Pulp Poem of the Week

I shot ahead,
watching the mirror.
There were cars behind us,
but there was no way to tell.
There are always cars behind you.

Charles Williams
Scorpion Reef

1955

Review: Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (1929)

Raymond Chandler praised Dashiell Hammett for "[giving] murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse . . . [and putting] these people down on paper as they were, and [making] them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes." But these strengths are not too much in evidence in Red Harvest, Hammett's debut novel. The Continental Op, who narrates the proceedings, is more a catalyst than a character, and the many criminals who populate his story are too busy killing to emerge as much more than killers. Perhaps the most interesting characters are Sheriff Noonan, who somehow manages to seem a precursor to both Lou Ford and Chief Wiggum, and Dinah Brand, a femme fatale whose femme-powers are provocatively difficult to account for. Bottom line: Hammett's snappy prose rescues this hard-boiled cartoon. Grade: B-

Footnote: Roger Zelazny, The Dead Man's Brother (c. 1971)

The following sentence appears on page 206 of Roger Zelazny's The Dead Man's Brother (Hard Case Crime #52):

"You know why I sent for you./?" he said/asked.

Any theories as to what on earth is going on here?

Book Review: Roger Zelazny, The Dead Man's Brother (c. 1971)

The hero of The Dead Man's Brother, Ovid Wiley, is an art dealer and blowhard who has a rare genetic predisposition for luck in the face of death. His story might have been interesting if Roger Zelazny (who ordinarily was a science-fiction writer, after all), had focused his attention on Wiley's remarkable gift for survival. Instead, this detail is an afterthought in the novel's serpentine, borderline-nonsensical plot involving the CIA, the Vatican, and Brazilian revolutionaries. The fact that I forced myself to finish reading this dreck indicates that I, too, have a genetic gift, though mine seems to have something to do with masochism. Grade: F

Pulp Poem of the Week

My wife was squawking
the other day about kidnapers,
and I told her we could
set the three of our kids
out on the front porch
with a ten-dollar bill
in each one's hand and
they wouldn't be touched.
That's the kind of kids we got.

Don Tracy
Round Trip
1934

Author Photograph: Wade Miller

I'm guessing that's Bob Wade on the left and Bill Miller on the right. From the back cover of Guilty Bystander (Signet 1482; January 1958).

Book Review: Lawrence Block, Killing Castro (1961)

This book is a strange hybrid. In the main, it is the story of five men hired to assassinate Fidel Castro for a pot of $100,000. It does not matter who kills Castro or how; if Castro is killed, whichever of the assassins make it back to Miami will split the money. Their story is intercut with a narrative of Fidel Castro's rise to power, though this primer of Cuban history is more or less irrelevant to the main plot of the book--Castro's story contributes to the word count more than anything else. The book's biggest failing, however, comes in its last few pages. Until the end, the story of the five assassins is told with competence. At the end, however, Lawrence Block makes a choice in narrative perspective that seems designed to dampen the drama of the novel's climax as much as possible. Originally published as Fidel Castro Assassinated by Lee Duncan. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

Way past nightfall I flicked the TV on

and sat in the squeaky rocker.

Some show played,

kids who drive Porsches to high school

and eat in sit-down restaurants on their own,

but there's this emptiness inside them, apparently,

bigger than the beach.

They were folks you'd like to meet sometime

and leave in a car trunk at the airport.

Daniel Woodrell

Tomato Red

1998

Book Review: W. R. Burnett, Little Caesar (1929)

In Little Caesar, author W. R. Burnett, who had in a minor way infiltrated the Chicago underworld, strove to capture the career criminal, his milieu, and his idiom. Much of what was innovative in 1929 may seem quaint today; as a result, it can be easy to miss that Burnett was fomenting a revolution in crime fiction that would culminate 45 years later in the works of George V. Higgins and Elmore Leonard. But the highest praise for Little Caesar is to note that it is still a potent read. The story of the young gangster, Rico, moves quickly, but because Burnett values language and character over plot, readers may want to force themselves to slow down. Little Caesar's prose is so skillfully terse that it encourages speedreading. Grade: A

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Angel (1960)

When Nick Gavin's friend Fred Westfall summons Nick back to his hometown of Gulfport because Fred needs his help, Nick arrives at Fred's house just in time to find Fred murdered and to pick up the gun (when will the Nicks of the world ever learn NOT TO PICK UP THE GUN?) just before the police arrive. And that's just what happens in Angel's opening scene. Fast and lean--what else can a Gil Brewer novel be when it's only 96 pages long? Grade: B

Hard Case Crime Awards: The Best and the Worst of the First 50

Top 3
1. Charles Williams, A Touch of Death (HCC #17)
2. Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, Bust (HCC #20)
3. Lawrence Block, Grifter’s Game (HCC #1)

