THE LONG DRUNK – “Best Noir Novel In Years”

The Long Drunk by Eric Coyote, 2011

Kindle, $2.99

This is the gritty story of a homeless alcoholic who must solve a murder in order save his dog’s life. If that turns you off…wait.

When I first started out as a graphic illustrator I thought maximum contrast meant black and white. Gradually I discovered that gray makes black seem blacker and white whiter.

So it is with Eric Coyote’s The Long Drunk. His depiction of the homeless and the affluent gives noir a new, sharper, more disturbing clarity. And the emotional force behind Ulysses S. Grant Murphy’s needing money for expensive medical treatment to save his pet bull hit by an SUV will keep you reading long into the night. But the author does an equally fine job, whether it is a scene in the back alley, a gay bar, yoga class or the world of art.

I’ll be honest. I felt like I was reading a Raymond Chandler (Murphy’s own guide) or Dashiel Hamett that no one had yet seen. The Long Drunk is a masterpiece you’ll remember twenty years from now with a smile on your lips and tear in your eye.

An excerpt will appear in the next edition of Lit Noir, around the start of March. Watch for it.

Meanwhile, (for Murphy’s dog, Betty) here’s one of my many unpublished dog poems:

HUNTER’S MOON

My dog and I are silhouettes

against the stars. He cocks his

head toward where the moon

will soon appear. And it does.

- John Lehman

Buy this book directly from Amazon. Click the title below:

THE LONG DRUNK

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EXCITING NEWS, LIT NOIR #2 IS NOW OUT

The hell with 2012, the real news is that pulp fiction for the digital age has “come of age.” Not only can you buy Lit Noir #2 for a buck, but you can get a free Kindle app for your computer if you want plus try a sample of the new pub before you decide to buy anything. I think you will find it fresh and exciting. Books, movies, poems, short stories, articles, tough-guy wisdom…it is all here. Check it out. Click: Lit Noir #2 and let me know. It is “bigger and better than Mantovani.”

PULP FICTION FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

    I am excited to announce the launch of a new reading venture. LitNoir, the $1 magazine/book, is now available from kindle. If you don’t have a kindle or reading tablet, you can get a free app by clicking:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

Lit Noir, itself, is available at: Lit Noir # 1. Here you will find stories, book/DVD reviews, articles, tough guy quotes, new and classic noir, all for only $1. Easy to read on your PC, Mac, notebook computer, I-Phone or even BlackBerry. And the right length (like the old pulp fiction magazines) to be enjoyable at home or at work. Suddenly, we are into a new age, where all things are once again accessible. Enjoy!

If you are interested in buying an inexpensive Kindle without paid advertising on it for $109, click: Kindle, Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display

BODY HEAT (DVD) – “Dead On, Terrific Noir!”

Body Heat, written/directed by Lawrence Kasdan, 1981 

The GOOD: Ted Danson dancing like Fred Astaire on a deserted boardwalk late at night. William Hurt spotting a clown driving through town in an old convertible. A cast of unknowns who became mega-stars in a production by a first-time director that proved in retrospect to be their finest work. 

The BAD:  How we the audience congratulate ourselves all the way through on being smarter than Ned Racine. (At the end, in an anti-climax to die for, he uncovers a secret that blindsides all of us smug viewers.) 

What BUGS ME: The narrow spectrum traditionally given to film noir: from The Maltese Falcon to Touch of Evil.  What about Chinatown, Kiss Me Deadly and The Long Goodbye? This film, originally written-off as a Double Indemnity clone, offers something new to the black and white code hero walking mean streets. Hurt’s character is a shop-worn, over-aged guy kidding himself about his womanizing skills. Like updated Chandler and Hammet anti-heroes, he is us, sitting out there in the dark. 

REVIEW: Incredible that the writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark should strike gold with his directorial debut. Sure it owes something to Double Indemnity but its ending when Kathleen Turner’s character must be wondering about the price she has paid for her dreams should leave all actors who become famous by pretending to be other people (and we in the audience who enable this) wondering the same.

     Did you know this film, originally to be shot in New Jersey, was forced to be moved to Florida because of labor disputes out East. But the new location suffered record low temperatures. The sweat is sprayed on; actors had to chew ice cubes and spit them out so when they said their lines outside we wouldn’t see their breath in the cold. Amazing.

     The dialogue is the stuff of great noir, with lines no one would ever hear in real life, but they work seamlessly in the film. Plus an outstanding musical score by John Barry. 

