The Box

by Peter Rabe

Quinn thought he had all the angles figured. After all, taking over the Organization should be a piece of cake for such a smart guy. But what he didn’t figure was that boss Ryder would stuff him in a large crate with enough food and water to sustain him - and ship him around the world. When the freighter ports at the North African town of Okar, the captain of the boat decides it's time to unload the box. It's starting to make noises, and it smells bad. What emerges from this wooden coffin looks barely human. But once Quinn recovers, he starts to look around. Is this a new chance at life, or an opportunity to cash in on another racket, halfway around the world?

Genres: Noir, Crime

Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Peter Rabe aka Peter Rabinowitsch, was a German American writer who also used the nom de plumes Marco Malaponte and J.T. MacCargo (though not all of the latter's books were by him). Rabe was the author of over 30 books, mostly of crime fiction, published between 1955 and 1975.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Fierce and intense - German American author Peter Rabe's 1962 crime thriller, The Box.

We're in the sweltering town of Okar along the North African coast, forty miles from Tripoli. The Englishman in charge of the pier where a freighter is currently unloading its cargo is roused from siesta to oversee the operation.

Whitfield the Englishman demands to know the nature of the emergency. The captain tells Whitfield his crew in the hold reported something very strange: a bad smell coming from a box twice the size of a telephone booth, a box, the captain insists, that must be unloaded here in Okar.

Whitfield fumes, calls for port of origin and destination. The Captain looks at his papers and says, "Queer, isn't it. Port origin, New York. Destination: New York." For Whitfield, this whole mess with the box stinks like a heap of camel shite both literally and figuratively. But something must be done since the captain leaves the port within hours. Finally, the captain gives the order - Open it!

And open it they do. The shock - the box contains a man, a still very much alive man. He's taken to the local hospital and does not talk for several days.

Turns out, the man in the box is an American lawyer by the name of Quinn. We quickly learn Quinn's backstory: at some point in his career back in New York, Quinn switched from law to outlaw. But Quinn wound up in a fix. As one mob boss tells Quinn: "You were hired to be smart in the organization, not stupid, you shyster, not stupid enough to try and slice yourself in!"

The punishment dished out for Quinn to learn his lesson: a trip around the world by sea on a freighter in his own special compartment: a box. The boss tells Quinn not to worry, the box is stocked with food and water. If you make it back to New York, one thing's for sure: you'll be a changed man. If you don't, well, that's the way it goes.

Following his release from the hospital, the four main players in Quinn's life: Whitfield, the man legally responsible for Quinn (actually, Quinn stays in the Englishman's apartment), Remal, town mayor and head of the local smuggling operation, Turk the Arab who looks to Quinn as a source of power and Bea, a beautiful, wealthy European lady who takes a special liking to Quinn.

It shouldn't come as a surprise the presence of Bea, short for Beatrice, adds huge helpings of zeal and ardor to the developing drama. Quinn meets Bea for the first time in the town's main dining room:

"She did not answer anything but closed her eyes for a moment and kept smiling. She sat still like that as if feeling her own skin all over. Now she also had a face like a cat, thought Quinn. I can see her lie in the sun like a cat, the way they lie and you want to touch them. And the cat face, very quiet and content, with cat distance.
"You know," she said, and opened her eyes. "I like to be looked at."
Quinn finished his Scotch, put the glass down, and felt light-headed.
"In that case," he said, "you, looking the way you do, should have a good time of it all day long."

Worth repeating: The Box packs a wallop, a tale of ferocious intensity and economy since each scene and every bit of dialogue is cut down to the literary bone as Peter Rabe explores themes of love and hate, life and death, loyalty and betrayal under the African sun. And also African nights where acts of violence such as beatings, stabbings, kidnappings, rape are more readily concealed.

Quinn and Whitfield drive to the consul in Tripoli where Quinn is told it will take a month to process the needed papers. Meanwhile, he must remain in Okar. Quinn reflects, "But what to do, what to do, staying a month in a truly foreign place, where no one meant anything to him, or everyone was somehow beyond him? How did I do it before, what did I do, filling the time and finding some tickle in it? A month of nothing."

Nothing, you say? Quinn's month in Okar is anything but nothing. After all, Peter Rabe is known for crime stories that are tough, bitter, real, powerful and compelling. According to lifelong Rabe fan and author Ed Gorman, "He told the truest gangster stories, no doubt about that. He knew how the mob worked and how mob people thought." Since the mob put Quinn in the box in New York, you can bet the mob doesn't go away just because Quinn happens to be in some small town in North Africa.

