The Mike Hammer Omnibus Vol 2

By Mickey Spillane.

Vol 2 contains three novels;
One Lonely Night
The Big Kill
Kiss me Deadly

I keep thinking I'm done with noir and then I keep going back to it, for just one more book. This time it was three books in one and I went back because I'd already read volume one so why the hell not?

Alas, the river is running dry now and I'm more or less done with Mike Hammer. Over the course of six novels the character has increasingly become something strange. Less a detective, and more of a psychotic killer with a license. I don't mind moral ambiguities, but I can't quite see the fun in a protagonist who actually enjoys killing people. The undercurrent of revenge that fuels Mike Hammer novels doesn't justify page after page of the character's ranting obsession with bringing pain and death to his enemies and frankly it gets pretty tedious in the long run.

The stories themselves are poor in quality. Mike Hammer goes up against a variety of antagonists, including Soviet backed Communists, the Mafia and a wide range of disposable thugs, and despite getting captured and tortured almost as often as Mel Gibson, manages to always come back swinging, usually with a couple of beautiful women throwing themselves at him wantonly.

The 'sex' aspect of the novels is probably the strangest. Noir is supposed to be sexy, but there is no actual sex. Mike Hammer kisses a lot of women and acts as if in kissing a woman, he's made love to her, but there is precious little action beyond the occaisional French kiss and whilst I don't demand sexual content, the consistent lack of it in a genre which regards iself as highly sexual is a bit unusual. Perhaps I'm just too much of a European reading an American genre, but like You Tube directs, sexual content is apparently bad, whilst beating human beings to a pulp and enjoying it, is just popular entertainment.

The Story is You

By Megan Abbott.

The third of the three books I bought by Megan Abbott, I was lucky in that this one was by far the best! Unlike the other two, this one doesn't have an almost total emphasis on female characters, it has a regular mystery at its heart, it leans up against certain historical facts and it's got a real hard nosed noir pace to it.

'Hop' Hopkins is a studio problem solver who spends his time fixing things for various famous actors and actresses. One day an old flame comes to see him and relights a two year old mystery which threatens to burn Hop's world. Desperate he moves to put out the flames but as he does he gets deeper and deeper into the smoke and murk of Hollywoods underworld.

James Ellroy is quoted on all three of the Abbott novels I bought, talking about what a brilliant story teller she is, and how she is bound for greatness. Until I read this book, I couldn't see why he'd say that. She's good I thought, but she's not that good. Reading this novel sheds some light. Abbott references several Ellroy favourites, not least the Black Dhalia, Mob boss Cohen, and the dirty dirty lives of publically celebrated stars. I bet this one tickled him in all the right places.

The only problem with this book, and the reason it only gets four stars, is the ending, which I found some what rushed and anti-climactic. I got a sense about three quarters of the way through the story that Abbott had suddenly lost her enthusiasm, which was a shame. Maybe thats why Ellroy wrote she is 'poised' to ascend to the top rung of crime fiction?

Die a little

By Megan Abbott

As far as noir goes, this is as close to the real thing as its possible to get, whilst seeing the genre from a slightly different perspective. After having read Hammet, Mosley, Ellroy and Chandler, I decided it was time to try something from a female perspective, so I bought this novel by Megan Abbott after I looked up female noir authors. I came across a feminist noir blog book review which recommended it which seemed as good a recommendation as any other, and hey presto.

241 pages long, the story starts off with no great fanfare and within 26 pages I knew what was going to happen every step of the way. Its a short book though so I kept with it and I am glad I did, because the out come may be obvious, but the journey to get to there was so well described that I got caught up in the characters and I think this may be the key to understanding the difference between Abbott and the afore mentioned male authors. I've noticed that Barbara Vine's stories always revolve around well defined characters and the thoughts, feelings and emotional states they move through as their story evolves. Abbott's story does the same, so much so that this is in fact not really a mystery story at all, but more an exploration of the mind of the main character as she fights to save her brother against the dangerous woman he has fallen for.

If I have any criticism of the story, it is that Abbott pulled her punches when it came to the sexual aspects of the story. Subtle insinuation seemed some what tame when the subject was undergoing a significant sexual awakening. Not least given how much this impacted on the character's subsequent actions.

