Pulp Fiction discussion

A stonewall classic.

Just received James Lee Burke's newest, but still reading I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay (Southern Noir) and can't put it down. Gay's (RIP) writing is incredible. Just read George V. Higgins, Killing them softly. Not sure about that one.

S. L. wrote: "Just received James Lee Burke's newest, but still reading I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay (Southern Noir) and can't put it down. Gay's (RIP) writing is incredible. Just read G..."

If it wasn't for Larry Brown, I'd have never discovered William Gay.
If it wasn't for William Gay I would have never felt compelled to read William Faulkner.

Still wrote: "S. L. wrote: "Just received James Lee Burke's newest, but still reading I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay (Southern Noir) and can't put it down. Gay's (RIP) writing is incredibl..."
I wish I had discovered him years ago. There is something about his stories that create/renew an urge to continue trying to better my writing. Can't say as I've read Larry Brown. Must be missing something.

I'm reading Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, to be specific I just finished "The Mystery of Marie Roget". Even more than "Murders in the Rue Morgue" it feels like a prototype for Sherlock Holmes, reminds me that I need to read more of his adventures.

I also realize somewhere around here that Poe's at least as interested in literary mind-games as in gothic horror, coming across as being as much a forerunner for Jorge Luis Borges as for H. P. Lovecraft. It's an aspect of Poe's writing I've noticed many casual readers either don't notice or don't appreciate.

Simon, if you're interested in Poe's literary mind-games, don't overlook his single novel: the bizarre, strange, wonderful NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM. Borges is a nice touchstone.

I am, and if you look at my ratings you will notice that I have indeed read "Arthur Gordon Pym". Out of curiosity, which biographies of Poe can people here recommend? I've read that most of them are full of rumours and lies spread by his literary rivals, as a result what people think they know about the man being mostly fiction...

I'm looking for a group discussion from back a few months about a character called Blackbird, I think. An assassin, or killer of some kind, I think. I picked up The Blackbirder by Dorothy Hughes recently but I still can't find the discussion on our boards to see if that's the book or author some group members were talking about. Anyone remember or know what I'm talking about?

Was it the Indian in Elmore Leonard's Killshot? Killshot He was called Blackbird and did hits for the mob in Michigan near the lakes. It's a great book and he's a great character. The first Elmore Leonard book I ever read. Now I've read them all.

There is a book called Birdman, by Mo Hayder. It about a serial killer who puts birds inside the people he kills.

Robert W Talbott wrote: "There is a book called Birdman, by Mo Hayder. It about a serial killer who puts birds inside the people he kills."

I was thinking about buying this book and reading this until you mentioned this. Now I don't want to read this author or book. Thanks.

Reading the erotic suspense thriller The Schack Job by Henry Kane.

Here is a post by Lawrence Block on Henry Kane. Great story along with a scoop on Lucille Ball.

http://www.mulhollandbooks.com/2010/1...

Thank you, Susan! That was it.

I think I will go ahead and start on Red Harvest. Looks like it won the poll for August read. Can anyone recommend a good film adaptation of that novel?

Also, I might start on In Cold Blood for another group.

Red Harvest is amazing.

Franky wrote: "I think I will go ahead and start on Red Harvest. Looks like it won the poll for August read. Can anyone recommend a good film adaptation of that novel?

Also, I might start on [book:..."

In Cold Blood - Capote's best work. Has to be one of the best novels, in it's genera, of the last century.

Bobbi wrote: "Thank you, Susan! That was it."

Killshot? Elmore Leonard. It's a great book. Loved the Indian. A bad guy with very endearing qualities, as only Elmore can do! :)

Franky wrote: "I think I will go ahead and start on Red Harvest. Looks like it won the poll for August read. Can anyone recommend a good film adaptation of that novel? "

There's no "official" film adaptation of Red Harvest to my knowledge, but Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and the Coen bros' "Miller's Crossing" are both "inspired" by the Hammett book and I'd say both are must-sees. Walter Hill's "Last Man Standing" and Leone's "Fistful of Dollars" are both takes on the Kurosawa so I guess are adaptations twice removed.

