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The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed
The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed
The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed
Ebook239 pages6 hours

The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed

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Accidents happen, but the town of Sherman seems to have more than its fair share of the fatal kind. Someone falls into a well, another drowns, another is killed by an exploding stove. Curt Friedland comes back to town to clear his brother of murder, convinced there is more to all these deaths than mere coincidence. Enlisting the aid of Velda, whose sister was supposedly murdered by Curt's brother, the two of them gradually begin to attract the attention of a very ingenious killer, a man well versed in the game of Death.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 31, 2011
ISBN9781440539022
The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed
Author

Charles Runyon

An Adams Media author.

Read more from Charles Runyon

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.”

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The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed - Charles Runyon

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