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Three Aces: The Gilded Hideaway / In At the Kill / Heat Lightning
THE GILDED HIDEAWAY
Robert West wants a change in his life. And he’s willing to stake it all for a chance to make that change. He steals a hundred thousand in cash from his uncle’s business, leaves his wife and friends behind, and heads for Mexico. He knows about a lawyer down there, Santos, who can guarantee him safety. All he has to do is pay Santos enough, and West is free to live the good life. That’s when he meets Mercedes. She is everything he wants in a woman—innocently captivating, willing to share her life with him. But in a land where anything can be bought for money, does Mercedes have her price as well? And once West meets that price, will he be able to live with himself in his new-found paradise?
IN AT THE KILL
When auctioneer Jonathan Knox finds out that a construction company has ripped up the pavement in front of city hall, then fixed the hole expecting the city to pay for it, he sees a golden opportunity. He knows that bails of paper were buried when the original sidewalk was laid back in 1906. And that within that paper might lurk some very rare stamps. So he buys the bundles, sight unseen, from the construction company. The only problem is, the bundles are missing. And when Knox starts searching for them, he uncovers a much larger plot, this one involving some old photos and a deadly game of blackmail.
HEAT LIGHTNING
Holly Reed has been raised rough in the Kentucky hills and knows a lot more about men than her young years would indicate. She certainly knows that Brandy Elliot, the local bootlegger, is interested in her. He makes that plain enough. But she doesn’t know love. Until the stranger comes to town, looking for a cabin. There’s something about him that attracts Holly. She gladly agrees to help clean for him just to be near him. But the city-bred Larry Carter is not all he seems. There is someone else in town that shares a past with him. And soon Brandy gets an eyeful when he keeps watch on Larry’s cabin. The hills already know lust, but before long, they will know violence as well.
Robert West wants a change in his life. And he’s willing to stake it all for a chance to make that change. He steals a hundred thousand in cash from his uncle’s business, leaves his wife and friends behind, and heads for Mexico. He knows about a lawyer down there, Santos, who can guarantee him safety. All he has to do is pay Santos enough, and West is free to live the good life. That’s when he meets Mercedes. She is everything he wants in a woman—innocently captivating, willing to share her life with him. But in a land where anything can be bought for money, does Mercedes have her price as well? And once West meets that price, will he be able to live with himself in his new-found paradise?
IN AT THE KILL
When auctioneer Jonathan Knox finds out that a construction company has ripped up the pavement in front of city hall, then fixed the hole expecting the city to pay for it, he sees a golden opportunity. He knows that bails of paper were buried when the original sidewalk was laid back in 1906. And that within that paper might lurk some very rare stamps. So he buys the bundles, sight unseen, from the construction company. The only problem is, the bundles are missing. And when Knox starts searching for them, he uncovers a much larger plot, this one involving some old photos and a deadly game of blackmail.
HEAT LIGHTNING
Holly Reed has been raised rough in the Kentucky hills and knows a lot more about men than her young years would indicate. She certainly knows that Brandy Elliot, the local bootlegger, is interested in her. He makes that plain enough. But she doesn’t know love. Until the stranger comes to town, looking for a cabin. There’s something about him that attracts Holly. She gladly agrees to help clean for him just to be near him. But the city-bred Larry Carter is not all he seems. There is someone else in town that shares a past with him. And soon Brandy gets an eyeful when he keeps watch on Larry’s cabin. The hills already know lust, but before long, they will know violence as well.
310 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2023
4 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Peter Twist
4 books1 followerPeter Twist coached in the National Hockey League for 11 years and is currently a consultant for several NHL players and agents. An exercise physiologist with a M.Sc and a specialization in Coaching Science, Twist has published over 400 papers, authored 10 books and 19 DVD’s on athlete development, while coaching over 700 professional athletes.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 27, 2023
A thoroughly entertaining collection of 3 short crime novels originally published by Ace Books in the 1950s.
The individual books aren’t all great, but they are all nicely representative of their specific sub-genres and that makes the collection a pleasure to read
The individual books aren’t all great, but they are all nicely representative of their specific sub-genres and that makes the collection a pleasure to read
April 5, 2024
Stark House’s Three Aces (A Trio of Ace Books) contains three Ace novels, beginning with Peter Twist’s The Gilded Hideaway. Peter Twist only published this one novel. Told in the first person, you get the narrative from one Robert West, a man who has the easy life on Fairwater Road(aptly named) with Doris and a cushy job making FHA loans for remodeling projects in his uncle’s firm, one he may someday inherit. But, as happens so often in this novels, something is missing in West’s life that makes it feel incomplete. He is tired of going to work every day. He is bored with Doris, sending her off packing to her sister’s for the weekend while he gropes the bar server Greta in his car. West has read a news article about a guy who held up the bank manager, forcing him to the bank to withdraw everything. West has heard talk from a coworker Finlay about an operator in Mexico, Samtos, who, for the right fee, can buy off anyone. There is nothing wrong with his life on Fairwater Road, nothing that hundreds of guys wouldn’t jump at changing places with him, but there was something empty for him at the heart of the middle-class American dream in the suburbs in the ticky-tacky identical houses on perfectly measured lots.
