February is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog
3 / 5 Stars
'Plunder' (180 pp.) is Gold Medal book No. 266 and was published in October, 1952. According to his New York Times obituary, author Appel (1907 - 1977) published more than 25 books between 1934 and 1977, many of these novels in the noir and crime genres. 'Funhouse' (aka 'The Deathmaster,' 1959) is science fiction. 'People Talk: American Voices from the Great Depression,' first issued in 1940 and reprinted by Touchstone in 1982, is an oral history of that era.
Stark House Press has republished some of Appel's crime novels, including 'Plunder.'
Appel also wrote a number of books for juveniles under the 'We Were There' imprint, such as 'We Were There in the Klondike Gold Rush.' I may well have read some of these when I was a kid - !
'Plunder' is set in the Philippines in April, 1945, just a month or so after the end of the brutal Battle for Manila (which killed an estimated 100,000 civilians). Vice and corruption seethe in Manila, as the destitute and impoverished Filipinos try to make as much money as possible from the American military, before it ships out in order to pursue the Japanese elsewhere in the Pacific. Amid the ruins of the city, neighborhoods have been turned into Red Light Districts, where bars, brothels, and souvenir shops compete for the pesos being spent by G.I.s.
In the opening chapter we learn that the novel's protagonist, Joe 'the Lawyer' Trent, is in the stockade for deserting the battle in order to work in a brothel called the Five Sisters. In the stockade, Trent befriends a swarthy G.I. named 'Blacky' MacIntyre, who is willing to buy into Trent's promises of wealth and women. Trent makes a bargain with First Sergeant Murdock, the stockade NCO, to escape confinement. Fifty miles later, Trent and Blacky are back in Manila, and Trent is ready to wheel and deal.
Working with Tommy Cruz, the owner of the Five Sisters, Trent schemes to masquerade as a Military Police (M.P.) officer, and acquire easy pesos by coercing the owners of the other red light brothels and bars into paying protection money. Trent is very good at exploiting the avarice of the officers in charge of various Army logistics units in Manila, into playing along with one clandestine business arrangement after another.
As the novel progresses, Trent's flair for illicit commerce leads to the creation of a syndicate that has its fingers in all manner of commodities, and Joe is a thorough man-about-town, consorting with a rotating cast of beautiful mistresses and influential gangsters. But Joe has a big weakness: his greed has no bounds. Sooner rather than later, Joe Trent is going to discover that once dishonesty exceeds a certain threshold, retribution is all but assured.....
One thing 'Plunder' does very well is remind the reader of the aspects of the American involvement in World War Two that tend not to be mentioned in the history books: the massive scale of corruption and profiteering that mushroomed in the war zones once the shooting stopped, and the hustlers saw their chance to operate. In such an environment morals evaporated and transgressions became commonplace.
Appel was present in the Philippines following World War Two, as an aid to the American High Commissioner (and later Ambassador) Paul McNutt, so Appel's descriptions of wartime Manila, its commerce (open and clandestine), Tagalog phrases, and G.I. slang and idioms, give the novel considerable verisimilitude.
Where the novel falters is in its final third, where the prose gets florid and Blacky's psychological turmoil gets so much attention that it drains momentum from the narrative. As well, readers are unlikely to be surprised by the denouement, which takes its time in arriving.
Summing up, 'Plunder' is a solid Three Star crime novel. If you like a blend of noir and exotic locales, then it's a worthy read.
