Don't Cry For Me
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He was a heel . . . a blue-blood gone bad, a low-brow with class, a bum with an income. He liked low-slung cars and top-heavy girls, and he took his pleasure where he found it. He was the consort of bookies, dope-peddlers, crooks; the buddy of has-beens, tough guys, and junkies. He dreamed the big dream, but played it small . . . free wheeling it down hill all the way, with a crack-up—and murder—at the bottom.
Too many slow horses, too many fast women, and finally, one loaded cigarette; and after that . . . trouble: a woman who wouldn’t stay, a dead man’s face that wouldn’t go away, and an alibi that wouldn’t stick . . .
William Campbell Gault
William Campbell Gault (1910–1995) was a critically acclaimed pulp novelist. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he took seven years to graduate from high school. Though he was part of a juvenile gang, he wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl’s name lest one of his friends find it. He sold his first story in 1936, and built a great career writing for pulps like Paris Nights, Scarlet Adventures, and the infamous Black Mask. In 1939, Gault quit his job and started writing fulltime. When the success of his pulps began to fade in the 1950s, Gault turned to longer fiction, winning an Edgar Award for his first mystery, Don’t Cry for Me (1952), which he wrote in twenty-eight days. He created private detectives Brock Callahan and Joe Puma, and also wrote juvenile sports books like Cut-Rate Quarterback (1977) and Wild Willie, Wide Receiver (1974). His final novel was Dead Pigeon (1992), a Brock Callahan mystery.
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