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Sweet Cheat
Buck Peters is the religious and respectable Chief of Police in the small, Southern town of Greenhill. After a rich and beautiful widow is murdered, the investigation threatens to expose the secret, deviant side of Greenhill's citizens.
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1959
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 2, 2025
In “Sweet Cheat,” “Duncan” offers up a bawdy tale of backwoods intrigue. It’s a small town called Greenhill, somewhere outside of Memphis. Buck Peters is the police chief and church deacon and he narrates the tale in an aw-shucks Gomer Pyle way. The big intrigue in town is when the local Madam Rita is murdered and suddenly half the town’s men are suspects and half the town’s jealous wives as well.
Kip, the local millionaire, had threatened to kill Rita earlier in a drunken rage when he got tired of her teasing him. His alibi though is that he was home in bed with his wife, Lacey. And that’s a bit of a complicated alibi because, at the time the murder was committed, dear sweet Lacey was in the garden behind Kip’s home, making mad passionate love at least three times in a row with Buck.
Indeed, there’s a whole backstory about how, when they were sixteen, Buck and Lacey fell in love, but she swore they couldn’t marry because Kip’s family had swindled Lacey’s family out of all their money and she planned to marry Kip to get the family money back. So for twelve years Lacey has been carrying on with Buck, whom she claims to love, while failing to consummate her marriage to Kip. And if Kip ever got wind of what went on, he’d murder them both, alibi or no alibi.
The whole novel carries on like this with farcical comedy and Peyton Place attachments. Fir instance, the coroner on seeing Rita’s body and the four bullets fired through the window, three lodged in the wall, thinks he can call it as suicide and save the town quite a few headaches. And, a few in the town, including the defense attorney, think it would save everyone lots of trouble if it all got blamed on the town special needs guy who had a history of being a peeping Tom.
“Sweet Cheat” is thus a bawdy comedic small country town story masquerading as a crime novel.
Kip, the local millionaire, had threatened to kill Rita earlier in a drunken rage when he got tired of her teasing him. His alibi though is that he was home in bed with his wife, Lacey. And that’s a bit of a complicated alibi because, at the time the murder was committed, dear sweet Lacey was in the garden behind Kip’s home, making mad passionate love at least three times in a row with Buck.
Indeed, there’s a whole backstory about how, when they were sixteen, Buck and Lacey fell in love, but she swore they couldn’t marry because Kip’s family had swindled Lacey’s family out of all their money and she planned to marry Kip to get the family money back. So for twelve years Lacey has been carrying on with Buck, whom she claims to love, while failing to consummate her marriage to Kip. And if Kip ever got wind of what went on, he’d murder them both, alibi or no alibi.
The whole novel carries on like this with farcical comedy and Peyton Place attachments. Fir instance, the coroner on seeing Rita’s body and the four bullets fired through the window, three lodged in the wall, thinks he can call it as suicide and save the town quite a few headaches. And, a few in the town, including the defense attorney, think it would save everyone lots of trouble if it all got blamed on the town special needs guy who had a history of being a peeping Tom.
“Sweet Cheat” is thus a bawdy comedic small country town story masquerading as a crime novel.
January 24, 2024
Author Peter Duncan is actually Lurton Blassingame (1904-1980) a well-respected literary agent. Blassingame's clients included Sci-fi legends Robert A. Heinlein and Frank Herbert. One day Mr. Blassingame decided to try his hand at writing a pulp novel, which is not surprising since he wrote his Master's thesis on the history of pulp fiction. That decision produced "Sweet Cheat" a 1959 Dell paperback.
The story is set in a small town where there lives a floozy. She's had affairs with half the men in town, most of whom are married and many of whom are deacons and otherwise prominent members of the local church. One day someone fires four bullets through Ms. Floozy's bedroom window, one of which does her in. The thing that serves as a match to set the situation on fire is the floozy's private diary which falls into the police chief's hands. Apparently, it's quite detailed. Suddenly, more than a few men in our no-longer-happy little town are panicking, and some might be willing to go to extraordinary measures to protect their secrets. Add to this the fact that the Police Chief is having his own affair with a woman who might be married to the murderer, and you've got the makings of a real potboiler.
I loved this book. Yes, the mystery was interesting and the characters compelling. But most of all I loved Mr. Blassingame's writing. It's some of the best I've ever laid eyes on. He has the police chief telling the story in first person, and the guy is genuinely funny. No, the book isn't a comedy, but the chief's wry observations and witty one-liners had me chuckling throughout. In particular, his theological meanderings and speculations about God and eternal judgment are classic. He is, after all, a deacon and a Sunday School teacher who is committing adultery.
I was a little surprised at the explicitness of the sexuality in this book. The year was 1959 so you know it's not as steamy as what one might read today. Still, for a mainstream novel of that era, it gets pretty racy.
Lurton Blassingame may have been a top-notch agent. If this novel is any indication, he could also have been an A-list novelist.
The story is set in a small town where there lives a floozy. She's had affairs with half the men in town, most of whom are married and many of whom are deacons and otherwise prominent members of the local church. One day someone fires four bullets through Ms. Floozy's bedroom window, one of which does her in. The thing that serves as a match to set the situation on fire is the floozy's private diary which falls into the police chief's hands. Apparently, it's quite detailed. Suddenly, more than a few men in our no-longer-happy little town are panicking, and some might be willing to go to extraordinary measures to protect their secrets. Add to this the fact that the Police Chief is having his own affair with a woman who might be married to the murderer, and you've got the makings of a real potboiler.
I loved this book. Yes, the mystery was interesting and the characters compelling. But most of all I loved Mr. Blassingame's writing. It's some of the best I've ever laid eyes on. He has the police chief telling the story in first person, and the guy is genuinely funny. No, the book isn't a comedy, but the chief's wry observations and witty one-liners had me chuckling throughout. In particular, his theological meanderings and speculations about God and eternal judgment are classic. He is, after all, a deacon and a Sunday School teacher who is committing adultery.
I was a little surprised at the explicitness of the sexuality in this book. The year was 1959 so you know it's not as steamy as what one might read today. Still, for a mainstream novel of that era, it gets pretty racy.
Lurton Blassingame may have been a top-notch agent. If this novel is any indication, he could also have been an A-list novelist.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews