Deliver Me From Dallas – by Charles Willeford

Very few authors seemingly entertain and captivate as effortlessly as Charles Willeford. His hard-boiled style mixes humor and violence while exploring characters and plots that are at once familiar and completely new. My first knowledge of Willeford came about through the film Miami Blues (1988). Hoke Moseley, our protagonist, is a gruff homicide detective that loses his dentures. Naturally, this was right up my alley and appealed to my sense of humor. However, I wasn’t the only one that enjoyed Willeford’s characters. With the popularity of the Hoke Moseley series, Willeford’s career received a twilight boost. Suddenly, all of his older work, including his pulp novels dating back to 1953, became instant hard-to-find expensive collector’s items. Now, I freely admit that I am always late to the game in finding cool authors and great books. I discovered my love of Willeford’s books within the last five years. It wasn’t until I set about tracking down his work on the used bookstore scene, with some luck, that I was able to digest his older works.

The latest addition to my library is Deliver Me From Dallas, originally published under the title The Whip Hand in 1962 by Gold Medal, and under the name W. Franklin Sanders. McMillan Press published this edition in 2001. In the introduction by Jesse Sublett, The Whip Hand was relatively easy to track down on the used market until Willeford’s name connected to it. In fact, Sublett thought that W. Franklin Sanders was a pseudonym, but it turns out that he was an actual person and did indeed provide some input into the construction of the novel. The Gold Medal paperback version fetches $200 or more on the collector’s market and practically impossible to find in good shape, while the McMillan version is hard to find but can be more affordably purchased. There are also subtle differences between the two publications. It appears that McMillan Publication’s version stems from an early draft discovered among Willeford’s personal artifacts after his death in 1988.

The story begins with a Los Angeles police officer, Bill Brown, on the run from his traffic-cop duties blunder involving an assault on a smart-aleck motorist. On the lam in Dallas, Brown stumbles onto a kidnapping scheme gone wrong by a trio of bumbling, violent con men. Determined to right himself with the Los Angeles police force, he sets out to solve the case but manages to get deeper into trouble when it turns out the kidnappers have murdered a child and kept the ransom money. Eventually, justice, served Texas-style, comes with a whip.

What strikes me about the novel is the juxtaposition of humor and violence. A tone that brings to mind the Coen Brothers’ crime films such as Blood Simple, Fargo, and even the zany Raising Arizona. My favorite scene involves a hungry kidnapper scoping out the carnival hot dogs only to find one pugnaciously rammed into his face by Bill Brown. The dopey kidnapper brothers, one named Junior and the other Donald, interact in such hick-comedic ways, the dialect written spot-on, it is hard not to think the novel was a comic caper. However, the tone shifts radically with vicious violence. Junior goads Donald into believing that the parents of their 6-year old kidnap victim will find her safe and then sneaks her into the bathroom and kills her. The kidnapped victim’s father uses a whip to extract his gruesome revenge on Donald who ultimately had little to do with kidnapping scheme or her death. Likewise, Bill Brown has a temper that explodes from the slightest provocation; hence, his speedy departure from his traffic duties in Los Angeles, which, in turn, were punishment from a previous outburst.

I cannot recommend this novel enough and if you are able to track it down on the collector’s market, it is worth it. After reading this novel, I promptly searched for other Willeford titles not in my collection. I found Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, another McMillan Press reprint that sits quietly and awaits for me to pull it off the shelf and open it.