FEAR THE WORST (Book) – “A Thriller Rivaling the Best”

Fear the Worst

by Linwood Barclay

Dell Publishing

$7.99 (paperback), 512 pages

Ever have a lonesome week saved by a seat-of-your-pants thriller? I just did, and have become an instant fan of the Canadian writer, Linwood Barclay. Even with a cover blurb claiming he “pushes suspense to the edge and beyond” I was unprepared for the originality, thoughtfulness and shocking ending of this instant classic. He starts with a separated father missing his almost-adult daughter, but the story line manages to get below the surface with regard to the man’s relationship to his ex-wife, her current boyfriend, his daughter’s friends, the man’s work relationships and most significantly, what we know, want to know and don’t want to know about our children.

There’s some interesting subtext on how a car dealership works and the climactic shootout in an auto showroom after hours pushes all the narrator’s suppressed feelings to the hilt. This is a page turner, but a reader has a feeling of going deeper and deeper rather than traveling on a horizontal plot line from beginning to conclusion. The scenes and images are vivid. No words are wasted, and the ending is sad but satisfying in an unexpected way. The author talks about his inspiration for the book in the acknowledgments as when his own daughter asked him over eggs one morning, “Suppose you came to pick me up at my job, and found out I’d never worked there?”

And me? I have a whole winter to kill. I’m on my way to the library to pick up some of this guy’s earlier books.

Buy this directly from amazon. Click here: Fear the Worst: A Thriller

CHINATOWN – “One of the Greatest Films of All Time”

Chinatown  - Roman Polanski, Director, 1974 

HOOK: John Huston, who’s first film was the iconic Maltese Falcon plays a pivotal role in the last American film of  Roman Polanski (whose wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969) to create the ultimate film on LA, corruption and the underbelly of the American Dream. Polanski later fled the US after being convicted of statutory rape that stemmed from a party at Nicholson’s house.

LINE: “I like my nose. I like breathing through it.”  “She’s my sister. She’s my daughter. My sister. My daughter. She’s my sister and my daughter.” “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

SINKER: Robert Towne’s script is incredibly rich, more than movie audiences today might be able to handle. He beautifully incorporates Jack Nicholson’s speech patterns and the choices of an alien-like Faye Dunaway and bullying John Huston are inspired. But it was Polanski who gave then ending an immortal spin few movies have ever achieved (one that did might be with Bogart’s last line in Maltese Falcon). 

There’s a term in mystery-story writing called “after-shadowing.” It’s the opposite of foreshadowing in that when the piece is over, looking back, all the disparate parts of the puzzle are seen to fit. That well defines this stylish classic. The script is complex, yet coherent. The acting, top of the game. Like the music, this one haunts you. An attempted sequel twenty years later (The Two Jakes) was lame. 

Unfortunately this film came out the same year as The Godfather, Part 2, which grabbed most of the Oscars away it (“Forget it, Roman, it’s Hollywood!”). But it does raise some questions. First, why the hell can’t we go to new movies like either of these two today? Second, in a media that is devoted to escapism why do we honor what seems realistic rather than one that directly addresses, while embracing, the escapist genre? It might seem that what we want is the illusion of truth rather than truth (for truth we just need to look out the window, not hole up in a dark theater). So a movie that questions that, Chinatown, no matter how great, will be penalized. Though later, I wonder which remains embedded most firmly within us. And isn’t that the real prize? At one point the actress impersonating Evelyn Mulwray asks Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes on the phone if he’s alone (he isn’t). Jake responds, “Isn’t everyone?” Like that viewer in a darkened theater, Jake is an alienated man searching for some connection in a cruel world. 

INSIDE TRACK: Jack Nicholson was known to his high school friends as “Nick”, and was voted “class clown” by the Class of 1954 at Manasquan High School. In 2004, Nicholson attended his 50 year high school reunion, much to the surprise of his fellow classmates. When he first came to Hollywood, Nicholson worked as a go-fer for animation legends, Hanna-Barbera. Seeing his talent as an artist, they offered Nicholson a starting level position as an animation artist. However, citing his desire to become an actor, he declined.

A FULL RICH DEATH – “The best mystery ever.”

A Full Rich Death

by Michael Dibdin

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

 204 pages, $12 

This is an astonishing book that will leave you reeling. On the cover is a blurb by Ruth Rendell claiming, “Dibdin has a gift for shocking the unshockable reader.” That is dangerous because it gets us imagining all of the farfetched possibilities. But then wham! Something we not only didn’t anticipate, but a surprise that makes new sense of the whole book including the title. Each chapter, and especially the last few pages, will take your breath away. 

