Noir — From Book to Screen: Two Examples and Bumps on the Way

UPDATE: I pulled this from my post on Ride the Pink Horse because it is more relevant here since this is where I went off the rails.

Since this post on the topic of film noir and noir fiction I realize that I've been looking at this subject all wrong. You shouldn't use a work of noir fiction determine a film's noirness. I really knew better and don't know what I was thinking.

I'm from the school that holds that film noir isn't a genre. Film noir can encompass pretty much any story line, be taken from any established genre: gangster, police drama, romance (particularly Gothic), etc. Rather, film noir embraces a visual style or mood. There is no common definition or agreement as to what constitutes for film noir and if you want to call a film, noir, you can. For the classic period of film noir — where this film falls — we tend to think in terms of black and white and low key lighting, low angles, and other techniques.

Somewhere on the interwebs I read that noir is like pornography — I might not be able to define it but I know it when I see it. I like that.

So, I shouldn't expect that a noir film will match the noir book from which it derives. There are exceptions of course. I think James M. Caine's noir books translate very well into noir films — The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce. As for Dorothy B. Hughes' Ride the Pink Horse, forget it. I don't see how it could be translated to film as she wrote it. On the other hand, another of Hughes books, In a Lonely Place, could easily be turned into a noir film as written if you don't mind your leading man seen as a misogynistic psycho serial killer.

We have to accept that noir means something different in print and on film.

/UPDATE

I have set aside a few books for which I also have the DVD or Blu-Ray and several fall into the noir category. I previously published my look at what is and isn't noir fiction here and this comes into play here.

I have two examples to present. In the first, I conside whether a book of noir fiction can result in a non-noir film.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The Woman in the Window (1944)
Starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, and Dan Duryea.
Directed by Fritz Lang
Based on the book, Once Off Guard by JH Wallis published in 1942

With a cast like this and with Fritz Lang directing you figure this film is naturally going to live up to its noir designation. Let's see what happened.

Brief Summary: Richard Wanley is a psychology professor on his own after sending his family on vacation. Next door to his club where he has gone for the evening, Wanley sees a striking portrait of Alice Reed. Standing near the window is the subject herself, observing passers-by look at her portrait. She strikes up a conversation with Wanley and gets him to go for drinks at her place. While there, a jealous lover arrives and is killed by Wanley after a struggle. Things get worse for Wanley as there is a lot of evidence pointing at him and he finds himself being blackmailed by an associate of the dead man. Wanley attempts to poison the blackmailer and when that fails he takes the remaining poison himself and is seen slumped over in a chair, apparently dead. But, in a film technique called a match cut,  Wainley wakes up and we find that everything has been a dream and club employees were characters in the dream. Outside the club, by the window with a portrait, Wanley is asked for a light by a woman. Startled, Wanley refuses and runs down the street in a panicked reaction to the possibility of his dream coming true.

Until the moment Wanley wakes up, I was enjoying The Women in the Window as a pretty decent little noir film. You have a hapless protagonist who gets involved with a femme fatale which leads to his destruction. He is doomed from the moment he agrees to go for drinks.

After all was revealed to be a dream, ,I wanted to toss the DVD in the microwave on high power. and watch the sparks. What a cheat! Apparently the studio wanted a lighter touch which they got with the slapstick running down the street scene.

What about the book?  Wanley succeeds in killing the blackmailer with a poison that makes the death look like a heart attack. He decides that the only way to preserve his reputation is to kill himself which he does with the same poison he used on the blackmailer. thus making his death appear natural. The ending has a physician friend approached by a woman while standing on the street in front of the portrait. He pegs her as a woman on the hustle, rebuffs her advances, and strolls off down the street.

Verdict: If you stop the film with Wanley slumped in has chair, then you have a pretty good noir film. As far as I'm concerned, the 'it's all a dream" ending takes the film out of the noir category. Film is not noir for me.

In a Lonely Place (1950)
Starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Based on the book In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes published in 1947

Brief Summary: Dix Steele is a Hollywood screenwriter who hasn't had a hit since before the war. He has serious anger issues resulting in violent outbursts. He takes a hatcheck girl, Mildred, home to discuss a book he has been asked to adapt to the screen and which Mildred has read. After Dix decides the book is worthless, he sends Mildred on her way. His arrival with Mildred and her later departure are observed by a neighbor, Laurel. When Mildred turns up dead, Dix is a suspect but Laurel gives him an alibi havind seen Mildred leave.

He and Laurel begin a relationship and Dix appears to be reinvigorated by having Laurel assist him. But Dix's history of violent behavior makes people wonder if Dix might have killed the girl and doubt is sown in Laurel's mind as well. Dix finds out what people are saying and becomes increasing erratic in behavior. In the end, he has a blackout rage moment and he nearly kills Laurel when he finds out that she intends to leave him. Just as he regains control, the police call to tell him that the Mildred's boyfriend has confessed and he is no longer a suspect. Unfortunately, his rage has destroyed his relationship with Laurel.

The film version of this story carries with it a strong incitement of the Hollywood studio system.

What about the book? Dix Steele is a returning WWII pilot who was never happier than when he was in the war. He is also a misogynistic psychopath, serial killer, and rapist. Also, he has killed a Princeton classmate from before the war, moved into his flat, wears his clothes, and drives his car.  He tells everyone he is a writer. As in the film, there is the neighbor Laurel with whom he develops a relationship. Laurel was also a fried of the previous occupant of the flat who was murdered by Dix. A friend from the war is on the police force and investigating a serial killer. Dix arrogantly volunteers to assist in the investigation using his writerly observations to give insight into the killer. Dix sees himself as a superior intellect, toying with the police. But Laurel, and the wife of the detective friend begin to suspect Dix and set a trap for him. As the book ends, Dix is being charged with multiple murders and breaks down and confess to a murder he committed in England during the war.

Hughes wrote beautifully, even poetically, and was able to get into the mind of a serial killer. She shows the psychological cat and mouse game Dix sees himself playing with the police.

Verdict: Both film and book are noir. With the film, Dix is doomed by his uncontrollable rage and finds himself left with nothing. In the book, Dix is doomed by his arrogance and feelings of superiority and lack of self-awareness that others might see through him. So both are noir but I think the book is more noir. Personally, I wish they had given the film a different title, it is so different from the book.

