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I Want Out
Ace Double, printed with "Obit Deferred" by Louis Trimble.
117 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1959
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March 12, 2026
Thomey published six crime novels: And Dream of Evil (1954); Killer in White (1956); I Want Out (1959); The Sadist aka When the Lusting Began aka Kill Me a Husband (1960); Flight to Takla-Ma (1962); and Prodigy Plot (1987). In “I Want Out,” Thomey uses a bail bondsman (Lew Pool) as his lead character and stand-in for a private eye. Pool suffers from claustrophobia, which beset him following his stay in North Korea as a prisoner of war confined to a crawl space so tight he could not even move around. Thus, the title of the novel is “I Want Out.”
Pool is uncomfortable in jail cells, elevators, and virtually any room with a closed door. In fact, he panics whenever he is shut in. So, right off the bat, we know his kryptonite. He tells us: “Claustrophobia can’t be ignored. By the time we got to the seventh floor, I felt like I was in a coffin, a narrow metal coffin jammed so close around my body and head that I could bite into the the cheap, forty-cents-a-yard satin the undertaker had lined it with.”
He is assisted by his one-legged friend Billy, who does have a prosthetic, and likes to talk in old Irish blarney.
The story harkens back to Pool’s stay during the “police action” in North Korea, including his “special interest” in Asian women, which is on high alert when he meets his first client of the day, Ti-Lo, whose boyfriend is in jail for fighting and needs a bond put up. Almost as soon as Pool can make arrangements for bail, Felix Pia, however, is shot to death in his jail cell. Ti-Lo asks Pool what he intends to do about it, thinking he is a detective, an occupation he says is not his. But he relents and promises he will try to find out what happened.
And that begins the caper in which one by one the witnesses or suspects involved all suddenly die within moments of Pool contacting them. And, a heliotrope-colored sedan keeps tabs on Pool.
All in all, it is a wacky, good-natured, fun read that never tries to get too deep or meaningful.
Pool is uncomfortable in jail cells, elevators, and virtually any room with a closed door. In fact, he panics whenever he is shut in. So, right off the bat, we know his kryptonite. He tells us: “Claustrophobia can’t be ignored. By the time we got to the seventh floor, I felt like I was in a coffin, a narrow metal coffin jammed so close around my body and head that I could bite into the the cheap, forty-cents-a-yard satin the undertaker had lined it with.”
He is assisted by his one-legged friend Billy, who does have a prosthetic, and likes to talk in old Irish blarney.
The story harkens back to Pool’s stay during the “police action” in North Korea, including his “special interest” in Asian women, which is on high alert when he meets his first client of the day, Ti-Lo, whose boyfriend is in jail for fighting and needs a bond put up. Almost as soon as Pool can make arrangements for bail, Felix Pia, however, is shot to death in his jail cell. Ti-Lo asks Pool what he intends to do about it, thinking he is a detective, an occupation he says is not his. But he relents and promises he will try to find out what happened.
And that begins the caper in which one by one the witnesses or suspects involved all suddenly die within moments of Pool contacting them. And, a heliotrope-colored sedan keeps tabs on Pool.
All in all, it is a wacky, good-natured, fun read that never tries to get too deep or meaningful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review