West’s scheme comes together quickly when he realizes how little scrutiny banks were giving FHA loans since the government insured them. It really wasn’t the bank’s money at risk. All he had to do was submit loan documents to a series of banks and pocket the money. The first one made him real nervous, but after that, it became easy. West gives little thought to what will happen when he takes off, to his wife Doris, to his uncle’s firm, to the banks he did business with. He has no moral qualms. He just wants the money in cold hard cash to carry with him to Mexico where he will pay Santos to keep the feds from extraditing him from Mexico. He will then live down there for the rest of his days, carefree, easy, with nothing to every worry about it.
The heart of this novel really opens up once West gets to Mexico City with his suitcases filled with cash. Mexico in many of the crime novels at the time is the place everyone runs to, thinking a few tiny payoffs will secure a life of bliss, but often finding that they have put their lives in the hands of smooth operators who will require every penny of their fortunes and their souls to boot. Indeed, Santos tells him when they meet that the does what he does for money and he is unscrupulous. “It would not be difficult or me,” he tells West, “even now, to take everything you have. You are a stranger here. I could have you murdered before morning, and now would know!” West should consider himself forewarned.
This is precisely what West ultimately finds – that money corrupts – and that once he has his bundles of cash, there is no one he can trust even one iota who won’t betray him. Even the woman he falls for in Mexico- Mercedes Ruhl- tells him quite bluntly that the prime attraction is the bundles of cash and that, once it runs out, she does too: “I would leave you when the money was gone,” she tells him bluntly. “Life is short,” she says, and “All the things that please me can be bought. You’re money won’t last.”
And, West was certainly warned about her too: “She shot her husband. Terrible man. He was a client of mine too. Liked to be beaten with whips – wore a crown of thorns around the house. Naturally called it suicide.” “Being bored with life is a dangerous disease,” Mercedes tells West and he has a hard time seeing her, “beautiful, finely made, talking so calmly about her husband’s murder.” “She was dressed in polka dots and moonbeams and looked like a prom date.”
This is where it turns from an ordinary hum-drum crime novel into a noirish descent to somewhere in the depths of hell complete with sadomaschistic scenes of beatings and whippings. West finds himself helpless on a chicle plantation in the Yucatan where expatriates have gathered to drink and lose their inhibitions while their money is sucked out of them.
Ultimately, this novel succeeds in demonstrating just what West has traded his humdrum life in the suburbs for and what a world he has entered where he can trust no one – or at least can trust them until his stolen money runs out.
In at the Kill (Ace, 1960) is one of those crime stories featuring a rank amateur masquerading as a private eye. In this case, that rank bumbling amateur is one Joseph Knox, the sole auctioneer and chief proprietor of the Green Barn auction house in Louisville, Kentucky. “He was a tall, rangy man in his middle thirties, with a long prominent nose, a wide thin-lipped mouth that was as amiable as a bear trap.”
There, he runs an office with his assistant, Elly Watson, a feisty feminist who objects to Police Lieutenant Ben Hardin Helm pinching her behind so much that she applies a pliers to the lieutenant’s behind to his dismay and thereafter flees the office in fear of the lieutenant’s wrath. “She was a strikingly pretty brunette who radiated innocence and virginity – a rank deception since Elly was neither innocent nor a virgin. In fact, she had been married, divorced, and still regarded men with a jaundiced eye.”
The mystery here concerns why some workmen dug a ten foot hole in front of city hall and then filled it in. But, Knox, given his wide knowledge of things of value and the history of Louisville, thinks he knows what it is all about and sets out to gain the rights to what he thinks was dug up — seven bales of wastepaper.
Knox is prepared to go to quite a bit of trouble for those bales of wastepaper, including breaking into and entering and searching an apartment, but that endeavor gets him in hot water when he finds the proverbial body in the bathtub, has to club his way out of the apartment, and anonymously report the body to the police. Hoping no one is the wiser, Knox thereafter breaks into and searches another house, this time clubbing one rather unforgiving lieutenant on his way out through a side window. Knox is not exactly a man on the run for a crime he did not commit, but if the lieutenant ever puts two and two together he just might start believing Knox is guilty of murder, assault, battery, and all manner of thievery.
