JUST ANOTHER SUCKER. By James Hadley Chase

At last – a Hadley Chase novel that makes one feel good at the end despite so many twists and turns that seemed to be ensuring that our narrator and protagonist would have his life shattered in the end. It does look as if everything is against him until the very end, as if there is no way out. When he even has to try to get rid of a decomposing body (of a female) which he “hides” in his car he looks as guilty as hell, enmeshing himself in trouble after trouble. Harry Barber the protagonist appears to be the most unlucky man in the world from the very beginning – when he finds himself in jail for years, despite the fact that he did nothing wrong and was even supposed to be a hero. He leaves jail a bitter man, and soon gets into more trouble. A faked plan to hold a young woman for ransom and collect a solid easy sum of money starts to come apart at the seams from the moment he puts the plan into operation. And when the kidnapped girl (Odette) is actually killed (by who? - find out)) Harry knows he is in deep deep trouble. Even what he thinks is the ransom money is just a stack of newspapers. Just another sucker indeed! Yet amazingly, at the end there is a reprieve for poor Harry, though of course his reputation is very much tainted by then, a diminished man. But heck – considering what could have happened to him, he would surely jump for glee at his diminished stature!

-         P Lothane