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. . . .

Pulp Poem of the Week

I went over to the sink

and washed up and finally

faced myself in the mirror

on the towel rack.

I looked as if I'd been

shot through a cannon,

was approaching the net,

and knew I would miss it.

Gil Brewer

The Bitch

1958

Book Review: Jim Thompson, The Alcoholics (1953)

A Noirboiled Quiz

Question: How would The Alcoholics be different if it had been written
by any noir writer of the 1950s other than Jim Thompson?

Answer: It would not be in print!

Grade: C-

The Harlequin Bowdlerizations Redux

Good to see that the word has spread to France to avoid these travesties of publishing. . . . If you know some French, you may be interested to visit Noir Bazar.

Book Review: Don Tracy, Criss-Cross (1934)

Don Tracy's Criss-Cross was published the same year as James M. Cain's debut novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice. If Criss-Cross had been written two decades later, it would have fit easily into the Gold Medal line. Narrator Johnny Thompson, an ex-boxer who works as a guard for the Laird Armored Car Agency, wants nothing more than the love of femme fatale Anna Krebak, who dates Johnny when he has money, ignores Johnny when he is broke, and makes no effort to hide her desires and motivations: money, money, money. Johnny is no fool—he sees Anna for what she is—but he is still a fool—he cannot leave Anna well enough alone. Anna soon marries an acquaintance of Johnny's, a local hood who has money enough to keep her satisfied, and when the hood becomes ambitious for a big score, his thoughts turn, naturally, to Johnny and the Laird Armored Car Agency. The first half of Criss-Cross is a bit leisurely in pacing, but its second half is strong. Especially worth reading for those interested in the early development of noir. Grade: B+

James Lee Burke's Best Mysteries of All Time

James Lee Burke's list of his choices for the best mysteries of all time has strangely disappeared from the Parade magazine website, so, as a public service, I am reproducing his list and annotations here. This list suggests, among other things, that (a) Burke may not have read very many mysteries and (b) he may be friends with Ron Hansen and Michael Connelly:

Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy is a masterful metaphysical story dealing with the stigmata. Ultimately, it's about a woman who represents courage and altruism in the midst of mediocrity.

James M. Cain once said his stories were about the ultimate human tragedy—people getting what they want. Double Indemnity, a 1930s murder mystery involving an insurance fraud scheme, exemplifies his best work.

Mr. Majestyk, by Elmore Leonard, features a farmer who runs afoul of the Mob. It's one of the best portrayals of professional criminals I have ever read and a beautiful accomplishment in terms of dialogue and style.

Selected Tales and Sketches is a collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories, perhaps the best allegories ever written about the nature of good and evil.

The city of Los Angeles is a protagonist in The Black Echo, Michael Connelly's superb tale about Vietnam vets pulling off the score of scores. Connelly writes with the knowledge and experience of a hard-nosed police reporter, but he's also an artist.

Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men deals with evil that seems to have no origin. The writing is spartan, the imagery and dialogue as clean as razor cuts in leather. The story seems derived from the collective unconscious; it is frightening and unforgettable.

[Originally published in Parade on April 19, 2009.]

Book Review: Gil Brewer, Wild to Possess (1959)

Gil Brewer's Wild to Possess is Everyman noir with an unapologetically implausible plot. Lew Brookbank, a sign painter who has hit the bottle hard since finding his wife and her lover murdered, happens to overhear a man and a woman plotting a kidnapping. (Imagine the kidnapping plot in Fargo, and you're not too far off.) Feeling that he has nothing left to lose, Lew decides to inject himself into the kidnapping in hopes of getting away with the $250,000 ransom. From here, most of Lew's decisions are made with the standard noir justification of there-was-nothing-else-I-could-do. Of course, there are many other things that Lew could have done, as he realizes during his occasional moments of sobriety, but most of the time he is drunk and doesn't give a damn. On the whole, Wild to Possess is fast and entertaining with a number of nice twists and turns, and though Brewer does not find an artistically satisfying way to conclude things, the ending is not bad enough to qualify as a full-blown ruination. Available in a two-fer reprint from Stark House Press. Grade: B

Pulp Poem of the Week

That's what they really

pay us for—the responsibility,

not for flying the plane.

