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A Killer is Loose by Gil Brewer. New York. 1954. Fawcett Gold Medal. 152 pages. paperback. 380. Cover by Lu Kimmel.  

DESCRIPTION - Behind a helpless man and girl his gun terrorized the town. A KILLER IS LOOSE. He shot Jake Halloran in the head, then turned to me, smiling, the Luger held loosely in his right hand. ‘Hello, pal,' he said. ‘My name's Ralph Angers. What's yours? That's how I met him, this grave-looking, clean-cut, totally mad young man, who walked through my town with a gun, leaving a wake of tears and agony and murder behind him. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Florida writer Gil Brewer (1922-1983) was the author of dozens of wonderfully sleazy sex/crime adventure novels of the 1950's and 60's, including Backwoods Teaser and Nude on Thin Ice; some of them starring private eye Lee Baron (Wild) or the brothers Sam and Tate Morgan (The Bitch). Gil Brewer, who had not previously published any novels, began to write for Gold Medal Paperbacks in 1950-51. Brewer wrote some 30 novels between 1951 and the late 60s - very often involving an ordinary man who becomes involved with, and is often corrupted and destroyed by, an evil or designing woman. His style is simple and direct, with sharp dialogue, often achieving considerable intensity. Brewer was one of the many writers who ghost wrote under the Ellery Queen byline as well. Brewer also was known as Eric Fitzgerald, Bailey Morgan, and Elaine Evans.

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To Die in California by Newton Thornburg. Boston. 1973. Little Brown. 0316843881. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.  

DESCRIPTION - David Hook had not been born into the farmer's life, he had chosen it - because he cherished its rugged simplicity, because on a farm he could be the strong, idiosyncratic man he was, and watch his family grow with hard work and dignity. His wife Kate's premature death had nearly destroyed him. And now he stood immobile. The coffin bearing the body of his eldest son, Chris, disappeared into the ground. The California police had said it was suicide. David Hook knew that was a lie. Silently, he turned away and boarded a plane for Santa Barbara. To Die in California is the story of Hook's search for the truth about his son's death. In Santa Barbara, where Chris Hook tumbled over the edge of a cliff, several people tell a convincing story  - convincing, at least, to the police. But Hook knows it is not the truth, and the casual evil of their lies infuriates him. He encounters, in particular, a professional politician named Jack Douglas and Douglas's stunning, cynical mistress, and, obsessed with pride for those he loves deeply, he becomes their tireless, cagey adversary. He hounds them incessantly, determined to expose them, until, suddenly, he holds in his hands the means of their destruction, and of his own. This is a thrilling work: a story which draws its relentless suspense from the struggle among people violently different in motive, character and degree of courage. In David Hook is embodied the continual fight for the survival of what a man finds honorable and worth loving.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Newton Thornburg (May 13, 1929, Harvey, IL - May 9, 2011, Bothell, WA) was an American novelist and screenwriter. Born in Harvey, Illinois, Thornburg graduated from the University of Iowa with a Fine Arts degree. He worked in a variety of jobs before devoting himself to writing full-time (or at least in tandem with his cattle farm in the Ozarks) in 1973. His 1976 novel CUTTER AND BONE was filmed in 1981 as Cutter's Way. The New York Times called CUTTER AND BONE ‘the best novel of its kind for ten years.' His other novels include KNOCKOVER, GENTLEMAN BORN, BLACK ANGUS, TO DIE IN CALIFORNIA, VALHALLA, DREAMLAND, A MAN'S GAME, EVE'S MEN, and THE LION AT THE DOOR.

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The Price of the Ticket by Jim Nisbet. Yucson. 2003. Dennis McMillan Publications. 0939767430. 230 pages. hardcover. Cover art by S. Clay Wilson.  

DESCRIPTION - Pauley's done a few bad things in his life and he's been around the block a few times, too; in fact, he's been inside the Big Block for most of his life. But now, age 52, he's got an honest job, making h1gb-class torture racks and other exquisite playthings for a gay S&M outfit in San Francisco. He's also got a super-hot 25-year-old girlfriend who wears a glow-in-the-dark mood bone in her nose and keeps him on the straight and narrow. His only real problem right now is that his old Ford Econoline van has finally pooped out, and he's got to find new wheels posthaste. The State Franchise Tax Board is also breathing down his neck and the rent is due; but things will work out  - they usually do. But, unfortunately for all concerned, today isn't usually; it's the day he's going to look at a small, used Toyota pickup truck advertised by one Martin Seam. Sometimes a ticket to Hell only costs $600 . . . nonrefundable, of course.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jim Nisbet (January 20, 1947 – September 28, 2022) was an American author, Nisbet received a degree in literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before settling in San Francisco, California, where he wrote poetry, short stories, plays, and novels. He also ran a studio designing and building “electronics furniture”—consoles and cabinetry for audio and video production studios. He was the author of 13 published novels and six books of poetry, and he contributed to many collections and journals. His work was published in the U.S., France (by Rivages, under legendary editor François Guérif), Germany, and Italy. Nisbet's writing used the conventions of crime fiction and noir to support a dark, cerebral, and harrowing narrative, laced with humor and carried off in unexpected directions by exuberant wordplay. He incorporated themes as wide-ranging as sailing, particle physics, mathematics, ancient Rome, modern jazz, and urban subculture. Jim Nisbet died in Sausalito, California, on September 28, 2022, at the age of 75.

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Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. New York. 1943. Pocket Books. 227 pages. paperback. 241.  

DESCRIPTION - Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by the Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction, much of which is drawn from his own experiences as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency (fictionalized as the Continental Detective Agency). The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders in a corrupt Montana mining town, which had been taken over by gangs following a labor dispute. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana. . . A BLOODY HUMORESQUE - RED HARVEST is a lurid thriller . . . the most real I and vivid picture of gang warfare we have ever had there h~ never been a detective story like it it contains the most remarkable collection of detestable characters ever devised by the brain of a fiction writer . . . it is told in choice underworld vernacular . . . it is doubtful if even Ernest Hemingway has ever written more effective dialogue . . . Hammett's characters race through the story with the rapidity and destructiveness of machine guns . . . RED HARVEST is just what its name implies . . . a harvest of ill-grown crimson weeds. The foregoing won4s are a composite of the. opinions expressed by Warden Lawes, Carl Van Vechten, the Bookman, the New York Sun, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Outlook.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 - January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, a screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett 'is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time' and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, 'the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction.' Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

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Digger's Game by George V. Higgins. New York. 1973. Knopf. 0394483162. 218 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Hal Siegel.  

