A TOUCH OF DEATH

First published in 1953, A TOUCH OF DEATH by Charles Williams was one of the early entries in the line of Hard Case Crime reprints of vintage crime fiction . It's a white knuckle descent into hell that asks the question, just what you be willing to do for $120,000 (a sizable amount in 1953). 

For one Lee Scarborough, the answer is anything. Scarborough is the classic noir trope, the average, decent guy who plays the fly trapped in a web spun by a deadly black widow in the form of Madelon Butler, as fatale a femme as I've ever encountered in all my years of reading crime fiction. 

Scarborough is tasked with breaking into a supposedly empty house in search of the aforementioned money. Seems Madelon's husband embezzled the money from the bank where he worked. But now Mr. Butler is dead and the money is missing. But Scarborough finds the house isn't empty when he discovers an extremely drunk Madelon in a bedroom. Knowing that she holds the key (literally) to the location of the money, Scarborough takes the unconscious woman from the home and goes on the run. 

The pair hole up at a deserted cabin where they are soon found out by a murderous brother and sister duo who are also after the money. Scarborough and Madelon return to the house where Madelon commits a murder before setting a torch to the ancient structure. 

Lee and Madelon flee once again and take refuge in his apartment where a deadly mental game of cat and mouse plays out. Every time Lee thinks he has an answer to their predicament (cops everywhere are hunting for them), he finds out that the ice cold Madelon is already at least one, sometimes two steps ahead of him. 

And when Lee launches his final plan to recover the money from three different safety deposit boxes, he discovers that Madelon has one last twist of the knife to deliver.

A TOUCH OF DEATH moves at a shot-from-a-cannon pace as the likeable patsy Lee finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a swirling nightmare of a situation from which only one of them can escape. 

This is the first book by Charles Williams that I've read but rest assured it won't be the last. 

Highest recommendation.