"The Girl With No Place to Hide" by Marvin Albert as Nick Quarry (1959)

The Girl With No Place to Hide gave me everything I wanted from a 1950s private eye novel—and in spades. A thoroughly hardboiled protagonist, gritty New York city ambience, wild nights in Greenwich Village bars, Bronx flophouses, incriminating photographs, two-way mirrors, blackmail, loan-sharks, shoot-outs, fist-fights, jail-house brawls, prizefights at Madison Square Garden, thugs, crooked cops, duplicitous dames—you name it, this book’s got it. But it’s also got something extra special—and that’s Marvin Albert. 

The story begins when a young woman enters a bar looking for private eye Jake Barrow’s friend, fight manager Steve Canby, who left the bar just moments before. Later, as Jake is leaving the bar, he finds a thug in the alley strangling the woman. He rescues her and takes her to his apartment for safe keeping, and she reveals that she’s in trouble, and that something bad has happened to her friend Ernie. Before Jake can find out more, he gets an urgent call to come up to the Bronx for $200. When he gets there, he realizes it was a ruse. Returning to his apartment, Angela is gone. The next morning, Jake sees in the newspaper that a photographer named Ernie was found murdered—and he fears that Angela will be the next victim.

I’ll say no more except that this is a wild ride all across New York City, with plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing every step of the way.

Originally appearing under Albert's pseudonym “Nick Quarry” in 1959 by Gold Medal Books, The Girl With No Place to Hide was recently reissued by Black Gat Books from Stark House Press, and it magnificently captures why Albert was a writer’s writer. The Girl With No Place to Hide is the work of a real pro—a slickly designed plot that hits the right beats but not in the expected places, so readers will get what they're looking for but not in the same way they’ve read it before. Albert also shows restraint with the prose, no leaning too much on sex, violence, or slang. This is Albert’s third novel with his series character Jake Barrow—but don’t let that stop you from jumping in. If you’re like me and you haven’t read the first two yet, you’ll have no trouble following along (though you might want to rush out and find the others). 


"The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues" (1955)

The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955) is the type of movie that puts title and poster first—and story and production values dead last. And that’s ok! It’s schlocky good fun with a ragged monster that’s more cute than menacing. A bargain basement Creature from the Black Lagoon with a Cold War espionage twist, Phantom also embodies the highs, lows, and everything-in-betweens of what wound up on the bottom half of double bills in the 1950s. This particular movie accompanied Roger Corman’s Day the World Ended (1955), and together they made enough money at the box office to more than double their production costs. Sure, the monster doesn’t get enough screen time, and everyone uses the same boat, and nobody has a car, and there are lots of chance encounters happen on this one particular beach…but these sorts of decisions were made in the name of keeping the budget low, the production schedule quick, and the run-time short. So, maybe Phantom isn’t the horror classic that it tries to emulate, but it has an undeniable econo joie de vivre that makes ‘50s schlock so enchanting.

"The Gang" (1977)

Making its Blu-ray debut from the Cohen Film Collection (distributed by Kino Lorber), Jacques Deray's The Gang (Le Gang) is a strikingly unusual and idiosyncratic arthouse gangster film that should hold many surprises for fans of French crime dramas. While it has moments that resemble French master Jean-Pierre Melville, as well as American films like The Godfather, The Sting, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, stylistically the film is quite distinct from all of those. 

The Gang begins with the titular group of men gathering before a job, and then jumps to directly after the job, as they return with their leader, Robert "The Crazy" (Alain Delon), wounded. This leads into a voice-over from Robert's wife, Marinette (Nicole Calfari), who takes the story back to post-war Paris where they meet at a nightclub, where Robert holds the patrons at gunpoint after an American soldier insults one of the gang. From here, the story alternates between idyllic scenes of the gang celebrating baptisms, relaxing in the countryside, and glimpses of their crimes filmed with Melvillain sobriety. Robert becomes increasingly brazen as their success grows, and it's only a matter of time before his craziness gets him—and perhaps the gang—killed.

