British Crime Cinema -ed. Steve Chibnall & Robert Murphy

I expected British Crime Cinema to be a broad survey of British crime films, covering detective stories, police procedurals, psychological thrillers, film noir and gangster films alike. Instead, the book is much more narrowly focused on the British gangster tradition, an area of the genre with which I am less familiar. Apart from films such as Get Carter and Villain, many of the titles discussed were completely new to me.

Despite this initial disappointment, the collection contains several excellent essays. Particularly interesting is the chapter on the controversy surrounding the 1948 adaptation of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which explores why the film was condemned as both "un-British" and excessively shocking, while also placing the novel within a wider cultural and mythological context. The essay on Get Carter is another highlight, offering fresh insights into one of the defining British crime films.

Although the volume did not match my expectations, it introduced me to a number of films I now want to explore. Readers looking for a comprehensive history of British crime cinema should be aware of its strong emphasis on gangster films, but those interested in that particular tradition will find much to enjoy.

Jim Thompson - The Nothing Man

Convincingly wrapped in the conventions of a crime novel, Nothing Man is one of Jim Thompson's most unsettling and personal works. Robert Polito, in his excellent biography Savage Art, argues that this is perhaps Thompson's most autobiographical novel, drawing heavily on his own experiences as a newspaper reporter.

The protagonist, Clinton Brown, returns from the war physically and psychologically scarred and finds employment as a reporter for a daily newspaper. His closest acquaintance is the police detective Stuckey, while alcohol becomes his constant companion. When Brown's ex-wife unexpectedly reappears, a chain of increasingly disturbing events begins to unfold.

Thompson tells the story in his trademark deadpan style, combining shocking violence with dark, almost absurd humor. The novel's greatest strength, however, lies not in its crimes but in its portrayal of an unreliable narrator whose fractured perception of reality constantly leaves the reader questioning what is true and what exists only inside Brown's disturbed mind.

Brown's descent into violence is presented with Thompson's characteristic deadpan irony. After killing his ex-wife during a drunken confrontation, he begins to repeat the same disturbing pattern with other women in his life, leaving behind poems as a bizarre signature. A journalist who loves him becomes another victim, as does an editor who offers to publish his poetry under humiliating conditions. These episodes are not merely crime set pieces; they reveal the mind of a deeply unreliable narrator who transforms his own brutality into a distorted personal mythology.

There are also moments of bleak comedy, such as Brown's disastrous dinner with his editor that ends with severe food poisoning and a stay in hospital, reminding us that Thompson could mix horror and humor with remarkable ease.

Part psychological noir, part existential nightmare, Nothing Man is less concerned with solving crimes than with exploring guilt, alienation, and self-deception. It stands among the strongest novels Thompson wrote and deserves to be mentioned alongside The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 as one of his finest achievements.

James Hadley Chase - No Orchids For Miss Blandish

Although James Hadley Chase can be described as a hack writer, his thrillers are always entertaining and highly readable, even if they are not particularly literary. He occupies an important place in the history of crime fiction thanks to his violent debut novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish.

Set in an American world of Prohibition-era gangsters, the novel follows the kidnapping of the wealthy Miss Blandish by the ruthless Grissom gang. The story develops effectively, although I think Chase could have benefited from trimming some of the narrative.

What elevates the novel above many conventional crime thrillers is the disturbing relationship between the victim and her psychotic captor, Slim Grissom. Chase explores the lasting psychological trauma suffered by Miss Blandish, creating a far darker and more unsettling novel than its pulp reputation might suggest.

The novel was influential enough to inspire George Orwell's famous essay Raffles and Miss Blandish, in which he examined the changing nature of popular crime fiction. It was also adapted into the underrated 1971 gangster film The Grissom Gang, which is well worth seeking out.

Bruin Crimeworks did a fine, evocative cover artwork for this edition.

Charles Willeford - The Burnt Orange Heresy

Charles Willeford’s The Burnt Orange Heresy revolves around James Figueras, an art historian and critic who becomes obsessed with the greatest painter in the world, Jacques Debierue, an eccentric artist who lives in isolation. Through Debierue’s lawyer, Figueras discovers that the painter has moved to Florida under a false name, and he is offered the opportunity to interview him — but only on the condition that he steals one of Debierue’s paintings.