Bottom 3
48. Madison Smartt Bell, Straight Cut (HCC #21)
49. Max Allan Collins, Deadly Beloved (HCC #38)
50. Stephen King, The Colorado Kid (HCC #13)

The Best Cover Award
Gregory Manchess for John Lange’s Grave Descend (HCC #26)

The Worst Cover Award
Robert McGinnis for John Farris’ Baby Moll (HCC #46)

The It-May-Be-Terrible-or-It-May-Be-a-Masterpiece Award
Russell Hill, Robbie’s Wife (HCC #29)

The Once-Too-Often-to-the-Well Awards
Lawrence Block, A Diet of Treacle (HCC #39)
Donald E. Westlake, Somebody Owes Me Money (HCC #44)

The I’m-Embarrassed-How-Much-I-Liked-It Award
David J. Schow, Gun Work (HCC #49)

The Everyone-Else-Likes-It-More-Than-I-Do Award
Richard Aleas, Little Girl Lost (HCC #4)

The Charles Ardai Award for Noble Publishing Projects
Charles Ardai

Pulp Poem of the Week

There was a beauty mark

alongside her mouth,

as if to serve as a guide.

Wade Miller

Sinner Take All

1960

Pulp Poem of the Week

You could feel the excitement of it.

And that's why they came,

to get some of that excitement,

to take the ante, big or little,

and pitch it against the house,

to double it, triple it, multiply it

a thousand times if they could.

It was sticky and hot and grim

in Sacramento.

It was crowded and stifling

in Chinatown,

lonely for the oldster

in the Mission

routine and empty for the widow

in the Portola.

But the lights were on

in Reno.

James McKimmey

Winner Take All

1959

Book Review: Ryu Murakami, Audition (1997)

Aoyama is a widower whose teenage son suggests that it might be time for him to remarry. When Aoyama mentions this possibility to a friend who works in in the film industry, the friend hatches a scheme to find Aoyama an attractive young wife quickly: They will launch a phony film production and will interview aspiring actresses for the nonexistent lead role. Despite his initial reservations, Ayoama goes along with this plan, succumbing to the fantasy of "himself surrounded by ten or twelve lovely, intelligent, refined young ladies." As in a traditional American noir of the 1950s, in which an ordinary guy in dire financial straits cannot resist the temptation of easy money, Aoyama has cast his lot and will face unpleasant consequences. While these American noirs are sometimes read as commentaries on the American Dream (promised to all, attainable to some), Audition seems a commentary on the situation of young women in Japan and the willingness of a decent man such as Aoyama to treat them like fruit in a supermarket. Grade: B

Book Review: James M. Cain, Serenade (1937)

The following review contains spoilers . . . if you do not want to know the general contours of Serenade's plot, read no further . . . Opera singer John Howard Sharp is a self-loathing homosexual who wants to believe he is like any other man. At one point he protests that all men are 5% gay but that most men are fortunate enough not to meet that special someone who triggers that 5%. Unfortunately for John, he has met that special someone, and it turns out that homosexual activity has the little-known side effect of ruining a man's ability to sing. Therefore, John takes drastic measures, raping his way back into the world of heterosexuality and thereby reclaiming his singing voice. When his rape victim falls in love with him, all seems right with his world, until his gay ex-lover turns out to be an effete but vengeful predator. A regrettable novel in many ways . . . worth reading only as a period piece. Grade: D+

Pulp Poem of the Week

They dangle it

in front of you

then when you

reach for it,

they yell.

I wondered if

she would yell.

Gil Brewer

Wild

1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

A baby will bite and strike,
and a baby of this size
could be rather painful.
But the danger is
mainly to himself.
You know.
Might masturbate himself raw,
or eat his own excrement.
Things of that kind.

Jim Thompson
The Alcoholics
1953

Book Note: Mark D. West, Secrets, Sex, and Spectacle: The Rules of Scandal in Japan and the United States (2007)

I loved Mark D. West's previous book, Law in Everyday Japan: Sex, Sumo, Suicide, and Statutes, and this one did not disappoint. Secrets, Sex, and Spectacle: The Rules of Scandal in Japan and the United States is a scholarly yet accessibly entertaining analysis of what qualifies as scandal in each culture and how each culture deals with the aftermath. Neither of West's books is particularly noirish, but if you're a fan of Japanese noir, his work will enrich your understanding of Japanese culture and deepen your appreciation of Japanese fiction.

