Noirboiled Notes

Pulp Poem of the Week

2012-01-30T03:00:00.000-08:00

Calm down,

will you?

Have a

tangerine.

Osamu Tezuka
MW
1976-1978
(translated by Camellia Nieh)

Book Review: Osamu Tezuka, MW (1976-1978)

2012-01-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

A young boy, Michio Yuki, is accidentally poisoned by MW, a top-secret hyper-powerful chemical weapon, which turns him into a sociopath. As an adult, his life’s ambition becomes to find a hidden stockpile of MW, which he hopes to use to kill pretty much everybody. Michio is a remarkably uninteresting sociopath because of his origins: His soul has literally been poisoned, and that’s that. Nothing else to talk about here. More absurd than uninteresting is his foil, Father Garai, a pedophile turned priest who seduced the young Michio. Priests must do what priests must do, but Father Garai’s insistance that he must try to save the soul of a hardworking serial killer rather than turn him over to the police does not play well. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

2012-01-23T03:00:00.000-08:00

She was a virgin,

and things took

some doing.

Gil Brewer
The Tease
1967

Book Note: Lawrence Block, Afterthoughts (2011)

2012-01-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

Afterthoughts collects the many afterwords that Lawrence Block has written mostly for his out-of-print works that have become available as ebooks. Not surprisingly, given Block’s recent popularity, these works skew toward the beginning of his career. Because Block chose not to take the time to turn Afterthoughts into a coherent memoir, he offers it for 99 cents and makes no bones about what it is: an extended advertisment for his backlist. In return for that bargain price, you are not allowed to complain that you hear certain stories over and over again, sometimes verbatim, as they are repeated in the afterwords to different novels from the same time period. Everything is informal and chatty and reads quickly, and you will be consistently entertained (if you can put up with the repetition). On top of that, the book serves Block’s stated purpose well: You will likely finish Afterthoughts with a good idea of which Block ebooks you want to buy.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2012-01-16T03:00:00.000-08:00

Fellas that yells

that loud

ain’t hurt much.

Jim Thompson
Bad Boy
1953

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Tease (1967)

2012-01-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

Wes McCord is a skirt-chaser with a marriage to match. One night, when his disgusted wife leaves him to stay at her sister’s house, a naked nymphette appears on his doorstep with an incredible tale of murder and money. For reasons that are never explained, Wes believes that money will solve his marital problems, so he agrees to help the nymphette flee her pursuers and secure her hidden loot. If all goes well, she will give him half of her $300,000. Brewer may be going through the motions with this one, but at least he knows the motions to go through. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

2012-01-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Somehow we just don’t see

how it is with other folks until—

something comes up.

Susan Glaspell
“Trifles”
1916

Book Review: Charles Williams, The Diamond Bikini (1956)

2012-01-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

Start with Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Remove the Duke, the King, and Huck, and transplant them into an Erskine Caldwell novel. Have the Duke and the King be a little bit smarter. Cut Huck's age from fourteen to seven, and make him the Duke’s son. Throw in a striptease dancer on the run from the mob, and throw in some killing, but all in fun. This is what happens when Charles Williams needs a vacation. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

2012-01-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

marriage

lottery

Emily Hawley Gillespie
April 25, 1887

Top Ten Novels Reviewed in 2011

2012-01-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

1. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930)
2. Gil Brewer, Memory of Passion (1962)
3. Gil Brewer, A Taste for Sin (1961)
4. Dave Zeltserman, Outsourced (2011)
5. Richard Stark, Plunder Squad (1972)
6. Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note (2003-2006)
7. Donald E. Westlake, The Ax (1997)
8. Richard Stark, The Sour Lemon Score (1969)
9. Otsuichi, Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse (2000)
10. Richard Stark, Lemons Never Lie (1971)

Book Note: Dave Dickerson, Japanese Serial Killers: True Tales of 13 Notorious Murderers (2011)

2011-12-31T10:19:00.000-08:00

With an interest in Japanese noir, I couldn’t resist a cheap eBook about Japanese serial killers. My instincts said it looked like a piece of self-published crap, but the price was only $2.99. Unsurprising moral of the story: Trust your instincts. Most of the write-ups in Japanese Serial Killers: True Tales of 13 Notorious Murderers read like underdeveloped Wikipedia entries. Favorite moment in the book: the sentence that ends [citation needed]. FOOTNOTE: Just got curious and checked . . . they are Wikipedia entries! Ha!

Book Review: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note (2003-2006)

2011-12-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Tsugumi Ohba, author of the Death Note story, admits that he is no good at keeping plots going. Therefore, every time he has an idea for a new plot point, he immediately sticks it in. The upside to this strategy is that it gives Death Note a real sense of unpredictability; the raggedly constructed narrative arc will frequently surprise you. The downside is that the plot eventually feels arbitrary, sort of like a season of 24. Heroes and villains come and go, and sometimes it does feel that the author has no purpose other than to keep the damn thing afloat till the end of his projected 108 chapters. Fortunately, most of the time the upside outweighs the downside. Favorite thing about the art: the hilarious reaction shots of the Japanese police force. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-12-26T03:00:00.001-08:00

Burglary, I thought,

and the more I thought

the more I liked it.

It seemed somehow akin

to writing—

you set your own hours,

you avoided human contact,

and, if you were successful,

you managed to touch the lives

of people you never even met.