“The Kid I Killed Last Night and Other Stories: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #7,” edited by David Laurence Wilson (Ramble House, 2021)

I'm ecstatic over the seventh and most recent volume in Ramble House’s series of Day Keene’s short stories is The Kid I Killed Last Night and Other Stories: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #7 (2021). Expertly compiled, edited, and introduced by David Laurence Wilson, this collection is one of the most interesting and illuminating volumes released yet. Devoted to Keene’s earliest stories published under his real name Gunard Hjertstedt and later tales published under pen names (John Corbett and Donald King), The Kid I Killed Last Night sheds light on the more obscure areas of Keene’s pulp career. Fans of the author will delight in being able to access such rarities, and newcomers will hopefully appreciate the author’s wit and crackerjack plots. Early or late, real name or pen name, Keene was a master of the short story, and Ramble House and David Laurence Wilson deserve applause (and lots of orders) for keeping the author’s legacy alive. 

"Manhunter" by Arnold Hano (1957)

In Arnold Hano’s westerns, the frontier is deceitful above all things, truth is rarely simple, and resolutions never easy. Where other books end—the capture of the killer and the confession—Manhunter begins.

“Ross was no longer vitally interested in Gill. He had his father’s killer, his confessed killer. But Gill could clear up who was lying, and why.

“On the heels of that thought came a terrible doubt, streaking across his brain like a yellow comet. It had all happened so long ago. Maybe it was he—Ben Ross—who was lying.”

Originally released in 1957 under the pseudonym “Matthew Gant” and recently released by Stark House Press (paired with Slade), Manhunter is emblematic of Hano’s strikingly original approach to the western genre. Revenge and closure don't drive his protagonist forward, it’s something darker and all-consuming. These sorts of qualities separate Arnold Hano’s westerns from many of his peers, and what gives them the distinction of being labeled retroactively as “western noir.” 

"Slade" by Arnold Hano (1956)

There’s nothing heroic or romantic about Arnold Hano’s westerns. The frontier is a dark and violent landscape that doesn’t offer redemption, rebirth, or hope. In Hano’s books, the barren landscapes reveal the naked awfulness of its people. These qualities are on full display in Slade and Manhunter, two of Hano’s grim, gut-punch westerns recently reissued by Stark House Press. These great books embody why Hano deserves the title “Master of the Western Noir,” which is the name of Paul Bishop’s terrific essay-interview with the author, which is also included in the new volume.

Slade was originally published in 1956 under the name “Ad Gordon” by Lion Books, where Hano was also the editor. Hano doesn’t handle his characters with kid gloves—he puts them through hell, over and over again. Slade begins with him knocking the titular character off his high horse, and what a fall he takes. Like Icarus before him, Slade flew too close to the sun and paid for his hubris. Here, the gambler bet everything he had—including his saloon—and lost it. With only his horse, his hat, and a sock with $500 he tries to leave town, but after he’s jumped and beaten unconscious he loses even the sock. “Dilt drove both his fists to the back of Slade’s neck and kicked himself loose. Yet somehow he got up again. Finally, the wild red washed through him and turned gray and the last thing he remembered was Dilt saying hoarsely, ‘Fall, you son of a bitch, fall.’”

My new story "Death Drives By Night" is at Beat to a Pulp


I've been a big fan of Beat to a Pulp since I discovered them a little over a decade ago, around the same time I started this blog. Since then, it's been a dream of mine to have a short story included on their website. That dream has finally come true, and I'm thrilled that they've given a home to my story, "Death Drives By Night." It's about a rural veterinarian with a sideline patching up criminals who gets caught in the middle of a drug war when violence follows the trail back to his home. Zakariah Johnson described it as "Gritty, gravel-road-noir."

Click here to read "Death Drives by Night."

Image: Designed by me, photograph "129201-07" by phrenologist is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

"Love Like Bleeding Out With An Empty Gun In Your Hand" by Stephen J. Golds (2021)

Nothing ever lasts in Stephen J. Golds’s world—not the good, and not the bad. 

In Golds’s hard-hitting collection of noir-influenced poetry and prose, Love Like Bleeding Out With An Empty Gun In Your Hand, there’s a lot of past, not much present, and even less future. Characters look back and see what’s better left behind; they look around and don’t like what they see; and they look ahead but don’t see much of anything. Yet somehow, Golds manages to be both a romantic and a nihilist at the same time—and that’s as good as definition of noir as I can think of.

