parameters of the sexy big business novel so popular in that time period. Mystery writer Richard Powell hit big when he did THE PHILADELPHIAN.
January 18th, 2015 at 8:05 pm
This one was and wasn’t about big business, not in the sense that some of JDM’s were. This one was mostly about a highly dysfunctional, but wealthy, family, and how well Maguire might find a way to fit in. Ninety percent of the book takes place in the family mansion.
January 18th, 2015 at 8:26 pm
Sorry Steve those two congealed in a lot of novels of the period by writers from John O’Hara to Harold Robbins. Since the writing is good it would only have taken a little twerking (not that kind of twerking) to boost this to the James Gould Cozzens style novel (THE PHILIDELPHIAN is about family too, but when you write about the wealthy you are writing about the source of the money as well).
I’m surprised Himmel didn’t try for that market when it dominated mainstream fifties literature. The outsider observing the incomprehensible rich and powerful while trying to hold onto his own identity goes back to Nick Carroway in GATSBY. Even with the token mobster sub-plot this sounds like basic mainstream fifties material.
January 18th, 2015 at 8:35 pm
David, I think you really intended to say “tweaking”, but “twerking” sounds funnier.
January 18th, 2015 at 8:43 pm
Tweaking or twerking, the book is a little too pulpy to be considered literary or mainstream, and it would have needed some polishing, shall we say, to get it there. You can tell where Himmel was going with this, which, David, is exactly as you say.
After RICH AND THE DAMNED, Himmel wrote one more paperback novel in 1959, this one for Avon, then nothing from him for 18 years, then three hardcover novels also in Hubin:
The Twenty-Third Web (n.) Random 1977
Lions at Night (n.) Delacorte 1979
Echo Chambers (n.) Delacorte 1982
I have no idea what any of the three are about, nor how successful they were. I may look into them, next chance I get.
January 18th, 2015 at 9:03 pm
Okay, Steve, you’ve read the last one, and David has read the second or third one. I’ve read only the first one. My review is here: http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2013/03/forgotten-book-ill-find-you-richard.html
I think you and I came to similar conclusions, Steve.
January 18th, 2015 at 9:42 pm
Bill
Yes, DAMNED is not a crime novel at all but, in its own way, a love story, told Gold Medal style. In this last book of the series Maguire tells Rourke about halfway through that he is in love with her, and some time later, she him, though it is harder for her to say so. And then the question is, where do they go from there?
I probably should have made sure I read the Maguire books in order, but I thought they were only tough crime and lawyer-oriented stories. Who knew that Himmel had other ideas?
January 19th, 2015 at 6:06 pm
Steve, is the 1959 Avon title you mention called The Shame which is a re-issue of Soul of Passion aka Strange Desires – it may not be crime fiction. One seller describes it as Gay Pulp Fiction
January 19th, 2015 at 6:27 pm
Jamie,
Yes, you’re right. I don’t know why I didn’t catch that. This means that Rich and the Damned was Himmel’s last book before those last three in hardcover that he wrote several years later. Soul of Passiom/The Shame is listed in Hubin, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. And perhaps Rich and Damned shouldn’t be either. I’ll email Al and see was he thinks or can find out.
October 22nd, 2020 at 10:14 am
Good news — I’ve struck a deal with the Himmel estate and have already republished just about all of Richard Himmel’s books, with the last two or three coming in the next few weeks. You can find them here:
http://cuttingedgebooks.com/category/richard-himmel/
October 22nd, 2020 at 10:47 am
Great news indeed, Lee. Of the many hardboiled authors Gold Medal published in the 50s, Himmel is one that ought to be better known.
And of those of you who may be reading this, check out the rest of the Cutting Edge line of books. Here’s the link:
http://cuttingedgebooks.com/
“Republishing cutting edge crime novels, literary fiction, westerns, and selected non-fiction.”