Pulp Fiction discussion
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The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, also known as "Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets" in older translations, is so far my favourite of the ones I've read. Though apparently it wasn't until The Yellow Dog, which is the next one on my to-read list, that Simenon really hit the writing style he'd use for most of the series?
Just finished The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald. This was really, really good. Few authors do the entire "festering moral decay underneath a shiny idyllic surface" theme better than him... also gets an excellent sense of cultural time-and-place regarding the prosperous optimism of the United States just after WW2.The intricate descriptions of the architecture, cars, fashion and interior design actually make me nostalgic for that era because I like the aesthetic so much... even though the story also makes clear how much of a dark underside there was to it all! Same effect as the TV series "Mad Men" has on a lot of people. The reason I dwell on this so much is that it results in Macdonald's books having a very different feel than Hammett's or most of Chandler's novels, where the characters usually *know* their world's a mess as a result of being in the middle of either the Great Depression or World War Two.
On a sociological level there's also an interesting Great Gatsby-style "old money vs nouveau riche" class conflict going on in that novel, though when Lew Archer goes to investigate things in the working-class parts of town the tone flips to something almost like a more worksafe Charles Bukowski.
Simon wrote: "Just finished The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald. This was really, really good. Few authors do the entire "rotten mess of moral decay underneath a shiny idyllic surfac..."Agree. Excellent writer. Excellent book.
This week I'm reading The Yellow Dog by Georges Simenon. I can definitely understand why a lot of people choose it as the best Maigret novel: It's got a very complex and meticulously structured plot full of colourful characters who all have a well-defined role in the story, and the location of Bretagne results in a very unique atmosphere. The plot is also a level more involved and faster-moving than the other three Maigrets I've read so far.
I just finished Southern Bastards, Vol. 1: Here Was a Man, an action-packed graphic novel with a plot not too unlike that of Walking Tall.
Finished several days ago: Made to Kill
My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
PS-Great cover:-D
3 stars.
Posted a review of "The Drowning Pool":https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Continues off the description I gave in this thread, but adds some more discussion of the story's central themes and how the novel - as well as the central concerns informing Ross Macdonald's signature style - fits into a larger context of cultural history... including a couple compare-and-contrasts most of the other reviews here don't consider.
Algernon wrote: "The setting reminds me of The Automatic Detective.which has an even better cover."
I have a copy of that too Al & i agree, if is an excellent cover.
Worth reading?
Mod
Just started listening to Shovel Ready. I loved this title which describes a hitman's term for his targets. The Spade Man is one cold individual.I kill men. I kill women because I don’t discriminate. I don’t kill children because that’s a different kind of psycho.
Tom wrote: "Just started listening to Shovel Ready. ..."I listened to it too & liked it. Quirky & dark, but upbeat in weird ways, too. There's a sequel that wasn't quite as good, but still fun.
Tom wrote: "Just started listening to Shovel Ready. I loved this title which describes a hitman's term for his targets. The Spade Man is one cold individual.I kill men. I kill women because I ..."
The Spademan didn't really strike me as cold. I enjoyed the book, but since the story is mostly about him protecting the girl he was contracted to kill & the only individuals he kills are 'bad guys'...
Parker in the series by Stark is COLD. But Spademan? Not so much.
In the course of this story he talks the talk, but he doesn't really walk the walk.
Paul wrote: "The Spademan didn't really strike me as cold. In the course of this story he talks the talk, but he doesn't really walk the walk. "
But at the beginning of the story, all you know of him is the talk.
I'm considering reading "Chandler" by William Denbow.Doesn't show up in Goodread's list of published items.
Or else I have a typo or two in the search.
Hammett & Chandler team to solve a crime.
I can't believe Joe Gores didn't sue.
Still wrote: "I'm considering reading "Chandler" by William Denbow.Doesn't show up in Goodread's list of published items.
Or else I have a typo or two in the search.
Hammett & Chandler team to solve a crime.
I..."
I see its only available in paperback Still. It was published in the 70's, so i don't think JG would have grounds for suing:-D
'Hammett' by Joe Gores is my next TBR.
I'm reading The Way Some People Die by Ross Macdonald. There's the usual dysfunctional family theme from his other novels, but the plot's way faster moving all over the place with less dwelling on psychological trauma. Gets a really good feel of the cultural and social divisions in early-1950s California too, as well as the architecture and geography of the place. I think the character of Joe Tarantine is supposed to be one of the hot-rodder street racers that Tom Wolfe wrote about in "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby"?
