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Any Man's Girl
ANY MAN’S GIRL
All the men agree that it was a damn shame that Lucinda Perky was strangled like that. Just a plain waste of beauty. But they’ve got her husband Russ behind bars where he belongs, and if there’s any justice, he’ll fry for killing her like that. What a waste…
Dan Waxman and his wife Marty have moved down to Florida so that he can start his hydroponic experiments growing tomatoes. Marty was all set to be a lawyer, but gave that up when she married Dan. But Dan feels like Marty needs to do something before she goes crazy with boredom, and talks her into taking the case of the young husband who is accused of murdering his pretty wife. How could they know where this simple decision would lead them?
All the men agree that it was a damn shame that Lucinda Perky was strangled like that. Just a plain waste of beauty. But they’ve got her husband Russ behind bars where he belongs, and if there’s any justice, he’ll fry for killing her like that. What a waste…
Dan Waxman and his wife Marty have moved down to Florida so that he can start his hydroponic experiments growing tomatoes. Marty was all set to be a lawyer, but gave that up when she married Dan. But Dan feels like Marty needs to do something before she goes crazy with boredom, and talks her into taking the case of the young husband who is accused of murdering his pretty wife. How could they know where this simple decision would lead them?
- GenresCrime
206 pages, Paperback
Published August 31, 2023
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Basil Heatter
38 books2 followersBasil Heatter, the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter, was born on Long Island on March 26, 1918. He attended schools in Connecticut, then went abroad when was 16 for a two year travel stint through Europe. Returning to America, he went to work for a New York advertising agency. He enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and during WWII served as a skipper on a P.T. boat in the Southwest Pacific. Besides being a news commentator himself, Heatter wrote twenty novels of intrigue and adventure—beginning with "The Dim View" in 1946, the story of a young PT boat skipper—as well as several non-fiction works revolving around his love of the sea. In fact, he lived for years off Key West on his own self-built sailboat, The Blue Duck. He passed away June 12, 2009, in Miami, Florida
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 1, 2024
Originally published as Gold Medal # 1126 in 1961, and more recently republished by Stark House’s Black Gat imprint in September 2023, Heatter’s “Any Man’s Girl” with the haunting blonde woman on the cover is a tour-de-force of crime fiction.
The cover girl, Lucinda Perky, has a body that hypnotizes every man she meets and makes them do things that they really should not. She has been married to a young kid, Russ Perky, who took her from Chicago where she was a nightclub singer and set up shop at a fishing camp on Lake Okeechobee in Florida where she now feels trapped and at the end of life. He rents boats and fishing gear to men in the area. She sleeps half the day and answers the door in a barely-there negligee, trying to get attention from every man she meets. The desk sergeant who booked Russ says he had “never seen such a body on a woman.” He says she was so ripe that, even dead, there was a crowd at the morgue to see her.
The reputation is that Lucinda has been with every man in driving distance of the fishing camp although you never really get to know her other than by hearsay. You only have hearsay now because the story that Russ tells to the sheriff is that he got so frustrated with her teasing him that he knocked her to the floor and raped her and headed out to fish. Unfortunately for him, as he tells it to the law, when he came back, she was extremely dead and he does not know who did it. This is a small Southern town and no one wants to hear his story after he admits to the violent rape of his unwilling wife and he is now on death row awaiting trial.
And every photograph of her in the local newspaper shows her sitting on a skiff with her legs apart and wearing only brief shorts and a skimpy halter. Even Dan, when he met Lucinda just that once, was mesmerized. She had come to the door wearing a yellow silk dressing gown “and he had been made immediately aware by the unfettered shape of her breasts and the amount of white skin exposed in the vee of the gown that she was naked under it.” She had a throaty voice like Marilyn Monroe and invites him in. As her yellow silk seemed to slip another inch and another, revealing her breasts, Dan found it hard to breathe and felt like a fool.
Heatter does not tell his crime novel through action-packed sequences or even man-on-the-run sequences. Rather, what he gives us readers here is a legal thriller after the action has already taken place. He offers us Marty and Dan Waxman, recently moved here from New York. Dan has retired and has ideas about technologically growing crops, wondering though if the rural South in the Jim Crow era is a place for a New York Jew, particularly when his wife, Marty, is a lady lawyer interested in taking on the death row case of poor guy who the whole town (that includes the entire jury pool) wants to put away.
