Published by World Distributors in 1950 is Awake to Die! by James V. Nolan. Usually penned as J. Vincent Nolan, the author began his literary career during the postwar 1940s within Irish publications. The cover art features a woman bound to a chair while a gunnie either climbing in a window or preparing to leave by said window, is firing his handgun at an unknown person.
I’d swear that I’ve seen this cover originally on an American crime pulp but can’t place it. I’m sure someone out there will readily recognize this one for us.
I hate to ruin a good cover art plot, but no dames are tied up at all within Nolan’s novel, but that complaint aside, it’s well-written and plenty hard-hitting gangster action.
Awaking in cheap housing, Danny French, only yesterday released from prison (where he made his bed for the past 5 years doing hard time after someone squealed on him as to the whereabouts of missing loot) is contemplating murder. Seriously contemplating murder. He’s hot under the collar and wants nothing more from life but to plant a slug fairly between the eyes of the s.o.b. that sent him to the Big House.
Only his two partners knew that he had the loot; one would never sell him out, the other, he knew, had been given the “treatment” by the coppers.
But when a dame calls him out and proclaims she is the college-age daughter of that latter particular and swears he’s gone straight and didn’t squeal, Danny begins his day revolving through a series of adventures chasing ex-hoodlums through uptown and skid row.
How does this novel end? You’ll have to struggle like I did to locate a copy.