Wednesday, February 9, 2011

"A Desperate Man"


After another hard day in the city Mr. Peter Willoughby pulled his sensible grey sedan into the garage of his suburban splitlevel home, and he considered his choices: either duct-tape one end of the garden hose to the exhaust-pipe of his car and secure the other end through the driver’s-side window and put an end to his unhappy life, or turn off the ignition and go inside and eat his dinner. It was Thursday, and that meant Chicken à la King.
In fact Peter was famished – because of that extra work on the Throckmorton account he had only had a vending-machine cheese sandwich for lunch – and so, with a sigh, he decided on the Chicken à la King.


A Desperate Man, by Horace P. Sternwall; an “Ace Double” paperback original, published in tandem with Housewife From Hell, by Helen P. Stevens (believed to be a nom de plume for Sternwall), 1953.


(Scroll down the right-hand column of this page to find a listing of links to the opening passages of some other fine but sadly out-of-print novels by Horace P. Sternwall.)

3 comments:

Di said...

More please! I'm hooked already!

Dan Leo said...

There's more in the pipeline, Di.

Our lawyers are working on clearing the rights...

Unknown said...

Decisions, decisions...