Wild

by Gil Brewer

I never knew what trouble was until she came back into my life and started fanning the flames on an old torch.

“I need you, Lee,” she said. Then she looked up at me with those wonderful, burning dark eyes of hers and I fell into them just like I always did—like it was yesterday and we were crazy in love on Cloud 13.

Only it was today. Only she already had a husband. Only he was missing. She wanted me to find him before he found her—and killed her.

There were holes in her story. There were holes in my head, too. Because I bought every word of it.

Bang! The next thing I knew I was head over heels in a mess of corpses, killers, and wild, wild women.

Genres: Crime

206 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Florida writer Gil Brewer was the author of dozens of wonderfully sleazy sex/crime adventure novels of the 1950's and 60's, including Backwoods Teaser and Nude on Thin Ice; some of them starring private eye Lee Baron (Wild) or the brothers Sam and Tate Morgan (The Bitch) . Gil Brewer, who had not previously published any novels, began to write for Gold Medal Paperbacks in 1950-51. Brewer wrote some 30 novels between 1951 and the late 60s – very often involving an ordinary man who becomes involved with, and is often corrupted and destroyed by, an evil or designing woman. His style is simple and direct, with sharp dialogue, often achieving considerable intensity.

Brewer was one of the many writers who ghost wrote under the Ellery Queen byline as well. Brewer also was known as Eric Fitzgerald, Bailey Morgan, and Elaine Evans.

http://www.gilbrewer.com/

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gil Brewer’s Florida is hot and steamy and maddening. His books almost always have a man on the run, missing loot, and a scorching lustful heat that fills the air. Lee has come back to Florida to carry on dad’s PI business though he couldn’t stand the man and to relive old memories and perhaps rekindle old flames.

And, the Florida he returns to is intoxicating when Ivor calls him up and asks a favor. She still mesmerizes him with her curves and her eyes and her scent to the point where he can barely breathe, but she’s living in the trashiest trailer park imaginable with a vicious louse for a husband. She’s a tarnished dream that Lee can’t get out if his head, not even when her sister Asa, a drunk, lustful Helen of Troy who always has a drink in her hand and a skimpy negligee on, gets involved.

The two sisters and their hypnotic hips and twisted marriages might fill the book if it weren’t for some corpses and a whole lot of loot from a bank robbery.

The plot doesn’t always hang together, but Brewer fills it with enough excitement and action that it reels you in.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

From 1958
The female lead here is named Ivor. Is that/was that a common or uncommon girl’s name? I didn’t look it up.
This has, as always with Gil Brewer, a good mystery.
It also has, as always with Gil Brewer, a lot of descriptions of female bodies. And they are all big breasted.
Gil Brewer is absolutely the Russ Meyer of literature.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has all the right ingredients for a good hardboiled read--not just one femme fatale, but two, two sisters no less. There's lots of gun play, the protagonist getting clubbed in the head, beat up, hacked-up corpses, sex in the back of cars and rye whisky. And this was written in 1958.

I would actually give it three and a half stars if I could, rather than four. The downside of the novel is that it really doesn't have a strong plot and not all that well-written. I suspect that Brewer was drunk while writing it and tried to let the story write itself.

Favorite line: "A Slow wind came in across Tampa Bay, like the hot breath of an eager woman."

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for that west coast Florida setting for tawdry plots like this one. This novel features two wild sisters, both of them bad news for private eye Lee Baron. The plot does feel a bit like Brewer was flying by the seat of his pants as Lee runs around trying to figure out how a bank robbery is connected to a missing husband and a hacked up corpse. There are shootings, beatings, sex, booze and along the way a couple wenches get slapped for their own good. It's probably a book Grandma enjoyed while sitting under the dryer at the beauty parlor. I always kind of wondered where she got that hardboiled slang she used to hit me with from time to time.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts off much slower than most Brewer noirs and then, at the end of Chapter Two, there’s this:

The door was cracked partially open, rain brightly flickering against gray wood. I booted the door sharply with my heel.
The odor was no longer polite.
I held a handkerchief over my nose and mouth and stepped through, pushing the door wide. A dusty window high on the back wall shed dim light across the body.
He resembled a partially unwrapped mummy.
Both arms were gone, and somebody had done a hatchet job on his face.

And from this point on it is typical breakneck Brewer prose as Lee Baron tumbles into a $400,000 bank heist, a couple of murders, and two wacked sisters, all while trying to avoid the cops and a big lug wanting to bust his skull. And even the slow start comes around as a meaningful plot point.

[Carles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quarta novel·la que llegeixo de Gil Brewer.

