JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS – Lady with the Dice. Handi-Book #56, paperback original, 1946. Ramble House, hardcover/softcover, 2009. No prior publication known.

JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS Lady with the Dice

   Rogers was a prolific writer for both the pulp and slick-paper magazines, with hundreds of published stories and a handful of novels between 1920 and 1959, which is why I went searching for an earlier version of Lady with the Dice, but I came up empty.

   It reads very much like a pulp story, though, very much in the Cornell Woolrich vein, but Rogers is not nearly as effective as the writer who in my opinion was the ultimate master of overwrought and gripping suspense fiction.

   Or noir, if you will. And if you don’t believe in coincidence (see my previous review), then Lady with the Dice is not the book for you.

   It’s only 127 pages long, so you can read it in about the time you can watch a noir film of the 1940s — somewhere in between sixty and ninety minutes –- and once you reach the midway point, I guarantee that you’ll read faster and faster, about as fast as you can turn the pages.

   Or should I go back and rewrite that as “if you reach the midway point,” as I’m sure that purple prose like this is not for everyone. Here’s a lengthy passage from page 57:

   … Clothos, the Spinner, and Atropos, the Cutter, and Lachesis, the most dreadful of them all. Inexorable, immitigable, pitiless, the Caster of the Dice, which even the Fates themselves must obey, and no man can avoid.

   But even so, so much was allegory. The idea of there being any sensate and malignant power in the dice themselves which had caused Costovain his losses of the past year was completely ridiculous, of course. Unless he was out of his head, the old man must see that. Costovain had been extraordinarily unlucky in all his gambles, it was true. But there had been no fate in that. That kind of luck or unluck falls like rain on the just and unjust. A man who has thrown craps for twelve months may turn around and throw sevens for the next two years.

   Some background. Costovain is the heel who married his last wife for her money, and murdered her for it, a murder officially called a suicide. The “old man” referred to above is her father, now paralyzed and helpless and who cursed him with the vengeance of Lachesis. His daughter died on the twelfth day of the twelfth month on the twelfth stroke of the hour.

   It is now one year (twelve months) later, and Costovain has lost his last $1200 on 12 rolls of the dice, throwing boxcars (a pair of sixes) each time. He’s down to his last nickel, good for a single one way subway ride …

   Costovain is an utter cad, utter and absolute –believe me on this — nearly dwarfing any villain you can think of, and he deserves his fate – but he’s also extremely clever and may even get away with his latest plan, not knowing that when the Dice are against you, there’s nothing you can do about it. (Look up Lachesis on Wikipedia, for example.)

   Oddly compelling in spite of its flaws, slurs against blacks, and only superficial characterization, Lady with the Dice is designed to stick in your mind for a while. No classic by any means, but if you’ve read this far into the review, you just might enjoy the ride.


Previously reviewed on this blog:

    The Red Right Hand (by Geoff Bradley)
    The Red Right Hand (by Marcia Muller, from 1001 Midnights)