Keywords: noir, crime fiction, film noir

Nonfiction Review: Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir by Nick Triplow

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Ted Lewis (1940 - 1982) was a British creative genius: musician, artist, animator, screen writer, and, above all, a crime fiction writer. As with his protagonists, he was doomed and, like many creative people, he was ultimately brought down by drugs. In his case, the drug of choice was alcohol. If his name is recognized today , it is probably as the author of Jack's Return Home —otherwise known as Get Carter —which was the source of the Mike Hodges film Get Carter staring Michael Caine. as Jack Carter. For a crime fiction reader such as myself, Ted Lewis is the author who inspired Brit Noir and gave us one of the best noir novels and noir protagonist ever written. Maybe the best.

 I knew nothing about Ted Lewis outside of Jack's Return Home and the film Get Carter and was immediately interested when a Facebook posting alerted me to Nick Triplow's book, Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir.  Nick's chronicling of Lewis' very short 42 years on earth is an impressive accomplishment and for those of us who appreciate Lewis' writing very welcome. There isn't much in the way of documentation available about Lewis but Triplow was able to draw on the memories of those who know Lewis and extrapolate from the environment in which Lewis grew up and what was happening around him.

I give some of the book's highlights below but you really need to read Getting Carter in the whole. Tripow's book is is an uncompromising looks at Ted Lewis, a deeply flawed genius, doomed like one of his noir characters.

Lewis grew up around Barton-upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, UK. These northern locals — Hull, Doncaster, Scunthorpe, Mablethorpe — figured in Lewis' writing. What emerges from his schoolboy years is that Ted was obsessed with jazz, films, comics, and crime magazines. His interest in music led him to learn jazz piano and play in local bands. After grammar school he attended art school where he was an accomplished if unstructured student where drinking, music, films, and chasing girls took precedence over completing assignments in a timely fashion. These predilections, particularly the drinking, followed Lewis throughout his life. The drink led to two failed marriages.

Ted's interest in film stayed with him. He worked as an illustrator for a while but got into animation, working on episodes of a Lone Ranger cartoon. He also had an important role on the animated feature, Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968), where he had the important role of clean-up supervisor. It was especially important because of the number of animators hired to do bits of the production. Lewis and his team brought consistency to the work.

Though he had no experience as a screen writer, Lewis was later hired to write scripts for the gritty crime drama, Z Cars. He didn't write for the later series, The Sweeney, but he felt it ripped him off. The two main characters in The Sweeney are Jack Regan and George Carter which Lewis took as a reference to his character Jack Carter. I've watched all the seasons (series if you British) of The Sweeney and it would have benefited from Lewis' writing. He was also commissioned to write a story arc for Doctor Who and completed three scripts. The scripts were never filmed because they didn't quite match the mood the BBC was going for at the time.

Lewis' first book was the autobiographical All the Way Home and All the Night Through which was met with some critical success. But it was with the 1970 publication of Jack's Return Home that made Lewis a bestselling author and, importantly, for us crime fiction readers, created the British noir school of writing. Jack's Return Home is set in [unnamed] Scunthorpe and is a staggering counter to the traditional British crime story. Jack Carter is an enforcer for a London mob family. He returns home after the death of his brother. The circumstances of the death are suspicious and Jack starts to look into it. In this he runs afoul of the local criminal element who are allied with his London bosses. He is warned off but can't let go. Jack Carter isn't a nice person. He's amoral, violent, ruthless, and misogynistic and quite unlike any protagonist preceding him. He is a classic noir protagonist, ultimately doomed by his own actions. Seriously, if you appreciate noir and haven't read Jack's Return Home/Get Carter you need to get a copy.

Ted wrote two more Jack Carter books, prequels: Jack Carter's Law and Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon. Jack Carter's Law was well received but Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon is considered a much lesser book, written to pay the bills.

Lewis's last book is GBH (grievous bodily harm) which is a masterpiece of disturbing, stomach churning noir writing. The doomed noir protagonist is George Fowler, a London pornographer. Pornography also features in Jack's Return Home. Fowler is a paranoid psychopath who;s story is a descent into into madness. It is set in Mablethorpe, a seaside town where Lewis and his second wife lived for a time. Reading a description of their home in Mablethorpe I immediately saw Fowler's house in GBH.

For me, Jack's Return Home and GBH are essential noir reading and not just for Brit noir, I mean noir as a whole.

There is an interesting section in Getting Carter on the filming of Getting Carter. Lewis' contribution consists of noting that it is based on his book. It moves the action to Newcastle, an area the directors knows well amd makes other changes to the story but you know you are watching Jack's Return Home. Michael Caine is brilliant as Jack Carter though he doesn't much resemble the book's .Jack Carter. Lewis had hoped to write the screenplay but apparently was never considered. Given that this was Mike Hodges' first feature film and was produced in a very short time (10 months from concept to completion) it probably couldn't have handled a new director and new scriptwriter at the same time. It wasn't promoted very well but has since become acknowledged as a masterwork of noir film. As with the book, if you haven't seen the film and like film noir, you need to see it immediately.

Getting Carter has inspired me take down Derek Raymond's Factory series that have been gathering dust on my TBR shelf. Raymond (Robin Cook is his real name) is another Brit Noir author. He knew Lewis and owes a debt to him for his nameless detective in the Department of Unexplained Deaths, aka The Factory. David Peace, a Brit noir author known for his gritty noir Red-Riding Quartet, also acknowledges Lewis, calling Get Carter "the finest crime novel I've ever read". The Red-rRding Quartet is one of the most difficult series to get through I've ever read and I'm not sure I'm up to a second reading

Keywords: noir, biography, British crime writers, Derek Raymond, David Peace

Research: What is Noir and What it Isn't

My search for a definition of noir arose after I read the first books by two authors who appear on lists of Nordic noir. While perfectly acceptable crime stories, I didn’t find anything in them noir. When I started looking at what constitutes noir I discovered almost immediately that I was guilty of putting hard-boiled and noir stories as the same sub-genre. In fact, I was pretty liberal as to what I called noir.

