Ride the Pink Horse

Sailor is a man with no other name known to the reader. He is the former confidential secretary of “the Sen” — ex-senator Willis Douglas, who used Sailor to do his dirty work, including arranging for the murder of his wife so that he could get the insurance money. Sailor is consumed with the desire for revenge, and he is driven to follow the Sen to a small New Mexico town for Fiesta, where they and McIntyre, a cop from the murder case, will collide and meet their destinies.

It was interesting to read this as my next American Mystery Classic after Todd Downing’s Vultures in the Sky — both are set in the same approximate geographic area, the southwestern U.S. and Mexico, and both carry some element of tension between the various show more ethnic groups that live there (the white people, the Spanish Americans, the Native Americans). In this book, Sailor examines his own prejudices over the course of the story and ends up feeling more at home than he would have expected. I also noted that both stories had hot and stuffy atmospheres, perhaps too realistic reading for the middle of a heat wave!

Ride the Pink Horse was a good case study in how someone goes bad and another treads a different path: Sailor and McIntyre both grew up on the rough side of Chicago, but Sailor was the one who ended up in a life of crime. Although this was published in 1946, that element felt relevant today as well.

I’d recommend this if you have been reading and enjoying the work reprinted by American Mystery Classics or if you’ve read other books by Dorothy B. Hughes. show less

Dorothy Hughes wrote noir stories, but they are anything but generic pulp. I’ve read three of her novels now, this one, The Expendable Man, and In a Lonely Place. They’re all engaging way beyond their noir core.

The plot in this one comes down to a triangle of characters. The main character and narrator is Sailor. Sailor is the now-estranged assistant and right-hand man to Senator Willis Douglass (“the Sen” to Sailor), a corrupt Chicago politician whose wife has just conveniently been murdered. And the third character is Mac (McIntyre), the head of the Chicago homicide division who is quietly determined to hunt down and fry the Senator’s wife’s killer.

All three come together in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at Fiesta time. The Sen show more has gone there to enjoy Fiesta with a new lover. Mac goes where the Sen goes, and Sailor follows after. It’s not a spoiler to say that the Sen is responsible for his wife’s death. You know that right off. Sailor knows it, too, of course. The Sen’s alibi is falling apart — it was always a little too fragile for comfort. Now Sailor wants a payoff from the Sen. Sailor has a story he can give to Mac, Mac knows it, and the Sen is going to have to buy Sailor’s silence.

That’s the core plot. But there’s much more going on. When Sailor arrives in Santa Fe, he’s got an attitude, self-importance mixed with a good helping of racism. Spanish people (not the epithet he uses) and Indians everywhere. Fiesta. Noise, cheap entertainment, and cheap trinkets. Cheap alcohol. To him, it’s all noise really. It gets in the way, it’s not Chicago, and he doesn’t want to get dirty.

It’s as if the play between him, the Sen, and Mac is more real, more worthy, more whatever than all this noise and all these people. Extras on the set. But that world of Fiesta that Sailor disdains so much at first grows and becomes a major force in the story.

Hughes is very sensitive to racism (as we saw in The Expendable Man), and this is her home territory. It matters to her.

Sailor meets a man he calls Pancho, because he reminds him (of course) of Pancho Villa. Pancho has a much longer name that Sailor couldn’t be bothered with. He operates a merry-go-round at the Fiesta.

Pancho has a lot to teach Sailor. Pancho lives the life he’s born to. He’s happy, he’s poor, and he’s good. He takes care of Sailor, gives him a place to sleep, companionship, and tequila. And he takes care of him when Sailor gets himself on the wrong end of a knife. He also, through the whole story, gives Sailor a model to follow, a living lesson to learn from if Sailor will just pay attention.

Pila also gives Sailor a lesson to learn. Pila is a 14 year old Indian girl, in Santa Fe for the Fiesta. She takes up with other girls her age who are more or less on the make, looking to move up the ladder, as they see it, from their little villages to the hustles of Santa Fe. Sailor does have a heart and Pila finds it. She’s an innocent, on the verge of losing her innocence. Sailor won’t take it from her. She naturally draws the good out of him. He buys her pop and rides on Pancho’s merry-go-round (the pink horse of the title). He even has advice for her, to forget about the Santa Fe hustles that the other girls are after, go back home and live a simple, good life — be like Pancho.

So does Sailor learn the lessons that Pancho and Pila offer him, or does he go after the Sen and the big score? He’s a hustler from Chicago, where pushing your advantage, playing power is the game. He doesn’t have to settle down in Santa Fe and run a merry-go-round, but he could pull back from the dangerous game he’s playing with the Sen and with McIntyre.

The story isn’t moralistic, but it does pose that question for Sailor. Actually Hughes is such a good writer that I’ve done her a disservice by making it all sound a bit pat. It’s really well played. You root for Sailor, and you root for Pancho and Pila as well. McIntyre is a source of quiet wisdom — he’s rooting for Sailor, too. The Sen is rooting for the Sen. He’s the one pure lost soul in the story. We don’t want Sailor to go down with him. show less

[a:Dorothy B. Hughes|80430|Dorothy B. Hughes|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1455297574p2/80430.jpg] can turn a phrase and keep the tension at high ebb. The Chicago swell's visit to a Santa Fe-like town in the middle of Fiesta as he hunts down "the rat" is a treat and a fine writing model.

