“River Girl” is one terrific, top-notch piece of fiction. It reads smoothly and easily and is deceptively good. It is a southern noir piece taking place in and around a small Southern town and a swamp around the town. The narrator, Jack, is a corrupt Southern Deputy Sheriff who is stuck in an unhappy marriage with a woman who barely makes an appearance in the book, but who only seems to want money and, at that, more money than the poor deputy makes. “Louise was very pretty, a taffy blonde with wide, green eyes and a stubborn round chin.” But, their lives were constant fights and endless bickering over money.

Jack goes around town, collecting for his boss from poolhalls, gambling establishments, and brothels. They seem to spend more time drinking and collecting envelopes of money than actually doing much in the way of law enforcement.

Jack and the sheriff are constantly on the watch for getting caught in this graft, concerned that a grand jury will be impaneled and that they will have to flee. He is bitter, unhappy, and lonely and often reminisces about growing up in the town, playing on the fifth-grade football team and having a childhood crush on a girl named Doris or Dorothy. “At night,” Jack “used to lie awake and rescue her from burning buildings and capsized boats and bullies big enough to be in the seventh grade.”
That all changes one afternoon when Jack takes the afternoon off and heads out to do some fishing for a few days. While on the lake, deep in the swamp, he spots a guy who seems a little out of place – his accent isn’t right. Jack also spots the man’s wife- a barefoot young lady dressed in a shapeless oversized garment and with her gorgeous hacked off as if with a knife. Doris takes his breath away. He watches her, trying not to stare, “conscious of the crazy thought that she could be modeling a bathing suit instead of walking across a backwoods clearing.” When he got to understand her better, he realized that “Loneliness was driving her mad.” She had been living in the swamp here in a shack on the water for years, seeing no one but the husband, who barely left the shack either. They had been on the run from someone or something for five years, but she didn’t know what and was afraid to find out. Of course, Jack can’t put this girl out of his mind and couldn’t stay away from her, whether they were each married or not.

Jack explains that “Even before you will admit to yourself that you are a criminal, . . .you begin to act like one without conscious thought.” Soon, he has to get Doris away from this beast of a husband and save her from this swamp life. He also has to escape from the noose tightening around his neck with the grand jury peering into the graft he has been involved with.

Of course, they can’t just waltz off into the sunset. That would be too easy. He sticks out like a sore thumb. Doris can’t blend into the herd with her looks. She might as well be “leading a couple of pandas on a leash.”

This is a love story and a man on the run story through the treacherous Southern swamps. There’s also a dangerous femme fatale on the loose in addition to sweet Doris -- a thrill-chasing girl who will drive one hundred miles an hour through small towns and be ready to leave on a moment’s notice. There’s murder here and betrayal and distrust and desperation.

This is a fantastic piece of pulp work that is worth reading more than once. It’s that good. Just like all this pulp stories, as the reader, you feel Jack’s agony as he sinks deeper and deeper into the quagmire and can’t figure his way out. ( )

Deputy, from the inevitable corrupt sheriff's department, meets a strange woman with a bad hairdo at the lake - and decides to leave his wife for her. Only one problem, her husband is a mysterious fugitive of some sort who makes his living selling catfish and fixing motors. But the girl is barefoot, you see, and that just breaks the poor deputy's heart so that he must do something for her! Perhaps I've oversimplified things a bit - suffice to say they are a bit murkier than that and there are some interesting other characters as well. In fact, the overblown, over-sentimentalized love story between the deputy and the wife is the weakest part of the story. Except for her intriguing hairdo, the wife isn't as interesting as the latest lady friend of the Deputy's boss, who supplies her with an apartment well furnished with guns as well as furniture. Just when we think Williams has become lost in Harlequin territory, he pulls out the stops for an ending that makes you glad you stuck around for the wild ride through Jim Thompson territory. ( )