Down and Out

by Les Masters

She was like all the others . . . a young female desperately in need of money, with nothing to offer in the way of collateral except herself!

156 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1965

Reviews

[Steven]

Although the POV jumps around a several times into other character's perspectives, which does help to round out the story, the primary focal character that I guess we are supposed to identify with is Joe Ryan, the sleaze-bag manager of a finance company that specializes in making loans to people who have no other options. His go-to move is to take young women seeking loans to a motel where sex is their collateral for loan approval. But Ryan is under investigation for his shady loans and a couple of the women are also bent on revenge. He has a private detective helping him gather intel on his enemies and the main drama (aside from Ryan getting laid a lot) is whether he will avoid getting arrested for his sleazy lending practices. Plenty of interesting angles and setups but just not written well enough to make this vintage sleazer the cracker of a noir that it could have been.