Blood's a rover

By James Ellroy

I'm not sure what this book is meant to say. As the ending of a trilogy, it really ought to do just that, end the trilogy, but as I understand it took Ellroy a long time to actually get around to writing this book, I suspect what happened is he ran out of steam with the previous novel and in bringing it all back to life, he created a whole other story.

This was by far Ellroy's most disapointing book for me. I suppose he is getting old, and maybe the edge he had has become blunted, or maybe I just didn't get it, but for what ever reason, I felt somewhat cheated. The characters of the previous books morphed and atrophied for no apparent reasons, all of them becoming left wing radicals, all of them falling under the charm of a middle aged communist activist, whose only apparent charm is her grey hair and a knife wound on her arm.

I suppose it is not unlikely that a man who has spent his life working towards certain goals might suddenly have a change of heart and switch directions, but that several such people, orbiting each other in various degrees of seperation should all do, and should all fall for the same woman, independetly of each other, is amazingly far fetched, and certainly not in the spirit of the previous two books. That these men should all happily perish as a result of their sudden infatuations becomes simply absurd. These are human beings Ellroy is attempting to portray, not insects.

In 'Blood's a rover', many of the characters from the previous books are ignored, even primary characters whose personal stories formed the foundation for the overall plot. All the crime family heads are forgotten about, Pete Bondurant and Ward Littel (who are two of the main characters in the first two books) are ignored. Littel killed himself in the end of the second book but his actions (which have been considerable) carry no apparent consequences in the third book what so ever. Bondurant still lives but we never learn what has happened to him. Likewise Jimmie Hoffa. In a trilogy that seeks to explain all the mysterious deaths of the period, Hoffa's disapearance doesn't happen because Hoffa just stops being a character. Its like Ellroy simply fogot about him.

Then there is the man who shot JFK. A French merc named Mesplede who has been drawn into the story more and more. Suddenly he is killed off in the most horrific manner but with no fanfare or consequences for the story. Ellroy simply drops the character having no further use for him.

Essentially Ellroy betrayed the story he had begun in 'American Tabloid' and 'The Cold Six Thousand', and in doing so he demonstrates that even the best writers can get lost.

The Cold Six Thousand

By James Ellroy

Another brilliant Ellroy novel, though this time the brilliance is as hard and cutting as a diamond. 'The Cold Six Thousand' continues the tale begun in 'American Tabloid'. Historically ending with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jnr and Bobby Kennedy. Two of the three characters from 'American Tabloid' continue in this novel which details their lives through a great many historical events.

Ellroy is unforgiving. His prose is fast, staccato and easy to read but its also unrelenting. Ellroy looks at history and where others see grandeur or greatness, Ellroy sees the darkest, pitiless aspects of humanity and no one is innocent. Such a dark, unrepenting point of view gets a tad wearing after a while. Especially when the topic is one as well known as American history in the 1960's. On the other hand, Ellroy does have a clarity of vision unclouded by the dazzle of fame and political spin. Who is to say if his analysis of history is right or wrong?

What ever it is, and how ever much it leans up against history, this novel is still a work of fiction, and as story telling its lacking in something which has been present in all the previous books I've read by Ellroy. I think whats happened with this book is Ellroy did such a good job with the previous story that he couldn't stop and with the 'Cold Six Thousand' he got some what long winded. I understand that the final book in the trilogy also took a long time to write, and this is unsurprising. I'm hoping that the long wait rekindled the fire though because Ellroy is king of crime fiction in my mind and although I found this book to be too long, I still recognise its brilliance. I'd like to give it four stars but it just wasn't as good as 'American Tabloid'.

I've labelled this as noir, though strictly speaking its more like historical crime fiction.

L A Confidential

By James Ellroy

Well, it doesn't get much better than this I think. I went looking for the best in noir fiction and I found it. Chandler has finally been eclipsed.

Unfortunately I read this book and 'White Jazz' in the wrong order, so I messed up and got a few spoilers, but it was a great read anyway.