Lawrence Block
Introduction to The Burglar Who Quoted Kipling
1999

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-12-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

You couldn’t trust

anything she said,

colored as it was

with her personality.

Gil Brewer
The Hungry One
1966

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-12-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

the safe,

the god,

crouching,

embedded in the wall,

squat and somnolent,

with its triple lock,

its massive flanks,

its air of a brute divinity

Èmile Zola
The Kill (La Curée)
1872
(translated by Brian Nelson)

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-12-05T03:00:00.000-08:00

If I had anything

left to lose,

I couldn’t remember

what it was.

John D. MacDonald
The End of the Night
1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-11-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

The cheaper

the crook

the gaudier

the patter.

Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
1930

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Hungry One (1966)

2011-11-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

Herb Forrest and his wife Wilma are traveling to Tampa, where a new job awaits Herb. They stop for the night in perhaps the world’s sleaziest motel, and, in the novel’s most memorable scene, find their room invaded by Danny and Joy, a couple of speedfreaks. Danny/Joy kidnap Herb/Wilma and force them to participate in the fake kidnapping of Joy, an effort to get a suitcase of loot from Joy’s rich father. On the whole, not bad when one is running out of Brewer novels to read. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-11-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

the ponderous machinery of the law

grinds the sausage of circumstance

into links of evidence

Damon Runyon
“The Eternal Blonde”
1927

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-11-14T03:00:00.000-08:00

Dying
in the line of duty
is heroic,
but dying
while unemployed
is just stupid.

Tsugumi Ohba
Death Note
(2003-2006)
(translated by Pookie Rolf)

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-11-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

College is fun

as long as

you don’t die.

Tsugumi Ohba
Death Note
(2003-2006)
(translated by Pookie Rolf)

Book Review: Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (1930)

2011-11-06T11:41:00.001-08:00

Maybe it’s sacrilege to be thinking of John D. MacDonald while reading The Maltese Falcon, but that’s what I’ve been doing. In 1981, when asked if he were an admirer of Hammett, JDM answered in part, “The prose style of Hammett is certainly a more solid and a more artful style than that of Chandler. But he was an idiot as far as plots are concerned. If you want to drive some high school or college kid nuts, make him do an outline of the plot of The Maltese Falcon. It’s incredibly mixed up and nothing ever happens the way it’s supposed to. But the flow of the narrative is such that you’re caught up in it and you believe it. But you can’t believe it if you try to dissect it.” What I kept thinking as I was reading was how strange it was for JDM to criticize Hammett’s plotting of The Maltese Falcon in the same breath that he was mentioning Chandler. Worse than being “mixed up,” I find the plot of The Maltese Falcon to be patently uninteresting, but Raymond Chandler sets the standard for incomprehensible hardboiled-detective plots. The thing about it, though, as JDM does seem to know, is that with Hammett and Chandler plots may well be beside the point. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-10-31T03:00:00.000-07:00

Apples taste

so much better

indoors.

Tsugumi Ohba
Death Note
(2003-2006)
(translated by Pookie Rolf)

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-10-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

more relieved

than bereaved

Koushun Takami
Battle Royale
1999
(translated by Yuji Oniki)

Book Review: Richard Stark, Plunder Squad (1972)

2011-10-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

After taking a kind of vacation in Slayground, Parker gets back to work in Plunder Squad, and it is, as always, the kind of book that Starklake does best: a slice of life from the career thief. Whereas Slayground was a set piece, Plunder Squad is tangle of events from the ongoing story of Parker’s criminal career. And it is, as well, the clearest evidence you could want that Parker is a pure sociopath: Any sane person would work in a McDonald’s rather than deal with Parker’s problems. Grade: A-

Book Review: Koushun Takami, Battle Royale (1999)

2011-10-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

Lord of the Flies as formally organized competition: In a Japan-like dictatorship, 42 fifteen-year-old classmates are forced to play a killing game till one of them remains. Each kid is issued a bag of supplies—including one weapon, which could be anything from an Uzi to a fork—and they are turned loose on an island, where they will complete the competition or all be killed. The 2009 English-language edition of Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale features a newly corrected translation, interviews with the author and with the director of the film version, and a foreword by Max Allan Collins in which he makes a fair case for himself as the world’s coolest dad. These bonuses in some measure compensate for the novel’s weak dénouement, which culminates in perhaps the lamest final page in the history of the printed word. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-10-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

I sit here writing, not daring to stop,

For fear of seeing what’s outside my head.

Bob Kaufman
“Jail Poems”
1959

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-10-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

I wondered which would be better—

to work as a prostitute to live,

or to die rather than work as one?

I’d say the latter answer would be

the one chosen by the healthy mind,

but then again,

there’s not really anything healthy

about being dead.

Anyway, they do say that women

who are sexually active tend

to have a better complexion.

Not that I cared if

I was healthy or not.

Hitomi Kanehara
Snakes and Earrings
2004
(trans. by David James Karashima)

Book Review: Hitomi Kanehara, Snakes and Earrings (2004)

2011-10-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

Woodenly translated Japanese nihilnoir. Sort of like They Shoot Horses, Don't They? with the dancing replaced by tattoos, piercings, and demeaning sex. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-10-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

I had no idea

How much brains

He had

Until

I saw them.