Quinn's tale takes tumbles that are both bitter and powerful. "First Quinn sat, and it was as if he were blind with confusion. But this did not last. He sat and was blind to everything except his hate for the laugh, and for his own stupidity. Because, for a fact, Quinn was not new to this. Neither to the contest with the man, Remal in this case, nor to the simple, sharp rules of the game: that you don't go off half-cocked, that you don't threaten unless you can hit." Will Quinn work himself up to the point where he's capable of hitting, of striking back? For each reader to discover.

Eros and Thanatos, love and death, perform a furious dance in The Box right up till the final page. The Box, an existential novel, a thrilling novel, a novel that, as the saying goes, blew me away. The Box is my first Peter Rabe and, I can assure you, I'll be reading and reviewing more Peter Rabe.


Peter Rabe, 1921 - 1990

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

At one point in time, one of the more clever punishments that the Mafia meted out to those who disobeyed orders (at least according to Peter Rabe) was to knock the offender out, place him in a coffin-sized crate with jars of food and water, and ship him off on a cargo ship on a round trip tour of the world. If the offender survived, he would be humbled and beaten. And, no longer a threat.

This is a story of one poor soul set adrift on such a journey and how he survives when he is prematurely rescued from the darkness and filth in his living coffin.

The box serves as a metaphor for the gangster life as well as a physical prison and the psychological question is whether he really survived the box, whether he can escape its constraints, is he the same person now.

This is certainly a pulp tale about organized crime, but it has a very different feel and format than most pulp crime novels. It's a solid tale about a man coming back to life in a strange new world, but it may not appeal to everyone.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

02/2018

This has to do with an American gangster who, as punishment, is put in a box and shipped around the world. He is given water, sleeping pills and freeze dried food. So it sounds fine, except that he must have to lay in his own waste. Still, it's an elaborate method for giving a criminal a year's time out, and not entirely believable. He gets out in North Africa and spends time there and Italy, a criminal fish out of water.

[Larry Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Box by Peter Rabe, published 1962, reconstructs a Mafiosa punishment/lesson - the offender, Quinn is placed in a box placed on a freighter and shipped, in this case from NYC… …ports of call -North Africa, Tel Aviv, Alexandria, Madagascar food and water provided, self contained in the box along with the captive’s excretions, final destination returning in 1 year back to NYC.

Journey interrupted prematurely in a small town- “over Okar it is still a very sharp wind. It does not blow all the time but it is always expected, fierce with heat and very gritty. The sand bites and the heat bites, and on one side the desert stops the town and on the other the sea shines like metal.” The Box discovered- opened…emerging -Quinn, witless and raging in his filth. Quinn leaves the box of his punishment to decide the next box -of his choosing…

Jars from the box. “Now they were completely his and worth money, and even if it was pennies only, the difference was big. “Here lies the start of it. The bent, bumped and humble beginnings of a great fortune, no less. And there you are, born in a box, raised in a gutter. Next he owns the gutter, next he owns everything that floats, crawls or swims in the gutter. — “Let’s say a buck apiece,” said Quinn.
“Let’s say I give you five dollars for the lot,” said Whitfield, “which is a veritable fortune in Okar. And all because you were, so to speak, shipped to me and I feel responsible in a way, though don’t ask me why. “You can sell me the bleedin’ cans for eight dollars the lot, an outrageous price as I told you, a love price, Quinn. But then I don’t love anyone anyway and so can afford it. Deal?” “Deal.”

Out. “After the sirocco comes through and then disappears over the water, there is often a motion of slow, heavy air. Nobody feels it move in, but it is there, like a standing cloud, a mass of heat. This phenomenon, in a Western climate, might mean a thunderstorm and release. But not in Okar.” — “Quinn thought. Got to get away now. Nothing holds as still as I’ve been holding still and I don’t know how but it can’t be much longer.”

Quinn ignores the mayor’s curfew. “The Arab quarter, Quinn discovered, was not very large. He knew with an uncomplicated certainty he would find his man. Or Turk would find him. It was also very simple in his mind why he had to see Turk. There is a rat here whom I can understand. “You’re talking about Remal,” said Quinn. “Of course. He who had them beat you up.” “You seem to know everything.” “Almost.” “Is that how you lost your teeth, he beat you up?” “No. I was speaking in a manner of speaking,” said Turk. “He beats me in some other way.” “How does a strong man beat a weak one?” said Turk. “He ignores the weak one. He beats me in that way.” -“The night’s beating, the off-hand treatment by Remal — all that came back now as a clear, sharp offense, like a second beating, not of the body this time, but something worse. Like I didn’t exist, it struck Quinn. And this time, without moving a muscle, a cold hate, which seemed very familiar, moved into Quinn, settled there and started to heat.” -“the talk that has been about you, that you must have been somebody with the big-business criminals in your country. “Go on.” “I would like to see how a man like you deals with a person like Remal. That’s all.”

