KISS YOUR ASS GOOD-BYE AND OTHER HARD-BOILED TALES OF CRIME FICTION – a very small sampling of books and movie adaptations.

My very brief foray into the seamy world of pulp fiction was the result of inheriting a small collection of paperbacks primarily published in the 20s through the 50s, the heyday of the hard-boiled school of crime writing. Although a short lived experience, the books I read serve as an excellent contrast to today’s more elaborate crime fiction versions. Only two names were previously familiar to me — Dashiell Hammett (a Pinkerton detective before he became a writer) and Jim Thompson — but they and the many others of that era significantly influenced today’s crime writers as well as the film industry.

Many of their books were turned into noir movies, the making of which continues to this day.* Although the plots are less innovatory and the writing styles generally less sophisticated than those of today’s mystery writers– either unduly flat or excessively overwrought — they are a refresher on the evolution of the genre and a reflection of their time. They were also a reflection of the rigid roles men and women were assigned, a last gasp of the patriarchy — in crime fiction at least. As always, they revealed the dark side of the mind, and the amoral, disagreeable denizens inhabiting that world. Most importantly, the once derided crime fiction genre was ultimately transformed into an art form that flourishes today.

As a kid, I read whatever I could get my hands on, particularly if there was an “adult” theme. My exposure to mysteries started with Enid Blyton and the Famous Five, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Sherlock Holmes, but it was a constant battle between books my mother insisted I read (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) and those I wanted to read (The Circus of Dr. Lao). I do remember being expressly forbidden to read anything by Mickey Spillane. One summer in the late 50s at a rented house in Rehoboth Beach, my brothers and I discovered a lurid cache of old detective magazines. We spent all of our spare time reading them, unbeknownst to our parents — True Detective (“Man Cut Up, Boiled, Fed to the Birds”), Real Detective (“Look for the Love-Mad Murderer”), Official Detective (“Pretty Little Bobbi Was Mutilated Beyond Belief”) and the like.

Agatha Christie (particularly the Poirot books), many of Georges Simenon’s books (Maigret and the stand-alone novels), Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series, the gritty humor and memorable dialogue in all of Elmore Leonard’s books, Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee books, Thomas Lee Burke’s atmospheric Dave Robicheaux series, and everything by Patricia Highsmith occupied some of my time as I grew older. John Le Carre’s cerebral and fatalistic examinations of corruption and mendacity in the Cold War world were most compelling, but all of these writers dealt with criminal psychology and were effective storytellers.

Crime fiction has evolved and blossomed into today’s enormous bank of excellent crime fiction writers and now encompasses many categories — Scandinavian noir (Stieg Larsen, Jo Nesbo, Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum and others); Australian, Canadian, French, Celtic and Brit noir (Kate Atkinson, Peter Temple, Malcolm Mackay, Ian Rankin, Adrian McKinty, Fred Vargas, Tana French, Mick Herron, Stuart Neville et al), psychological crime (Gillian Flynn); police procedurals (James Lee Burke, Tony Hillerman, Walter Mosley); capers (Elmore Leonard); humorous crime (Carl Hiaasen); cosy mysteries (Rita Mae Brown) and and too many more to list. These writers frequently overlap into other categories, but the breadth of the genre is enormous.

The tough guy school of writing was a precursor to the flowering of a more sophisticated writing style and greater in-depth psychological studies of the criminal mind. The following books give new meaning to the definition of misogyny and patriarchy. From a sociological standpoint, reading these books is illuminating but for no other reason than they are a mirror of their time and the culture.

CHARLES WILLEFORD, 1919-1988

Willeford had a checkered career serving many stints in the military where he won the Silver Star, Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre. He was a hobo, an editor, a Philosophy and English professor, a student of art and painting, and a prolific writer. Five of his books have been made into movies. He wrote over 20 crime books, plays, novellas, short stories, and poetry. These two books were written in 1971 and 1987, beyond the original hard boiled fiction time frame, but are typical in style and substance to that era.