David Rachels
Verse Noir
2010

Book Review: Richard Stark, Lemons Never Lie (1971)

2011-10-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

The best Grofield novel earns its status as the best Grofield novel by being the Grofield novel that is most like a Parker novel: The Sour Grofield Score with minimal opportunities for Actor Alan to play the wiseass. Grade: B+

Book Review: Richard Stark, Slayground (1971)

2011-09-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

I prefer to read novels knowing as little as possible about them going in, so Slayground represents a special achievement for me: I began reading the often-discussed, often-praised fourteenth Parker novel knowing absolutely nothing about it—I even managed to tune out the illustrations on the cover of the Chicago reprint (except for the always-present Big Gun). So, in that spirit, I’m not going to tell you anything about it, either. Grade: B+

Book Review: Richard Stark, Deadly Edge (1971)

2011-09-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Deadly Edge perhaps deserves better than the grade I give it, but I’m trying to make distinctions within the Parker canon—or, to put it another way, a C-level Parker novel is still a damn good novel. “Part One” of the book, which runs uninterrupted for nearly 50 pages, details Parker and his partners stealing the all-cash take from a rock concert. No one does this sort of thing better than Starklake, and Deadly Edge would be worth reading just for this set piece. The 150 pages that follow are not nearly so compelling, as Parker plays cat and mouse with two uninteresting villains who want to steal what he has stolen. This, too, is well done, but Parker-the-thief is almost always more interesting than Parker-the-anything-else. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-09-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Lit by her son,

a signal flare burst

under the skirts of

Mme Roger, of Clichy;

damages were

considerable.

Félix Fénéon
Novels in Three Lines
1906
(translated by Luc Sante)

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Blackbird (1969)

2011-09-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

One reason that the Parker novels are superior to the Grofield novels is that, over the long haul, it's more pleasant to spend time with a sullen sociopath than a smartass. In The Blackbird, Grofield's schtick begins to wear thin around page 100, but the book has more than enough action and intelligence to keep you going. Grade: B-

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Memory of Passion (1962)

2011-09-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

Contrary to what you may have heard, Gil Brewer had his mojo working well beyond the 1950s. Memory of Passion tells of a husband wife who still have “active glands,” though not for each other. Things get complicated when the flame of the husband’s teenaged years reappears in his life—having not aged a day in more than 20 years. Things get more complicated still when we learn that this ageless flame is being stalked by a serial killer. Another excellent Brewer ripe for rediscovery. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-09-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

I stood on the top

of the toboggan slide,

thinking how small it was

really,

and how large it had looked

to me when I was a kid.

It had been a world then,

a big one.

You could get lost in it.

Now I knew no world

was big enough

to get lost in.

Gil Brewer
“Final Appearance”
1951

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-09-12T03:00:00.000-07:00

It’s too late

for anything

but

getting away.

Gil Brewer
The Red Scarf
1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-09-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

He looked as if

somebody had

machine-gunned

his soul.

Gil Brewer
13 French Street
1951

A New Gil Brewer Story!

2011-09-02T11:13:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of yours truly, an unpublished Gil Brewer story will appear in the next issue of Needle. Read all about it here:

Gil Brewer story to debut in NEEDLE

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-08-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

When one sells mattresses,

one has an in.

Talk comes quickly

to the point.

A woman wants to

purchase a mattress.

Take it from there.

Gil Brewer
Play It Hard
1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-08-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

I was as hollow and

empty

as the spaces between the

stars.

Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye
1953

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-08-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

Cars littered

the sloped lawn

like discards

on green felt.

Gil Brewer
A Taste for Sin
1961

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-08-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

The calm,

Cool face of the river

Asked me for a kiss.

Langston Hughes
“Suicide’s Note”
1925

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-08-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

needed

killing

Gil Brewer
Appointment in Hell
1961

Book Review: Gil Brewer, A Taste for Sin (1961)

2011-07-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

David’s Femme Dépravée Theorem: The quality of a traditional Everyman noir is in direct proportion to the depravity of its femme fatale—and it doesn’t hurt if she also happens to be married to a clerk at the local bank. Brewer had written this book before, but not with this much panache. Available in a two-fer from Stark House Press. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-07-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

Once you’ve

made up your mind,

it doesn’t

hurt so much.

Gil Brewer
“The Axe Is Ready”
1956

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Appointment in Hell (1961)

2011-07-19T18:37:00.000-07:00

Gil Brewer didn’t like writing this book, and I didn’t like reading it. Brewer didn’t like writing it because its South American setting required him to do research; I didn’t like reading it because Brewer’s sex-driven characters aren’t believable in this setting. Three men, three women, their plane has crashed in the jungle, and, yes, of course, they want to tend to their injuries, to find food . . . but the main thing they want to do is have sex . . . oh, and to find shelter, too, and maybe to build a raft to take them back to civilization . . . but, hey, is it okay if they screw some first? Please? They’ll worry about that whole survival thing later. Really . . . they promise . . . right . . . after . . . the . . . next . . . LAY! Grade: D+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-07-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

The halls twisted like a digestive tract
through the spacious house.
They hadn’t been designed to be complicated—
at least I thought they hadn’t—
and yet at each intersection I found myself
losing track of where I was.
As I walked along the black floorboards,
I started to feel the illusion of the halls
languidly moving
like the peristalsis of the intestines.