Ill suited. “The liqueur was red and smelled like sugar and the tea was yellow and smelled like flowers. And I belong here, thought Quinn, like I belong in a box. Both don’t fit. But he didn’t think any of that through and asked something else. -Bad Mohammedan, thought Quinn. He drinks. Bad Westerner, thought Turk. He sits and does nothing, like me, but he feels badly about it. It was then Quinn got up. “All right,” he said. “Show me the way out of here, Turk.”

Casual, common & horrific. “There was a small, low table and a very young girl lay on top of it. -the girl on the table who acted as if she were not there, the men in the room, and things like ropes and wires, perhaps the most delicate parts of which they were made. And Remal trades in this. I drop out of a box, thin-skinned like a maggot, and a cold bastard like Remal, moving the ropes and wires inside his anatomy, steps on me. “Let’s go,” said Quinn —“Shut up. Get that one. Borrow her. Pay the captain for the loan of the cargo he’s got on the table there.” “That won’t be necessary, I don’t think. Just a little token, perhaps, but there is no real price.” “But there will be,” Quinn said to no one in particular. “There most certainly will be,” and he wiped his face because he was sweating again, feeling a sharp, sudden anger.”

Two things. “All I want from you are two things. One, information.” “What do you wish to know?” “Nothing right now. Just listen, huh?” Turk didn’t understand that either. “And two, I might need another set of eyes, like in the back of my head, so I don’t get jumped in some dark alley.” — “so he had made another small move, still without seeing which way he was tending.”

To the mayor. “And this merchandise talks. She was going out on a boat tonight, white slave shipment to some place, which would interest anyone from your local constable to the High Commissioner of the Interpol system.” “Mister Quinn,” said Remal from the door, “when or if you see that little whore again, ask her to open her mouth. She has no tongue, perhaps not since she was five.” Remal slammed the door behind him, but even after that he kept laughing. —It was stupid of you to take her to Whitfield’s house. Remal figured as much. But no matter.” “Huh?” “She had no tongue. Did you know that?” —“Tell me everything that goes on with this smuggling operation. And don’t be clever, just talk.” Where the girl came from and where they went. Quinn learned about the trade in raw alcohol, black market from American bases, and how it left here and then was handled through Sicily.”

Bea. “You know what will happen to you, if you go through with all this?” “I probably do,” he said, “because it’s happened before.” “Back into the box,” she said and gave a small, disconnected laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever been out of it.” — “And then, when he stood with her on the pier, he had one other chance. “Don’t go with the boat,” she said. “Go with me.” He was stiff and cold and made no decision. Making no decision, he muffed his chance. And he saw this.”

Boat to Sicily. “When he closed his eyes there was the motion again, and more of the vibration, and it reminded him of the box. It was not the same motion and not the same vibration, he knew that, but he was reminded. Without transition Quinn went to sleep.” —“You listen to me, bum,” said Cipolla. “You come down here knocking this place right from the start and you don’t get nowhere. I like this place. People here like this place, and if you know what pride means…” -“Cipolla said something filthy in Sicilian — the language, Quinn had noticed, did not have the ring and the sing of Italian. Quinn thought, you can probably say something filthy better in Sicilian than in any other language.”

Sicilian boss. “So they gave you the trip around the world, huh, Quinn?” and Motta came back to the couch, sat down, puffed a blue cloud which smelled like clubs and good leisure. “Yes,” said Quinn. “Except I got out ahead of schedule.” -“What was you in?” asked Motta. “Law.” “Hey, that’s funny!” “Yes. It was.” “And from that maybe labor relations or politics and from there, well, you either get to be a politician or a crook, right, Quinn?” —“Quinn, had drifted from one intention to another. Though it had not really been so much a matter of intention, but almost all drift. There had been no zest, not much zest at any rate, in his switch in direction or in his taking a new one. Except, of course, the matter of clawing his way ahead, in spite of Ryder.”

The box. “Quinn thought of the box for the first time with any feeling. I am thinking of the box now because for the first time it’s clear now, clear and true, the way Bea explained it, that I’m not out of it.
— Bea, this one woman over there who knew what I went for. The one who knows how it feels to build a box and that the worst things that happen are the things you do to yourself. And if you have to — she knows this — and if you have to go and take it like a sentence, then I have respect for you, that’s what she might have said. Respect for you because you know how you’re under a sentence, your own, which is the worst. —“The first thing he had seen had been Bea and now the first thing he saw was the box. It was as if having a choice of one first thing after another. Everything that happened next happened, in a manner of speaking, without any succession. Everything that happened next was all life and death. Something that is always immediate, that does away with all past and future. There is only now, and so there is no succession.”