Indeed, before the story is over it seems that half the prominent citizens of Louisville think Knox is the chief of all blackmailers, too. And, when he sends his pretty young secretary out to investigate things and she calls for help, Knox is a bit of a bumbling knight in shining armor, busting in and assaulting the lady of the house quite by accident.
McDowell’s In at the Kill is quite an enjoyable amateur-turned-detective mystery and it is too bad McDowell did not see fit to involve Knox and Elly in further adventures.
Heat Lightning by Wilene Shaw (Ace S-74; 1954) was one of seven crime novels that Virginia Harrison wrote under the name Wilene Shaw for Ace. It is probably not apt to call it a crime novel as it is more of a backwoods noir tale of lust and desire and any crime in the story is more a result of the goings-on between the residents than any nefarious knife thrust or bullet hole. The setting is a small Southern town awash in poverty. Holly Reed is the lead character although Shaw often turns the narrative to the thoughts and experiences of other characters so the reader gets to know half the town quite intimately. Holly is poor, uneducated, and probably a bit of what we now call special needs. She walked around town in a shapeless sackcloth brown dress barefoot, doing odd jobs for her neighbors for a few bucks.
As the story opens, we are told that Monday is always a big night for Holly Reed because she liked to stand inside the general store and watch the big city bus pull up. Usually the only one to get off the bus was Babs Melchior as no one except Babs could afford to go to the city to shop for nice clothes. Holly would watch the bus and dream “with that strange hungry ache in her stomach, heavy and sick on her shoulders, she would press her face against the glass of the window.” None of the men bothered to look at Holly who at twenty is really starting to feel the pangs of womanly desire in her loins. But the men never looked at her and, if they did, they never saw her, not the way they looked at Babs or even Holly’s mother, Alice. “And they didn’t look at any woman the way they looked at Nellie Byrd.” “Every time the bus stopped she imagined herself walking out of the store and climbing up the steps, then setting herself in into a rear seat.” “That was when she would not be Holly Reed any longer but a woman searching or something – the something that was strange, foreign, and desirous to her though she couldn’t say what it was.”
As the story goes on, we find that half the town is hopping in and out of the other half’s beds and running off before their spouses (particularly the ones with shotguns loaded and ready) find out. It might help to make out a chart of who is sleeping with whom and who Preacher Tincher isn’t sleeping with. The natural order of stuff though is upset when a stranger walks into town, one Larry Carter, allegedly a landscape painter from the city, who Holly oodles over, but he has something going for Babs, something that started long before when Babs was a failed actress who sold her time by the hour to various men before a G.I. found her and took her back to the small town where she became the town beauty queen leaving her past behind.
This type of small-backwoods-town story was quite popular in the Fifties, but most of these, including this one don’t really stand the test of time. It is primarily a gossip-type backwoods story with a bit of Holly coming of age. Of the three stories collected in this trio of Aces, this would be this reviewer’s least favorite.
West’s scheme comes together quickly when he realizes how little scrutiny banks were giving FHA loans since the government insured them. It really wasn’t the bank’s money at risk. All he had to do was submit loan documents to a series of banks and pocket the money. The first one made him real nervous, but after that, it became easy. West gives little thought to what will happen when he takes off, to his wife Doris, to his uncle’s firm, to the banks he did business with. He has no moral qualms. He just wants the money in cold hard cash to carry with him to Mexico where he will pay Santos to keep the feds from extraditing him from Mexico. He will then live down there for the rest of his days, carefree, easy, with nothing to every worry about it.
The heart of this novel really opens up once West gets to Mexico City with his suitcases filled with cash. Mexico in many of the crime novels at the time is the place everyone runs to, thinking a few tiny payoffs will secure a life of bliss, but often finding that they have put their lives in the hands of smooth operators who will require every penny of their fortunes and their souls to boot. Indeed, Santos tells him when they meet that the does what he does for money and he is unscrupulous. “It would not be difficult or me,” he tells West, “even now, to take everything you have. You are a stranger here. I could have you murdered before morning, and now would know!” West should consider himself forewarned.
This is precisely what West ultimately finds – that money corrupts – and that once he has his bundles of cash, there is no one he can trust even one iota who won’t betray him. Even the woman he falls for in Mexico- Mercedes Ruhl- tells him quite bluntly that the prime attraction is the bundles of cash and that, once it runs out, she does too: “I would leave you when the money was gone,” she tells him bluntly. “Life is short,” she says, and “All the things that please me can be bought. You’re money won’t last.”