One of the first articles that popped up in my internet search—see links below for much better and more detailed analysis— was Otto Penzler’s “Noir Fiction is About Losers, Not Private Eyes”. Now Penzler has some serious credentials. He is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan which, according to Wikipeida is…”the oldest and largest mystery specialist bookstore in the world”. Penzler “is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on crime, mystery and suspense fiction” and has edited a huge number of crime fiction books.

Penzler pretty much engraves in stone what noir fiction is and isn’t thus his isn’t a opinion that can be dismissed easily. Indeed, I realized I had felt this all along even if I didn’t know enough to voice it.

Noir fiction has attracted some of the best writers in the United States (mostly) and many of its aficionados are among the most sophisticated readers in the crime genre. Having said that, I am constantly baffled by the fact that a huge number of these readers don’t seem to know what noir fiction is. When they begin to speak of their favorite titles in the category, they invariably include a preponderance of books and short stories that are about as noir as strawberry shortcake.

UPDATE
Here is another quote from Penzler that I like

“Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers--people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.”

― Otto Penzler, The Best American Noir of the Century
/UPDATE

Noir evolved from the hard-boiled detectives that Dashiell Hammett defined in Black Mack Magazine in the 1920s. The hard-boiled detective might be tough and use questionable means but at the end of the day has a moral center, a code of ethics. Even Sam Spade, who is a bit morally ambiguous, recognizes that when someone kills your partner you do something about it even if you are sleeping with your partner’s wife. Chandler famously wrote about the detective:

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

For Penzler, “noir is about losers”. Noir stories are existential and nihilistic and the characters doomed because they lack morality. “Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film is driven by greed, lust jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape.”

Penzler unequivocally says that the hard-boiled and noir sub-genres of crime fiction are philosophically opposed to each other.

One is dependent on its hero maintaining the ethical high ground while most everyone with whom he interacts lies, charts, steals and kills. The other features people who wallow in the sty that is their world.The machinations of their lust, whether for money or love (which in noir fiction is a four-letter word for sex), will cause them to be blinded to rudimentary decency as they become entangled in the web of their own doom.

There are no happy endings in noir.

By now you might be having unsettling thoughts about our beloved crime fiction, what have I been reading. Hammett’s Maltese Falcon and the Continental Op stories and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, as dark as they might be, are not noir. I’d always thought it incongruous that these books appeared on the same lists with books by Jim Thompson and James M. Cain. Walter Neff in Double Indemnity and Lou Ford in The Killer Inside me are noir figures, not Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.

Dave Zeltserman sums it up nicely:

What makes these noir novels such fascinating reads are the ways in which they open up the human psyche and leave bare the dark impulses that can drive us to do the unthinkable. What makes them such exhilarating and dread-inducing reads is being sucked into the noir protagonist’s private hell, and hoping he can somehow escape the abyss waiting for him while knowing there’s no escape.

Given all this, did two of my favorite crime writers, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, write noir, since the term is often ascribed to their works? Simple answer,no. They wrote tough, hard-boiled crime fiction, and while there’s a darkness to their book and stories, none of it is noir. In Chandler’s case, Philip Marlowe might uncover others’ sins, but he always lives to fight another day.

You might be asking, as I did, wait,isn’t it possible to have a noir detective? It seems like their must be but I can only think of one from recent reading. PI Jake Blake in Charles Williford’s Wild Wives begins his downward spiral because of a woman and money. Ray Banks suggests the PI Harry Angel in William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel which features which features murder, mystery, and the occult and maybe a crossover with horror. He also thinks that Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor novels constitute a noir cycle.

In his article, 'Writing in the Darkness: the World of Cornell Woolrich', Eddie Duggan further distinguishes between hard-boiled and noir:

The main difference between the ‘classic’ hard-boiled writers and the ‘noir-writers’ — although James M. Cain has a foot in each camp — can probably be characterized by two tendencies: a tendency in hardboiled writing to paint a backdrop of institutionalized social corruption; and a tendency in noir-writing to focus on personal psychology, whether it is despair, paranoia or some other psychological crises. These two schools—if we can call these tendencies ‘schools’—are by no means mutually exclusive: hard-boiled writing can display elements of noir, and noir writing can be hard-boiled.

This actually reinforces my feelings about Philip Kerr’s first book in his Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets: definitely hard-boiled but with noir elements as you might expect in a book set in pre-WWII Nazi Germany.

Here are links to the resources all of whichI consulted and some shamelessly copied from:

• Ardai, Charles–The Dak Heart of Noir.
• Banks, Ray–Noir is for Losers.
• Defective Yeti–The Difference Between Noir and Hardboiled.
• Duggan, Eddie–Writing in the Darkness: The World of Cornell Woolrich. (requires a Google or Facebook login)
• Escribano, Jose Ignacio–A first approach to the difference between hardboiled, noir fiction and crime fiction in Spanish
• Escribano, Jose Ignacio–Notes on Noir Fiction
• Jones, Howard Andrew–Hardboiled or Noir?
• Penzler, Otto–Noir Fiction is About Losers, Not Private Eyes.
• Zeltserman, Davene–One Crime Writer's Thoughts on Noir.

Book Review: The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

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Keywords: crime fiction, Harlem Detective series, noir, detective, Black crime authors, detective fiction

The Real Cool Killers is the second book in the Harlem Detective series. In the previously reviewed A Rage in Harlem, Black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones are introduced and make a memorable impression but control most of the action in the story. By this third book the two detectives are decidedly front and center.

A white man has been killed in Harlem, shot in the head after a dramatic chase down Lenox Avenue pursued by Sonny, high on marajuana, and firing a pistol at the running man. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed respond and find the dead man surrounded by Sonny and members of a street gang called The Real Cool Moslems (they are not Moslems). Sonny, still holding his gun, is naturally arrested and handcuffed. When they attempt to search the Moslems, the gang taunt the detectives. One of them, Caleb, makes the tragic mistake of throwing a liquid on Coffin Ed which triggers a blind rage and PTSD flashback when acid was thrown in his face (see A Rage in Harlem) and Ed shoots and kills the boy. Since it was a white man killed in Harlem, all the police brass show up and the Chief suspends Coffin Ed though it is more of a token guesture to appease the public. In the confusion, Sonny and the Muslims have disappeared. It is quickly determined that Sonny couldn't have been the killer since his gun only fired blanks. With his partner suspended, Grave Digger is left to conduct the investigation on his own which he does in his face slapping, head spitting, rage. As Digger probes, he finds that there are [good] reasons why Harlem residents would like to see the white man dead.