Talk in town. “There was talk for a while, but no change. About where the woman might be, the one who had left suddenly after having known everyone, and where the man might be, the one who had come in a box.”

Reader’s choice? Rabe extraordinary -IMO.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the time he reached the North African port of Okar, the captain has had enough of the strange noises and foul odor coming from the phone-booth-sized box in his cargo hold. After badgering the port’s clerk Whitfield to allow this strange box to be unloaded, they find the ravening Quinn held inside, ex-lawyer to the Mob, stuffed in the cargo crate on a round-trip ticket from New York across the Mediterranean and back to New York again. After his recuperation, Quinn finds himself born anew on the sands of the desolate Okar. What does with this new-found freedom, his new clean slate?

Resort to his old ways, of course; Quinn dives into Okar’s seedy underbelly rife with smuggling and slave-trading with the goal of claiming this tiny criminal empire for himself. The local mayor and crime lord, Remal, has organized a small but profitable smuggling operation, connecting it with the Sicilian Mafia. And Quinn has decided to shake it up.

It’s important to emphasize that Rabe had a doctorate in psychology, because that knowledge shines through in works like this one. The Box sees Rabe’s prose in full-blown glory, a poetic style that weaves in and out of perspective and point-of-view, at one moment full of lush description, at another full of tense but vague dialogue, then winding into stream-of-consciousness rich in color metaphors. This writing style can be slippery to grasp, which makes reading The Box a methodical enterprise. His elliptical, evasive prose mimics thought patterns very well, hence why I say stream-of-consciousness — colors become feelings, concepts and ideas collide as one leads to another. Not only are the characters’ thoughts random and chaotic, but we intrude upon them at random intervals. Rabe works hard to construct a tense and imprisoned atmosphere; even after being freed from his prison, Quinn is still stuck in a world of boxes and enclosures, and the writing reflects that.

Rabe is a unique stylist and one of the best Gold Medal authors, a step ahead of many of his contemporaries. At the same time, I can see why Rabe’s writing is not what most readers look for in their fiction—it’s beautiful but awkward, lucid yet perplexingly obscure. A lesson in contrasts, where characters say what they mean without really saying anything. I thought The Box was a fantastic and layered read, but expect others could find it maddening. Don’t expect a traditional fiction narrative and you’ll be richly rewarded, since this is not your typical tale of private eyes and underworld goons, nor one written in a typical prose style. Instead, it’s unique and vibrant, if chaotic.

Full review found here.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim THE BOX opens with a mob lawyer named Quinn facing punishment for going against the wishes of his boss, ending in his being restrained and sedated, then the story transitions to a very interesting situation involving a ship traveling in Northern Africa discovering a large strange box emitting a very foul odor in the cargo. Discussion ensues between the ship's captain and a clerk on the dock in the port of Okar, and the captain eventually succeeds in convincing the clerk to open the box - only to discover our man Quinn has been sent around the world in a living coffin as a method of punishment by the mob.
Quinn sees his opportunity to muscle in on a smuggling ring in his new surroundings, and makes a move against the local "mayor" who controls everything including smuggling.
Great story with a mobster being relocated for his punishment and plying his trade in a new environment, and there are some similarities between this novel and A Shroud for Jesso also by author Peter Rabe. 4 stars.

[Jim Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure if I like Peter Rabe or not. I really liked "Anatomy of a Killer" and "Murder Me For Nickels" but disliked "A House In Naples" and "A Shroud for Jesso" just as much. I almost gave up on this one a couple of times but stuck it out to the finish. The story contains a great deal of detailed description that never seems to add up to much. The characters seem to speak at cross purposes while assigning specific motives to the other characters but never really understanding each other at all. Not much happens or at least not much that I could understand as being part of a plot. There is an implication that there is a deeper meaning to the interplay between these characters but I don't seem to be able to get it. The crime story is weak and the the idea of it revolving around a misplaced American in a small Northern African town engaged in a smuggling operation with Sicilians doesn't seem to provide any insight based on those conditions.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

rabe is consistently weird. think the last chapter of Jim Thompson’s The Getaway. this one’s about a guy who gets shipped around the world in a box. winds up in a little port town in North Africa and makes a play for the mayor’s smuggling operation. there’s a love triangle, or at least a sex triangle. things get very Paul Bowles. excellent book.

[CD Borden · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Victor Whitman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favorite Rabe novel so far. A cargo ship arrives in North Africa and a man is found alive, stuffed in a coffin-like box. He then cuts himself into a smuggling operation and falls in love with a beautiful woman.

[Gregory Gay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good suspense, but couldn't get past the awkward, plodding writing style. Didn't love it.