Gil Brewer's Nude on Thin Ice

Nude on Thin Ice is a 1960 noir novel by Gil Brewer. The protagonists in noir fiction (or movies) can be led to disaster by various things but usually it’s greed or lust. Gil Brewer tended to be more interested in the lust angle.

In this novel we have a protagonist who seems to be motivated by greed but lust will soon put in an appearance.

Ken McCall is a loser. He wants to be a winner. He wants money. He wants money so badly he’s prepared to do anything to get it, anything that is other than work for it. Like a lot of noir protagonists he thinks work is for losers. To get real money you need to wait for your one big chance and have the daring and the guts to grab it.

Ken thinks his opportunity has arrived when he gets a letter from his friend Carl Shroeder. Carl is dead. The letter, written shortly before Carl’s death, makes an odd request and that request seems like Ken’s big chance. Carl is worried about how his widow Nanette will cope without him. Maybe Ken could go to her and comfort her.

Carl was rich. Very rich. And Ken always wanted to have Nanette. He figures he should be able to get his hands on both Carl’s millions and Nanette.

The first thing Ken has to do is ditch his current girlfriend Betty. He isn’t bothered by that. He only ever wanted her for sex. Dumping her will be easy. Or so Ken thinks.

When he gets to Carl’s isolated mansion he realises he has walked into a situation that is dangerous, crazy and evil. He knows he should head straight back where he came from but by now he has met Justine. Justine lives at the Shroeder mansion. He has no idea who she is or where she fits in. What he does know is that she is young and gorgeous and horny. She is frantic to get Ken’s trousers off. They begin what in 1960 was known as a torrid love affair.

Ken hasn’t yet figured out what the wrongness is in this house, but he knows there’s a real wrongness there. By the time he figures it out it is too late. He’s hooked. He cannot escape.

There’s a wrongness in Ken as well. He’s a loser and a louse. He’s had plenty of women but he’s never loved any of them. Now he might be in love, or maybe it’s the money. Ken isn’t sure which he wants most, the woman or the money. He thinks it doesn’t matter because he thinks he can have both. The price will be high but he’s already gone so far he might as well keep going. He’s not a sympathetic protagonist but we understand his motivations. They’re lousy, but we understand them. We understand why he thinks he’s making good choices when in fact he’s making seriously bad ones.

There’s not just a femme fatale. Ken is mixed up with three women and any or all of them could lead him to disaster. They have their own agendas. Ken has never been able to put himself in another person’s shoes and he doesn’t understand women at all.

He understands himself, up to a point. That’s the closest he comes to having a redeeming quality. He has no illusions about himself. He doesn’t think he’s a nice guy. He knows that he isn’t. It has just never bothered him.

His greed for money and his obsession with sex are two sides of the same coin. When he wants something he convinces himself that he’s entitled to it. He thinks he’s entitled to money and sex.

It isn’t easy to make the reader care about a guy like Ken but Brewer manages it. Ken is trapped and there’s no way out and we can feel his desperation. To be fair to him, he’s only ever been a small-time thief and chiseller. He never wanted to get involved in murder. He is shocked by it. But he is swept along by events and he can’t see the extent to which he is not in control.

It should be added that the female characters are as depraved and corrupt as Ken McCall. They’re not women that a sensible man would have anything to do with, but then Ken McCall is not sensible when it comes to women. And he’s not exactly the kind of guy that a sane sensible woman would choose. All the characters in the book are people you get mixed up with in noir world.

This is a very sleazy book but Brewer does sleaze extremely well. It’s also very very noir. An excellent book, highly recommended.

By the way, there is a nude in the book and she is on ice. Stark House have paired this one with another Gil Brewer noir novel, Memory of Passion, in a double-header paperback edition.