![]() She can positively finger Stroud, and he has the damning framed canvas that proves they met. A determined believer in her worth as an artist, she’s been buying back all of her paintings, hoping to feature them in an upcoming retrospective. Disheveled and bibulous, with a face “like an arrested cyclone,” she comes across as an irascible crackpot with a mouth like a sailor’s. Stroud eventually won the painting-and now it’s the only piece of physical evidence that can link him to Delos. He and Patterson bickered that fatal weekend over the purchase of one of the artist’s pieces at an antiques shop. Louise Patterson is an underappreciated artist whose works Stroud collects. With George Stroud feeling his pursuers closing in, author Fearing suddenly throws out a wild card. Those who witnessed their drunken traipsing can put a name to Delos, but not Stroud. It doesn’t take long for the investigative team to discover every stop Delos and her mystery lover made during that fatal weekend. For Stroud, though, the reason is obvious: He’s being asked to implicate himself in the murder of Pauline Delos. To make that happen, Hagen lets loose some of the best bloodhounds there are-the staff of Crimeways-who are told to locate the man, but not why he’s wanted. #Big clock rapper skin#To save Janoth’s skin (and Hagen’s power and prestige), they know they must identify and find the man who brought Delos home that day-and then deal with him, letting the fall guy fall where he may. After talking Janoth off the hangman’s scaffold, the pair begin to conspire. He’s all cunning, with plenty of backbone that’s as crooked as a snake. Weak and cowardly, and already against the ropes with his troubled magazine empire, Janoth wants to surrender himself to the police, but Hagen will have none of it. Then, with nowhere else to go, he flees to the apartment of his right-hand man, Steve Hagen, and admits his crime. Taunted and berated beyond the breaking point, Janoth finally beats Delos to death. Once upstairs, Janoth and Delos argue, and things get out of hand. It’s a close call for the philandering Crimeways editor, but he’s far from home free. But the couple spot Janoth waiting out front. “Tall, ice-blond, and splendid,” Delos also happens to be the love interest of Stroud’s boss, Earl Janoth, who presides over a faltering magazine syndicate (reportedly based on Time Incorporated, for which the author himself once worked), and who expects much from his employees, giving Stroud the opportunity to pass judgment on the capitalist grind “that seemed to prefer human sacrifices of the flesh and of the spirit over any other token of devotion.”Īfter spending a wild weekend together, Stroud goes to drop the delectable Delos off at her apartment building. He’s also a bit of a cynic whose wandering eye gets him into the jam of a lifetime (and into the middle of a very clever plot) when he steps out with Pauline Delos. The better part of The Big Clock is recounted by George Stroud, executive editor of the New York City-based Crimeways, a Janoth Enterprises publication known as “the nation’s police blotter.” Stroud is intelligent, a hard worker, and a good father. A psychological thriller, told through several first-person narrators, it is an acknowledged classic. His fourth novel, 1946’s The Big Clock, brought him the greatest fame and fortune, becoming the source material for not one, but two Hollywood films, shot three decades apart. A pulp writer and left-leaning poet in the 1930s (with five collections to his credit), Fearing turned to fiction writing in the 1940s and ’50s. Among those was Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961). Many have succeeded in producing long fiction, gaining a popular readership along with critical acclaim. (Can anyone really be certain what some modern poets are attempting to say in their works? Now, imagine those works at book length.) But not all modern poets are inscrutable, and luckily for readers, neither is their prose. In general, novels penned by poets seem like daunting reads. #Big clock rapper series#(Editor’s note: This is the 169th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books.) ![]()
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