Patti Abbott's "Friday's Forgotten Books"

My piece on The Name of the Game is Death is up at Patti's great blog, right here:
pattinase.
Thanks again, Patti, for letting me ramble on about one of my favorite books.

Donna Moore's Essential Noir

Donna Moore is the author of Old Dogs, a rollicking fun heist novel, as well as 2007 Lefty Award winner Go to Helena Handbasket. She has short stories in various anthologies, including Damn Near Dead and A Hell of a Woman (both Busted Flush Press). Donna runs the always amusing and entertaining blog Big Beat From Badsville, which focuses on Scottish crime fiction. I'm honored to have her here.

Donna says:

"A scan of my bookshelves revealed these as the first
twenty-ahem-three to present themselves to me. A couple of them are
not crime fiction, but they're definitely noir. A couple of them might
not be someone else's definition of noir, but they're mine. I get all
excited when I read a book which tortures its protagonist in the way
that noir fiction does. I hug myself gleefully as the poor guy (or
gal) desperately tries to scrabble his way out of a dirty great hole
and when finally, it looks as though hope arrives in the form of a
shovel...well, the only use for that shovel is to beat the protagonist
about the head before chucking more dirt on top of him. Ah, I do love
a nice bit of happy noir, me."

And Donna's list:

KNOCKEMSTIFF - Donald Ray Pollock
HELL OF A WOMAN - Jim Thompson
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY - Charles Willeford
I WAS DORA SUAREZ - Derek Raymond
SLAMMER - Allan Guthrie
IN A LONELY PLACE - Dorothy B Hughes
NIGHTMARE ALLEY - William Lindsay Gresham (and if you've only ever
seen the film, the book is so much darker)
THE DEATH OF SWEET MISTER - Daniel Woodrell
BURY ME DEEP - Megan Abbott
RILKE ON BLACK - Ken Bruen
DISTURBING THE PEACE - Richard Yates
TOBACCO ROAD - Erskine Caldwell
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE - James M Cain
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER - Davis Grubb
SQUEEZE PLAY - James McKimmey
THE DISTANCE - Eddie Muller
TWISTED CITY - Jason Starr
LOSS - Tony Black
THE BOTTOMS - Joe Lansdale
CROOKED LITTLE VEIN - Warren Ellis
WILEY'S LAMENT - Lono Waiwaiole
FAST ONE - Paul Cain
BEAST OF BURDEN - Ray Banks

Al Leverone's Essential Noir

The more of these lists I see, the more I suspect my own list of essential noir novels is fairly pedestrian-- yeah, there are some writers who seem to have made everyone's list (Cain, Hammett, etc) but so far every writer and critic who has contributed has pleasantly surprised me. Al Leverone, author of the forthcoming thriller Final Vector, is no exception.

Al says:

"I'm a 51 year old writer living in New Hampshire with my wife Sue, three children, one adorable granddaughter and a cat who has used up eight lives. A three-time Derringer Award Finalist for excellence in short mystery fiction, my work has been featured in Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Shroud Magazine, Twisted Dreams, Mysterical-E, FlashShot, Crime and Suspense and Black Hound, among others, as well as the print anthologies TEN FOR TEN and NORTHERN HAUNTS. My debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR, is due for release by Medallion Press in February, 2011."

And his list:
1) The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
2) Double Indemnity - James M. Cain
3) The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain
4) The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
5) The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
6) L.A. Confidential - James Ellroy
7) Cape Fear - John D. MacDonald
8) The Score - Richard Stark
9) Money For Nothing - Donald Westlake
10) Eight Million Ways to Die - Lawrence Block
11) The Drowning Pool - Ross MacDonald
12) Dead Aim - Thomas Perry
13) Strega - Andrew Vachss
14) Persuader - Lee Child
15) Trunk Music - Michael Connelly
16) The Wheelman - Duane Swierczynski
17) The Cold Spot - Tom Piccirilli
18) The Coldest Mile - Tom Piccirilli
19) Small Crimes - Dave Zeltserman
20) A Bad Day for Sorry - Sophie Littlefield

Vincent Zandri's Essential Noir

Vin "Action Man" Zandri, when he's not writing novels, is a globe-trotting photo-journalist, living a life shmucks like you and me can only dream about. His characters, however, don't have things quite so good. Among his books are Godchild and Moonlight Falls, and his newest is The Innocent, a nicely-packaged new edition of his first novel, As Catch Can.


