Deep is the Pit

by H. Vernor Dixon, Barye Phillips (Illustrator)

The beautiful, aristocratic Karen Stannard had married Marty Lee. Too late she found, under his polished manner and his easy smile, a cold-blooded, calculating assassin. She found a man hunted by the women he had ruined and by the police he had defied.How trust can turn to terror, how love can turn into hate, is the theme of this new, powerful novel by H. Vernor Dixon, author of To Hell Together .

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 4, 2012

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep Is the Pit

Deep Is the Pit was a 1952 Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original that starts out with a Lionel White type bank robbery caper planned down to the last detail and the crew splitting the dough. You think it’s going to be the story of one of these three -or all – on the run from the law and perhaps from his double-crossed partners, but not really. What you get instead is a kind of West Coast Great Gatsby with our Bank robbery planner using his stake to buy his way into San Francisco’s high society. He doesn’t fit in, but they oooh and aah over his gun-ho fearless manly attributes and he becomes the talk of the town and in with the snobbish crowd. Though he’s got a secret they would never guess being as Marty is on the FBI’s most wanted list. Most of the story is how Marty worms his way into business with the landed gentry, the old money snobs, and how deep inside he knows he’s not one of them and really just wants to rub their noses in it. The genius of Dixon though is how he creates these compelling tortured characters on the entwined together on the path to doom.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

is an almost perfect crime novel, but for two factors, the first of which is that it drags a little bit with too much character study and not enough action. The plot, though, is almost flawless, except for, what is the other shortcoming of the novel, the use of a .357 Magnum with a silencer, which is a bit oxymoronic in that it's a powerful and loud revolver that cannot be silenced. Revolvers are completely open and the noise comes from the gaps around the cylinder, not from the muzzle, as is the case, with automatics. Bret Easton Ellis would make exactly the same mistake in American Psycho 40 years later.

[Andy Raptis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinda similar to The Great Gatsby only edgier. The main difference is that here we already know how our hero acquired his wealth, and despite his efforts to leave behind his past, it gradually catches up with him.
The only problem is the ending, as in The Hunger and the Hate, another book by the same writer, it happens very abruptly, and without much suspense. However the plotting and build up are excellent enough to make you ignore the sudden ending.