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True story. In Summer 2002, I checked out the only Charles Williams novel found in my public library’s holdings, Man on a Leash. Some months later, I went back to recheck it out. No soap. The book (Williams’ last novel) had been taken out of circulation. An ex libris. Well, well. This anecdote illustrates to me how Charles William’s oeuvre has fast disappeared from today’s crime fiction radar. However, his fine works hardly deserve returning to their pulp origins in the form of recycled paper.
My oblique introduction to Charles Williams came years ago watching The Pink Jungle, a 1968 offbeat romance-adventure B-flick starring James Garner, George Kennedy, and Eva Renzi. Williams was credited as the screenplay writer. Adapted from Alan A. Williams’ novel, Snake Water, Williams managed to put in some snappy, quirky dialogue, especially Kennedy and Garner’s exchanges. The movie’s documentation is archived today with Director Delbert Mann’s papers at his alma mater, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. I just have to wonder if Williams, who had a wry contempt for Hollywood, left any squibs inked on the back of a script or memo.
Despite having launched his writing career in the early 1950s with Gold Medal (who also published other hardboiled luminaries such as Jim Thompson and Gil Brewer), Charles Williams wasn’t nominated for an Edgar until 1972 (Best Paperback Original for And the Deep Blue Sea). Instead, I Charge More For Murder by Frank McAuliffe captured the honors. And yet, at the peak of his creative powers, Williams wrote Hill Girl (1951) which sold an astonishing 2.5 million copies.
But self-advertisement and self-advancement weren’t really Williams’ forte. His literary agent Don Congdon has described the former merchant marine sailor as "a hard luck kind of guy" and "genuinely modest." Willaims himself once said about writing: "Sometimes I wouldn't mind giving it all up and just being a beach bum." The dust jacket photo on Leash shows a beetle-browed, stolid-faced gentleman uncomfortable in the conservative coat and tie he’s donned for the occasion. To his friends and associates, he was known as "Charlie."
After leaving Gold Medal in the late 1950s, Williams with his agent went on to publish successful hard cover novels at Viking Press, Macmillan, Dell, and, of course, G. P. Putnam who published Leash in 1973. Williams still managed to please his most ardent admirers. The noted American mystery critic Anthony Boucher reviewed his paperbacks for NYTBR. He was also reviewed favorably in Library Journal for 1963’s Dead Calm.
However, Williams’ readership continued to dwindle. His book sales flagged. Woody Haut has proposed that Williams was unable to tailor his fiction to suit the age of protest, the 1960s. The grand golden era of the pulps had passed. The always observant Williams himself satirized the washed up pulp writer in his 1966 Don't Just Stand There: "It wasn't lack of talent, but simply a matter of early conditioning and the fact he was a little too old to adapt."
Posthumous fame for Williams has been negligible. Harold Matson, the literary agency handling the Charles Williams Estate, oversaw reprints with Simon and Schusters’ Blue Murder imprint and Harper & Row’s Perennial Library Harper Suspense line. One Williams short story, "Flight to Nowhere," first printed in September 1955’s issue of Manhunt, was collected into Maxim Jakubowski’s 1996 The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction anthology.
The 1989 film Dead Calm adapted from Williams’ potboiler by the same title is competent but uneven; as Washington Post critic Desson Howe has noted, the screenwriter lopped out "too much character motivation and suspense." Williams was co-credited with Nona Tyson for the screenplay adaptation of his novel Hell Hath No Fury into the 1990 movie The Hot Spot. Again, this Dennis Hopper-directed picture left many viewers unfulfilled. The RKO noirish atmosphere, as Roger Ebert observed, translated fine. Don Johnson as the lead was thought to be miscast. Hopper is said to have tinkered too much with moods and methods later fused into his bad guy role for David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Perhaps Jennifer Connelly’s buff scene is perhaps best remembered from The Hot Spot.