Himes wrote his Harlem Detective series while an expatriate living in France. It is a testimony to Himes' skill as a writer that he is able to imbue his stories with such a rich vibrancy for the Harlem location and it's people without ever having been in Harlem. For me, a reader, Himes put me there, on the streets, in the bars, restaurants, and homes.

These stories are very violent and Coffin Ed and Grave Digger have no compunctions when it comes to using their guns and slapping around anyone foolish enough to hold back information. The detectives perform this violence against their own people but do so because of their own need to bring order and an understanding of how the Harlem blacks are conditioned to respond to authority. Himes' books are very much about racism. In one scene, a white man objects to Digger's treatment of a woman and Digger responds:

If you white people insist on coming up to Harlem where you force colored people to live in vice-and-crime-ridden slums, it's my job to see that you are safe.
The white man turned bright red.

Later, Digger is asked by the police Commissioner why such a large crowd quickly assembled at the scene of the murder. Was it just a case of morbid curiosity? Himes, through Digger, explains the reality of things to the white brass:

Well, it's like this, Commissioner, Grave Digger said. Every day in Harlem, two and three times a day, the colored people see some colored man being chased by another colored man with a knife or an axe, or by a white man with his fists. But it's only once in a blue moon they get to see a white man being chased by one of them. A big white man at that. This was an event. A chance to see some white blood spilled for a change, and spilled by a black man, at that. That was greater than Emancipation Day. As they say up in Harlem, that was the greatest. That's what Ed and I are always up against when we try to make Harlem safe for white people.

Not that last sentence. Ed and Digger have to keep Harlem safe for white people.

Himes' dialogue with a great ear for dialect, his descriptive setting, his action scenes, his lean prose style, and above, his ability to portray the lot of black people make his Harlem Detective stories just as powerful today as when they were written in the late 50s and early 60s. I can't recommend them enough and hope they are discovered by a newer, younger audience.

Book Review: The First Time I Died (Garnet McGee Book 1) by Jo Macgregor

The author is Joanne Macgregor writing as Jo Macgregor. Joanne Macgregor's website can be found here.

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The First Time I Died is the first book in the author's Garnet McGee series. I enjoyed it and look forward to seeing where she takes her character next. The First Time I Died has a paranormal element (not a spoiler, you know from the cover) but Macgregor doesn't bludgeon the reader with otherworldly stuff which I appreciated. What the book is, is a good amateur sleuthing crime-solving story.

Garnet McGee returns to her small Vermont home town of Pitchford. Rather than dying like a lot of small towns, Pitchford  has turned itself into a quaint destination. I like the small town setting because gives  an instant knowledge and intimacy and allows Garnet to react against her own memories and the memories of those who remained in town.

Garnet is taking a break from work on her master's thesis in psychology to return home for the Christmas holiday. The origin of Garnet's name and how it fits into her family life are a fun bit of the story. 

When Garnet left Pitchford 10 years ago she vowed never to return. The unsolved murder of her high school boyfriend, Cody, is still raw and has left her unable to connect with anyone, withdrawing from intimacy. An incident on a frozen pond leaves Garnet clinically dead but she is brought back to life by EMS. 

Strange things happened while Garnet was drowning and afterwords words and visions pop into her mind. She seems to be seeing what happened to Cody. This brush with the paranormal and a vow to Cody's dying sister compels Garnet to find out who murdered Cody.

The author is herself a clinical psychologist which works when developing her character's back story and state of mind. Garnet is going to be naturally skeptical and any hint of the paranormal and I like the way this was worked into the story. The reader isn't smacked with a data dump but is left with a good idea how science views what is happening to Garnet.

I enjoyed the way the story is plotted. Garnet goes off on wild tangents as you would expect from an amateur sleuth but her instincts are solid which leads to a very satisfying ending. There is the use of a plot device that annoys me greatly – loss of something important which was entirely avoidable – that I saw coming way in advance but it didn't actually make a difference in the story. I decided that I really wasn't that annoyed after all. There is also a small incident that takes place in a flashback that turns out to be a Checkov's Gun. I liked that I spotted that. 

Being that Joanne Macgregor is a South African writer, the Vermont USA setting intrigued me but nothing she wrote about a small New England town pulled me out of the story. My wife has family next door in New Hampshire so I'm familiar with the area.

So, in summary, The First Time I Died A good read and one I recommend to someone who likes nicely plotted amateur crime investigation with a brush of the paranormal. The author has left me greatly anticipating the next book in the series.

Keywords: crime fiction, paranormal, small town mystery, Vermont, South African author

Review: The Bat by Jo Nesbø

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Keywords: crime fiction, police procedural, Norwegian crime writer, Australia, Australian Aborigines

This debut of police Norwegian detective Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-Leh according to Harry) was published in Norway in 1997 but didn't appear in English until 2012. It is set in Australia, not Norway.

Harry is sent to Sydney to observe the investigation into the rape and strangulation murder of a minor Norwegian celebrity, Inger Holter. He is teamed up with an Aboriginal detective, Andrew Kensington. Harry is supposed to merely observe but that doesn't last long, fortunately for the reader. The investigation is following along the usual procedural lines: how did she die, who did she know, was she close to anyone,  what were her last, movements. Harry meets a Swedish bartender, Birgitta, who worked with the murdered woman and they develop a personal relationship outside the investigation. Pretty soon a pattern begins to emerge. Other victims are identified that fit the current case. Is a serial killer at work. What ties them together? They are all young blond white women.

My rating: pretty good but not remarkable. I like it enough to keep reading in the series.

I enjoyed The Bat but, for me, it wasn't a gripping, can't put down thriller. I might have felt different in 1997 but today, not so much. It is your standard police procedural with a central protagonist with a flaw. In this case, Harry is an alcoholic though currently sober.