Last night I finished "The Way Some People Die", which really wowed me with all the plot twists folding on each other in the climax as well as the fantastic sense of the different cultural milieux, and started reading The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall.Am I the only person who gets very similar vibes from the movie "Zodiac" as from that Martin Beck novel? Not just the entire "serial killer loose during the Summer of Love" concept, but also the way the plot is structured switching between the murderer + the police + affected civilians. Wouldn't be surprised if David Fincher used it as inspiration.
Mod
Algernon wrote: "A lot of great writers were inspired by the work of Sjowall and Wahloo. I found some of the greatest names in the genre writing the introductions to the Martin Beck series, and remembering how they..."I still consider Sjowall and Wahloo to be the best of all time in terms of Scandinavian crime writing. I read their complete series some time back, but to this day I can tell who's been influenced by their work.
I also sense James Ellroy as a kindred spirit to them, more for the inside view at police investigation and internal political struggles within the relevant law enforcement agencies than anything else. Though his real stated influences are Dashiell Hammett, Don DeLillo and Jack Kerouac in that order...
Simon wrote: "I also sense James Ellroy as a kindred spirit to them, more for the inside view at police investigation and internal political struggles within the relevant law enforcement agencies than anything e..."Not to intentionally be argumentative, but personally, I don't see the connection to Sjowall and Wahloo; Ellroy's style of writing is unique in its own way. I can definitely see Kerouac in Ellroy, as well as Hammett, but Ellroy is definitely in a league of his own.
Yeah, I think it's more of a parallel evolution case.
I also describe Ellroy as a cross between Raymond Chandler and Louis-Ferdinand Céline at other times...
Simon wrote: "I also describe Ellroy as a cross between Raymond Chandler and Louis-Ferdinand Céline at other times..."he definitely has some of Céline's pessimist outlook, that's for sure.
Algernon wrote: "A lot of great writers were inspired by the work of Sjowall and Wahloo. I found some of the greatest names in the genre writing the introductions to the Martin Beck series, and remembering how they..."I had a chance to meet Jo Nesbø and he cited Sjowall/Wahloo as one of the two factors largely responsible for the quality of Scandinavian crime fiction. The other factor was that Scandinavian bookstores tend not to categorize crime fiction into a lesser mysteries subgenre.
In Geoffrey Homes’ *Build My Gallows High* (1946; released the next year as the noir essential film *Out of the Past*), Jeff Bailey is an honest as well as tough P.I., chasing adulterers, blackmailers, embezzlers, and finance manipulators, who has retired from New York to run a gas station in rural California. He is dating a local woman, Ann, who is loving and fiercely loyal. But he cannot free himself from his past, especially a thieving, murdering, psychopathic femme fatale (Mumsie in the book; Kathie in the film) whom he first met on assignment from Whit (Guy in the novel), a version of Eddie Mars with a more varied wardrobe and a handshake like “iron.” The passion of both Jeff and Whit for Mumsie/Kathie is ambiguous, in that it is more than recovery of money she stole, and more than her erotic promise. It has something to do with her amoral shrewdness, dominance with a gun, and uncomplicated acquisitiveness—all of which make her a prize as an accomplice. They assume she will be loyal; she has an uncanny ability, with her deadpan sultriness, to make a man believe he is the center of her world.The screenplay, also written by Homes, makes Jeff’s choice of his personal “gallows” over the good girl more clearly a matter of the universe he came from—the city, with its challenges, illusions, seductions, and its belief in “the orgiastic future” of which Gatsby’s friends dreamed. The film, directed by Jacques Tourneur, reminds me—with its images of remote, wide-open spaces without people—of something else in _The Great Gatsby_, about “ that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” A novel and film about the American Dream. Noir--maybe best delineated in pulp.
Mod
Thanks for the tip : I think I saw the French movie with Jean Marais when I was a kid , but I don't remember anything of the plot. I know it was fun.
Now I am interested in the book!
Algernon wrote: "Now I am interested in the book! ."Me too!
Algernon wrote: "Nancy wrote: "I've finished a truly good pulp/crime novel, Fantômas, by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre."Thanks for the tip : I think I saw the French movie with Jean Marais when..."
I may revisit a more modern version of the movie -- the one I watched was a silent from 1913. I wasn't sure I'd like it, but it was fun.