LA Confidential starts off as one might expect if one has seen the film. There are a few differences of course, but these are minor details, the sort of thing you might expect when a novel has been truncated to the medium of cinema. Then about a third of the way in, it all suddenly warps beyond recognition. The story expands far beyond the parameters of the film and Ellroy unleashes his trademark tangle of plot lines so by the time you've reached the end, you don't have a clue whether you're going to see the same conclusion or not and what your reading is every bit as good as if you'd never been corrupted by the film.

Mostly the characters are the same, only now they are bigger, fleshed out, with high-lights and complexities that were lost in the transfer to cinema. Jack Vincennes (played by the always excellent Kevin Spacey in the film) is particularly well done. Here he is a far more complex character than even Spacey can convey, though his personality as played by Spacey is largely intact. Jack Vincennes plays a much bigger role in the book, complementing the trio of main characters perfectly. Bud White (played by Russell Crowe in the film) is much the same as in the film. The powerfully built man who is regarded as tough because he punishes men who hit women, but who yearns to be a detective rather than a goon. Ed Exley (played in the film by Guy Pearce), is the ambitious young police officer who's brilliance takes him all the way, but at a terrible price. In the book, that price is even higher. Exley is a compelling character, full of driven contradictions, but essentially pure. Well defined. The three cops are brought together by circumstance and they struggle against the invisible, almost omnipotent power of the antagonist, Dudley Smith.

Smith (played by James Cromwell in the movie) is the red thread between all four novels in Ellroy's LA quartet and his menace fluctuates according to where the reader is along the time line. In this, the third book, Smith is at the height of his power but his ability to influence events is already beginning to show cracks. Having established who and what Smith is, the reader (if they have read the first two novels) is already primed to fear him, so Ellroy keeps Smith at arms length for most of the novel. You know he's there, but he's not the immediate threat.

If you've seen the film then you know Smith is the bad guy, but the second half of the story is so different that you don't know whats going to happen any way. In the film Smith shoots Vincennes, but in the book he doesn't... read it yourself if you want to know more. If your a fan of the genre, you won't regret it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

White Jazz

By James Ellroy

Ellroy seems to be one of those authors who love to challenge themselves and this book is a prime example of a challenge. The story itself is wonderfully crafted, with all the multiple plots I now think of as typical Ellroy, but the style in which it is written is slightly annoying. Written in a staccato first person style, the book, which is long and complex, feels almost like it was jotted down on a post it pad by some one engaged in a very long meeting. To make matters worse, Ellroy throws in headlines and newspaper articles to tell the story and I found this distracting. Apparently the original was twice as long as the published version and I can only guess at what was cut out as the story is so complex and detailed already.

Dave Klein is a dirty cop, and by dirty we mean bodies. Mob hits. Bag man. As bad as it gets, and yet he's our main character, the hero of the piece... in as much as Ellroy ever has heroes.

Klein, who is LAPD Vice, gets put on a strange case of burglary. Some one has broken into the house of a drug dealer named Kafesjian and killed his dogs in a gruesome manner. Kafesjian is a sanctioned drug dealer, protected by the LAPD as a means of controlling the city drug trade. It doesn't take long for the hand of Dudley Smith to become apparent. Klein who is as dirty as Smith, stays out of his way as much as possible, but things are reaching a conclusion. Ed Exley is now Smith's superior and is out to destroy him. along the way Klein falls in love, but can his conscience allow it?

The last of the LA Quartet, 'White Jazz' is not as good as 'LA Confidential', but it comes very close. If it hadn't been written in the strange 'stream of consciousness' way it is, I would have given it five stars also.

Planning ahead whilst listening to some very inspirational music

All you need is a .45 in one hand a and a swell dame in the other!

With the end of RM5 & RM6 I am faced with a choice of what to do next. Previously I have been able to work on multiple campaigns at the same time, but since I set up an art computer, I've not really had much inclination to do anything but paint in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Currently I'm learning how to paint without pre drawn guide lines, and I'm painting Gaia, though this is mostly just an excuse to paint a big woman with considerable physical attributes. I'd post a work in progress image but it probably contravenes Blogger's rules and regs since I don't have an adult content warning on my blog. I'll probably post it on my art blog when its done. No one ever seems to go there anyway so it should be safe. I suppose I could render her naughty bits less naughty with some black squares or summat...