“Willeford creates a world in which the predatory cannibalism of American capitalism provides the model for all human relations, in which the American success ethic mercilessly casts aside all those who are unable or unwilling to compete, and in which the innate human appreciation of artistic beauty is cruelly distorted by the exigencies of mass culture.” – Writer David Cochran

KISS YOUR ASS GOOD-BYE, 1987

When have you ever read a book where the closing sentence was: “Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha–Ha, Ha, Ha.”? Well, let me direct you to Charles Willeford’s Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye, a book published one year before Willeford’s death at 69. Writen some three decades after the traditional hard-boiled era ended, it could easily have been written in 1955. Set in 80s Miami, the anti-hero, a successful salesman and womanizer, is casually homophobic, misognyistic, racist, and anti-semitic, a cliche-ridden relic of bad male behavior. He fears for his life because of his connection with an exotic woman (she has underarm hair) whose husband thinks they are having an affair. Allusions to “women’s lib,” cock-teasers, “stewardae,” nurses, and dating, and frequent references to women’s inanity (they are never smart) and their desire to marry abound, and will no doubt bring a wry smile to your lips along with an unpleasant flash of recognition. Today’s toxic masculinity was yesterday’s typical attitudes and are skillfully characterized by the author. The writing style is terse and abrupt similar to the old Dragnet radio series (“Ladies and Gentlemen, the story you are about to hear is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent,” etc.) the narrative does move along, and Willeford throws in some unusual words like idioform, nugatory, and enuresis. It is a highly implausible plot but an easy read.

THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY, 1971

Again, Heresy was written two decades after the classic hard-boiled era, but is a riveting story about a young art critic who aspires to be famous and rich. He is persuaded by a wealthy art collector to obtain a painting at all costs from a once famous, now reclusive painter, the creator of the “nihilistic surrealism” movement (the author’s term). A plan is concocted to defraud the art world and cement his reputation as the definitive critic. Accompanied by a beautiful woman he has just met, the critic sinks deeper into a web of murder and deceit. Willeford knows the art world, the buyers, sellers, and galleries, and the book is full of arty details that greatly enhance the far fetched plot — with a nice twist at the end.

The movie which came out in 2020 stars Claes Bang as the critic, Elizabeth Dibecki as his lover, Donald Sutherland as the reclusive painter, and Mick Jagger, of all people, as the wealthy collector. It is an entertaining suspense story, and although the location and some names have been changed (no doubt to protect the innocent), it is a relatively faithful recreation of the book (on Apple, Prime).

DAVID GOODIS, 1917- 1967

Goodis was a talented and prolific writer who died at an early age. Born in Philadelphia, he lived between coasts alternating between Los Angeles and New York. After some years in Hollywood as a screenwriter, he returned to Philadelphia to write crime stories. An important intellectual property rights and copyright law decision was settled after his death involving his book, Dark Passage. He wrote 18 crime fiction books, and many short stories and screenplays. Over 16 movies have been made from his books and stories, many directed by French directors including Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player), Clement, Beineix, and Tourneur.

“The depiction of gutter life in his ’50s novels is not more realistic than the rendition of the lush life and middle-class existence was in his earlier books — which always read as if the details were mail-ordered from catalogues. For Goodis and his characters, Skid Row is not merely the end of the line, it is also an imaginary land, a fantasy land, the hell they have elected to fall into.” Writer Philippe Garnier.

Critic Dennis Drabelle said of him: “Despite his [university] education, a combination of ethnicity (Jewish) and temperament allowed him to empathize with outsiders: the working poor, the unjustly accused, fugitives, criminals.”

STREET OF NO RETURN, 1954

Whitey, a once famous singer, is now a homeless alcoholic, a hobo who can barely whisper because of a murderous attack damaging his vocal chords. It is a bleak look at a ruined life, a talented man whose unfortunate infatuation with the wrong woman determines his decline. Race riots between the “Americans” (white people) and the “Puerto Ricans” are raging. Someone is purposely stoking their anger towards each other in a way that replicates our most recent racial turmoil in the 21st century, and the police are desperate to quell the deadly riots. Whitey leaves Skid Row after a riot in search of booze and becomes embroiled in a twisted series of events involving upright and corrupt cops, a kind loner who offers him shelter after a beating, a hopeless love angle, and cruel men and women conspiring to ruin a neighborhood for profit.

