Blonde Bait - Lacy, Ed

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Biographie:
Ed Lacy was the principal pseudonym of Leonard S. Zinberg (1911-1968), an American writer of crime, mystery, and suspense fiction. Working largely in the paperback-original marketplace, Lacy wrote fast, direct, socially alert crime novels that drew on urban pressure, violence, class tension, moral compromise, and the ways ordinary people can be driven into dangerous choices. His fiction belongs to the hard-boiled and noir tradition, but it often carries a sharper social awareness than the formula might suggest.Lacy's best-known novel, Room to Swing, introduced private detective Toussaint Moore and won the 1958 Edgar Award for Best Novel. That book remains especially important for its use of a Black private investigator at a time when American detective fiction rarely gave such a role serious treatment. Alongside Room to Swing, Lacy produced a substantial body of paperback crime fiction, including Sin in Their Blood, Strip for Violence, Enter Without Desire, Go for the Body, and Blonde Bait. Enter Without Desire, first published by Avon in 1954, stands among his earlier paperback originals and shows the lean, unsparing crime style that made his work a natural fit for mid-century noir readers....

Sommaire:
A Florida charter-boat skipper finds a stranded blonde, a gun, and a suitcase full of money-and from that moment on, every choice can get him killed. Mickey Whalen makes his living on the water, running a charter boat through the Florida Keys and staying clear of trouble when he can. Then he discovers a beautiful woman alone on a deserted island, with a pistol close at hand and enough cash to make any man ask the wrong questions. She needs help. She may be lying. And the people looking for her are the kind who do not leave witnesses behind. Ed Lacy's Blonde Bait is a swift, sun-baked piece of late-1950s paperback crime fiction, shifting the hard-boiled world away from dark alleys and cheap hotel rooms into bright water, island heat, greed, pursuit, and sexual danger. The setup is pure noir: a working man, a woman in trouble, money that does not belong to either of them, and a decision that turns ordinary caution into a matter of survival. First published in 1959, Blonde Bait belongs with the sharp, fast-moving paperback originals that kept American crime fiction lean, dangerous, and commercially alive after the classic pulp era. It is well suited to readers of vintage noir, hard-boiled crime, Florida crime fiction, fugitive suspense, and mid-century American paperback thrillers....