From that moment, things begin to unravel. Debierue is a strange and mysterious figure, a quiet man who reveals very little about himself during the interview. After dinner, the painter decides that he wants to watch a movie at a drive-in theater, so Figueras drives him and his girlfriend there. While Debierue watches the film, Figueras breaks into the house searching for the painting. Unable to find it, he starts a fire and decides to create a fake painting that will be presented as a work by Debierue.

However, his girlfriend discovers what he has done, and in a moment of panic and desperation, Figueras violently attacks her and kills her. Despite achieving success and recognition as an art critic, he eventually goes to the police and confesses the crime.

An unusual novel about the world of art and the price people are willing to pay for success, The Burnt Orange Heresy is a dark satire of ambition, deception, and the desire for fame. The novel reminded me of two other works about the art world: George Sims’s The Last Best Friend, which has a more convincing setting because Sims himself was an art dealer, and Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters, a darkly humorous satire of art and the cultural establishment.

Although Willeford’s novel is not a realistic portrait of the art world in the same way as Sims’s work, its strange atmosphere and cynical view of ambition make it a fascinating and unusual crime novel.

Italian Crime Fiction - ed. Guliana Pieri

This collection of essays on Italian crime fiction is a welcome breath of fresh air after so much Anglo-American detective fiction. When the publishing house Mondadori began introducing English and American detective novels through its famous Giallo series, many Italian intellectuals looked down on the genre as little more than popular entertainment. Italian writers soon began producing their own crime novels, although most of the early works were largely imitations of their foreign counterparts.

Everything changed with Giorgio Scerbanenco and his four Milan novels featuring Dr. Duca Lamberti. Unfortunately, many Italian crime novels have yet to be translated into English. Scerbanenco transformed Milan into the quintessential noir city of Italian crime fiction while confronting the country's shameful Fascist past and its lingering social consequences.

For many years, crime fiction continued to be regarded with suspicion by Italy's literary establishment until several major mainstream writers embraced the genre. These included Umberto Eco with The Name of the Rose, Leonardo Sciascia with The Day of the Owl, Carlo Emilio Gadda with That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, and Antonio Tabucchi with The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro.

The 1980s saw the emergence of the so-called Bologna School, represented by writers such as Loriano Macchiavelli and Carlo Lucarelli, whose novels explored corruption and political tensions in Bologna. A separate chapter is devoted to Andrea Camilleri, whose Inspector Montalbano series and evocative Sicilian setting made him one of Italy's most successful crime writers.

Overall, this is an informative and engaging volume that traces the development of Italian crime fiction from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in exploring one of the richest and most distinctive traditions in European crime fiction.

Lionel White - The Snatchers/Clean Break (The Killing)

I have already written about Lionel White and his crime-caper novels, and this Stark House double-bill edition, featuring an excellent introduction by Rick Ollerman, is a very worthwhile volume. The Snatchers, White’s debut novel, foreshadows the formula he would perfect in his later work. Although the story of the kidnapping of a young child has a few shortcomings, it remains engaging, particularly because of the memorable seaside hideout. The novel was later adapted into the film Night of the Following Day, starring Marlon Brando. The second novel in this volume, Clean Break, is even stronger. Reading it, I was frequently reminded of Kubrick’s adaptation, The Killing, although the novel possesses a somewhat different tone and pace, as well as several significant scenes and plot details that were omitted from the film. All in all, this is a very enjoyable summer read.

