No Sale

by Patrick Conrad, Jonathan Lynn (Translation)

For Victor Cox, a professor of film history, the Hollywood films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s are more real than his daily life. When his wife is found drowned, Cox is the first murder suspect. He falls in love with a student who looks like the 1920s film star Louise Brooks, but she disappears at a Belgian seaside resort. Smeared in lipstick in their hotel room are the words "No Sale," the same words Elizabeth Taylor wrote on a mirror in Butterfield 8. Subsequently, a series of gruesome killings of young women, all modeled on violent deaths in films that he knows and loves, lead the police back to Cox, who starts to doubt his own sanity and innocence.

With its stylish writing, pointed references to cinema classics, and blend of horror and humor, this is a powerful psychological thriller. It won the Diamond Bullet Award, the Edgar Award for Belgium.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Noir, Fiction, Novels

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Patrick Conrad is een Vlaamse dichter en schrijver.

Patrick Conrad in de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia

Patrick Conrad in de Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

Patrick Conrad bij "Schrijversgewijs"


Patrick Conrad is a Flemish poet and writer.

Patrick Conrad in the English Wikipedia

Reviews

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is way off the scale in terms of normal crime fiction -- one that would appeal to fans of gritty, edgy crime novels. The unique thing about this book is that Conrad layers his murder mystery with several noir films, creating a surreal reading experience in the process. Definitely a winner if you like edgy, dark novels that delve into human nature. For a much longer review, feel free to click through to the crime section of my online reading journal. If anyone's read this, I'd love to know your thoughts on this book. It's very different and unique.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toen ik het las moest ik denken aan 'Stoner' Van John Williams en 'Onderworpen' van Houellebecq; in beide romans is het hoofdpersonage een 'oude' professor die verliefd wordt op zijn leerlinge.
Fictie en realiteit worden op een bepaald moment door elkaar gehaald (American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis) en je begint op een gegeven moment te denken dat het hoofdpersonage zelf de dader is - op pagina 198 spreekt men ook letterlijk over geheugenverlies (De Zaak Alzheimer - Jef Geraerts).

Het boek bevat alle ingrediënten van een klassieke misdaadroman: opbouw naar de climax, rechercheurs die rokend en drinkend door het leven gaan (de ene al incapabeler dan de andere), ook de andere personages zuipen erop los, links en rechts passeert er een prostitué de revue. Voorts vallen verschillende elementen in het verhaal doorheen het boek als puzzelstukjes in elkaar, pas op de laatste 10 pagina's kunnen we de ontknoping lezen.

Op een gegeven moment is er een nogal absurde scène, die onderbroken wordt doordat het hoofdpersonage plotseling wakker wordt, badend in het zweet. Dat vond ik nogal cliché, maar goed.

Voor de cinefielen zit dit boek vol met verwijzingen naar films; ik heb zelf (geen filmkenner) een paar zaken uit interesse opgezocht; je kan voorts ook een uitgebreide kroegentocht maken op basis van alle plaatsen die opgenoemd worden.

Ik denk niet een blijvertje is in mijn bibliotheek, maar op basis van mijn ervaring bij dit boek, ga ik in de toekomst nog wel andere dingen lezen van deze auteur; smaakt naar meer!

Zeer degelijk geschreven, volgens de regels van de kunst.

[David Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a magnificent piece of metafiction pretending to be a police procedural where our lead detectives face what proves to be a serial killer selecting his victims because of their links to noir US films.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2012/0...

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

🖍️ The chapter on Starr Faithfull was most interesting to me, especially since I am doing research on her and the time. Fascinating.

📕 Published in 2012.

☞Why this book? I was doing researching on Starr Faithfull (1906-31).

જ⁀➴🔵 The e-book version can be found at Internet Archive.
જ⁀➴🔵🔵 The chapter entitled, "Starr Faithfull" from this e-book version can be found at this link on Internet Archive.
✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎⋆✴︎

[Clay Stafford]

Wow. Having just read this, I’m dumbfounded. Incredible. From the first page two things happened: I was pulled in and I was stumped. This is a grand mystery in the finest of forms, complicated and solid. The story jumps right in with the investigation into the death of American film noir professor Victor Cox’s wife. The prose is fast and clipped. Descriptions of the characters and their world are truly visual. “…touching up her lipstick in the reflection of her knife blade.” Or when a suspect asks, “Do I look like a serial killer?” then the other character’s reply, “You look too normal not to look like one.” After putting away the book, I still saw the characters and their world, hauntingly, like my own memories of an old movie. And why not? Conrad is one of Belgium’s most famous thriller writers and filmmakers. You can visualize why his works translate so easily to the screen (his previous novel “Limousine” is being made into a film with Kelsey Grammar, to be released this year). I loved the lines: When told that his wife is dead, the husband replies, “Shelley has been dead for years.” And later, “Once again there is a woman in the house, which smells of love and coffee.” I can feel that. It hits me viscerally. As a character says, “It’s not easy to strip naked before complete strangers,” but that’s exactly what these characters do. Point by point, their exterior coverings are removed showing their strengths and their foibles. “Shall I drop you home?” the detective asks his girlfriend (who is a hooker) when he has to leave on a call. “No,” she replies to him, “The weather’s fine. I’ll walk and maybe pull a few tricks.” I read that and thought that I shouldn’t find that so believable and yet, in context of the characters, every word Conrad writes, rings true. It is a mystery novel, true, but it is more than that. It is a psychological thriller. There is a love scene that is both erotic and as maturely touching as anything anyone could write in any genre. I felt the character – I felt myself being there and feeling what he was feeling – in every word. The plot goes back and forth. Just when I thought I knew the killer, I immediately began to doubt myself. It plays like a Hitchcock film itself. Looking deeper, it is a study of the fallibility of memory, even of one’s own life, and how even our own regrets and pains can be nothing more than our own fictionalizations. It is this underlying current that elevates it. Brilliantly translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Lynn (incidentally, this is Lynn’s first book translation and he has done a smashing job) this is a “must read.” “No Sale” is the winner of Belgium’s Diamanten Kogel (Diamond Bullet). It is only a matter of time before you will also see this one in theaters, as well. But I wouldn’t wait. Read the book from Bitter Lemon Press.