Wallace Stroby Interview at CrimeReads


I've long been a fan of Wallace Stroby's crime novels, especially his Crissa Stone series, but his latest is my new favorite. In design, Heaven's a Lie reads like something straight out of Gold Medal from the 1950s, but in feeling and tone it is completely modern, and deeply tied to the present moment. The main character is Joette, a woman who was laid off from her bank teller job when the bank downsized. Now she works a day-shift at a decaying motel during the off-season in order to pay for her trailer and support her dying mother. But that's all backstory you learn later. Stroby kick-starts the action with the first sentence of the book. A car turns over in front of the motel. Joette rushes to help rescue the driver. Inside the open trunk, she sees a bag of cash. She takes it. And, of course, the rightful owner quickly figures out she has it and wants it back. Trouble is, Joette's got nothing left to lose and is determined to keep the cash.

One of Stroby's strongest abilities is character development. He eschews archetype for realistic people made of flesh-and-blood, with urgent and relatable motivations, and who—when pushed—surprise not only those around them, but also themselves. And Heaven's a Lie is a book in which characters frequently surprise themselves. Whether it is Joette recognizing her boldness and recklessness, or Travis—the sadistic drug dealer—acknowledging his limitations and powerlessness, the cast of Heaven's a Lie face life-altering and disturbing self-realizations. 

I loved Heaven's a Lie—a tightly-knit chamber noir filled with melancholy and heartache set against a backdrop of America's struggling economy and the destructive wake of gentrification.

On the occasion of the book's release, Stroby was kind enough to speak with me about the writing process. 

Read the full interview, "Wallace Stroby on Life, Death, and Noir on the Jersey Shore," at CrimeReads.

"Later" by Stephen King (2021)

Later, Stephen King’s third crime novel published by Hard Case Crime, is a masterful fusion of melancholic macabre and grim fantasy that recalls past masters of the crime/horror hybrid like Fredric Brown or Joel Townsley Rogers’s The Red Right Hand. There’s also an air of wonderment that permeates the entire novel and which reminds of the crime stories of Ray Bradbury (collected by Hard Case last year). “I thought of asking her if it freaked her out to look up at night and see the stars and know they go on forever and ever, but didn’t bother. I just said no. You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to, but you do. There’s too much wonder, that’s all. It’s everywhere.” Horror, in Later, can be frightening, but it can also be magical and fantastic. To borrow the title of a Sergio Martino movie, Stephen King explores all the colors of the dark in Later, a playful, gripping novel that’s as moving as it is chilling. 

"High Plains Drifter" (1973)

High Plains Drifter (1973) is a landmark film for Clint Eastwood: his second feature as a director (following the stalker-thriller Play Misty for Me) and his first western as director. Among his darkest works, it’s a surreal, disturbing tale that plays out more like a horror movie than a traditional western. Inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese (killed in public in 1964 while people looked on), High Plains Drifter is also a sharp critique of how society—and especially cinema—fetishes and romanticizes violence and brutality. Gorgeously filmed by Bruce Surtees, who transforms the western landscape into a blazing hellscape, the full infernal glory and grim beauty of High Plains Drifter is on display in a new Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

"Bad Moon Rising" by Ed Gorman (2011) - FFB

It's coming up on 5 years since Ed Gorman passed away, and not a day goes by that I don't pass by his books on my shelf and think of him. And while I still have plenty of his nearly 120 books—including novels, novellas, and story collections—to get through, I still miss the thrill of hearing about a new Gorman novel, seeing his latest blog post, or reading one of his introductions to a reprinted classic crime novel. 

The hallmark of Gorman's style is the utter simplicity and clarity of his language. He doesn't go in for hardboiled-isms, procedural jargon, expletive overload, or any other attention-grabbing affectation. Straightforward prose is more than just a stylistic decision; it's the foundation of Gorman's moral universe. His protagonists shun pretensions of any kind—artistic, social, or political. In both style and substance, Gorman's work radiates a profound sense of honesty. His characters can see the worst qualities in others because they've first recognized them in themselves. Among my favorites of his books is the Sam McCain series. First introduced in 1999's The Day the Music Died, McCain is a lawyer and licensed PI in the small town of Black River Falls, Iowa, and one of Gorman's most compassionate and endearing characters.

