Be careful when you grab a tiger by the tail, you might just be waking up a whole lot of trouble you aren't prepared to handle. In Chase's 1954 crime thriller "Tiger by the Tail," (one of four he put out that year), Chase offers us a twist on the old plot device of the innocent man waking up with a corpse and blood all over him. Here, a mild-mannered Clark Kent type bank teller, Ken Holland, reluctantly takes out a call girl while his wife is out of town. But what really sets this thriller over the edge is the politically connected, mob-connected serpents that have been awakened. As Holland desperately and at times ridiculously attempts to destroy evidence, a comedy of errors ensues that drowns the entire town in an explosion of violence so complete that only Chase could have dreamed it up. Slow to start, this novel picks up the pace as it moves along, gathering up speed and momentum as it barrels toward the conclusion.