DESCRIPTION - With all his brilliance of suspense, verisimilitude, and ‘dialogue so authentic it spits,' George V. Higgins floodlights the murky area of the city - his setting once more is Boston - where the borders between legitimate and criminal enterprise vanish in a fog of greed, and violence is just around the corner. This is how a slick (Beacon Street) setup like the Regent Sportsmen's Club, Inc., works. It's an air charter operation: package tours to top casinos. What its clients - respectable businessmen hooked on gambling - don't know is that in addition to the front man, a seemingly respectable ex-stockbroker, one of the partners is a Mafia connection and the third, put in by the Mob, is ‘the Greek,' the loan shark who collects the markers. A smooth enterprise, neat, profitable, until. . . That's where the Digger comes in. The Digger is Jerry Doherty, proprietor of a workingman's bar, who supplements his income with occasional odd jobs like stealing live checks or picking up hot goods. He contrives to stay out of jail (his brother, a priest, has political clout). But they've hooked the not-so-respectable Digger with a bargain fare on a half-empty plane to Vegas, and now he owes $18,000 and the Greek is crowding him. The partners are scared the Creek isn't up to tangling with a tough proposition like the Digger. The Don himself is nervous. The smooth enterprise gets rough - and one thing seems more and more certain: whether it's the Digger or the Greek or the ex-broker or the Mafia man, someone's going to die. In scene after scene - as the novel rushes toward its violent climax - Higgins makes overwhelmingly real the world of the loan shark, the world of the Mafia-connected businessman, the machinery of their operations, and the inevitable semi-pros who, like the Digger, grease, and sometimes jam, the gears.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - George V. Higgins (November 13, 1939 - November 6, 1999) was an American author, lawyer, newspaper columnist, and college professor. He is best known for his bestselling crime novels. His full name was George Vincent Higgins II, after an uncle living in Randolph, but he dropped the numeric (unofficially) in mid life. His books were all published as by George V. Higgins.

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Kill the Boss Good-By by Peter Rabe. New York. 1956. Fawcett/Gold Medal. Paperback Original. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - They wanted to feed on the lion's flesh - these jackals of the underworld. PANDER wore dark glasses and fancy suspenders and he moved into the San Pietro rackets like a sandblaster gone berserk. FELL, the boss, was mysteriously away and Pander grabbed the chance to bury his hands in the heavy money. Then Fell carne back. At his side was Cripp, the human adding machine with the beautiful face and the twisted leg. With them came murder - wholesale. Another novel of underworld violence told with the frightening quietness that has established Peter Rabe among the masters of suspense.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Peter Rabe aka Peter Rabinowitsch, (1921–1990), was a German American writer who also used the nom de plumes Marco Malaponte and J. T. MacCargo (though not all of the latter's books were by him). Rabe was the author of over 30 books, mostly of crime fiction, published between 1955 and 1975. Born Peter Rabinowitsch on November 3, 1921, to Michael Rabinovitch (a Russian Jew; the spelling is the Russian version) and Elisabeth Margarete Beer, in Halle, Germany. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Hanover, Germany, where Peter's father worked as a doctor and surgeon. When the Nazis came to power and summoned Michael Rabinovitch to a Gestapo office and confronted him with transcripts of political conversations between him and his patients, he decided it best to emigrate to the United States before Peter turned 15 and face possible internment. Michael also had his doctor's license revoked by the Nazis. Michael and Peter left a few months before Kristalnacht in October, 1938, sponsored by Michael's brother Robert Rubin, and they lived with the Rubin family in Detroit, Michigan. At Rubin's suggestion, Michael changed the family name to 'Rabe,' by combining his name (the 'Ra' from Rabinovitch) and his wife's maiden name (the 'Be' from Beer). He took over the practice of a retiring obstetrician in New Bremen, Ohio, a German American town. Margarete, a Lutheran, brought her other two sons, Valentin and Andreas, on the last ship of refugees before World War II broke out in 1940. Peter earned his bachelor's degree from Ohio State University, then served a stint in the Army. He attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland and was awarded a Masters degree and a Ph.D. in psychology. While at Western Reserve, Rabe met Claire Frederickson, also a psychology student and member of a family who had left Europe ahead of the Nazis. Claire introduced Peter to fellow student Max Gartenberg, who would eventually become Peter's literary agent. Claire and Peter married and moved to Bar Harbor, Maine, where Peter worked as a researcher for Claire's brother, Emil Frederickson. Peter was uncomfortable experimenting on animals and after the project ended the couple moved to Los Angeles to try to establish Peter as a therapist. It was hard to break in and after a short time the couple returned to Cleveland. Peter did blue-collar work in a factory but was soon asked to work on the company's advertising layouts. This work served him well as Peter used these skills to write and illustrate his first book, From Here to Maternity (Vanguard Press, 1955; originally appeared in McCall's Magazine, September 1954, as 'Who's Having This Baby?'), a humorous look at the birth of his and Claire's first son, Jonathan, born April 5, 1953. After his first book, Rabe wrote almost exclusively crime fiction, the exceptions being three soft core books for Beacon in the early sixties, and a novelization of the war movie Tobruk for Bantam in 1967. In an essay included in the book Murder off the Rack, edited by Jon L. Breen, Donald E. Westlake opens with the line, 'Peter Rabe wrote the best books with the worst titles of anybody I can think of.' When Gold Medal changed the titles of Rabe's first two books from The Ticker and The Hook to Stop This Man! and Benny Muscles In, a pattern was set that would last throughout his career. Stop This Man! appeared in August, 1955 (Gold Medal 506), followed closely by Benny Muscles In (Gold Medal 520, September, 1955), and A Shroud for Jesso (Gold Medal 528, October, 1955). Clearly capable of writing books quickly, Rabe published eighteen books by 1961. In 1962 came one of his best books, The Box (one of only two Rabe books to use his own titles, the other being A House in Naples). Then there were the three soft core books for Beacon, the last two under the pseudonym of Marco Malaponte. After this came the three books about his second series character, Manny DeWitt, the novelization of Tobruk, and then the final books to appear under his own name These were a pair of Mafia related books, again for Gold Medal (War of the Dons (Gold Medal M2592, 1972), and Black Mafia (Gold Medal M2939). The last books Rabe published before he backed off from his writing career were novelizations of episodes of the television series 'Mannix' using the pseudonym 'J. T. MacCargo.' This was apparently a house name for Belmont, with an unknown author penning the first and third books of the series. Rabe wrote the second and fourth books, A Fine Day for Dying and Round Trip to Nowhere, both appearing in 1975. They were the last of his books to be published in his lifetime. In the late '50s, Rabe had gastro-intestinal problems that led to a mis-diagnosis of terminal cancer. He moved to Europe for treatment where his marriage eventually ended and he moved back to the United States. He had met Lorenzo Semple, Jr. in Spain and later, after Semple began work for the Batman television series, Rabe wrote two episodes: 'The Joker's Last Laugh' and 'The Joker's Epitaph.' He went on to two other marriages, neither of which lasted, and left the writing life to become a teacher of psychology at California Polytechnic State University. His only other children were also with Claire, who published some fiction of her own in the 1960s, later collected in 1989's Sicily Enough and More. Also in the 1980s Black Lizard began reprinting some of Rabe's earlier classics. Beginning in 2003, Stark House Press has been reprinting Rabe works in two for one trade paperback editions. Rabe settled down in Atascadero, California until his death from lung cancer on May 20, 1990. Although Rabe left the writing life for his teaching career, he didn't stop writing. This led to two unpublished novels probably written between 1987 and 1990, The Return of Marvin Palaver and The Silent Wall. Shortly before his death, Rabe had sent these to writer Ed Gorman in an effort to see them published and in 2010, both works will appear in a single volume from Stark House Press. Rabe may only have written two short stories in his career. One, “Hard Case Redhead,” is an excellent story with a debatable ending, hard core and noirish up to its final paragraph, which gives us an almost Hitchcockian twist ending. The other, 'A Matter of Balance,' is a perfectly titled story of two soldiers, each a cipher to the other, pushed together in what for one is an impossible situation. The emotional buttons Rabe pushes, the real contrast between the characters, and the morally and thematically ambiguous ending make it a nearly pitch perfect telling. He also contributed two scripts to the 'Batman' television series. Rabe had a clear and lucid style, and other than his series books, never wrote to formula or wrote the same book over and over. He wrote straight Gold Medal-type books such as Stop This Man!, Journey Into Terror, and Mission for Vengeance, as well as books that showed a lighter touch (Murder Me for Nickels, The Return of Marvin Palaver), dark and almost brooding (A House in Naples, The Silent Wall), and brilliant character studies of underworld figures (The Box, Benny Muscles In, Anatomy of a Killer). He is a subtle writer, and the dialogue and choices made by his characters show them off in unusual ways, often with seemingly unpredictable behavior that turns out to be entirely consistent with who they are as well as the plot of the book. He zigs when most writers would zag which makes even his stock characters interesting.

