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.

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.

Jim Thompson - The Kill-Off

As in many of Jim Thompson's novels, The Kill-Off focuses on lost and morally compromised people. The novel follows a woman who believes that her neighbors want to kill her and take her money. However, Thompson does not present his protagonist as an innocent victim. She is a gossip who constantly spreads rumors about the residents of her small town, and the reader soon realizes that some of her neighbors may indeed have reasons to dislike her. At the same time, the other townspeople are hardly portrayed as honest or admirable individuals. Thompson creates a world in which it is difficult to find anyone completely innocent, and where the line between victim and culprit becomes increasingly blurred.

Likewise, as in many of Thompson's other novels, The Kill-Off contains autobiographical elements and appears to be fueled by the author's resentment toward certain people around him. Thompson often worked through his personal frustrations and conflicts in his fiction. As Robert Polito points out in his biography Savage Art, and as Arnold Hano, Thompson's editor at Lion Books, once observed, Thompson had a tendency to work out his problems in his novels.

Charles Williams - A Touch Of Death

A Touch of Death, much like The Hot Spot, revolves around a man driven by greed and a fatal woman who gradually pulls him deeper into destruction.

Perhaps this is a worn-out noir cliché, but Charles Williams uses his storytelling skill to create a powerful noir atmosphere and a dark psychological struggle between desire and doom. His prose is direct and economical, yet capable of building constant tension beneath seemingly ordinary scenes.

What makes the novel particularly memorable is its ending.
(Spoiler ahead.)

As the protagonist waits for the woman to return from the bank with the money, he notices a girl passing beside the car and continuing down the street. At that moment, reality itself begins to collapse for him. Arrested by the police and abandoned by everyone around him, he starts wondering whether the woman even existed at all, and why nobody believes she was real.

The final pages create an almost hallucinatory sense of paranoia and emotional disintegration, elevating the novel above routine pulp material.

Hard Case Crime also deserves praise for reissuing the novel in an attractive edition with a fittingly evocative cover design.

James Ellroy - White Jazz

With White Jazz, the final entry in the L.A. Quartet, James Ellroy pushes his experimental style to the extreme.

The fragmented prose, already present in the earlier books, becomes almost overwhelming here. Sentences are cut, thoughts are compressed, and the narrative often feels chaotic and disjointed. At times, it works. At other times, it feels forced and unnecessarily psychedelic.

The plot revolves around Dave Klein investigating a break-in connected to a deeply disturbed family. The father is a major drug dealer, the daughter is a prostitute, and the son appears to be obsessively attached to her. This alone creates a sense of moral decay that is typical of Ellroy, but the novel doesn’t stop there.

Another subplot follows a runaway actress connected to Howard Hughes, portrayed here as a deeply unwell figure. She ends up acting in a low-budget film produced by Mickey Cohen, who is depicted as a fallen man reduced to working with alcoholics and fringe figures. These elements add to the sense of a collapsing world, where everyone is compromised and nothing feels stable.

As the novel progresses, the narrative becomes increasingly difficult to follow. Characters blur together, motivations become unclear, and it often feels like no one fully understands what they are doing — including the reader. The story turns into a kind of fever dream, driven more by sensation than by logic.

This is Ellroy at his most extreme: dirty, chaotic, and completely unrestrained. For some readers, this will be the ultimate expression of his style. For others, it may feel like excess without control.

In the end, White Jazz is less a traditional crime novel and more a descent into narrative breakdown — a book where structure collapses under the weight of its own intensity.

James Ellroy - The Big Nowhere

Out of all the novels in L.A. Quartet, The Big Nowhere is the one that impressed me the most.

The novel opens with a notorious wave of anti-communist witch hunting in America. This storyline, investigated by Malcolm Considine, is interesting in itself, especially once Buzz Meeks enters the picture. Still, for me, this is not the true core of the novel.

The heart of the book lies in the investigation of a serial killer, followed by Danny Upshaw. His character stood out the most. Not only because of the disturbing and brutal nature of the murders, but also because of the way his personal life slowly collapses as he becomes entangled in both the homicide case and the anti-communist purge.

Upshaw is a tragic figure. His involvement in the investigation of communist organizations only deepens his internal conflict, leading to an inevitable and devastating end. Ellroy builds his character with a sense of doom that feels unavoidable from the very beginning.

Reading James Ellroy is like stepping into a filthy bar late at night — a place filled with outcasts, criminals, corrupt policemen, and constant noise. There is no comfort, no elegance, only decay and tension. The prose is fragmented, aggressive, and relentless, pulling the reader deeper into a world where morality is blurred and violence is everywhere.

What makes The Big Nowhere effective is not just its plot, but its atmosphere. Ellroy doesn’t suggest darkness — he throws you into it. The novel is crowded with characters and subplots, but at its best, it delivers moments of pure noir intensity, especially through Upshaw’s storyline.