Nesbø is classed as writing Nordic Noir but I wouldn't put The Bat anywhere near noir which is why it isn't one of my keywords. A book like The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson is noir. The Bat is a police procedural. It has none of the darkness and brutality that I associate with noir. I'll see if my opinion changes as I read more of the series.

I think the investigation is layed out well and I don't see the conclusion as pulled out of  nowhere. True, Harry does get the killer to reveal all but at least it wasn't in a "I'll answer all your questions before I kill you" setting.

I'm sort of torn on the Australian setting. Having several characters describe the treatment of Aboriginal Australians could have been a problem if it tended toward a data dump making it more of a history lesson. Fortunately Nesbø pulls off this "look at a culture through the eyes of a foreigner" by working it into the story naturally and not as a lecture.

POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD

Something happens during the course of the investigation that give Harry an excuse to fall off the wagon and begin an alcohol fueled downward spiral. This is painful to read but wasn't a problem. What did bother me is one of the Australian detectives sits Harry down at lunch, tells him he needs to straighten up because only he has the insights to solve the case and BANG, Harry is sober, clear-headed and taking care of business.  Prior to that he was a puking, sodden mess. Just a little bit too quick a turn-around.

Retro Review: A Bullet for Cinderella by John D. MacDonald

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Keywords: crime fiction, crime thriller

If you mention John D. MacDonald (JDM), people, if they know the name at all, immediately think of the 22 books in the Travis McGee series, the first of which appeared in 1964 and the last in 1985. This is certainly a good thing to be known for since these are excellent mystery/crime/thrillers that are still readable today.

But JDM has a long list of standalone thrillers beginning with The Brass Cupcake in 1950. More often than not every year since 1950 saw a new JDM book published. He even ventured away from thriller to write three science fiction novels. As good as the Travis McGee books are, JDM's standalone thrillers represent some really fine writing. Ed Gorman has a nice article on JDM and his standalones on the Mystery Scene website: My Ten Favorite John D. MacDonald Standalone Novels.

A Bullet for Cinderella isn't on Gorman's list of favorite standalones but it is a good, solid thriller. My Kindle copy identifies it as one of the "noir masters" but it really isn't noir so don't be misled. It would be more noir if it was told from the viewpoint of the villain of the story, Earl Fitzmartin. The cover and cover blurb are also a bit misleading. Mind you, I like the cover but it represents a small part of the book. I really can't explain the cover without spoiling the story.but I will say that it's worth getting there.

Tal Howard comes to the town of Hillston looking for treasure. His cover is that he is writing a book about the men who died during the Korean War in the Chinese camp where Tal was also a prisoner. While in the prison camp Tal was friends with Timmy Warden who made a deathbed confession that he had embezzled $60,000 from the family business. His only clue to the location of the buried money is the enigmatic clue, "Cindy would know". Being a POW changed Tal and nothing about life after repatiation satisfied him, not the job or girl that waited for him. Restless, he took of for the treasure hoping it would fill the emptiness within him.

When Tal arrives in Hillston, he finds that he has been preceded by Earl Fitzmartin who was in prison camp with Tal and Timmy and who overheard Timmy's confession. He wants the $60K. Tal has no love for Fitzmartin, in fact he and other prisoners vowed to track him down and kill him after the war more for what he didn't do than anything he did do.

Using his cover as a writer, Tal begins his search for the mysterious Cindy all the while shadowed by the menacing Fitzmartin. One of the people he "interviews" is a former girlfriend of Timmy's, Ruth Stamm to whom he is strongly attracted.

Tal not only has to contend with Fitzamartin dogging his steps but the local police aren't too happy with him either. They think he might be a private detective looking into the disappearance of the wife of Timmy's brother George who apparently left town with a salesman in the dark of night.

For someone who is not a detective, Tal does a pretty good job of trying to track down the elusive Cindy and I would say that his approach is logical but with lots of dead ends and frustrations to keep the tension up.

One of the characteristics of JDM's writing are his observations on society, people, and behaviors. Personally I enjoy this aspect of his writing. In the first chapter he describes Tal's reaction upon driving through Hillston:

Standardization had given most of our small cities the same look. Plastic and glass brick store fronts. Woolworth's and J.C. Penney and Liggett and Timely and the chain grocery. The essential character of Hillston had been watered down by this standardization and yet there was more individuality left than in many other cities. Here was a flavor of leisure, of mild manners and quiet pleasures. No major highway touched the city. It was in an eddy apart from the great current.

MacDonald wasn't a great fan of homogenization. I love that last sentence. It's simple but conveys much.

Later in the book, JDM describes a shack where his investigation has led him:

It had a sagging porch, auto parts stamped into the mud of the yard, dingy Monday washing flapping on a knotted line, a disconsolate tire hanging from a tree limb, and a shiny new television aerial.

You have 4 signs of poverty and despair then he finishes with the incongruity of the television aerial. It is this kind of writing the makes JDM appeal to me.

So, to wrap up, it's a solid, nicely plotted story. It's not the best nor the worst and it isn't noir but it is a good read. I recommend looking a Gorman's article, cited above, for outstanding examples of MacDonald's standalone thrillers.

Book Review: The Sticky Fingers Collection by JT Lawrence

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Keywords: short stories, twisted, dark humor, South African author

I haven't been an avid short story reader, mostly picking them up when an outside moves me. In the case of these books, the force is the author herself, JT Lawrence. She's one of my favorite writers and solidly in the "will always read" column. I was familiar with her style from her novels, especially the dystopian When Tomorrow Calls series and its spin off novellas, and was happy when she started giving us short stories to fill in the gap between novels.

The subtitle for these collection is "12 deliciously twisted short stories" and she delivers on that promise. As with any short story collection, the reader will click with some stories and not with others but it is a happy reader who finishes the collection feeling that the author has indeed tricked, twisted, and perhaps emotionally plucked the reader's perceptions. Cut to the chase, I love the stories in this collection.