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He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond. New York. 1987. Available Press. 0345342895. 240 pages. paperback. Cover design by Bill Toth. Cover photo by Bill Brandt.  

DESCRIPTION - Life in the Department of Unexplained Deaths. As it turns out, a dead man can tell stories... Murders are a dime a dozen in Margaret Thatcher's London, and when it comes to the brutal killing of a middle-aged alcoholic found dumped outside of town, Scotland Yard has more important cases to deal with. Instead it's a job for the Department of Unexplained Deaths and its head Detective Sergeant. With only a box of cassette-tape diaries as evidence the rogue detective has no chouce but to listen to the haunting voice of the victim for clues to his gruesome end. The first book in Derek Raymond's acclaimed Factory Series is an unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a city plagued by poverty and perversion, and a policeman who may be the only one who cares about the 'people who don't matter and who never did.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robert William Arthur Cook (12 June 1931 – 30 July 1994), better known since the 1980s by his pen name Derek Raymond, was an English crime writer, credited with being a founder of British noir. The eldest son of a textile magnate, Cook spent his early years at the family's London house, off Baker Street, tormenting a series of nannies. In 1937, in anticipation of the Second World War, the family retreated to the countryside, to a house near their Kentish castle. In 1944, Cook went to Eton, which he later characterised as a "hotbed of buggery" and "an excellent preparation for vice of any kind". He dropped out at the age of 17. During his National Service, Cook attained the rank of corporal (latrines). After a brief period working for the family business, selling lingerie in a department store in Neath, Wales, he spent most of the 1950s leading the life of a Chelsea layabout which he describes in his first, semi-autobiographical, novel The Crust on its Uppers (1962), from 1957 on enjoying a long affair with Hazel Whittington the deserted wife of Victor Willing At some time he is said to have lived in the Beat Hotel in Paris, rubbing shoulders with his neighbours William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and danced at fashionable left bank boîtes with the likes of Juliette Gréco. In New York City he resided on the Lower East Side and was married to an heiress from New England for all of sixty-five days. He claimed that he was sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn't believe in and didn't want, whose values were meaningless. He was seeking to carve his way out — "Crime was the only chisel I could find." Cook smuggled oil paintings to Amsterdam, drove fast cars into Spain from Gibraltar, and consummated his downward mobility by spending time in a Spanish jail for sounding off about Francisco Franco in his local bar. Cook returned to London in 1960. He soon fronted a property company for Charlie Da Silva, an associate of the Krays. After undergoing interrogation by the Dutch police force in connection with an insurance scam related to the apparent theft of a painting by Rembrandt, Cook claimed to have given up a life of actual crime for good in favour of a life of writing about it. Published under the name of Robin Cook (not to be confused with the American novelist), his study of one man's deliberate descent into the milieu of London lowlifes, The Crust on its Uppers (1962) was an immediate succès de scandale upon publication. Lexicographers mined it for authentic usage of Cockney rhyming slang and thieves’ cant. But glowing reviews failed to produce great riches. Cook was unfazed by this disparity, commenting later: “I’ve watched people like Kingsley Amis, struggling to get on the up escalator, while I had the down escalator all to myself." He supported his second wife, Eugene, and first child, Sebastian, by combining further novel-writing with stints as a Soho pornographer in St Anne's Court or running gambling parties. In conducting these affairs, Cook soon found himself inspired to depart from England. He spent much of the 1960s in Italy. The Tuscan village in which he settled declared itself an independent anarchist state, and appointed Cook in a dual capacity of its foreign minister and minister of finance. By the end of 1970, Cook had a third wife, Rose, a stepson, Nicholas, an infant daughter, Zoe, a house in Holland Park, and a job as a taxi-driver. His books earned no royalties, his third marriage was in shambles, and he lost his London house. Cook relocated to France and bought a derelict 15th-century fortified tower in Aveyron, to the north of Montpellier. He abandoned writing through all of the 1970s, working as a vineyard labourer with occasional sidelines in roofing, driving, and livestock slaughter. His family rejoined him for a while, but by 1979 the marriage had disintegrated. Nearing 50, Cook eased himself back into literature with a potboiler that was published only in a French translation. He returned to London, married his fourth wife, Fiona, then divorced again. He worked as a minicab-driver on the night shift. He was collecting the material for the first of his "black novels".

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Double Barrel by Nicolas Freeling. New York. 1965. Harper & Row. 217 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Cast in the form of a police investigation, this is very far from being a simple whodunit. Beginning as a seemingly minor & squalid enquiry into an outbreak of poison pen letter-writing, it develops startlingly into something monstrous, a crime against humanity, and then raises the challenging question, what can one do about a crime or a criminal of such magnitude?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nicolas Freeling, born Nicolas Davidson (March 3, 1927 - July 20, 2003), was a British crime novelist, best known as the author of the Van der Valk series of detective novels. A television series based on the character was produced for the British ITV network by Thames Television during the 1970s, and revived in the 1990s. Freeling was born in London, but travelled widely, and ended his life at his long-standing home at Grandfontaine to the west of Strasbourg. He had followed a variety of occupations, including the armed services and the catering profession. He began writing during a three-week prison sentence, after being convicted of stealing some food. Freeling's THE KING OF THE RAINY COUNTRY received a 1967 Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Novel. He also won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association, and France's Grand Prix de LittErature Policière. In 1968 his novel LOVE IN AMSTERDAM was adapted as the film Amsterdam Affair directed by Gerry O'Hara and starring Wolfgang Kieling as Van Der Valk.