I'm already committed to running Project Herald with Oleg, but I also intend to run at least one campaign sometime later in the year. The big question is which campaign. I have about ten different idea's to chose between, some of which are already begun, whilst others are still embryonic.

The biggest contender is RM7; 'The Terror of Oyster Bay', which is a role playing game in two chapters rather than a skirmish campaign. The problem is, I just did two RM campaigns back to back and Project Herald is set in 1949 and I'd like to do something in another genre to avoid genre fatigue. I had an idea to do a third Takshendal campaign, but then I discarded it as the original thread which strung all six chapters together had been tied off, and a third campaign might feel as weak as 'Twenty Years after' is to 'The Three Musketeers'. On the other hand, the models and figures are all built, more or less, and a return to Takshendal does offer a lot of possibilities to do something very different from 'pulp noir', ...and I do so like the mysterious whodunnit type games. All I need is a better idea than the one I already discarded.




My absolute favourite passage from all the Indiana Jones soundtracks. The best bit starts around 4:47 mins as Indy's fights against a whole truck full of German soldiers reaches the climactic under-the-truck sequence. I love the whole bolero like build up and the way the horns climb higher and higher as the pace picks up, drops then picks up again. John Williams was never better than this!

Here is an alternative recording with the passage beginning around 5:00 mins.

Below is my second favourite passage from the Indiana Jones soundtracks. This one starts at just the right moment. Of all the Indy films, this one is my least favourite, mostly because a lot of the gags seem to aimed at young children. The first film was much more mature, and its still the best of them all, by far.

'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' also featured a lot of action sequences which were just plain daft, for example the roller coaster mine railway. What kind of a numbskull miner would build a roller coaster in a mine, often bridging a river of lava?

The Big Nowhere

By James Ellroy

This was so good that it catapulted Ellroy to the top of my noir detective author list, alongside the original and best Raymond Chandler. The two authors are very different from each other, not least in how they structure a story. Chandler is smooth, offering a stream lined narrative, uncorrupted and genuine. His story's feel like they were written in the period, which they mostly were, so they reflect the period in ways Ellroy's don't. Ellroy by comparison lays on his story's with a shovel, unafraid of making a great bloody mess, like some bleeding lasagne filled with body parts and corruption his novels take longer to chew through, but they taste really good!

'The Big Nowhere' also benefits from hindsight in that the social mores of the 1940-50's don't apply to a contemporary author and Ellroy can tell stories in ways that Chandler, Hammet and Macdonald couldn't. Mickey Spillane is probably the old school author who comes closest, but Ellroy makes Spillane look like he was singing nursery rhymes. Like Mosley, Ellroy goes for the jugular, but unlike Mosley, he doesn't pull his punches. Reading Ellroy you can feel the blood spattering across your face and smell the putrefaction when a long dead corpse turns up.

'The Big Nowhere' deals with so many plot lines that to summarize is to lose the essence of the story. Unlike the previous novel in the LA quartet, TBN is not written in the first person, so here the multiple plot lines get really convoluted, but it works anyway. I certainly didn't have any problem following the story. I'm almost inclined to give this one five stars...

4/5

~~~~~~~~~

Morlock Night
By KW Jeter

I was hoping this sequel to HG Wells 'The Time Machine' would be something akin to a Michael Moorcock novel, don't ask me why. There was something about the premise that made me think of Moorcock, and who knows, maybe KW Jeter is MM under a false flag? I doubt it though. Though this story features a steam powered Atlantean submarine in an underground sea below London, indicating the author has at least got some interesting idea's, the execution of describing those idea's was painfully wooden. Thankfully its a short book!
2/5

~~~~~~~~~

The Arctic Event
By Robert Ludlum and James H. Cobb

This is one of those American adventure thrillers, in the vein of Clive Cussler, where weaponry is accorded greater interest than character, villains are cardboard cut outs and women are either Gorgons or cut from the pages of Vogue (and then given lavish weaponry).

