Devil Take Her by Fan Nichols

Fay Adams is a lounge singer, and a pretty good one.  She has the looks, a nice singing voice and the kind of sweet personality that keeps her fans and admirers coming back for encore performances.  The only problem is, she’s got a secret.  She didn’t choose the backwater town of Bayport Florida as a way to jump-start her career, but rather as an out-of-the-way locale that would keep her hidden from her former life in New York, one step away from a role on Broadway, and a double-murder rap.  She didn’t commit the murders but she was there and the evidence all points to her…so she ran.

This sounds like a set-up for a movie-of-the-week melodrama but it was far better than I expected it to be.  The character of Fay Adams is certainly a flawed one, allowing herself to be ruled by greed for fame and fortune and not at all leery of using other people for her own ends. Her choices grow riskier as she tries to make fast money and she grows more and more desperate as she gets in over her head.  But as the protagonist of the story you can’t help but root for her to overcome it all, and turn herself around.  

Several years ago I acquired a huge box of beat-up old paperbacks from the 1940s-1960s and occasionally I pull one out at random and give it a whirl.  I had never heard of this one before (or the author) so it was very surprising when I found myself completely absorbed after the first few pages.  My research indicates that the author, Fan Nichols, began her career as a mainstream novelist but then dabbled in romance and then moved towards crime fiction.  She evidently enjoyed writing career driven female characters and thus most of her work was sold to genre paperback original publishers like Popular Library.  I don’t know that this one was ever picked up for re-publication but it should be.  Hard Case Crime or Stark House Publishing should take a look.

ll need to be on the lookout for more Fan Nichols stories.