Pulp Poem of the Week

Fear wasn't a jagged split of light cleaving you;
fear wasn't a cold fist in your entrails;
fear wasn't something you could face
and demolish with your arrogance.
Fear was the fog, creeping about you,
winding its tendrils about you,
seeping into your pores and flesh and bone.
Fear was a girl whispering a word
over and over again,
a small word you refused to hear,
although the whisper was a scream in your ears,
a dreadful scream you could never forget.
You heard it over and again
and the fog was a ripe red veil
you could not tear away from your eyes.

Dorothy B. Hughes

In a Lonely Place
1947

Carny noir classic back in print!

When I recently gave my list of all-time favorite noir novels, I noted to myself that only 5 of the 10 were currently in print in the U.S. I am pleased to report that that number has just risen to 6 with the NYRB Classics reissue of William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 masterpiece of carny noir, Nightmare Alley. Buy it!

Book Review: Erskine Caldwell, The Bastard (1929)

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner warned of the writer who "labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands." In The Bastard, Erskine Caldwell writes of the glands. Viewed through the lens of noir history, Caldwell's debut novel seems a precursor to the episodic realism practiced by P. J. Wolfson and Don Tracy in their novels of the early 1930s, but Caldwell's characters are, if anything, even more unrepentantly savage. Perhaps Gene Morgan, The Bastard's title character, is meant to have our sympathy, yet he thinks nothing of raping a young runaway who is being held in the local jail. In this world of the glands, such events are treated as so unremarkable that when we finally get a glimpse of Gene's heart, we cannot help but wonder if it is a gland in disguise. Noir doom is often driven by the glands. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

It was like
heat rash.
You knew when
you had it.

Gil Brewer

Wild to Possess

1959

Book Review: Charles Ardai, Fifty-to-One (2008)

The fiftieth title from Hard Case Crime is self-indulgently amusing noir lite. Author/publisher Charles Ardai explains the impulse behind Fifty-to-One: "to write a 50th book that would commemorate the (fictitious) 50th anniversary of the founding of Hard Case Crime, set 50 years ago, and to tell the story in 50 chapters, with each chapter bearing the title of one of our 50 books, in their order of publication." What makes this a real challenge, of course, is that each chapter is connected in some to way its title, and Ardai can hardly be blamed for doing what he must with the plot to pull it off. One downside to this template is that Fifty-to-One's required 50 chapters result in 329 pages, which is about 100 pages longer than the book's backflipping gimmickry can hope to sustain. It's a good thing that Ardai got this out of this system now, rather than waiting for Hard Case Crime #100. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

I don't want to do

a million things

that I can't feel.

I want

one thing

I can feel.

Peter Rabe

Agreement to Kill

1957

Book Review: Fredric Brown, Here Comes a Candle (1950)

When I began reading Fredric Brown's Here Comes a Candle, I didn't realize exactly what I was getting myself into. The novel's hero is Joe Bailey, a small-time numbers runner who is haunted by a nursery rhyme ("Here comes a candle / To light you to bed, / And here comes a chopper / To chop off your head") and by his belief that he was responsible for his father's death. The book's table of contents looks like this:

Given this, I imagined a straightforward narrative ("The Story") combined with a pastiche of documents that would relate in tangential ways to the main narrative. As it turned out, I was more or less wrong: "The Radio" and "The Screen" are actually flashback continuations of "The Story" given in the form indicated: a radio script, a screenplay. For most of the novel, Brown has no apparent reason for making these narrative shifts, other than the fact that he can. Maybe readers will be amused by Brown's shifting modes, or maybe they will be annoyed, but they will likely not find the story enriched. The third and fourth of these sections are the most likely to amuse or to annoy: in "The Sportscast," a play-by-play man rides along to narrate our hero's first robbery, and in "The Video," scientists use virtual-reality-style technology to broadcast one of our hero's dreams. It is only in the last two of these sections, "The Stage" and "The Newspaper," that Brown seems to be doing more than just showing how clever he is. Say what you want about Here Comes a Candle, you cannot blame Fredric Brown for not trying hard enough. Grade: B+

Pulp Poem of the Week

Her whole body shivered

and her face fell apart

like a bride's pie crust.

Raymond Chandler

The Big Sleep

1939

Pulp Poem of the Week

When you're afraid of a man,
he doesn't have to be
a better fighter than you.
You beat yourself.
I've seen men in the ring
who could take the other guy
twice a week without
getting up a sweat,
but for some reason they'd be
scared of the other fellow and
they'd get beat up bad.
It seemed as though fear
made them forget everything
they'd ever known about fighting.

