Home Is the Sailor

This entry in the Hard Case Crime series is a republication of a novel written in the early fifties, by Day Keene. Home is the Sailor is a fine, gritty book firmly in the pulp/noir tradition, but it is perhaps too typical of the genre. Though the style is pleasurable the similarities to other books are a bit too striking.

The story concerns Swede Nelson, a merchant seaman who has saved his money and wants to head back to his Minnesota home town to buy a farm and settle down. He gets as far as the California coast before he meets a beautiful young woman who owns a travel court (the earlier equivalent of the motel). She rescues him from a bar fight, and he is smitten. Of course she is not all she seems to be, and soon enough he is committing murder on her behalf.

The jacket copy tells us that it is reminiscent of the work of Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, and that is a plus and a minus. It is almost too reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice, right down to a dead body being placed in a car and pushed off a cliff. Since this book was written after the Cain book (and well-known film version) I'm kind of stunned Keene even tried it. Also, it's pretty clear what the femme fatale is up to early on, but there are a couple of nice twists along the way, and in this kind of book you can't be sure if the hero/narrator is going to get out of this without facing the gas chamber.

At times the writing is a bit much. Swede is a constant drinker, and we have to accept that twice he has blackouts and remembers nothing. But these kinds of entertainments do not hinge on realism, so it's best to just sit back and enjoy the rum-soaked sex and violence.