Classic 50's pulp fiction. Harry Madox is a drifter, and drifts right into a maelstrom of opportunity and temptation; a bank begging to be robbed, a beautiful young girl with troubles, his boss' bored wife who is trouble.
"I was still sweltering when I went back to the room. I couldn't sleep. In the next room an old man was reading aloud to his wife from the Bible, laboring slowly through the Book of Genesis, a begat at a time, and pronouncing it with the accent on the first syllable. I lay there on the hard slab of a bed in the heat and wondered when I'd start walking up the walls. Gloria Harper and Sutton kept going around and around in my mind, and a long time afterwards, just before I dropped off, I came back to the other thing I couldn't entirely forget.
It was that bank with nobody in it."
Madox isn't a career criminal, as far as we know (but Madox doesn't tell us much about his life before he arrived in this sleepy town to be hooked by the lovely Gloria and the provocative bank): he's an ordinary guy who has the misfortune to have temptation ladled from every direction. Which temptation should he resist? Gloria is delicious and (for some reason) falls for him. The bank is easy and he deserves this once-in-a-lifetime chance to change his no-account drifting life. The boss' wife would be dangerous anywhere but in this gossip powered backwater she is a volatile explosive charge. This Harry Madox is a fatalist and a pessimist - he knows he doesn't deserve the innocent Gloria, he expects the bank job to go wrong and he is certain the boss' wife will bring disaster. He dives in anyway, taking his immediate pleasures as they come, hoping something will turn up to save him from his pre-ordained doom.
Just before his darkest hour Madox is thrown a lifeline (via someone else's misfortune)and his new dawn suddenly looks good. Charles Williams is a cruel author, though, and Madox's upward curve suddenly spirals out of his control, again.
Williams knits all the false starts and character weaknesses together to create a propulsive narrative that could/should be devoured in one sitting. He handles the pace and suspense with the diligent care of a provocateur, and the climax matches the build up.
The copy I read was published in 1969 (priced 4/-, or 20 pence in modern Sterling), and, if anything, the faded print against the almost brown paper added to the pulp experience.
At the same time, Williams' 1953 work is full of reminders that it was written over 60 years ago - "Negro maids" and "Negro youths" drift along in the background, with dialogue to match, "Mister Julian? You theah, Mr Julian? Wheahbouts the fiah?" Of course, it may be unfair to make certain judgement calls on Williams so long after the period he was working in. Still, I'm fairly sure the white characters in 'The Hot Spot' aren't speaking with my accent (working class, north east of Ireland), so if I can read the dialogue that Williams puts into the Texan(?) mouths of Madox, Gloria et al without a random phonetic prompt, I don't need one for the other characters either - and it jars.
A good read, nonetheless, and especially for any pulp fiction fans of the black n white movie era.