Maxim Jakubowski has written: "Charles Williams is still one of the most neglected authors of the paperback original Golden Age. His tales of sea, backwoods and obsession still ring for me a strong noir chord unlike any other. Yet another example of an American classic better known in Europe than in his own language." Williams’ sustained popularity overseas is puzzling. Leash was his 18th novel translated into French. Gallimard's celebrated Serie Noire printed his novels in France. At least eight Williams titles have been translated into Danish. Author Jiro Kimura notes that three Charles Williams novels appeared in Japanese. German, Spanish and Italian translations were also available. As further evidence of this paradox, Williams scripted the top-notch French film noir, Joy House, from Day Keene’s novel in 1963. Five years later, however, he wrote the U.S.-made The Pink Jungle, only an also-ran.
Parallels have been drawn between Charles Williams and the more renowned mystery novelist John D. MacDonald. For instance, Max Allan Collins has described Williams: "Though a number of major films have been made from his work, Charles Williams remains the best kept secret in (what's now being called) noir fiction. His work rivals the best of Jim Thompson, who was never the polished professional that Williams was, and he should be considered at least the near-equal of John D. MacDonald, who himself ranked Williams at the top of the Gold Medal era heap." Indeed, in an interview with Ed Gorman, John D. MacDonald said he believed Williams had been undeservedly neglected. Williams in some respects eclipsed MacDonald’s vast talent. Mario Taboada, for instance, believes Williams’ "way of maintaining tension throughout" exceeded John D.’s narrative development.
Other current crime writers agree Williams was a superior writer given short shrift. "Williams was at least as good as his more well-known contemporaries if not always better." Country noir author Daniel Woodrell in a 1994 NYTBR referred to the "under-appreciated Charles Williams." Jason Starr, a young noir writer, has declared Williams was an early influence. Charles Williams is well thought of and eagerly discussed by members on Bill Denton’s rara-avis list.
Ed Gorman has noted that "Williams was quiet and possessed of a melancholy that imbued each of his tales with a kind of glum decorum." His wife since 1939, Lasca, died of cancer in the early 1970s. This provided the biographical backdrop for Williams’ final book. Nona Tyson, an assistant to Steve Spielberg and who’d also helped out on The Hot Spot script, drew Williams out of his funk to finish Leash for 1973 publication. Encouraged, the author relocated to the Pacific Northwest but loneliness, lousy health, and soupy elements made it no go. He was unable to polish off the next manuscript, returned to LA, dejected. In 1975, he committed suicide. Understandably, details were not forthcoming from his agent or immediate family. No full-length study on the man or the writer is available.
Does Leash, then, reveal something new developing in Williams' vision? Yes, I believe it does.
It was brought out by G. P. Putnam under the Red Mask Mystery imprint that also included such authors as Martin Cruz Smith, Thomas B. Dewey, Michael Z. Lewin, Leslie Edgley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Lillian O’Donnell. Coincidentally, short story writer Jack Ritchie published a short fiction in the December 1958 issue of AHMM by the same title. As Bill Crider has correctly suggested, Leash was "not up to Williams’ Gold Medal novels." Ed Gorman also considers Williams "was probably at his best in his books set at sea."
Still, Leash, as Williams’
final foray in print, presents some intriguing themes and revealing insights. It
clocks in at his usual Gold Medal 55,000-60,000 word limit. Its similarity with
his Gold Medal output ends there, however. Roughly speaking, Williams divided
his settings into sea capers (Dead Calm, The Sailcloth Shroud, Scorpion
Reef) and rumbles in the sticks (Big City Girl, Hell Hath No Fury,
and Hill Girl). Leash, at least for the first half, straddles its
emphasis on both these settings.
The protagonist, Eric Romstead, a 36-year-old resident of San Francisco, returns to the Nevada desert town of Coleville to investigate his father’s brutal murder. Captain Gunnar Romstead, a merchant marine captain, has been shot execution-style and dumped at a landfill. Eric’s vengeful quest is to hunt down his father’s assassins while making peace with a father-son rift driven by mutually fierce, independent personalities.