"A Death in Mexico" by Jonathan Woods (2012)

Jonathan Woods’s debut novel, A Death in Mexico (New Pulp Press, 2012), is an outrageous and unruly mescal-soaked murder mystery packed with plenty of euphoric and hallucinogenic highs and none of the regrettable aftereffects. Readers looking for a by-the-books police procedural won’t find anything so straight-laced or conservative in this book; adventurous readers—those willing to drink without first asking what’s in the glass—will savor Woods’s unorthodox mélange of sex and slaughter under the sun.

It all begins when a young female corpse is discovered mutilated in the streets of San Miguel de Allende. Leading the investigation is police inspector Hector Diaz, a man prone to indigestion, ill-timed erections, and hallucinations of Aztec gods. After the corpse is identified as Amanda Smallwood, a young model from Texas, the trail leads Diaz to a local community of expatriate American artists that includes a charming convicted child molester, a Canadian diplomat’s wife, and scores of jilted lovers and wannabe artists living Bohemian fantasies with total abandon—any of whom seem desperate, envious, inebriated, or crazy enough to have committed the murder.

"The (Original Adventures) of Ford Fairlane: The Long Lost Rock ’n’ Roll Detective Stories" by Rex Weiner (2018) - FFB

The 1970s witnessed a rebirth of interest in the hardboiled private eye. This new wave of gumshoe scribes paid tribute to their pioneering forebears, like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but also modernized the genre and its hero for their own time. Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective series started in 1971 with The Snatch; Robert B. Parker's first Spenser book, The Godwulf Manuscript, appeared in 1973; James Crumley debuted two beloved series characters, Milo Milodragovitch in The Wrong Case (1975) and C. W. Sughrue in The Last Good Kiss (1978); Lawrence Block launched Matthew Scudder in Sins of the Fathers (1976); and Marcia Muller introduced Sharon McCone in Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977). The new breed of private eyes was so successful that their influence and popularity—and, in several cases, sequels—continue to this day.

Into this fray rode Rex Weiner’s Ford Fairlane, an ex-bouncer-turned-punk-rock-PI who made the New York and L.A. scenes in two serialized stories in the New York Rocker and the L.A. Weekly in 1980. Long out of print, both are now collected in The (Original Adventures) of Ford Fairlane: The Long Lost Rock ’n’ Roll Detective Stories (2018), which also includes an insightful “Backstory” by Weiner, as well as contextual interviews with the stories’ original editors, Andy Schwartz of the Rocker and Jay Levin of the Weekly, and with filmmaker Floyd Mutrux, who first tried to bring Fairlane to the screen (he is not at all responsible for the obnoxious Andrew Dice Clay–fronted adaptation from 1990, that dishonor belongs to Renny Harlin). The reappearance and reappraisal of the Fairlane stories is overdue, as these should-be classics of the genre strike a perfect tonal balance between tradition and innovation.

"A Corpse Walks in Brooklyn: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #5" edited by John Pelan (2013)

Ramble House's fifth volume of Day Keene's pulp stories is one of their strongest collections in the series thus far. Edited by John Pelan and featuring an introduction by Robert J. Randisi, A Corpse Walks in Brooklyn: Day Keene in the Detective Pulps, Vol. #5 includes three of Keene's series characters (Silent Smith, Herman Stone, and Matt Mercer) in characteristically excellent tales, but it's the non-series stories that really elevate this volume.

While Keene's pulps often focused on innocent everyman protagonists who were framed or detective-proxies (be they private eye, cop, or a stand-in), some of his funnest—and darkest—yarns were about criminals. The one in this collection is among my favorite of Keene stories. "I'll Be Seeing You" is about a racketeer who plots to get rid of the newly-elected D.A. when he meets her sister one night, unaware that she has a plan of her own underway. The ending has a delightful and dark sense of poetic justice. Keene's criminal-centered stories are often shorter than his detective-based narratives, which gives them an extra sense of bit—and "I'll Be Seeing You" shows Keene's teeth at their sharpest.

The Rock Hudson Collection: "Seminole" (1953), "The Golden Blade" (1953), and "Bengal Brigade" (1954)

Before he was the debonair leading man in Doris Day rom-coms like Pillow Talk (1959) and Lover Come Back (1961), and before his commanding performances in Douglas Sirk’s melodramas like All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956), Rock Hudson was a man of action, portraying rugged characters in a variety of genres. Hudson’s star persona was quite diverse, capable of channeling the suave charm of Cary Grant, the physical dynamism of Burt Lancaster, or the soft-spoken intensity of Gregory Peck, often in the same role. And it’s this versatility that makes Hudson’s body of work so rewarding: he could lend his talents to such starkly different movies, from light hearted comedies and war pictures to heavy dramas and outdoor adventures, and be just as convincing in each of them. 

