Barney Godwin lives in a small rural town. He runs a two-man boat shop where they repair outboard motors and sell fishing and boating supplies. Whenever he feels like it, he leaves his employee in charge and heads out to fish for an afternoon or even a couple of days. Barney's wife is Jessica and she's worth two hundred grand left from her first marriage. She is "currently an ash blonde, has very lovely, big, blue eyes, and her figure hovers between voluptuous and overblown, though she can still make voluptuous in ten days on Ry- Krisp and lettuce when she wants."

So what does a guy like Barney do when the FBI shows up looking for currency from a $180,000 bank robbery? Does Barney tell the agent about the bills he was given by some dame earlier that morning or does he lie to the agent and try to figure out where the stash is on his own? Barney follows the clues and embarks on the craziest scheme to get his hands on the missing loot, a scheme so nutty it never could work or could it. In the process, Barney finds himself involved in murder, trespassing, adultery, and impersonating an officer.

In many ways, it is a story about greed and karma and what happens when an ordinary guy crosses the line and keeps crossing more and more lines. Girl Out Back is a 1958 novel by Charles Williams. It contains many of the noir elements of River Girl, the Hot Spot, and Nothing In Her Way, but the story just doesn't come off as successfully. Although it is a compelling can't-put-it-down read, it simply doesn't have the power and depth of his other works. Perhaps the passion that rips through River Girl or Scorpion Reef is missing.

It is a fine story and worth reading, just not the kind of story dripping with pulpy goodness that catapulted Williams to the top ranks of the fifties pulp writers. ( )

(2.5 stars)

I suspect many books go out of print over time because they are so closely connected with the era in which they found popularity. When that era passes, when the collective consciousness that permeated those times reincarnates into something different, it drags down into obscurity many of those books that it had spawned. As for a book's literary merits, those are more subjective and, in many cases, dependent on genre. This is my first Charles Williams book, and I would have to say its obscurity is probably due to its narrator/protagonist's close identification with early 1950's cultural values; though there is nothing wrong with that, this reader found much unintentional humor due to the disconnect. The protag is a lady's man with a nicotine habit and a shaving kit. He has his own "den" in the basement where he can smoke and tie flies and dream of the ultimate fishing vacation when he's not required to be anywhere else; like, say, upstairs accomodating his wife's amorous clutches. I've met many a man my grandfather's age (born in the late 1910s, early 1920s) who still whistles catcalls when he spies a lady showing a little cleavage or leg. Fair enough - this is why I like to occasionally read books like this (hat-tip to my GR friend cbj for bringing it up on the radar). Williams sold millions of books in his time, and I suspect it was to ex-GIs and Merchant Marine men who had plenty of time to relax in their dens while their wives went shopping.

Okay, enough of the social commentary, let's go over the story briefly. The setting is a rural town somewhere near plenty of good fishing lakes; the location state is not mentioned but it isn't Florida because that's where the protag dreams of living. The protag meets the "girl out back" (GOB) at the very beginning when she inadvertently passes some bad money to him during a routine purchase. This action gets the FBI involved and starts our protag down a questionable path full of improbable actions that eventually leads to an unquestionably suspenseful ending. The GOB is a married woman whose violent husband keeps on a very short leash, when he's not collecting "marital accounts-receivable as they f[a]ll due." She's ready for a real man to take her away from all that and our protag is sure he's the right guy for the job - if there is real money to be made. When our protag is thinking about "real money," he means enough money to set up a marina and fishing shop down near the Florida Keys. (Wow, one can dream.)

On the positive side, the book does deliver a suspenseful ending, and the author delivers some memorable phrases throughout the book. Here's an example: "She stepped up on the concrete walk and went past me. She was quite tall. I’m six feet two, so in the scuffed spectator pumps she was wearing she must have been close to five eight. Her legs were bare. The predominantly blue cotton dress she had on was just another number off the rack, well worn and often laundered, and while it was somewhat tight across the chest for a couple of somewhat obvious reasons I noted it only in passing. Now that bust-line architecture has become a basic industry, like steel and heavy construction, all the old pleasant conjectures are a waste of time and you never believe anything until the returns are in from the precincts." Did I say memorable? Maybe so ... maybe not. ( )