Charles W. Runyon (1928–2015)

Charles Runyon was a top notch writer who wrote masterpiece after masterpiece. Why he is not more well-known is a mystery. "The Anatomy of Violence" is an amazing work that starts off a little slow but builds to a fiery climax. In a small town controlled by one man's iron will, beauty queens are crowned once a year. Eileen is raped and murdered that night. A year later it's Laurie's turn, and, although she too is left for dead, she survives, determined to expose the man who did this even if no one else in this backwards town gives a damn. Told in the first person, Laurie's experiences are set out as the deadly game of cat and mouse begins. Reminiscent of Runyon's "The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed," there are brief glimpses from the rapist's point of view. This is a well -written, well-paced crime novel and is without question a five-star read.… (altro)

It is a story about love, about betrayal, about waiting ten years to exact revenge, about trust and loyalty. It is a book written with great skill and contains incredible prose. It is a powerful story filled with the rawest of emotions. It begins with a man in prison and is, indeed, about the cages we put ourselves in out of guilt or fear, traps of the past, shackles of memory that we can't escape. It is a story about the nature of evil and cruelty.

Drew was betrayed by a woman who framed him for a crime he didn't commit. He lost everything -- his wife, his daughter, his job. On the run from every lawman in the country, Drew tracks Edith from one man to another as she keeps trading up to find the safety and security she craves. He tracks her across the Caribbean and finds an island girl who loves him and will do anything for him, but his red hot rage propels him to revenge on the one who betrayed him.

"She was a witch and she must confess her witchery." "She had pointed the black-gloved finger which consigned him to death."

"Drew's mind was jumbled,crumpled, disintegrated like the inside of a broken thermos bottle, little bits shaking loose inside, all hurting."

Edith was a girl who had married wealth expecting to find the end of her troubles, only to discover that the nagging feeling of insecurity wouldn't go away."

Runyon writes pulp as if he were reciting poetry and there are scenes and moods and emotions he captures that are just outstanding.

Leta "had stepped from the sea and flowed like liquid to the hard- packed sand, spreading her limbs like a golden flower opening to the sun."

Runyon doesn't just write novels. He writes masterpieces that you want to read more than once so you can read his descriptions of the sky blending into the sea and the temptress in the green bikini whose claws are never fully retracted.
… (altro)

Charles Runyon is best known as a science fiction writer, but it is unfortunate for us that he didn’t write more crime fiction. He was quite good at it. “The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed” has a title that grabs you from the paperback racks. It is a murder mystery about a serial killer and it is a real good one.

Make no mistake about it. This novel is excellent. Don't be fooled into thinking it is just another pulpy tale filled with the language and imagery of Southern noir.

The first part of the book is told from the killer’s point of view and it is quite a chilling point of view. Told in the most lushly pulpy way, it is reminiscent of the best of Gil Brewer’s Florida lust in the swamps tales. The killer explains that “Bernice Struble thought she was playing the adultery game, but [he] taught her that it was only a variation of The Death Game.” Bernice is a lonely, horny housewife who while the husband’s away, goes to town and sits there, smoking a cigarette, her lips “swollen and sensuous as they pursed and pulled on the white cylinder” and her eyes “moist and hot, measuring the men as they passed.” The narrator notes that, in five years, Bernice would be “coarse and dumpy, but now she had no need to stretch and compress her flesh with latex and elastic. As she walked the town, he could see the “soft rolling shape beneath Bernice’s dress” and knew “she was dealing it straight, letting you know in advance, and if you were disappointed later it was your own fault for not looking.” But, this portrait of this dame is not complete until the narrator finds her sitting in front of her house and asks if she wanted to take a ride. “Poor dumb broad, she had nothing working for her but an extra helping of hormones.” He explains that she had been sitting in her yard and it hadn’t mattered who came by.

But what is most chilling here is not the narrator’s casual approach to adultery, but that, after killing her, he explained that he had only contempt for those who go out on a dark street and select a victim at random. Instead, this narrator is a professional, an expert, an artist, who is not crude and barbarous about killing. He works at his craft and he leaves few clues that it is even murder.

Most of the book is concerned with two folks in this small, homey little town who have picked up on the small clues – like the fact that there have been statistically way too many accidental deaths in this town. Velda runs the grocery and is a smart, clever woman. The other is Curt Friedland, who has been away for many years since his brother Frankie had been convicted of murder – the murder of Anne, Velda’s sister, now dead twelve years. Amid small-town gossip, these two put together the clues. This, the main section of the book is told from Velda's point of view. It is sandwiched in with the killer's voice in the beginning and his return to the dialogue at almost the end of the book. Very cleverly done and a great way to build the tension.

It is a well put together story that is filled with this small Southern town world. As one character remarks, something happens to people here. Although their bodies look healthy, “but the minds inside are dead, sluggish and slow, like cold porridge.”… (altro)