The Will to Kill by Robert Bloch

"No, Kendall, you've been emotionalizing, not cerebrating, or you'd realize the facts.  Somebody dislikes you.  Somebody who has already managed to kill two women.  Until he is found and captured, you aren't good company for any young lady." 

We haven't read a novel since March 27, when we read Henry Kuttner's The Murder of Eleanor Pope, a 1956 murder mystery full of psychological discussion.  Well, today let's read Robert Bloch's 1954 novel The Will to Kill, a murder mystery with a generous serving of psychological goop, though only about half as generous as that in Kutter's.  Bloch's novel also has appetizing sides of sex and violence that make it more palatable than Kuttner's yarn.  However, it seems like The Will to Kill didn't set the world on fire--it does not appear to have been reprinted until it was included in the 1989 omnibus volume Screams.

Our narrator is Tom Kendall; Tom served in Korea and suffered a concussion, leaving him with an unfortunate chronic condition: he suffers periodic blackouts, and after waking up from them has no memory whatsoever of what he did during them.  Generally, it seems, he just walks around the town or rides mass transit, but one night Tom woke up from a blackout to find his wife Marie dead, her throat cut, a gory pair of scissors in his hand!  The authorities, after initially suspecting Tom, judges the death a suicide; maybe Marie killed herself because of the stress of putting up with Tom's blackout problem, and because she had recently learned she was pregnant.  Since then, Tom has always wondered if he really did murder his wife and his unborn child, either directly or indirectly.

All that Marie stuff we learn in flashbacks and exposition in the first half or so of The Will To Kill; as the narrative begins it is some time later, and Tom owns a store that sells second hand books and magazines, coin and stamp collections, and other used or antique items, like fancy knives (uh oh.)  One of the fun things about The Will to Kill, to me at least, is the references to Astounding, Galaxy, Planet Stories, and various collectible coins and stamps.  Working in the store is Tom's beautiful girlfriend Kit.  Tom and Kit are fighting because she wants to get married but Tom wants to wait until he has enough money to buy a house, and because Kit wants Tom to see more doctors about his condition and he is reluctant to do so.  She says "If you loved me as much as you say you do...."  This is a pretty realistic novel.

Early in the novel Kit leaves Tom, and then Tom's best friend Art seems to be abandoning him; both Kit and Art seem to be responding to something Tom said or did during his most recent blackout.  Then, at a bar, Tom gets mixed up in a fracas with a huge fat guy, a guy whom Tom has every reason to believe is a thief and an abuser of women--earlier fatso tried to sell Tom some stamps that Tom intuited were noy his own, and here in the bar he is treating his female companion pretty roughly.  One thing leads to another and Tom ends going back with fatso's girlfriend to her place; I guess they have sex, though this isn't explicitly stated.  Anyway, when Tom wakes up the girl has been murdered and it is not long before Tom is in jail under suspicion of having been the one who carved her up.

The middle section of the novel sees Kit and Art return to Tom's side, and the introduction of a new character; Kit introduces Tom to her former boyfriend a lawyer, and he takes up Tom's defense.  Bloch gives us reasons to suspect any and all of these people of not having Tom's best interests at heart, that some combination of them might be in cahoots in some way (e. g., Art seems to have had a crush on Marie and the lawyer's hobbies include collecting edged weapons and books on serial killers.)  Tom is released when another woman turns up dead and that fat guy becomes the cops' prime suspect, though the fuzz still have their eyes on our boy Tom.

In the final third of the novel (which is pretty short, like 100 pages of text here in Screams after you subtract all the blank space between the 18 chapters), Tom starts running around the town trying to solve the case himself.  Tom gets into fights with multiple malefactors.  Additional murders take place.  Eventually Tom figures out who the murderer is; I was surprised and a little disappointed by the identity of the killer, as it was some minor character I wasn't paying attention to, and I had been hoping it would be Kit and we'd have a downbeat ending.  In the event, we get a very happy ending; not only does Tom catch the killer and marry Kit and see his store turn a profit, but his blackouts are cured without his obeying Kit and seeing more doctors.  

As we expect of Bloch, in the final third of The Will to Kill we learn the ins and outs of the neuroses suffered by the various characters and the psychological trauma that made them act the way they have been, including Tom, who remembers the precise details of his trauma in Korea.  (While Tom's trauma is war-related, the psychological issues of the other neurotic characters revolve around sex.)  There is also a little social commentary, with Bloch/Tom describing how pathetic are the people on skid row (the "crum-bums") and reminding us that a little bad luck could find any one of us on skid row right there with them.  Sometimes Bloch overdoes the psychoanalysis and the social commentary, but this time he gets the proportions right.  

The Will to Kill is sort of pedestrian, but it doesn't commit any blunders; it moves along at a decent pace, the characters are easy to keep track of, there is enough gore and sex to keep you interested, the psychology jazz is believable and the humor doesn't wreck the mood.  The Will to Kill is low-key enjoyable, so I guess I am mildly recommending it.