ROBERT EDMOND ALTER – Carny Kill. Gold Medal d1611, paperback original; 1st printing, 1966. Reprints: Black Lizard/Creative Arts, pb, May 1986; Vintage/Black Lizard, trade pb, March 1993.

   Let me state at the beginning that a novel of this type is not my customary reading of choice. Still, I was glad I read it. Alter has presented an absorbing setting and an engrossing albeit not wholly admirable main character.

   Leslie M. Thaxton, who prefers to be called Thax, seeks employment at Neverland in Florida, a borrowing of the Disneyland idea. This was, of course, before the construction of Disney World. One of the attractions is an old-fashioned carnival, and Thaxton, who has been a barker and prestidigitator, fits right in at the shell-game stand.

   Unfortunately, the owner of Neverland has married Thaxton’s former wife, a beautiful but unpleasant woman with a “cold, sensual, calculating look” who is a former knife thrower and has used Thax as an unwitting target. Even more unfortunately, the morning after Thaxton’s arrival his new boss is found among the alligators where the Swamp Ride is located, with one of his wife’s knives in his back.

   Thaxton is a suspect, along with his former wife. The evidence that she did it is so overwhelming that it is obvious that she didn’t do it. Luckily for her, a policeman with imagination is in charge and recognizes a frame-up.

   As pointed out previously, Thaxton is a most interesting character, with both depths and shallows. Well-read in the earlier adventure-type literature — particularly Robert Louis Stevenson — and intelligent, he also has a considerable chip on his shoulder and, whether the author intended it or not, is obviously a loser.

   He’s something of a philosopher, too, yet cannot see the parallel between his observations, “She smiled at both of us — a real earthy we-know-what-god-put-it-there-for-don’t-we-boys smile. She was about as tarty as they come,” and “I like bed. I like the female form. I damn well like the lust of female flesh — in bed, out of bed, anywhere.”

   Fawcett Gold Medal published this novel in those more innocent days when the “f” word was still being blanked out — presumably Black Lizard restores the missing letters — and the sex is suggested rather than explicit.

   (I will spare you my lecture as to how a useful word like “f—ing” has been so abused both orally and in print that it has become ,merely a weak and undefinable intensifier like “very.”)

   If you can accept Thaxton’s double standard, and even if you can’t, you should find this gripping reading.

Editorial Comment.   Following an article by Peter Enfantino on the primary M*F website, entitled “The AHMM Stories of Robert Edmond Alter,” is a nearly complete bibliography for the author. Follow the link, and tell the man behind the door that Steve sent you.