Coy Hall’s largely overlooked series opener, A Séance for Wicked King Death, published by Shotgun Honey Books last November, is an engrossing 1950s crime story that flaunts scrupulously distilled prose and memorable rogues. Set in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Huntington, West Virginia, it introduces Royce Pembrook, a smart, articulate ex-con with a talent for deception. A decade earlier, Royce worked as a predatory medium, preying on those desperate to communicate with deceased loved ones. Then, a muckraker tabloid journalist brought attention to Royce’s scams, exposing his family’s shame in an exposé. Later convicted of fraud, Royce left the medium circuit, working deadbeat jobs to stay out of the gutter.
However, the sudden emergence of Anna Vogel, a con artist with whom he worked the carnival circuit in the Forties, draws him back to his old livelihood. Anna’s on the run from Wendell Marsh, an enforcer for the syndicate out of Columbus, and her pockets are heavy with $300 of stolen money. But Anna’s resilient, a child of the gutter who’s manipulative and streetwise, and despite her physical frailty, she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. It’s Royce who’s in greater danger.
When Anna reenters his life, Royce is thrown into an ugly confrontation with Wendell and then dragged into seedy spiritualist schemes with Ruben Graf, a well-connected gangster embedded in a hick town with plenty of moneyed people. Appeasing Ruben and avoiding trouble proves no easy feat, and when other past acquaintances enter the picture, death and malice swiftly close in on Royce, heralding a thrilling, bloody showdown.
Stylish prose and convincing dialogue enrich the narrative, and delightfully trampish characters like Anna Vogel, who uses “old phrases to add a touch of elegance to her persona,” energize scenes. Though compact and deliberately constrained, the storyline holds the attention, and through bursts of vivid, hard-hitting action, Hall stuns and stirs the reader, willing us to brave the barbarity.
Incidentally, the book’s title refers to a lame vaudeville sketch in which a swami converses with the Grim Reaper to ascertain his client’s expiration date. The joke might be lame, but it makes for a helluva book title.
You can find a copy on Amazon or directly from Shotgun Honey. The Switchblade Svengali, the second Royce Pembrook Thriller, is scheduled for publication this November, so now might be a good time to read the first one.