Saint Mudd: A Novel of Gangsters and Saints

From Publishers Weekly Enriched since 'wealth' follows by a wealth of historic detail and some evocative writing, this first novel (Thayer self-published an earlier version in 1986) brings to life the uncommon setting of '30s St. Paul, Minn., a safe haven for pimps, gamblers, bootleggers, dope smugglers and bloodthirsty gangsters of every stripe. In his popular column in the financially crumbling St. Paul Frontier News , protagonist Grover Mudd assails his city's cops, politicians and criminals--all of the forces that have brought on its moral decay. Characterized by cynical honesty and truculent wit, "Grover's Corner" alternately elicits anger, respect and amusement from the local citizenry. With the paper on its last legs, Grover and his editor, Walt Howard, mount a front-page campaign against the city's hospitality to criminals and the bloodshed in its streets. Meanwhile, the Feds come to town on the trail of some infamous crooks, among them Baby Face Nelson, Alvin Karpis, John Dillinger, Ma Barker's boys and the principal local villain, Dag Rankin. Lacking the distinctive narrative voice of the best crime fiction and with sex scenes seemingly grafted onto the story, Thayer's novel succeeds best as the story of St. Paul and of Grover Mudd. A contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald, in failing health as the result of wartime mustard gas, divorced and in love with a black hotel maid, an occasional opium user working for a dying paper in a decadent town, Mudd holds the reader's interest from start to finish. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal This raw, gritty first novel hews fairly closely to the hard-boiled detective tradition, with the twist that protagonist Grover Mudd is a newspaper columnist. The journeyman journalist covers early-Thirties St. Paul, Minnesota, one of the most crime-riddled cities in the country. Against a backdrop of bank robberies, prostitution, drug deals, and money laundering, Mudd uses his columns to alert citizens to the corruption that enfolds St. Paul at all levels. Plenty of violence and some very explicit descriptions of sexual encounters will put off the squeamish, but Saint Mudd tells a realistic tale of how those courageous enough to fight back can ultimately defeat the criminal element dominating a city.