When I bought Wild to Possess and A Taste of Sin, I thought I had discovered an interesting pulp writer. After finishing both novels, however, I was left rather disappointed.
Wild to Possess begins in an intriguing way: the protagonist discovers an attempted murder involving a woman and her lover, apparently motivated by money. The situation is complicated by his own secret — he once found a woman and her lover dead. As the story progresses, the lover’s brother appears and accuses him of being responsible for the deaths. The premise promises psychological tension and moral ambiguity, but as the plot unfolds, the structure begins to feel unstable and the characters’ motivations insufficiently developed.
In A Taste of Sin, there is a stronger emphasis on sexual tension and a planned bank robbery. While these elements could have created greater momentum, the story never quite achieves the necessary narrative control. The stakes feel lower than they should, and the tension fails to build in a convincing way.
It is perhaps worth noting that Gil Brewer struggled heavily with alcoholism and addiction to sleeping pills, something that may have affected both the consistency and discipline of his writing.
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