Robert Moore Williams' Somebody Wants You Dead

Robert Moore Williams (1907-1977) was an American writer. He mostly wrote science fiction but dabbled in other genres and used quite a few pseudonyms. His short novel Somebody Wants You Dead is quite obscure. I haven’t even able to find a publication date for it. I assume it was published in a pulp magazine (possibly under one of those pseudonyms) and then forgotten until Armchair Fiction rescued it from obscurity.

There is a helicopter that plays a part in the story so it must have been written in the postwar period and the scene depicted in the cover illustration with a woman holding on to the running board of a car does happen in the novel so it had to have been written when cars still had running boards. My guess is that this novel dates from the late 40s or very early 50s.

Zack Grey is a private eye. He’s been employed by a man named Grimsby to find a girl named Ruth Shaw. Grimsby claims she’s an employe who suddenly disappeared, along with some important papers. Grimsby might not have been telling the entire truth. That’s not Zack’s problem. A job is a job. Now he’s found Ruth Shaw and she’s very dead. Murdered. Just before dying she handed Zack a key. Then two guys show up, one of them toting a submachine gun. They’re real unfriendly. Zack is lucky to get away. He figures it’s a cinch that they killed Ruth Shaw.

While this is happening Ruth’s sister Sally arrives at the nearby Rocky Mountain Lodge where she’s supposed to meet Ruth. Ruth sent her two hundred dollars and an oblong steel box, the kind you keep securities in. Sally soon has her own problems with two other goons, young punks. They ransack her room, threaten her and try to rape her.

There’s an escaped convict on the loose, there seem to be quite a few people looking for something that they’re convinced Sally has in her possession, there’s lots of killing and quite a bit of paranoia.

The author also throws in a few time-honoured clichés familiar from 1930s B-movies and from Old Dark House movies.

Zack starts to take a liking to Sally and she seems inclined to reciprocate but of course there’s no way he can be sure he can trust her. There’s also no way she can be sure she can trust him.

Zack is a fairly standard PI hero. He’s no genius but he’s no fool. He makes some mistakes.

I don’t think this novel can in any way be described as noir fiction. Zack is not a classic noir protagonist and there’s no real femme fatale. This is more a hardboiled mystery suspense tale. The plot is quite serviceable. There are some suitably nasty and ruthless bad guys.

The style is very pulpy, but you won’t get any complaints from me about that. There’s no shortage of violence. The dead bodies start piling up at the Rocky Mountain Lodge.

Somebody Wants You Dead is a reasonably enjoyable read although you would be advised not to set your expectations too high. This is no neglected gem. Recommended.

Armchair Fiction have paired this one with M. Scott Michel’s 1946 crime thriller The Black Key in a two-novel paperback edition.