Here’s a period mystery in which Robert Browning is presented as an aspiring young Sherlock Holmes; but Booth, his Watson-like sidekick, has some real doubts about his would-be idol (as well as coveting the poet’s mistress). Listen to the sensual language that enriches each layer of this tale: 

Then the lightning—as bodiless as moonlight, though far intenser than the sun—suffused the scene again, and I saw that the figure was Beatrice, as naked as Eve. The torrential rain blowing in through the window, which she had gone to shut, had sprayed her shoulders and bosom, and the skin gleamed like polished bronze. 

“The English are dying too much,” a Florentine police chief observes, as the narrator becomes embedded in a murderous plot mirroring Dante’s Inferno. From which only we, the readers, will emerge (though not unscathed).

  To order this directly from amazon click: A Rich Full Death

THE THIN MAN – “Drawing Room Comedy with Corpses”

THE THIN MAN
by Dashiell Hammett

It’s impossible to read this book and not see and hear
William Powell and Myrna Loy in the classic 1934 film that inspired five
sequels. The plot is preposterous and the Hammett novel (and its readers) don’t
really care. Nick Charles typically stands in the midst of inexplicable events
with a drink in his hand, nodding wisely as if he understands everything and is
not about to share. When a reporter asks him, “Can’t you tell us anything
about the case?” Nick replies: “Yes. It’s putting me way behind in my
drinking.”

But there is something endearing about this drawing room
comedy with corpses. The banter between husband and wife, their life, like a
piece of enjoyable art, a good cast of secondary characters (thugs, cops,
reporters and an untiring line of partygoers who turn up nightly at the
Charles’ suite for free drinks) and, of course, Asta the dog. As opposed to
Agatha Christie the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit together without any
effort. In the movie on Christmas morning, Nick tests the new air-rifle he got
as a present by firing at the balloons on their Christmas tree and he throws a
dinner party for all of the suspects, with plainclothes cops as waiters (Nora
tells one of them: “Waiter, will you serve the nuts? I mean, will you
serve the guests the nuts?”).

Life is fun, and we are ready for those sequels.

THE BLACK DALHIA – What Went Wrong?

The Black Dahlia, 2006, Brian De Palma, Director 

KEEPER: “Nothing stays buried.”

 The novelist whose book this disaster is based upon (convoluted story of dirty cops, damaged dames, crooked politicians and violent murder—and that’s the good part) is none other than James Ellroy (LA Confidential).

His mother was raped and murdered when he was ten and a few years later he became obsessed with the murder of a young woman, Elizabeth Short, who had come to Hollywood to become a star. Her body was badly mutilated and the press dubbed the case, “The Black Dahlia” probably after the movie, “The Blue Dahlia” film of a year before.

But half way through this promising movie set in the noir 40’s goes awry. Why? There is the endless repeating of lines as if the film is spoon feeding us a mystery that will make sense. It doesn’t. 

The screen tests of Mia Kirshner as Short are haunting. And the fact that the initials carved into the Scarlett Johansson character’s body, “B.D.” stand for the pimp Bobby Dewitt, but could as well belong to Brian De Palma adds a certain metaphysical spin that should be intriguing.

Things go wrong when Hilary Swank appears, but whether it is her performance or the plot hemoraging is the question. Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett (the cops “Fire” and “Ice”) should be able to pull this off, but don’t.  

Give us your take, so the Black Dahlia can finally rest in peace.   

THE KILLER INSIDE ME – “You Gotta Go There”

The Killer inside Me by Jim Thompson, 256 pages, $13.95

This classic of shadowy, noir alienation predates Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley by three years but has the first-person narrator enter into the crime in a way that makes us both cheer and abhor his (our) amoral choices. Credible settings, taut dialogue, haunting theme, Thompson has a way of making things happen off stage and revealing plot twists that might have changed our reactions to events had we known them earlier. But more to the point, we are left wondering about our empathy for this psychotic, murderous West Texas deputy sheriff. The process speaks to the heart of reading: how I can sample other lives and other situations though sometimes I might be shocked at the result—might be shocked by the killer inside me.

A friend recently asked me if I was interested in getting the much acclaimed DVD version of this Thompson story. But the kind of perspective possible in a novel like this is different from a movie. I’m rereading The Remarkable Mr. Ripley and as much as I admire the perfectly cast film version with Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and the ever-suspicious Phillip Seymore Hoffman,  it cannot have the same kind of intimacy (or catharsis) as the book. This is the difference between observing something and experiencing it for yourself. Jim Thompson is a master in doing the latter. And—like it or not—we gotta go there.

Buy this book directly from amazon for $11.16.  Just click: The Killer Inside Me