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Title: Murder Me for Nickels

Author: Peter Rabe

Narrator: Paul Christy

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-11-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Modern Detective

Publisher's Summary:

Waler Lippit makes music all over town. He owns the juke boxes that play the tunes that keep the bars and the diners hopping. Jack St. Louis works for Lippit, smoothing the customers and keeping the nickels coming. But then along comes Benotti and the Chicago syndicate to louse up the operation. It's everything Jack can do to stay one step ahead. One step ahead of Benotti's gang, Lippit, and Lippit's willing wife Patty, who wants to be a singer and is convinced that Jack can make that happen too. And maybe he can. It's all in a week's work.

Members Reviews:

Rabe's funny side- still violent

Publication date: 1960

Jack St. Louis works for Walter Lippit, who runs the jukebox business- or racket- in an unnamed city. Jack also owns a recording studio that he doesn't want Lippit to know about:

... Iâd rather not mix friends and business, and as for Loujack I wanted Walter Lippit to be just a friend. He knew that the outfit was there, the way you know thereâs a lamp post down the street, but so what. He didnât know â there were few who did â that Loujack was me. That would have been different. That would have been less like a lamp post down the street and more like uncle Walter Lippit observing the doings of his favorite nephew. Next, kindly interest. Next, this being all in the family, he might have dreamt dreams about mergers and empires and since Lippit was not much of a dreamer, next thing, he would grab. Iâm not against Lippit â friend of mine â but I myself donât like to be grabbed.

Donald Westlake called this novel "chipper and funny throughout," which is a bit exaggerated. It is funny, but it might have been funnier if Rabe hadn't tried so hard (I can't find a gag short enough to quote here). What Rabe does well, and here as well as anywhere, is build the conflict- an out-of-town mobster is trying to break up Lippit's monopoly- build it to a point where triumph and disaster seem like two horses yoked to the same chariot. Let's just say that Lippit finds out about Loujack at the worst possible time.

We sat down at the table, he on one side, I on the other, and the only good thing was all the feelings showed plainly.

âSo what was your plan, right-hand man?â said Lippit.

âThe plan was,â I said, âto help you keep playing your jukeboxes.â

âWas that the reason you snuck around behind my back and set yourself up in a legitimate business?â He used the expression like a dirty word and I felt I should make one thing clear right away.

âJust remember itâs mine, Lippit. Not yours.â

âSure. And you just remember that I got the union that can rock your boat.â

âHowâs that going to help you?â

âIt would make me feel just fine. The way I feel, it would make me feel just fine.â

In many ways, this is the best of the three or four Rabe novels I've read so far. He is like no other writer, although Westlake, for one, says he learned a lot from him.

Murder Me for Nickels

Tightly plotted noir. Man caught in the middle of a gang take-over of the juke box rackets, multiple girlfriends and a business partner with a hair-trigger temper. Strong characters.