Tag Archives: Crime Fiction

“She could take care of herself…”

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He sipped his martini and appreciated how her faded jeans stretched against her haunches as she kneeled to work the fire. He thought about the size of the staff needed for a place like this. A full-time grounds-keeper, for sure. A pool man. Maybe a handyman, too. Housekeeper, definitely, even with auntie in residence. The guys in the truck. It added up.

One thing was certain, somebody filled that ice bucket, somebody put this wood out here, somebody took the covers off these chairs, somebody lit these torches, somebody swept away the desert that would never give up its claim to the land. Maybe she called ahead on that radio-phone in her fancy XKE.

He wondered how long it would be before she mentioned her husband again. Or would he have to bring it up. He knew he should feel guilty, but he didn’t. Mrs. Lyman was a big girl. She could take care of herself. (from “Joey’s Place”)

Review: NIGHT SQUAD, by David Goodis

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NIGHT SQUAD, by David Goodis

NIGHT SQUAD, by David Goodis

A very interesting noir piece by a writer whose troubled soul (and alcoholism) kept him from securing a place in the pantheon of pulp writers who achieved recognition beyond the genre. (His book, Dark Passage,” was made into an unusual Bogart/Bacall film in 1947.)

A down-and-out, disgraced ex-cop surviving in his netherworld community of darkness, rain, water, and despair is contracted by the local criminal boss for a mysterious task that the ex-cop must slowly deduce. Then he’s “recruited” by the boss of the police department’s special unit, “Night Squad.” And this boss has very special and personal reasons for wanting the criminal boss eliminated.

They’re all here — broads, bimbos, and courtesans; cons, crooks, and grifters, all uniquely drawn and brought to life. It’s all here — booze, “tea,” gun battles, brawls, lust, and hot pursuits. In the end, Goodis’s talent, like Chandler’s or Hammett’s or Cain’s (to name a few), was not giving us  happy endings for any of these characters. Even the police boss’s revenge is tinged with vinegar.  In this world, darkness prevails.