Noir

Book Review: All the Wrong Places

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I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of All the Wrong Places from Lisa Lieberman in exchange for a review on this blog.  Lieberman is an author with a hand full of books about Europe and the effects of World War II on the area.  This book takes place in that time frame from the Summer of 1941 through the Fall of 1956.

This book starts with our protagonist, Cara Walden and her half-brother, Gray, moving to London.  Cara is moving because she had a baby with a famous star when she was only 17 and to keep the birth secret, gives up the baby and flees America to avoid the scandal.  Gray is a known Communist in the Hollywood community and is fleeing to England to avoid prosecution.  Our adventure follows Cara all over Europe, with flashbacks to past events, including her mother’s death.  This goes through a lot of dark stuff through this adventure including a possible suicide, a murder because of race, a sudden rape from a current boyfriend, numerous scandals, communism, the effects of the Jewish Holocaust, Gypsies and an interesting road trip.

This book mixes a lot of true to fact historic events, people, and movements with our fictional characters.  This gives us an interesting story line.  I honestly didn’t know a lot of these issues that effected Europe as it recovered from the war and was still struggling in many ways.  We also get a look at the golden era of film as well as books, music and celebrity from this era.

This book is classified by the publisher and the author as a Historical Noir and is said to have a thrilling finale straight out of Hitchcock.  It is an interesting read that is different than most noir novels I read.  I would recommend it to fans of noir that want something a bit out of the ordinary and those that love historical fiction and historical mysteries.

This book will be out on 4/8/2015 from Five Star Publishing, here is a link to the website where you can get a copy:

http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=197+4294916909&Ntk=P_EPI&Ntt=1538100433176310079472528022999007033&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial

Also check out Lisa Lieberman’s blog at:

http://deathlessprose.com/

Review: The Big Clock

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The Big Clock is an amazing noir story with all the best features of noir.  We have a femme fatale, we have a protagonist in a situation way over his head and has to out smart the enemy to get out of danger, we have adultery, murder, a rich and powerful antagonist and a claustrophobic setting that even as a viewer we want to get out of.

The film is based on a book by the same name written by Kenneth Fearing.  There have been two remakes of this film, or two more movies based on this book, depending on how you look at it.  Police Python 357 is a film made in 1976, I have not seen this one.  The other one is No Way Out starring Kevin Costner and Sean Young, I’ve seen this movie but it was so many years ago I would like to re-watch it before I make any comments about it.

John Farrow directed this, he had a storied career as a director with over 49 credits to his name.  Ray Milland plays our hero and was in many film noir movies as well as westerns and horror films.  We will look at more if his films in the future.  He is amazing in this film as our everyday man who hates his job, but is a very successful author and journalist.  He decides he is going to quit his job for two reasons, he is married and wants to go on his honeymoon and his boss has pushed him to his limit. The boss is played by the great Charles Laughton and our hero’s wife is played by Maureen O’Sullivan.  He goes out for a drink to celebrate his new freedom and runs into a beautiful blonde played by Rita Johnson. She makes him miss his meeting time with his wife, and they make the best of it by having a grand old-time.  They go back to her place and things are implied.  We soon find out our mystery blonde is dead.  His old boss and the magazine he used to write for wants him back for one last assignment, find the man who was with the blonde last night!?!?!  This has an amazing set up and the story does not disappoint.  As the trap tightens around our hero the tension grows.

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Harry Morgan, that went on to fame many years later on T.V.’s Dragnet and M*A*S*H, plays an interesting role as the silent henchman.  We also see the Bride of Frankenstein herself, Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric artist.

Favorite tidbit:  Kenneth Fearing wrote this book as revenge on publisher Henry Luce and his “Time” magazine, where Fearing worked for many years for financial reasons. The character Earl Janoth played by Laughton is based on Luce.

This is an amazing movie and should be watched by any noir fan or classic film fan in general.

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Book Review: Revenge is a Redhead by Phil Beloin Jr

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I recently read a blog that was talking about how pulp literature has become back in favor.  This is good news for noir fans!  Pulp was popular with the working man, because it was short, cheap and talked to the downtrodden.  We had magazines like Black Mask and The Strand and they published their issues on cheap pulp paper, hence the name.  The literary world used slick glossy paper for there publications causing them to be to expensive for some.  Today we have the internet, and especially E-readers.  This makes it easy for independent publications to put out pulp like stories on the cheap.  I also read somewhere that noir stories don’t sell, people want happy ending and likable characters(I guess nobody told Gillian Flynn that?).  Anyway some noir authors had no outlet to get there work out to the public, but now thanks to small independent publishers and E-readers we can get great stories that may never of had a home 10 years ago.