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Where Roses Never Die by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2019. Orenda Books. 9781910633090. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 260 pages. paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found. Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge. Shocking, unsettling and full of extraordinary twists and turns, Where Roses Never Die reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s foremost thriller writers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Wolves at the Door by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2020. Orenda Books. 9781912374410. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 260 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault … crimes that Veum himself once stood wrongly accused of committing. While the guilty men were apparently killed accidentally, Varg suspects that there is something more sinister at play … and that he’s on the death list of someone still at large. Fearing for his life, Veum begins to investigate the old case, interviewing the victims of abuse and delving deeper into the brutal crimes, with shocking results. The wolves are no longer in the dark … they are at his door.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Pursued by Death by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2024. Orenda Books. 9781916788244. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 277 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline ' YOUNG MAN MISSING' , he realises he' s seen the youth just a few days earlier – at a crossroads in the countryside, with his two friends. It turns out that the three were on their way to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen. Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he' s pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies. Is the body he' s found connected to the death of a journalist who was digging into the fish farm's operations two years earlier? And does either incident have something to do with the competition between the two powerful families that dominate Solvik' s salmon-farming industry? Or are the deaths the actions of the ‘ Village Beast' – the brutal small-town justice meted out by rural communities in this part of the world. Shocking, timely and full of breathtaking twists and turns, Pursued by Death reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world's greatest crime writers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Bitter Flowers by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2022. Orenda Books. 9781913193089. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 321 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - PI Varg Veum has returned to duty following a stint in rehab, but his new composure and resolution are soon threatened when a challenging assignment arrives on his desk. A man is found dead in an elite swimming pool and a young woman has gone missing. Most chillingly, Varg Veum is asked to investigate the ‘Camilla Case’: an eight-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of a little girl, who was never found. As the threads of these apparently unrelated crimes come together, against the backdrop of a series of shocking environmental crimes, Varg Veum faces the most challenging, traumatic investigation of his career.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Mirror Image by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2023. Orenda Books. 9781914585944. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 293 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - Bergen Private Investigator Varg Veum is perplexed when two wildly different cases cross his desk at the same time. A lawyer, anxious to protect her privacy, asks Varg to find her sister, who has disappeared with her husband, seemingly without trace, while a ship carrying unknown cargo is heading towards the Norwegian coast, and the authorities need answers. Varg immerses himself in the investigations, and it becomes clear that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling – and increasingly uncanny – similarities to events that took place thirty-six years earlier, when a woman and her saxophonist lover drove their car off a cliff, in an apparent double suicide. As Varg is drawn into a complex case involving star-crossed lovers, toxic waste and illegal immigrants, history seems determined to repeat itself in perfect detail … and at terrifying cost. A chilling, dark and twisting story of love and revenge, Mirror Image is Staalesen at his most thrilling, thought-provoking best.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Wolves in the Dark by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2017. Orenda Books. 9781910633724. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 305 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - Reeling from the death of his great love, Karin, Varg Veum’s life has descended into a self-destructive spiral of alcohol, lust, grief and blackouts. When traces of child pornography are found on his computer, he’s accused of being part of a paedophile ring and thrown into a prison cell. There, he struggles to sift through his past to work out who is responsible for planting the material … and who is seeking the ultimate revenge. When a chance to escape presents itself, Varg finds himself on the run in his hometown of Bergen. With the clock ticking and the police on his tail, Varg takes on his hardest – and most personal – case yet. Dark, emotive and compulsive, Wolves in the Dark is the absorbing, shocking next instalment in the addictive Varg Veum series, by one of the fathers of Nordic Noir.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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We Shall Inherit the Wind by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2015. Orenda Books. 9781910633076. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 263 pages. paperback. Cover photograph - Shutterstock. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - 1998. Varg Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he's made. Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, Varg Veum is thrust into one of the most challenging cases of his career, riddled with conflicts, environmental terrorism, religious fanaticism, unsolved mysteries and dubious business ethics. Then, in one of the most heart-stopping scenes in crime fiction, the first body appears. A chilling, timeless story of love, revenge and desire, We Shall Inherit the Wind deftly weaves contemporary issues with a stunning plot that will leave you gripped to the final page. This is Staalesen at his most thrilling, thought-provoking best. 'The Varg Veum series is more concerned with character and motivation than spectacle, and it's in the quieter scenes that the real drama lies.' Herald Scotland. 'Staalesen is one of my very favourite Scandinavian authors and this is a series with very sharp teeth' Ian Rankin. ‘A Norwegian Chandler' Jo Nesbo. ‘Gunnar Staalesen was writing suspenseful and socially conscious Nordic Noir long before any of today's Swedish crime writers had managed to put together a single book page … one of Norway's most skillful storytellers' Johan Theorin. ‘Razor-edged Scandinavian crime fiction at its finest' Quentin Bates. ‘Not many books hook you in the first chapter - this one did, and never let go!' Mari Hannah.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Big Sister by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2018. Orenda Books. 9781912374199. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 259 pages. paperback. Cover photograph - Shutterstock. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - Chilling, shocking and exceptionally gripping, Big Sister reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world's foremost thriller writers. Varg Veum receives a surprise visit in his office. A woman introduces herself as his half-sister, and she has a job for him. Her god-daughter, a 19-year-old trainee nurse from Haugesund, moved from her apartment in Bergen two weeks ago. Since then no one has heard anything from her. She didn't leave an address. She doesn't answer her phone. And the police refuse to take her case seriously. Veum's investigation uncovers a series of carefully covered-up crimes and pent-up hatreds, and the trail leads to a gang of extreme bikers on the hunt for a group of people whose dark deeds are hidden by the anonymity of the Internet. And then things get personal.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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The Consorts of Death by Gunnar  Staalesen. London. 2014. Arcadia Books. 9781906413385. 272 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - September 1995. Veum is in his office when a telephone conversation takes him back 25 years, to a case he was involved in while working as a child protection officer, in the summer of 1970. A small boy was seperated from his mother under tragic circumstances. But that was not the end of it. In 1974 the same boy surfaced in connection with a sudden death in his new home. And again ten years later, in connection with a dramatic double-murder in Sunnfjord. The boy is now an adult, on the run in Oslo, determined to take revenge on those responsible for destroying his life, among them the former child protection officer, now detective Veum.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Cold Hearts by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2013. Arcadia Books. 9781908129437. 300 pages. paperback. Cover photograph: Image Sourse.  

DESCRIPTION - On a frosty January day in Bergen, Norway, private investigator Varg Veum is visited by a prostitute. Her friend Margrethe has disappeared and hasn't been seen for days. Before her disappearance, something had unsettled her: she'd turned away a customer and returned to the neighbourhood in terror. Shortly after taking the case, Veum is confronted with a brutal, uneasy reality. He soon finds the first body - and it won't be the last. His investigation leads him into a dark subculture where corrupted idealism has had deadly consequences. Dark secrets lurk everywhere, as the murky pattern of wounded people, worm-eaten lives, and hearts long grown cold proves deadly … for someone. A dramatic, poetic and page-turning thriller from Norway's most dazzling crime writer.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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The Writing On the Wall by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2004. Arcade Publishing. 1900850583. Translated from the Norwegian by Hal Sutcliffe. 264 pages. paperback. Cover design by Eleanor Rose.  

DESCRIPTION - In this crime drama detective Varg Veum's adventures lead him to a dark world of privileged, young teenage girls who have been drawn into drugs and prostitution. The situation worsens when the local judge is discovered in a luxury hotel, dead and clad only in women's lingerie. Called in by anxious parents and officials to look for a missing daughter and explain the judge's death, Varg finds clues that lead him only deeper into the city's criminal underworld. Gunnar Staalesen is one of Norway's leading crime writers. His Varg Veum books have been translated into 12 languages. He lives in Bergen, Norway.
 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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At Night All Wolves Are Grey by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 1986. Quartet Books. 0704325586. Translated from the Norwegian by David McDuff. 214 pages. hardcover. Cover photograph by Stephen Baxter. Cover design by Namara Design.  