Depending on how you feel about Keith Carradine (an acquired taste like scat singing), the 1989 movie directed by Samuel Fuller, features Valentina Vargas as a sultry dancer leading Carradine down the road to perdition. The dialogue and music are sappy, but the script adheres to the plot. Carradine sings. The opening riot scene is dramatic and violent but well photographed, like a choreographed dance sequence. There are some good performances from the villains, but I recommend the book (on Apple, Prime).

NIGHTFALL, 1947

Even the most casual reader of crime fiction knows that it’s never a good idea to take $300,000 from a criminal gang, go on the lam, and then lose the money. Our lonely and perplexed hero, Vanning, does just that and reaps the consequences in a jaunt from Seattle to Denver to Chicago to Manhattan. He is a commercial artist who falls for a woman who isn’t what she appears to be, all the while trying to avoid the criminals who are after him. An insightful police detective, Fraser, feels that he has a psychological connection with Vanning after spending a long time watching and following him. There is a great deal of explanatory dialogue, a diagnosis of “regressive amnesia,” and a fortuitous and timely recollection that concludes the surprise ending. This is a time when drugstores still had soda fountains, women were called dames, men wore hats, and phone booths had telephone operators. There is less macho swagger than in many of the era’s books since our hero is a more sensitive type. There is not, unfortunately, much suspense.

Made into a 1957 movie directed by Tourneur, the movie has some energy and star presence with Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, and Anne Bancroft. Bancroft, the love interest, plays a different, less interesting role in the movie plot. If you like 50s movies, it is entertaining enough but is most definitely a throwback to a more innocent time in filmmaking (on Prime). I recommend the book.

JIM THOMPSON, 1906-1977

Thompson’s father was a conflicted man — once a teacher, then a sheriff, he was involved in an embezzlement scheme and fled to Mexico. He later returned and reunited with the family and made and lost a fortune in the oil business. Jim Thompson’s own mixed feelings about his father inspired some of his books, one of them being The Killer Inside Me, later twice made into movies. Thompson was a bellboy, oilfield laborer, IWW union member, head of the Oklahoma Federal Writers Project (a New Deal program), Communist Party member for 3 years, an aircraft factory worker, a reporter, writer, Hollywood screenplay writer, and TV writer. He wrote more than 30 novels, with at least 11 of them made into movies. Commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, he was rediscovered in the late 80s, and is now considered one of the best representatives of that era.

“The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn’t know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave ‘lets’ inherent in the foregoing: He let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it.” Writer Stephen King.

THE GRIFTERS, 1963

Son of a 13 year old mother who came from “backwoods white trash,” Roy Dillon grows up under her uncaring and cruel tutelage. He moves out as soon as he can after he graduates from high school and begins to learn the short-con grifting game. He meets an older man who becomes his mentor in the fine art of swindling — the dice, the tat, the smack, the twenties — all the while living an unassuming life as a salesman in a cheap hotel. Ever calculating and enterprising, Roy has put aside a large sum of money earned from his con pursuits. Roy is injured while trying to con a shopkeeper, and his mother, Lilly, unexpectedly shows up again. She is working for a gangster who has punished her for an indiscretion, and needs money. His mistress, Moira, wants him to join forces with her to work a “long con.” Needless to say, the two women clash immediately. The ending is violent and surprising with strong Oedipal overtones. The book is a study in deception and trust, but is also an in-depth study of the con game and the people who play it. Thompson’s writing style feels more contemporary, less laden with stilted references, and his characters are darkly authentic.

The 1990 Stephen Frears movie with Annette Bening, Angelica Huston, and John Cusack is excellent, one of the best adaptions. It is set in contemporary times, but adheres to the book plot. The screenplay was written by Donald Westlake, another well known crime fiction writer, and was produced by Martin Scorsese. Huston, Bening, and Cusack are all splendid as conflicted con artists with complicated interactions and motivation. Murder and betrayal ensue (on Apple, Prime).