If they only paid us—say—

six or seven thousand a year,

the passengers would lose

confidence in flying, I think.

It's like psychoanalysts.

They charge fifty bucks an hour

so you'll trust them.

Charles Willeford

The Shark-Infested Custard

c. 1975

Pulp Poem of the Week

Ours is but a little stay here,

full of sound and fury, and,

if you will pardon the blasphemy,

signifying not a hell of a lot.

Jim Tully

Circus Parade

1927

Book Note: Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (2005)

Fans of psycho noir will find much of interest in Martha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door. Research indicates that 1 in 25 Americans is a sociopath, which is to say that not every sociopath resembles Lou Ford or Tom Ripley, and psychologist Martha Stout gives a richer portrayal of the sociopathic mind than one can get from noir alone. Noir fans, however, will probably want to skim past Stout's optimistic cheerleading for the future of the human race.

Pulp Poem of the Week

She rolled over

on the bed and

looked at him.

Her mouth broke

into a smile, and

she looked a luscious

armful lying there.

An armful of hell.

Gil Brewer

Little Tramp

1957

Book Review: Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1947)

If Mickey Spillane had named one of his heroes "Dix Steele," it would leave me shaking my head and rolling my eyes, but when Dorothy B. Hughes gives the name to a serial rapist and killer, I nod and smile. Hughes can get away with this name because everything else in In a Lonely Place is so restrained. Dix Steele is so scary because he seems so ordinary--which is, of course, why sociopaths are so dangerous: Inwardly they have no conscience, while outwardly they seem the same as you or I. Many of today's writers of psycho noir, who are free to indulge their every excessive impulsive (and often do), would do well to learn a few things from this understated masterpiece. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

It amazed him

she could talk

like that

in the kind of

underwear she wore.

Elmore Leonard

Freaky Deaky

1988

Book Review: Charles Willeford, The Shark-Infested Custard (c. 1975)

Charles Willeford felt that The Shark-Infested Custard was his masterpiece. The novel centers around four men who become friends because they all live in a Miami apartment building that caters to singles. Beyond this, the main things they have in common are a creepy crassness and an interest in the finer points of getting laid. Willeford described The Shark-Infested Custard as "a fairly nasty picture of so-called ordinary young men who are making it down here." Thus, the challenge facing Willeford as a writer was to give his readers sufficient reason to want to spend 263 pages' worth of time with such an unpleasant group of protagonists. For a noirish novel, the obvious strategy would have been to hook readers with a strong narrative drive, but Willeford's episodic storytelling pointedly refuses to do this. (Perhaps it was this vaguely arty storytelling decision, in combination with the vaguely arty decision to use multiple first-person narrators, that deluded Willeford into his high opinion of this book.) Failing this, the author might try to give the book some sort of substance as sociological document, exploring the nature of a society that produces "ordinary young men" like these. But the novel does not seem especially interested in this, either. In the end, the problem with The Shark-Infested Custard is that it does not seem interested in much of anything other than itself. Grade: C

Pulp Poem of the Week

He had never liked Summer,

even as a kid,

and now that he

was an adult and a cop,

the only memorable characteristic

Summer seemed to have

was that it made

dead bodies stink quicker.

Ed McBain

Cop Hater

1956

Book Review: Natsuo Kirino, Out (1997)

Take your favorite vintage noir PBO, transfer its setting to present-day Tokyo, turn your loner anti-hero into a quartet of anti-heroines, and the result is Out. This brilliant combination of Everyman noir and psycho noir is by far the best Japanese neo-noir that I have read. Highly, highly recommended. Grade: A

Pulp Poem of the Week

"I'm wearing

a skirt,"

she said.

Gil Brewer

The Vengeful Virgin

1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

"I'll have you know

we serve the best coffee

in the street," she said.

"If you don't like it

you can go elsewhere."

"Thanks, honey," Leon said,

and smiled his slow, lazy smile.

Maybe I'll just

rinse my hands in it."

