Book Review: Dave Zeltserman, Pariah (2009)

As an example of noir, Dave Zeltserman’s Pariah, the second installment in his man-out-of-prison trilogy, is a cross between Don Tracy’s Round Trip (1934) and Jason Starr’s Fake I.D. (2000). Like Round Trip, the structure of Pariah is episodic. There are several plot elements in the first three-quarters of the novel (including a revenge plot, some family psychodrama, a kidnapping, and a trial), any one of which could have been the foundation of a thriller with a conventional plot arc. But, as in Round Trip, the plot wanders, trading narrative tension for a heightened sense of realism. The major difference between Round Trip and Pariah is that the protagonist of Tracy’s novel, Eddie Magruder, is basically a sympathetic character, while the protagonist of Zeltserman’s novel, Kyle Nevin, is fairly loathsome from the moment the novel begins. Thus, like Jason Starr with Tommy Russo, the unsympathetic protagonist of Fake I.D., Zeltserman takes a chance that he can make readers care enough about the fate of an unlikeable character to keep reading. Combine this risk with the risky plot structure, and Pariah becomes a noir high-wire act. But if Zeltserman gets you across the wire, you will be rewarded at the other side. Grade: B-

5 Quick Questions with Lee Horsley

Lee Horsley, Reader in Literature and Culture at Lancaster University, is among the leading experts in noir fiction. Her books include The Noir Thriller (2001; expanded paperback edition, 2009), Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (2005), and The Blackwell Companion to Crime Fiction (co-editor, 2010).

1. What was the first noir thriller?

Jacobean revenge tragedies have a good claim to be the first noir thrillers. But, limiting myself to the 20th century, the most obvious answer is probably the best: Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest (1929), is both noir and hard-boiled, and is one of the key turning points in American crime writing.

2. What is the first noir thriller that you remember reading?

Faulkner's Sanctuary: when I was about fourteen, I read it at a single sitting, shocked, fascinated and utterly gripped by it. And then I hid it from my parents.

3. What is your favorite noir thriller?

Here are a few of the novels that come to mind. Some of them elude neat generic categorisation: that's one of the reasons they're so good. Woodrell's Death of Sweet Mister, Hjortsberg's Falling Angel, Hughes' Ride the Pink Horse, Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Charlotte Carter's Walking Bones, Charles Williams’ Hell Hath No Fury. But that list leaves out way too many all-time favourites by writers like McCoy, Goodis, Willeford, Thompson, Brewer, Whittington, Highsmith. . . . Sorry, just too difficult a task to pick one!

4. If it has a happy ending, can it be noir?

Not if it has a conventionally resolved, unequivocally happy ending. But it can still be noir even if it ends with a glimmer of light, some temporary respite, a bitter-sweet, ironised victory, or a transgressor's fleeting hope for the future . . . the end of The Talented Mr. Ripley, where Tom instructs the taxi driver to take him to "il meglio albergo"; or the final paragraphs of Megan Abbott's Queenpin, in which her protagonist reflects on the promotion she is being offered - "Say good-bye to all that? Who did I think I was fooling? . . . 'I'm your girl,' I said."

5. Excluding your own work, what is the most important work of literary criticism concerning noir?

I really admire some of the recent books about hard-boiled fiction, which of course also have important things to say about noir: Sean McCann's Gumshoe America; Erin Smith's Hard-Boiled; Christopher Breu's Hard-Boiled Masculinities. And, a decade or two earlier, the book that did more than any other to introduce me to pulp fiction: Geoffrey O'Brien, Hardboiled America: Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir.

Pulp Poem of the Week

Is it logical
to suppose that
a man would
be ignorant of
the identity of
his wife's dentist?

Martin M. Goldsmith
Double Jeopardy
1938

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Jugger (1965)

Parker is a problem-solver, and usually these problems arise in the course of planning and committing robberies. In The Jugger, however, Parker's problems are the residual result of a life of crime. Sometimes, Parker must solve problems not to earn money but just to stay out of jail. The staying-out-of-jail Parker is less interesting than the earning-money Parker, but Parker is always Parker, which is to say that The Jugger is a good read. Grade: B

Book Review: Tiffany Thayer, Five Million in Cash (1932)

First, a note about how I came to read this book: I saw a reference to Tiffany Thayer as an early hardboiled writer, and, knowing of Thayer only as the founder of the Fortean Society, I was curious to read one of his hardboiled books. Trolling around the internet, however, I couldn't find anything that I trusted as an authoritative list of his work, and I ended up in Stanford's Copyright Renewal Database. There I found, among the novels copyrighted by Thayer, Five Million in Cash, which the database indicated had been published under the pseudonym of O. B. King. This seemed promising, and it was cool to discover, upon further research, that no one (prior to this!) seems to have connected Thayer to this novel. So you heard it here first, folks.

