ELLIOTT CHAZE – Wettermark. Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1969. No paperback edition.

   Cliff Wettermark is a reporter at shitty small town Mississippi paper.

   His life sucks. He can’t pay his bills. It’s just doldrums. Day after day of mediocrity and the slow bleed of failure.

   Then something happens. A guy robs the town bank.

   He just drives right up to the drive thru, hands the teller a note that says: ‘Gimme all your money. Rifles are trained at your head. Don’t hesitate. Give me all of the bills in your till immediately or you will be dead two seconds after I honk my horn.’ And she does. Hands him $10,000.

   It was that easy.

   Wettermark can’t let it go. He dreams about it.

   In a dream, he speaks with the robber:

   “The sunglasses were the blackest kind of black and very large, bulging like grasshopper eyes. The robber’s voice seemed to come from behind the glass, his mouth not moving at all. He had asked Wettermark how long it had been since Wettermark lived a really good day or night. Wettermark said he couldn’t remember but it was probably on furlough from Fort Benning in War II. The robber said was the trouble with everybody. They kept hoping for a string of good years; but while they were waiting, they didn’t live one good day and many didn’t have even a single fine hour. The robber said people were tricked by the lure of longevity, yet there was no crueler death than that of extreme old age and a hundred years would mean nothing if the span was composed of thousands of rotten, meaningless days. The robber invited Wettermark to examine the fabric of the past year and then state one clear reason for not taking the risk of robbing a bank. It was all a matter of logic. A man needed money in quantity. A glimpse of the green was not enough. The money was in the bank. It was not much of a gamble if the life you were living was drab.”

   Wettermark puts the dream aside, and continues his dull, boring life.

   He starts drinking again. And he’s assigned to a Senator’s press conference at the local college. He’s not paying much attention. Then the senator says, about the Vietnam war: “I believe some excellent reporting is being done over there; but at times the Pentagon paints too rosy a picture of the supply situation. That, of course, is all a part of the war, you don’t know your own side.”

   Wettermark, drunk, and drunk sick of the mendaciousness of it all, “was surprised to hear himself saying: ‘Why the hell shouldn’t you knock it if your side does something wrong?'”

   “The senator smiled at him, the tawny face as pleasant and relaxed as before. ‘Are there any more questions?'”

   “‘I asked you a question,’ said Wettermark.”

   “The TV reporter who looked like a Pekingese, whom Wettermark had not seen since the bank robbery, dropped his pencil. While he was bent over the side of his chair, he hit Wettermark on the leg and hissed: ‘This is a live interview, you creep.'”

   “Wettermark said to the senator who held onto the smile: ‘Tell me, sir, tell me in living color, if you would want to pile on the pressure if it was your ass over there in the jungle?'”

   “The TV reporter made a slashing gesture at the camera-man behind him and Wettermark arose from his seat, bowed to the assembly, a kind of half-bow. He hoped that his smile was faint and mocking. His head hurt and he knew he was going to be sick.”

   Wettermark is immediately fired. And now he really is screwed. His wife leaves him, he can’t pay his bills, he’s got no career prospects but one: Bank robber.

   So he plots. And he plots. And he does it.

   The first half of the book is a straight tale of the boring life of a small town police reporter. A tale that Chaze knew personally and well.

   The second half is a caper novel. Pulled off by someone with the skills of a Dortmunder. But it’s no joke from here on out.

   It’s real and it’s frightening and it’s…..well I don’t wanna tell you how it ends. But anyone who has read Black Wings Has My Angel knows that Chaze knows how to plot and write vividly of violence and of crime gone awry.

   In its own way, once the caper starts the novel is fully the equal of Black Wings. Which is saying a lot. Because Black Wings may be the best caper novel of all. But while Black Wings is dirty and swampy and belongs on a shelf with Whittington and Charles Williams and Jim Thompson — this one reads like the book of a completely different writer.

   The book credibly sounds like the voice of a near-do-well reporter who decides to rob a bank. Which is what it is. He’s educated. He’s cynical. He’s dissatisfied. And he’s incompetent and nervous. Just like you and me. Or me, at least.

   It’s a really good book that deserves to be in print.

   Another review here: https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=286