I actually didn't mind the story; a TU4 is discovered crashed on a remote island some where in Canada's frozen north and oops, its not only loaded with two tons of weaponized anthrax, but contains a deadly secret that could potentially blow the lid off the post Cold War coziness between the USA and Russia. Can you guess what that might be? I couldn't believe the plot twist would be so bleeding obvious, but it was. I was expecting the looming 'secret' to be a device to deflect the readers attention but the only surprise was that there was no surprise.

The best thing about the novel is the above picture, by an Australian illustrator which it inspired, and which could be cropped to make a great wrap-around illustration for the book. Too bad it wasn't. The illustration on my copy was so dull that I refuse to post it.
3/5

The Black Dahlia

By James Ellroy

Based on one of the most notorious unsolved murder crimes of American history, this book is a work of fiction that runs as close as possible to the established facts but remains fiction.

I put off Ellroy deliberately as I wanted to get through the classic noir authors before I started on contemporary writers, but since I've already read three of Mosley's novels, there didn't seem much point in further prevarication.

Having already seen the movie version of 'The Black Dahlia' I was not surprised by the identity of the killer, and I was slightly apprehensive that this would spoil the novel for me, but it didn't. The book is so much denser than the film with layers upon layers of (sometimes convoluted) detail and Ellroy appears to be an author who goes to great lengths to create well told stories. Whether or not this talent manifests itself in all his novels will be revealed in further books no doubt, and I understand that the original Black Dahlia was something of a fascination for Ellroy, so it could be that this is the pinnacle of his abilities. I have 'The Big Nowhere' lined up on my to-read shelf so I'll soon have a better idea. In the meantime, if 'The Black Dahlia' is anything to go by then I'm in for some good reading!

The way some people die

By Ross Macdonald

Macdonald pulls a doozie from somewhere creative. This is his best novel to date and it justifies some of its own blurb; "Ross Macdonald gives to the detective story that accent of class that Raymond Chandler did" - Chicago Tribune.

Generous words and almost true. The differences between Chandler and Macdonald have indeed blurred slightly and whilst I've read virtually all of Chandlers novels, Macdonald still has a lot to offer. I wonder if Macdonald can usurp Chandlers throne?

This story is quite easy to follow, even with three big plot twists which both turn the story on its head. Lew Archer is hired by a distraught mother to find her missing daughter; Galatea, only nothing is at it seems and as Archer uncovers each layer of deception, another is revealed below. The story is good, and the story telling is good also. The only real weakness is the characters, many of whom are mere sketches, on the other hand this lends the book a welcome touch of brevity. 244 pages and it was finished in two lazy days.



Master of the Moor

By Ruth Rendell

I'd only give this one two stars if it weren't for an excellent plot twist which caught me by complete surprise. I actually laughed with delight when I read it, but unfortunately the rest of the novel had rather turned me off so that several times I threw the book down in disgust at the cliche's that were being thrown at me. The thing is, I don't know if Rendell was setting me up or if the whole story was fabriacted in order to set the stage for the plot twist (I suspect it was).

Colin Firth acted in a dramatized version of this book, but I'd never heard of it before. I bought it solely on the strength of Rendells previous novels and its interesting name, but in reading this earlier work, I realised that a lot of Rendell's storys are based on the same ideas of a dangerous man and a confused main character (sometimes these are the same person). I don't know if that bothered me because it means Rendell's not as original as I might have thought, or because I just didn't like the main character in this book.

The Drowning Pool

By Ross Macdonald

Back in the world of noir fiction, where private cop Lew Archer is solving yet another murder mystery by getting punched about and knocked out cold by various villains whilst beautiful women compete for attention before dying by overt sexual metaphor.

Macdonald isn't bad, but he's not brilliant either. He's good in the standard fashion for this genre, but kind of like a watered down version of Chandler spiced up with an extra twist of violence. All very good and fine for passing the time. I only have one more Archer novel left on my shelf to read, and then I think I'll put Macdonald aside and head for the darker waters of Ellroy.

