A Touch of Death

By Charles Williams

The score would be an easy one -- if it weren't for the women involved.

Out of work and dead broke, Lee Scarborough is a long way from his days as a football hero when he meets the sunbathing Diana James -- an innocent-looking creature with a plan to make a fortune. A few months' back, her lover embezzled $120,000 from a bank, but disappeared before she could get her hands on the cash. The police think he's fled the state, but Diana is sure he's dead, and knows who killed him: his wife, Madelon Butler, a sadistic drunk who is capable of anything. The cash is inside Madelon's house, waiting to be stolen a third time, and all Diana needs is a patsy. Scarborough fits the bill.

The plan sails along smoothly until Scarborough meets Mrs. Butler. By the time his luck runs out, he'd rather face a dozen hulking linebackers than these two beauties, who have been driven to a frenzy by jealousy, greed, and lust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784089436

Charles Williams

Charles Williams (1909–1975) was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years before leaving to work in the electronics industry. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime. Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay. Williams died in California in 1975. 

Reviews for A Touch of Death

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pulp Perfection
If you choose to read just one pulp novel in your lifetime, this would be an excellent choice. Guaranteed you will choose to pick up another one or two. Charles Williams was one of the top authors of the pulp era of the fifties. He is not to be confused with the other Charles Williams, who wrote theological books and was often linked with C.S. Lewis. This Charles Williams wrote in a smooth, flowing style that had wider appeal than just the pulp audience of many other authors. This book is not some dark and dreary crawl through the gutter of life by some two-bit punk who ran off with the boss's wife and money. Rather, it is a well-executed, well-plotted masterpiece that is worth reading more than once. It is obvious why Hard Case Crime chose this book from among Williams' work to feature in its crime series.

Here you have an ex-college football player (Scarborough) reduced to selling door-to-door who explains that "You can't eat six-year-old football scores." He's soured and possibly has run out of dreams at the ripe old age of twenty-eight.

You have Diana James, a brunette "sunbathing in the bottom part of a two-fragment bathing suit" who offers him a chance to walk off with a piece of $120,000. She was no bimbo, though. "She was sharp." "She had it figured out from every angle." She gave him a chance to think about the reward first and, when he got used to that, "you could let your ideas grow a little. You didn't have to jump in cold. You waded in."

You have a second femme fatale at war with the brunette. This one, Madelon Butler, was also a brunette, "with a magnolia complexion and big, smoky-looking eyes. And a bitch right out of the book." "She was almost unbelievably beautiful, and she was drunk as a lord." She scared the living hell out of him. "An icicle walked slowly up my spine and sat between my shoulder blades." Even when she's in his arms, she is like "a beautiful and enraged wildcat." "If she wanted ice water, I thought, all she had to do was open up a vein." Wow! "God knows what went on inside that chromium-plated soul of hers, but no human being born could go on taking that kind of pressure forever without breaking."

So you have two crazy, gorgeous women, a hidden fortune that had been embezzled from the banks, a man who was probably dead, although his body was never found, married to one of these women and having an affair with the other. Once you mix that together, boy, do you have a tale to tell. He had warned James that he did not want any "wild-haired babes blowing their tops."

Scarborough isn't sure how he fits in here and wonders if he is being set up as a patsy or a "dead duck." James is setting him up as a "sucker" and, if he can't pull off the job, she would just send out the next sucker. "I'd been played for a sucker by a smooth operator," he explains. These two women are both lying to him and throwing him curves, left and right. Throughout the story, there is suspicion and distrust and he constantly wonders if the knife will end up in his back or the scissors in his throat.

Scarborough is never sure who all the players are or who is setting up who. Not even when the ash blonde with the angelic face pays him a visit.

This book has it all, murder, kidnapping, snipers, police dragnets, and, most of all, it has it all turning to hell as Scarborough starts to become more and more unglued. He had been warned about her, hadn't he? He would never get any of the money, he'd been told. "I wished she were dead. I wished she'd never been born, or that I had never heard of her," he says. "

This novel is so well-written that the pages literally melt into your hands as you read them. It is narrated in such a perfect pace that the reader doesn't stumble over long flowery descriptions or complain that there is too much action or too many players.

Williams tells this tale perfectly, as Scarborough feels the noose tightening around his neck and the cage he is in gets smaller and smaller, the reader feels him breaking apart.