Don Tracy
Criss-Cross
1934

Book Review: Charles Williams, Scorpion Reef [a.k.a. Gulf Coast Girl] (1955)

As part of my ongoing project of dividing noir into as many subcategories as possible, I am proclaiming Scorpion Reef to be an example noir gonade, that special brand of noir in which a woman seizes control of a male protagonist's brain via his testicles and thereby leads him to believe things and to do things that no sane man would otherwise believe or do. Scorpion Reef is a frame narrative: The Joseph H. Hallock, an American tanker, finds a small, abandoned boat drifting in the Gulf of Mexico. On the boat, a coffee pot is still warm. Clearly, the boat has not been abandoned for long. But what has happened to its occupants? The answer lies in a log book in which our protagonist, Bill Manning, has written his story. Reading over the shoulder of the Hallock's master, we learn how Bill had his gonades seized by a tall blonde he calls "Swede" . . . and we learn how they ended up on that small boat with some bad guys . . . but enough about the plot. Bill Manning's story is somewhat interesting, and the novel's frame makes it even more so. The danger of spoilage prevents me from saying more than that. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

There's no

such thing

as a nice

detective.

Natsuo Kirino

Out

1997

(translated by Stephen Snyder)

Book Review: Don Tracy, Round Trip [a.k.a. Too Many Girls] (1934)

If you want a shining example of a noir novel (re-)marketed in a misleading way, look no further. Published in hardback as Round Trip (a much more appropriate title than Too Many Girls), Don Tracy's 1934 novel tells the up-and-down life story of Eddie Magruder, a newspaper photographer in Baltimore. The book's mode is episodic realism; its highest drama comes when Eddie stands trial for manslaughter. In a novel with a more conventional plot structure, Eddie's trial might have provided narrative arc for the whole affair. As presented, however, the trial is merely one in a string of events that define Eddie's life. The nature of the book's overall drama is indicated by this passing comment from Edith, Eddie's wife: "It would be nice if we could always be happy like this, wouldn't it, Eddie?" This line comes a bit more than one-quarter of the way through the book, and it leads readers to suspect (if they did not already) that Eddie and Edith will not always be so happy. As a whole, then, Round Trip's drama comes in waiting to see what will be their ultimate (and inevitable?) undoing. (And good luck finding all those pin-up models the paperback reprints promise you!) Grade: B

Author Photograph: Charles Williams

There are not many photographs of noir master Charles Williams on the net, so when I saw this picture on the back of Gulf Coast Girl (Dell 898), I thought I should give it a good scan.

Pulp Poem of the Week

What

doesn't kill you

doesn't kill you.

Nate Flexer

The Disassembled Man

2009

Book Review Revisited: Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup (1997)

I recently reread Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, which I reviewed here in October 2008. Here is what I said in that review:

In the Miso Soup reminded me quite a bit of Gil Brewer's classic A Killer Is Loose (1954). Both books are narrated by an Ordinary Guy whose fate becomes entangled with that of a Roaming Homicidal Maniac. Both Brewer and Ryu Murkami invite readers to partcipate in Ordinary Guy's attempts to make sense of Roaming Homicidal Maniac, though in the case of Murakami, there is just as much time spent with Roaming Homicidal Maniac trying to make sense of himself. And this leads to my major complaint about In the Miso Soup: I have no problem in theory with books that become increasingly ponderous as they progress, but in this case that pondorousness comes at the expense of nearly everything else. The climax of the novel, such as it is, consists of Roaming Homicidal Maniac blathering on about his life story for 25 pages or so. And that's not much of a climax. Grade: C+

The occasion for my second reading was teaching the novel in a class on American and Japanese noir. Though I think this novel is far from perfect (obviously, given my original review), it nevertheless did seem perfect for this course, which is, in part, an examination of the congruences and differences between American and Japanese cultures, as seen through the lens of noir. In the Miso Soup seemed ideal for this purpose because the novel's Roaming Homicidal Maniac is an American who is (literally) cutting a swath through Tokyo, and the cultural issues raised by an American serial killer in Japan are never far from the forefront of the narrative.

On the whole, my second reading of the novel deepened my appreciation of Murakami's work, as sometimes happens when I have to reread a novel and think about it for the first time as a teacher. Ironically, this is the opposite experience from that which students have traditionally reported in English classes down through the ages: "I liked reading the book, but then when we had to sit in class and analyze it, that just ruined it for me." Responses like this tend to be driven by two factors: (1) bad teachers and (2) students who prefer not to think about what they read. Regarding the second, such students tend to resent even more strongly being made to think about movies, which to them can be sacrosanct to the point that analysis seems a betrayal of the spirit and purpose of filmmaking. ("Why are we trying to find things in movies that aren't really there? Movies are just made for entertainment!") In any case, I hope that I'm managing at least not to ruin anything for my students. In the case of Murakami, Japanese culture is just alien enough to them that the act of analysis perhaps seems worthwhile. Whether I ruined Charles Williams for them, though, is another matter entirely. . . .