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One of the pleasures of a short story collection is that you can dip into it at any point and that is true with these collection. Howeverr, I will recommend that you read the collection in publication order. Why do I make this seemingly contradictory recommendation? First, you get to see how the author develops certain themes across the three collections. There are stories that are thematically related though not directly. It is fun to see how she can take the same theme and look at it from a different point. Second, there are several stories that directly cross between collections. The longest overlap between collections are the very humorous Trip Advisor stories. No spoilers but when you read the Trip Advisor story in Sticky Fingers 3 your going to go "hold on, wait a minute" and flip back to Sticky Fingers. There are also two sets of police detective procedual stories that feature the same detectives.

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As far as recurring themes go, one of the most pervasive is that of a persons disturbed mental condition and ability to handle reality. Here you'll find reaction to trauma, multiple personalities, imposter syndrome. Some of these are very poignant. Several stories look at how a woman handles an unsatisfying marriage. Two stories consider reactions to South Africa after 1993 when apartheid fell. "Kakkerlak" (Sticky Fingers 2, #11) is a particularly bleak, Kafkaesque horror.

Some other stories outside of the ones I described above that I hope will get your interest:
Sticky Fingers

• "Grey Magic" – about a modern, somewhat ditzy modern witch. Lawrence expanded it into a novel of the same name. Excellent novel.
• "Escape" – was my WTF! story. It features a baby that thinks it was born in the wrong body.
• "Pigeon Pain" – is a Hitchcockian bird story

Sticky Fingers 2

• "Rockabye Baby" – a pregnant woman seeks help in a strange shelter, West Haven, which seems to have a sinister aspect
• "Alpha Lyrae: A Robot Romance" – this story is expanded in volume 3 of the When Tororrow Calls series, What Have We Done. Of I wasn't already a fan of this series, this story would have pulled me in. 

Sticky Fingers 3

• "Every Breath You Take" a really, really disturbing look into the mind of a stalker.
• "Lucky Strike" – what happens when you betray the wrong woman

Book Review: March Violets: A Bernie Gunther Novel by Philip Kerr

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Keywords: historical fiction, Berlin, private detective, Germany, Chandler-esque, noir, Nazi, hardboiled detective. crime fiction

My copy of March Violets is part of Berlin Noir which collects the first three Bernie Gunther novels in one volume. Also in this volume are The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem.

I'm not normally one for historical fiction but I'd seen references to Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels and knew they had something to do with Germany around WWII. I also liked his writing in A Philosophical Investigation. I picked up a used copy of Berlin Noir and stuck it on my TBR shelf. The author passed away this year so I thought it time to pull it down. I knew very little about this series going in other than the main character was a private detective in Berlin.

I wasn't far into March Violets before the resemblance to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe leaped from the page. I confess that my heart soared a bit because I do love me some hardboiled detective. Like Marlowe, Bernie Gunther was formally in law enforcement but left to go private. Also like Marlowe, Bernie doesn't respect authority, doesn't like to be told what to do, is inclined to go wherever the investigation takes him, is quick with the wisecracks, and makes wry, sardonic observations. Not surprisingly, I later saw the Bernie Gunther novels described in a New York Sun article as "He wrote the nearest pastiche to Raymond Chandler's literary style yet achieved"

The term March Violets in the title refers to latecomers to the ranks of the Nazi party. When the story opens, it is 1936 on the eve of the Berlin Olympics. Bermie Gunther a private detective who was formally an investigator with the Kriminalpolizei or Kripo for short. He is hired by wealthy industrialist Herman Six. His daughter and her husband were murdered ,apparently during a robbery, and the house burned to mask it. Herr Six wants Bernie to find those responsible and recover an expensive diamond necklace that was in a safe in the house.

It seems like a fairly straightforward case, especially since Bernie specializes in missing people, but it gets complicated. It turns out that the murdered son-in-law, Paul Pfarr, was heading an anti-corruption task force on the direct orders of Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Lots of people have an interest in the case and what was in the safe. Bernie finds himself up against the SS (major paramilitary organization), Gestapo (secret state police), Kripo (Criminal police), and Sipo (Security Police). He even finds himself facing Hermann Göring.

March Violets is first of all a cracking good hardboiled detective story.  Thanks to Bernie's wisecracks and sardonic wit the story does have humorous moments but make no mistake, with its setting and bleak, downbeat story it is very noir. The Nazi Party is solidly in power and people like Bernie have to tread a thin line to avoid being disappeared or disappearing into a concentration camp (KZ) because of his disregard for everything Nazi. The story is also peppered lots of interesting slang new to me: lighter = gun; polyp = police; cement = prison; nut = safe.

Kerr works in works in historical detail that paints a bleak picture of an increasingly brutal Nazi regime tooling up for war and how the populace is made complacent and complicit through propaganda manufactured threats, like the Jews. How the Nazi party entrenched itself is scary. Kerr also works in internecine rivalries within the Nazi Party like between Göring and Himmler. I found myself heading over to Wikipedia to get more detail about historical events and people. I'd say that a historical that makes you want to know more about the period is successful.

Retro Review: Wild Wives by Charles Willeford

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Keywords: crime fiction, noir, hardboiled, private detective

Wild Wives (1956) is Willeford's third novel and I'd say that here he's working on finding his voice but not quite there yet.

There is only one wife involved though I suppose you can use the plural "wives" on a technicality. Spoiler alert: Florence Weintraub's husband is killed and she marries private detective Jake Blake under the alias Mary Brown so I suppose that could constitute "wives".

Despite the blurbs, I don't think it all that good. An entertaining and short read, sure. If you like this genre, you'll find some Jim Thompson loser laid low by bad choices and some Micky Spillaine hardboiled and maybe some Philip Marlowe sardonic humor in PI Jake Blake but it lacks the polish you see in later books like the Hoke Moseley series and The Burnt Orange Heresy.

Jake Blake is hired by Florence Weintraub to get away from two thugs hired to watch her by an overbearing father. Only it turns out that Milton Weintraub is Florence's husband and Jake is only the latest in a string of lovers. When Weintraub ends up dead, Jake and Florence hit the road to avoid a murder charge and to collect money Florence has stashed in Las Vegas, enough to get them to Mexico City. Jake finds out that Florence has problems that he sort of suspected but might provide a way to put him in the clear for Weintraub's death. With the Florence problem taken care of, Jake thinks he can go back to his old life as a San Francisco private detective but a seemingly innocent prank involving a teenage girl comes back to haunt him.

