Charles Williams' All the Way (The Concrete Flamingo)

All the Way is a noir novel by Charles Williams, published as a paperback original by Dell in 1958. It was reprinted in Britain in 1960 as The Concrete Flamingo. It was filmed in 1960, as The 3rd Voice.

American writer Charles Williams (1909-1975) is one of the greats of hardboiled/noir fiction.

The narrator, a man named Hamilton, is sitting on a beach. There’s an attractive blonde nearby reading a book. But then he realises she isn’t reading the book at all. She is listening to him. Listening very intently. He tries to pick her up but gets the brush-off. Later she agrees to meet him. Her name is Marian.

She knows a lot about him. His name is really Jerry Forbes. He had to change his name and leave Vegas in a hurry after an unfortunate incident. He is not a murderer on the run or anything like that. He is not a criminal. He did however slug a guy, hard enough to break his jaw, in a disagreement over a woman. Leaving Vegas seemed like a good idea.

He finds out why she was listening to him. It’s his voice. His voice is uncannily similar to someone else’s. There’s a reason that that interests her. She has a plan. It’s not exactly legal but she assures him that he won’t be running any risk. And there’s $75,000 in it for him. OK, the plan does involve a murder, but it’s foolproof. And 75 grand is 75 grand.

Jerry is not a criminal but 75 grand (an immense fortune in the 1950s) would tempt anybody. He would like that $75,000 but the real reason he agrees to Marian’s scheme is Marian. He is becoming obsessed by her.

Marian is a bit strange. She is bitter and she has good reason to be bitter. A woman who has been dumped by her man for another woman (a woman more than ten years younger) can get very bitter. That’s what her plan is all about - revenge.

Her plan involves perfect alibis. Alibis that cannot be broken. That’s where Jerry’s voice comes in.

Marian is quite willing to sleep with Jerry. She’s very good in bed but she seems a bit disconnected from it all. This is a girl with a lot of red flags showing but Jerry doesn’t care. He wants her.

Jerry isn’t seeing things very clearly. Marian tells him that she’s using him but it makes no difference. He is in love with her and he knows she will learn to love him.

You can see some obvious plot twists on the way but the actual plot twists are not the ones you expect. The ending is brilliant and powerful.

You expect a Charles Williams story to have a nautical flavour and while this is not really one of his full-blown nautical thrillers boats do play a fairly significant part in the story.

There’s a love story here but it’s kept nicely ambiguous. Marian’s feelings towards Jerry are kept deliberately unclear. In a story such as this the reader will always expect one of the lovers to betray the other. This story has a few surprises in store in that department.

The plotting is excellent. Marian’s scheme is risky but fiendishly clever and elaborate. It’s a plan that deserves to work.

Jerry isn’t the smartest guy in the world and he’s not the most honest but he means well. He really does love Marian. He will do anything for her.

Marian is obviously playing a femme fatale role but she is not a straightforward femme fatale. I always like complicated ambiguous femmes fatales and Marian qualifies on both counts.

This is genuine noir fiction. It ticks most of the noir boxes. It’s beautifully written and the noir sense of doom builds very slowly. Jerry is not really committed to anything until late in the story. He can still back out. Except that he can’t back out. He has to have Marian.

This is top-tier noir fiction from a top-tier writer. Highly recommended.

Stark House Noir have paired this with another excellent Charles Williams novel, The Sailcloth Shroud. This two-novel volume is pretty much a must-buy for noir fans. I’ve also reviewed Williams’ superb 1954 novel A Touch of Death.

Alexei Tolstoy’s Aelita

Alexei Tolstoy’s celebrated Soviet science fiction novel Aelita was published in 1923.

Alexei Tolstoy (1883-1945) was a distant relative of the more famous Count Leo Tolstoy, writer of War and Peace. Alexei Tolstoy was quite an interesting character. He was born In Russia and lived for a time in Germany and in France. He returned to Russia in 1909.

He opposed the Bolshevik Revolution and went into exile. By 1923 he was back in Russia. Under the Soviet regime Tolstoy was lionised and lived like a millionaire. Reading between the lines of Aelita one gets the impression that he regarded revolutionaries with a certain amount of scepticism.

Aelita opens with an eccentric amateur scientist named Los who has constructed an egg-shaped spacecraft. He believes it can reach Mars. He persuades a soldier named Gusev to accompany him.

Mars turns out to be inhabited, by people who seem rather human. Mars has been home to a number of civilisations. The histories of Mars and Earth were at one time intimately linked, thanks to an event that occurred when the terrestrial civilisation of Atlantis was destroyed. There is a good reason that the Martians are so human-like.

Martian civilisation is fairly advanced. They have airships (which are always cool) and they have televisual communication. They also have what appears to be a kind of anticipation of nuclear power.

The Martians are reasonably friendly towards their two visitors from Earth, on the surface at least. In fact they’re suspicious. Mars has seen disastrous wars in the past. Once again Martian civilisation seems to have entered an era of instability. The two Earth men will be caught up in the turmoil, and Gusev will contribute to that turmoil. Gusev dreams of leading a socialist revolution on Mars. Like so many revolutions it will end in slaughter and widespread destruction.

One of the factors impelling Los to build his spacecraft was his loneliness and despair after his beloved wife’s death. On Mars he thinks he has once again found love, in the person of Aelita. She is the daughter of the Chief Engineer (the effective ruler of the Martian civilisation).

Los has a slightly mystical and rather pessimistic outlook on life. Gusev thinks the revolution will usher in a golden age.

There are plots and counter-plots, revolutions and counter-revolutions.

You might be put off reading this book, assuming that it’s going to be heavy on Soviet propaganda (Tolstoy was later to be very much in favour with Stalin) or that there’s going to be a lot of socialist utopianism. That isn’t really the case. There’s a certain degree of cynicism in this novel on the subject of political solutions. Revolutions just lead to chaos and suffering.

The novel also does not reflect a view of history as an inevitable progression towards a socialist promised land. In fact it reflects a very dark and pessimistic view of history as an endless cycle of violence and destruction.

Gusev has political enthusiasms but Los just wants to find love. Love is the only thing that ever brought him happiness. There is very definitely a love story at the heart of this book.

There’s some wild and intriguing alternative history going back 20,000 years or so into the pasts of both Earth and Mars. We get a detailed history of Atlantis.

It’s fast-moving and action-packed.

Aelita is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the history of science fiction, and it’s rather entertaining as well. Recommended.

The 1924 film adaptation is also regarded as a classic, although in my view t's a flawed classic.