Damaged

Happy New Year, friends. Let’s talk for a minute about damaged people, our fascination with them, and why emotionally-scarred protagonists move us so much.

What was it, a couple of years ago now, when the actor Owen Wilson tried to kill himself? I don’t know all the particulars, nor do I really care that much, but I do recall a brief flurry of media attention about it that died away as quickly as it started. Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky character actor, seemingly without a care in the world, gets depressed over a girlfriend or some-such and tries to top himself… well, I’m not without compassion, even though I never gave Owen Wilson much thought before that. I silently wished him well and went on with things.

But I learned something interesting about my wife then. Like me, she’d never been particularly interested in Owen Wilson. But after his failed attempt at suicide, he was suddenly… intriguing. We watched a flurry of his movies, some good, some bad, and I got a sense that Kim was searching for something inside the actor, some indication of the turbulent waters that roiled under the surface of his easy grin.

Her fascination with him came and went pretty quickly, but I found it all quite telling. She, like almost all of us, is compassionate about the emotional pain that other people carry. But more than that, she—and we—find it… interesting.

While Wilson’s personal anguish was well-disguised until then, the writers we tend to deify wore their pain and discontent on their sleeves. I doubt anyone was surprised that day in ’61 when Hemingway topped himself. And who can say they were thrown for a loop when Hunter Thompson did the same thing? Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, David Goodis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiell Hammett, Kurt Vonnegut… our personal pantheons are crowded with writers who seemed driven by pain. Even the Patron Saint of American Writers, Mark Twain himself, was, in his later years, fueled by misery.

And the stories they wrote reflected it. The protagonists of their stories were, usually, not heroic in the traditional sense—they were desperate for… something. A sense of accomplishment, or closure, or self-worth. And more often than not, none of those things came by the end of the story.

There’s a looming sense of unresolved, open-endedness to the best stories from those writers, an absolute refusal to sugar-coat their fictional worlds. They were bitter reflections of the universe in the writer’s minds. Dark, unforgiving places where nothing pure could really take root and flourish.

Why do so many of us respond to that? Why do we find it so… satisfying?

Do we recognize that world?

Granted, there are many readers (maybe even the majority of them) who don’t want to linger there. They want real heroes to identify with, they want healthy relationships played out on the page, they want resolution, and to see the bad guys lose and the universe set right. Who can blame them for wanting that? And maybe those readers are mentally healthier than the rest of us.

Or maybe, just maybe, those readers are afraid of something. I don’t know.

As for me, I’ll take the damaged protagonist, and the ambiguous ending and the universe askew. I know that place and am comfortable there.

Hardboiled/Noir Writers Part 7

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six

--The Ones Who Carried the Torch--

Hardboiled/Noir never really went away. Although the Golden era ended in the early ‘60’s, there were still plenty of writers who loved the form too much to let it die, and many of them made lasting contributions and continued to add amazing diversity and vision.

The hardboiled school, especially, thrived in its own way through the seventies and eighties. There were many great detective writers in that period—some more hardboiled than others—and by the mid-eighties a small renaissance had taken place.

The Travis McGee books by John D. MacDonald continued to sell well, and McGee’s tough guy sensitivity (so at odds with earlier tough guys) rubbed off on his contemporaries. Robert Parker’s books about Boston P.I. Spenser took the genre in a new direction, featuring a hero who loved literature and philosophy, respected women, and used violence only as a last resort.

Female writers of detective fiction began having a serious impact. Sue Grafton and her protagonist Kinsey Millhone hit the bestseller charts with A is for Alibi and a whole alphabet of mysteries after; Sara Paretsky broke sales records with her series about female private dick V.I. Warshawski, starting with Indemnity Only.

But while these developments were a good sign for society as a whole, it’s debatable whether or not the new sensitivity was good for the soul of noir. The thing that defined the genre had always been a sort of disaffection, a—dare I say it?—existential angst.

But even when it looked as if the hardboiled world might suddenly go softboiled, there were still writers of vision down there in the trenches, dredging up all sorts of savory ugliness. Here’s a few of the most noteworthy:



James Crumley proved hugely influential on the detective story writers who came after him with his books about alcoholic dick C.W. Shugrue, and another brief series about a character called Milo Milodragovitch. Here’s a few to start:
The Last Good Kiss
The Mexican Tree Duck
The Wrong Case
The Dancing Bear



George V. Higgins debut novel startled readers with its crisp, realistic dialogue and almost laconically depicted action. He wrote several fine novels throughout the '70's and '80's, but he'll be most remembered for his first, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The Digger's Game
A City on a Hill
Dreamland



Edward Bunker brought to his fiction his own life experiences as a convicted bank robber and drug dealer. He was the real deal, and his hardboiled prose jabbed relentlessly at the hypocrisy that Bunker saw inherent within so-called "straight" society.
No Beast So Fierce
The Animal Factory
Little Boy Blue
Dog Eat Dog



