Skid Roche

Fifty to One by Charles Ardai

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

I just can’t say enough nice things about this clever, fast-paced novel from Edgar Award winner Charles Ardai. The concept is irresistible: for the 50th Hard Case Crime publication, in honor of the fictional 50th year of Hard Case Crime, publisher Ardai wrote a novel set 50 years ago (in 1958 — the book was published last year) where each of its 50 chapters is titled for one of Hard Case’s books, in order of their publication. Clever, huh? Julio Cortazar would probably have approved.

But it’s so much more than just clever, meta, and deconstructive — it’s a supremely entertaining pulp novel with vividly realized characters, an intoxicating narrative voice and plenty of satisfying twists and turns, not to mention action. Fifty-to-One is the story of a book that never was, the fictional story of a heist against a mob boss, made up by a dancer named Trixie and published as the true confessions of a mobbed-up thief. Problem is, the crime boss in question is convinced it isn’t fiction, since he seems to be missing a few million bucks and some incriminating photographs. The race is on to find the money and the pics before ganglord Uncle Nick murders Trixie, Hard Case Publisher Charley Borden, and their friends in increasingly gruesome and torturous ways.

Unlike almost any other mystery I’ve ever read, this one actually had me surprised — nay, shocked — when The Big Reveal comes as to who stole the money. I felt like a dork for not seeing it coming, but that’s how caught up I was in the narrative trickery. More importantly, I cared about the characters enough that at the end I actually gave a shit whodunnit — actually pretty rare for me with a bona-fide mystery novel. In the meantime it’s a fast-paced ride and filled with juicy period details and a plot that never slows down.

Ardai’s two earlier novels, written as Richard Aleas, were absolutely brilliant but incredibly depressing. This novel retains some of the moral sensibilities that made Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence so intense, but in this case those sensibilities serve the purposes of the caper, rather than the roman noir. There’s still plenty of dark alleys, bloodshed and tragedy, but Fifty-to-One left me feeling invigorated, rather than contemplative. What’s more, you’ll even see a couple of fun cameos-that-aren’t-really-cameos from a pair of Hard Case’s actual authors who fit right in to the clockwork of the novel. Pulp geeks will squee.

After reading more than a dozen books in the Hard Case Crime line, I have to say I think this one’s my favorite — beating out even Lawrence Block’s great Grifter’s Game, Ed McBain’s powerful Gutter and the Grave, and Berkeley writer David Dodge’s South American archaeology “yarn” Plunder of the Sun, all of which I adored. Don’t miss any of them, but particularly don’t miss Fifty-to-One.