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BOOKS
THE LAST MATCH
Lost crime novel surfaces by author of To Catch a Thief
Submitted by filmguy on 12.31.06 at 12:27pm.
Canadians might be forgiven if they think the only David Dodge worth thinking about is the current head of this country’s Federal Bank.
There's another David Dodge of note, and his name has resurfaced lately, even though he passed away in 1974 after a long, varied and productive life as a Chartered Accountant, world traveller and US Navy man.
This particular David Dodge also wrote mystery novels; very good whodunits, in fact, with plenty of racy dialogue, crafty characters and exotic locals. So good were these books that Hollywood made two into wildy successful movies. One of them, To Catch A Thief, published in 1952, became one of Alfred Hitchcock’s biggest hits, filmed in 1955 with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Monaco where Kelly would eventually quit the movie business and marry into European royalty and become Princess Grace.
The Hard Case Crime imprint recently reprinted the second of those books - Plunder Of the Sun - which was made into a pitiless thriller starring Glenn Ford by John Wayne’s production company, Batjac, in the early 1950s. The film was also recently re-issued on DVD.
Now HCC has gone one step further in releasing David Dodge’s last novel which had never been published and was recently discovered amongst his papers. The book, The Last Match, is a fast-paced partly picaresque tale of a handsome American grifter and ex-G.I. caught up in the amoral world of the French Riviera.
Dodge’s prose is cheerfully sexist and often breathtakingly brusque. Writing in the first person, his un-named hero manages to traverse a huge amount of geography - from the South of France to North Africa to South America and back again - armed with nothing but his abundant charm, good looks and sheer luck.
Alternatively brisk and breezy, The Last Match contains sudden blasts of brutality and violence that makes it seem oddly contemporary. Dodge’s abrupt changes of tone and graphic scenes might have made the book a little too risque for the early 1970s pulp fiction market for which it was originally written.
Plot turnarounds erupt fast and furious throughout the book, with con-games going on right up until the very last page. And while some of the twists and turns occasionally strain credulity, The Last Match retains a certain unflappable American confidence that would drain away in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam and the recession of the mid-1970s.
Compulsively engrossing, The Last Match might just be the mystery book find of 2006.
More info on this wonderful writer can be found at the very rich website www.david-dodge.com
The Last Match rates a 9 0ut of 10.
The Last Match by David Dodge, A Hard Case Crime Original Book, published by Dorchester Publishing, New York, 2006, 319 pages paperback, $8.99 in Canada.
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1965 publicity photo of David Dodge.