Anatomie eines Morders

by Peter Rabe

Punching Dixon had gotten Jake Spinner thrown in jail, but now that he’s out all he wants is a fresh start back on his farm. Suddenly Dixon is dead and Spinner is on the run, escaping town in the getaway car with Dixon’s assassin in the back seat! He knows the cops won’t believe his innocence. He knows his only chance is to keep the cold, clubfooted little killer known as Loma with him. Because Loma is his ticket to a new life. His respectable life shattered, Spinner figures the only ones who’ll take him in now are the guys who hired Loma. The choice is easy - until he meets Ann.

Paperback

First published May 1, 1957

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

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agreement To Kill (1957) is a very quirky pulp noir by Peter Rabe. It’s not one of his best, but it’s quirky and original. Jake Spinner is an ex-con who is released and moves back to his small town where he has every reason to kill this guy who, you guessed it, gets killed. The killer is a taciturn club-foot named Loma. They take it on the lam together: Loma because he is the killer and Spinner because everyone thinks he is the killer. Spinner, wanted anyway, decides that he may as well become a professional hit-man so he makes Loma take him to St, Louis. The dialogue and action are often disjointed and Loma in particular is a cypher. There’s a good book in here, but this was written the same year as two or three others. I like Rabe, and this is original, but not nearly as compelling as some of his other novels.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I was reading Agreement to Kill, my first Peter Rabe novel, Rabe's prose kept reminding me of Joseph Conrad (né Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), the Polish-born British novelist who was not fluent in English until adulthood. Though stylistically very different, Rabe and Conrad both write with a self-confident awkwardness: While their styles are effective, neither writer seems entirely comfortable with the English language. Once I had finished Agreement to Kill, I discovered (to my surprise, I admit!) that this analogy is exactly right: Like Conrad, Peter Rabe (né Peter Rabinowitsch) was not a native English speaker, having fled Nazi Germany to the United States as a teenager in 1938. Agreement to Kill is an oddly memorable book whose strangeness is actually complemented by the sometime awkwardness of Rabe's writing. The plot reminded me a bit of Gil Brewer's A Killer Is Loose , in which an ordinary man is trying to escape the forced companionship of a psychopathic killer. In Agreement to Kill, though, our ordinary guy (Jake Spinner) is befriending a professional killer (Loma) rather than fleeing him. Jake is tired of being an ordinary guy--which for him has come to mean being a sucker and a loser--and he wants Loma to introduce him to the other side of the law.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed by AGREEMENT TO KILL. The characters were two dimensional, the plot didn't come together in a plausible way and the overall story itself was a bit of a reach. With any fiction, a certain amount of suspended belief is required but I couldn't fathom how this plot was hatched and force myself to believe it could actually happen. Jake Spinner is accused of the murder of a shady local town character, only to escape the laws clutches, locate the real hired killer and then attempt to join the outfit that hired him after forming a strange bond with the hitman. It just didn't add up. While pulpy and easy to read I was left wanting. I think there is a good concept here, unfortunately the execution, characters, and early plot formulation just didn't come together. The only saving grace was the twists at the end of the novel, yet those weren't written in an engaging manner. AGREEMENT TO KILL could've been a lot better yet suffers from average writing and insufficient detail.

[Mxyzptlk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agreement to Kill is a crime novel by Peter Rabe, a German American writer who immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 to escape the Nazis. In this book, he tells the story of Jake Spinner, a former convict who teams up with Loma, a professional killer, to work for a crime boss in St. Louis. The book was first published by Gold Medal in 1957 and was reprinted by Stark House Press in 2006. It is one of Rabe’s 14 books for Gold Medal, which were popular among fans of pulp fiction in the 1950s.

[Jim Davis]

I found this to be just OK. It was an interesting idea with some interesting characters. I often found the dialogue and action are to be disjointed especially when we were inside Spinner's head. Loma is like trying to look through a blank wall but he was interesting because that was intentional. Spinner never seemed to have a clear grip on anything except narrowly focused hate and anger. I was never able to get a clear picture of who Spinner was or what he was like as a person other then he would set a near term goal and work towards it step by step without every looking at the big picture around him. I gave it 3 stars for it's quirkiness and different tone even if it wasn't expressed that well.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 3 out of 5]

So you get out of jail for assaulting the mob boss who stole half of your dad’s farm. You plan to do the best you can with the rest of the land. The mob boss isn’t satisfied with the land he stole. He wants the rest of it — at a bargain price. Sounds like the kind of guy you kill, doesn’t it. Sheriff sure thinks so. So does the mob assembling in the courthouse square. If you didn’t do it, who is going to save you? Maybe the hired killer who did the deed — if you agree to become his assistant.

Rather a fun setup, but this kind of grim paperback original has too nutty a plot to carry off any serious points the author is trying to make. Ultimately, this one seems like a missed opportunity.

[A. Fatih · Rating 1 out of 5]

Completely waste of time!

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agreement to Kill is Peter Rabe's take on the theme of an innocent man on the run. It takes an ordinary guy with all the evidence in the world pointing toward his guilt and throws in a deadly assassin, a femme fatale, and mob connections. It also includes a jury trial, Perry Mason style. However, like other Peter Rabe books, there's a certain oddness and awkwardness to the main characters and the story. Even the romantic entanglements are odd, awkward, & don't make perfect sense. But that's okay - in real life, things don't always fit together neatly and people are odd, awkward, and uncomfortable.