Fri 11 Nov 2016
JOHN CREASEY – Hang the Little Man. Charles Scribners Sons, US, hardcover, 1963. Berkley F1280, US, paperback reprint, October 1966. First published in the UK: Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1963.
Although published in the early 1960s, Hang the Little Man has a really old-fashioned feel to it. That may be in part because the crimes involved are so relatively unimportant. A series of robberies from small neighborhood grocery shops (the little men of the title) are taking place all across London. All that are taken are cigarettes and whatever cash is found in the drawers.
Superintendent Roger “Handsome” West suspects that these thefts are not the actions of lone individuals, but rather that some mastermind is behind them. It is not until one woman alone in her shop is murdered that West’s superiors yield to his arguments and allow him to set up a task force to find out who’s responsible.
And somehow author John Creasey manages to build into his tale enough twists and turns to fill out a novel, and I feel I must warn you that not everyone manages to get through it alive or not seriously maimed, beginning with the first victim, a wife pregnant with the couple’s first child. Make that two victims.
It all makes for interesting but rather shallow reading, with an ending that comes with a huge explosion of action and confusion that sorts itself at the very end with some surprising … well, let’s say perhaps my suspicions were correct. Creasey had something up his sleeve all along.
November 11th, 2016 at 10:02 pm
My first Creasey was a West novel that opened in the Middle East with this attractive British couple on vacation getting involved with the kind of situation you would expect in a Hitchcock film … And then he killed them brutally.
I was hooked to the last page. Whatever his flaws he knew how to create attractive people, involve you in their problems, and drive home the suspense.
Shallow? Yes, it’s British pulp fiction, slick and fast paced, sometimes a tad sloppy, but Creasey was a born storyteller with a gift for creating attractive protagonists, and while the manipulation may be too obvious at times, it is so painless, an accompanied by enough thrills, I could never complain.
November 12th, 2016 at 2:35 am
Agreed. The first Inspector West that I read was …AT BAY (USA: THE BLIND SPOT), where the main character is temporarily blinded in an attack. I simply couldn’t just put the book down without finding how it ended, and I’ve never started a Creasey where that didn’t happen. His reputation suffered because of the incredible output, and his sales fell after his death for the simple reason that the second-hand market was so flooded with his stuff. Back in the ’80s there were omnibus editions of authors like Frederic Brown and Anthony Boucher which served as terrific entry points into their work. Time something similar was done for Creasey?