Wild Wives is a fun read and I'm not sorry I read it though I wouldn't say that it advances the genre. It is an interesting stop on the way to the Hoke Moseley novels: Miami Blues, New Hope for the Dead, Sideswipe, The Way We Die Now.

Sleeper (2018) by Mike Nicol

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Keywords: crime fiction, South Africa, spies, espionage, thriller

Mike Nicol has been one of my favorite authors since a friend introduced me to the Revenge Trilogy (Payback 2008, Killer Country 2010, Black Heart 2011). Mike has a clipped, lean style of writing that instantly appealed to me and is a welcome respite to door stoppers. He is high on my "will always buy" list of authors.

Sleeper is the latest in the Vicki Kahn and Fish Pescado series which follows after the Revenge Trilogy and converges with it. The other Vicki and Fish books are Of Cops and Robbers (2014), Agents of the State (2017), and, of course, this book, Sleeper (2018).

The main setting as with previous books is Cape Town, South Africa. As you can deduce from the title, espionage is a big part of the story but the author weaves together several threads before you figure out what's going on. As the story opens, lawyer and ex-spy Vicki has been pulled back into a branch of state security called The Aviary. She only needs to do a "few hours work" to sooth the jitters of a whistle blower in the department of energy. It turns out there is a serious problem in the Department of Energy involving atomic materials and Iranians. Soon Vicki's "few hours of work" turns into real spy work and dangerous as she tries to look after atomic scientist Robert Wainwright. 

At the same time, private investigator Fish Pescado is hired to investigate the murder of Victor Kweza by Caitlyn Suarez the suspected murderer. Victor's murder is high profile him having been a cabinet minister and international banker. Caitlyn herself internationally connected. At the same time, private investigator Fish Pescado is hired to investigate the murder of Victor Kweza by Caitlyn Suarez the suspected murderer. Victor's murder is high profile him having been a cabinet minister with energy portfolio and an international banker. Caitlyn herself is internationally connected in the banking/finance world. Complicating Fish's life is the suicide of his cop friend, Flip, who seemed to know something about Caitlyn Suarez.

The story is very well crafted and tightly plotted with, as I said before, several plot threads that have to come together and as they do the pace picks up along with tension, action, and danger. There are recurring characters and references to events from previous books that will leave a new reader with questions. The answer is simple, go back and read the previous five books. You won't be disappointed. Long-time readers will probably have an emotional investment in some characters which gives an added punch to Sleeper. 

Nicol is South African and includes expressions and cultural references that will be unfamiliar to US readers but that's what the Internet is for. Personally, I enjoy the sense of place you get reading one of Mike's books.

I know the phrase "unputdownable" is an annoying review expression but, literally, I had to keep reading despite the late hour. As an Amazon reviewer wrote, the only problem with the book is that I finished it.

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

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Keywords: alternate reality, fantasy, Wales

Early Riser (2018) is the latest book from the skewed and very funny imagination of Jasper Fforde. It is a stand-alone so you can dip into it without fear of missing. If this is your first Fforde book then I recommend you go back and pick up the Thursday Next series beginning with The Eyre Affair (2001). If you are new to Fforde then I would give you a comparison with Douglas Adams to entice you to pick up his books.

Fforde is a master at world building, constructing very detailed, logically consistent worlds that are twisted to great comic effect.

Early Riser gives us a world set in Wales where people hibernate in dormitoriums during four long deadly winter months. In the lead up to hibernation, people put on as much weight as possible and actually grow a winter coat for more insulation. Hibernation isn't without risks and sometimes people come out of hibernation as Nightwalkers. Nightwalkers are basically zombies who, if not fed, will eat anything including people. Overseeing the winter months and protecting the hibernating residents are the Winter Counsuls.

Into this world Comes Charlie Worthing whose life is on a track to nowhere when he is recruited as a Novice Winter Counsul due to his skill at memorization. Due to a series of mishaps, Charlie finds himself stranded for the winter in Sector 12, a place with a disturbingly high mortality rate. He becomes aware that there is a sort of viral dream infecting the sleeping population with the same dream. Everyone in the dream sees a blue Buick. People are not supposed to dream while in hibernation.

Charlie finds the Winter Consuls have an antagonist relationship with HiberTech, a shadowy megacorporation researching hibernation and producers of a drug supposed to assist people in hibernation.

Nothing is as it seems and Charlie doesn't know who is actually working for the common good, HiberTech or the Winter Consuls. But he is determined to find the truth behind the conspiracies no matter the danger.

This brief synopsis really doesn't do the book justice but then I'd pretty much have to quote the entire book to explain it. Along the way Fforde pokes fun at global climate change and Big Pharma conspiracies. It is a fun read particularly if you have a taste for the absurd, which I do. I enjoyed it very much and recommend it and all of Fforde's books even the Dragonslayer trilogy which I haven't read but I'm sure I'll like when I do.

Leverage in Death by JD Robb

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Keywords: police procedural, futuristic, crime fiction

A funny thing happened on the way to the TBR stack, this book popped off the top of my library hold list.

This is the latest in the Eve Dallas/... In Death series and honestly, as much as I enjoy these books, I can only give it an OK rating. The villainy just didn't grab me. This time out, a horrendous explosion takes out the conference room where a merger is about to be finalized. One of the company executives, Paul Rogan, has detonated a suicide vest killing eleven people. Officers dispatched to secure his house find his wife and daughter terrorized and tortured. It soon emerges that Rogan was coerced into carrying out the attack. This sort of crime falls within the expertise of Roark, the billionaire business tycoon husband of Lt. Eve Dallas. Who benefits from this act?

If you are a devoted follower of these books you know what you'll get: Eve and Roark will have steamy sex a couple of times, Eve and Roark will have a vicious argument; Eve will threaten to kick Peabody's ass, when captured the villains will be arrogant but Eve will get them in "the box" and break them. There will probably be a personal sub-story going on. This time the video based on a book about one of her cases is up for an Oscar. Much fun is had here.

