Mister Candy by Jules Hardy
In a lifetime of being wrong about more things than I am right, you would think, by now, that I would have honed my judgement to a sharper edge. Not a bit of it! Still as wrong as ever I was; as, for instance, my recent throwaway line to the effect that women were no good at writing thrillers. Within days I had borrowed from the library a book entitled Mister Candid by Jules Hardy. Now I'm not one to threaten my local library with an action under the Trade Descriptions Act, but the fact is that 'Jules', in this case, turned out to be a woman. Nevertheless, unflagging in my duty to this blog, to bring to the attention of my equally low-brow readers the very best of 'pulp fiction', I persevered, and I have to admit that Ms. Hardy has written a winner!
This is all the more surprising in view of the fact that Ms. Hardy is not only a woman, but English! However, the book is set entirely in America and spans three generations. If I describe the form as 'Gothic' (or perhaps neo-Gothic, is more accurate) I do not wish to put off those readers (like me) who just look to 'pulp- fiction' for a good series of 'crash-bang-wallops-and-thrills'. There is plenty of violence, some of it eye-wateringly awful, but the intricate plotting over several decades is cleverly handled, and the main thrust of the story never lost. It is peopled by a gallery of vividly drawn characters, and the book ends sadly, but satisfactorily. For those jaded by too many thrillers of the same type, this comes highly recommended as brilliant in its own right, but also utterly different from anything you might have read before.
As a service to my readers (We try harder!), I have provided the following links to my previous book tips:
#1: The Search for Klingsor by Jorge Volpe
#2: Good News, Bad News by David Wolstencroft
#3: The Interrogation by Thomas H. Cook
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