This story is pretty much standard fare for noir fiction. A beautiful woman is in trouble and brings in the hard boiled detective. Various goons and sexual motivations come to light during the story, the usual stuff, a few people die, the detective gets pushed around by every one, but by the end of the story, things have almost sorted themselves out, and only the detective knows that the official story is the wrong story. Naturally there is a twist, unfortunately it was so thin as to be invisible until trodden upon.
3/5




The Atrocity Archive
By Charles Stross

Where to begin? This is two stories in one cover and I quite liked them even though I more or less knew what to expect due to various spoilers. What I liked was the way the charaters were described, the first person narrative and the way the author pulls his punches. What I didn't like was the over use of techno-babble, the reliance on office politics to create a mood and the 'Nazi angle'.

The techno-babble was often just meaningless to me, since I am not a computer nerd and although I sometimes perceived the humour which was lurking beneath, as often as not I wasn't particularly amused. I was reminded of Patrick O'Brian's irritating habit (one he shared with a great many authors) of suddenly interjecting French or Spanish passages without translation. Certainly O'Brian just told a funny, but as with these books, since I don't speak Spanish, and I don't happen to have a English to Spanish dictionary by my side as I sit on the toilet reading my book, I miss the punch line and the story suffers as a consequence. Stross might be a clever chap, but he needs to curb the showng off if he wants to reach the wider audience.

The office drudge/political infighting angle was slightly overdone but in the second story it turned out to be necessary, if not a little predictable. I didn't care for the anticlimax which ended the second story as it seemed like a plot cop out.

Lastly there was the Nazi angle, and this is my biggest beef. I am really getting tired of story's like this which rely so heavily on the Nazi's, and in this case, the Holocaust. I personally have little tolerance for stories which attempt to use the Holocaust, because in doing so they belittle what must be one of the greatest crimes of all human history. The idea that there was a practical, non political reason for the mass murder of millions of innocent people turns me right off and the caveat that the reason is evil x 10 doesn't alter my mind on that. Its for the same reason I don't have any Nazi's in Rocketman. Its just to big a cop out. Its been done to death and the truth was far, far worse than the fiction could ever hope to describe.
3/5




White Butterfly
By Walter Mosley

A few years later and 'Easy' Rawlins is married and has a daughter (as well as his adopted son). Easy has also become something of an alcoholic and things aren't going too well.

Some one has been murdering young women, but since this is Mosley, no one cares until the next victim turns out to be white, and then suddenly Easy Rawlins is (once again) put to work by 'the man'.

As usual, the racial aspect dominates Mosley's story but as usual its so central to the characters lives that it is impossible to reasonably complain... but I just did anyway.
3/5

Playback

By Raymond Chandler

A bitter sweet, and all too short read, this is just about the last Philip Marlow novel by Raymond Chandler, save for the unfinished 'Poodle Springs', which I'm not sure I want to read as I hate uncompleted novels knowing the author died before they could be finished. Is there anything in art as sad as a good novel, half written but destined to never be finished? Sometimes some other author will step in and try to finish the novel, but even if they do a good job, the end result is the same as in cinema, as when Spielberg tried to salvage Kubrick's last film and now I'll never know if Kubrick had lost it, or if Spielberg just didn't have a clue what Kubrick was trying to say.

What ever the circumstances, it was a pleasure to read Chandler again, and in following Mosley, Chandler cemented his place at the summit of the moif pantheon of great noir fiction authors. This book wasn't better than 'A Red Death', it was altogether too short and too slow for that, but it served to remind me of Philip Marlow and the way Chandler wrote, and that was nice. Really nice. To listen to Marlow's voice is to doze in the warm Californian sun and forget the snow and biting wind of Jutland.

A Red Death

By Walter Mosley

I'm still working through the pile of pulp detective novels on my 'to read' shelf and I'm glad I didn't stop because after the Gods of Mars, this book was just what the doctor ordered. At first I was chary because the last Mosley novel had been some what predictable (I'd seen the film and heard the radio play) and because it seeme d to be more about race than about a detective mystery. In fact this novel also contains a lot of racial commentary, but I was expecting it this time and it didn't detract from the pleasure of the story.

