Reviewed by TONY BAER:

   

JEROME ODLUM – Each Dawn I Die.  Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1938. To be published by Stark House Press as a Staccato Books imprint edition in September. (See comment #4.) Film: First National/Warner Brothers, 1939, withe James Cagney, George Raft.

   Frank Ross is a reporter digging up dirt on the corrupt local administration when he gets sapped by some goons and set up on a phony vehicular homicide rap. And sent up to prison for 20 years.

   “When you first came here, you imagined that every day would bring your release. Then you started figuring in weeks, then months. And now you’re beginning to feel it’s nearly hopeless. And you hate all the world and God and Jesus Christ for letting you in for a mess like this. You don’t want any part of them….  When you came here, you had no intention of adopting the code of the convict. But now you’re not only a convict by number and garb; you’re also a convict at heart. That’s what the dumb taxpayers and yard sprinklers and grass mowers and God and Jesus Christ and all the rest of the world have done for you. That’s what prison has made of you. The hell with all of them.”

   It’s a good prison yarn with plenty of gory details. Then the ending goes all Hollywood on you and everything’s smiles, rainbows and cotton candy. But until that point you’ve got a solid story of prisoners, the weasels running the prison and their succubae. But for the ending, I liked it.