James Hadley Chase

I'll Bury My Dead

1954

Book Review: Elmore Leonard, Freaky Deaky (1988)

Freaky Deaky begins with three major characters who appear at first in pairs of alternating chapters: Chris Mankowski, a Detroit cop who is leaving the bomb squad for a different assignment; and Robin Abbott and Skip Gibbs, aging hippie radicals scheming to use their anarchic skills in more financially rewarding ways. Elmore Leonard manages these characters with remarkable skill, insinuating them into each other's lives while folding in other characters along the way. While Chris is likable throughout, in the early stages of the novel Robin and Skip are more annoying than anything else, but Freaky Deaky's great humor eventually overwhelms any shortcomings in the novel's cast of characters. No great insights into the criminal mind here--just a great deal of entertainment. Grade: A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

You plan the hell

out of something like this,

but you never can be sure

how it'll come out.

It's the only thing

that worries me.

W. L. Heath

Violent Saturday

1955

Book Review: Peter Rabe, Agreement to Kill (1957)

As I was reading Agreement to Kill, my first Peter Rabe novel, Rabe's prose kept reminding me of Joseph Conrad (né Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), the Polish-born British novelist who was not fluent in English until adulthood. Though stylistically very different, Rabe and Conrad both write with a self-confident awkwardness: While their styles are effective, neither writer seems entirely comfortable with the English language. Once I had finished Agreement to Kill, I discovered (to my surprise, I admit!) that this analogy is exactly right: Like Conrad, Peter Rabe (né Peter Rabinowitsch) was not a native English speaker, having fled Nazi Germany to the United States as a teenager in 1938. Agreement to Kill is an oddly memorable book whose strangeness is actually complemented by the sometime awkwardness of Rabe's writing. The plot reminded me a bit of Gil Brewer's A Killer Is Loose, in which an ordinary man is trying to escape the forced companionship of a psychopathic killer. In Agreement to Kill, though, our ordinary guy (Jake Spinner) is befriending a professional killer (Loma) rather than fleeing him. Jake is tired of being an ordinary guy--which for him has come to mean being a sucker and a loser--and he wants Loma to introduce him to the other side of the law. Available in a reprint two-fer from Stark House Press. Grade: B+

Book Review: Ed McBain, Cop Hater (1956)

The American police procedural begins more or less here, with Ed McBain's first 87th Precinct novel in 1956. The prose is slapdash, but the plotting is impressive in its willful directionlessness. Someone murders a detective from the 87th Precinct, and the other detectives from the precinct, naturally, want to catch the killer, but the novel resists falling into a clichéd gathering of clues that lead inexorably to his identity. Rather, the detectives spend most of the novel frustrated as they follow a series of weak leads that go nowhere. In this way, McBain strives for a new sort of realism in crime fiction while at the same time still trying to provide readers with the page-turning momentum that they expect. Cop Hater does not entirely succeed; nevertheless, it is a valiant attempt at something new. Grade: B-

Pulp Poem of the Week

He was in bed

when she came in;

the lights were off

except for the small table lamp

which threw a shaded glow

at one side of the double bed.

Half consciously, she noticed

that George hadn't opened

the window for the night.

Once more she smiled,

this time inwardly.

George was about as subtle

as a fractured pelvis.

Lionel White

Clean Break

1955

Jason Starr's Six Crime Novels That Have Most Influenced Him

1. George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972)

2. Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me (1952)

3. Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)

4. Charles Willeford, The Shark-Infested Custard (1993)

5. Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty (1990)

6. Ken Bruen, The Guards (2001)

To read Jason Starr's comments on the six crime novels that have most influenced him, visit the Vertigo Comics blog.

Book Review: Gil Brewer, The Vengeful Virgin (1958)

The Vengeful Virgin is a good example of a type of artistically flawed noir that exists somewhere between Everyman noir and psycho noir. At the outset, such novels seem to be about ordinary folks--in this case, Shirley Angela, an eighteen-year-old giving twenty-four-hour hospice care to her rich stepfather, and Jack Ruxton, a TV and intercom salesman and installation man. But Shirley and Jack seem like Everyman and Everywoman for only a few pages until amour fou erupts and a murder plot is born, by which time they have both lost their knack for sane behavior. This change happens so quickly--particularly in the case of Jack's readiness to join with a stranger in a murder plot--that it seems doubtful whether Shirley and Jack were sane to begin with. Put another way, The Vengeful Virgin is like Everyman noir on speed: The characters transgress from their straight-and-narrow lives, as readers know that they will, but they do it with more dispatch than Gil Brewer (or any other writer) can reasonably hope to get away with. Grade: B