Darwin Teilhet (1904-1964) was an American novelist and screenwriter, writing under his own name and several pseudonyms. Take Me As I Am was one of several novels he wrote using the William H. Fielding pseudonym. It falls into the “couple on the run” sub-genre.
The novel starts with a guy named Monk and two other hoods carrying out an armoured car holdup. With a bazooka, which is a nice touch. Their boss, a guy known as Gramma (short for Grammelini), planned the heist and with half a million dollars in that armoured car Monk’s share will see him set up for life. The robbery goes horribly wrong, and worst of all there’s only a hundred grand in that truck. The police will be closing in at any moment. Monk was supposed by be picked up by his girl Alma and they would take the money to a specified drop-off point. Now there’s just one chance. Monk will lie low and maybe Alma can bluff her way through the roadblocks. She’s a cute blonde and cute blondes can bluff their way out of tight corners.
Then fate intervenes as it tends to do in noir fiction (and we’re definitely in noir territory in this story). Alma picks up a hitchhiker. His name is Bill and he’s eighteen, four years younger than Alma. Alma figures that if she can persuade Bill to pretend he’s her kid brother they can get through the roadblocks. The coppers are not going to be looking for a young brother and sister. And Bill is naïve enough to agree. He thinks Alma is such a nice girl that it never occurs to him that she could be in trouble.
Bill possibly should have noticed that the story Alma tells him is a bit odd, and she has a tendency to change her story. A couple of odd things happen, involving other blondes. Bill becomes slightly uneasy but he’s falling in love with Alma and he puts his doubts aside. And really they’re only tiny niggling doubts and he’s only eighteen.
More odd things happen. Bill has entered a nightmare world but he doesn’t know it yet. There doesn’t seem to be any possible connection between the odd events.
Gradually Bill starts to see a pattern, but it’s a constantly shifting pattern. The reader sees almost everything from Bill’s point of view. The seasoned crime reader will certainly be a step ahead of Bill in connecting the dots but there are still plenty of twists to come.
Then the real nightmare kicks in and the story becomes a desperate chase.
This is definitely noir, but it avoids overly obsessive clichés. Bill really is a true innocent. He just wants to believe that he really has met a nice girl.
Alma is not quite a stereotypical femme fatale. To find out what actually makes her tick you’ll have to read the book.
Bill and Alma are both hopelessly out of their depth. They really have no idea what’s going on. Alma initially thought she knew what she was mixed up in but every one of her assumptions turned out to be mistaken Bill and Alma are both trapped. Bill is horrified to be involved, even indirectly, in crime. But he loves Alma. Alma is more complicated. Both Bill and the reader are left uncertain until the very end as to whether she’s a good girl or a bad girl. Maybe she’s a bit of both, but she’ll have to make a choice.
There’s plenty of suspense and excitement and quite a bit of action towards the end. There’s romance but it’s a twisted love story. It’s not just that Bill is out of his depth with a woman like Alma. He’d be out of his depth with any woman. He’s also very conflicted. He wants to have sex with Alma, he’s resentful when she won’t sleep with him but disappointed in her when she does. He’s an innocent farm boy who thinks nice girls don’t have sex. Alma wants to have sex with Bill but she’s sure he won’t respect her if she does. There’s plenty of tortured 1950s sexual guilt in this novel.
There’s a background of corruption. There are plenty of references to the moral decay of America and the ubiquity of organised crime.
This is a good solid noir novel that moves along briskly. Highly recommended.
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