Two other Thompson film adaptations are worth mentioning: The Getaway and The Killer Inside Me. The Getaway is a 1972 film directed by Sam Peckinpah, and stars Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw (who, thankfully, doesn’t have to do much acting), Ben Johnson, Al Lettieri, Sally Struthers and Slim Pickens. It features a quintessential car race, limited dialogue (“punch it, baby”), double crosses, shootouts, and music by Quincy Jones (on Apple, Prime).

The Killer Inside Me is a 2010 movie starring Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba, directed by Michael Winterbottom. Affleck is a young, piano playing, opera loving cop with sadistic tendencies. He has a very flat affect that in combination with his high voice and calm manner create a chilling and menacing atmosphere, enhanced by the small town West Texas location. Fortunately, there’s a suspicious detective who persists in his pursuit of the unknown murderer (on Apple, Prime).

JAMES M. CAIN, 1892-1977

Cain was a descendant of an old Irish immigrant family who settled in Connecticut in the early 1850s. Highly educated, his parents instilled in him a love of literature and music. His mother had trained as an opera singer and his father was a college professor. Cain worked as a Math and English teacher, a high school principal, a journalist, served in the military, tried to become an opera singer, had a close association with H.L Mencken at The American Mercury and Walter Lippmann at The New York World, and was briefly managing editor of The New Yorker. He was a successful writer known for The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Serenade (all of them made into movies) and many others.

“Still just a euphemism for Hollywood, Los Angeles was Cain’s natural habitat more than he knew, teetering between the transcendent and the tawdry, swarming with the forsaken, disenchanted, and besotted, among them fugitives from Hitler’s coming holocaust. Centerless and gravityless, Los Angeles was the Elba of Entropy for exiles like Cain who, writing scripts within a martini’s throw of Faulkner and Fitzgerald, honed self-loathing into an aesthetic.” Critic Steve Erickson

SERENADE, 1937

Let us just say that the anti-hero in Cain’s thriller (you might even call it a soap opera), John Henry Sharp, does not like Mexicans, Mexican food, Mexican roads, Mexican hotels, mariachi music — Mexico in general. He does love and has a deep knowledge of opera. In fact, he was once a famous opera singer whose voice cracked and he ended up a bum in Mexico. Sharp is a tough cookie with the soul of an artist and a questionable code of ethics who falls for a prostitute in Mexico, and then recovers his voice. They make a perilous trip back by ship to San Francisco, commanded by an opera loving captain, braving torrential rains and crooked cops en route beforehand. There is a fascinating and detailed description on how to catch and cook an iguana. Juana illegally enters the US. and they go to Hollywood. Sharp quickly becomes a overnight celebrity as a singing cowboy, and is then offered a job singing at the Met in New York. He takes the offer without regard for his Hollywood contract since he is sick of Hollywood. He meets up again with a wealthy gay impresario/conductor he knew before in Paris, and therein the real problems arise. Juana suspects he is attracted to the conductor and the plot spirals downwards to the ultimate and tragic ending. As a side note, any opera lover would enjoy reading this because of the lengthy and detailed discussions about opera — a veritable master class in technique, history and trivia.

Serenade was made into a 1956 movie with Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine (Olivia de Havilland’s sister), and Vincent Price, and directed by Anthony Mann. Much of the movie is filmed in San Miguel Allende long before it became a tourist mecca. It’s entertaining enough but lacks the grittiness of the book and has a significantly different plot. One could almost call this a musical since it is primarily a vehicle for Lanza’s singing. Here, our hero begins his singing career with a glittering start, but loses the will to sing after his heartless socialite love (Fontaine) goes off with another man. The acting is histrionic, the plot is unrecognizable, and the prose is purple (“You lived through the fever but your heart is dead.”) Eventually, Lanza regains his voice and returns to San Francisco with a new Mexican love as his wife, not a prostitute but the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and confronts the cold-hearted socialite. There is a pretend bull fight and a car accident, but in the end true love prevails (twin beds, a few kisses), and the homosexual factor has been erased. I recommend the book although Lanza’s singing is quite something (on Apple, Prime).