Even if Ellroy’s style can become exhausting, this novel shows him at his strongest: obsessive, chaotic, and completely uncompromising.

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.

Jim Thompson - Nothing More Than Murder

In Nothing More Than Murder, Jim Thompson appears at first to be working within the familiar framework of Double Indemnity: an unhappy marriage, an affair, and a plan driven by money and insurance. Yet the novel gradually undermines that expectation. The crime ultimately gives no one anything of real value. There is no triumph, no glamorous payoff.

What truly drives the protagonist is not greed alone, but a provincial power fantasy. As the owner of a small-town movie theater, he sees himself as a local magnate, locked in petty rivalries and desperate to assert dominance. The murder becomes less a calculated financial maneuver and more an extension of his fragile need for control. Thompson strips the noir formula of its sheen and exposes the smallness beneath the ambition.

Among the writers published by Gold Medal Books, Jim Thompson remains, for me, the most compelling. Even more than David Goodis, whose work I admire but often find overwhelmingly atmospheric and steeped in a kind of relentless depression. Where Goodis immerses the reader in mood and despair, Thompson balances psychological darkness with structural control and narrative momentum. His novels feel less suffocating and more sharply observed, driven not only by emotion but by a clear understanding of character and consequence.

Jim Thompson - The Criminal

 

In The Criminal, Jim Thompson builds the narrative around the murder of a young girl and the accusation against a boy who knew her. Rather than functioning as a conventional whodunit, the novel unfolds through multiple perspectives, creating a fragmented structure that almost recalls Rashomon. Yet Thompson’s purpose is not to relativize truth but to expose the moral decay of individuals and institutions.

What I found particularly compelling is the battle between the district attorney and the boy’s defense lawyer, especially during the interrogations. Their questioning turns into a subtle contest of power and interpretation, where the boy becomes less a person and more a battleground for competing ambitions. The tension does not arise from discovering new facts, but from watching how authority shapes, pressures, and reframes those facts. The crime becomes a lens through which the legal system itself is examined — and quietly condemned.

Gil Brewer - Wild To Possess/A Taste Of Sin

 

When I bought Wild to Possess and A Taste of Sin, I thought I had discovered an interesting pulp writer. After finishing both novels, however, I was left rather disappointed.

Wild to Possess begins in an intriguing way: the protagonist discovers an attempted murder involving a woman and her lover, apparently motivated by money. The situation is complicated by his own secret — he once found a woman and her lover dead. As the story progresses, the lover’s brother appears and accuses him of being responsible for the deaths. The premise promises psychological tension and moral ambiguity, but as the plot unfolds, the structure begins to feel unstable and the characters’ motivations insufficiently developed.

In A Taste of Sin, there is a stronger emphasis on sexual tension and a planned bank robbery. While these elements could have created greater momentum, the story never quite achieves the necessary narrative control. The stakes feel lower than they should, and the tension fails to build in a convincing way.

It is perhaps worth noting that Gil Brewer struggled heavily with alcoholism and addiction to sleeping pills, something that may have affected both the consistency and discipline of his writing.

Martin Goldsmith - Detour

 

Detour is one of the purest and most merciless examples of classic noir, a novel in which there is no investigation, no crime in the conventional sense, and no possibility of redemption. What remains is the inner collapse of a man who believes he is being hunted by fate—and the novel persistently suggests that he may be right.

The protagonist, Alexander Roth, is not a typical pulp figure. He is introspective, educated, and keenly aware of his own vulnerability, yet this awareness offers no salvation. Goldsmith masterfully employs interior monologue to show how a chain of coincidences, bad decisions, and ill-fated encounters turns into a prison with no exit. Fate in this novel is not a metaphor—it is an active force, cold and inescapable.

The book is short, dense, and stripped of everything superfluous. There are no psychological justifications and no attempts to comfort the reader with explanations. As in the finest noir fiction, everything is already lost; the tension arises not from whether collapse will occur, but when.

The female character is not a classic femme fatale but rather a weapon of fate—a figure who enters the story not to seduce, but to complete what has already begun. Her presence merely accelerates the movement toward the inevitable end.

Compared to the film adaptation, the novel is colder and more pessimistic. The film Detour offers unforgettable atmosphere, but the book goes further: it refuses consolation, irony, or distance.

Detour is a novel without illusions, noir in its purest form—a story of a man caught in a merciless game of fate, where every decision, even the most trivial one, leads to the same outcome.

Jim Thompson - Pop. 1280

Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280 is one of those rare crime novels that is both darkly funny and deeply disturbing.

On the surface, it reads like a grotesque comedy, but beneath the humor lies something far more corrosive. Thompson turns the small-town setting into a moral wasteland, where cruelty hides behind smiles, politeness, and folksy charm.