And, West was certainly warned about her too: “She shot her husband. Terrible man. He was a client of mine too. Liked to be beaten with whips – wore a crown of thorns around the house. Naturally called it suicide.” “Being bored with life is a dangerous disease,” Mercedes tells West and he has a hard time seeing her, “beautiful, finely made, talking so calmly about her husband’s murder.” “She was dressed in polka dots and moonbeams and looked like a prom date.”
This is where it turns from an ordinary hum-drum crime novel into a noirish descent to somewhere in the depths of hell complete with sadomaschistic scenes of beatings and whippings. West finds himself helpless on a chicle plantation in the Yucatan where expatriates have gathered to drink and lose their inhibitions while their money is sucked out of them.
Ultimately, this novel succeeds in demonstrating just what West has traded his humdrum life in the suburbs for and what a world he has entered where he can trust no one – or at least can trust them until his stolen money runs out.
In at the Kill (Ace, 1960) is one of those crime stories featuring a rank amateur masquerading as a private eye. In this case, that rank bumbling amateur is one Joseph Knox, the sole auctioneer and chief proprietor of the Green Barn auction house in Louisville, Kentucky. “He was a tall, rangy man in his middle thirties, with a long prominent nose, a wide thin-lipped mouth that was as amiable as a bear trap.”
There, he runs an office with his assistant, Elly Watson, a feisty feminist who objects to Police Lieutenant Ben Hardin Helm pinching her behind so much that she applies a pliers to the lieutenant’s behind to his dismay and thereafter flees the office in fear of the lieutenant’s wrath. “She was a strikingly pretty brunette who radiated innocence and virginity – a rank deception since Elly was neither innocent nor a virgin. In fact, she had been married, divorced, and still regarded men with a jaundiced eye.”
The mystery here concerns why some workmen dug a ten foot hole in front of city hall and then filled it in. But, Knox, given his wide knowledge of things of value and the history of Louisville, thinks he knows what it is all about and sets out to gain the rights to what he thinks was dug up — seven bales of wastepaper.
Knox is prepared to go to quite a bit of trouble for those bales of wastepaper, including breaking into and entering and searching an apartment, but that endeavor gets him in hot water when he finds the proverbial body in the bathtub, has to club his way out of the apartment, and anonymously report the body to the police. Hoping no one is the wiser, Knox thereafter breaks into and searches another house, this time clubbing one rather unforgiving lieutenant on his way out through a side window. Knox is not exactly a man on the run for a crime he did not commit, but if the lieutenant ever puts two and two together he just might start believing Knox is guilty of murder, assault, battery, and all manner of thievery.
Indeed, before the story is over it seems that half the prominent citizens of Louisville think Knox is the chief of all blackmailers, too. And, when he sends his pretty young secretary out to investigate things and she calls for help, Knox is a bit of a bumbling knight in shining armor, busting in and assaulting the lady of the house quite by accident.
McDowell’s In at the Kill is quite an enjoyable amateur-turned-detective mystery and it is too bad McDowell did not see fit to involve Knox and Elly in further adventures.
Heat Lightning by Wilene Shaw (Ace S-74; 1954) was one of seven crime novels that Virginia Harrison wrote under the name Wilene Shaw for Ace. It is probably not apt to call it a crime novel as it is more of a backwoods noir tale of lust and desire and any crime in the story is more a result of the goings-on between the residents than any nefarious knife thrust or bullet hole. The setting is a small Southern town awash in poverty. Holly Reed is the lead character although Shaw often turns the narrative to the thoughts and experiences of other characters so the reader gets to know half the town quite intimately. Holly is poor, uneducated, and probably a bit of what we now call special needs. She walked around town in a shapeless sackcloth brown dress barefoot, doing odd jobs for her neighbors for a few bucks.
As the story opens, we are told that Monday is always a big night for Holly Reed because she liked to stand inside the general store and watch the big city bus pull up. Usually the only one to get off the bus was Babs Melchior as no one except Babs could afford to go to the city to shop for nice clothes. Holly would watch the bus and dream “with that strange hungry ache in her stomach, heavy and sick on her shoulders, she would press her face against the glass of the window.” None of the men bothered to look at Holly who at twenty is really starting to feel the pangs of womanly desire in her loins. But the men never looked at her and, if they did, they never saw her, not the way they looked at Babs or even Holly’s mother, Alice. “And they didn’t look at any woman the way they looked at Nellie Byrd.” “Every time the bus stopped she imagined herself walking out of the store and climbing up the steps, then setting herself in into a rear seat.” “That was when she would not be Holly Reed any longer but a woman searching or something – the something that was strange, foreign, and desirous to her though she couldn’t say what it was.”
