Fools Walk In

by Bruno Fischer

Yes, fools walk in--even though the fool is a professor. But what could a poor teacher do when he met the blonde standing in the rain with a suitcase full of trouble?
She was running for her life. The cops wanted her! A gang of thieves wanted her!
The professor wanted her because she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. And it didn't matter what happened to him.

Genres: Mystery

Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Bruno Fischer was the author of 25 novels and more than 300 short stories, a contributor to "Black Mask" and "Manhunt" magazines, and the uncrowned king of the notorious 'weird menace' pulps. He wrote also as Russell Gray and Harrison Storm.

Reviews

[Paperback Papa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruno Fischer (1908-1992) was, for my money, one of the very best of the crime/noir authors of the 50's and 60's. Every book of his I've ever read has sucked me in. "Fools Walk In" was no exception.

In this 1951 novel, a conservative, buttoned-up high school English teacher who's never done anything exciting in his whole life picks up a young female hitchhiker. He doesn't realize she's on the run from the law and is carrying more than clothing and toiletries in her suitcase. He thinks he's going to give her a lift and go right back to his boring existence. But when she keeps asking for favors that pull him deeper and deeper into her situation, he figures it might be his only chance to experience some excitement.

The first half of this book is fairly interesting. At about the halfway mark it catches fire. The second half is fantastic and the ending is perfect. Highly recommended.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imperfect analogy ahead: sometimes you want to sample some fine gastronomy, and sometimes you just want to go to a diner. This little ditty from 1951 is, for me, the literary equivalent of a giant slab of delicious meatloaf to gleefully scarf while no one's looking at you in the corner booth. Ridiculous story? Check. Stereotypes on wheels in lieu of fully dimensional characters? Yep. But also: a story that just keeps on revving around the next corner? Absolutely. If you care about this genre at all already, you've likely encountered some if not all of the components here... the she-wolf, the guy over his head, the robbers in a farmhouse waiting for the cops to cool off, the constant double-crosses... but it all just gleefully is what it is. If you're always looking for just one more Westlake-ish book, this one is recommended.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally, noir plots are not particularly believable, so the noir writer must be skillful enough either to make you believe in spite of it all or to make you not care whether you believe in the first place. (Jim Thompson specializes in the former; Cornell Woolrich specializes in the latter.) This time, Bruno Fischer did not quite succeed in making me believe. Fools Walk In is an example of transgressive noir, the subgenre in which the protagonist, presumably someone not much different from the reader, crosses over to the noir side. Usually the protagonist is driven by financial temptation, but in Fools Walk In, Larry Knight is motivated by the simple desire to escape his miserably unexciting life.

When the novel begins, Larry is driving home to New York from Kentucky, where he has been visiting his brother, George. Larry lives with his sister--a shrill, self-pitying, dominating old maid--and he had hoped to convince George to take her. Of course, he had so no such luck. Add to this the fact that Larry is toiling in the world's most pathetic job--he's a high school English teacher, for God's sake!--and he is ripe to transgress when he picks up a gangster's moll who is on the run with $20,000. Larry soon finds himself in hiding with gangsters of the sort who talk earnestly about "capers," and, for a high school English teacher, he proves to be unaccountably attractive to gangster women. If only all English teachers had such latent powers!