What's so special about a first-person novel? The answer revolves around our intimacy with and empathy for a single character, the one who's telling the tale. In the hands of an accomplished author, with each turn of the page, we come to know, really know, the narrator by their speech, their actions and, most profoundly, the content of their mind, the breath of their knowledge and experience, their thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Other telling qualities of novels written in the first-person: as readers, we can continually ask: how reliable is the narrator? Are we being told the truth? Also, with first person, we experience the outside world right along with the story's yarn spinner - if that individual is baffled by the surrounding swirl of events and happenings, so are we.
Peter Rabe's My Lovely Executioner is such a first-person novel. And a baffling swirl is exactly what happens to the tale's narrator - perceptive, intelligent, well-educated Jimmy Gallivan.
Peter Rabe vividly conveys what it means for Jimmy Gallivan, a prisoner with three weeks to go on serving his seven year jail sentence, to suddenly find himself in the midst of a jail break – confusion, disorientation, conflicting emotions, “my insides keep floating and spinning faster, like an internal fire, roaring.”
On that fateful day, in the laundry room, Gallivan hauls sheets from the dryer as he's been doing for the past nearly seven years, sweating away at his grueling task along side little Smitty, a lifer. Then it happens: there's a fire, Gallivan scrambles out; there's also a fight in the yard with the screws (prison guards) on the upper wall confused since there's no plan to follow, screws being drones, order takers, all the more confusing because the fire and king-sized brawl, dozens of prisoners and other guards down there in the yard kicking, swinging fists, takes place during a massive blizzard.
Somehow there's a gap in the front gate, open enough to squeeze through and Gallivan is pushed, squashed, pressed in its direction. But with only three weeks to go on his seven year sentence, the last thing Gallivan wants is to escape, become a hunted convict where being caught would mean a hell of a lot more than just three weeks, ten years more like it.
Almost at the front gate, Gallivan stops, turns to go back, but he's being pushed even further to the gate by Rand. Gallivan gets near the gate, knows the screws up on the wall can't fire their rifles since, in the blizzard where you can't see more than six inches in front of your nose, they can't tell who's a con and who's a guard. Rand pushes, Gallivan hesitates and then Rand hauls off and cuffs him, knocks him out and carries him on his back. The next thing Gallivan knows, he's in the rear of a van with flowerpots, hearing prison sirens blaring.
After they drive further on, Rand tells Gallivan they're switching to a car, which turns out to be a limo. Once in the limo, Rand sheds his prison strips, puts on pants, shirt, tie and then hands Gallivan a suit to put on. Gallivan does and realizes: the suit fits, the suit is his size!
It finally dawns on Gallivan: the whole planned jailbreak was orchestrated to spring him free. Why? And with only three weeks to go on his sentence - the whole damned thing doesn't make any sense. Or, does it? Somebody had to have a good reason but one thing's for sure: he, Gallivan, doesn't know why, isn't even close to figuring out the underlying reason why things are the way they are.
And Gallivan's bafflement continues, even when he and Rand are hiding out in a high-rise hotel, in a room on one of the upper floors. And there's a woman in the adjoining room, as it turns out, a woman Rand knows quite well, a woman by the name of Jessie. All the while, upset and confused as hell, Gallivan tries to take the edge off his nervousness by drinking. And more drinking. So much drinking he doesn't even remember what he said when he spent hours with Jessie in her room, in her bed.
Recall, as per above, I focused on Lovely Executioner being a first-person novel. Thus, as readers, we share Jimmy Gallivan's perplexity, his being completely discombobulated over what's happening to him, and even more importantly, why...damn, yes, why, of all people, is he the critically important guy? And this cloud of unknowing, this bafflement persists right up until the final pages. By my judgement, Peter Rabe has written one of the most effective first-person crime noir mysteries around. Quite the achievement.
Here's what grand master of crime fiction, Donald E. Westlake, had to say about the novel: "Why him? Why couldn't they wait three weeks until he'd be released anyway? The mystery is a fine one, the explanation is believable and fair, the action along the way is credible and exciting, and the Jim Thompsonesque gloom of the narration is wonderfully maintained."
Another provocative question: why the novel's title - My Lovely Executioner? I wouldn't want to give away too much but let me share a hint about Jessie, the gal in that adjoining hotel room, via this exchange deep into the story, where Jimmy Gallivan quips with more than a touch of irony, "I've got a guardian angel." Jessie says, "I'd like one sometime." To which, Gallivan replies, "I think they'd be afraid of you."
Ouch! Sounds like what Gallivan offers here might have prophetic significance. Is this an omen linked with the tale's mystery, the reason why Gallivan wasn't allowed to serve his remaining three weeks? You'll have to read for yourself to find out.
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Note: Stark House Press published a 2 for 1: My Lovely Executioner and Agreement to Kill. With a personal recollection by Max Gartenberg, introductory remarks by George Tuttle and an insightful essay on Peter Rabe by Donald E. Westlake, this is the book you'll want to pick up.
"For seven years behind the big wall I had been a mouse and for the two days I had been out of it, like a mouse's shadow."
German American author Peter Rabe, 1921-1990
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