DESCRIPTION - Varg Veum is a down-at-heel private detective in Bergen, Norway. Fond of akvavit, he has a broken marriage behind him and is training to run a marathon. A chance conversation with a retired policeman arouses his interest in two old, unsolved cases: a disastrous fire in a paint factory caused by arson in 1953, and the brutal murder of a suspected Gestapo informer and hired killer nearly twenty years later. Veum sifts meticulously through the past, is threatened and beaten up as he interviews millionaires and down-and-outs, but eventually brings his investigations to a surprising - even shocking - conclusion. AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is a complex, richly textured novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler or Ross Macdonald, yet at the same time Staalesen writes originally and with an unmistakable individuality. As well as being an exciting thriller, the book tells us a good deal about contemporary Norway, and the setting, Bergen, emerges as a living city, through whose streets and harbour alleyways Veum roams in search of the recent past.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'. David McDuff is a translator and literary critic at present living in Greenwich, London. His published works include the SELECTED POEMS OF OSIP MANDELSTAM (Writers & Readers, 1983) and the COMPLETE POEMS OF EDITH SODERGRAN (Bloodaxe Books, 1984). He has translated several volumes of 19th- century Russian prose fiction for the Penguin Classics series.

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Yours Until Death by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 1993. Constable . 009471990x. Translated from the Norwegian by Margaret Amassian. 238 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Terry Pastor. Jacket design by Splash Studio.  

DESCRIPTION - The single-mother families of the isolated high-rise community under the shadow of the Lyderhorn, Bergen's great mountain - steep, dark and oppressive - were being robbed, terrorised and molested by a teen-age gang led by the psychopath, Joker, who looked like a priest, but with the eyes of a tiger and the teeth of a decaying corpse. It was at their ‘torture chamber', a hut in the pine woods nearby, that Varg Veum, Private Investigator, first encountered the gang's pathetic but deadly ferocity. Eight-year-old Roar's bicycle had been stolen and not an adult in sight dared retrieve it. But a preliminary brush with such youthful violence was as nothing compared to what awaited Veum when he got to know Roar's blue-eyed, shy yet sensuous mother, Wenche Andresen, and her estranged husband, Jonas. Veum's attempts to break up Joker and his pack of young thugs by enlisting the help of the local youth club leader proved a dead end. But not so dead as the man who lay prone with a knife in his back on the floor of Andresen's flat. YOURS UNTIL DEATH is an unbearably tense novel of revenge and murder from which emerge moving statements about modern marriage, childhood bereavement and the destructive force of passion. First published in Norwegian in 1979, it was described by the critic Nils Nordberg as ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing'.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen in 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For thirteen years he was employed as the Information Manager of The National Stage, Bergen's only theatre. He is now a full time writer. In 1991 he was awarded the international Palle Rosenkrantz Prize for the best crime story published in Denmark that year. He is the author of twelve novels, nine of which feature Varg Veum. He has also written two adventure books for children, three plays for the stage and two radio plays. His work has been translated into German, French and Dutch, as well as English.

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The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. New York. 1978. Random House. 0394419464. 259 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Arthur Crumley (October 12, 1939 - September 17, 2008) was the author of violent hardboiled crime novels and several volumes of short stories and essays, as well as published and unpublished screenplays. He has been described as ‘one of modern crime writing's best practitioners', who was ‘a patron saint of the post-Vietnam private eye novel' and a cross between Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson. His book The Last Good Kiss has been described as ‘the most influential crime novel of the last 50 years.' Crumley had a cult following, and his work is said to have inspired a generation of crime writers in both the U.S. and the U.K, including Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and Craig McDonald, as well as writers from other genres such as Neal Stephenson, but he never achieved mainstream success. ‘Don't know why that is,' Crumley said in an interview in 2001, ‘Other writers like me a lot. But up until about 10 to 12 years ago, I made more money in France and Japan than in America. I guess I just don't fit in anyplace' in the genre book marketplace. Crumley's first published novel, 1969's One to Count Cadence, which was set in the Philippines and Vietnam, began as the thesis for his master's degree in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1966. His novels The Last Good Kiss, The Mexican Tree Duck and The Right Madness feature the character C.W. Sughrue, an alcoholic ex-army officer turned private investigator. The Wrong Case, Dancing Bear and The Final Country feature another p.i., Milo Milodragovitch. In the novel Bordersnakes, Crumley brought both characters together. Crumley said of his two private detectives: ‘Milo's first impulse is to help you; Sughrue's is to shoot you in the foot.'

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The Burgler by David Goodis. New York. 1991. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. 0679734724. 156 pages. paperback. . Cover design by Keith Sheridan Associates, Inc. Cover photography by Alesia Exum.  

