Thursday, January 10, 2013

"A Gal Named Elizabeth"



Her name was Elizabeth, except you couldn’t call her Liz, or Betty, or Beth. You had to call her Elizabeth or else she would get pissed off. She was a real pain in the neck, and I don’t know why I fell in love with her. But I did, and I guess that’s why I’m writing this confession in this jail cell, instead of living the good life like I used to, working at Al’s Garage and living at Ma Jones’s boarding house over on Main Street…


A Gal Named Elizabeth, by Horace P. Sternwall, (Mammoth Books; 1955; paperback, 25¢; originally serialized in slightly different form as Call Her Elizabeth by “Horatia P. Sterne”, Romantic Crime Stories, Jan., Feb, March, 1954).

(Scroll down the right-hand side of this page to find a listing of links to the opening passages of many other works of  Horace P. Sternwall.)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

is she in jail, too? Were they smoking a joint? Or, did she coerce him into robbing a bank or maybe murdering her boss?

Dan Leo said...

Or all of the above?