1. The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

2. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

3. To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway

4. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James, M. Cain

5. The Getaway, Jim Thompson

6. The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson

7. Falconer, John Cheever

8. Homo Faber, Max Frisch

9. The Godwulf Manuscript, Robert B. Parker

10. A Catskill Eagle, Robert B. Parker

11. Wilderness, Robert B. Parker

12. The Last Good Kiss, Jim Crumley

13. The Wrong Case, Jim Crumley

14. Dancing Bear, Jim Crumley

15. The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes, KC Constantine

16. Tough Guys Don’t Dance, Norman Mailer

17. The Executioners Song, Norman Mailer

18. No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy

19. Caught Stealing, Charlie Huston

20. Killer, David Zeltserman

NPP interviews NPP, and Heath interviews Heath...

...over at Sea Minor, Nigel Bird's terrific blog.

Three French Films Noir

The French get it. Here's three movies that exemplify that.

Clean Slate (Coup de Torchon)
1981
French film based on Pop. 1280, by Jim Thompson, except the action is moved to French W. Africa in the late ‘30’s. It still works well. Police chief Cordier (Phillipe Noiret) comes on like a dim-witted buffoon, but when the town pimps push him too far, the murderous psychopath inside him emerges and he decides to wipe the whole town clean.

Shoot the Piano Player
1962-Francois Truffaut
Based on the novel Down There, by David Goodis, another example of a French director nailing the noir feel beautifully. After a personal disaster, an ex-concert pianist now plays in a seedy Paris café. His girlfriend wants him to make a comeback, but when he gets involved with some inept gangsters everything starts falling apart.
Solid acting, solid story, and even some surprising moments of humor. Superior movie.

Diabolique
1955
A boarding school master (and complete asshole) is targeted for murder by his wife and his lover, who’ve had enough of his bullying and cruelty. But after they pull it off, the wife becomes more and more convinced that her husband is actually still alive. Crazy plot twists, mounting paranoia and jangled nerves follow.

Nigel Bird's Essential Noirs

Nigel Bird is a Support For Learning teacher in a primary school near Edinburgh.  Co-Producer of the Rue Bella magazine between 1998 and 2003, he has recently had work published by ‘The Reader’, ‘Crimespree’ and 'Needle'.  He was interviewed by Spinetingler for their ‘Conversations With The Bookless’ series earlier this year, won the ‘Watery Grave Invitational 2010’ contest over at ‘The Drowning Machine’ and has recently made debuts at ‘A Twist Of Noir’, 'Pulp Metal Magazine and ‘Dark Valentine Magazine’. His story ‘An Arm And A Leg’ will appear in the ‘Best Of British Crime’ anthology (edited by Maxim Jakubowski) in 2011 and ‘No Pain No Gain’ has just been accepted by Crimefactory. His blog ‘Sea Minor’ is currently running the ‘Dancing With Myself’ series of interviews. He hopes to complete a draft of his novel by the end of 2010.

Nigel writes:
"My memory for names has never been good. I have to beat around the bush to get to where I need to get. 'That book, you know, the one where god comes down to earth as a human and they nail him to one of those wooden things...'. It’s something I’ve had to get used to. My top 20 noir novels, then, includes those titles that are unforgettable even to me. I’m not the most widely read of individuals, but I’m going to give it my best shot. I do this in the knowledge that my pile of To Be Read novels looks so good it there are definitely going to be a few that would have made the list had I got to them earlier. I’ve also tried not to pick a list of the obvious in a bid to keep the series interesting and in doing so I’m stretching both the definition of ‘noir’ and of ‘novel’ in some cases."

Here goes:
Georges Simenon – The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
Allan Guthrie – Slammer
James M Cain – Double Indemnity
Tristran Egolf – Lord Of The Barnyard
Paul Auster – Man In The Dark
Donald Ray Pollock – Knockemstiff
Benjamin Whitmer – Pike
Albert Camus – The Outsider
Franz Kafka – The Trial
Jim Thompson – The Getaway
Charlie Williams – Deadfolk
Lawrence Block – Eight Million Ways To Die
Patrick McCabe – The Butcher Boy
Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep
Ray Banks – Donkey Punch
The Longshot – Katie Kitamura
Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon
Don Winslow – Savages
Paul Cain – Fast One
Kate Atkinson – When Will There Be Good News
Joe Lansdale – Bad Chili