Finished Laidlaw by William McIlvanney, one of the best crime novels to come from Glasgow. It is said to be the very first example of 'tartan noir'

Christopher, thanks for the heads up on those films. I really want to see "Yojimbo." I've heard it is pretty good.

It`s excellent, Christopher. Kurosawa and Mifune ;-P

can't go wrong with any of the Parker books by Richard Starke

Miller's Crossing is a really interesting film, as are most of the Coen Bros films.

Foul97 wrote: "can't go wrong with any of the Parker books by Richard Starke"

True. The only series i have read from beginning to end. I've started reading them from the beginning again, as i read them out of chronological order first time round.

I notice Hard Case Crimes has some of their books now at a discounted price on Kindle $1.99 to $1.39 for some fun titles. I picked up House Dick by E. Howard Hunt and also Shotting Stars/Spiderweb by Robert Bloch

I can see a time, in the not too distant future, when it's not feasible for publishers to produce paper editions of their books, as more people move to Kindles & similar devices.

Kipp wrote: "I notice Hard Case Crimes has some of their books now at a discounted price on Kindle $1.99 to $1.39 for some fun titles. I picked up House Dick by E. Howard Hunt and also Shotting Stars/Spiderweb ..."

Thanks for the heads up! Picked up 3 of the Quarry books and a couple by Richard Aleas (Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence).

I loved the Quarry books.

Read Robert Coover's Noir: A Novel - more an exploration of the genre than a typical crime story. I still liked what he did with the tropes.

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan was an excellent, twisty mystery-thriller. I never would have guessed it was a first novel. I'm going to read the next now. Best of all, the setting of both is firmly around a pulp magazine & mystery writers. Here's my 4 star review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The second David Loogan novel, Very Bad Men, was almost as good as the first, even twistier. Very well plotted & kept me guessing the entire way through. The only downside is the main character really needs the first book to introduce him. I still gave it 4 stars in my review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I started Nightfall, just because I was so anxious to get back to read Goodis. Hard to find time to read right now though.

Jim, thanks for the recommendations and great reviews. (I was looking for new suggestions and saw your posts.)

I have just finishedThe Torch Singer, Book One: An Overnight Sensation by Robert Westbrook which has just been released in paperback and reissued on Kindle. It's actually a contemporary novel although its setting is in 1950s Hollywood and it is firmly in the "noir" tradition. Westbrook is the son of Sheilah Graham the lover of F Scott Fitzgerald and hence knows about the world of which he writes.

This is a stunning book - an epic and clever book of great scope which relates the story of the life and death of a b-singer who escapes Poland to rise to Hollywood fame.

I read it in pretty much one sweep on a friend's recommendation and have reviewed it in detail.

Highly recommended.

I'm reading Gone Bitch: A Parody of Gone Girl
after reading Gone Girl

I'm reading The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders, about the duel between a psychopat serial killer and a police officer acting as a private investigator. The story alternates between the point of view of the two characters, takes its time to explore in detail their respective thought processes and I believe is an early example (set in New York in 1971) of using profiling as a tool of investigation. Excellent human interest side stories.

Did you like 'Gone Girl', Pat? I got about half way through it, figured the end was obvious & dropped it since I disliked the characters. I was hoping that something would kill them off & put them out of my misery.

Having finished Red Harvest, I'm onto The Dain Curse. I'm at the point where he's trying to figure out why a certain somebody is lying at the bottom of a cliff.

I really dig Hammett. I love listening to the old Sam Spade old time radio shows, and as I read, I can hear the actor's voice.

I just finished The Big Sleep.
Wow! Really enjoyed the writing and storytelling.
I've also reviewed it.

1. Is the movie any good? Worth seeing?
2. Can you recommend a similar author? (I've read Hammett, already)

Thank you.

Reaching the end of Ripley's Game by one of my favorites, Patricia Highsmith, and I don't want it to end even though I've read it — and seen it — before.