“He didn't pay any attention to anything but the white-and-silver girl down in front. She belonged here; she was like something holy, like one of the altar candles, like an angel. He didn't pay any attention to the altar. There were priests up there chanting the litany; their white-and-gold benediction vestments draped over the red velvet chairs. There was a choir of seminarians singing. Singing the responses. Their faces were foreign like the show more town; brown Mexican faces, somber, and their voices, unaccompanied were like a heaven choir. He didn't care about that. He hadn't come here to pray; he'd come with a gun to keep his eye on a rat. He wasn't going to be sucked in by holiness.” show less

[a:Dorothy B. Hughes|80430|Dorothy B. Hughes|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1455297574p2/80430.jpg] can turn a phrase and keep the tension at high ebb. The Chicago swell's visit to a Santa Fe-like town in the middle of Fiesta as he hunts down "the rat" is a treat and a fine writing model.

“He didn't pay any attention to anything but the white-and-silver girl down in front. She belonged here; she was like something holy, like one of the altar candles, like an angel. He didn't pay any attention to the altar. There were priests up there chanting the litany; their white-and-gold benediction vestments draped over the red velvet chairs. There was a choir of seminarians singing. Singing the responses. Their faces were foreign like the show more town; brown Mexican faces, somber, and their voices, unaccompanied were like a heaven choir. He didn't care about that. He hadn't come here to pray; he'd come with a gun to keep his eye on a rat. He wasn't going to be sucked in by holiness.” show less

Amazing book- loved it to death. totally noir-ish, unrelenting trip to Fiesta in Santa Fe (I think). The protagonist arrives in town with everything entirely booked up, so he must wander around in the heat with the crowds for days and days with no room. He is looking for "the sen" (senator) for whom he has done bad deeds. But now he has something on the sen and plans to collect lots of dough and start over in Mexico. A cop is on their trail and it doesn't end well. The magic of the book is the endless wandering around - without a direction- interacting with natives, as we slowly get to know all about the character.

[Ride the Pink Horse] by Dorothy B. Hughes. This novel was published in 1946, apparently went out-of-print. In 2021 it was republished by Otto Penzler, as an entry in his "American Mystery Classics."

The story's about a Chicago gunsel who goes by the name Sailor. He had done a job for a fellow nicknamed Sen because he had been a U.S. Senator, a corrupt one. Sen welshed on Sailor. The gunsel pursues Sen to a New Mexico town a lot like Santa Fe, where he plans to confront Sen, confident he'll get paid (even though Sailor has jacked up the price). Complicating the action are two matters. It's the town's annual Fiesta that fills every hotel and restaurant, with crowds jamming the street. Sailor can't get close to Sen, much less confront him. show more Moreover, a Chicago policeman called Mac (for MacIntyre) shows up, himself tailing Sen and, knowingly, trying to thwart Sailor.

In a striking departure from publishing practices in 1946, Hughes records all of Sailor's racism in a town teeming with Native Americans and hispanics. Sailor's never been outside of Chicago with its mature municipal infrastructure. So he's repelled by the unpaved streets and the lack of personal hygiene (due to the lack of a viable public water system).

I recognize Hughes' sharp eye, her character development. But reading her book was slow going. I didn't see any likable main character, anyone to root for. (Of course, it's the kind of story that shouldn't have likable characters.) Even Mac the cop got on my nerves with what Sailor called his preachy-ness. I'd rate Ride the Pink Horse "good". show less

I've read 2 other books by Dorothy Hughes, master of mid-century classic noir, and liked them, so I was not surprised to like this one as well.
When the book opens, Sailor has just stepped off the bus from Chicago to a sleepy southwestern town (modeled on Santa Fe). He is searching for the Sen, a sleazy former Senator who was his former employer and who "owes" him. Sailor carries a gun, and has a criminal background, so we know his intentions are not pure. As he walks to the plaza, he is surprised to see Mac, a Chicago policeman, and he knows that Mac can only be in town to track down the Sen as well.
Over the next three days, as the festival swirls around the three main characters, and events become more frenzied and hallucinatory, show more Sailor tries to force the Sen to give him his due, and Mac tries to keep Sailor out of trouble while making a case for murder against the Sen. The background of festival, with the comparisons between how it was enjoyed by the wealthy, the Hispanics, and the Native Americans, was fascinating, as Sailor must spend most of the festival on the streets, there being no hotel rooms available. As he wanders the streets he befriends the itinerant merry-go-round operator, and also a 14 year old Indian girl Pila. What made the book especially interesting to me was the constant tug-of-war within Sailor between the forces of good and decency and the forces for evil. We must wait until almost the very last page to see which will prevail.

Recommended.

4 stars show less