(4 of 5)
Hard-boiled Writer Ernest Hemingway started something when he published his first popular book (The Sun Also Rises]: earnest critics have thought they discerned among his imitators the beginnings of a School. But the two most outstanding followers of Hemingway, William Riley Burnett and Dashiell Hammett, seem to have been not so much started by his example as let loose by it. Both have a manner that owes its start, perhaps, to Hemingway; but both have branched off into a patented, individual style of storytelling. No pioneers of language, they have been content to follow their leader into new country and then settle there.
You will have a hard time putting down one of Burnett's books before you have finished it; The Silver Eagle is no exception. As in Little Caesar, the scene is contemporary Chicago, but this time the hero is no gangster but a racketeer perforce. Francis Cecil Harworth (ne plain Keogh) has come up from scratch to a position that includes the ownership of several nightclubs, a gambling house, a Rolls-Royce and a limited but attractive choice of women. All his businesses are strictly legal with the exception of the gambling house. Harworth is a hard young man with no sense of humor, big ambitions; he is making good money but wants the best. Other Chicagoans have ambitions too, and Harworth soon finds that if he wants to continue making any money at all he will have to string along either with Gangster Molina or Gangster Monahan.
Unfortunately for Harworth he is forced into choosing Molina (who strongly resembles Scarf ace Capone); he finds himself unwilling accessory to a killing, soon realizes that he is caught between the millstones of gang warfare. When Molina falls, Harworth goes with him. If cinema audiences continue to favor gang pictures, The Silver Eagle should make money as a film.
Ex-Wife
HALF A LOAF—Grace Hegger Lewis— Liveright ($2.50.).*
The late Robert Louis Stevenson, suave preceptor, warned youths & maidens against taking a literary mate. Like a frenetic footnote to that polished advice comes Grace Hegger Lewis's case-history, Half A Loaf. Divorced from her famed husband Sinclair Lewis six years ago, Authoress Lewis has spent part of the interim preparing to heave her stone, which hits more birds than perhaps she meant it to.
"Timothy Hale" was young, poor, gawky, with big ambitions and no prospects when "Susan" first met him. He was reader to a Manhattan publisher; she was editorial factotum on a woman's magazine. He courted her with picnics, omnivorous enthusiasm, awkward gestures: finally she gave in, married him. At first they had a grand time, especially when Tim's stories had begun to make enough so that they could travel. But from the day his God's Own Country (Main Street) became a best seller dated all of Susan's troubles. Success inevitably went to his head and he further bamboozled himself by drinking. Susan was always technically faithful but Tim gave her many a cause for anxious jealousy. Once she gave a wedding anniversary party in London; Tim got drunk and disgraced her. Once he brought a psychoanalyst into her room while she was dressing, wanted the three of them to have a conference on their marital troubles. When she could stand it no longer Susan went to Reno.