Pulp Poem of the Week

I have such a beautiful love
for myself—
and the sweet part of it is—

no rivals.

          Raymond Chandler
          The Long Goodbye
          1953

Book Review: Donald E. Westlake, The Road to Ruin (2004)

11 Dortmunders down, 3 to go. By now I know that I enjoy the Dortmunder formula, and I thoroughly enjoyed The Road to Ruin, but this may have been the weakest entry in the series thus far. The novel is free from the out-and-out silliness that I sometimes complain about (though to some readers, the entire Dortmunder series may seem an exercise in silliness), but it also lacks the gravitas that elevates some of the books in the series. As well, for the first time while reading a Dortmunder novel, I was acutely aware of the padding. The supporting cast (exclusive of Dortmunder's usual crew) seemed to arrive more quickly than usual, all with backstories and occasions for us to see the narrative through their eyes, and all seeming to lengthen the narrative more than enrich it. The heist this time involves Dortmunder & Co. planning to steal a collection of rare automobiles, but—spoiler alert—things go so wrong that we never get to see them even try to drive away with the cars. In sum, if you enjoyed the first 10 Dortmunders, you will enjoy this one, but if you are looking for a random Dortmunder to read, pick a different one. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

She was like a wind-walloping pennant
flickering and buffeting
back against its flagstaff.

          Cornell Woolrich
          Hotel Room
          1958

Book Review: Cornell Woolrich, Hotel Room (1958)

The thesis of Cornell Woolrich’s Hotel Room is that “hotel rooms . . . are a lot like people”: they begin new and optimistic, and then they decay until they are torn down to make way for office buildings. (Okay, so maybe the analogy isn’t perfect.) The stories in this collection all take place in Room 923 of New York’s (fictitious) St. Anselm Hotel. Woolrich dedicates the book to his mother, with whom he lived for more than 20 years in a hotel. The first story begins on June 20, 1896, the day of the hotel’s grand opening, and the last story takes place on the hotel’s final night, September 30, 1957, which happens to be one week before the death of Woolrich’s mother. If you are a Woolrich fan, it is easy to read all sorts of psycho-significance into Hotel Room’s proceedings. If you are not a fan, then you are left with a collection of entertaining if overwritten stories, which pluck seven dramatic nights from Room 923’s sixty-one year history. Grade B- 

Pulp Poem of the Week

If you put your lips
to a police badge,
you only get
a cold feeling back,
and if you stroke
a .38-caliber revolver,
the .38-caliber revolver
absolutely doesn’t care

          Cornell Woolrich
          Strangler’s Serenade
          1951

Book Review: Cornell Woolrich, Strangler's Serenade (1951)

Expanded from the novelette “Four Bars of Yankee Doodle” (1945), Strangler’s Serenade (1951) is Cornell Woolrich running out of gas. If you set out to read Woolrich’s suspense novels in chronological order, this is probably where you stop. The novel’s hero is Champ Prescott, a Big City Cop who is taking forced “rest” after getting shot in the line of duty, but, of course, there will be no rest for him. When he arrives at a boarding house in a small island community, he finds the first murder victim awaiting him. From here, Woolrich foregoes any damaged-cop psychodrama, opting instead for clichés of the Big City Cop showing the yokels how it’s done. Season with a love interest and standard-issue Absurd Woolrich Plotting, and the result is closer to terrible than it is to Woolrich’s Black Period. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

When you have

nothing inside you,

you feel everything more,

and

you feel you can control

all of it.

         Megan Abbott
         Dare Me
         2012

Pulp Poem of the Week

Funny to be
in this neighborhood
in the daytime.

          Donald E. Westlake
          Don’t Ask
          1993

Pulp Poem of the Week

What could be more perfect
than an armored car?
It’s stinking with money
and it’s got wheels on it.

     Elliott Chaze
     Black Wings Has My Angel
     1953

Pulp Poem of the Week

all
the logic
of
gonorrhea

in

a convent

     Charles Williams
     Girl Out Back
     1958

Pulp Poem of the Week

Unless his testes
were regularly evacuated,
they became the seat of his central nervous system
and sent throughout his body
venomous communications in the forms of
neuralgia, dyspepsia, and a twitching
of the inner eyelid, maddening
though not visible to others.

          Thomas Berger
          Sneaky People
          1975

Book Review: Thomas Berger, Sneaky People (1975)

This review is unfair to Thomas Berger’s Sneaky People, as it is a function of my genre expectations rather than the actual quality of the book. I like Thomas Berger, and when I read a passing reference to Sneaky People as his “noir” novel set in the 1930s, I bought a copy immediately. The plot gets rolling when Buddy Sandifer, owner of a used car lot, puts out a hit on his wife. That sounds noir enough, and the book certainly has its dark moments, but Sneaky People is a sex comedy, and I am the victim of bad intel. I kept waiting for the novel to be something that it never became. If I had encountered Sneaky People in a different context (“Hey, you’ve got to read this hilarious Thomas Berger novel!”), I doubtless would have liked it more. If I could call a do-over and read this book again for the first time, I would. Grade: C+

Pulp Poem of the Week

He clenched his teeth.