Lucinda perhaps was an embarrassment to the town with the way she carried on and perhaps the town elders were all involved in her traps and want to quickly close the matter before their extramarital activities come to light. The only sort of witnesses are poor African-Americans who want to keep a low profile and not make waves in a matter that does not really concern them. This is not the kind of trouble they want anything to do with. Not when kerosene fires are set on the Waxman’s property.
The trial is told rather quickly, but Marty still represents Russ, hoping something will break before he runs out of appeals and sits in the electric chair. It is a race against time to find out the truth about this crime that the town – a seemingly backward town- wants swept under the rug quickly.
Heatter does not offer much in the way of action, but that does not mean that there is ever – even for a second- a let-up in the tension. He offers the reader everything a crime fiction reader could want – a tempting blonde bombshell, a violent murder, a town that does not want this crime explored too much, a pair of outsiders who keep digging up the town’s secrets that perhaps should be kept hidden, and a race against time to find some evidence to stop the execution. In short, this is a top-notch novel.
The cover girl, Lucinda Perky, has a body that hypnotizes every man she meets and makes them do things that they really should not. She has been married to a young kid, Russ Perky, who took her from Chicago where she was a nightclub singer and set up shop at a fishing camp on Lake Okeechobee in Florida where she now feels trapped and at the end of life. He rents boats and fishing gear to men in the area. She sleeps half the day and answers the door in a barely-there negligee, trying to get attention from every man she meets. The desk sergeant who booked Russ says he had “never seen such a body on a woman.” He says she was so ripe that, even dead, there was a crowd at the morgue to see her.
The reputation is that Lucinda has been with every man in driving distance of the fishing camp although you never really get to know her other than by hearsay. You only have hearsay now because the story that Russ tells to the sheriff is that he got so frustrated with her teasing him that he knocked her to the floor and raped her and headed out to fish. Unfortunately for him, as he tells it to the law, when he came back, she was extremely dead and he does not know who did it. This is a small Southern town and no one wants to hear his story after he admits to the violent rape of his unwilling wife and he is now on death row awaiting trial.
And every photograph of her in the local newspaper shows her sitting on a skiff with her legs apart and wearing only brief shorts and a skimpy halter. Even Dan, when he met Lucinda just that once, was mesmerized. She had come to the door wearing a yellow silk dressing gown “and he had been made immediately aware by the unfettered shape of her breasts and the amount of white skin exposed in the vee of the gown that she was naked under it.” She had a throaty voice like Marilyn Monroe and invites him in. As her yellow silk seemed to slip another inch and another, revealing her breasts, Dan found it hard to breathe and felt like a fool.
Heatter does not tell his crime novel through action-packed sequences or even man-on-the-run sequences. Rather, what he gives us readers here is a legal thriller after the action has already taken place. He offers us Marty and Dan Waxman, recently moved here from New York. Dan has retired and has ideas about technologically growing crops, wondering though if the rural South in the Jim Crow era is a place for a New York Jew, particularly when his wife, Marty, is a lady lawyer interested in taking on the death row case of poor guy who the whole town (that includes the entire jury pool) wants to put away.
Lucinda perhaps was an embarrassment to the town with the way she carried on and perhaps the town elders were all involved in her traps and want to quickly close the matter before their extramarital activities come to light. The only sort of witnesses are poor African-Americans who want to keep a low profile and not make waves in a matter that does not really concern them. This is not the kind of trouble they want anything to do with. Not when kerosene fires are set on the Waxman’s property.
The trial is told rather quickly, but Marty still represents Russ, hoping something will break before he runs out of appeals and sits in the electric chair. It is a race against time to find out the truth about this crime that the town – a seemingly backward town- wants swept under the rug quickly.
Heatter does not offer much in the way of action, but that does not mean that there is ever – even for a second- a let-up in the tension. He offers the reader everything a crime fiction reader could want – a tempting blonde bombshell, a violent murder, a town that does not want this crime explored too much, a pair of outsiders who keep digging up the town’s secrets that perhaps should be kept hidden, and a race against time to find some evidence to stop the execution. In short, this is a top-notch novel.
April 9, 2025
Excellent, little known pulp gem. Twisty ending.
September 2, 2023
Written during the middle of Basil Heatter’s (1918–2009) crime fiction career, Any Man’s Girl follows, in hindsight, the curse of a gorgeous fatale unable to find her place in the world. The cover image of Lucinda Perky is as close as readers will ever get to meeting her, because she never appears alive in her story, which begins with the number one suspect of her murder—her husband, Russ—already incarcerated, awaiting trial.
