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The Beautiful Trap
What had happened to police lieutenant Emmet Rafferty?He was a good cop, a family man, a cop who hated killers... but Rafferty went to the Chair...What happened to him?What led him into MURDER?
- GenresFiction
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
27 people want to read
About the author
Bill S. Ballinger
87 books12 followersBill S Ballinger received his B.A. in 1934 at the University of Wisconsin. From 1934 he worked in advertising, and as a radio and television writer. After traving Europe and the Near East, Ballinger moved to southern California, to take advantage of the television 'boom' of the 1950s as a script writer. Between the years 1977 and 1979 he was an associate professor of writing at the California State University, Norhtridge. In 1960, Ballinger received for his TV work Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 6, 2024
Originally published as Rafferty (1953), it was later reissued as a Signet Book #1134 as The Beautiful Trap (1954) is one of those great books that no one has ever heard of. Ballinger uses the Beautiful Trap to delve into standard noir themes of lust and obsession and the fall from grace of a a pillar of society. Ballinger though slowly and carefully walks the reader into this story, first offering up a narrative voice of one reporter who has recently returned stateside and has decided to reacquaint himself with an old buddy, but is flummoxed when the attitude of the people he encounters toward Emmet Rafferty is quite twisted. We are not as readers told what Rafferty has done or why this decorated policeman is suddenly persona non grata, but the intrepid reporter reaches out and tires to finagle an answer from Rose Pauli, the vixen who bewitched Rafferty or someone who knew her.
The conceit here is that suddenly we switch from the reporter’s narrative and perspective to that of good ol Rafferty himself and the story places itself out before us as we first lean that Rafferty is the best of the best, the cop on the beat who falls for the cute waitress on the night shift, that they marry, and move to New York where Rafferty is on the sprint up the ladder to success. But, as luck would have it, he is assigned to investigate one Rose Pauli, a voluptuous nightclub dancer who used to be the big thing for a robber. The thing is no one knows where the loot was stashed and maybe Rose knows and maybe Rafferty can shake it loose from her, but like the prize chump he goes and falls for her and thinking she wants money he can’t provide on a government salary, finds himself twisted so that he is no longer the boy scout he thought he was. He has to have the missing loot and will do whatever it takes to get it including springing Eddie Stack from prison and tracking his every move.
Rafferty slowly but surely in his desperate quest to make Rose happy turns from being the boy scout detective on the rise to something dirty and underhanded only to find that what she really wanted was not just the loot, but something akin to respectability. Rafferty slowly but inexorably descends into the depths of hell, tragically focused only on his obsession with Rose and throwing everything away in the process of trying to gain her heart.
Ballinger might raise familiar themes, but he does so with a lot of verve and builds up these themes till they are the overriding theme of the story. This is truly an unexpected gem.
The conceit here is that suddenly we switch from the reporter’s narrative and perspective to that of good ol Rafferty himself and the story places itself out before us as we first lean that Rafferty is the best of the best, the cop on the beat who falls for the cute waitress on the night shift, that they marry, and move to New York where Rafferty is on the sprint up the ladder to success. But, as luck would have it, he is assigned to investigate one Rose Pauli, a voluptuous nightclub dancer who used to be the big thing for a robber. The thing is no one knows where the loot was stashed and maybe Rose knows and maybe Rafferty can shake it loose from her, but like the prize chump he goes and falls for her and thinking she wants money he can’t provide on a government salary, finds himself twisted so that he is no longer the boy scout he thought he was. He has to have the missing loot and will do whatever it takes to get it including springing Eddie Stack from prison and tracking his every move.
Rafferty slowly but surely in his desperate quest to make Rose happy turns from being the boy scout detective on the rise to something dirty and underhanded only to find that what she really wanted was not just the loot, but something akin to respectability. Rafferty slowly but inexorably descends into the depths of hell, tragically focused only on his obsession with Rose and throwing everything away in the process of trying to gain her heart.
Ballinger might raise familiar themes, but he does so with a lot of verve and builds up these themes till they are the overriding theme of the story. This is truly an unexpected gem.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews