Pulp Poem of the Week

He lay beneath a single white sheet

which still showed creases from the shelves.

This sheet had not been slept with--

and neither had Halquist.

Gil Brewer

The Bitch

1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

Bookmakers have

remarkably little faith

in the inherent

nobility of man.

Charles Williams

Nothing in Her Way

1953

Book Review: Nate Flexer, The Disassembled Man (2009)

In the genre of noir sociopathique, drama commonly comes from two sources: the cat-and-mouse game between the law and the sociopath and/or the uneasy excitement that the reader may feel in vicariously participating in sociopathic behavior (and in wondering who the next victim will be). Neither of these, however, is much of a factor in The Disassembled Man. There is a lawman, yes, but he stays pretty much in the background, and the crimes of our sociopath, Frankie Avicious, are about as dramatic as the action of the buzzsaw. The focus of the plot, therefore, is mainly on watching Frankie deteriorate--but as the narrative becomes increasingly outrageous and surrealistic, readers may lose interest in Frankie as they become increasingly unsure how reliable his first-person narrative is. Beyond this, some readers may enjoy the novel as black comedy, especially in the aggressiveness of its metaphors, as in, "My throat got as dry and tight as a frigid virgin in bed with a bald insurance man," or, "I cried like a teenage prom-queen runner-up cutting red onions after burying her dog in the backyard." For me, though, a little of this goes a long way. Grade: C

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Bitch (1958)

Tate Morgan is a many-time loser who has long relied on his brother Sam to get him out of tight spots. In The Bitch, Tate faces his tightest spot of all after he betrays Sam's trust and helps to plot a robbery that goes horribly wrong. This novel resembles what I call Everyman noir, in which the main character is typically an ordinary, likable guy who, desperate for money, sets out to commit what seems a harmless crime (but then noir ensues). The Bitch is interesting novel of this type because Tate is an unusually unsympathetic protagonist. (As a title, The Bitch is just a gimmick to sell books--much more accurate would be to call it The Asshole.) Gil Brewer sets himself quite a challenge in trying to make readers care what happens to Tate Morgan, and he is, I think, at least partially successful. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

It sure is awful

to die in Arkansas

with this circus.

Jim Tully

Circus Parade

1927

Book Review: Charles Williams, Nothing in Her Way (1953)

Charles Williams' Nothing in Her Way is a novel of the con game--one con involving mining sand for glass, the other involving horse racing--in which Cathy Dunbar and Mike Belen seek belated financial revenge on the men who ruined their fathers' business more than two decades before. A nice read with the obligatory twists and turns. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

His books don't sound

like he had any fun

writing them.

But you see ads,

you can buy every book

Zane Grey wrote and

fill up a whole shelf.

For people who

don't know any better.

Elmore Leonard

Up in Honey's Room

2007

Book Review: Jim Tully, Circus Parade (1927)

A bleak portrait of life with a traveling circus, Jim Tully's Circus Parade focuses on anecdotes and character sketches rather than sustained narrative. As a result, the proceedings may sometimes be tedious, especially for readers familiar with the subject matter. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

It had been good.

He'd thought he loved her,

and she'd certainly acted

the part of loving him.

It was like getting cut

across the throat

when he found she was laying

not one guy, not even two--

but every beer-faced stud

in the county.

And then coming back to him

with her fine virginal face,

her just-for-you-honey body,

and her church-going, fine, clean

mind that manufactured

all the crazy promises

that had him standing

on his ear night and day.

And he never knew until

that time in a bar,

when a stranger began

bragging to him

about the quick piece

he'd knocked off

that afternoon

in a park

on the edge of town.

Gil Brewer

Little Tramp

1957

Book Review: Donald Goines, Daddy Cool (1974)

Daddy Cool features the most jarring contrast between style and subject matter of any book that I can remember reading. While the plot is fairly brutal--featuring, among other things, the gang rape of a child and an assassin who works only with knives--the novel is written in the most wooden grammar-book prose imaginable. Even the profanity-laced dialogue is written as though Donald Goines imagined that some schoolmarm somewhere would be assigning him a grade. I found the narrative sometimes to be powerful when I was able to tune out the prose style, but tuning out the prose style was difficult. Grade: C

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Little Tramp (1957)

After the train wreck of 1957's The Angry Dream (aka The Girl from Hateville), Gil Brewer finished the year with two much stronger efforts: The Brat and Little Tramp. Little Tramp is a Noir Everyman story, in which our ordinary guy, Gary Dunn, is blackmailed by the title character into kidnapping her so that she can extort money from her father, who also happens to be Gary's former boss. For me, what often elevates truly great noir is the ending: Simply put, how memorable is it? Gil Brewer loads up a powder keg and lights the fuse. Will he snuff the fuse, or will he let it blow? And if he lets it blow, will the explosion somehow surprise me--but without making me roll my eyes? This time out, Brewer does a fine job of packing the explosives, but if you ask me next week what happened to the keg, I probably won't be able to remember. Grade: B

Book Review: Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey's Room (2007)

In need of something to keep me awake as I drove from Ohio to Virginia, I found this on CD at a Books-a-Million for $10. The most I can say for it is that it did manage to keep me awake . . . barely. There are a couple of memorable characters (the title character and Carl Webster from The Hot Kid), but no drama to speak of. Skip this one. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

I don't mind if you

forgot my name.

It's about as ordinary

as a name can be.

Even I feel like

forgetting it sometimes.

It's not that easy, though,

to forget your own name.

Haruki Murakami

After Dark

2004

(translated by Jay Rubin)

Book Review: Haruki Murakami, After Dark (2004)

80% night people of Tokyo + 20% unnecessary pretentiousness. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

Sometimes

words

are just

a nuisance.

John Farris

Baby Moll

1958

Book Review: Max Allan Collins, The First Quarry (2008)

Though the title of 2006's The Last Quarry seemed to promise there would be no more, Max Allan Collins's crass, banal hitman has returned to narrate his genesis . . . and it's pretty good. In fact, if you read The First Quarry immediately after Deadly Beloved, MAC's previous effort for Hard Case Crime, it will seem like Raymond Chandler. Grade: B

Book Review: Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, The Max (2008)

Unless you adored Slide, the second entry in the Max Fisher saga, there is not much reason to read the third. In The Max, the same noir comique schtick is in place, right down to the heavy-handed in-jokes, which are stretched even thinner this time around. The best plan: Read Bust, the first and best entry in the series, and then stop. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

Sometimes

it is good

for a man

to be drunk.

Dorothy B. Hughes

Ride the Pink Horse

1946

Book Review: John Farris, Baby Moll (1958)

Pete Mallory has cut his ties with the mob. He has a woman he loves, and they are engaged to be married. Pete is ready to live a normal life . . . that is, until his old boss blackmails him into doing one last job, etc., etc., etc. Competent but forgettable. As with quite a few Hard Case Crime reprints, it is difficult to figure why this one was deemed worthy of rescue from oblivion. Grade: C

Book Reivew: Dorothy B. Hughes, Ride the Pink Horse (1946)

Sailor, a Chicago hood, finds the Sen, an ex-senator and his ex-employer, enjoying fiesta in a southwestern town. The Sen owes Sailor $1000 for a job, and Sailor is intent on collecting. Rich in atmosphere, glacial in pacing. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

She started a low

continuous moaning,

as though she had

just been branded.

James McKimmey

The Long Ride

1961

Book Review: Jim Thompson, Recoil (1953)

Doc Luther, a sleazy political horse-trader, pulls every available string to get Pat Cosgrove paroled into his custody. The strange thing is that Doc and Pat do not know one another--so why does Doc want Pat out of prison? Why does he get him a job, buy him clothes and a car, and throw women in his path? In a genre that often strains credulity, I found the answers to these and other questions to be remarkably inane and unsatisfying. And more remarkably, perhaps, Jim Thompson managed to bore me fairly steadily. A disappointment to be sure. Grade: D

Book Review: James McKimmey, The Long Ride (1961)

The Long Ride has its share of dark, violent moments and sad, tragic characters, but its overall tone nevertheless manages to be breezy and often even humorous. As with any great book, the less you know about the plot going in, the better, so, in only the most general way, here is what you get: the early chapters contain a bank robbery, and the rest of the novel follows a group of strangers as they carpool from the midwest to San Francisco. And of course the two are connected. A light noir classic. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

Did you ever stop

to figure that

there's all kinds

of ways of dying,

but only one way

of being dead?