In fact the story was great and the first half was really good. Mosely switched a few things around from the previous book, or rather he clarified things in a way that put a relationship under a strain and so suddenly there was an unexpected tension that worked wonders for the story. This tension also worked because at first the story was rather vague and I wasn't quite sure what it was about. 'Easy' Rawlins is maneuvered by the Feds into getting close to a Jewish Communist and find out what the red is doing, but nothing seems to add up. The Communist seems quite good natured and the Feds seem like the bad guys but nothing is as it seems. Three plot twists later and the story is over and the pages are still slightly smoldering, I'm ready to oder the next 'easy' Rawlins novel and Walter Mosley just movd up to second place in the moif pantheon of great noir fiction authors!

The Moving Target

By Ross Macdonald

Having read Chandler, Mosely, Hammet and Spillane, I now reach Macdonald and once again find myself in the seedy world of 1930's California. I have to say that its amazing how often old rich men with beautiful daughters get into trouble in noir fiction. Just about every other book has the same set up though thankfully they don't all end the same. I'm finding enough similarities to make the experience less than fantastic though and I think I may now be drawing to the close of this pulp-noir- detective phase. Just a few more books that I've stockpiled from Amazon and then thats it I think. Time to find another genre worth plundering.

'The Moving Target' is a moderately good read, though it never really gripped me. Its Macdonalds first novel featuring his star character Lew Archer, so maybe they get better? I don't know. I ordered two more so I guess I'll find out eventually. This story has the mandatory elements, a batchelor detective with a war record, investigating a mystery surrounding a very rich old man with a desirable daughter. He has the usual car, office, drinking habit and he likes to frequent night clubs looking for clues. The language seems kosher and the sudden bouts of violence aren't nearly as dramatic as Spillane's, Macdonald is more understated, almost like Chandler, but not as well written.

The Thin Man

By Dashiell Hammet

This, I understand, is one of Hammets earlier novels, and it shows. The way in which the story is written defies convention to create a curious mystery which establishes the main character as some one far more interesting than your average noir detective. He has a wife, a regular job and interests beyond the story, and these lend an additional depth to the character than had he been your typical whiskey drinking gumshoe, alone in his office, watching the neon lights below.

The story was interesting, and although I guessed who the murderer was, it became apparent to me about half way through, I didn't get the twist at the end at all.

All in all a good read. I have a few more noir detective books to go through, but I can already see that Raymond Chandler is still my favourite, and Hammett, Spillane and Mosely are all in joint second place, with Mosely trailing ever so slightly. I have a just bought a new novel with a new noir author, Ross Macdonald; so that will be next in line (after I've read 'A Princess of Mars').

Devil in a blue dress

By Walter Mosley

Having seen the film, heard the BBC radio adaptation, and having come across ample praise for this novel, I was under the impression that it was a really good work of classic crime fiction. But it isn't. The story is just enough to qualify as 'noir', but its short, sketchy and written in a simple handed manner that struck me as being almost childish. Perhaps I'm missing the point some where but given how often the main character diverts the story to talk about race issues, I can't but help think that its the race issues that have garnered so much attention and the people raving about this book have not paid all that much attention to the actual story.

If your interested in race issues, then this book is certainly interesting, and you might argue that its impossible tell the story of an African American detective in the 1950's without taking the race aspect into account. Personally I found it a bit much, not least how often Mosley brought up Easy Rawlin's experiences killing 'white German boys' in the Second World War juxtaposed against Rawlin's hard times with white Americans, something glossed over in the film adaptation starring Denzel Washington, but I guess is all a part of what it was to be an African American ex-GI in those times. It certainly lends the story a facet which you won't find much of with Marlowe or Hammer.

Although slightly disapointed in the length of the story and its lack of complexity, I did like the characters, their interactions and how they were described. There was also some sex, which is something else you don't find in the older noir books, and I personally like to read about sex because as often as not, its an important aspect of how two people relate to each other. Sex makes a story just that much more engaging.

The Mike Hammer Omnibus vol 1

By Mickey Spillane

Vol 1 contains three novels;

'I the Jury'
'My gun is quick'
'Vengeance is mine'

Not as good as the Philip Marlowe novels, but still interesting. Mike Hammer is a much more hard boiled character, much given to emotional outbursts, often bordering on the psychopathicc and unlike Marlowe and Spade, Mike Hammer is also violent, and moves in violent circles, so much so that corpses litter these stories, left, right and centre.

