It’s a shame that the cover artist for this sixties Bantam paperback is not stated as it captures the mood and theme of this cracker-jack Vegas crime novel by Steve Fisher. Fisher is remembered primarily for his work as a screenwriter for dozens of noir, crime, and Western films most notably “I Wake Up Screaming” (from his novel of the same name, 1941), “Lady in the Lake (1946) and “Las Vegas Shakedown (1955). He also wrote for television creating scrips for “Starsky & Hutch” (1976) and “Fantasy Island” (1978).
Steve Fisher started as a pulp story writer who also succeeded (a rare feat) with the “slicks” (mainstream magazines like Saturday Evening Post). He left the US to live in Paris back in 1939 because he was broke and it was cheaper to live abroad in those days. When his agent sold a story to Hollywood he moved to Los Angeles and never left.
He wrote from 1935 to 1970 primarily in the hardboiled style, but with more emotion and sentiment than writers like Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain. No House Limit is set in the gambling world of Las Vegas in the early 1960s and is very tightly plotted. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:
“The Rainbow’s End casino was the fanciest casino in Las Vegas. It was an air-conditioned smoke pit. Men crowded feverishly around the gambling tables; girls waiting upstairs, ready to provide the most erotic professional entertainment in town. At the dice table, two men faced each other grimly in a marathon crap game that lasted for three harrowing days and nights. They had no house limit on bets, nothing to stop them from maniacal self-destruction”
Fisher is a very good (but not great) crime writer with a flair for suspense and tight plots. His other excellent novel, I Wake Up Screaming is also worth a read. It deserves an award just for the title alone.
Hard Case Crime publishers reprinted No House Limit in 2008 with cover art by Richard B. Farrell. It’s a very good edition with many extras:
NO HOUSE LIMIT offers a sizzling insider’s view of Las Vegas written by the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of numerous classic noir films, including Raymond Chandler’s Lady in the Lake, Humphrey Bogart’s Dead Reckoning and Tokyo Joe, and the atypically dark final film in the Thin Man series.
First publication in more than 45 years!
Fisher wrote hundreds of movies and TV shows, including scripts based on the work of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich
Author of the pulp classic I WAKE UP SCREAMING
Features an all-new afterword by Fisher’s son, Michael
The Washington Star praises NO HOUSE LIMIT for its "sex, sadism and action."
Woody Haut, author of PULP CULTURE: "Fisher deserves a place on a short list of influential noirists."