Bill Pronzini is mostly known for his terrific series about the Nameless Detective (who first appeared in 1971), Pronzini is also a noted scholar of the hardboiled school and a terrific editor. Fortunately for us, he’s still writing tight, solid hardboiled masterpieces. Here’s a few by him:
Savages
Fever
Schemers
The Other Side of Silence



Joe Gores: Like Hammett before him, Gores turned a brief career as a P.I. into a convincing career as a detective story writer. He’s mostly famous for his D.K.A. series, but also for the screenplay to the movie “Hammett”.
Spade & Archer: a Prequel to The Maltese Falcon
Glass Tiger
Cases
Cons, Scams & Grifts



Lawrence Block made an impact with his clever and fast-paced noir novels in the '60's (see Part Five), and in the decades that followed he created many memorable series characters, such as Evan Tanner, Keller, and Bernie Rhodenbarr. But his greatest impact began in 1976 with the first Matt Scudder book. These are my favorite P.I. novels, although Scudder isn’t strictly a P.I. They are intense, bleak, and tightly plotted, and Scudder is one of the more intriguingly damaged protagonists you’ll ever read about. Here's a sampling:
Time to Murder and Create
The Sins of the Fathers
Out on the Cutting Edge
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
In the Midst of Death
A Stab in the Dark



Like Block, Donald Westlake hit it big at the tail end of the second Golden Age of Noir. As Richard Stark, he wrote the one-of=a-kind series about Parker, the icily amoral professional thief(again, see Part Five). But throughout the seventies, eighties, nineties and 00's, Westlake also penned some of the most clever and funny "heist novels" ever written. Near the end of his career, he made a return to edgy noir under his real name, turning out a handful of books that assured his legacy would never die. Here's a handful of highly-recommended noirs by this master, from the beginning of his career to the end.
The Mercenaries (aka The Cutie)
Pity Him Afterwards
Somebody Owes Me Money
The Axe
The Hook
Put a Lid on It



Ed Gorman is a treasure; one of those old-school workhorses who seldom lands a foot wrong in his plotting and pacing. His books are models of what solid detective fiction should look like, especially his series about Jack Dwyer. A sampling:
Grave’s Retreat
The Poker Club
Rough Cut
Breaking Up is Hard to Do
The Midnight Room



Loren Estleman: You'd think the whole "private dick" thing would be totally played out by now, but Estleman infuses it with new life every time while maintaining its best traditions. Maybe I’m biased, being a Detroit guy, but Estleman’s Amos Walker novels are sharply observant, funny, and paced faster than a Detroit freeway. For the pure P.I. story, the line goes from Chandler to Ross MacDonald and right to Estleman. He’s also penned a terrific series of crime thrillers taking place in various eras of Detroit’s history. Here’s a random sampling:
Motor City Blue
Every Brilliant Eye
Poison Blonde
Retro
Nicotine Kiss
American Detective
Whiskey River
Stress



Derek Raymond has been called the Father of English Noir. His concerns as a writer seem to have been particularly existential. He's most famous for his series of "Factory" detective novels.
He Died with His Eyes Open
The Devil's Home on Leave
How the Dead Live
I Was Dora Suarez


Max Allan Collins is most notable for his Nate Heller series of P.I. mysteries. What makes these books worth reading, aside from Collins dead-on voice and great plotting, are the fact-based historical twentieth-century murders each novel is built around. Apparently, Heller was around for every major crime committed in the 20th Century. Try these:
Angel in Black
Dying in the Postwar World
True Crime
True Detective
The Million Dollar Wound

Next time: More writers who kept the flame burning, and the Age of the Door-stop Thriller.

go to Part Eight

Hardboiled/Noir Writers Part 5

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Here are some of the other great talents that emerged in the Golden Age of Noir:

William Lindsay Gresham wasn't prolific by any means, but his 1946 novel Nightmare Alley is still well-regarded as a twisted, bizarre noir that gave readers an uncomfortably close look at the depraved world of the carny circuit. Tightly written and very, very tense.



Irving Shulman. He started off as a writer of tough stories and ended as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers, where he wrote the screenplay for Rebel Without a Cause. Noteworthy novels:

The Amboy Dukes
Cry Tough
The Square Trap



In latter years, Ira Levin would write Rosemary’s Baby, The Boys from Brazil, and The Stepford Wives, but he’s on this list primarily for one novel, his first. A masterpiece of noir.