And now about the book: Ben Flinders, an ordinary guy who works as a car painter in New York City, gets out of bed one morning and finds himself standing ankle-deep in money. He has no idea where the money came from, but he decides that he will keep it. After this, he proves to be somewhat skillful and more than somewhat lucky as he negotiates life on the run from two warring mob bosses. Published in 1932, Five Million in Cash is a clear forerunner to the Everyman noir that became a Gold Medal staple in the 1950s, but with one crucial difference: Though the novel features numerous shoot-outs and much bloodshed, its voice is so breezy that it is impossible to imagine that Ben is ever in any real danger. Lightweight, but enjoyable. Grade: B

Some Things Were Just Meant to Be

I was recently participating in a friendly Trivial Pursuit Team game, and my team got the category of "Noir Novels." Of course, I was immediately accused of somehow having cheated, though it was difficult for my accusers to say exactly how I could have engineered the universe to get this category for my team. The answers were Dashiell Hammett, Thomas Harris, and James M. Cain. You may now all write your own questions.

Pulp Poem of the Week

He remembered one time
in Cincinnati. It was Hallowe'en
and the streets were crowded
with masqueraders. He was broke,
flat broke. He hadn't shaved
for two days and he looked tough.
Someone accidentally tripped him
and he bumped into a pretty girl
in a clown suit. The man with her said:
"What the hell you trying to do,
you dirty bum!" He knocked the man
down and ran. Several of the man's
friends chased him, but he got away.

W. R. Burnett
The Silver Eagle
1931

Pulp Poem of the Week

The smallness of

the truth

can rub

the mind wrong.

Daniel Woodrell

Tomato Red

1998

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Score (1964)

In The Score, Richard Stark plays to the greatest strength of the Parker series: His ability to imagine, in fascinating and believable detail, the working life of a professional thief. The narrative focuses tightly on the planning, execution, and immediate aftermath of Parker leading a gang of men into Copper Canyon, North Dakota, to rob the town—or at least as much of the town as is worth robbing. Of the first five Parker novels, The Score is the purest and most self-assured. Grade: A

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies (1984)

Noirish psychological realism + surrealistic whimsy = tedium.
Grade: D+

5 Quick Questions with Dave Zeltserman

Dave Zeltserman is probably best-known to noirboiled fans for Small Crimes (2008), Pariah (2009), and Killer (2010), his series of novels about men just out of prison. His most recent books include The Caretaker of Lorne Field and 21 Tales (both 2010).

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

Well, not counting the Freddy the Detective, I was 13 when I read I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane, and that got me hooked on crime fiction.

2. Which crime novel have you read the most times?

Other than Hammett, I usually don't read any novel more than once. I did read A Hell of a Woman many times, but that was more to study how Jim Thompson did what he did with that book, although it is one of my favorites.

3. Black Mask or Manhunt?

Black Mask. I'm a huge Hammett fan.

4. John D. MacDonald or Ross Macdonald?

Ross Macdonald. I read all the Lew Archer's when I was high school, and early on wrote really bad Lew Archer-type stories until I found my voice. The first incarnation of what eventually became Fast Lane was written as a Lew Archer-like novel.

5. What’s the best novel by Dave Zeltserman?

My best published crime novel is Killer. My best published novel is The Caretaker of Lorne Field. My best novel (although still unsold) is something called Monster.

Pulp Poem of the Week

Nobody has to say
nothing about a drunk.
A drunk is a drunk.
You just don't spell it
any other way.

Ed McBain
Big Man
1959

Pulp Poem of the Week

If you put
One million monkeys
In a room with
One million typewriters
Sooner than you think
The monkeys will use
Those typewriters to
Kill each other.

David Rachels
Verse Noir
2010

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Mourner (1963)

After the series-opening trilogy featuring Parker vs. The Mob—The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit—the fourth Parker novel is a letdown. Parker has substantially less at stake in The Mourner (other than his life, of course, which is always at stake), and there is nothing particularly inventive in the narrative given the novels that came before. Competent? Of course. Enjoyable? Well, sure. But that's as far as I'll go. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

All who
knew him
for an hour
regretted it

a lifetime.

