Roy Foley is working in a cheap diner when he hears of his father’s death. He’ll have to go back to his home town, Big Prairie. That means he’ll see Lola again. He knows that seeing her again is the worst thing he could do, but he knows that he will.
Roy had been born on the wrong side of the tracks. The rich kids looked down on him. Especially Lola. Lola was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Roy had tried to make something of himself. He became a football star. He figured that now Lola would go out with him. But she laughed in his face.
Fourteen years later Roy can still hear her laughter. His hate just seems to keep getting stronger.
In fact Roy really is a loser. But in Big Prairie he has an idea. Bootlegging is a thing of the past, except in Oklahoma. They still have Prohibition in Oklahoma. The bootleggers spend a lot of money buying politicians to make sure Prohibition stays in place. Prohibition is good for business. They also make sure that prostitution remains illegal. That makes it a profitable sideline.
Roy decides he wants to be a bootlegger. He had dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer, but he wasn’t smart enough. At some level Roy understands that he’s not very smart enough. But you don’t have to be smart to be a successful bootlegger. You just need to be hungry. His old pal Sid is a bootlegger and will teach him the ropes.
Roy soon has bigger plans. Roy comes up with reasonably good plans but he never thinks them through properly. When they blow up in his face he’s always surprised. But he keeps trying. You have to give him credit for that - every time a plan fails he immediately comes up with a new one, just as ingenious and just as flawed. He’s not very bright but he is cunning.
He’s a fairly typical noir fiction protagonist, although not a very sympathetic one. Lola was right to laugh at him. He really is a dumb thug. He’s too vicious and too stupid to make the reader care very much about him. On the other hand we feel some sympathy since we figure that really really bad things are bound to happen to him.
There are two women. One is Lola. The other is Sid’s wife Vida. One or both could turn out to be a femme fatale.
Roy hates Lola but maybe he has never stopped loving her. It’s not clear whether he loves Vida. He doesn’t know himself if he loves her. He certainly desires her.
There’s no ideological grandstanding although the book certainly paints moral reformers in very unfavourable colours. The moral reformers are organised crime’s biggest asset. There’s plenty of cynicism here. There’s not a single politician or public official who isn’t corrupt.
To be honest there’s not a single character who isn’t corrupt in some way. Corrupted by greed, ambition, revenge, the thirst for power, lust or just seething hatred.
Whom Gods Destroy has a nasty edge to it and a stifling atmosphere of hopelessness. Which is what noir fiction is all about. This is a fine entry in the genre and it’s highly recommended.
The Stark House Noir paperback edition also includes another excellent Adams noir novel, Death’s Sweet Song, which I reviewed here a while back. Adams doesn’t have a huge profile as a writer of noir fiction but perhaps he should.
