By William Neubauer, ©1964
Cover illustration by
Rudy Nappi
They warned her—you’re
asking for trouble! But Nurse Elaine wouldn’t give up. As a police nurse it
was her job to help people, and Ed Morley, accused of murder, needed her help.
His youth, good looks, and wealth had turned the whole town against him. Elaine
was sure he wouldn’t get a fair trial unless Lydia Shelton helped. Lydia was
the owner of the town’s paper—and Elaine’s rival for reporter Mike Jones’
heart. And Lydia promised to help, but her price was high—Nurse Elaine must
leave town and never see Mike Jones again.
GRADE: A-
BEST QUOTES:
“The purple eyes glared. Elaine didn’t die.”
“Girls, you know, have the oddest minds.”
“If it wasn’t for men, us girls wouldn’t have no trouble. I
say a girl which marries a guy can’t blame anybody but herself. Don’t ask me to
say more.”
“True feminine beauty, Warburton, is compounded of
appearance and serenity. Always be serene.”
REVIEW:
Elaine Warburton is both a police sergeant and a prison nurse,
which makes her one exceptionally tough cookie. And this proves very helpful to
her, for at book’s open, she is embroiled in a political situation that I never
quite got a handle on—one of the book’s few weaknesses. As far as I can tell,
the hospital director, Dr. O. Walter Thorpe, is tussling for control of the
prison hospital with Police Commissioner Hendricks; the mayor, too, is involved
in the fray, and the upcoming election is going to decide the fate of the
prison ward. Elaine, who is head of the prison ward, is being thrown under the
bus as a means of demonstrating that the police are not suited to run a
hospital. The problem here is that by pretty much everyone’s standards, Elaine
is absolute tops at her job. As various factions push to get her fired, she ups
the ante by threatening to quit, and is quickly begged not to leave, which
gives her more power than ever. It’s a real pleasure to watch Elaine Warburton
successfully wrangle numerous politicos and doctors with a hard-boiled aplomb that
would do Sam Spade proud—she even knocks out with a punch to the face someone
attempting to abduct her. Doing her one better than even Mr. Spade, however, is
the fact that she’s a damned good nurse, knowing even before her surgeons what
they will need next.
Complicating the situation is the fact that one of Elaine’s nemeses
is Miss Lydia Sheldon, who is publisher of the Pacific City Times, 400 pounds, and angling to steal Elaine’s
boyfriend, newspaper reporter Mike Jones. Lydia’s scheme is to set Mike up as
editor of the paper if he will marry her. Interestingly, though Mike is, of
course, an excellent reporter, he understands that he is not a very good
editor, which conflicts with his desire to hold the top spot. In a way, this
inner discord helps him choose the right woman in the end (you knew he would),
but it adds a bit of unexpected complexity to the story.
Lydia’s father is planning to run for mayor, so it all loops
back again to the prison vs. hospital control of Elaine’s ward. I never exactly
understood why the prison ward was so important to everyone, and all the
machinations of all the characters were hard to follow, but overall this is a
very enjoyable book. It’s funny, written in a succinct style, entertaining,
energetic, and remarkably appreciative of its heroine in a way few VNRNs are—Elaine
is not just talented and smart, but powerful. Elaine’s female coworkers are supportive
and strong, which I must confess I didn’t expect from a male writer (curious
that William abbreviates to just the initial; usually it’s women writers who do
this, depending on basic sexism that
readers will assume the writer is male and correspondingly give the book more
weight; was Mr. Neubauer hoping his readers would assume he is female?). I
confess a fondness for William Neubauer beyond his apparently egalitarian views
as suggested in this book, as he penned the fabulously titled Scandalous Career Girl under the pen
name Gordon Semple—“She would do anything for success,” breathes the cover
lines. Neubauer wrote many other nurse novels as well as sluttier nurse books (including Playboy Nurse) that I will look forward
to after the romp—or alley fistfight—that is Police Nurse.
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