Film Noir Reader -ed. Alain Silver & James Ursini

Film noir remains an inexhaustible subject for study and rediscovery, as demonstrated by the first volume of the four-part Film Noir Reader, edited by Alain Silver and James Ursini. The book is divided into three sections and contains a number of engaging essays that reveal the evolution of critical thought on noir from the 1970s through the 1990s. Among my favorites are Paul Schrader’s celebrated “Notes on Film Noir,” Paul Kerr’s “Out of What Past? Notes on the B Film Noir,” Tony Williams’s “Phantom Lady, Cornell Woolrich and the Masochistic Aesthetic,” which discusses one of my favorite writers and his screen adaptations, Alain Silver and James Ursini’s “John Farrow: Anonymous Noir,” devoted in part to The Big Clock and my personal favorite, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Robert E. Smith’s “Mann in the Dark: The Film Noirs of Anthony Mann,” and the essay on neo-noir, “Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre.” Together these pieces show why film noir continues to inspire fresh interpretations and passionate debate. Something I would criticize is thick font and low quality reproductions of stills.

Nightfall (1956)

Jacques Tourneur, renowned for films such as Cat People and Out of the Past, crafted this small noir gem from David Goodis’s novel of the same name. Although the novel is set in summer, Tourneur transferred the action to a wintry landscape without sacrificing the unmistakable Goodis spirit, which he captures brilliantly through his assured direction. Aldo Ray is excellent as a man ensnared by a chain of unfortunate circumstances, though his ruggedly masculine presence differs somewhat from the protagonists one usually encounters in Goodis’s fiction. The criminals pursuing him are memorable, and Anne Bancroft is equally impressive as his companion, bringing warmth and charm to the role.

Maurizio Ascari - A Counter-History Of Crime Fiction

As a child, I was a great fan of the comics Dylan Dog, Marty Mystère, and Nick Raider. While Dylan Dog investigated nightmares and often blended horror with crime stories, Marty Mystère dealt with the fantastic in its broadest sense, and Nick Raider represented the classic police detective. Later, I discovered horror literature, and writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft became some of my favorites.

For that reason, I was immediately drawn to Maurizio Ascari's A Counter-History of Crime Fiction, published in the respected Crime Files series. Ascari argues that crime fiction did not emerge suddenly or in isolation, but developed out of a variety of earlier traditions, including medieval concepts of crime and punishment, Gothic literature, sensationalism, melodrama, Victorian spiritualism, mesmerism, and other cultural and literary influences that predated the modern detective story.

I found the sections on Cesare Lombroso's theories of the "born criminal" and the influence of Max Nordau's Degeneration particularly fascinating, as they demonstrate how nineteenth-century scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas shaped literary representations of criminals and criminal investigation.

While reading Ascari, I was frequently reminded of the film Angel Heart, which brilliantly combines horror and the hard-boiled tradition, as well as the comic Dylan Dog, whose stories often demonstrate that the boundary between horror and crime fiction is far less rigid than it might initially appear.

A Counter-History of Crime Fiction is not a conventional history of the detective novel. Instead, it serves as a reminder that crime fiction emerged from a complex mixture of literary and cultural traditions, and that this is precisely what makes the genre far richer and more diverse than is often assumed.

Giorgio Scerbanenco - Betrayal

cover photograph of original novel in italian

Italy never developed a crime fiction tradition as extensive as those of Britain or the United States. However, the famous Il Giallo Mondadori series, which introduced Italian readers to translated British and American detective novels, helped pave the way for the emergence of a distinctly Italian crime fiction tradition.

One of its most important figures is Giorgio Scerbanenco, often regarded as the godfather of Italian crime fiction. Betrayal is among his best-known novels. It begins with Dr. Duca Lamberti agreeing to perform an operation on a young woman who wants to regain her virginity. After the procedure, he learns that she has been murdered, drawing him into a world of violence, organized crime, drugs, and the lingering shadows of Italy's Fascist past.

Although Scerbanenco employs the conventions of crime fiction, Betrayal often feels closer to the broader Italian literary tradition than to the Anglo-American detective novel. While reading it, I was reminded of writers such as Leonardo Sciascia, Dino Buzzati, Luigi Pirandello, Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia and even Gabriele D'Annunzio. The novel uses crime not merely as a puzzle to be solved but as a way of exploring history, betrayal, and the moral fractures of postwar Italian society.

The English translation occasionally feels a little stiff, but it remains perfectly readable and does not diminish the power of Scerbanenco's vision.