The novel story takes place in Florida, rich in the southern racism of its barely 1960s era, but also with sections of remarkably progressive views. Dan and Marty Waxman have transported themselves from New York to Florida, chasing Dan’s dream of perfecting hydroponic farming. He’s the homebody when wife Marty sets out to refresh her career in law, at his uninhibited encouragement. Her case? Prove Russ Perky did not murder his wife, Lucinda, despite substantial circumstantial evidence and local political powers that want nothing better than to wrap this nasty thing up as quick as possible.
Heatter does a solid job maintaining momentum as Marty spins her wheels at every turn and manages to slip in some biting social commentary on prejudice and corruption along the journey.
“Governor Harwood felt a distinct sense of relief when Judge Grady failed to show up for his appointment. It was always a chore, being with Grady. His immense vitality was overwhelming, and those small piggish eyes concealed a cruel and vengeful intelligence.The political woods were full of Gradys, and as a matter of survival, the governor had long since learned to deal with them; but still, particularly in the case of the judge, it went against his grain.
“At what point, he wondered, did a man rise above this sort of thing, free himself of these political vultures? The answer, of course, was never. Right on up to the White House, he felt sure, it must be the same—a never ending procession of men to whom you owned favors—men who could swing votes—men who were important cogs in the party machine. People really imagined that when they elected a governor, they were electing one man to an important office. What they didn’t know was that they were electing a thousand-and-one Gradys at the same time, and that it was the Gradys who made the governor, and that without them, he would vanish into political limbo.”
Heatter does fine work with characterization, dialogue, setting, and plotting his story. Any Man’s Girl is a great read, worthy of celebrating Black Gat’s 50th classic-size paperback. Here’s hoping their are 50 more!
Black Gat Books No. 50 published September 18, 2023
The novel story takes place in Florida, rich in the southern racism of its barely 1960s era, but also with sections of remarkably progressive views. Dan and Marty Waxman have transported themselves from New York to Florida, chasing Dan’s dream of perfecting hydroponic farming. He’s the homebody when wife Marty sets out to refresh her career in law, at his uninhibited encouragement. Her case? Prove Russ Perky did not murder his wife, Lucinda, despite substantial circumstantial evidence and local political powers that want nothing better than to wrap this nasty thing up as quick as possible.
Heatter does a solid job maintaining momentum as Marty spins her wheels at every turn and manages to slip in some biting social commentary on prejudice and corruption along the journey.
“Governor Harwood felt a distinct sense of relief when Judge Grady failed to show up for his appointment. It was always a chore, being with Grady. His immense vitality was overwhelming, and those small piggish eyes concealed a cruel and vengeful intelligence.The political woods were full of Gradys, and as a matter of survival, the governor had long since learned to deal with them; but still, particularly in the case of the judge, it went against his grain.
“At what point, he wondered, did a man rise above this sort of thing, free himself of these political vultures? The answer, of course, was never. Right on up to the White House, he felt sure, it must be the same—a never ending procession of men to whom you owned favors—men who could swing votes—men who were important cogs in the party machine. People really imagined that when they elected a governor, they were electing one man to an important office. What they didn’t know was that they were electing a thousand-and-one Gradys at the same time, and that it was the Gradys who made the governor, and that without them, he would vanish into political limbo.”
Heatter does fine work with characterization, dialogue, setting, and plotting his story. Any Man’s Girl is a great read, worthy of celebrating Black Gat’s 50th classic-size paperback. Here’s hoping their are 50 more!
Black Gat Books No. 50 published September 18, 2023
September 25, 2023
Excellent Pulp
Love this kind of quick read. First book by Heatter but won’t be last. Fast , well written, pulpy(though dated in portrayal of African Americans), with an emphasis on character. The ending is great. Enjoy. And thanks to Stark House Press for bringing this and other pulp classics from the fifties and sixties back in print.
Love this kind of quick read. First book by Heatter but won’t be last. Fast , well written, pulpy(though dated in portrayal of African Americans), with an emphasis on character. The ending is great. Enjoy. And thanks to Stark House Press for bringing this and other pulp classics from the fifties and sixties back in print.
January 14, 2025
Pulp Project: This book is surprisingly good, but it suffers from being too brief in certain places. As a full-blown novel, this would have been on par with some of top narratives.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews