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Fires That Destroy
Whittington, Harry
141 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
3 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Harry Whittington
169Ìýbooks40ÌýfollowersHe also wrote under the names Ashley Carter, Harriet Kathryn Myers, and Blaine Stevens, Curt Colman, John Dexter, Tabor Evans, Whit Harrison, Kel Holland, Suzanne Stephens, Clay Stuart, Hondo Wells, Harry White, Hallam Whitney, Henri Whittier, J.X. Williams.
Harry Whittington (February 4, 1915–June 11, 1989) was an American mystery novelist and one of the original founders of the paperback novel. Born in Ocala, Florida, he worked in government jobs before becoming a writer.
His reputation as a prolific writer of pulp fiction novels is supported by his writing of 85 novels in a span of twelve years (as many as seven in a single month) mostly in the crime, suspense, and noir fiction genres. In total, he published over 200 novels. Seven of his writings were produced for the screen, including the television series Lawman. His reputation for being known as 'The King of the Pulps' is shared with author H. Bedford-Jones. Only a handful of Whittington's novels are in print today.
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Harry Whittington (February 4, 1915–June 11, 1989) was an American mystery novelist and one of the original founders of the paperback novel. Born in Ocala, Florida, he worked in government jobs before becoming a writer.
His reputation as a prolific writer of pulp fiction novels is supported by his writing of 85 novels in a span of twelve years (as many as seven in a single month) mostly in the crime, suspense, and noir fiction genres. In total, he published over 200 novels. Seven of his writings were produced for the screen, including the television series Lawman. His reputation for being known as 'The King of the Pulps' is shared with author H. Bedford-Jones. Only a handful of Whittington's novels are in print today.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 1, 2022
Whittington was known as the “king of the paperbacks� and published in excess of 170 paperback novels in his lifetime. “Fires that Destroy� is a pulp crime novel, but it is not your classic action-packed crime story. And, don’t read it expecting to be kept in suspense. There’s little question from the first pages who is the killer or why or what the various characters will end up being.
The novel is not about the action so much as the psychological motivations of the main character, Bernice Harper. In Joe Lansdale’s introduction to the novel, “Fires that Destroy� is compared to the great Cain novels, which pick apart characters and show their descent into worlds of guilt and compromise.
Even though this novel is a character study rather than an wham-bam action story, it is somehow compelling and, once I started reading, it became very difficult to put down. The questions you are left with after reading this are whether Bernice is to sympathized with or not. Is she simply a horrible person motivated by greed and lust or is she thrust into this situation by how society has treated her. She suffers from “ugly duckling syndrome� and thinks other women have always gotten their way because of their looks and their figure and that she has suffered in comparison because she is somewhat lacking in the looks and appeal. Is this a justification for murder? Is it a justification for buying her way to happiness?
Is she somewhat out of her mind? Even when she is put in a good situation- being a companion to a rich, handsome blind man � she can’t trust that he would have picked her if he had sight and she
“hated herself because it was a joke to pawn her off as a looker on a man who couldn’t see her.�
In the end, is she just a sad case of someone to be pitied or has the narrator fooled you into thinking this person who is motivated by uncontrollable lust and greed is someone decent if but for the way people look at her or if but for the men she picked or bought. “She grew up determined to have all the things she’d been denied,� Whittington explains. “To want was one thing � that was hell. To be
wanted � that was all that mattered. Her eyes filled with tears. Without that, you had nothing.�
It is, at base, a novel of obsession: “When finally you admit that you are going to kill a man, your obsession take over. You begin to plan how you can do it � and get away with it.� But, does the obsession go away or are you forever haunted by guilt and shame for what you did.
Do you always think everyone suspects you or everyone is after you? How far can you run? How far can you hide from those nightmare eyes that keep haunting you? This is a terrific novel and it makes you wonder why Whittington was not more widely recognized as one of the great American writers of the mid-twentieth century.
