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april_does_feral_sometimes 's review for:
Queenpin
by Megan Abbott
‘Queenpin’ is dramatic, cruel, and pure 1940’s noir. Have you seen the movies ‘Gun Crazy’ or ‘Out of the Past’? This novel has all of that movie miasma of criminal ambition and lurking betrayal - except the two main characters are women. One, fortyish Gloria Denton, is a ‘made man’ so to speak, and the other, twenty-two-year-old Murray, is her upcoming protege.
We never know Murray’s first name because all of the characters continually call her “baby”, “sugar cake”, “muffin“, “kid”, or “honey”. Murray assumes false identities when she begins to work for Gloria Denton as a runner and a driver, which mostly is about delivering suitcases, packages and envelopes from casinos to warehouses to racetracks to politicians to policemen, but she hopes for the chance to sometimes travel to Europe like Gloria. Part of her job is to make an appearance in the casinos and meetings dressed as a high-class wealthy woman, and to smile like a high-priced courtesan, but it takes time for Gloria to bring our nameless criminal debutante to that level. Murray never had to play at being that kind of woman before she started working for Gloria.
Murray's church-going father filled the vending machines for the Club Tee Hee, a job he had had for fifteen years. When his bosses Jerome and Arthur needed a bookkeeper, he told them about one of his three daughters, our narrator. He did not like the job she had as a model at a department store modeling dresses, and he thought sitting behind a desk hidden away in the nightclub's office safer. However, he did not know how ambitious his daughter Murray was, or that Jerome was actually looking for a bookkeeper willing to help him skim money from the profits, hiding the theft from the Mafia owners.
About five days into the skimming, Murray sees Gloria for the first time. Gloria came every two weeks to count Jerome's "vig" (fee charged by a bookmaker for services) and take it to her bosses.
The nameless narrator cannot take her eyes off of Gloria. "She was legend." Jerome and Arthur and the regulars told stories about Gloria. She had maybe killed people, gutting them with rumored long-handled scissors. She had run with the "pros", an insider with the Mob when it was the Mob, although no one says that name out loud. Ever.
Gloria is looking at the narrator's books. A few comments later and Murray knows Gloria suspects. No, Gloria knows. She sweats. Later, over coffee, Gloria offers her a job, to work for Gloria. "Yes," I blurted, standing too, if shakily. "I'm ready. I'm all yours." She nodded and I got the feeling that nod was her version of a smile. "Good, kid. You did good."
Gentle reader, our nameless narrator thinks she is prepared to do whatever it takes to step into the same identity and role Gloria plays. But her first mistake is to believe Gloria is playing a role. Her second is to fall in love with a gambler who loses.
This novel is an awesome post-noir novel. I had to look at the publishing date to verify it truly was written only a few years ago. Be warned, gentle reader, there is swearing and graphic violence. Bullets cause a lot of damage in real life. Modern noir is not gonna be tiptoeing around the realism which is the foundation of fictional noir stories.
There was a real Queenpin. Her name was Virginia Hill.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hill
We never know Murray’s first name because all of the characters continually call her “baby”, “sugar cake”, “muffin“, “kid”, or “honey”. Murray assumes false identities when she begins to work for Gloria Denton as a runner and a driver, which mostly is about delivering suitcases, packages and envelopes from casinos to warehouses to racetracks to politicians to policemen, but she hopes for the chance to sometimes travel to Europe like Gloria. Part of her job is to make an appearance in the casinos and meetings dressed as a high-class wealthy woman, and to smile like a high-priced courtesan, but it takes time for Gloria to bring our nameless criminal debutante to that level. Murray never had to play at being that kind of woman before she started working for Gloria.
Murray's church-going father filled the vending machines for the Club Tee Hee, a job he had had for fifteen years. When his bosses Jerome and Arthur needed a bookkeeper, he told them about one of his three daughters, our narrator. He did not like the job she had as a model at a department store modeling dresses, and he thought sitting behind a desk hidden away in the nightclub's office safer. However, he did not know how ambitious his daughter Murray was, or that Jerome was actually looking for a bookkeeper willing to help him skim money from the profits, hiding the theft from the Mafia owners.
About five days into the skimming, Murray sees Gloria for the first time. Gloria came every two weeks to count Jerome's "vig" (fee charged by a bookmaker for services) and take it to her bosses.
The nameless narrator cannot take her eyes off of Gloria. "She was legend." Jerome and Arthur and the regulars told stories about Gloria. She had maybe killed people, gutting them with rumored long-handled scissors. She had run with the "pros", an insider with the Mob when it was the Mob, although no one says that name out loud. Ever.
Gloria is looking at the narrator's books. A few comments later and Murray knows Gloria suspects. No, Gloria knows. She sweats. Later, over coffee, Gloria offers her a job, to work for Gloria. "Yes," I blurted, standing too, if shakily. "I'm ready. I'm all yours." She nodded and I got the feeling that nod was her version of a smile. "Good, kid. You did good."
Gentle reader, our nameless narrator thinks she is prepared to do whatever it takes to step into the same identity and role Gloria plays. But her first mistake is to believe Gloria is playing a role. Her second is to fall in love with a gambler who loses.
This novel is an awesome post-noir novel. I had to look at the publishing date to verify it truly was written only a few years ago. Be warned, gentle reader, there is swearing and graphic violence. Bullets cause a lot of damage in real life. Modern noir is not gonna be tiptoeing around the realism which is the foundation of fictional noir stories.
There was a real Queenpin. Her name was Virginia Hill.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hill