[calum7iain · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lee Scarborough is an ex-American football player who has fallen on hard times following a leg break that forced his premature retiral from the game. In reduced circumstances, he now earns a meagre living in real estate and doing all kinds of shady odd jobs and finds himself having to sell off his car. Answering an offer he ends up at an apartment complex where he stumbles across a stunning brunette called Diana, sunbathing topless. He gets talking to her and is soon learning about a corrupt bank official and an embezzled $120k of cash, which is apparently hidden in a remote abandoned mansion. Diana cannot go to the mansion to look for the money, but she soon persuades Lee to take on the job. Lee is suspicious but Diana is persuasive and he soon finds himself roaming the dark mansion and subsequently plunging into a desperate, double-crossing game of greed and deception. Originally published in 1954 "A Touch of Death" by Charles Williams was republished in 2006 under the "Hard Case Crime" imprint. In many ways Williams’ story runs as a classic "couple on the run" story, albeit with a clever and nasty twist on the formula. The book is powerfully plotted with a serpentine approach and a desperate atmosphere of growing paranoia, dark cynicism and violent suppressed sexual desires. The dialogue is cool, clever and hard-boiled and in Madelon Butler, Williams has come up with one of the most memorable, beautiful, tough and deadly femme fatales in all pulp fiction. The relationship and the manipulations between Lee and Madelon, as the book reaches its perfectly pitched climax, are superbly written in taut, tight language that is melancholic and simmering with impending disaster. "A Touch of Death" is a masterly pulp novel – fast-paced and full of perverse amoral characters and situations that are guaranteed to create rampant paranoia. Exciting and suspenseful throughout, this is a first rate slice of hard boiled fiction from a master of the genre.

[hredwards · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great!! Really love Hard Case Crime books!

[willymammoth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Hardcase Crime series of novels is simply wonderful, a throwback to the days of gritty detective fiction and pulp sleaze. The stories aren't the stuff of pure literary genius, but they're always dependably enjoyable. "A Touch of Death" is no different. The narrator, an ex-college football player named Lee Scarborough, is propositioned by a young lady who needs a favor. It seems her middle aged, married lover--a VP at a local bank--disappeared after embezzling $200,000. He had planned to leave his wife, take the cash, and run off with his young mistress, but on the date of their planned departure he never showed up. Said young lady is convinced that he's been murdered, and that his wife is the culprit. She offers Scarborough half of the 200 grand if he'll search the banker's supposedly empty house to find where the money's been hidden. Seeing as how Scarborough is up to his eyeballs in debt and this promises to be an easy score, he agrees. But as in any such story, it doesn't turn out to be as easy as he thinks. At every turn there are new lies and new angles unfolding, so many that he doesn't know what to believe and what not to. Soon the only thing Scarborough can believe in is the promise of cold hard cash, and he holds onto it with white-knuckled determination.This was definitely a fun read for me, and anyone who is a fan of the pulp sleaze and noir of the 40s and 50s will probably enjoy it. It features many staples from that era of literature (that being 1950s crime novels), including the femme fatale, the tough-talking strong man, and plenty of action and hard dialogue. One of the more endearing aspects of the book (to me, at least) is that Scarborough might be considered something of an unreliable narrator. This fact makes it even harder for the reader to sort out the "whodunnits" of the tale, and even the reality of the ending can be questioned.Speaking of the ending, there's an abrupt shift in tone from the rest of the novel, transitioning to a direct plea to the reader. It's one of those "You gotta believe me, it really happened that way!" types of endings. It adds to the unreliability of the narrator, but it also makes for a stylistically inconsistent narrative. It is, however, a typical device used in the genre at that time, so I found it easy to forgive. And the title of the novel had little to nothing to do with the story, but again, sensational novel titles were par for the course in the novels of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. It's partly why we love them."A Taste of Death" gets three and a half stars from me It's a great throwback to the bygone days of noir and pulp sleaze, and while it may not appeal to all readers given its dated nature, I can't resist liking it. I am, after all, one of genre's biggest fans.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very well done, exciting read. An ex-football player tells us how he met a girl & we follow him into a deadly mystery with a prize of a lot of money. The story unfolds bit, by logical bit, that completely swings it around, especially twisting us toward the end as all the pieces finally fall into place. I could not only follow his line of thought every step of the way, but felt I would probably do the same, feel the same. It was scary.The story is a bit dated. Much of it depends on information or lack thereof & only newspapers & radios were available. Far from harming it, I found a new appreciation for what we have now, while being thoroughly sucked into & enjoying the story.Another great Hard Case Crime!