The novel is not about the action so much as the psychological motivations of the main character, Bernice Harper. In Joe Lansdale’s introduction to the novel, “Fires that Destroy� is compared to the great Cain novels, which pick apart characters and show their descent into worlds of guilt and compromise.
Even though this novel is a character study rather than an wham-bam action story, it is somehow compelling and, once I started reading, it became very difficult to put down. The questions you are left with after reading this are whether Bernice is to sympathized with or not. Is she simply a horrible person motivated by greed and lust or is she thrust into this situation by how society has treated her. She suffers from “ugly duckling syndrome� and thinks other women have always gotten their way because of their looks and their figure and that she has suffered in comparison because she is somewhat lacking in the looks and appeal. Is this a justification for murder? Is it a justification for buying her way to happiness?
Is she somewhat out of her mind? Even when she is put in a good situation- being a companion to a rich, handsome blind man � she can’t trust that he would have picked her if he had sight and she
“hated herself because it was a joke to pawn her off as a looker on a man who couldn’t see her.�
In the end, is she just a sad case of someone to be pitied or has the narrator fooled you into thinking this person who is motivated by uncontrollable lust and greed is someone decent if but for the way people look at her or if but for the men she picked or bought. “She grew up determined to have all the things she’d been denied,� Whittington explains. “To want was one thing � that was hell. To be
wanted � that was all that mattered. Her eyes filled with tears. Without that, you had nothing.�
It is, at base, a novel of obsession: “When finally you admit that you are going to kill a man, your obsession take over. You begin to plan how you can do it � and get away with it.� But, does the obsession go away or are you forever haunted by guilt and shame for what you did.
Do you always think everyone suspects you or everyone is after you? How far can you run? How far can you hide from those nightmare eyes that keep haunting you? This is a terrific novel and it makes you wonder why Whittington was not more widely recognized as one of the great American writers of the mid-twentieth century.
February 8, 2018
Pulpy Tagline:
"A relentless, revealing search into the soul of a sinful woman."
Back in the 50's, the pulp paperbacks were filled with seedy noir tales of doomed men moving toward their own destruction through bad choices and usually as a result of the charms of a sexy and irresistible harpy preying on their sad weaknesses. With Fires That Destroy though, prolific pulp writer Harry Whittington turns this trope on its head. He focuses on the femme fatale herself and reverses the roles a bit, telling the story of a meek, mousy secretary named Bernice (think the Hitchcock secretaries, like Midge from Vertigo), who ends up killing her blind employer with the hopes of absconding with his 24,000 bucks, make herself over, and have everything that sexy girls have. So naturally she falls for the first pretty boy that winks at her, leading her down the path to hell.
This is like the "ANTI-feminist" novel, where Bernice spends so much of the novel pining and groveling after an asshole that does nothing but take advantage of her. But I loved that Whittington doesn't pull punches in making sure that a female noir protagonist back then would be just as sad and flawed as their male counterparts, falling ass-over-elbow for a dangerous man that will no doubt lead to her destruction. Bernice is an interesting character, guided by her insecurities and her expectations that money will buy her all the happiness that she believes you get when you're more attractive. But she soon realizes that murder money can only take you to one undeniable destination. And in this book, that destination is an ironic ending that I really adored. Time to read more Whittington!
Back in the 50's, the pulp paperbacks were filled with seedy noir tales of doomed men moving toward their own destruction through bad choices and usually as a result of the charms of a sexy and irresistible harpy preying on their sad weaknesses. With Fires That Destroy though, prolific pulp writer Harry Whittington turns this trope on its head. He focuses on the femme fatale herself and reverses the roles a bit, telling the story of a meek, mousy secretary named Bernice (think the Hitchcock secretaries, like Midge from Vertigo), who ends up killing her blind employer with the hopes of absconding with his 24,000 bucks, make herself over, and have everything that sexy girls have. So naturally she falls for the first pretty boy that winks at her, leading her down the path to hell.