Otsuichi
Black Fairy Tale
2004
(translated by Nathan Collins)

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-07-11T03:00:00.000-07:00

do not suspend him until

he is reinstated from expulsion so

I can suspend him as of last month so

I can reinstate him to be expelled, so—

Jim Thompson
Bad Boy
1953

Book Review: Otsuichi, Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse (2000)

2011-07-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

I read this one for the title novella, Summer, Fireworks, and My Corpse, an excellent juvie noir pageturner narrated from the POV of a murdered little girl. Also included are a short story, “Yuko,” which reminded me of Hawthorne, and a novel, Black Fairy Tale, a J-horror story that weaves together an amnesiac and a serial killer, a winning combination if ever there was one. Translated by Nathan Collins. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-07-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

The sun was bright and

hot as the insides of

a Russian horse doctor’s valise.

George H. Smith
Bayou Babe
1960

Book Review: Jim Thompson, Bad Boy (1953)

2011-06-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

Jim Thompson’s Bad Boy is tepid autobiography in the vein of Jim Tully’s early books: a series of broad-stroke anecdotes in search of a narrative. The book gets stronger as it goes, with its most famous section detailing Thompson’s encounters with the sheriff who inspired the creation of The Killer Inside Me’s Lou Ford. But this juxtaposition serves only to highlight the comparative thinness of Bad Boy: Thompson may have been haunted by his memories of this man, but in the real-life telling he is (perhaps unavoidably) the barest husk of Lou Ford. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-06-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

It was like being in a room

with no windows or doors.

You kept running against the walls,

slamming into them.

You knew there was no way out.

But back in your mind,

something told you

there had to be a way out.

So you rammed, and rammed,

smashing against those walls.

You’d reel around and try again.

Something had to give—

either one of the walls,

or you.

Gil Brewer
The Three-Way Split
1960

Book Note: The Best American Crime Reporting 2010, edited by Stephen J. Dubner

2011-06-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

This year’s stand-out: David Grann’s “Trial by Fire,” the story of Todd Willingham, a man accused of burning his house with his children inside.

This year’s stinker: Ernest B. Furgurson’s “The Man Who Shot the Man Who Shot Lincoln,” a boring summary of the life of Boston Corbett.

Book Review: David Rachels, Verse Noir (2010)

2011-06-23T06:29:00.000-07:00

Follow this link for a nice write-up of Verse Noir at Spinetingler.

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Play It Hard (1960)

2011-06-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

Gil Brewer mashes up Cornell Woolrich (I Married a Dead Man crossed with The Black Curtain) with his own sexed-up Gulf Coast noir. Perhaps not his best, but I’m always a sucker for noir amnésique. Grade: B-

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-06-20T03:00:00.000-07:00

She moaned and she moaned.

After a while they lay still.

The house waited.

Gil Brewer
Backwoods Teaser
1960

Book Review: George H. Smith and Gil Brewer, Bayou Babe (1960)

2011-06-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

You can have a remarkable time reading George H. Smith’s Bayou Babe, but only if you read Gil Brewer’s Backwoods Teaser first. Brewer's novel was published in January 1960; Smith’s book followed five months later. In between, Smith took considerably more than inspiration from Brewer. The books have the same premise, more or less the same opening scene, and many scenes scattered throughout are eerily similar. Historical bottom line: An unexpected payday for Brewer when someone alerted him to Smith's plagiarism. Grade reserved for plagiarists and The Colorado Kid: F-

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Three-Way Split (1960)

2011-06-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Three-Way Split begins with Gil Brewer reworking the opening of one of of his short stories. In “Death Comes Last” (Hunted Detective Story Magazine, October 1955), Brewer begins with an aggrieved protagonist, who runs a modest charter-boat service, getting shafted out of his fee because his obnoxious clients didn’t catch any fish and one of them lost a watch overboard. The Three-Way Split begins with another aggrieved protagonist running a charter boat, and this time a necklace falls into the Gulf. On this occasion, however, our protagonist—Jack Holland, which also happens to be one of Brewer’s pseudonyms—manages to find the necklace, and he finds something else too: a recently uncovered sunken ship. Perhaps it contains treasure? After this, Brewer rushes to get his other characters on stage: Jack’s girlfriend, his girlfriend’s sister, his friend the old treasure hunter, his ne’er-do-well father, and the men who want to kill his ne’er-do-well father. If you like this sort of thing, how much you ultimately like The Three-Way Split will probably hinge on how effective you find its ending. Currently available as part of a two-fer reprint from Stark House Press. Grade: B-

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Backwoods Teaser (1960)

2011-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Erskine Caldwell meets James M. Cain for swamp titillation. As much comedy as it is noir. Quick, professional, for Brewer completists only. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-06-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

She was

as dry as

an invoice.

Èmile Zola
The Kill (La Curée)
1872
(translated by Brian Nelson)

Èmile Zola, The Kill [La Curée] (1872)

2011-06-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

For those inclined to trace the origins of naturalistic crime fiction—a.k.a. noir—beyond Frank Norris’s McTeague (1899), the next logical stop is French naturalist Èmile Zola. The Kill (La Curée), the second in Zola’s twenty-volume cycle Les Rougon-Marcquart, traffics in familiar noir themes of uncontrolled greed and lust. The novel begins in medias res as we are plunged into the tacky decadence of the nouveau riche of the Second Empire, and then rewinds to show how the environment of Paris created Aristide Saccard (greed) and his wife Renée (lust). The novel can be slow at times, as its subject is as much Paris itself as Saccard and Renée, but if your interest in noir is at all academic, The Kill is well worth your time. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-06-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

Everything she wore
must have had
strong seams.

Gil Brewer
“The Screamer”
1955

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-05-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

I felt too young.