DESCRIPTION -  ‘If Jack Kerouac had written crime novels, they might have sounded a bit like this.' - Geoffrey O'Brien. Nat Harbin is a family man. His family happens to be a gang of burglars. Now Nat has met a woman so hypnotic ally seductive that he will leave his partners and his trade to possess her. But you don't get away from family that easily. THE BURGLAR has the hallmarks that made David Goodis one of the great practitioners of the hard-boiled crime novel: a haunting identification with life's losers, and a hero who finds out who he is only by betraying everything he believes in.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Loeb Goodis (March 2, 1917 - January 7, 1967) was an American writer of crime fiction, noted for his prolific output of short stories and novels epitomizing the noir fiction genre. A native of Philadelphia, Goodis alternately resided there and in New York City and Hollywood during his professional years. Yet, throughout his life he maintained a deep identification with the city of his birth, Philadelphia. Goodis cultivated the skid row neighborhoods of his home town, using what he observed to craft his hard-boiled sagas of lives gone wrong, realized in dark portrayals of a blighted urban landscape teeming with criminal life and human despair. ‘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.' Goodis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of William Goodis and Mollie Halpern Goodis. William Goodis was a Russian-Jewish Emigre born in 1882, who had arrived in America with his mother in 1890. David Goodis's mother Mollie Halpern was born in Pennsylvania also into a family of Russian-Jewish Emigres. In Philadelphia, Goodis's father co-owned a newspaper dealership and later went into the textile business as the William Goodis Company. A brother, Jerome, born in 1920, died of meningitis at age three. In 1922, another brother, Herbert, was born into the family. In high school Goodis was engaged in student affairs, editing the school newspaper, serving as student council president, and participating in athletics as a member of both the track and swim teams. He also had the distinction of being chosen valedictorian for the graduating class of 1935, delivering a speech entitled ‘Youth Looks at Peace'. As a college student, he continued and expanded on the interests he had pursued as a high school student, contributing to the student newspaper as both writer and cartoonist. It was during this period he purportedly attempted his hand at novel writing, a book titled Ignited. The novel was never published, and no copy of it has been discovered. Goodis later claimed: ‘The title was prophetic. Eventually I threw it into the furnace.' Goodis graduated from Temple University in 1938 with a degree in journalism. While working at an advertising agency, Goodis started writing his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion. After it was published by Dutton in 1939, Goodis moved to New York City, where he wrote under several pseudonyms for pulp magazines, including Battle Birds, Daredevil Aces, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Western Tales, sometimes churning out 10,000 words a day. The first pulp story published under his own name appeared in Gangland Detective Stories (November, 1939), titled ‘Mistress of the White Slave King'. Over a five-and-a-half-year period, according to some sources, he produced five million words for the pulp magazines. While the quantity of his output far eclipses that of his predecessors Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, unlike theirs, the vast majority of his pulp stories have never been reprinted. During the 1940s, Goodis scripted for radio adventure serials, including Hop Harrigan, House of Mystery, and Superman. Novels he wrote during the early 1940s were rejected by publishers, but in 1942 he spent some time in Hollywood as one of the screenwriters on Universal's Destination Unknown. His big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, published by Julian Messner and filmed for Warner Bros. with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall heading the cast. Delmer Daves directed what is now regarded as a classic film noir, and a first edition of the 1946 hardcover is valued at more than $800. Arriving in Hollywood, Goodis signed a six-year contract with Warner Brothers, working on story treatments and scripts. In 1947, Goodis wrote the script for The Unfaithful, a remake of Somerset Maugham's The Letter. Some of his scripts were never produced, such as Of Missing Persons and an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake. Working with director Delmer Daves, he wrote a screen treatment for a film, Up Till Now, which Daves described as ‘giving people a look at themselves and their [American] heritage'. This film too was never made but Goodis used some of its elements in his 1954 novel, The Blonde on the Street Corner. Goodis is also credited with writing the screenplay to The Burglar, a 1957 film noir directed by Paul Wendkos that was based on his 1953 novel published by Lion Books. It was the only solely authored screenplay to be produced by him. The film was written and directed by Philadelphians, as well as being shot in Philadelphia. Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield were cast in the lead roles, and The Burglar still stands as one of the greatest heist films ever made. It was re-made in 1971 by Henri Verneuil as the French-Italian film Le Casse, starring Omar Sharif. Until recently, it was generally believed that Goodis never married. His friend Harold ‘Dutch' Silver said Goodis never spoke of a wife, and no wife was mentioned in Goodis's obituary. Attorney correspondence also repeatedly stated that Goodis never married. However, research by Larry Withers and Louis Boxer has produced a marriage license for Goodis and Elaine Astor. It shows that they were married on October 7, 1943 by Rabbi Jacob Samuel Robins, Ph.D., at Ohev Shalom Congregation, 525 South Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles. According to a divorce decree found in the attic of Philadelphia's City Hall, Astor received a divorce on January 18, 1946. Withers is Astor's son by a later marriage. He learned about her marriage to Goodis only after her death in 1986 from a stroke. In 1950, Goodis returned to Philadelphia where he lived with his parents and his schizophrenic brother Herbert. At night, he prowled the underside of Philadelphia, hanging out in nightclubs and seedy bars, a milieu he depicted in his fiction. Cassidy's Girl (1951) sold over a million copies, and he continued to write for paperback publishers, notably Gold Medal. There was a renewed interest in his novels when Francois Truffaut filmed Down There (1956) as the acclaimed Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Goodis died at 11:30pm on January 7, 1967, at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Northern Division, not far from his home. He was 49. His death certificate lists ‘cerebral vascular accident,' meaning a stroke, as the cause of death. Days earlier, Goodis had been beaten while resisting a robbery. Some have attributed his death to his injuries. It is also said that he keeled over while shoveling snow. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park, in Pennsylvania. In 1963, ABC television began airing the television show The Fugitive, the story of Richard Kimble, a doctor wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. Kimble subsequently escapes and begins a long search for the ‘one-armed man', the person he believes to be the real killer. Goodis stated that The Fugitive was based on his novel Dark Passage. In 1965, he sued United Artists-TV and ABC for $500,000, alleging copyright infringement. His cousin's law firm, Goodis, Greenfield, Narin and Mann, represented him and several groups supported him, including the Author's League of America, the Dramatist's Guild, and the American Book Publishers Association. Coudert Brothers represented United Artists and ABC. During a deposition on December 9, 1966, Goodis stated that The Saturday Evening Post had serialized Dark Passage, a fact that would become critical to the case. One month later, Goodis was dead. The lawsuit continued to wind its way through the courts, however. The dispute did not so much concern whether the theme of Dark Passage had been used, but whether the book was in the public domain. In a victory for UA and ABC, the District Court held that Goodis had, in effect, ‘donated his work to the public domain' when he published it in The Saturday Evening Post without using a copyright notice that listed his name. The Goodis estate appealed. In 1970, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the lower court's decision and remanded the case for trial. The decision is reported at Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F.2d 397 (2nd Cir. 1970). The court wrote, ‘We unanimously conclude that where a magazine has purchased the right of first publication under circumstances which show that the author has no intention to donate his work to the public, copyright notice in the magazine's name is sufficient to obtain a valid copyright on behalf of the beneficial owner, the author or proprietor.' (425 F.2d 398-399). By then, Goodis's main beneficiary, his brother Herbert, was also dead. So in 1972, the Goodis estate agreed that the case now had only ‘nuisance value' and accepted $12,000 to settle the matter. Despite the significant difference between the initial claim and the final monetary settlement, the case is still regarded as a landmark decision in intellectual property rights and copyright law. After his death, his work went out of print in the United States, but he remained a popular favorite in France. In 1987, Black Lizard began to reissue Goodis titles. In 2007, Hard Case Crime published a new edition of The Wounded and the Slain for the first time in more than 50 years. Also in 2007, Street of No Return and Nightfall were re-published by Millipede Press. His novel Down There was reprinted as part of American Noir of the 1950s, in the Library of America. In March 2012, the Library of America published a selection of Goodis's novels under the title, David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s. Goodis has influenced contemporary crime fiction writers, notably Duane Swierczynski, and Ken Bruen. A character in Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Made in U.S.A. was named after Goodis.

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The Blonde On the Street Corner by David Goodis. New York. 1997. Serpent's Tail. 1852424478. 250 pages. paperback. 