I've been reading The Laughing Policeman over the course of the last week. One thing I like so much about "The Story of a Crime" - calling it the "Martin Beck Series" is inaccurate since it's as much about the teamwork involved in police investigation - is that it really feels like a *series*: There's a genuine sense of how the characters' interactions and personalities evolve just like they would from people working with each other for many years.Another thing is that this sense of historical continuity really gives some extra weight to how the series reflects cultural and social change in Sweden during the 1960s/1970s. There's quite a few crucial plot elements that rely on the police being rather confused by crimes they're not used to occuring on a large scale or even at all in Sweden until then, in the case of "The Laughing Policeman" it's a spree killing of the sort they've only heard about from the US and in "The Man on the Balcony" a serial killer of the sort that the Swedish police then weren't used to.
Also, if you pay attention to the just basic interactions the cops have with civilians, it's clear that social mores and cultural lifestyles have changed a lot since the first book in the series (which came out in 1965 I think) to the one I'm reading right now. (from 1969)
Simon wrote: "I've been reading The Laughing Policeman over the course of the last week. One thing I like so much about "The Story of a Crime" - calling it the "Martin Beck Series" is inaccurate si..."I read an interview with Sjowall where she notes that "The story of a crime" refers to to the failure of the system -- the social welfare system of Sweden and the promises it held for the people. Don't forget -- he was a major lefty and he penned this series to bring out a lot of the problems that came about as business (I.e. capitalism) and money became more important than people.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that Sjöwall and Wahlöö have put a herculean amount of sociological research into depicting the internal conflicts between the involved government bureaucracies and law enforcement agencies involved in police investigation, as many of those conflicts turn out to be just as central to their novels as the crimes they're investigating.Come to think of it, they kind of took the same approach to writing police novels as John Le Carré did to writing spy novels.
Simon wrote: "Yeah, it's pretty clear that Sjöwall and Wahlöö have put a herculean amount of sociological research into depicting the internal conflicts between the involved government bureaucracies and law enfo..."Here's a piece of the interview (which was, as I mistakenly wrote not done with Wahloo, but with Sjowall, mistake now corrected):
"We wanted to describe society from our left point of view. Per had written political books, but they’d only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality. We wanted to show where Sweden was heading: towards a capitalistic, cold and inhuman society, where the rich got richer, the poor got poorer."
Mod
Just finished The High Priest of California by Charles Willeford, which I thought was pretty great, if a little sad. The narrator was at the same time repulsive and fascinating. Has anybody read this one?
I read that recently and liked it a lot, despite some shortcomings. As a character study of the narrator, it is terrific.My review here - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Edwin wrote: "I read that recently and liked it a lot, despite some shortcomings. As a character study of the narrator, it is terrific.That's true, you definitely have to look at it as more of a character study. There's no heist, no detective story, basically just a guy trying to score. But I think it's a great portrait of a certain type of male from a certain time period.
Bran wrote: "Just finished The High Priest of California by Charles Willeford, which I thought was pretty great, if a little sad. The narrator was at the same time repulsive and fascinating. Has anybody read th..."High Priest of California sounds interesting. Why does Charles Willeford sound familiar?
Tom wrote: "Bran wrote: "Just finished The High Priest of California by Charles Willeford, which I thought was pretty great, if a little sad. The narrator was at the same time repulsive and fascinating. Has an..."He wrote some classics, like The Cockfighter (which became a Warren Oates movie) and the Hoke detective series (Miami Blues, etc)
Done with The Laughing Policeman. This was really, really good - especially the build-up and denouement as the investigation really closes in. I think this is where S&W most effectively use the story to show how an entire sociological ecosystem is intertwined underneath the surface.Also, interesting how it uses the winter season so instrumentally in its themes as "The Man on the Balcony" used the summer theme.
Richard Haxby is an American idol: affluent, loves good whiskey, cars, good music, and books (“The Playboy Philosophy”), can talk his way to the top of his field, appreciates the female form, and gets things done (“hire this man!”). He is also a fine observer, sensing people’s authentic needs and how to spin his web so that these people trust him. A high priest. Of course, he has no conscience, no compassion for anyone, and power is his only aphrodisiac. He’s a product of deep forces in post-war America.
I have a Goodreads review of _High Priest_ at
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Currently I'm reading a short story collection called Toronto Noir, which is edited by Janine Armin I'm almost finished and the stories have been very good.
Just finished reading Beast In View which I enjoyed thoroughly, it was short but sweet.After that I'm thinking of re-reading Hamett's The Glass Key
Rory wrote: "Just finished reading Beast In View which I enjoyed thoroughly, it was short but sweet.After that I'm thinking of re-reading Hamett's The Glass Key
"I loved Beast In View!
Pulp Fiction
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The problem with Simenon is that all of his Maigret books are good and I'm not sure which one is the most representative