The Best American Noir of the Century

The elevator was carrying Freddy steadily downward. Already, he had left Pearl somewhere far above him. He realized it all at once, and an unreasonable terror filled him.

Freddy looked at the white-gold watch again. A minute had passed and he knew suddenly that he was slated to do a job on someone in exactly three minutes now. The minutes passed and he stood there alone.

At precisely five fifty-seven he said goodbye to his profession and plunged the blade into his heart.

1956 GIL BREWSTER THE GESTURE

Gil(bert) Brewer (1922-1983) was born in Canandaigua, New York. While he was serving in the Army during World War II, his family moved to Florida; he joined them after his discharge. He decided to become a writer like his father when he was nine years old, dropping out of school to work at various blue-collar jobs while practicing his craft. Although his bibliography shows numerous sales to pulps such as Zeppelin Stories in 1929 and to various detective magazines between 1931 and 1934, they are obviously inaccurate. His first book, 13 French Street, was published in 1951 — the first of his twenty-three novels to be issued in that decade — the same year in which he sold what is probably his first published short story, “With This Gun,” to Detective Tales. He published nearly one hundred stories in all, mostly under his own name, but also under the pseudonyms Eric Fitzgerald and Bailey Morgan. He also ghostwrote novels for Ellery Queen, Hal Ellson, Al Conroy, and five novels for an Israeli soldier named Harry Arvay.

Early in his career, Brewer came to the attention of Joseph T. Shaw, who became his agent. The famous editor of Black Mask saw in Brewer a special talent and thought he could rival the biggest names, but Shaw died of a heart attack in 1952, soon after their association began. Thereafter Brewer cranked out paperback originals at a prodigious rate, often completing a book in a week or less. They are generally dark stories, compared by the editor Anthony Boucher to the work of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson, mostly about ordinary men led down the road to ruin by unscrupulous women. His best-selling book, The Red Scarf (1958), one of two hardcover books he published, sold more than a million copies. After the 1950s, however, his output diminished, both quantitatively and qualitatively, largely due to alcoholism and serious injuries sustained in a car crash — a good career that, with better advice and a little more luck, could have been a great one.

“The Gesture” was originally published in the March 1956 issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine.

Nolan placed both hands on the railing of the veranda, and unconsciously squeezed the wood until the muscles in his arms corded and ached. He looked down, across the immaculately trimmed green lawn, past the palms and the Australian pines, to the beach, gleaming whitely under the late-morning sun.