Kill Now, Pay Later ~Robert Terrall

–1960, reprint 2007
–220 pages, Hard Case Crime
–4/5 stars

It is Friday, normally Friday Favorites time, but a storm that knocked out internet service last night means that instead you get me desperately attempting to catch up on my overdue book reviews. But hey, you also get a couple of great Robert McGinnis illustrations, so it isn’t all bad news!

I recently posted about the publisher Hard Case Crime and their goal to “bring…back into print the best work of the pulp era and [to introduece] readers to new work by some of today’s most powerful writers and artists”. Because I collect various paperback books because of my affection for the cover illustrators, I have all of the Robert McGinnis illustrated Hard Case Crime novels. I was looking for something easy to take with me last weekend and decided to grab Kill Now, Pay Later.

I haven’t really read any of these reprints of older pulp/noir novels and had no idea what to expect. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised.

From his bio on the Hard Case Crime website:

“Robert Terrall: Under his own name and the pseudonyms “Robert Kyle” and “Jose Gonzalez,” Robert Terrall wrote many popular and well-reviewed crime novels, including the prescient 1948 classic A Killer Is Loose Among Us, about a biological weapons lab developing weaponized anthrax for use in a terrorist attack. He is best known, however, for his comic work, including the Ben Gates series that began with Blackmail, Inc. in 1958 and included Kill Now, Pay Later. After the creator of detective Mike Shayne, Davis Dresser, stopped writing novels as “Brett Halliday,” Terrall also took over these duties, turning out more than two dozen Mike Shayne novels under the Halliday name.”

Robert Terrall is considered one of the better authors of pulp detective stories of his era and Kill Now, Pay Later features his creation, private eye Ben Gates, who starred in a handful of novels. Kill Now, Pay Later was written in 1960 and yet I didn’t feel like the story was dated in any significant manner in regards to the setting or technology with one exception: the lack of cell phones. I found it very interesting how the need to use a pay phone or someone’s house line gave the story a nostalgic feel. Beyond that I felt like it could have been a novel written at any other time period.

Terrall’s language is engaging and the story flows very well. Ben Gates is a somewhat sardonic character with a dry sense of humor that gives the character weight and distinguishes him from the other well-known private detectives and spies from the literature of this era. True to form there is a degree of sexual banter in the book but despite that Terrall’s women are not just pretty faces and alluring forms…these women are strong, resourceful characters. As such they keep the level of suspense high throughout the tale as you the reader are always wondering if any or all of the female characters are somehow involved in the crime.

The events in Kill Now, Pay Later take place over a very short period of time and at 220 pages the story just races by. Though Terrall wastes no time getting his detective in over his head, I felt that he used the rest of the story to not only engage the reader in the mystery but also to reveal various things about his character. The whole experience of reading this was immensely satisfying, especially coming on the heels of the more difficult but similarly themed stories of Paul Auster.

If this is any indication of the quality of books that Hard Case Crime are releasing then I am happy to say that I have many fun reads ahead.

One of the things I admire about what Hard Case Crime is doing is that they are doing their best to tie back into the original source material. They were able to get Robert McGinnis to do an entirely new image for this reprinting of Kill Now, Pay Later. Below you can see the image (minus title/author graphics) that he painted for this novel’s first release in 1960.

If you are interested you can click on the Kill Now, Pay Later link at the end of paragraph 2 of this post and read a sample chapter of the book.