A Kiss Before Dying



Bruno Fischer was an active Socialist who actually ran for office in New York. When he wasn’t directly involved in politics, he wrote great crime novels. Amazingly prolific in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, he suddenly stopped writing until the ‘80’s, when he produced his final novel. Here are just a few:

Fools Rush In
The Restless Hands
House of Flesh
So Wicked, My Love



Elliot Chaze was a newspaperman who occasionally wrote novels. In the ‘50’s, he wrote three, but only one of them, Black Wings Has My Angel, was a noir. It’s too bad he didn’t tackle the genre again, since he managed to produce a cult favorite. Some critics think it’s the best book Gold Medal ever put out.



John D. MacDonald is hugely important in both noir and hardboiled circles. For tightly-paced detective fiction with a very likeable hero, you can’t go wrong with any of the Travis McGee books. This list, however, focuses on his “non-series” work, all masterly-plotted and beautifully written. MacDonald was the consummate professional of noir.

The Brass Cupcake
Murder for the Bride
Judge Me Not
Weep For Me
The Damned
Dead Low Tide
The Neon Jungle
Cancel All Our Vows
All Those Condemned
A Bullet for Cinderella
Cry Hard, Cry Fast
April Evil
Death Trap
Cape Fear (aka, The Executioners)
One Monday We Killed Them All



William P. McGivern was another one who went on to do teleplays in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He wrote convincingly about cops skating on the edge of moral corruption as well as heisters and professional criminals.

Shield For Murder
The Big Heat
Oddsa Against Tomorrow
Rogue Cop
Night Extra



Ed McBain was the creator of the best-selling ‘87th Precinct’ police procedurals. The first few in the series, at least, were great examples of hardboiled, told, for a change, from the point of view of honest cops (honest cops? In hardboiled/noir fiction? You’re kidding me, right?).

The Blackboard Jungle (as Evan Hunter)
Cop Hater
The Mugger
The Pusher
The Con Man
King’s Ransom


So you may have noticed a distinct lack of the female voice in the genre throughout the decades. Noir was a boy’s club for the most part, no question. There may as well have been a sign on the door saying No Girls Allowed. But a small handful of brilliant women writers broke in anyway, and showed the boys a thing or two about how to get it done.



Patricia Highsmith was a master (mistress?) of high tension and brutally cynical prose. Her heroes were invariably amoral sociopaths, and her brand of humor was so dark as to completely blot out any light whatsoever. She was well-known as a first-grade misanthrope, and it shows in her work. A really terrific writer; if you haven’t read her, do it now.

Strangers on a Train
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Blunderer
Deep Water
Eleven
Little Tales of Misogyny
Slowly, Slowly, in the Wind
A Game for the Living
This Sweet Sickness
Two Faces of January




By the 1950’s, Dorothy B. Hughes had stopped writing to settle into married life, but throughout the ‘40’s her work was extremely popular. She wrote several books, but three in particular are considered benchmarks in the genre:

The So-Blue Marble
Ride the Pink Horse
In a Lonely Place



Vin Packer was the pen name of the prolific Marjane Meaker, who is remembered mostly today for launching the so-called "lesbian pulp" underground movement of the '50's. In truth, though, the vast majority of her remarkable books had nothing to do with lesbianism. They were solid noir with complex characters and a notable sense of non-conformity.

Come Destroy Me
Whisper His Sin
The Thrill Kids
The Young and the Violent
Dark Don't Catch Me
3 Day Terror



Helen Nielson was the only female writer of the ‘50’s who contributed regularly to Manhunt and other digest crime magazines of the time, and her novels were every bit as bleak and nasty as the boys.

Obit Delayed
Detour
Stranger in the Dark
The Crime is Murder
False Witness
Seven Days Before Dying



By the early ‘60’s, the explosion of noir fiction was winding down. One of the last of the old school to make a significant mark was Donald Westlake. Under the pen name Richard Stark, Westlake wrote the terrific series of books about professional thief Parker. Brutal and fast-paced, they are some kind of benchmark in noir. I can’t recommend them highly enough. Here's just a few.

The Hunter
The Man with the Getaway Face
The Outfit
The Mourner
The Score
The Jugger
The Seventh
The Handle
The Rare Coin Score
Deadly Edge
Slayground



Lawrence Block was coming up at the same time as Westlake, and in fact the two men were great friends. While Westlake disguised himself as Stark, Block took on multiple pen-names and wrote in a wide variety of styles and genres. Through the early '60's, he wrote a solid string of noirs that, fortunately, have seen print again in recent years.

Grifter's Game
The Girl with the Long Green Heart (aka Mona)
Death Pulls a Double-Cross (aka Coward's Kiss)
You Could Call It Murder (aka Markham)
A Diet of Treacle (aka Pads are for Passion)
Deadly Honeymoon

The individual impact of Lawrence Block wasn't over, however, and neither was Westlake's. More about both writers when we come to part seven.

But before that:
Next Wednesday, a brief diversion into... Espionage Noir!

Go to Part Six