Having read Marlowe first, I think I've become preconditioned, for I find these books, though entertaining enough, to lack the sense of mystery and novelty that Raymond Chandler was able to create. Spillane seems more like a teenager who discovered a type writer and used it to exorsize his adolescent demons. Guns are great, women are disposable dolls and men beat the beejesus outta each other, then carry on as if nothing had happened. The first two stories were easy enough to solve and I hardly bothered with the third, simply reading it something to do whilst sitting on the toilet. Thats probably more information than you needed, but there it is. I was never able to put down Chandler's novels, but with Spillane I merely coasted along when I had five minutes to spare

The long goodbye

by Raymond Chandler

The last of the 'big' Marlowe novels. 'The long goodbye' begins with a slightly curious geographical reference to the previous novel, The little sister, and sets out on a start-stop narrative, building up a friendship between Philip Marlowe and a hard drinking socialite named Terry Lennox. The skullduggery begins when Lennox asks Marlowe to help him get to Mexico, after his wife has been murdered. Marlowe agree's to help, providing Lennox doesn't admit to the murder, not least because Marlowe doesn't believe Lennox is guilty. Lennox escapes the USA, but eventually commits suicide. Marlowe is arrested and suffers some police brutality, but when news of the suicide, and a signed confession reach LA, he is released again.

Marlowe goes back to his life and broods. In the mean time another job comes his way. An author named Wade is missing and his beautiful wife wants him back. All straight forward it seems, until Marlowe begins to discover peculiar connections between the missing man and his dead friend.

As Marlowe novels go, this one is said to be one of the best. I'm not convinced. It certainly has a lot going for it, the many plot twists are good at keeping the reader guessing, but essentially it came across as preaching just a little too much. Marlowe has developed over the course of the novels to the point where he so moral and upstanding that he's beginning to be predictable, especially when people offer him payment.

The other big problem I had with the book was the big twist at the end was just downright obvious. No doubt I've seen too many films. It was still a good book, but not as good as 'The big sleep' or 'The lady in the lake'.

I note there is a film adaptation by Robert Altman, starring Eliot Gould as Marlowe. I have to say that I can't see Gould as Marlowe at all.

The Little Sister

By Raymond Chandler.

Holiday reading with style. Ice pick murders, glamourous women and hidden wise guys. Once again Philip Marlowe defies common sense and pays the price. Accepting a commision without payment, for no apparent reason beyond curiosity, Marlowe soon finds himself in trouble with the police, suspected of murder.

Another great book by a great author, though some what jumbled in comparison to the previous books this was still a good read which kept me guessing.

The Lady in the Lake

By Raymond Chandler

Yet again, Chandler caught me out, and this time it was with the most obvious twist imaginable. The story was great, lucid and well described and I don't wonder if Chandler got better with age. The characters were so well drawn that I had actors in my head, Michael Madsen as Degarmo and Rod Steiger as Patton. I still can't decide who would play Marlowe. Humprhey Bogart doesn't work at all for me, and Robert Montgomery is just a little too 'nice'. Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum and James Garner have all also played the character in their time, but none of them works for me at all. I see Marlowe as a big man, slightly rough faced, but well dressed and generally suave and with very intelligent eyes. Something like Tom Selleck with a touch of Tom Sizemore perhaps...

Some one really ought to bring this character back to the big screen!

The best thing about Raymond Chandler I think is his ability to describe people. His characters are barely sketched at times, and yet they jump right off the page. I can see their faces, their eyes, smell their perfume, sweat and anger. Every word they speak works within the context of the characters and there is a lot left undescribed that follows automatically. Chandler can convey a mans mood by describing how his arm hangs at his side or how he lights a cigarette. This ability to create a scene with so few words, keeps the story short and tight, and yet as befitting good noir literature, the plot twists and turns keeping the reader at arms length until the truth is finally revealed, and then you get slapped in the face.

Shame about the cover ilustration though. I really wonder what people are thinking when they choose to publish something with a cover like that.