WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – Square in the Middle. Random House, hardcover, December 1955. Bantam #1602, paperback, May 1957.

   Although a very prolific author in his day, I imagine that Gault is remembered now mostly by fans of private eye novels and for his two primary series characters, both members of the profession, Joe Puma and Brock (The Rock) Callahan. Only a small handful of Gault’s crime fiction novels were standalones, of which Square in the Middle is a prime example.

   It’s also a prime example of noir fiction, and if it had even been made into a movie (it never was), it could have been a good one. Picture James Garner, say, as a happily married man, but who, when his wife and two children take a vacation away from home together, meets a very entrancing waif of a woman sitting along in bar (Audrey Hepburn, if we could afford to pay her salary), and all of a sudden, Jim Gulliver becoming exactly as the title says, the square in the middle.

   Lynn Bedloe, as it turns out, is a member in good standing of a gang of friends, some married to each other, some not, although some would like to be, and when Gulliver hesitantly and ever so cautiously tries to learn about Lynn, he finds himself a member of the gang as well, and well over his head.

   And when one of the members of the gang ends up dead, and Gulliver is the first on the murder scene, none of of the connections he has as a well-known member of the community seems to mean anything to a publicity hungry detective who’s assigned to the case.

   Square in the Middle is as much a character study as it is a detective mystery, which takes going back and re-reading certain earlier parts of the book to be sure it all hangs together properly (it does), but if characters who are trying to find their way in the wilderness of suburban 1950s sunny California appeal to you at all, then so will this book.