Kino Lorber Studio Classics’s Rock Hudson Collection highlights three of the actor’s early adventure pictures: the frontier epic Seminole (1953); a Middle Eastern swashbuckler, The Golden Blade (1953); and Bengal Brigade (1954), set during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. 

"Becoming Day Keene" at the Los Angeles Review of Books


Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, I have a piece on Day Keene focused on his working-class upbringing, early years as an itinerant actor, and his radio career, and how these experiences influenced and are reflected in his later pulp stories and paperback novels. 

Struggle is rampant in Keene’s world, and nothing ever comes easy. “It burns me up when I think of it. I get all sick inside,” admits a police lieutenant in Wake Up to Murder, lamenting about how he’s only an $80-per-week cop raising a family instead of the rich man he thought he’d be. “I guess all we little men of the world have the same problem. We’re all riding a blind horse. And despite our best efforts, most of the time it plods on where it will. And all we really can do is hang on and keep our heads.” This working-class ethos stems from Keene’s own upbringing and his pre-pulp careers as an itinerant actor in the 1920s, specializing in vaudeville and stock theater, and as a radio writer in the 1930s.

The full essay, "Becoming Day Keene: The Pre-Pulp Career of Gunard Hjertstedt," is available here.

I am deeply grateful to the LARB for publishing this piece, and my fabulous editor Boris Dralyuk for his patience, support, and enthusiasm. 

"P.J." (1968)

Kudos to Kino Lorber Studio Classics for releasing P.J., a missing piece of the private eye movie puzzle that had never before been on home video. Originally released in 1968, it’s a fascinating look at a genre—and an industry—on the brink of change. P.J. is poised precariously between two eras, it’s like a last-call for late-era Golden Age Hollywood decadence that also looks ahead to ‘70s ambivalence. P.J. recalls more the shaggy dog detectives of the following decade, like in Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in Hickey & Boggs (1972) or Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye (1973), than a classical model like Humphrey Bogart. 

In P.J., George Peppard (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) stars as the titular character, a down-on-his-luck private detective who has been reduced to framing a wife by posing as her lover so her husband can catch them in a motel room and have evidence for divorce; the husband even throws in an extra $50 so he can beat up P.J. to make it look more convincing. Later, P.J.’s loyal bartender gives him a tip on a bodyguard job for Maureen Preble (Gayle Hunnicutt), mistress to business tycoon William Orbison (Raymond Burr). From the pre-credit sequence, we know that Orbison has hired an assassin, though it’s not clear who he hired—or who he wants killed. Multiple attempts have been made on Maureen’s life, and P.J. is determined to keep her alive at any cost. As expected, the case is more complicated than P.J. or the audience can imagine. 

Noir February at The Kulturecast

Chris Stachiw, host of The Kulturecast podcast, was kind enough to invite me to program a month of episodes based around noir movies. I was greatly honored by the invitation, and lost track of how many movies and themes I considered. In the end, I went with my gut and chose 5 favorite noir films that I think are under-seen and under-appreciated. I looked at it as an opportunity to help spread the word about these movies. Here's a list of the films with a schedule of speakers:


1) The Sound of Fury (1950) - Chris with Trevor Gumbel

The Sound of Fury, also known as Try and Get Me, was directed by Cy Enfield before he was blacklisted and forced to relocate to England to continue working. This movie epitomizes post-WWII noir for me. Frank Loveloy is a vet who is down and out. Unable to find a job, he runs into sharp dresser Lloyd Bridges who offers him an easy job—just drive a car. Soon, Lovejoy is a getaway driver, and things go south from there. What really hits me about the movie is the ending—utter bleakness. No redemption, no justice, just a rioting mob and widespread violence. 

"Test Tube Baby" by Sam Fuller (1936)

Test Tube Baby is the second novel from Samuel Fuller (here credited as “Sam Fuller”). Published in 1936 by Godwin, Publishers, it is among...