I took the advice of some other members here and picked up my first Joe Lansdale book : The Bottoms.

It's a great Southern Gothic set in East Texas at the time of the Great Depression, told from the perspective of a young boy who is a witness to a series of horrible murders.

I've been reading quite a bit in the genre. A while ago I went through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, it's amusing to see how much crime fiction is still using the basic plot twists A. C. Doyle invented back then. I usually don't read that much pre-WW1 or even pre-Hemingway literature, though, so this struck me as an obvious product of its time for both better and worse. I liked the general atmosphere of Victorian Britain, complete with a lot of sociological insight into a very important part of Western history, but the writing style gets a bit too "show don't tell" for my tastes.

Earlier this week I finished Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. The plot's a lot less confusing than in "The Big Sleep" which I liked, though the characters perhaps weren't quite as interesting either. Still, when it comes to prose style the man could write the pants off not just his contemporaries but also most authors to pick up the genre since then. At times it feels more like epic poetry as delivered by a disillusioned middle-aged barroom drunk.

Right now I'm reading Maigret Stonewalled by Georges Simenon. I'm a bit confused where exactly the Maigret series starts because apparently it was published and translated into other languages than French in a somewhat different order than Simenon wrote them, but I can already sense the influence his writing had on quite a few of the Continental European crime movies I've seen from the 1950s/1960s and even 1970s.

I have also been confused by the order of the Maigret
series. I think I followed the one on Fantastic Fiction which if anyone doesn't know, is the best site to get the order of book series. I'm pretty sure the first Mairgre is Peter the Lett. The problem is that he doesn't really introduce Maigret in any recognizable way so I don't think it matters where you start. Just yesterday I picked up one of the brand new editions of Simenon's The Yellow Dog. Many of the books are being reissued with new translations. So much of his work hasn't been available for a long time now.

Does anyone have the complete set of the Hard Case Crime books? I know you can get them cheap in Kindle format but the covers are so beautiful that that is part of the joy in owning them. I thought of writing Charles Ardai and asking him how much the entire set would be but I'm pretty sure it will be unaffordable as there are so many in the series. But I would really love to have them all. I'm sorry I didn't join the club when it existed.

Alans ; I`ve got 17. I came across some turkeys, and wouldn`t have critchon or king on my bookshelves for free anyway ;-O

I wonder if some of the early ones are out of print because the first Donald Westlake, I think it's 361 is really expensive on amazon now. I found a guy who is selling 42 brand new copies but he wants over two hundred dollars for them and I just can't pony up that kind of money right now.I'm hard up like our hard-boiled criminals.

I forgot to mention that I've also been revisiting Frank Miller's "Sin City" comics and I think I understand it somewhat better now that I *get* his homages to pulp crime fiction and film noir. In the case of Sin City, Vol. 2: A Dame to Kill For, it's pretty clear that Dwight McCarthy's based on Mike Hammer and Ava Lord an exaggerated version of most of James M. Cain's villainesses. (Phyllis Nirdlinger from Double Indemnity in particular)

I also wonder if Miller based Marv in part on Farewell, My Lovely's Moose Malloy.

Of course, then there's how "Sin City" at times owes as much to Expressionist horror and 1970s action movies as to noir and might be too board in its pastiche to be accurately categorized as such.

Michael wrote: "What pulp/crime novel are you currently reading or just finished"

Currently reading 'Skinny Dip' by Carl Hiaasen. I love the concept of a husband who throws his wife off a cruise ship, but she survives and pretends to be dead and comes back to mess with her husband's head.

I am currently reading / re-reading the novels of Raymond Chandler. Absolutely brilliant. Fantastic dialogue. Philip Marlowe is one of the best fictional characters ever created and I fall in love with him a little bit more with each novel. I have also recently bought James Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet" of novels, so I have a big pile of brilliant books to look forward to reading! L.A. Confidential is one of my favourite films, so I am sure that the novel will be fabulous.

I have finished the eight book in the Story of Crime series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo : The Locked Room. It is one of the best plotted in the series and funnier than usual, a worthy addition to an already famous collection.