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lgpiper's review against another edition
2.0
Classic pulp fiction, I suppose. Full of hard drinking, mindless violence, gangsters, misogyny, and little coherent thought before launching into more episodes of manly action and mayhem. I found it to be rather tiresome and, in the end, rather pointless.
paul_cornelius's review against another edition
4.0
First published under the pseudonym James L. Docherty, this early Chase novel seems at first to be a somewhat average crime thriller. As it develops, however, He Won't Need It Now becomes something different. It is the most cynical Chase novel I have read so far. Without spoiling the ending, almost no one is redeemed in this work. And that, at the end, is also what makes it a little special. The hero/protagonist, Duffy, a failed newspaper photographer, comes across as a sad version of a modern Don Quixote. His quest is doomed to failure. That isn't a giveaway; it's clear from the beginning. But like Don Quixote, Chase takes the reader through just about every American institution, save religion, and finds them corrupt and murderous. The press, the police, the politicians, especially the reformer politicians, all conspire to kill and enrich themselves. And the person who ends up stringing everyone along like puppets is as bloodless, indifferent, and self-interested as imaginable.
Another thing to pay attention to: Gilroy, the black mobster who comes closer than anyone else to being a "good guy." Remarkable it may seem, because Chase is fond of using racial and ethnic slurs that, even in his day, were considered vulgar. But that is the point of much of Chase's writing. He deals mostly with vulgar types in these stories, thieves, conmen, murderers, gangsters, blackmailers, and psychotics. He uses the words and phrases they would use. But, here, Chase draws his strongest sympathy for two people. First, a prostitute and, second, a black mob leader. They're the only two ethical people in the entire story. Duffy certainly isn't, with his greed for cashing in on a blackmail scheme. And neither are Duffy's two friends, Sam and Sam's wife, Alice. Sam is a newspaperman, just as involved in spreading the news falsely as anyone else in the business. And Alice is his mere appendage.
Another thing to pay attention to: Gilroy, the black mobster who comes closer than anyone else to being a "good guy." Remarkable it may seem, because Chase is fond of using racial and ethnic slurs that, even in his day, were considered vulgar. But that is the point of much of Chase's writing. He deals mostly with vulgar types in these stories, thieves, conmen, murderers, gangsters, blackmailers, and psychotics. He uses the words and phrases they would use. But, here, Chase draws his strongest sympathy for two people. First, a prostitute and, second, a black mob leader. They're the only two ethical people in the entire story. Duffy certainly isn't, with his greed for cashing in on a blackmail scheme. And neither are Duffy's two friends, Sam and Sam's wife, Alice. Sam is a newspaperman, just as involved in spreading the news falsely as anyone else in the business. And Alice is his mere appendage.
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