Jim Thompson

The Killer Inside Me

1952

Book Review: Lionel White, Flight into Terror (1955)

I liked the first 30 pages of Flight into Terror well enough; I liked the last couple of pages, too. Unfortunately, I came close to hating the hundred or so pages in between. This bulk of the novel fell prey to one of my major noir peeves: plots that are driven by the completely irrational behavior of their protagonists. In this case, Dal Brandon is an ordinary guy who accidentally ends up with $100,000 that does not belong to him, and the people who want their money back kill Dal's wife. For no sane reason, Dal then decides to take the money and run. He does not care about the money, he says; rather, he is intent on finding his wife's killers and avenging her death. Lionel White might have made this believable if he had portrayed Dal as a devoted, loving husband, but the opposite is true. Not only does Dal not love his (late) wife, but at the start of the novel he is planning to abandon her, having already purchased a one-way plane ticket to Chicago. White's portrayal of Brandon in this way wrecks the plot of this book. Grade: D+

Book Review: Jim Thompson, Cropper's Cabin (1952)

After his breakthrough fourth novel, The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson's fifth, Cropper's Cabin, feels like a variation on the proverbial sophomore slump. The novel's narrator, nineteen-year-old Tommy Carver, is poised to rise above his origins as a sharecropper's son: He's getting an education, and he's the secret beau of Donna Ontime, daughter of his father's wealthy landlord. Then, of course, things turn noirish, but the narrative never gains much momentum. On the whole, Cropper's Cabin is not a bad book, but there's certainly no harm in skipping it. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

I had to see you,

honey,

or I'd go crazy.

Hurry.

Gil Brewer

The Brat

1957

Book Review: Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me (1952)

In The Killer Inside Me, which is perhaps the most important early entry in the genre of noir sociopathique, Jim Thompson figures out how to be Jim Thompson. The novel's narrator, simpleton sociopath sheriff Lou Ford, may be Thompson's most memorable and creepy creation. While Thompson's fourth novel may not be his best--it loses its way for a bit in the final act--The Killer Inside Me is still the logical place to begin reading one of the noir masters. Grade: A-

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Brat (1957)

If ever Gil Brewer were guilty of understatement, it was when he titled his twelfth novel. Calling Evis Helling a brat is something like calling Michelangelo a doodler. Evis is one of Brewer's most memorable femmes fatale. Lee Sullivan, The Brat's narrator, has no idea what he is getting himself into when marries Evis and takes her away from her home in the Florida swamp. His first clue comes when Evis announces that she has a plan for them to rob a bank together. . . . Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

It was an ancient house,

built in the late nineties

and constantly repaired

and restored since then.

There was nothing

but the look of money

wastefully squandered here--

a smell of money

even in the flower beds

where roses smelled like

sweaty fifty-cent pieces

instead of roses, and

the jasmine had the scent of

a disinfectant used in banks.

Harry Whittington

Hell Can Wait

1960

Book Review: Elmore Leonard, Mr. Majestyk (1974)

I picked this one up because it appeared on James Lee Burke's pleasantly idiosyncratic list of the all-time best mysteries, which was published recently in Parade magazine. (Alternate interpretation of idiosyncratic list: James Lee Burke has not read very many mysteries.) Says Burke: "It’s one of the best portrayals of professional criminals I have ever read and a beautiful accomplishment in terms of dialogue and style." Mr. Majestyk is a noirish novel of the Average Guy school: melon farmer Vincent Majestyk cares about nothing other than saving his crop, but then he runs afoul of a local mobster and discovers that harvest time becomes more complicated when somebody wants to kill you. Tight, fast-paced, recommended. Grade: B+

Book Review: Harry Whittington, Hell Can Wait (1960)

At first, Harry Whittington's Hell Can Wait reminded me of The Girl from Hateville, my most recent foray into Gil Brewer. Both novels involve a man on a mission in a small town where he is not welcome. In Brewer, the man wanted to find out the truth about the death of his father, the town banker who robbed the townsfolk blind. In Whittington, the man, Greg Morris, wants revenge on the drunk driver who killed his wife. Unfortunately for Morris, the drunk driver is the richest and most powerful man in the town (which is why he was able to beat the rap in the first place). The most important difference between the two novels is that while the Brewer was executed terribly, the Whittington is very good. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

You can label almost anybody

by finding out what time

they go to work in the morning.

