Watch Out for Willie Carter

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. 1944. First Edition. Hardcover. [nice tight copy of a cheaply-made wartime book, with light shelfwear, slight soiling to binding along front hinge, minor dust-darkening to page edges; jacket shows moderate general wear, a little paper loss at spine extremities, one small internal tape-repair at top of front panel]. Curious, unsettling novel about a moody young boxer, given to unpredictable rages, who adores (but also abuses and alienates) his pretty young wife (a nightclub singer) with his obsessive jealousy and sometimes irrational behavior. His ambitions as a fighter are inseparable from his desire to escape his past -- specifically the influence of his father, a small-town gangster -- and just to complicate matters, he must also contend with his in-laws, who are conniving to extricate their daughter from what they view as a very unfortunate union. The action is compressed into a three-day period, and of course has the boxer's Big Fight as a dramatic focus; might have made a good film noir, although the protagonist at some points is a pretty nasty piece of work, and his character would certainly have needed some softening in order to make for a palatable screen adaptation. The author's first, and apparently only, book. .