One of these publishers was kind enough to send me 6 books to read and see what I thought.  All Due Respect is a small publisher specializing in pulp and noir books and I thank them for letting me check out there library of work.  Of course I grabbed the slimmest volume first to read.

That book is Phil Beloin Jr’s Revenge is a Redhead and it is only 90 pages, but I could not put it down and read it in one night.  We have two main characters in this short but sweet read.  We have a homeless man with 70 cents in his pocket and a gorgeous femme fatale hooker that moonlights as a stripper when they need somebody to fill in.

Our protagonist is named Rich, but he is far from rich.  We find him in a strip club enjoying the scenery and find out he is flat broke.  He was just kicked out of his father’s house and took off in his beat up Olds and plans on going until the fuel runs out.  He changes his mind and stops at the club instead.  He spends what little money he has on a beautiful redhead stripper named Cherry.  Rich leaves the club and goes to the nearest homeless shelter for a meal and a cot.  Soon our hero wakes up in an unusual situation and it just keeps getting worse from there.  This short book is packed with great dialog and some amazing character development.

This book is pure pulp with a shocking scene on every other page.  Some might find this book a bit offensive…so if your easily offended don’t read it.  If your not…buy this for a quick read of pure entertainment.  I look forward to reading the rest of the books from All Due Respect and look forward to what else they publish in the future.

Here is a link so you can see what else they offer and check back here for more reviews in the near future.

http://allduerespectbooks.com/

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Book Review: Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

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Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty is an Irish noir that takes place in the early 1980’s.  McKinty grow up in Northern Ireland during this harsh time, so the background in which our story takes place is from somebody that lived it.  I had very little knowledge of the climate in the early 1980’s in Northern Ireland, but this book gave me some real historic insight of that turbulent time.

Some of the real life history that is happening during this novel is the Princes Di and Prince Charles wedding, something I do remember, because even though I was young this was on every magazine cover and newspaper headline at the time as well as live coverage on every television channel, all two of them!  So if you where home on that day watching television, you got to see the wedding whether you wanted to or not.

Unfortunately I did not know much about the real news of the time with the hunger strikes, the riots, and the fighting among the Protestants and the Catholics.  As well as England’s attempts to stop all this without siding with terrorists in any way and Margret Thatcher being the head of that balancing act.

A review I recently read, didn’t like the historic facts going on in the background of this story.  I actually learned some from this and didn’t mind the background facts, but did find this made the book a little long and took me longer to get through it than normal.  This was the same way with James Ellroy’s American Tabloid and the first two Coughlin books by Dennis Lehane.  All these books I felt like “When will this book end?!?” but after I was done, I felt like “I sure am glad I read that!”

This is the first of the Sean Duffy books and there are 4 books in the series with the 4th just being released.  After reading all the great reviews on like-minded blogs and on goodreads, I had to jump in and start the series.

The story is Sean Duffy is Catholic and has recently started working in a small Northern Irish town with a mostly Protestant police force.  A dead body is found in an abandon car with a gunshot wound and the hand cut off.  It is soon found out that the hand they found with this body is not from the same person.  They soon find the other body the hand belongs to.  The pattern shows homosexuals are being targeted by a serial killer. Our detective is also given a second case of a young women that appears to have committed suicide in the forest.  Duffy just doesn’t feel right about the suicide, and starts asking questions.  Where has she been for the last 6 months?  Is her ex-husbands incarceration and announcement he is starting a hunger strike have something to do with it?  As our story goes on and the more we learn the more questions we have.

This is a very good book and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.  I do have to take a break from Duffy for now, this is not a light read, but I will be back soon.

An Interesting Article From Dave Zeltserman

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This is an interesting article on what Zeltserman considers noir.  He has some good points, and some interesting reading recommendations.

http://artery.wbur.org/2015/03/16/dave-zeltserman-noir

Zeltserman is making a counterpoint to Dennis Lehane’s view of noir in this article:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/02/24/hey-author-dennis-lehane-misses-boston-snow/6ipzoCj3JggLgOMQHBGoMK/story.html

I like both there takes, but Hammett and Chandler will always be noir heroes to me, no matter how good an argument Zeltserman has.