Mon 5 Sep 2022
Reviewed by Tony Baer: RAOUL WHITFIELD – The Virgin Kills.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
RAOUL WHITFIELD – The Virgin Kills. Knopf, hardcover, 1932. Quill, papernack, 1986. No Exit Press, UK, paperback, 1988.
“The Virgin” is the name of a yacht. It’s called that because there’s no first mate.
Yacht owner Eric Vennel invites a bunch of ‘friends’ to sail from NYC to Poughkeepsie on the Hudson to watch the regatta.
Vennel owes a bunch of money to the mob and has put in the fix on the regatta. Heavily favored California’s star rower gets stuck with a morphine syringe right before the race, spoiling their chances.
Unfortunately, the shot was too strong and the rower OD’s. Now the cops are involved, and Vennel has vanished, presumed dead. The remaining ‘friends’ aboard the yacht immediately become suspect, and the dead college boy’s rich father spares no expense in sending a fancy pants sleuth to find the killer.
I enjoyed it. Not my favorite Whitfield by a long shot — but it’s still Whitfield; his dialogue is credible and vintage and his prose is tight.
September 5th, 2022 at 8:36 pm
The problem is it just can’t compare to GREEN ICE or DEATH IN A BOWL though it is quite good on its own and does hold up well against his Temple Field books.
ICE is a tough pulp romp that compares well to Hammett’s RED HARVEST and BOWL is almost as good a hardboiled detective story as THE MALTESE FALCON. VIRGIN KILL just can’t compete with that good as it is.
September 5th, 2022 at 8:53 pm
David: Agreed. To what you said I’d add that it also can’t compete w/ the Jo Gar stories, which to me are, taken as a whole, almost as good as the collected OP stories. Though of course the Philippine venue makes it a bit apples and oranges.
September 5th, 2022 at 10:36 pm
The Jo Gar series is good but at no time did I ever consider the stories as almost as good as Hammett’s Op series. Hammett was on another level completely and Joe Shaw realized this and encouraged his writers to try and write like Hammett.
The writer I considered “almost as good” is Paul Cain but not anybody else except for Chandler of course.
September 6th, 2022 at 7:02 am
Walker: De gustibus. But hey. I love Paul Cain too. And any day I can talk about Cain and Whitfield and Hammett and Chandler is a good day for me.
September 6th, 2022 at 9:36 am
Tony, good response. I guess that’s why I’ve been following Steve’s Mystery*File since the early 1970’s.
September 6th, 2022 at 10:46 am
And we have been talking about Cain and Whitfield and Hammett and Chandler on and off all that time!
September 8th, 2022 at 10:14 am
From 2015, Mystery*File: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=31018
September 8th, 2022 at 11:20 am
Thanks for unearthing that old review of mine, Bill. When I went looking for it, I couldn’t find it.