Despite the somewhat formalistic nature of the books they are a fun read. They have a futuristic setting – Leverage... takes place around 2061– which I enjoy. While there are science fiction elements, scifi doesn't dominate. At their core, these are solid police procedurals with the crimes solved by dogged footwork, process of elimination, and interviews. Eve and her team are aided by the deep data diving skills of her husband Roark. This is the aspect of the ...In Death books that draw me to them, the police trying to determine motives, identifying suspects, looking for links and inconsistencies. Basic police work.

I also like the interaction between the characters, particularly the banter between Eve and her partner Peabody. There are usually several snort-worthy exchanges.

With 47 novels and a title count of around 58 (this includes short stories and novellas), the series is still going strong with two books a year. Nora Roberts, who writes the ...In Death series as JT Robb, is a remarkable author. While writing the ...In Death books, she is also writing romances and family sagas. Her style there is completely different and I haven't been able to finish one.

Roberts has done something interesting with the ...In Death books. Despite the large number of stories told in this world,  only three or four years have elapsed within the since the series began. With a series this large I would not say that a reader can drop into it at any point. There are too many references to events in previous books and a new reader will be left wondering why something was mentioned.  Start with the first book, Naked in Death, published in 1995.

The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg

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Keywords: Scandinavian crime fiction, Swedish crime fiction

The Ice Princess, Läckberg's first novel, is one of my series backlog books. It was first published in Swedish in 2003, in English translation in 2008, and I read it in February, 2010.  Given the time that has passed and that I didn't remember any details, I decided to re-read it before taking on the next books in the series. I have included my 2010 review below.

The Story
Erica Falck is the author of biographies of notable women who has returned to her Swedish home town of Fjällbacka from Stockholm, where she is based. Her parents have died in a car crash and Erica taking care of the their house and sorting out its contents.

While out for a walk, an elderly neighbor calls out to her and urgently requests she look at what he found in a house he watches for the owner. Erica finds the body of her childhood friend, Alexandra (Alex), dead in a bathtub of frozen water and apparently a suicide.

Erica hasn't had contact with Alex after she and her family left town many years before and without saying goodbye. Still, given her prior close-as-sisters relationship with Alex and being a writer, Erica is asked to write a memorial piece about her dead friend. They don't believe she killed herself and want something nice said about her.

In the course of interviewing Alex's husband and her business associate for the memorial, Erica's interest in what happened to her friend is awakened: why did she disappear, where did she go, why did she become so remote to others. Erica is also not feeling inspired about her current writing project and gets the idea of writing something different, a true crime book about Alex.

The forensic pathologist rules that Alex did not kill herself and it is a homicide. An investigation is opened and Erica finds herself pulled in to it. In an interesting twist, Erica finds that a childhood friend is a detective on the case. Patrik Hedström has been in love with Erica since they were children though she was unaware of the depth of his feelings. The case seems to be going nowhere but with Erica's interest and her growing attraction to Patrick, secrets begin to be revealed.

My Thoughts
Läckberg identifies herself as a crime writing specialist. Her books appear on Nordic Noir lists but based on The Ice Princess I don't see that. It isn't nearly dark and gritty enough to qualify. I've also seen her referred to as Sweden's Agatha Christie. This is closer but not close enough to put it on a list of cosy mysteries. I've just got to go with the broad category of crime novel.

Läckberg is known for the detail in her writing, particularly in the way she fleshes out her characters. Sometimes literally as with the police chief who is a buffoon-like caricature of a incompetent bureaucrat. She also provides a strong sense of place. Eight years, seven months after my first review, I find my reaction to these characteristics very different. I haven't come to dislike the book and in fact would recommend it to a reader who enjoys a book where the violence occurs out of sight and there isn't too much sex. For me, the the book is about a third too long and I found it a bit of a slog at times. There is often too much detail. For example, every character, no matter how minor, gets some back story even if they only appear briefly, once. There is no detail to small to be left out. Someone else wrote that the landscape is integral to the story but I don't see that:  it could have been set in Fargo, North Dakota in the winter.

But negative reactions aside, I still consider The Ice Princess a good story that is well plotted. There were a couple of police procedural issues that annoyed me, one I thought egregious. I won't mention them here because they could be spoilers.  Läckberg does a good job seeds the story with clues that leading the reader to the twisted conclusioning

I'm going to read at least the next two books in the series.


ORIGINAL 2010 REVIEW
Erica Falck has returned to her family home in Fjällbacka after the death of her parents. She is sorting through the effects and at the same time trying to work on a biography of Selma Lagerlöf, a Swedish author and the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Out walking one day, an elderly man frantically asks her to come into a house where she finds the body of Alexandra (Alex) Carlgren, a childhood friend, dead in the bath, apparently a suicide. She has been dead for several days and, with heat has been off, the water has frozen.

Alex's family ask her to write a memorial article. They do not believe that she killed herself. In the course of interviewing Alex's husband and business partner, Erica becomes interested in what happened to her friend, why they grew apart. She forms the idea of writing a book about Alex and what led her to take her life.

Initially thought a suicide, the Forensic Pathologist rules the case a homicide. Erica's involvement gets deeper and more complicated when she finds that a detective assigned to the investigation is another childhood friend, one who had a crush on her.

The style of the Ice Princess appeals to me greatly. It is the same feeling I had reading Susan Hill's The Various Haunts of Men though I wouldn't compare the two books. It is more the way Läckberg creates a sense of place and a feeling for the characters. There are little details, not consequential to the plot, that left a mark as I read. When Erica is driving through Göteborg to meet Alex's husband, she is convinced that every road will take her to Hisingen and, indeed, she ends up there trying leave Göteborg. Having spend most of seven days lost driving through the U.K., it made me smile. There is also the scene where Erica is greeting the town's leading lady and is concerned that she will get the cheek kissing sequence wrong.

I found the story griping. Läckberg parceled out the revealments in a way that kept me guessing. She gave good clues along the way but I was still surprised at how the case concluded.

Plot, characters, and setting combined to make this one of my favorite reads. The translation by Steven T. Murray, who also translates Henning Mankell, feels natural

Here is a web site that describes a bit of the real Fjällbacka: A bookworm's tour of murder in Sweden