He’d like to get her
to dance for him,

you know?

Yeah.
Then give it to her solid.
Then the rest.
And when he was really pumped up,
give it to her right.

          Gil Brewer
          Memory of Passion
          1962 

Pulp Poem of the Week

The undertaker’s eyes
always look like
they’re measuring you for a coffin,
and the astronaut’s eyes are
always looking
up to the sky.
My father was mostly
unemployed.
His eyes had
stories written across them.

          Sherman Alexie
          “Witnesses, Secret and Not”
          1993

Pulp Poem of the Week

sex with
needles

          Motörhead
          “Be My Baby”
          2006

Pulp Poem of the Week

There’s point driving
the getaway car
if nobody’s going
to get away.

          Donald E. Westlake
          Bad News
          2001

Pulp Poem of the Week

A little man—
a clerk or a butcher—
he can hide for a while,
but a guy so dumb
he can only make dough
writing words on paper—
he ain’t got a chance.

          Steve Fisher
          I Wake Up Screaming
          1941

Book Review: Donald E. Westlake, Bad News (2001)

An excellent Dortmunder in which Westlake succumbs to his weakness for low-hanging fruit only when he has to name law firms. (Kleinberg, Rhineberg, Steinberg, Weinberg & Klatsch, anyone?) This time out, Dortmunder helps to create a false heir to 1/3 of an Indian casino, and much of the fun is the route by which he ends up participating in this job that is far from his usual line of (illegal) work. While Bad News lacks the (surprising) gravitas of some of the preceding novels in the series, by this point the members of Dortmunder's crew (Stan, Tiny, Murch, Murch's mom) have (surprisingly?) passed the threshold of LOVABLE, and time spent with them is time delightfully spent. Grade A-

Pulp Poem of the Week

I loved her
like a rabbit loved
a rattlesnake.

          James M. Cain
          Double Indemnity
          1943

Pulp Poem of the Week

don’t run
when nobody’s
chasing you

          Charles Williams
          Man on the Run
          1958 

Pulp Poem of the Week

Nice old ladies
poison whole families.

Clean-cut kids
commit multiple holdups and shootings.
Bank managers with spotless records going back
     twenty years
are found out to be long-term embezzlers.
And successful and popular and supposedly
    happy novelists
get drunk and put their wives in the hospital.
We know damn little about what makes
even our best friends tick.

          Raymond Chandler
          The Long Goodbye
          1953 

Pulp Poem of the Week

His understanding of economics was,
you go out and steal money and
use it to buy food.
Alternatively,
you steal the food.

          Donald E. Westlake
          What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
          1996    

Pulp Poem of the Week

Skeezo what?
Frantic?

          Richard S. Prather
          Always Leave ’em Dying
          1954

Pulp Poem of the Week

These chickens of mine are lucky.
They don’t know
what’s coming their way.
They may end up on a table
but they don’t have the newspapers
to worry them to death first.

          Seymour Shubin
          Anyone’s My Name
          1953

Book Review: Richard S. Prather, Always Leave 'em Dying (1954)

Searching for a missing girl, Shell Scott does battle with Arthur Trammel, leader of a California cult. Always Leave ’em Dying is what it is: Fast-paced but featherweight, entertaining but absurd. I cannot deny that I enjoyed my first Shell Scott experience, but I cannot say that I crave another. Grade: C+

Book Note: Noir Erasure Poetry Anthology (2013)

Silver Birch Press has just published this really cool collection of noir erasure poetry that you should purchase by following the link that is this entire sentence. I contributed a poem from page 85 of Gil Brewer’s Hell’s Our Destination (1953). To read my poem from page 85, you have to buy the book. For free, you get to read poems that I made from the copyright page and page 145:

Book Review: Miyuki Miyabe, All She Was Worth (1992)

Honma, a police inspector on medical leave, is approached by his nephew to find the nephew’s missing fiancée. After this, nothing much happens other than an investigation and a primer in Japanese debtors. Worth a read if you have a particular interest in things Japanese. Grade: C-

Pulp Poem of the Week

You can’t erase it all,
not even half of it.
Half my life surrendered to gray
screens the size of my thumbnail,
each flare carelessly shot
from my phone to another
now rocketing back,
landing in my lap like a cartoon bomb,
its wick lit.

          Megan Abbott
          Dare Me
          2012 

Pulp Poem of the Week

They can be dangerous,
things
that don’t look dangerous.
Not looking dangerous
is
what makes them dangerous.

          Terry Pratchett
          Thief of Time
          2001