PETER RABE – Agreement to Kill. Gold Medal #670, paperback original; 1st printing, May 1957. Stark House Press, trade paperback, 2006 (published in tandem with My Lovely Executioner).

   I have in my collection nearly 300 original mystery/suspense/crime novels published by Gold Medal during the 1950s. Very few of them deal with detection in the classical sense, but in quality they often far outclass the pulp stories they are descended from. The types of stories are indeed the same pulpish stuff,with many of the same writers, their apprenticeship already served. Private eyes and tough hoodlums dominate.

   This is the first of Peter Rabe’s books that I’ve read. As far as I know, he came along after the pulps had gone. My impression is that he was popular (14 books in 5 years, for Gold Medal), writing largely from the criminal point of view, giving readers a realistic inside look into the hard and tough world of organized crime.

   Agreement to Kill is unusually strange. Jake Spinner, just released from prison, finds himself on the run for the shooting of the man who put him there. Running with him is Loma, the professional who really did the killing, on a contract from bosses in St. Louis. Loma is a cripple, an enigmatic clubfoot who never does anything for no good reason, no matter how temporarily. And Spinner? He thinks it may be time to change sides, and he wants a job and connections to the people in St. Louis.

   The ending reminds me of Cornell Woolrich. A guy and a girl are walking hand-in-hand into their future when fate intervenes. All in all, the book is very much off the beaten track, and the result is a puzzling piece of action that may either repel or wholly fascinate.

Rating: A minus.