Jim Tully

Shanty Irish
1928

Review: Richard Stark, The Outfit (1963)

The Parker novels are at their best when they are at their most restrained. While Parker and his cohorts are planning and executing their heists, the narratives are fascinating, but when the guns fire and the fists fly, things get much less interesting. So it goes with The Outfit: The action of the opening chapter tries too hard, and the shoot-'em-up climax is anti-climactic, but everything in between is just about perfect. Grade: B+

Book Review: John Riordan, On the Make (1929)

Fourteen stories, mainly about college boys and working girls. The prose is faux Hemingway; the plots are purposefully stagnant; and the characters are interchangeable. The overall effect is numbing. John Riordan's On the Make reminded me of Robert C. Du Soe's 1938 novel The Devil Thumbs a Ride, about which I wrote, "Much liquor is consumed, many sexual advances are made, and many lives are endangered, but never is there so much as a peek into anyone's soul." On the Make is superior, however, if only because it is a collection of stories: Just as readers may be tiring of one set of empty characters, the next set comes along. As well, Riordan strives for a sociological significance that Du Soe does not: While The Devil Thumbs a Ride feels unconnected to the real world, On the Make wants readers to wring their hands over its scandalous though understated portrayal of Jazz Age youth. More interesting than good. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

You look like
you've just seen
your great-grandmother
driving a taxi.

Don Tracy
Criss-Cross
1934

Book Review: Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

For a variety of reasons, I find it difficult to have an authentic response to The Talented Mr. Ripley. First off, of course, is the book's reputation. It has been anointed many times over as one of the Great Classics of Noir, so you read it expecting a Great Classic. An offshoot of this reputation is the book's presence in popular culture, which makes it almost impossible to read the book without already knowing at least a bit about Tom Ripley and his story. And for me, the crowning complication is Tom's portrayal as self-loathing closeted homosexual. I know how Tom's character reads to me in 2010, but what I would really like to know is how I would have responded to Tom if I had read this book in 1955. But here is what I do know: The first third of the novel is unnecessarily slow; in giving such a leisurely introduction to Tom, Highsmith is denying and not trusting her genre. Furthermore, it makes no sense to dwell on Tom's character because Tom has no character. When we meet Tom, he is an empty shell defined by a few desires and neuroses. Things get interesting only when he begins using this emptiness to his advantage, as good sociopaths do. Then, of course, the book gets much better, and this is when we actually begin learning about Tom. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

If there was a million dollars
lying in the bottom
of a shallow dishpan of water,
I would sure as blazes
slip and fall on my face
and drown trying to get it.

Gil Brewer
Sugar
1959

Now Available at Amazon.com!

Two books now available from Amazon.com that that everyone should buy: Gil Brewer's The Red Scarf, which many consider to be his best novel, and some other guy's Verse Noir. Click on their titles to go to their Amazon pages.

Pulp Poem of the Week

This guy was so ugly
he could have got himself
a free scholarship into
a college for gargoyles.

Peter Cheyney
Poison Ivy
1937

Book Review: Richard Stark, The Man with the Getaway Face (1963)

In the first Parker novel, The Hunter, Parker thumbs his violent nose at organized crime, thereby necessitating the getaway face. By the end of The Man with the Getaway Face, however, Parker knows that his new face will not be enough; sooner or later, he will have to deal with "The Outfit." Therefore, the second Parker novel seems rather like killing time until this showdown, but it's a pleasant way to kill some time. The Parker novels are the noir equivalent of cotton candy—and I mean that in the best possible way. Grade: B

Review: Richard Stark, The Hunter (1962)

The defining moment of the first Parker novel comes in a throwaway scene: Parker, searching for a location from which to surveil his prey, forces his way into a beauty shop, knocking out its proprietress with a punch to the chin. Parker gags her and ties her wrists and ankles together, cutting the cord with pair of scissors that he finds in a desk drawer. At first, he doesn't think anything of the inhaler that he finds along with the scissors, but then he notices that the woman is dead. Parker's reaction? There's no good reason why a gag should kill someone, so he's angry at the abstract stupidity of the woman's death. For just a moment. Then he goes about his business. Grade: B+

Book Review: Martin M. Goldsmith, Double Jeopardy (1938)

You can hear the gears grinding in Double Jeopardy’s breathtakingly awkward opening sentence:

I suppose it was that five-point-nine that was to blame—or the gunner who fired it; or maybe it was my own fault for lagging behind the rest of my battalion as we advanced deployed through that ploughed-up cemetery; but, somehow, I find myself laying it all before Anita’s door.

