SAVAGE STREETS

I found the book pictured above in an antiques store in Whitesboro, Texas, last summer. Whitesboro, in case you're wondering, is in far north Texas, just south of Oklahoma. I recognized William P. McGivern as an author I'd read and enjoyed and the price was right for this hardcover, book club edition: one dollar. I gladly paid the asking price.

SAVAGE STREETS (1959) is the fifth McGivern novel I've read in the last year or so. The other books have been THE DARKEST HOUR, THE BIG HEAT, ROGUE COP and SHIELD FOR MURDER. While those four books all dealt with cops and robbers, SAVAGE STREETS is something different.

This adult novel explores what happens when two major mid-century phenomena collide: juvenile delinquency and the sheltered, middle class life of the American suburbs. A group of JDs, the Chiefs, start small, extorting money from some of the children who live in the peaceful, tranquil, and restricted neighborhood of Faircrest. The boys are too terrified to identify their tormentors in a police line-up and without their identification, the police can't move against the thugs. Some of the men of the community then decide to take matters into their hands and things quickly escalate. There are beatings, a hit-and-run auto accident, the rape of a girl gang member and the death of one of Faircrest's residents. 

The hero of the tale, John Farrell, is a decent, honorable but nonetheless conflicted man. His son, Jimmy, was one of the victims of the gang and it's Farrell that delivers a brutal beating to one of the gang members. But when his neighbors conspire to cover-up the truth of the matter, he sees them revealed for what they really are.

SAVAGE STREETS rips the lid off of the idyllic, peaceful, protected American suburb, depicting the residents of Faircrest as a gang unto themselves, willing to do anything to protect their turf and their lifestyle. It's a blistering indictment of both the juvenile delinquents and the good suburbanites who harbor dark secrets of their own. Reminiscent of the best works of John D. MacDonald, SAVAGE STREETS pulls no punches in this complex study of men and women pushed to the breaking point, people who will do anything to survive.

Highly recommended.