Too Rich to Die by H. Vernor Dixon
Black Gat No. 65

A lousy first impression is a difficult smear to unsmirch. T. Howard Carleton makes a doozy in Chapter 1. Born fabulously rich, he’s shallow, callous, rude, and a mysogonist to boot. I got more than enough of him in the first 18 pages and almost had to bail. But Dixon knew what he was doing and spends the remaining 200+ pages churning things around. It isn’t so much that Carleton metamorphasizes into a butterfly; instead he finally figures out who he really is sans the baggage of ostentatious privilege.

The trigger is a nasty tryst Carleton tries to cap, waving a pistol at his latest conquest in hopes of scaring her off once and forever. Trouble is, he’s so drunk he passes out and can’t remember shooting her dead. Faced with an open-and-shut case, even opulence can’t compensate, he goes into hiding, fortuitously landing a cook’s job on a fishing boat that feeds the canneries in Monterey.

Dixon spent his life in California, eventually settling in Monterey, so he knew the territory well and cites numerous geographic points of interest in this and several of his other works.

Richboy/playboy Carleton takes on the alias Tom Howie, but is still plagued with a sort of death wish. His wealth has precluded him from any normal/genuine relationships, so he takes outrageous risks just so he can feel like he’s alive. And despite his reckless antics, his luck never fails. Hence the title: Too Rich to Die.

This is a marvelous character study, wrapped in a fast-moving adventure story. Howie/Carleton gets the most ink, but the skipper, Matt Radovich, the femme fatales, cousins Ginny and Gail Norton, and even the sardine king, Steve Moore, all get three dimensional treatment that get a little shallower by their role’s importance.

Unlike real life, people nearly always change in fiction, sometimes quite easily. Dixon does a good job with his lead, who slowly grows into the realization that most of the world isn’t black and white, but shades of gray. So his change seems more genuine than that born of crisis or epiphany.

This one has it all—crime, adventure, romance, action, suspense, and danger–all set aboard the churning tides of cannery row. Great, great fun.