DESCRIPTION - She took a final drag at the cigarette, flipped it away, and said, I don't get this line of talk. It's way over my head...Maybe you're waiting for some dream girl to come along in a coach drawn by six white horses, and she'll pick you up and haul you away to the clouds, where it's all milk and honey and springtime all year around. Maybe that's what you're waiting for. That dream girl. Maybe, he murmurmed. And then he looked at the blonde. His smile was soft and friendly and he said, I guess that's why I can't start with you. I'm waiting for the dream girl. But the dream girl does not come. In the meantime Ralph must deal with the yearnings of everyday life and take what he is offered. Written in 1954, The Blonde on the Street Corner is full of the passions and desires that are the hallmarks of a David Goodis novel.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Loeb Goodis (March 2, 1917 - January 7, 1967) was an American writer of crime fiction, noted for his prolific output of short stories and novels epitomizing the noir fiction genre. A native of Philadelphia, Goodis alternately resided there and in New York City and Hollywood during his professional years. Yet, throughout his life he maintained a deep identification with the city of his birth, Philadelphia. Goodis cultivated the skid row neighborhoods of his home town, using what he observed to craft his hard-boiled sagas of lives gone wrong, realized in dark portrayals of a blighted urban landscape teeming with criminal life and human despair. ‘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.' Goodis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of William Goodis and Mollie Halpern Goodis. William Goodis was a Russian-Jewish Emigre born in 1882, who had arrived in America with his mother in 1890. David Goodis's mother Mollie Halpern was born in Pennsylvania also into a family of Russian-Jewish Emigres. In Philadelphia, Goodis's father co-owned a newspaper dealership and later went into the textile business as the William Goodis Company. A brother, Jerome, born in 1920, died of meningitis at age three. In 1922, another brother, Herbert, was born into the family. In high school Goodis was engaged in student affairs, editing the school newspaper, serving as student council president, and participating in athletics as a member of both the track and swim teams. He also had the distinction of being chosen valedictorian for the graduating class of 1935, delivering a speech entitled ‘Youth Looks at Peace'. As a college student, he continued and expanded on the interests he had pursued as a high school student, contributing to the student newspaper as both writer and cartoonist. It was during this period he purportedly attempted his hand at novel writing, a book titled Ignited. The novel was never published, and no copy of it has been discovered. Goodis later claimed: ‘The title was prophetic. Eventually I threw it into the furnace.' Goodis graduated from Temple University in 1938 with a degree in journalism. While working at an advertising agency, Goodis started writing his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion. After it was published by Dutton in 1939, Goodis moved to New York City, where he wrote under several pseudonyms for pulp magazines, including Battle Birds, Daredevil Aces, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Western Tales, sometimes churning out 10,000 words a day. The first pulp story published under his own name appeared in Gangland Detective Stories (November, 1939), titled ‘Mistress of the White Slave King'. Over a five-and-a-half-year period, according to some sources, he produced five million words for the pulp magazines. While the quantity of his output far eclipses that of his predecessors Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, unlike theirs, the vast majority of his pulp stories have never been reprinted. During the 1940s, Goodis scripted for radio adventure serials, including Hop Harrigan, House of Mystery, and Superman. Novels he wrote during the early 1940s were rejected by publishers, but in 1942 he spent some time in Hollywood as one of the screenwriters on Universal's Destination Unknown. His big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, published by Julian Messner and filmed for Warner Bros. with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall heading the cast. Delmer Daves directed what is now regarded as a classic film noir, and a first edition of the 1946 hardcover is valued at more than $800. Arriving in Hollywood, Goodis signed a six-year contract with Warner Brothers, working on story treatments and scripts. In 1947, Goodis wrote the script for The Unfaithful, a remake of Somerset Maugham's The Letter. Some of his scripts were never produced, such as Of Missing Persons and an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake. Working with director Delmer Daves, he wrote a screen treatment for a film, Up Till Now, which Daves described as ‘giving people a look at themselves and their [American] heritage'. This film too was never made but Goodis used some of its elements in his 1954 novel, The Blonde on the Street Corner. Goodis is also credited with writing the screenplay to The Burglar, a 1957 film noir directed by Paul Wendkos that was based on his 1953 novel published by Lion Books. It was the only solely authored screenplay to be produced by him. The film was written and directed by Philadelphians, as well as being shot in Philadelphia. Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield were cast in the lead roles, and The Burglar still stands as one of the greatest heist films ever made. It was re-made in 1971 by Henri Verneuil as the French-Italian film Le Casse, starring Omar Sharif. Until recently, it was generally believed that Goodis never married. His friend Harold ‘Dutch' Silver said Goodis never spoke of a wife, and no wife was mentioned in Goodis's obituary. Attorney correspondence also repeatedly stated that Goodis never married. However, research by Larry Withers and Louis Boxer has produced a marriage license for Goodis and Elaine Astor. It shows that they were married on October 7, 1943 by Rabbi Jacob Samuel Robins, Ph.D., at Ohev Shalom Congregation, 525 South Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles. According to a divorce decree found in the attic of Philadelphia's City Hall, Astor received a divorce on January 18, 1946. Withers is Astor's son by a later marriage. He learned about her marriage to Goodis only after her death in 1986 from a stroke. In 1950, Goodis returned to Philadelphia where he lived with his parents and his schizophrenic brother Herbert. At night, he prowled the underside of Philadelphia, hanging out in nightclubs and seedy bars, a milieu he depicted in his fiction. Cassidy's Girl (1951) sold over a million copies, and he continued to write for paperback publishers, notably Gold Medal. There was a renewed interest in his novels when Francois Truffaut filmed Down There (1956) as the acclaimed Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Goodis died at 11:30pm on January 7, 1967, at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Northern Division, not far from his home. He was 49. His death certificate lists ‘cerebral vascular accident,' meaning a stroke, as the cause of death. Days earlier, Goodis had been beaten while resisting a robbery. Some have attributed his death to his injuries. It is also said that he keeled over while shoveling snow. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park, in Pennsylvania. In 1963, ABC television began airing the television show The Fugitive, the story of Richard Kimble, a doctor wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. Kimble subsequently escapes and begins a long search for the ‘one-armed man', the person he believes to be the real killer. Goodis stated that The Fugitive was based on his novel Dark Passage. In 1965, he sued United Artists-TV and ABC for $500,000, alleging copyright infringement. His cousin's law firm, Goodis, Greenfield, Narin and Mann, represented him and several groups supported him, including the Author's League of America, the Dramatist's Guild, and the American Book Publishers Association. Coudert Brothers represented United Artists and ABC. During a deposition on December 9, 1966, Goodis stated that The Saturday Evening Post had serialized Dark Passage, a fact that would become critical to the case. One month later, Goodis was dead. The lawsuit continued to wind its way through the courts, however. The dispute did not so much concern whether the theme of Dark Passage had been used, but whether the book was in the public domain. In a victory for UA and ABC, the District Court held that Goodis had, in effect, ‘donated his work to the public domain' when he published it in The Saturday Evening Post without using a copyright notice that listed his name. The Goodis estate appealed. In 1970, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the lower court's decision and remanded the case for trial. The decision is reported at Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F.2d 397 (2nd Cir. 1970). The court wrote, ‘We unanimously conclude that where a magazine has purchased the right of first publication under circumstances which show that the author has no intention to donate his work to the public, copyright notice in the magazine's name is sufficient to obtain a valid copyright on behalf of the beneficial owner, the author or proprietor.' (425 F.2d 398-399). By then, Goodis's main beneficiary, his brother Herbert, was also dead. So in 1972, the Goodis estate agreed that the case now had only ‘nuisance value' and accepted $12,000 to settle the matter. Despite the significant difference between the initial claim and the final monetary settlement, the case is still regarded as a landmark decision in intellectual property rights and copyright law. After his death, his work went out of print in the United States, but he remained a popular favorite in France. In 1987, Black Lizard began to reissue Goodis titles. In 2007, Hard Case Crime published a new edition of The Wounded and the Slain for the first time in more than 50 years. Also in 2007, Street of No Return and Nightfall were re-published by Millipede Press. His novel Down There was reprinted as part of American Noir of the 1950s, in the Library of America. In March 2012, the Library of America published a selection of Goodis's novels under the title, David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s. Goodis has influenced contemporary crime fiction writers, notably Duane Swierczynski, and Ken Bruen. A character in Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Made in U.S.A. was named after Goodis.

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Street of No Return by David Goodis. Lakewood. 2007. Millipede Press. 1933618227. Introduction by Robert Polito. 252 pages. paperback. Cover image by Jeff Hersch.  

