Sat 27 Jan 2018
DAY KEENE – Sleep with the Devil. Lion #204, paperback original, April 1954. Berkley D2024, paperback, 1960. Macfadden 50-414, paperback, 1968. Stark House Press, trade paperback, 3-in-1 edition with Wake Up to Murder and Joy House, April 2017.
If you’re any kind of fan of noir fiction at all, you’re going to know exactly what kind of story this is as soon as you start reading it. In New York City, the protagonist of this story is known as Les Ferron; in the small upstate town of New Hope, he’s known as Paul Perrish.
In Manhattan Ferron is the enforcer for a ex-cop now in the loan shark business; in New Hope, he’s a church-going Bible salesman who’s gotten himself engaged to the daughter of the patriarch of the town. What he has in mind is to kill his boss, dump the thousands of dollars stashed in his safe into a suitcase, let Les Ferron disappear, head out of town and marry the daughter, have fun with her for a while, and then abscond with whatever proceeds he can make off with from the father.
As a reader of this kind of story many times before, you know that even though this sounds like a very good plan of action, something’s going to go wrong. What you don’t know is how and when, but when it does, boy howdy, does it ever.
Potential problems develop along the way. The girl in New Hope has a former young swain who is very jealous, and in New York Ferron has a girl friend who would do anything for him (see the title) but is also not at all inclined to give him up lightly.
In terms of the tale Keene tells, it’s a good one, but I think perhaps he let it develop a little too slowly. The real action doesn’t begin until about 100 pages of 130 in the Stark House edition. But as I suggested earlier, when things start falling apart for Ferron/Perrish, it’s like a force of nature that once started is impossible to stop.
Culminating, I feel obliged to add, in two final paragraphs which will be among the most devastating you will ever read in all of noir fiction. I guarantee it.
January 28th, 2018 at 1:25 am
Keene came into the paperback originals from a fairly successful career at the tale end of the pulps, and like Bruno Fisher, Gil Brewer, and a few others had a good run, if not always at the top houses. He lacks the ability or the obsession of a Goodis or a Thompson, but he still manages to maintain readability.
His work isn’t outstanding, but it is almost always entertaining and worth your time. This one has the sort of plot loved by paperback original crime writers, where the protagonist has a grand old time double-crossing and killing right up to the point all his plans go awry.
January 28th, 2018 at 3:36 am
I’m a big fan of Keene’s novel “Wake Up to Murder” and short story “Remember the Night” .These are actual detective stories, in which sleuths solve mysteries.
By contrast “Sleep with the Devil” sounds like a thriller, without mystery.
I keep meaning to read some of the pulp magazine short story collections put out by Ramble House.
January 28th, 2018 at 9:18 am
Keene may not have been a giant of the genre, but was consistently readable.
January 30th, 2018 at 7:28 pm
I wrote up a bibliography for Day Keene quite a while ago, and appended it to an installment of The Gold Medal Corner by Bill Crider in which he talked about a couple of Keene’s paperback novels.
Here’s the link:
https://mysteryfile.com/GM_Keene/Keene.html
January 30th, 2018 at 10:41 pm
I’ve just read this novel based on your review. It was a great read. I think I’ll read a couple more.
January 30th, 2018 at 10:43 pm
PS, The final two paragraphs were a killer!
November 24th, 2020 at 8:05 pm
[…] by David Laurence Wilson. This is a 3-in-1 edition with Sleep with the Devil (Lion, 1954; reviewed here) and Wake Up to Murder (Avon, 1952; reviewed here). Film: MGM, 1964; also released as The Love […]