Tue 15 Feb 2011
DAY KEENE – Wake Up to Murder. Avon 660, reprint paperback, 1955. First publication: Phantom Book #513, digest paperback, 1952. Later printing: Berkley G258, paperback, 1959; cover art: Robert Maguire.
Keene continues to impress me as a writer. Don’t be thrown off by the sleazy cover of an overripe playgirl about to fall out of her snuggies. It isn’t (and yet is) that kind of story.
Mostly it’s he story of an everyday joe, earning a crummy $62.50 a week doing legwork for a criminal attorney, trying to make ends meet on a GI mortgage. He’s fired on his birthday, which his wife doesn’t remember, and he goes out on a drunk, waking up with $10,000 is a hotel room with a girl not his wife.
The nightmare continues. Murder, kidnapping, the mob, the cops — he’s caught in between, given just enough rope. There is not the overbuilding sense of catastrophe of Woolrich, but the quieter despair of failure, the misery of loneliness and rejection. One must plod on. Keene gives a nudge to the little guy. And comes up with an ending that might catch you with your pants down.
[UPDATE] 02-15-11. The only editing I did was to replace a badly situated comma by a dash, and a change of one preposition to another. Do I remember this book? No, not at all, more’s the pity.
If it wasn’t obvious from the description, it was the Avon paperback that I read, but I’ve supplied you with images of all three covers. For whatever reason, I kind of like the Avon one.
February 15th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Keene was one of those workhorse writers of the period, consistently pretty damn good, and once in a while something more. Some were more successful than others, some less — Gil Brewer and Richard Deming fall into the category as do quite a few of the Gold Medal, Dell First Edition, and Ace Double writers.
At the top of the heap there are the cult writers like Jim Thompson and David Goodis, and just beneath them the likes of Wade Miller, Dan Marlowe, Peter Rabe, John McPartland, Dan Cushman, and Ovid Demaris. Keene, Brewer, and Deming I rank just below that.
Above them and slightly removed by success — and sometimes ability —- were writers like MacDonald, Prather, Aarons, Atlee, and a few others.
But Keene was almost always a worthy read, though to be fair I can’t think of a title or book that so stands out that I can access it without making a bit of an effort. Mostly I recall a reliable and readable writer who never really seemed to write that one book that I couldn’t forget.
That’s no small accomplishment. Considering the competition at the time to simply have stood out enough to be remembered is something of a tribute.
February 16th, 2011 at 1:38 am
On that first cover, it’s looks like they just killed Poirot. I guess he found out too much!
February 16th, 2011 at 2:11 am
You’ve got a good eye there, Curt. Now write the novel!
February 16th, 2011 at 10:13 am
That’s not Poirot. That’s Philo Vance. And I say, “About damn time!”
Here’s another forgotten Day Keene that should be reprinted by Hard Case Crime. I can’t believe they did VALLEY OF FEAR! (Could this be where Philip MacDonald found his alias of “Martin Porlock”?) Never thought of Holmes as hardboiled even in that novel. But Hard Case is streamlining now with only a four books per year instead one a month. Hope they can hang in there.
November 24th, 2020 at 8:16 pm
[…] 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 […]