M’he tornat a sorprendre per la rapidesa de lectura. Començo el llibre i ja porto... cinquanta pàgines. Es llegeix súper fàcil. Tot és acció. Frases curtes. Diàlegs boníssims i versemblants. I, altre cop, en primera persona, que m’encanta.
En aquest cas, la trama és una mica més complexa que a les altres.

De les quatre llegides, la meva preferida ha estat “La verge venjativa” on, amb pocs elements, un protagonista ciutadà normal –no un detectiu, ni un malfactor-, ens narrava com anava quedant atrapat, i com més feia per resoldre-ho, pitjor.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Private Investigator Lee Baron relocates to his Florida past to take over his now deceased father’s one-man agency. He explains his approach to a couple of local cops who think he’s holding out on them:

“My old man was a lummox. He was a great guy, but he believed the book. Sometimes the book isn't right. You go through life believing every word in the book, that's all right. You live it your way. It's not my way.” I stopped talking, and they didn't speak. I said, “It’s not that I don't want to come to you. You have facilities, means of operations I'll never have. But I can't always come to you.”

It’s an anemic explanation of Baron’s hardboiled detecting style, but then it wouldn’t be wild if it wasn’t.

In true 1958 PI rogue, an old flame walks into Baron’s office with a heap of trouble—most of it below her surface story—giving him just enough to set the hook. This is a juicy, messy, murder mystery with a cast of untrustables who leave more cuts than clues. The wild cover girl is one of two sisters, both hot, but one far reckless than the other. What begins as one sort of case soon reveals a more complex chain-of-trouble underlaid by a high-stakes robbery.

Gil Brewer was a top-tier paperback original author, and Wild is a worthy entry on his impressive bibliography of hits.

[Dennis R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mediocre. Too many characters whose role in a murder to steal proceeds from a bank job goes awry. The main character, a private eye who took over his father's business, is hired by a vixen right of our central casting whose persona is outdone by her nymphomaniac and evil sister. Very confusing. After finishing it, I still cannot figure out what was gong on. I could have read this in two sittings but when it got convoluted, I put it down and ascribed that to my own weariness. Picking it up a day or two later changed nothing. While the plethora of actors is confusing, each one on their own fits a noirish/pulp stereotype which i guess is good. I felt like I was watching (for the umpteenth time), Farewell My Lovely with Robert Mitchum or The Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall. All in all, and if you have time on your hands, it is a good example of an average pulp novel from the day.

[Eric C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typical Brewer. Dames, death, crime, and mystery. I liked the main character and his motivations. The ladies were tough and interesting. The cops were dumb but fun. The plot reeled right along. Ending was satisfying and dark. Recommended for Brewer, JDM, and Williams fans.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent P.I. tale. Entertaining, and a good sense of setting, but nothing special. Written as if there would be sequels about the same detective, but none that I'm aware of.

[Malum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hardboiled pulp crime goodness.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An acceptable though not memorable Gil Brewer. Private detective Lee Baron moves home to Florida to take over his recently deceased father's one-man detective business. Almost immediately he is hired by an old flame, Ivor Hendrix, who has become fearful of her husband. Lee seeks out the husband and instead finds an armless body and things escalate from there--plot elements include a bank robbery, a hired thug with a head the size of a watermelon, and Ivor's nymphomaniacal sister. The plot meanders a bit as Lee wanders among a cluster of locales in the Tampa Bay area, trying to figure out what's going on. Characters are a bit thin even for this genre, but Brewer keeps things moving and hopes that you don't notice too much. Worth reading, but not if you haven't read A Killer Is Loose or The Red Scarf or etc., etc.

[Watt ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un llibre que inclou tots els ingredients imprescindibles de la novel·la negra norteamericana: la trama rebuscada, la dona atractiva i sofisticada que sedueix al nostre heroi, la tendra donzella (o no) que l'enamora, els pinxos de torn, la bòfia obtusa, la ciutat opressiva i la eterna pluja, entre d'altres moltes més coses. Pel meu gust ha envellit malament i tan sols a l'últim terç del llibre agafa embranzida, la resta son tòpics amb girs previsibles, però es clar que vist ara, més de mig segle des de la seva publicació. (6/10)

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bad, bad Brewer. A sort of Mystery Science Theater version of a Ross Macdonald detective novel with lots of amateur hour cliches like the classy sister vs. the slutty sister dynamic we saw in The Big Sleep and other shaggy dog crime business. The lowest point in the novel is a 12-page chase scene, like an auto race with the sound turned off. Hopefully the next one I read will be better.

[Viktor · Rating 3 out of 5]

The perfect example of break-neck speed.

[Elon Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrid writing, but a brilliant plot.