This 1962 edition of Horace McCoy's No Pockets in a Shroud was clothed in the typically gritty Penguin Crime design sensibility of the time featuring a murky photograph of a newspaper in a monochrome gutter. Oh to have been a fiction cover designer in the early 1960s.
But Penguin often published earlier titles. It's an old game: I start reading and try to pick the original publication date. There are usually plenty of period clues, but sometimes few.
*
Reporter Michael Dolan walks into his managing editor's office to be told his story has been spiked: commercially 'sensitive'. The manager of the baseball team that has deliberately thrown a series has connections. Dolan resigns, sets up his own newspaper, having a list as long as your arm of corruption ready to print: all the stories his former employer refused to run. The corrupt baseball series story is followed by revelation of the death of the husband of the woman with whom Dolan has had an ongoing affair. The heat is on.
A subplot sees Dolan’s amateur theatre company taken over by arts bureaucrats who turn it into an establishment company after its initial glowing notices make it too successful. The bureaucrats freeze out the non-paid amateurs.
Affairs and jealousy abound. Shootings and murders puncture the pages.
Then the big one: Dolan stumbles on an organisation of 'crusaders' peopled by leading citizens who take the law into their own hands. He attends their covert meeting (wearing the group's cape supplied by an sympathetic insider police officer). Dolan witnesses members curiously greeting each other with Nazi salutes. He makes notes of identity, writes the story, publishes.
But no happy ending.
After the headline 'Leading Citizens of Town Head Crusaders' hits the streets, Dolan exits his office late at night heading down an alley to the parking station.
by Horace McCoy
Penguin Crime 1962
Originally published by Arthur Barker Publishers, 1937.
(1937? The Nazi salutes are the only real signifier of pre-war unrest. Otherwise the plot could have come straight out of the free-love 1960s.)
But Penguin often published earlier titles. It's an old game: I start reading and try to pick the original publication date. There are usually plenty of period clues, but sometimes few.
*
Reporter Michael Dolan walks into his managing editor's office to be told his story has been spiked: commercially 'sensitive'. The manager of the baseball team that has deliberately thrown a series has connections. Dolan resigns, sets up his own newspaper, having a list as long as your arm of corruption ready to print: all the stories his former employer refused to run. The corrupt baseball series story is followed by revelation of the death of the husband of the woman with whom Dolan has had an ongoing affair. The heat is on.
A subplot sees Dolan’s amateur theatre company taken over by arts bureaucrats who turn it into an establishment company after its initial glowing notices make it too successful. The bureaucrats freeze out the non-paid amateurs.
Affairs and jealousy abound. Shootings and murders puncture the pages.
Then the big one: Dolan stumbles on an organisation of 'crusaders' peopled by leading citizens who take the law into their own hands. He attends their covert meeting (wearing the group's cape supplied by an sympathetic insider police officer). Dolan witnesses members curiously greeting each other with Nazi salutes. He makes notes of identity, writes the story, publishes.
But no happy ending.
After the headline 'Leading Citizens of Town Head Crusaders' hits the streets, Dolan exits his office late at night heading down an alley to the parking station.
... he smelled the odor of orange rinds and coffee grounds. ... for no reason that he could understand he was frightened ... The point of light that was the alley rushed towards him with terrifying speed, red and roaring and utterly unstoppable. ...That's it. Last sentence of the book:
The the top of his head flew off, and he fell face downwards across the garbage can, trying to get his fingers up to hold his nose.No Pockets in a Shroud
by Horace McCoy
Penguin Crime 1962
Originally published by Arthur Barker Publishers, 1937.
(1937? The Nazi salutes are the only real signifier of pre-war unrest. Otherwise the plot could have come straight out of the free-love 1960s.)
Aahh... that last sentence! Cringeworthy, as you say no happy ending. It certainly sounds like a good read though.
ReplyDeleteYes, a touch of pulp in what is a surprisingly good read.
ReplyDelete