As a Man Falls by Howard Rigsby. Fawcett Gold Medal (1954), 185 pp.
Unable to accept the death of his wife and child a few years earlier, Henry Scudder travels around aimlessly while his wealthy family back East picks up the tab. He’s just returned for a second stay at a beach hotel south of Los Angeles, even though he’s none too keen about renewing the relationships he acquired there the year before. After his first night back he awakens to find the body of a pretty blonde in the dressing room. She’s been strangled, and Henry fears everyone will believe he did it. He worries especially about acquaintances who might have seen them together the day before. Henry decides that he must somehow get rid of the body. But several factors, including his own growing sense of foreboding, make this a difficult task.
Readers will need to pay careful attention at the beginning of the book to understand what’s happening at the end. And even then they may be perplexed. Rigsby introduces a large cast of characters, sometimes switching viewpoint to reveal more about them. Yet their relevance comes not with their actions but with the ideas they put in Henry’s mind. They were, he comes to believe, the instruments in “a series of dazzling little diversionary movements, the sole object of which was to confuse and distract him, confound him so with meaningless incidents and people that he would not notice the preparations being made for some crushing frontal attack.” (pp. 105-106) This description of Henry’s thoughts gives a sense of Rigby’s writing style, which is sometimes far removed from the clipped prose usually associated with noir fiction. Readers looking for something different in crime novels are likely to enjoy the book.
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