“More Precious Than Gold” by Harry Sinclair Drago

 

Perhaps it was because of this that Las Animas tried so desperately to contrive an air of hospitality. It gilded its saloons, made its gambling attractive, and did its municipal best to prove that wine, women, and song we're not the bitter medicine they were so often painted as being.

This is my first toe into the copious work of Mr. Drago. This story first appeared in Munsey magazine in 1926.

Our story is not of the shoot-em-up variety but more of an intricately plotted revenge tale, very much a Southwest forerunner of what would later be known as Noir.

It is solidly written and what makes it surprising [to this reader, at least] is how maturely the humanity is handled. Typically, proto and early Noir falls into the trappings of juvenile tough guy tropes [truly, much of today’s Noir suffers from the same disease.] This one ventures into James M. Cain territory, but it actually precedes Cain by a good bit.

With that said, the story still has a familiarity to it, but it left me asking, “Whom was copying who?” Drago precedes Cain and other tales of Noirish love triangles of revenge.

With this in mind, the story may very well be far more impressive if I had the opportunity to read it without all the others that followed paling its effect.

Not a world beater of a tale, but I’m left curious and shall read more of Mr. Drago.