Noir fiction from the 30s to the 50s

Mickey Spillane, Chandler, Hammett, Ross Macdonald and most of the other writers wrote from the private eye or policemans point of view, which is quite different.

Some other books you might enjoy:

Horace McCoy - Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
Supposedly this book was a heavy influence on Camus when he wrote The Stranger. It is a good read, not as good as the best Cain or Thompson.

Chester Himes - Cotton Comes to Harlem
Not nearly as hard boiled as Thompson or Cain, but this is a good crime novel and is smart-assed and funny with a much different perspective than any of these other writers.

I have that Woolrich collection of short stories, I was unconvinced, although apparently his novels are good (and all out of print, as are most of John Franklin Bardin's).

laurenp otm 8 years ago, goodis is gold.

i just read my first ross macdonald -- liked it a lot, though it's more PI fiction than crime fiction -- read a critical review describing his work as 'drab' and i guess that's sort of accurate -- most things are shades of gray with dark blues and tans for contrast. doesn't bother me much. i prefer things with a gray realist mood to comic capers/snarky PIs.

other favorites are the richard stark novels (which began in the '62) about tough guy criminal mastermind Parker, paul cain's stuff (there's a complete anthology of his work out -- very lean writing heavy on the action and with virtually zero introspection), and i have a soft spot for the early Mike Shayne mysteries written by brett halliday (they were later continued under the same name by a series of ghost writers) -- the shayne stories are pretty lightweight in comparison to goodis, macdonald and paul cain but still fun puzzles for fans of that thing. there's plenty of drinking and sex but less gratuitous violence and morose void-gazing.

early ed mcbain does it for me too -- again, they're kind of light but they're fast and the characters are all well-drawn and relatively realistic.
http://bloodymurder.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mcbain_give-theboy-perma.jpg

georges simenon's "dirty snow" is an amazing book that sort of belongs here too.

i haven't read as much james m cain as i would like to -- i have 'serenade' sitting next to my bed, so maybe that's next, but i loved postman.
charles willeford's books seem to just be about sociopaths -- the early ones are a bit drearier. the hoke moseley's are hilarious and fast-paced and wonderful.
charles williams seems good too, but i've only read two of his. i started 'the wrong venus' at one point but put it down cuz i think i had a new donald westlake to read or something...

Probably all the Simenon novels reissued by New York Review Books are worth reading. Dirty Snow is, as you say, excellent; I've read The Widow, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By and Tropic Moon from that series too and they were all great.

Highsmith is a bit late for this period but almost everything she did from the 50s to the early 70s is good.

i have read the talented mr. ripley but no other highsmith.
my wife is a huge simenon fan, but almost exclusively of the inspector maigret novels. so we have a ton of those. i think she has some non-maigret novels i should read though...

Highly recommend Bill Pronzini's "Hard Boiled" short story anthology - great starter for noir authors from this timespan, as well as modern authors too like Vachss Leonard.

vachss and Leonard, that should read

xpost

I'm the complete opposite, never read any Maigret novels (police procedurals not my thing) but plenty of the "romans durs".

Best Highsmith novels for me are The Blunderer, Deep Water, This Sweet Sickness, The Cry of the Owl, The Tremor of Forgery, Edith's Diary. The last is more of a straight novel rather than suspense thriller, but it's truly great. The first Ripley is great, the others not so much, but still very readable (although the last is a mess). Ironically her breakthrough lesbian novel Carol I found rather boring.

i have some elmore leonard waiting to be read -- just a couple things i picked up thrifting for a buck. are there any of his that are great and wonderful and haven't been made into a film i should start with?

i will have to check out these non-ripley highsmiths.

During the 1950s Mickey Spillane outsold every other tough-guy hardboiled novelist, hands down. I've never read any of his stuff. In the interim it seems to have disappeared down some manner of rathole.

I've read a little, and I quite enjoyed it. Feels sort of like reading a radio play, I can hear all the old timey voices in my head

Kiss Me Deadly, one of the greatest films noirs, was based on a Spillane novel

I have to figure that in the era of noir, the most popular noir author was probably closely in tune with what the audience for it wanted to read. I just have no reading experience to fall back on to confirm this.

we have a bunch of spillane around the house but whenever i try to read one i get distracted by the cheeze.

Paul Cain is as Ian points out completely great (good to hear he's back in print). Raymond Edmond Alter (Carny Kill, Swamp Sister) is another great writer from a little after this period (mid-sixties). Early Willeford stuff (well really all Willeford stuff) well worth it. My favorite undermentioned novel is probably William Lindsay Gresham's Nightmare Alley (grifting and circuses!)

I see Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is mentioned above but They Shoot Horses, Don't They isn't.

Both these collections are great starting points. Not a dud in either one:
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=1
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=2

laurenp otm 8 years ago, goodis is gold.

The only Goodis I've read is The Wounded and the Slain, which is probably my favorite noir novel from this time period (so far). I've been meaning to pick up some more of his, but I never see them around.

haven't read any of this in awhile, since Mildred Pierce is not a noir, really.

does Edward Bunker's Thieves Like Us count? That was a goodie, even with the two splendid film versions to live up to.

ian, check your FB mail, dawg.

cwkiii -- i actually thought wounded & the slain was kinda goofy -- great story but the dialogue with all the ludicrous jamaican accents... just dated, really, made it tough to read. check out 'black friday' -- that's my fave. shoot the piano player is great too. there's something really propulsive about both of those novels -- characters constantly running.

this is the paul cain anthology --
http://www.amazon.com/Omnibus-Fast-One-Seven-Slayers/dp/0977431312/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347903959&sr=1-4&keywords=paul+cain

I think i have Nightmare Alley in an anthology somewhere but have not read it. Will make a point to read it this month or next.

thieves like us def. counts and rules.

Great movie too!

just got into Bunker recently, he is the shit. altho isn't he post-50s...?

The Hard Case Crime series has been mentioned on several "What are you reading?" threads, and I've liked most of those. Gil Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin was a good one, I would like to check out more of his stuff.

xp by two decades at least.

cwkiii -- i actually thought wounded & the slain was kinda goofy -- great story but the dialogue with all the ludicrous jamaican accents... just dated, really, made it tough to read. check out 'black friday' -- that's my fave. shoot the piano player is great too. there's something really propulsive about both of those novels -- characters constantly running.

Thanks for the recommendations; I'll try to track those down!

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Friday-And-Selected-Stories/dp/1852424699

buck-seventy on amazon..

duh, I meant write Edward ANDERSON re Thieves Like Us

if you like highsmith then i can highly recommend The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Sanxay_Holding

Highsmith short stories I've read are zesty, novels tend be depresso. Get the impression she really knows a lot about the high cost of living, dying, killing, shit-stirring and just gettin' by.

Woolrich is one of the best, before his mother died.

xxp Blank Wall's been turned into movies, no? Oh yes I see that it was the basis for the Deep End which is pretty well done.

i don't know what i can say about this really. this is a NSFW blog by a group of women who hang around topless and/or naked in private and/or in public and read crime, noir and pulp? i am sort f surprised i had never heard of these girls before. but it looks like they are more into tattoos than me, and hang out in central park, where i never go
http://coedtoplesspulpfiction.wordpress.com/