This is like the "ANTI-feminist" novel, where Bernice spends so much of the novel pining and groveling after an asshole that does nothing but take advantage of her. But I loved that Whittington doesn't pull punches in making sure that a female noir protagonist back then would be just as sad and flawed as their male counterparts, falling ass-over-elbow for a dangerous man that will no doubt lead to her destruction. Bernice is an interesting character, guided by her insecurities and her expectations that money will buy her all the happiness that she believes you get when you're more attractive. But she soon realizes that murder money can only take you to one undeniable destination. And in this book, that destination is an ironic ending that I really adored. Time to read more Whittington!
February 21, 2021
From 1951
The dark saga of one (female) character dealing with a little murder and a lot of insecurity. I think Harry Whittington is one of the best writers ever, but I just couldn't get into this.
The dark saga of one (female) character dealing with a little murder and a lot of insecurity. I think Harry Whittington is one of the best writers ever, but I just couldn't get into this.
September 30, 2015
After Bernice pushes her blind boss down the stairs and gets away with his murder and the $25,000 he'd hidden in a book, you don't really think it will end well do you? So desperate to be desired the way the beautiful girls in the office are, she falls for the first pretty-boy who flatters her, and off to Florida they go to get married and spend her murder-money. But what drives this quite different noir is that Whittington narrates it from Bernice's perspective, always moving the story forward driven by her hate and her desperate desire to be loved. A compelling inside out character driven noir. Bernice is no femme-fatale, she's actually a kindred soul of the typical male "everyman" noir protagonist who is tethered to a locomotive on the hot rails to hell, knows it, and rides that train to the end of the line.
June 12, 2008
A mousy secretary kills her blind boss after discovering the hidden money in his library. After a half-assed make-over she falls for a creepy teller who sounds like Spencer from "The Hills". He's described as green eyed and golden haired, as monetary a description of male beauty you'll ever read.
Of course he's a piece of gigolo hustler trash and can't seal the deal between his legs with her. It only gets sicker and sicker!
Of course he's a piece of gigolo hustler trash and can't seal the deal between his legs with her. It only gets sicker and sicker!
December 24, 2024
A bit slow getting started; but once it got into gear, it was very good
February 20, 2018
It held my interest enough to finish it, but it was far too overwrought and melodramatic, and the ending, which I guessed, was unsatisfying.
March 7, 2022
La figura de Harry Whittington sigue siendo a dia de hoy casi un misterio. Escritor muy prolÃfico en el terreno de la literatura noir, también publicó otras obras fuera de ella, en especial el western (curiosamente “novelizóâ€� una peli que siempre ha estado en la frontera de ambos géneros, Man in the shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) y probablemente vivió una vida modesta lejos del éxito alcanzado por otros colegas suyos. Fue lo que dirÃamos un escritor de categorÃa B (también los hubo como en el cine), es decir con publicaciones casi siempre en papel pulpa (“el rey de los paperbacksâ€�, se llegó a llamarlo) y sin la difusión comercial ni publicidad de la categorÃa de los considerados “topâ€�. Una especie de Tourneur. Su reconocimiento y paulatina reivindación por parte de la crÃtica especializada llegarÃa poco despues de su muerte, aunque no es uno de esos autores a los que se cite a menudo, o del que se reediten demasiado sus obras…menos aún en España. Perteneciente a la generación de escritores noirs que debutaron en los 50’s, al igual que algunos de ellos (Gil Brewer, Charles Williams, Lionel Whiteâ€�) sus novelas presentan variados enfoques del mundo del crimen, bien sea a partir de buscavidas metidos a ladrones, policÃas que no saben si ponerse del lado de la ley, mujeres fatales tras un mirlo blanco, maridos asesinos,…y donde, claro está, la violencia y el sexo juegan un papel importante, sin