Gil Brewer (1922–1983)

The Vengeful Virgin by Gil Brewer

Eighteen year old Shirley Angela is the caretaker of her ailing stepfather (Victor), a task that she finds more than unpleasant. She meets a television repairman Jack (and) falls head-over-heels for him. Blinded by love they decide to end Victor's life and live off his money, what could go wrong?

The Vengeful Virgin is an intense, suspense filled dramatic page-turner. A thrilling story of love, lust, greed, and revenge. I highly recommend to those who enjoy a gripping read.… (mehr)

For me, this 1958 crime novel is to the anfractuous-girl-with-money-wants-affair-with-me fantasy what PKD's A Scanner Darkly is to recreational drug use. The ending will scare the bejeebers out of you—in an intellectual don’t-challenge-the-gods kind of way—but you can't stop turning the pages. I haven’t read many books in this genre so I can’t tell you if it is superior in that way, but an underlying subtext of sincere regret and spurned grace enables us to sympathize with the protagonist and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”… (mehr)

If you enjoy classic pulp fiction from the fifties and early sixties, then at some point you will become acquainted with the work of Gil Brewer, one of the true masters of the craft. Brewer's novels are portraits of
lust-filled characters who are compelled by money and passion to do things those with sane minds wouldn't do. His characters are stuck on a path to destruction and can't stop even when they can see quite clearly where they are going.

Nude on Thin Ice is a particular type of pulp novel where almost every character in it is twisted in some way. Few of the characters offer any redeeming qualities, including the protagonist Ken McCall, who is about as swarmy and slimy as they come, out to use anyone he can get his hands on, motivated by greed and lust and panic, woman-dumper, woman-beater, playboy, degenerate, etc. What makes the
book great is how Brewer makes the reader care about what happens to this miserable creature.

Others in the book are greedy, vain, manipulative, conniving, incestuous, violent, sneaky, lying, and hateful. What do you expect from a story about a jerk who dumps his girlfriend and hightails it across the country merely to attempt to seduce his best friend's widow and get his hands on her fortune? And,

Slimy Ken may just be the most sane and levelheaded one in the veritable madhouse that buddy Carl Schroeder left behind.
The story is well-plotted and compelling but it's Brewer's writing filled as it is with pulpy goodness that blasts this novel into the hall of pulp fame.… (mehr)

Gil Brewer should be better known than he is. This book is a masterpiece
from cover to cover. It is up there with the best of Jim Thompson's
work. The descriptions of the people, the places, and the moods are
crazy good. This is noir as it was meant to be. A man is down on his
luck, way down. His wife, Ruby, is at least nine months ready and he
hasn't found a lick of work in six months or more. Selling the last of
his gun collection ought to pay a few bills. So he goes to his favorite
bartender to sell it. Trouble finds him though in the person of Ralph
Anger, who is do aptly named. And, hours of pure terror with a crazed
gunman ensue. This book is so good you'll want to read it again as
soon asyou finish it… (mehr)