Father and son have rousing maritime exploits, only not shared. Gunnar performed a daring rescue at sea and ran supplies in enemy waters during World War Two. Eric, an accomplished sailor, has a boat dealership in the Caribbean, a cover for his CIA activities. Despite their strong ties to the sea referred to throughout the novel, the bigtop drama is played out in a desert town. Eric first regards it while at his father’s gravesite: "It was full daylight now, the sky washed with pink and gold above the waste of flinty hills and desert scrub to the east, while to the westward the thrusting escarpments of the Sierra stood out sharply in the clear desert air."
Leash is very much a male-centric plot. Father and son, as it were, are tested in this desert town. Both are kidnapped and square off the same nemesis, an electronics wizard, who demands a hefty ransom each time. In fact, the sea has brought them this trouble set in motion by Gunnar's arrest of a man smuggling heroin aboard his vessel. Williams strives to establish an order in this arid, desolate landscape and is not wholly successful. He seems more at ease in employing such settings as seaport cities like San Francisco or the rural South of his youth (birthplace is San Angelo, Texas).
The novel’s second portion relies on lots of technical description of explosives and electronics to build suspense and establish expertise, preceding Tom Clancy’s techno-thrillers by almost a decade. Here the prose is concrete, tactile, and muscular: "He gestured toward the confused litter on Brubaker’s desk, the still bloody and dust-smeared automatic, his own statement, now typed out and signed, and half a dozen of the scorched aluminum tubes, a hand-written letter and some more papers, and a flat plastic bag of heroin."
Mileage is computed. Boat specs are given. Eric sums up the novel’s evil deed: "Having somebody by the balls is not just an expression." Williams brings in the D.B. Cooper caper (a man parachuting out of a Boeing 727 at 10,000 feet with a satchel of money) to underscore his own bad guy’s MO. The nifty, nasty device is remindful of one used by villains in a Richard S. Prather paperback. Enough said. I don’t want to be a spoiler.
Lee Horsely has written eloquently on Williams’ vibrant, complex femme fatale, particularly in his mid-1950s Gold Medal titles. Leash deviates from this standard. The female characters are pretty much reduced to flat or stock characters. Eric’s girlfriend in San Francisco, Mayo, waits around for his return, making perfunctory appearances at the book's start and ending. Paulette Carmody, a wealthy divorcee who teams up with Eric out in the desert, essentially embodies the 1970s version of a tough, wise-cracking dame.
One thing not missing from Leash is Williams' trenchant humor. He studs the prose with great one liners ("long as a whore’s dream," "needing younger and younger girls to get it off the runway," "he had a fist like a twelve pound frozen ham" ). There are nice turns of phrase ("in the boundless hush his shoes made little plopping sounds"). And how about this wonderful zinger: "I'll kiss your ass at half time in the Rose Bowl"? Furthermore, Williams' descriptions and characterization do not suffer in this Mojave Desert setting he tries out for size. Finally, the climax in Leash unwinds in typical Williams' taut yet restrained fashion.
What novels Charles Williams may've produced in the 1970s is, of course, speculative and perhaps it is a bit indulgent to guess. Leash suggests an attempt to reach beyond the hardboiled/noir comfort zones he'd erected in the 1950s into the late 1960s. While perhaps not a turning point in the author’s output, it reads more like a modern suspense novel than a traditional hardboiled book. References are made to the CIA and FBI. Pet phrases like "chauvinist pig" are used. Women are minor players to elevate the men to near-hero status. Still, the Williams hallmarks remain intact. The story is vigorously told; the action sequences are clean and crisp; the mystery plot is built line by line. Eric Rumstead becomes a sympathetic main character.
You don't come away with the impression after reading the novel that the author was tapped out or penning his swan song. In sum, the man on a leash, was not Charles Williams. He was well on his way to adapting to the times.
Copyright© 2003 Ed Lynskey
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ED
LYNSKEY's
crime short fiction has appeared in such online venues as HandHeldCrime, Plots
With Guns, Judas, The 3rd Degree, Hardluck Stories, The
Murder Hole and others. Ed Lynskey has three novels making the usual rounds:
The Dirt-Brown Derby, Pelham Fell Here, and The Blue Cheer.
Contact Ed