olvidar afilados diálogos, soterrado sarcasmo y el inevitable aire de estoica fatalidad que remite a la estela dejada por Cain y Thompson en los años precedentes en algunas de sus obras. En el caso de Fires than destroy (1951) ("Fuegos destructores") Whittington opta menos por la acción, y a cambio ofrece más psicologÃa y “monólogos interioresâ€�. Pero psicologÃa de la buena, dirÃase una especie de cruce entre William Irish y Patricia Highsmith un poco en la vertiente “crime psicologyâ€�. El escritor va directo al grano y tras unos pequeños saltos temporales para ponernos en situación nos conduce a la historia del asesinato planificado a manos de nuestra protagonista, Bernice Harper, una joven solterona, secreteria de profesión, poco agraciada fÃsicamente y por tanto acomplejada, quien verá en el crimen, dentro de su particular e implacable lógica, el camino rápido para llegar al dinero que a su vez la llevará al éxito que a su vez la llevará a la felicidad que siempre le fue negada. Un mordaz cuento de hadas que cual reverso al sueño americano nos habla de una sociedad en la que lo más importante es el éxito y el dinero (el segundo sucesor lógico del primero). Una novela dura por el tema de fondo y en la que, dada la alta calidad que destila a lo largo de sus 150 páginas, uno no puede por menos que preguntarse cómo coño lo hizo Whittington para escribir ese mismo año, 1951…¡otras 5 novelas más! Recomendable lectura de uno de esos escritores que por lo menos una vez en la vida hay que probar y de los que rara vez defraudan. Está publicada en catalán al igual que otra novela suya aún mejor, Forgive me Killer (aka Brute me in pass, 1956; Perdona’m assassÃ), y no hay tradu española. Los lectores en dicha lengua tendrán que conformarse con la también muy estimable Web of murder (1958, Telaraña para matar) publicada en su momento por Javier Coma en su imprescindible colección Black de Plaza&Janés, asà como alguna muy escasa y lejana edición española (pienso en la colección El búho) o la entrañable Malinca de Argentina. Más Whittington por favorâ€�
December 27, 2020
A young lady who isn't a looker winds up working as a private secretary for a wealthy man. The catch is the man is blind and loves to drink. He wants to love her, but she refuses to be a seeing eye girl for him and knocks him down a staircase at their residence. He dies horribly with his neck broken and his sightless eyes looking back up at her from an awkward angle. She steals some money that he hid in a false book and tries to find happiness with no luck. She does meet the man of her dreams, but he turns out to be a total louse. Moreover, she is so insanely in love with him that he cannot fulfill her dreams. During her entire life, this girl has seen other prettier girls use their bodies and their powers of seduction to climb to the top. This one is a spine tingler and Whittington knows how to tingle our collective spines.
July 2, 2018
Wow. My first HW book. Crazy, I know. The “King of Pulps� I learned after having really gotten into Wade Miller and Gil Brewer; not to mention the classics like Charles Williams and Woolrich. Love the prose. So smooth and elegant. Vivid writing. Really got a sense of madness in the story. So good. Highly recommended, and I’m sure it’s not his best work. Looking forward to more.
April 29, 2012
Whittington know how to keep you turning pages. No fat, no filler. Bernice got away wit the perfect crime, or did she? Now she's caught in a hellish loop of obsessive love and quenched desire. She comes to a bad end but finally gets what she she's always wanted.
February 26, 2015
A New Writer from the Past to Explore
Really enjoyed this old-fashioned novel that may have been ahead of its time. Looking forward to reading his other works. Give this one a try.....don't think you'll be disappointed.
Really enjoyed this old-fashioned novel that may have been ahead of its time. Looking forward to reading his other works. Give this one a try.....don't think you'll be disappointed.
May 25, 2015
This story switches direction abruptly, and the main character is a fascinating woman who transforms her persona throughout the book. Another pulp masterpiece from Harry Wittington.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
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