2 / 5 Stars
Howard Vechel Rigsby (1909 – 1975) wrote a number of novels and short stories in the gothic romance, suspense, and western genres in the 1950s and 1960s. ‘Lucinda’ was published in 1954 by Fawcett / Gold Medal books.
The novel is set in the late 1940s / early 1950s. Judson Hay is a young artist who travels the back roads of northern California, looking for painterly scenes. When his girlfriend Julia asks him to try and find her employer, a lawyer named Malloy, who was last located in the coastal town of Mussel Point, Hay somewhat reluctantly agrees. But Hay’s efforts to travel to Mussel Point are upended when a chance encounter in the unmapped wilderness of the mountains makes him a witness to the murder of a man in a corduroy hat.
Labeled a possible suspect, Hay winds up hiding out in the remote fastness of Squatter’s Valley, a strange and rustic collection of log cabins and hillbillies straight out of a ‘Lil’ Abner’ comic strip.
However impressive the mountain scenery surrounding Squatter’s Valley, it pales in comparison to the beauty of the eponymous Lucinda Plumb, a stunning 17 year-old girl whose parents are seeking to marry her off in a ‘Dogpatch’ – style convocation of eligible bachelors. The convocation, to be held few days hence by Lucinda’s mercenary father, has drawn the interest of all of the Valley’s bachelors, an unsavory lot of rustics with bad hygiene, missing teeth, and unsatisfied erotic yearnings.
While preoccupied with trying to learn who killed the 'corduroy hat man,' someone who well may be trying to kill Judson, too, our hero finds himself falling for the amazing Lucinda. But identifying himself as a suitor for Lucinda draws the ire of those others seeking her hand: hard men, desperate men, who have no problem with loosing rifle shots at any competitors, especially ones from outside the Valley……..
‘Lucinda’ is a competent Gold Medal novel. There are some plot twists and turns that at times get a little too complicated for their own good, and the ending relies overmuch on sentimentality. I can’t say it’s worth searching out, but those with a fondness for the ‘milder’ Gold Medal titles may find it interesting.
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