Fools’ Gold (1958)

This novel by Dolores Hitchens is one of the best in the Women Crime Writers Library of America collections, second only to Charlotte Armstrong’s Mischief. Sadly, a lot of these short novels seemed way off the standards of the LOA’s American Noir series, which is essential. Fools’ Gold is the source novel for Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 movie Band of Outsiders. It’s a movie worth seeing—Quentin Tarantino’s favorite Godard, I’ve heard—but not a good representation of the novel, a taut thriller that is all business about a heist going very, very wrong. The characters here are stock types but Hitchens somehow makes them lively, interesting, and believable. There is a hilarious sendup of Southern California Alcoholics Anonymous culture, apparently already in place in 1958—a mix of seeing the light of spiritual epiphany, on the one hand, and knocking elbows with the richies and celebs on the other. Skip is a cocky young dude of 21 who has learned via a girl he meets in a typing class, Karen, about a house where a man from Las Vegas is storing cash for some reason. Karen lives in it. She thinks there’s as much as a million dollars there. Skip’s plan is to waltz in and take it. Only Karen and an old woman, Mrs. Havermann, live there. Mrs. Havermann felt to me created with Miss Havisham in mind from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations because they share many traits. Karen is Mrs. Havermann’s “ward” (whatever that means) and mistreated by her as a servant. Skip’s Uncle Willy—an ex-con who attends an AA meeting to establish an alibi and ultimately see the light—gets word of the job and brings in some serious heavies to help, like “Big Tom.” Hitchens’s bad guys are bad in many different ways. Skip is a manipulative weasel, for example. Big Tom is violent, physically powerful, and scary, like some of the worst in Elmore Leonard novels. Uncle Willy is shrewd but weak. Karen means well but she is naïve and easily manipulated. The story of the owner of the house and the cash, Stolz, basically spells doom for this caper but no one in this story figures it out until too late. That’s another thing I like about it. It’s mostly downbeat, but there is one very nice story of redemption. Fools’ Gold is well balanced in general, ranging from the suspense promised in the series title (and too rarely delivered on in the series) to some very funny scenes, rooted believably in these characters Hitchens has created, this great cast. Very good one at the very end of this series.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)