FIRES THAT DESTROY

FIRES THAT DESTROY (1951) is the third Harry Whittington crime novel I've read in as many weeks. The other two, FORGIVE ME, KILLER and THE DEVIL WEARS WINGS, were both top notch noir drenched thrillers, and FIRES THAT DESTROY is yet another first rate depiction of a long, slow descent into hell.

Homely Bernice Harper murders Lloyd Deerman, her blind boss, at the beginning of the book. He's in love with her but she wants nothing to do with Lloyd. All she wants is the twenty-some-odd thousand dollars in cold cash that Lloyd had hidden in a hollowed out accounts ledger. When Bernice is cleared of suspicion in Deerman's death she takes the money and runs. She cashes a hundred dollar bill at a local bank and catches the eye of handsome young teller, Carlos Brandon. She can't imagine what he sees in her but he's incredibly charming and seems to be genuinely attracted to her.

Before you know it, they've fallen in love and Bernice has undergone a complete fashion, hair and makeup transformation at a posh New York salon, emerging as a stunning beauty. She and Carlos decide to run away to Florida and get married. They do so but it's not long before the trouble starts.

Bernice is overwhelmed with passion and desire for her handsome new husband. She literally can't keep her hands off of him as years of repressed urges come boiling to the surface. She wants sex 24/7. Carlos tries his best to satisfy her but he is, unfortunately, impotent. Thus begins a fevered love/hate relationship between the newlyweds. 

A bad situation only gets worse (and of course, this being a hard boiled noir drama, things must get worse) when Bernice learns that Carlos has had a string of rich women whom he has sponged off of in order to cover his massive gambling debts. 

Bernice, left alone while Carlos romances a hot-to-trot young waitress, turns to drinking heavily to alleviate her pain and anguish. She begins to contemplate suicide and a helpful bartender sells her a deadly concoction guaranteed to end things quickly. All she has to do is drink it. 

There's a sucker punch twist in the final pages of the book, an event that finalizes Bernice's final and irrevocable descent into the very depths of hell. 

All three of the Whittington books that I've read feature protagonists who start off in a very bad place only to find themselves falling deeper and farther into total damnation. FIRES is a first class piece of crime fiction, a searing character study of a woman who would kill to be loved and admired. She wants nothing more than to be treated as all other beautiful women are treated. 

In the end, she gets just what she wants.

Highly recommended.