Our latest literary foray has been Lionel White’s 1959 crime novel Invitation to Violence, but first let’s acknowledge this brilliant cover. It’s uncredited, but we love it—especially the lower quarter, with its sprinting gunman and finned classic car. The story hinges upon a car. Everyman Gerald Hanna drives by an early a.m. jewel heist in progress, but one in the midst of going haywire because two cops have stumbled upon it. There’s a shootout in progress, men down, and one of robbers forces himself into Gerald’s car to make a getaway. The robber has been shot in the head, and after a succesful escape from the scene of the crime keels over dead. Gerald dumps the body and—whaddaya know—is left with a bag of jewels worth $250,000. You could call this a case of right place right time, or wrong place wrong time. The first will be true if Gerald gets to sell the loot and ride away into the sunset, and the second will be true if he’s in a Lionel White novel.
The jewels corrupt Gerald’s ethics immediately and comprehensively. Instead of turning them in to the police he attempts to profit from them, and the difficulties he encounters are myriad, involving characters ranging from the sister of the dead thief, to the heist’s silent backer, to two clever cops who think Gerald was one of the original thieves. Gerald is educated. He’s an accountant by trade. He knows how to plan, think ahead, and weigh odds. But everybody is working against him, even his fiancée, who unwittingly throws a wrench into his scheme because she’s angry at being stood up the night Gerald was just a little preoccupied by a mortally wounded jewel thief bleeding out in his Chevy. Right place right time, or wrong place wrong time? White writes happy endings sometimes, so it isn’t actually a foregone conclusion how Gerald’s story wraps up. But it’s a foregone conclusion that it will be a crazy ride.
