Harry Whittington - A Ticket To Hell/Hell Can Wait

When I first heard about Harry Whittington, he was often mentioned alongside the great pulp and noir writers of the 1950s. His name appeared in Stark House reprints and in discussions about forgotten crime fiction authors who supposedly deserved rediscovery. Naturally, I expected something raw, atmospheric, maybe in the tradition of David Goodis or Charles Willeford.

After reading the Stark House edition containing Ticket to Hell and Hell Can Wait, I was surprised – and not in a good way.

Ticket to Hell starts with an intriguing premise: a drifter arrives at a remote motel and saves a young woman from her violent boyfriend who seems ready to kill her. This setup suggests a tense, morally ambiguous noir story. However, the novel quickly shifts into something much more conventional when it is revealed that the protagonist is actually working for the FBI and is on a mission to rescue a kidnapped boy. What begins as a potentially gritty, personal story turns into a predictable crime thriller filled with clichés and familiar plot turns.

The second novel, Hell Can Wait, follows a man who plans revenge against the driver responsible for a car accident that killed his wife. Revenge stories are a staple of crime fiction, but here the execution feels mechanical and uninspired. The characters lack psychological depth, and the plot unfolds in the most expected way possible, without the moral complexity or stylistic flair that defines the best noir fiction.

What disappointed me most was not just the use of clichés, but the overall flatness of the prose. Where writers like Goodis or Woolrich create atmosphere through mood, desperation, and poetic bleakness, Whittington’s writing in these two novels feels functional and rushed, as if produced to meet a deadline rather than to tell a compelling story. The dialogue is serviceable but rarely memorable, and the emotional stakes never feel fully real.

This is not to say that Whittington had no talent or that all of his work is without merit. Like many pulp writers of his era, he wrote quickly and prolifically, often under pressure from publishers. In that sense, he can be seen more as a professional craftsman than an artist. Still, based on Ticket to Hell and Hell Can Wait, it is difficult to place him in the same category as the truly distinctive voices of mid-century crime fiction.

Stark House deserves credit for keeping these books in print, as they provide a window into the vast landscape of mid-century pulp publishing. But as literature, these two novels serve more as historical curiosities than as forgotten masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered.

For readers exploring classic noir today, Whittington might be of interest for completists or for those curious about the broader pulp ecosystem. However, those looking for the emotional intensity of Goodis, the psychological precision of Highsmith, or the stylistic elegance of Chandler may find these novels surprisingly hollow.

In the end, reading Ticket to Hell and Hell Can Wait was a useful reminder that not every rediscovered pulp author is an overlooked genius. Sometimes, a hack is simply a hack – and even that has its place in the history of crime fiction.

Charles Willeford - Hoke Moseley Omnibus

Charles Willeford is often described as a kind of “Philip K. Dick of crime fiction.” Just as Philip K. Dick created strange, off-kilter worlds in science fiction, Willeford brings bizarre situations and unusual characters into the crime novel, often subverting the expectations of the genre.

The series about detective Hoke Moseley is particularly interesting in that respect.

Miami Blues is perhaps the best-known novel in the series, largely because of the unforgettable villain Frederick Junior Frenger. He is one of those criminals who seems completely unpredictable and dangerous, which gives the novel both energy and dark humor.

New Hope for the Dead was somewhat less interesting to me. Much of the plot revolves around old unsolved cases that Moseley has to reopen, and the pace therefore feels slower than in the first novel.

I liked Sideswipe the most. The premise itself is unusual: Moseley suddenly decides to move into a hotel run by his father in order to get away from everything for a while. At the same time another storyline unfolds involving a bizarre group of characters planning a supermarket robbery: a psychopathic small-time criminal, a confused retiree who no longer knows what to do with his life, a prostitute with a disfigured face, and a Black painter. This strange combination of characters gives the novel an almost grotesque tone.

The Way We Die Now is also good, particularly because of Moseley’s undercover assignment and the interesting character of a former convict who, after being released from prison, moves into a house across the street from him.

What I would criticize is Willeford’s somewhat dry writing style. Also, the edition I read from Orion Books is a paperback, which is not ideal for a book of more than 800 pages—something of that length would have been much better in hardcover.

Andrew Spicer - European Film Noir

I had high expectations from European Film Noir by Andrew Spicer, hoping for a broad and illuminating exploration of noir across the continent. Instead, the book mostly confirmed something I was already aware of: outside France, the European noir landscape is relatively limited.

The chapters on Germany, Spain, and Italy underline how few fully realized noir films emerged from those countries. While this may be historically accurate, it makes the study feel somewhat thin. The section on French noir is solid, but for anyone already familiar with the major films and critical discussions, it offers little that feels new or revelatory.

Another drawback is the book’s visual presentation. For a study devoted to a highly stylized cinematic form, it contains surprisingly few photographs. The overall design is rather plain and unattractive, which is disappointing in a book about a visually driven genre.

In the end, European Film Noir works better as an introductory academic survey than as a visually rich or groundbreaking reassessment of the genre. For readers already immersed in noir history, it may feel more dutiful than exciting.

Amanda Cross - Death In A Tenured Position

Death in a Tenured Position is a crime novel written by Amanda Cross, the pseudonym of literature professor Carolyn Heilbrun.

The novel tells the story of the first woman to receive a tenured position at a formerly all-male college. Instead of triumph, she is met with indifference, passive aggression, and institutional coldness. The mystery element is present, but atmosphere dominates — a pervasive sense of isolation, academic vanity, and quiet cruelty. In the end, it is revealed that her death was not a murder but a suicide, which casts the entire narrative in a darker and more unsettling light.

Heilbrun herself was a distinguished scholar and feminist critic who taught for many years at Columbia University. Throughout her academic career, she spoke openly about the subtle and overt discrimination women faced within universities, particularly in elite institutions that were slow to accept women as intellectual equals. Under the name Amanda Cross, she used detective fiction not only as entertainment but as a vehicle to explore gender politics, professional exclusion, and the emotional cost of institutional resistance.

Late in life, Heilbrun chose to end her own life at the age of seventy-seven. While it would be simplistic to read the novel as autobiographical, the themes of isolation, aging, autonomy, and the pressures placed upon accomplished women inevitably resonate more strongly in light of her personal history.