As the story goes on, we find that half the town is hopping in and out of the other half’s beds and running off before their spouses (particularly the ones with shotguns loaded and ready) find out. It might help to make out a chart of who is sleeping with whom and who Preacher Tincher isn’t sleeping with. The natural order of stuff though is upset when a stranger walks into town, one Larry Carter, allegedly a landscape painter from the city, who Holly oodles over, but he has something going for Babs, something that started long before when Babs was a failed actress who sold her time by the hour to various men before a G.I. found her and took her back to the small town where she became the town beauty queen leaving her past behind.
This type of small-backwoods-town story was quite popular in the Fifties, but most of these, including this one don’t really stand the test of time. It is primarily a gossip-type backwoods story with a bit of Holly coming of age. Of the three stories collected in this trio of Aces, this would be this reviewer’s least favorite.
July 23, 2023
I haven't read all three of the novels in this triple feature yet. I've only read the first two.
THE GILDED HIDEAWAY - Published in 1955 this novel follows Robert West as he makes a couple of bad choices that lead him on a path of self destruction from a home in the suburbs to life on the lam in Mexico. This is one of those classic setups. West is bored. Bored with his job, bored with his wife, bored with looking at his face in the mirror. I often think of that, now old, Springsteen line "wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face" when I read these kind of novels. You have a few drinks, you look at a couple of women, you think about stealing some loot and how to get away with it and then...well that's how it all goes to hell. It's not a perfect novel but there are some cool scenes in it. One of them is a party that could happen in a David Lynch movie featuring a torch song, a gun fired and strange acts in the dark. There is no such thing as a fool-proof caper.
IN AT THE KILL - Originally published in 1960 as part of an Ace Double along with BLOODLINE TO MURDER, both by Emmett McDowell. This short novel features auctioneer, yes an auctioneer, Jonathon Knox acting as a detective of sorts, on the the trail of a series of missing stamps from the turn of the century. This has a preposterous (even for a mid-century crime novel) plot involving a sidewalk getting dug up in front of a court house. Under the sidewalk was supposedly a bunch of valuable stamps buried there along with bundles of trash. The search for the unearthed stamps lead to a blackmail plot involving nude photos of a couple of debutants back in the 20s. I had a hard time getting into this one. The actual mystery was fine, but there was a heavy dose of screwball slapstick forced into the mystery. The plot is too far-fetched and would have fallen apart in the real world. I know the "real world" is far removed from novels like this. Jonathan Knox likes to ogle women, as men did in these novels. He also manages to stay one step ahead of both cops and criminals. He has an assistant named Elly who is something of a kook. Just okay - worth 2 stars.
THE GILDED HIDEAWAY - Published in 1955 this novel follows Robert West as he makes a couple of bad choices that lead him on a path of self destruction from a home in the suburbs to life on the lam in Mexico. This is one of those classic setups. West is bored. Bored with his job, bored with his wife, bored with looking at his face in the mirror. I often think of that, now old, Springsteen line "wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face" when I read these kind of novels. You have a few drinks, you look at a couple of women, you think about stealing some loot and how to get away with it and then...well that's how it all goes to hell. It's not a perfect novel but there are some cool scenes in it. One of them is a party that could happen in a David Lynch movie featuring a torch song, a gun fired and strange acts in the dark. There is no such thing as a fool-proof caper.
IN AT THE KILL - Originally published in 1960 as part of an Ace Double along with BLOODLINE TO MURDER, both by Emmett McDowell. This short novel features auctioneer, yes an auctioneer, Jonathon Knox acting as a detective of sorts, on the the trail of a series of missing stamps from the turn of the century. This has a preposterous (even for a mid-century crime novel) plot involving a sidewalk getting dug up in front of a court house. Under the sidewalk was supposedly a bunch of valuable stamps buried there along with bundles of trash. The search for the unearthed stamps lead to a blackmail plot involving nude photos of a couple of debutants back in the 20s. I had a hard time getting into this one. The actual mystery was fine, but there was a heavy dose of screwball slapstick forced into the mystery. The plot is too far-fetched and would have fallen apart in the real world. I know the "real world" is far removed from novels like this. Jonathan Knox likes to ogle women, as men did in these novels. He also manages to stay one step ahead of both cops and criminals. He has an assistant named Elly who is something of a kook. Just okay - worth 2 stars.
September 24, 2023
Peter Twist's "The Gilded Hideaway" is an excellent tale of a middle class everyman who embezzles and flees to Mexico, albeit with a better conceived plan than most. Of course, it all goes to hell in a way that makes you regret this is Twist's only book.
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