Noirboiled Notes

she thinks you’re a grown man; either go down and do it, or go up and tell her that she’s wrong           Charles Williams           Agro...

I’m not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I’m thirty-four and I’ve been married twice.           Charles Williams           Aground       ...

there ain’t nothin’ as aggravatin’ to live with as a disillusioned hawg           Charles Williams           Uncle Sagamore and His...

Aground  is the sixteenth Charles Williams novel that I have read, and it is my least favorite. I found the characters flat (even by stand...

Don’t fire, men, until you see the roots of their hair.           Charles Williams           Man on the Run           1958 

The second of Charles Williams’ two novels chronicling the adventures of peckerwood savant Sagamore Noonan, as seen through the eyes of hi...

all the logic of gonorrhea in a convent      Charles Williams      Girl Out Back      1958

don’t run when nobody’s chasing you           Charles Williams           Man on the Run           1958 

the attrition of honesty varies inversely with the square of the distance and directly with the mass of the temptation     ...

I awoke during the night and she was gone. Switching on the light, I looked at my watch. It was shortly after 3 P.M.     ...

Man on the Run begins with a man on the run for a crime that he didn’t commit. Russell Foley is his name, and he has the more-...

She climbed to her feet, watching me warily and trying to back away. I said nothing, and merely slapped at her again, feeling a lit...

Now that bust-line architecture has become a basic industry, like steel and heavy construction, all the old pleasant conjectu...

Barney Godwin, a typical noir Everyman, discovers that a local swamp rat has lucked into the proceeds of an infamous back robbery, and he ...

This was the way it ended. You learned everything there was to learn, you took care of every contingency, you memorized, you rehearsed—...

like a blonde with a pet skunk      Charles Williams      Talk of the Town      1958

Noir believes in love at first sight—or at least that  men  are capable of love at first sight—or at least that men are capable of  lust...

Talk of the Town   is an Everyman noir-cum-whodunit via a damsel in distress with occasional patter tossed in from a screwball comedy. T...

A man ’s either got to be young and full of sass and vinegar and ready to tackle anything, or else he ’s go to have a lot of money. Charles ...

Start with Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Remove the Duke, the King, and Huck, and transplant them into an Erskine Caldwell ...