Robert Bloch

The Scarf

1947

Book Review: Robert Bloch, The Scarf (1947)

While The Scarf is not the tour de force I had hoped for, it is nevertheless the best of the four Robert Bloch novels that I have read. The titular scarf belongs to narrator Dan Morley, an aspiring writer whose psychological problems, especially with women, are the result of his unhealthy boyhood relationship with Miss Frazer, his unmarried schoolteacher. The scarf is Morley's keepsake from his memorable last encounter with Miss Frazer, after which he ran away from home. The story follows Dan and his burgeoning writing career from Chicago to New York to Hollywood. My taste runs to the noir side of noir, and The Scarf was plenty dark enough for me, but I found Bloch's execution lacking, especially in the book's regrettably contrived dénouement. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

New York and Hollywood

is full of her, she is

everywhere you turn,

and when you have reached

the ripe age of thirty-six,

you have learned it is

useless to try to warn

her of the pitfalls.

Because nothing can daunt her--

nothing except time,

years of batting her pretty head

against too many disappointments,

and her firm white fanny

against too many mattresses.

Steve Fisher

No House Limit

1958

Book Review: Steve Fisher, No House Limit (1958)

There was one thing about No House Limit that bugged me and bugged me and bugged me such that it really interfered with my ability to enjoy the novel: the portrayal of the gambler Bello and his craps expertise. On the one hand, No House Limit presents itself as an insider's look at Vegas and crapshooting: most of the chapters begin with short tutorials about Vegas and/or craps, and in an afterward he wrote for this Hard Case Crime reprint, one of Steve Fisher's sons mentions the research that his father did for this book. But the portrayal of Bello playing craps is all wrong. Bello, we are told, is a legendary craps player with a betting system so mathematically complicated that onlookers are helpless to understand what he is doing. But this is nonsense. Saying that someone is a great craps player is like saying that someone is a great slot-machine player. In both games, the house always wins over the long haul. That's the point of casino games! So Bello has developed a complicated system of placing bets . . . that all favor the house! Fisher should have done more with the loaded dice angle (which does figure to some degree in Bello's success), and he should have left the idiocy alone. Grade: C

Book Review: James M. Cain, Double Indemnity (1936)

As lean as noir comes with pacing so relentless Cain seems to be daring you to notice that his razor-thin characters disappear when viewed from the side--and when you do notice, you don't care. Grade: A

Book Review: Jim Thompson, Nothing More Than Murder (1949)

With his third novel, Jim Thompson arrives in the world of noir, though he has not yet discovered his distinctively creepy voice. I wasn't sure what to make of Nothing More Than Murder's clumsy plotting as its chronology lurched artlessly around while its backstory came and went. If this were a third-person narrative, I would diagnose an evolving writer feeling his way through a new style of writing, but the narrative is written in the first person, so perhaps this clumsiness is an intentional reflection on its narrator. And perhaps, because this is Jim Thompson, I give him the benefit of the doubt. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

I had seen

so many houses burned down,

so many cars wrecked,

so man corpses

with blue holes in their temples,

so many awful things

that people had pulled

to crook the wheel,

that that stuff didn't seem real

to me any more.

If you don't understand that,

go to Monte Carlo

or some other place

where there's a big casino,

sit at a table,

and watch the face of the man

that spins the little ivory ball.

After you've watched it a while,

ask yourself how much

he would care

if you went out and

plugged yourself in the head.

His eyes might drop

when he heard the shot,

but it wouldn't be from worry

whether you lived or died.

It would be to make sure

you didn't leave

a bet on the table,

that he would have to cash

for your estate.

James M. Cain

Double Indemnity

1936

Book Review: W. R. Burnett, High Sierra (1940)

Part crime novel, part character study of a gangster in winter. The wooden dialogue is predictably quaint. The rambling plot feels surprisingly realistic. The aging gangster is unexpectedly affecting. All this, and a beautiful young blonde with a clubfoot. Grade: A-