Murder City was Oakley Hall’s first novel, published under the name of “O. M. Hall.” Although Hall came to be known as the dean of Western writers, particularly based on his 1958 novel, Warlock, he developed his chops with a number of thrillers full of guns, girls, and gangsters. The next four of these after Murder City were under the pseudonym of Jason Manor: Too Dead to Run (1953); The Red Jaguar (1954); The Pawns of Fear (1955); and The Tramplers (1956).
All of them shared urban California settings, usually a fictional version Hall’s native San Diego, as well as a cynical view of how power was abused in government, the police, business, and labor. Murder City is easily the most rough-and-tumble of the batch and displays the many shortcomings of a first novel. Every character can be labelled as either good or bad; plotting is haphazard and turns on too many awkward coincidences. The dialogue is packed with more wiseguy slang than a B movie, and when judgments are proclaimed, the evidence is piled on like corned beef in a Broadway deli:
You don’t realize what a dynasty you have. All those rented politicians and heisters and yeggs and torpedoes and tush-hogs. All your tea-pad boys, your gambling bosses, your labor racketeers. That’s your organization; you made it, but you can’t break it up. I don’t know why I feel sorry for you, Fats. All the killings that can be chalked up to your boys, the holdups, the beatings. The drunks and the hopheads you’ve made; the brothels you’ve set up and the girls you’ve buried in them.
The Pocket Books cover is the best thing about the book. KILL-CRAZY gangsters! A fight in what looks to be a pool hall. That title: MURDER CITY! This thing must have jumped off the newsstand shelves. On the other hand, there is the oddly feminist slant: the hero is on the ground, stroking the jaw that just took a punch, while his girlfriend covers him with a six-shooter. Who’s really in control, boys? And note that she also keeps a firm grip on her clutch purse. Why isn’t she the protagonist, and not her loser ex-Marine boyfriend?
At Boston University in 1973, I was in John Cheever’s writing class, and so was Oakley Hall III, son of the author you’re writing about here. I remember very little about him except that he was very critical of the work that the other students read out in class, and that when, towards the end of the semester, when it was his turn to bring in and read out his story, we all took probably unnecessary glee in ripping it to shreds.