DESCRIPTION - Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same. In STREET OF NO RETURN David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force. Special features of this edition - New introductory essay by Robert Polito; An extra short story, ‘Black Pudding'; New design with entirely reset text.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Loeb Goodis (March 2, 1917 - January 7, 1967) was an American writer of crime fiction, noted for his prolific output of short stories and novels epitomizing the noir fiction genre. A native of Philadelphia, Goodis alternately resided there and in New York City and Hollywood during his professional years. Yet, throughout his life he maintained a deep identification with the city of his birth, Philadelphia. Goodis cultivated the skid row neighborhoods of his home town, using what he observed to craft his hard-boiled sagas of lives gone wrong, realized in dark portrayals of a blighted urban landscape teeming with criminal life and human despair. ‘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.' Goodis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of William Goodis and Mollie Halpern Goodis. William Goodis was a Russian-Jewish Emigre born in 1882, who had arrived in America with his mother in 1890. David Goodis's mother Mollie Halpern was born in Pennsylvania also into a family of Russian-Jewish Emigres. In Philadelphia, Goodis's father co-owned a newspaper dealership and later went into the textile business as the William Goodis Company. A brother, Jerome, born in 1920, died of meningitis at age three. In 1922, another brother, Herbert, was born into the family. In high school Goodis was engaged in student affairs, editing the school newspaper, serving as student council president, and participating in athletics as a member of both the track and swim teams. He also had the distinction of being chosen valedictorian for the graduating class of 1935, delivering a speech entitled ‘Youth Looks at Peace'. As a college student, he continued and expanded on the interests he had pursued as a high school student, contributing to the student newspaper as both writer and cartoonist. It was during this period he purportedly attempted his hand at novel writing, a book titled Ignited. The novel was never published, and no copy of it has been discovered. Goodis later claimed: ‘The title was prophetic. Eventually I threw it into the furnace.' Goodis graduated from Temple University in 1938 with a degree in journalism. While working at an advertising agency, Goodis started writing his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion. After it was published by Dutton in 1939, Goodis moved to New York City, where he wrote under several pseudonyms for pulp magazines, including Battle Birds, Daredevil Aces, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Terror Tales and Western Tales, sometimes churning out 10,000 words a day. The first pulp story published under his own name appeared in Gangland Detective Stories (November, 1939), titled ‘Mistress of the White Slave King'. Over a five-and-a-half-year period, according to some sources, he produced five million words for the pulp magazines. While the quantity of his output far eclipses that of his predecessors Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, unlike theirs, the vast majority of his pulp stories have never been reprinted. During the 1940s, Goodis scripted for radio adventure serials, including Hop Harrigan, House of Mystery, and Superman. Novels he wrote during the early 1940s were rejected by publishers, but in 1942 he spent some time in Hollywood as one of the screenwriters on Universal's Destination Unknown. His big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, published by Julian Messner and filmed for Warner Bros. with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall heading the cast. Delmer Daves directed what is now regarded as a classic film noir, and a first edition of the 1946 hardcover is valued at more than $800. Arriving in Hollywood, Goodis signed a six-year contract with Warner Brothers, working on story treatments and scripts. In 1947, Goodis wrote the script for The Unfaithful, a remake of Somerset Maugham's The Letter. Some of his scripts were never produced, such as Of Missing Persons and an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake. Working with director Delmer Daves, he wrote a screen treatment for a film, Up Till Now, which Daves described as ‘giving people a look at themselves and their [American] heritage'. This film too was never made but Goodis used some of its elements in his 1954 novel, The Blonde on the Street Corner. Goodis is also credited with writing the screenplay to The Burglar, a 1957 film noir directed by Paul Wendkos that was based on his 1953 novel published by Lion Books. It was the only solely authored screenplay to be produced by him. The film was written and directed by Philadelphians, as well as being shot in Philadelphia. Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield were cast in the lead roles, and The Burglar still stands as one of the greatest heist films ever made. It was re-made in 1971 by Henri Verneuil as the French-Italian film Le Casse, starring Omar Sharif. Until recently, it was generally believed that Goodis never married. His friend Harold ‘Dutch' Silver said Goodis never spoke of a wife, and no wife was mentioned in Goodis's obituary. Attorney correspondence also repeatedly stated that Goodis never married. However, research by Larry Withers and Louis Boxer has produced a marriage license for Goodis and Elaine Astor. It shows that they were married on October 7, 1943 by Rabbi Jacob Samuel Robins, Ph.D., at Ohev Shalom Congregation, 525 South Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles. According to a divorce decree found in the attic of Philadelphia's City Hall, Astor received a divorce on January 18, 1946. Withers is Astor's son by a later marriage. He learned about her marriage to Goodis only after her death in 1986 from a stroke. In 1950, Goodis returned to Philadelphia where he lived with his parents and his schizophrenic brother Herbert. At night, he prowled the underside of Philadelphia, hanging out in nightclubs and seedy bars, a milieu he depicted in his fiction. Cassidy's Girl (1951) sold over a million copies, and he continued to write for paperback publishers, notably Gold Medal. There was a renewed interest in his novels when Francois Truffaut filmed Down There (1956) as the acclaimed Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Goodis died at 11:30pm on January 7, 1967, at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Northern Division, not far from his home. He was 49. His death certificate lists ‘cerebral vascular accident,' meaning a stroke, as the cause of death. Days earlier, Goodis had been beaten while resisting a robbery. Some have attributed his death to his injuries. It is also said that he keeled over while shoveling snow. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park, in Pennsylvania. In 1963, ABC television began airing the television show The Fugitive, the story of Richard Kimble, a doctor wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. Kimble subsequently escapes and begins a long search for the ‘one-armed man', the person he believes to be the real killer. Goodis stated that The Fugitive was based on his novel Dark Passage. In 1965, he sued United Artists-TV and ABC for $500,000, alleging copyright infringement. His cousin's law firm, Goodis, Greenfield, Narin and Mann, represented him and several groups supported him, including the Author's League of America, the Dramatist's Guild, and the American Book Publishers Association. Coudert Brothers represented United Artists and ABC. During a deposition on December 9, 1966, Goodis stated that The Saturday Evening Post had serialized Dark Passage, a fact that would become critical to the case. One month later, Goodis was dead. The lawsuit continued to wind its way through the courts, however. The dispute did not so much concern whether the theme of Dark Passage had been used, but whether the book was in the public domain. In a victory for UA and ABC, the District Court held that Goodis had, in effect, ‘donated his work to the public domain' when he published it in The Saturday Evening Post without using a copyright notice that listed his name. The Goodis estate appealed. In 1970, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the lower court's decision and remanded the case for trial. The decision is reported at Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F.2d 397 (2nd Cir. 1970). The court wrote, ‘We unanimously conclude that where a magazine has purchased the right of first publication under circumstances which show that the author has no intention to donate his work to the public, copyright notice in the magazine's name is sufficient to obtain a valid copyright on behalf of the beneficial owner, the author or proprietor.' (425 F.2d 398-399). By then, Goodis's main beneficiary, his brother Herbert, was also dead. So in 1972, the Goodis estate agreed that the case now had only ‘nuisance value' and accepted $12,000 to settle the matter. Despite the significant difference between the initial claim and the final monetary settlement, the case is still regarded as a landmark decision in intellectual property rights and copyright law. After his death, his work went out of print in the United States, but he remained a popular favorite in France. In 1987, Black Lizard began to reissue Goodis titles. In 2007, Hard Case Crime published a new edition of The Wounded and the Slain for the first time in more than 50 years. Also in 2007, Street of No Return and Nightfall were re-published by Millipede Press. His novel Down There was reprinted as part of American Noir of the 1950s, in the Library of America. In March 2012, the Library of America published a selection of Goodis's novels under the title, David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s. Goodis has influenced contemporary crime fiction writers, notably Duane Swierczynski, and Ken Bruen. A character in Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Made in U.S.A. was named after Goodis.

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