I felt like a child

being bathed

by an evil nursemaid.

I felt that some

unspeakable thing

was coiling and vomiting

in her mind.

John D. MacDonald
The End of the Night
1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-05-23T03:00:00.000-07:00

Yamsaki Asami undid his belt,

then

plucked gently at his zipper

and

slowly pulled it down,

a surgeon opening an incision.

Ryu Murakami
Audition
1997
(translated by Ralph McCarthy)

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Sour Lemon Score (1969)

2011-05-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

A solid Parker novel of the aftermath variety: A heist goes so sour that it resembles a lemon, and Parker is hellbent on getting his money back. The narrative makes one serious misstep early on: In a ludicrous sequence, a fellow career criminal drugs Parker and injects him with truth serum so that he can interrogate Parker to determine how much of a threat he poses. I mean, seriously? The man has no reason on earth not to kill Parker, plain and simple. Starklake tries too hard with the truth serum, but he is otherwise in fine form. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-05-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

Whatever else she may lack,

which seems to be plenty,

the woman appears to have nerve.

Or maybe she hasn’t any nerves.

It is about the same thing.

Damon Runyon
“The Eternal Blonde”
1927

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, The End of the Night (1960)

2011-05-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

Having recently read Weep for Me (1951), which John D. MacDonald identified as the worst of his early novels, I felt obligated to follow up by reading The End of the Night (1960), which was his favorite of the early books. The End of the Night chronicles the so-called Wolf Pack, three young men and a young woman who go on a cross-country crime spree. Given that JDM thought so highly of The End of the Night, I was expecting a great read. I did not stop to consider that there is a compelling reason for suspecting that JDM may not have been the best judge of his own work. To wit: Many readers, myself among them, find that JDM’s novels are aging poorly because of his habit of interjecting sociological lectures into his narratives, and these are precisely the sections of his books that JDM liked the best. Therefore, I should not have been surprised to find that The End of the Night is dominated by a pair of pretentious first-person narrators, both of whom are more interested in understanding the world than telling a story. Of course, this is not to say that noir fiction cannot be a vehicle for understanding the world—in fact, this is what distinguishes much of the best noir. But when JDM indulges his love of pontification, he fails to recognize that a well-told story can be not just a sufficient but a superior way of deepening readers’ understanding of the world. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-05-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

An old man dozed in the elevator,

on a ramshackle stool,

with a burst-out cushion under him.

His mouth was open,

his veined temples glistened in the weak light.

He wore a blue uniform that fitted him

the way a stall fits a horse.

Under that gray trousers with frayed cuffs,

white cotton socks and black kid shoes,

one of which was slit across a bunion.

On the stool he slept miserably,

waiting for a customer.

I went past him softly,

the clandestine air of the building prompting me,

found the fire door and pulled it open.

The stairs hadn’t been swept in a month.

Bums had slept on them, eaten on them,

left crusts and fragments of greasy newspaper,

matches, a gutted imitation-leather pocketbook.

In a shadowy angle against the scribbled wall

a pouched ring of pale rubber had fallen

and had not been disturbed.

A very nice building.

Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep
1939

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-05-02T03:00:00.000-07:00

There was the feeling

she would

spit on you.

There was the feeling

you wouldn't

care if she did.

Gil Brewer
Nude on Thin Ice
1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-04-25T03:00:00.001-07:00

Nobody’s

a professional

at people.

Richard Stark
The Black Ice Score
1968

Story Note: Susan Glaspell, "A Jury of Her Peers" (1917)

2011-04-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Spoiler alert! The following comments spoil much of Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers.” If you want to read the story, you may do so here.

Though Susan Glaspell’s early noir “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917) has been canonized in Tony Hillerman’s The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century (2001), it is not a mystery story in the conventional sense. Minnie Wright has murdered her husband. No one in the story believes her claim that she slept undisturbed next to him while someone strangled him with a rope, nor is the reader given any reason to doubt her guilt. The only mystery is why Minnie did it. (Significantly, the name “Minnie Wright” never appears in the story. Martha Hale, a neighbor, still thinks of her as Minnie Foster because Martha remembers her as she was before marriage. In all other instances, she is referred to as “Mrs. Wright,” symbolic of the appendage she became.)

The plot of the story proper describes a visit to the Wrights’ empty house as the sheriff (Peters) and the county attorney (Henderson) collect information for the prosecution of Minnie Wright. Peters and Henderson want to interview Martha Hale’s husband, Lewis, at the house, for it was he who discovered the murder. The day before, he had stopped by to see John Wright and was informed by Minnie that her husband was dead. Upstairs, Lewis found the body. The three men are accompanied on their errand by two women. The sheriff’s wife, whose name is given only as Mrs. Peters, is going to gather items that Minnie Wright wants in jail. When Mrs. Peters becomes nervous, she asks Martha Hale to come as well.

Martha feels sympathy for the accused from the outset. When her husband begins talking, she is concerned that he will “say unnecessary things that [will] just make things harder for Minnie Foster.” Thus, she disapproves when Lewis says that he “didn’t know as what [John’s] wife wanted made much difference to John” because this hints at a motive for the murder. Lewis does not follow up on this observation, however, because the attorney asks him to focus on the murder itself.

