The Power-House

[a nice tight clean copy, with minor wear to the extremities, top of spine slightly pushed; the jacket is bright and attractive with modest edgewear, some soiling to the rear panel, a shallow chip at the base of the spine, and a couple of tiny chips at the top edge of the front panel -- but also with a deep (1.5") chip at the top of the spine that has taken most of the title with it]. Very scarce novel of big-city crime and corruption, by the author that someone (I think it was me) once called "the best damn hardboiled writer you've probably never heard of." It's the middle work in Appel's "Brain Guy" trilogy (between "Brain Guy" itself, 1934, and "The Dark Stain," 1943), and possibly the most ambitious of the three -- a sprawling epic that brings to mind Sergio Leone's masterful film ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. It continues the story of Bill Trent of "Brain Guy" on his path from an up-and-coming gangster "into big-scale crime, into prostitution and labor racketeering," a world in which "petty crime becomes murder, the tenement delinquents become mobsters and labor spies; a world of gunmen, gangsters and procurers are protected by detectives and politicians; [and in which] crime has become a parasitic industry on the body of society." Appel (1907-1977) drew heavily on his own Hell's Kitchen background in fashioning the novel, about which The Los Angeles Times critic Wilbur Needham wrote: "Once you take this book up, I defy you to set it aside for meals and sleep." He was likened in his day to James M. Cain, Ernest Hemingway, and others of their hard-boiled ilk; one critic wrote that Cain was "outpointed, outsocked, outslugged, and outcursed" by Appel, and another said that "by comparison, Hemingway's style is flowery." That latter quote is slugged on the front of the jacket, and in fact the entire rear panel is given over to similar quotes -- more than a dozen of them -- presented as "nation-wide acclaim for Benjamin Appel as a writer, and for his novels as vital contributions to the literature of the modern American scene." Despite being well-reviewed, however, his books never sold particularly well, and his literary star has substantially dimmed over the years: apart from a couple of paperback editions of "Brain Guy," his work is out of print, and he is mostly out of mind. It ain't fair, I tells ya!

Product Info

Publisher: E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc.

Year: 1939

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

ReadInk

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Country: United States