Martin M. Goldsmith’s second novel is unapologetically plot-driven, but Double Jeopardy offers surprisingly little drama. As narrator Peter Thatcher describes how Anita, his femme fatale, played him for a fool and framed him into prison, readers will never have a doubt what is going on, even while Peter is too thick to see it.

Sometimes when noir fiction is dramatically weak, our empathy for the protagonist compensates with cathartic pleasure as we bear witness to inevitable doom. Not so here, as Peter Thatcher’s narrative becomes increasingly overwrought:

Unfortunately, there is no way I can find to adequately describe my suffering. But then I am reasonably certain that even the great Russian masters of tragedy—Tolstoi, Maxim Gorki, Dostoievski—would be quick to perceive the emptiness of their words in the telling of my story and would probably throw down their pens in despair.

Nobody knows the trouble Peter has seen, which he keeps reminding us in his ongoing attempt to wear out our goodwill. Grade: D+

Pulp Poem of the Week

Lying
requires
imagination.

Dashiell Hammett
The Dain Curse
1929

Book Review: W. R. Burnett, The Silver Eagle (1931)

The Silver Eagle is the follow-up to W. R. Burnett's groundbreaking gangster-novel debut, Little Caesar (1929). Businessman Frank Harworth is just smart enough, just persistent enough, and just lucky enough to have earned a place among the nouveau riche of late 1920s Chicago, but he isn't satisfied. Frank wants to be accepted by the old(er) money of the city, and he wants to make even more money himself. The former desire leads to romantic entanglements; the latter, to mob entanglements. Frank's character is sympathetic but not sufficiently complex to sustain much interest. Grade: C

Semi-Shameless Self-Promotion: David Rachels, Verse Noir (2010)

This allows you to sample a few of the poems in my collection, Verse Noir. It's much easier to read if you click on the full-screen icon.

Pulp Poem of the Week

The three stenographers,
with the wisdom of those
whose jobs are still solid,
guessed he'd got it
between the eyes.
Their faces were three pennies.

Benjamin Appel
Brain Guy
1934

Book Review: Jim Thompson, Savage Night (1953)

From one perspective, Savage Night is fairly pedestrian noir. A mob assassin, Charlie Bigger, insinuates himself into a small town as part of his plan for killing a witness in an upcoming trial. This plan, of course, proves to be unnecessarily complicated, as the conventions of noir sometimes require. So far, nothing memorable. But Jim Thompson adds to the mix a startling grotesquerie that turns Savage Night into something altogether new in the noir vein. I will say nothing more about this, as Savage Night should not be experienced by summary, but I will note that it is easy to imagine Flannery O'Connor learning a few of her tricks from Jim Thompson. Grade: B-

Pulp Poem of the Week

Gorilla Haley's skull was fractured.

He became insane. He later became

a member of the Chicago police.

Jim Tully

Circus Parade

1927

Book Review: Ed McBain, Big Man (1959)

A direct descendant of W. R. Burnett's Little Caesar (1929), Ed McBain's Big Man tells the story of Frankie Taglio, a young man in New York who falls in with the wrong crowd (or right crowd, depending on your point of view) and soon finds himself a career mobster. Frankie's rise through the mob hierarchy is somewhat difficult to explain: There are strangely few gangsters between him and the top, and Frankie doesn't seem to have much going for him other than a bit of intelligence and the willingness to use a gun. (Then again, maybe that's all any gangster really needs.) Big Man has a fair amount of action, but its drama is driven less by the crimes that Frankie commits than by the changes in his character as he ascends the mob ladder. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

The flare of my gun
showed me nothing.
It never does,
though it's easy
to think
you've seen things.

Dashiell Hammett
Red Harvest
1929

Book Review: Jim Tully, Shanty Irish (1928)

Kent State University Press, which has reissued four books by Jim Tully, has hung its hat on Rupert Hughes’ claim that Tully was the father of hardboiled writing in America. Unfortunately, Hardboiled Tully is not much in evidence in Shanty Irish, which veers between pathos and sentimentality in its portrayal of ignorance, poverty, hard work, and drunken blowhards. Grade: D

Pulp Poem of the Week

I filled
my mouth
with fish
and thought
of Kafka.

Roger Zelazny
The Dead Man's Brother
c. 1971