When the three men go upstairs to look at the murder scene, Martha and Mrs. Peters stay below, and this is when then real action of the story begins. Piecing together evidence that the men are oblivious to (“Nothing here but kitchen things,” says the sheriff), the women come to understand why Minnie Wright killed her husband. First, Martha notices a paper bag of flour only half emptied into a wooden bucket. Then she notices that the kitchen table has been only half cleaned. Then Mrs. Peters notices where Minnie seems to have lost her ability to sew, and she wonders, “What do you suppose she was so—nervous about?” The answer comes, literally and/or symbolically, when they find Minnie’s pet bird, its neck broken, wrapped in a piece of silk in her sewing basket. Earlier, Martha had observed that Minnie Foster was herself like a bird (“Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery. How—she—did—change”), and now the two women lock eyes “in a look of dawning comprehension, of growing horror.” Literally, the dead bird, along with a birdcage whose door has been forcibly broken, indicates that John killed his wife’s pet. Symbolically, the dead bird shows what marriage to John Foster did to the vibrant young Minnie Foster; as well, the manner of the bird’s death suggests the possibility of spousal abuse.

Though Martha and Mrs. Peters know little about the Wrights’ marriage, they know enough about the naturalistic weight of patriarchy to intuit the details that the dead bird suggests. From their perspective, if the men knew of the dead bird, it “would make certain the conviction” of Minnie Wright. Their sympathy is with Minnie, however, so they will not tell the men what they know. Commentary on the story tends to end here: As a jury, Martha and Mrs. Peters have united in support of their peer. But to stop here is to overlook what may be the story’s deepest irony: While Martha and Mrs. Peters believe that they have the power to prove Minnie’s guilt, they may well be wrong. Throughout the story, the men have treated Martha and Mrs. Peters with condescension bordering on contempt. Just as John Wright did not care what his wife wanted, it seems likely that the men would not take seriously the amateur detective work of the two women. The women’s confidence in their own power, when they may have no power at all, is classic noir.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-04-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

I don’t know

why I'm in—

but I'm in it.

It keeps me

in butts and

I see the

country and

I don't have

to slave

over a desk.

I get places.

It's not a

pretty game,

and no guy

every wrote a

poem about it.

But it’s the

only hole

I fit in.

Frederick Nebel
“Rough Justice”
1930

Book Review: John D. MacDonald, Weep for Me (1951)

2011-04-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

Weep for Me is one of two novels that Gold Medal let go out of print at John D. MacDonald’s request. (The other was 1963’s I Could Go on Singing.) So part of the exercise of reading it is trying to figure out why MacDonald disliked it so much. The set-up is standard Gold Medal fare: Narrator Kyle Cameron is a bank teller . . . actually, that’s probably all I need to tell you about the set-up . . . you know the rest. But the book takes a strange turn in its final act, and its ending is downright embarrassing—I don’t doubt that JDM hated it. He probably found much of its prose embarrassing too. Sample sentence: “They knew that the loins of this dark girl beside me were a trap that had closed on my soul” (98). But you might want to read it simply because JDM doesn’t want you to. Grade: C-

5 Quick Questions with Gerald So

2011-04-16T06:49:00.001-07:00

Gerald So is founding editor of the poetry journal The Lineup: Poems on Crime. A distinguished poet in his own right, So holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Queens College/CUNY.

1. Edgar Allan Poe wrote that “Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem,” which raises this question: Can a poem about crime be beautiful?

Crime repulses me, people assuming they have the right to hurt others. To write the honest reactions to crime The Lineup seeks, poets have to deal with hurt, fear, and other forces that would keep them silent. That act of bravery is what I find beautiful.

2. Can a crime poem achieve something that a crime story (or novel) cannot?

Yes. Fictional crime stories and novels are structurally bound to beginning, middle, and end. Any story must establish expectations and meet them. A poem about crime doesn’t have the limitations of fiction. It can spend more time evoking a moment and show most intimately what it means to the people involved.

3. Are there any crime novelists whose writings you find to be particularly poetic?

I’ll go with Hammett, Chandler, Robert B. Parker, Reed Farrel Coleman, and S. J. Rozan.

4. Do you think that The Lineup has attracted readers who otherwise would never have picked up a poetry journal?

I hope so. Crime fiction hooked me on fiction in general, and I hope poetry about crime hooks a new audience on poetry.

5. In your opinion, what’s the single best poem to have appeared in The Lineup?

It’s difficult for me to think of each poem individually after they’ve been published in an issue. I can tell you I like the flow of poems in each issue.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-04-11T03:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday many friends.

Today many enemies.

Yesterday you speak,

many listen.

Today you speak,

many laugh.

Erle Stanley Gardner
“Hell’s Kettle”
1930

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Nude on Thin Ice (1960)

2011-04-10T14:15:00.001-07:00

In the opening pages of Nude on Thin Ice, you can hear the plot gears grind before Gil Brewer gets his machine in gear: Our noir anti-hero, Ken McCall, is summoned to console Nanette Schroeder, the widow of a recently deceased acquaintance. The acquaintance, Carl Schroeder, was a lecherous bastard who didn’t live long enough to spend his fortune. Ken heads to the Schroeder residence with dollar signs in his eyes, but he arrives to find that he is not the only one with designs on the dead man’s money. In the trajectory of Brewer’s career, Nude on Thin Ice is remarkable primarily for its heightened sexual content. Dating to his earliest days with Gold Medal, Brewer was forced to reign in the “perverse” sexual content of his writing, but by 1960 he had considerably more freedom. In Nude on Thin Ice, he doesn’t use that freedom tastefully, but in noir this is not necessarily a bad thing. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-04-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

You may

question

the ethics,

but the results

are good.