What makes the novel so powerful is Nick Corey’s voice: deceptively simple, almost naïve, yet carefully calculated. Thompson had, like very few writers, a profound insight into the mind of a psychopath. He does not explain or analyze it — he lets the reader inhabit it.The humor works as a trap — you laugh, and only afterward realize what you’ve been laughing at. Thompson’s prose is sharp, economical, and relentless, stripping away any illusion of innocence. 

In a strange way, Pop. 1280 is also poetic. Its rhythm, repetition, and cold clarity give the novel a bleak kind of beauty. Thompson doesn’t decorate violence or evil; he presents them plainly, and that starkness creates its own brutal poetry.

This is crime fiction at its most cynical and intelligent — a novel that entertains, unsettles, and lingers long after the final page.

Thompson was a hard alcoholic and many of his novels were fueled by alcohol, and eventually it killed him.

Charles Williams - Hot Spot

Hot Spot is pure, concentrated noir, with no excess and no excuses for its characters. Charles Williams wastes no time: the story starts fast and then tightens like a noose. One wrong judgment is enough for everything to fall apart.

The protagonist is neither a detective nor a hero, but an ordinary man who believes he has control over the situation. Of course, he doesn’t. Williams masterfully builds the relationship between desire, greed, and fear, without moralizing and without illusions. The femme fatale here is not a myth, but a cold fact.

The novel is short but precise. Every scene has a purpose, every line of dialogue drives the story toward its inevitable end. There are no ten-page psychological explanations—characters are revealed through their actions, and fate is not something that can be negotiated.

Hot Spot is a reminder of why classic noir never grows old: it speaks about weaknesses that never change. The mistake is made once. After that, everything moves only downhill.

Black Lizard did a fine job of designign this book.

Richard Hallas - You Play The Black And The Red Comes Up

You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up is a bleak Depression-era noir that blends hardboiled crime with social despair. Richard Hallas (Eric Knight) follows a drifting, defeated protagonist through a world of chance, poverty, and moral exhaustion, where every decision feels like a losing bet. The novel moves episodically, with sharp observations and sudden violence, capturing a raw sense of fatalism without romanticizing crime. Less polished than Cain but closer to McCoy in spirit, it stands out for its grim honesty and restless energy rather than tight plotting.

Elliot Chaze - Black Wings Has My Angel

Black Wings Has My Angel is often praised as a noir classic, but its reputation rests more on style than substance. Elliott Chaze focuses heavily on atmosphere and fatalism, using long, overwrought sentences that can feel pretentious and self-conscious. The mood is dark and nihilistic, but there is surprisingly little actual action, and the pacing often stalls under the weight of its own prose. While the novel has moments of power and a strong sense of doom, readers who prefer leaner, more dynamic noir may find it slow and frustrating.

Boris Vian - I spit on your graves

The celebrated pataphysician Boris Vian wrote this short, oversexed crime novel, charged with erotic intensity and uncontrolled, almost surrealistic violence.

Beneath the mask of American hard-boiled fiction, Vian exposes the sexual hypocrisy and deeply ingrained racism of American society.
Overall, Vian is an exceptionally fascinating writer: he loved jazz, beautiful women, and provocation, and although he died young, he left behind an impressive and remarkably diverse body of work.

This book still provokes strong reactions today, precisely because it exposes deeply ingrained moral hypocrisy and racism. However, what I find interesting and appealing is what lies beneath the surface layer: a skillfully told crime story, infused with large doses of eroticism and dreamlike narration.

The Dark World Of David Goodis

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while — I had a few things to take care of.

I recently finished a collection of three David Goodis novels in one volume: Nightfall, Cassidy’s Girl, and Nightsquad published by Stark House. All of them are excellent, but what strikes me most about Goodis is that, although he was a pulp writer, his stories aren’t really plot-driven.

Goodis writes about losers — people who are defeated, broken, or caught in circumstances they can’t control. His characters aren’t heroes; they are flawed, vulnerable, often powerless. It’s not just about crime or action; it’s about the bleak, noir atmosphere that permeates every scene. 

Reading Goodis is like stepping into a world where everyone has fallen, where despair and failure are part of life — and yet it’s compelling, darkly beautiful, and utterly unforgettable.

Nightfall (adapted into a 1957 film directed by Jacques Tourneur) follows an ordinary man who finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time — stopping in front of a wrecked getaway car used by bank robbers. From that moment, his life spirals out of control. Goodis masterfully builds tension and a sense of inevitability, showing how quickly normal life can be shattered.

Cassidy’s Girl is perhaps the most tragic of the three. The protagonist is a former pilot whose plane crashed, killing some people. Haunted by guilt, he sinks into alcoholism and spends his days in bars with other outcasts. He has a woman who betrays him, works as a bus driver, and suffers another accident similar to his plane crash, leaving multiple victims. The police pursue him, and the story ends ambiguously. Goodis paints a world where misfortune repeats itself, and escape seems impossible.