I also read Cain’s The Butterfly (1946), but didn’t like it. There was, however, a 1982 movie made from the book starring Pia Zadora which, to my dismay, doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere. (It is available at Scarecrow Video for those of you in Seattle.) You may remember Zadora when she first appeared in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. For Butterfly she won a Golden Globe as New Star of the Year (some say through her husband’s influence) and also won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress and Worst New Star for the same performance.

STEVE FISHER, 1912-1980

He ran away from military school and joined the Navy submarine service at 16 where he wrote over 200 stories during his four years of service. He returned to Los Angeles for a while but then moved to New York to pursue his writing. While there he wrote over 500 stories for the pulps. He also published in established magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and the detective magazine Black Mask. He moved to Paris but returned to Hollywood when a couple of his books were adapted to the screen. He worked for many years as a successful Hollywood screenwriter and continued working in television (Starsky and Hutch, Fantasy Island). He published at least 20 books and wrote screenplays for over 22 films.

“This dark new style and psychology of crime narration jumped from magazine and book publications into screenplays, and led
in the 1940s to the emergence in Hollywood of the classic age of the noir film thriller. The obsessive, dreamlike narration favored by Fisher and Woolrich in their tense crime tales was a perfect match for the dark shadows, and frightening, expressive camera angles developed primarily in German and Hollywood horror cinema. Narrative fiction style, and camera photography styles played against and enriched each other in the development of this new film genre. No writer was more influential in both fiction and in film scripts than Steve Fisher in ushering in the classic age of Hollywood film noir.” Keith Alan Deutsch, publisher of Black Mask Magazine.

I WAKE UP SCREAMING, 1941

A 27 year old playwright with a play on Broadway and a Hollywood studio contract falls hard for a pretty office secretary (with a pretty sister). He is madly in love and wants to get her into pictures. He and an assortment of other men — a producer, a screenwriter and an actor — create an image for her and build her up to be a successful movie star. Without giving away the plot, let me just say there is a murder, and an Ahab-like police detective builds up an unbreakable case against our hero, the playwright. Billed as a “classic novel of sexual obsession and murder,” it felt a bit underwhelming. As in many of these books, women are described in an unflattering way — “dowdy female writer,” and “bitchy little queens.” They are either put on a pedestal and are, naturally, pure as the driven snow, or they are sexually permissive, and, by definition, cheap, or, and most devastating, they are just plain unattractive and unworthy of notice. And the writing! These are possibly my two favorite sentences in the whole book: “His subconscious flaying and screaming against the impotence which twisted him. I was an object, a figure, a symbol, even a effigy at which to hurl the bitter gall from the exploded bladder of his ego!”

If you are interested, there was a 1941 movie made from the book with Betty Grable, Victor Mature, and Carol Landis (can be viewed on Classic Film Time), and a 1953 remake with Jeanne Crain, Jean Peters, and Richard Boone (can be viewed on Roku).

Why do we like mysteries, crime fiction, who done its? Is it purely escapist and voyeuristic, do we enjoy the suspense and the challenge of trying to solve the puzzle before the conclusion of the book, and do we read to learn more about human nature? Yes on all counts. If given the chance to cheat, to commit a crime, or abuse others and the system will people do so if they feel the risk is worth taking or do societal constraints keep them in check? Do they succumb to their inclinations, are they born that way (the MOAA gene), are they formed by their environment, or is it a combination of several factors? The criminal mind is endlessly interesting. There is nothing so captivating as learning what motivates people to do awful things, to explore the dark side of human nature in all its variety.

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• Pulp Fiction, Laura, The Black Dahlia, Gone Girl, Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, Devil in a Blue Dress, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Strangers On a Train, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Jackie Brown, and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold are some old and new noir movies. The recent Slow Horses TV series based on the Mick Herron Slough House book series is an excellent example of contemporary noir.