Flight to Darkness & 77 Rue Pardis

FLIGHT TO DARKNESS I murdered my brother with a sculptor's mallet. But it was only a dream. It was a dream I always had. I hated my brother. I was going home to see him now, get it out of my System, and then spend the rest of my life hunting Leda. She was my wife and she belonged to me. All I remember of that searing journey was the sun blazing down, and there, framed in the doorway, were my brother Frank and Leda, my lovely Judas wife. So when they found my brother with his head battered in by a sculptor's mallet, they said I had murdered him. But did I? 77 RUE PARADIS It began here for Baron the whole grotesque skein of terror here in this Marseilles street of despair, the street called the Rue Paradis. There was Gorssmann, fat and corrupt, who waited until Baron scraped bottom and then blackmailed him into treason. And Lili, the dark, lovely gamin, who fell in love with Baron--and worked for the man determined to destroy him. Altogether for Frank Baron it was a small hell on the street called Paradise!

Gil Brewer was born Nov. 20, 1922 in Canandaigua, NY. After leaving the army at the end of WWII, he joined his family who had settled in St. Petersburg, Florida. There he met Verlaine in 1947 and married her soon after. Brewer started by writing serious novels, but soon turned to paperback originals after a sale to Gold Medal Books in 1950. At his height, he was a brilliant writer of sharply defined noir thrillers, usually involving a male protagonist driven to crime by the sexual allure of a young siren. But unwilling to promote himself, his career took a turn for the worse after a mental breakdown, and a long decline into alcoholism. Brewer died on Jan. 9, 1983.