Nightsquad tells the story of a former cop fired for robbing ordinary people. The mob hires him to track down certain individuals, while at the same time a notorious police unit called the Night Squad rehires him. He finds himself trapped between two forces, morally conflicted, and constantly under pressure. The novel captures the sense of being caught in a system that offers no easy choices.

David Goodis passed away at the young age of 49, which is especially tragic considering the depth and talent he had as a noir writer. He had already produced a significant body of work, but one can only imagine how many more dark, compelling stories and unforgettable characters he could have created if he had lived longer. His early death adds a somber layer to his legacy, echoing the sense of loss, despair, and inevitability that permeates his novels.

Several of Goodis’s novels were adapted into films, further cementing his influence on noir cinema:

• Dark Passage (1947), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall

• Nightfall (1957), directed by Jacques Tourneur

• The Moon in the Gutter (1983), directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix

• Shoot the Piano Player (1960), directed by François Truffaut

These films translate Goodis’s signature mood and flawed characters to the screen, allowing his bleak, noir vision to reach a wider audience.

The French audience appreciated Goodis because his prose is deeply psychological and melancholic, and his characters are true reflections of human weakness, defeat, and despair. Unlike classic American crime novels, in Goodis’s work, it’s not the detective mystery or action that takes center stage, but the atmosphere, inner sadness, and moral ambiguity.

The French have always had a particular taste for dark, introspective, and stylized stories, which perfectly matched Goodis’s noir world. His protagonists are often unable to save themselves, and the world around them is cold and unforgiving, which the French found both fascinating and artistically valuable.

Cornell Woolrich - The Bride Wore Black

 

Cornell Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black (1940) remains one of the most haunting works of noir fiction, a chilling exploration of grief, obsession, and vengeance. Often described as a “poet of loss,” Woolrich opens his saga of death and desire with a deceptively simple premise: a beautiful woman methodically hunts down a group of men, killing them one by one. What begins as a series of mysterious murders slowly reveals a devastating backstory that transforms the narrative into a meditation on fate and retribution.

This edition, published as part of Otto Penzler Presents American Mystery Classics, features an insightful introduction by Eddie Muller, the so-called “Czar of Noir.” Muller situates the novel within the larger context of Woolrich’s career and the noir tradition, pointing out how Woolrich’s sense of doom and fatalism shaped not only crime literature but also the film noir movement. His preface highlights how The Bride Wore Black anticipates the cinematic qualities of noir—its shadows, its obsession with femme fatales, and its inevitable sense of tragedy.

Reading Woolrich today, one feels the raw intensity of his prose. The episodic structure builds suspense with each successive killing, while the emotional core—the grief driving the “bride”—keeps the novel from being a simple revenge thriller. Instead, it becomes an unsettling character study, a dance with destiny where every step feels both inevitable and terrifying.

The Bride Wore Black is more than a crime novel; it is a work that shaped noir storytelling in both literature and film. Muller’s introduction frames it as an essential starting point for anyone wishing to understand the darkness at the heart of American noir.

James Ellroy - L.A. Confidential

James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential is a sprawling, hard-edged crime epic that plunges the reader into the murky depths of 1950s Los Angeles — a city glittering with Hollywood glamour on the surface, but rotten to the core underneath.

The novel follows three very different LAPD officers:

• Ed Exley, an ambitious, calculating climber determined to rise through the ranks, no matter the cost.

• Bud White, a brutal enforcer with a personal vendetta against men who abuse women.

• Jack Vincennes, a celebrity cop who trades integrity for fame and publicity.

Their separate investigations — a mass murder at the “Nite Owl” diner, a scandal involving a murdered young actor, and the rise of a new criminal syndicate — gradually converge into a tangled web of police corruption, organized crime, political manipulation, and personal betrayal.

Ellroy’s style is uncompromising: terse, staccato sentences, a relentless pace, and a refusal to spoon-feed the reader. The plot is deliberately complex, demanding close attention. Characters are morally ambiguous, shifting between heroism and villainy, which makes them feel real — but also unpredictable.

The climax is intense and bloody, exposing the true power players in Los Angeles, yet Ellroy avoids a neat resolution. Justice is partial, and some villains remain untouched. The death of Exley’s father, an influential police captain, adds a personal dimension to the corruption scandal, forcing Ed to confront his own values.

At over 500 pages, L.A. Confidential is not a quick read, but it rewards patience with a rich, multi-layered story. It’s more than just a crime novel — it’s a grim portrait of ambition, loyalty, and the moral compromises that shape a city.

A brutal, brilliantly constructed noir masterpiece. Not for the faint-hearted, but essential for anyone who appreciates crime fiction at its most uncompromising.