Poor morals

perhaps,

but good, sound,

common sense.

Carroll John Daly
“Three Gun Terry”
1923

5 Quick Questions with Ed Lynskey

2011-04-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

Ed Lynskey is an accomplished poet, essayist, and novelist. His novels tend to the noir side. His most recent, Lake Charles, begins with its protagonist waking up one morning to find his girlfriend next to him in bed. Dead, of course.

1. What’s the first crime novel that you remember reading?

The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald or a John Jericho title by Hugh Pentecost.

2. Hammett or Chandler?

Chandler’s early work is my preference.

3. Gun, knife, blackjack, or hands?

Gun. I don’t like up close and personal.

4. Which noir novel have you read the most times?

The only title I can think of reading more than once is Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

5. What’s the best novel by Ed Lynskey?

That’s for the readers and critics to decide. I like Lake Charles, my new Appalachian noir because it took ten years for me to finish writing.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-03-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

The men

with dirty faces

and calloused hands

said nothing.

David Goodis
The Blonde on the Street Corner
1954

Author Photograph: P. J. Wolfson

2011-03-22T18:20:00.001-07:00

P. J. Wolfson, author of Bodies Are Dust (one of the great early noirs), is the one in the yellow shirt with the blue stripe around the collar. Photograph posted here with the kind permission of Jon Wolfson.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-03-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

the face of a

Vassar undergraduate

smelling a

dead cat

Richard Stark
The Dame
1969

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Black Ice Score (1968)

2011-03-17T19:41:00.000-07:00

More support for the International Parker Theorem: The more Parker gets involved in international intrigue, the less interesting he becomes. The best Parker books convince you that they take place in the real world of professional thieves. Those books that fall under the International Parker Theorem convince you that some of the Parker novels should have been left out of print. Grade: C-

Dispatch from the Gil Brewer Collection

2011-03-15T18:23:00.001-07:00

I’m spending my spring break in Laramie, Wyoming, at the American Heritage Center working in the Gil Brewer Collection. A couple of tidbits folks might find interesting:

1. On November 26, 1956, Brewer signed a contract with Lion Books to write four novels for them. I have no idea why Brewer never actually wrote anything for them. I have not seen Lion mentioned anywhere in the Brewer papers other than on this contract.

2. On July 17, 1958, Brewer signed a contract with Tower Publications to write a book titled Backwoods Bikini under the pseudonym of Zack Holland. This is more exciting than the Lion business because I suppose it’s just barely possible this book is actually out there somewhere. As with the Lion contract, however, I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else in the Brewer papers, and a quick check of online sources has not turned up the existence of any such book. Nevertheless, I thought I should make everybody aware of it, just in case. (And if you’ve got a copy, shoot me an email, and I’ll tell you where to send it.)

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-03-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

I saw to it that

it happened

fast and clean.

It was something

like working

in a butcher shop,

only my job

pays better,

the hours

are shorter,

and there isn’t

the mess.

Max Allan Collins
Quarry [a.k.a. The Broker]
1976

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-03-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

Kill yourself
into a hole,
and the chances are
a time comes
when you have to
kill yourself out.

Dashiell Hammett
The Dain Curse
1929

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-02-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

If you could find

a nice circular saw

he'd put his neck

against it

just to make certain

it was sharp.

W. T. Ballard
Dealing Out Death
1948

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-02-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

The good guy

won.

The bad guy

lost.

The girl

didn’t do much of anything at all.

Sara Gran
Dope
2006

Book Review: William F. Nolan, The Black Mask Boys: Masters of the Hard-Boiled School of Detective Fiction (1985)

2011-02-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

Stories included: “Three Gun Terry” (1923) by Carroll John Daly; “Bodies Piled Up” (1923) by Dashiell Hammett; “Hell’s Kettle” (1930) by Erle Stanley Gardner; “Sal the Dude” (1929) by Raoul Whitfield; “Rough Justice” (1930) by Frederick Nebel; “Frost Flies Alone” [original title: “Frost Rides Alone”] (1930) by Horace McCoy; “Gundown” [original title: “Murder Done in Blue”] (1933) by Paul Cain; and “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” (1933) by Raymond Chandler.

William F. Nolan gathers eight representative stories from Black Mask’s heavy-hitters and seasons the mix with a history of the magazine, biographical overviews of the writers, and bibliographies of their work for Black Mask. Unfortunately, by almost any critical yardstick, Black Mask fiction is pretty bad. Joseph T. Shaw, who edited the magazine during its glory years, was interested in good writing, but he was more interested in series characters who would build and keep a base of loyal readers. (Thus, the many, many appearances of Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams, whom even Shaw knew to be terrible.) On the whole, the best story here (no surprise) is Dashiell Hammett’s “Bodies Piled Up,” which manages to be brilliant even if it doesn’t add up to much as a story. And this is the perspective from which Black Mask fiction is best enjoyed: as collections of moments rather than as unified narratives. Approached in this way, even Carroll John Daly’s “Three Gun Terry”—the world’s first hard-boiled detective story—can be fun. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-02-14T03:00:00.000-08:00

You can’t tell

a wound

from its scab.

Richard Stark
The Damsel
1967

5 More Quick Questions with Max Allan Collins

2011-02-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

In the second installment of 5 Quick Questions with Max Allan Collins, M.A.C. gives answers about his friend and collaborator Mickey Spillane. Of the many Spillane/Collins publications, two new ones to be aware of: (1) M.A.C. contributes an essay on Spillane’s One Lonely Night to Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads (2010; edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner), and (2) M.A.C.’s completion of Spillane’s unfinished manuscript for The Consummata (the sequel to Spillane’s 1967 novel The Delta Factor) will be published in October by Hard Case Crime.

1. What was the first Mickey Spillane novel that you read?

One Lonely Night. Changed my life. My world. The private eye as crazed avenger, the private eye writer as noir poet. It belongs on the short list of great P.I. novels with The Maltese Falcon and Farewell, My Lovely.

2. What do you most admire about Mickey Spillane as a writer?

The surrealistic, fever-dream world he creates in the first six Mike Hammer novels is a unique, compelling creation. I would also cite Hammer himself as a voice/character.

3. True or false: Mickey Spillane is America’s most underrated hardboiled novelist.

Probably true. I say “probably” because those who love him really love him. Some major players consider him hugely important—Otto Penzler for one, Ed Gorman for another. And hundreds of millions of readers.

4. Which is more challenging: co-writing a novel with a living co-author, or completing the work of a deceased author?

I find the process quite similar, because with both Barb Collins (my wife and collaborator on the Antiques novels) and Matthew V. Clemens (collaborator on the forthcoming No One Will Hear You), I work from their rough drafts. The back-and-forth comes at the plotting stage. With Mickey, I work from unfinished manuscripts, which I treat as rough draft, and sometimes notes. Obviously the Spillane collaboration is tricky, but I have been unwittingly training for that role since about 1960.

5. What is your favorite Mickey Spillane novel?

One Lonely Night. Hands down. But the first six Hammer novels combine to make an epic hardboiled fantasy.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-02-07T03:00:00.000-08:00

It was one of those
Chinese-type dresses,
with a high slit,
and it fit her
like a glass

around a strong drink.

Gil Brewer
Angel
1960

Book Review: David Goodis, The Blonde on the Street Corner (1954)

2011-02-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

Not much happens in The Blonde on the Street Corner, which, I suppose, is part of the point. Empty characters with empty lives. Sometimes they strive for something better, but most of the time it's not worth the trouble. After all, it won't ever amount to much. Goodis does his job by staying out of the way. Prone to overwriting himself into a mess, he keeps it simple this time. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-01-31T03:00:00.000-08:00

Only dumb guys fight.

If I wasn't dumb

I wouldn't be fightin'.

I could make six dollars a day

On the docks

And I'd save more than I do now.

Only dumb guys fight.

Langston Hughes
"Prize Fighter"
1927

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Dame (1968)

2011-01-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

Richard Stark writes an Agatha Christie novel, starring Alan Grofield. Ugh. Grade: C-

Noir Flow Chart

2011-01-24T20:06:00.001-08:00

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-01-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

Clinger was sitting

hunched in a chair

like a bankrupt laundromat owner

in his lawyer's outer office.

Richard Stark
The Seventh
1966

5 Quick Questions with Max Allan Collins

2011-01-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

Max Allan Collins has cut a wide swath through the noirboiled world (and many other literary worlds, for that matter) as a prolific author of novels (graphic and otherwise), stories, screenplays, movie tie-ins, comic strips, and on and on. He is perhaps best-known to noirboiled fans for the Nathan Heller novels, which blend the private eye genre with historical fiction, as well as his series featuring Quarry (the assassin) and Nolan (the thief).

1. What is the first crime novel that you remember reading?

I read a lot of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and loved the Saint novels—I particularly remember The Saint and the Sizzling Saboteur making an impression. And the Dick Tracy comic books are a very vivid memory—the first story I read was about Junior Tracy’s girl friend, Model, who died as a result of her juvie brother’s misdeeds, quickly followed by a book collecting the Brow sequence, in which the sympathetic Summer Sisters drowned in a car. But the crime novel that kicked off everything came in the seventh grade—The Maltese Falcon. Still my favorite private eye novel.

2. Which crime novelist do you consider to be your biggest influence?

I have to dodge this, at least somewhat. Everybody thinks I would say Mickey Spillane, but he is only one of a quartet of great mystery writers I discovered when I was thirteen—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, and James M. Cain. I learned 90% of what I know about crime writing from Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, and Cain.

3. Which non-crime novelist do you consider to be your biggest influence?

Probably William March, author of The Bad Seed, which inspired my films (and novels) Mommy and Mommy's Day. My other favorite mainstream writers during my impressionable years were Calder Willingham, who wrote End As a Man, and Willard Motley, who wrote Knock on Any Door. Not your standard picks, I’ll grant you. Later I came to like Mark Harris, author of The Southpaw.

4. Which crime novel (that you didn’t write) do you most wish you had written?

There aren't any. I only want to write my novels.

But I am very thrilled to be collaborating with Mickey Spillane—contributing real entries to the Mike Hammer series is an honor I wish I could share with my thirteen year-old self. Well, I guess I do.

5. What is the best novel by Max Allan Collins?

I don't know. I would suggest that the Nathan Heller novels, taken as a whole, represent my best work and major contribution. Of those I might pick The Million-Dollar Wound as the best representative example, and Flying Blind as the best atypical entry.

Pulp Poem of the Week

2011-01-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

There was no question

Nola was nice to look at,

and now that she was getting

moodier and quieter,

all the better.

Dave Zeltserman
Pariah
2009