From Amazon:

“For Victor Cox, a professor of film history, the Hollywood films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s are more real than his daily life. When his wife is found drowned, Cox is the first murder suspect. He falls in love with a student who looks like the 1920s film star Louise Brooks, but she disappears at a Belgian seaside resort. Smeared in lipstick in their hotel room are the words “No Sale,” the same words Elizabeth Taylor wrote on a mirror in Butterfield 8. Subsequently, a series of gruesome killings of young women, all modeled on violent deaths in films that he knows and loves, lead the police back to Cox, who starts to doubt his own sanity and innocence.

With its stylish writing, pointed references to cinema classics, and blend of horror and humor, this is a powerful psychological thriller. It won the Diamond Bullet Award, the Edgar Award for Belgium.”


No Sale on Killer Nashville
My Other Reviews on Killer Nashville

[Starr Gardinier]

“There’s no business like show business.” The same holds true for the murder business. In his award winning novel, Conrad brings the dark emotion of jealousy and the love of movies to light. A serial killer is on the loose and a man is driven to the brink of insanity. “No Sale” is a made for Hollywood must read.

Film buff professor Victor Cox sees similarities to movies in almost every situation. Living in Antwerp, he has collected memorabilia from nearly every time period in Hollywood’s history. His obsession is about to get the better of him. Cox’s alcoholic wife is killed and he is the prime suspect. However, there is no concrete evidence and the police have their third unsolved murder in three years. Time passes and Cox falls for a student who resembles actress Louise Brooks. As the months go by, they develop a relationship…or do they? A fourth and fifth woman are murdered and Cox’s dream girl disappears. Later, he sees the connection between the murders and the pictures he so loves. However, he also begins to lose focus on his mental faculties and wonders if he is the killer everybody is seeking.

From Hitchcock to Fatty Arbuckle, from Chaplin to Eastwood, this book covers the spectrum of moviedom. Every chapter, nearly every scene, is referenced to something from Hollywood. I enjoy books that urge me to do a little research into actual people or events and this one was no exception. Having the book set in Belgium added an interesting flavor to the plot as well as the slightly surreal characters. Conrad’s “No Sale” gets added to my collection.

Review by Stephen L. Brayton, author of “Beta” for Suspense Magazine

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in Antwerp, this Belgian mystery revolves around a retired film professor connected to a number of recent murders. However, far from being a straightforward whodunit, it's really aiming to be a kind of intertextual thriller playing on the professor's encyclopedic knowledge of classic American film history -- particularly film noir. As he learns of the various murders, he starts to realize that they are based on scenes from films he knows, and the police start to realize that he is the common link to five dead women. The first among these is that of his alcoholic wife, victim of an unsolved hit and run. But the foremost woman in the story is a beautiful student of his, whom he falls into an unlikely relationship with, and whose disappearance is the catalyst for the professor's increasing immersion in the investigation. Even though I am reasonably well-versed in film history and lore (for example, the infamous Fatty Arbuckle case, which figures in the plot), I found it all a little too insiderish and self-referential to my taste. I suppose one could try and pick out the film connections as they come, but you'd have to be a pretty serious film enthusiast to get too far with that. The author does manage to pull off one pretty good Hitchcockian trick, but the story generally felt like more of a well-intended homage than an organic story. Possibly worth reading if you're a film junkie, but otherwise I'd be surprised if it generated much general interest.

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Sale is a clever, literary crime novel. It is written and plotted in the style of a noir crime movie, using its stock of characters, sensibilities and tropes, and it is thoroughly intertextual in its make-up, blending together elements of dozens of movies without ever becoming a mere pastiche. Victor Cox is a wonderful character, drifting somewhere between reality and the imaginary, caught in a plot that Alfred Hitchcock would have delighted in committing to film. Whilst the resolution had no real surprise, the killer was a choice of three and it was telegraphed from a pretty long way out, and there’s some obvious gaps, such as the lack of any media interest in the cases, especially given how they all link to one person, neither really seemed to matter. This book was more about the journey, the interconnections, the trivia, the little puzzles, and above all the set of well drawn characters - the lush wife, the wise-guy police officer in love with a prostitute, his by-the-numbers partner who takes everything at face-value, the femme fatale, the innocent victims, the larger-than-life and salt-of-the-earth lowlifes - and how they swirl around Cox. An enjoyable read, which I’m sure would have been even better if I were a film history buff.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really want to give this 3.5 as I enjoyed the book and its 'hard boiled' 30's feel but the ultimate villain was so obvious I felt let down at the end. The premise is that a professor of film is connected to a series of murders which echo either classic fim noir killings e.g Psycho and The Big Heat or deaths of starlets from film history. The film really captures that film noir feel and has an interesting twist of madness and sexual obsession with those silent black and white movie stars like Louis Brooks and Clara Bow.I enjoyed the feel but not necessarily the outcome but will look for more.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

in het Nederlands heeft dit boek als titel Starr. De Engelse titel is eigenlijk nog beter. Merkwaardig boek. Het eerste van Conrad dat ik lees sinds ik decennia geleden een dichtbundel kocht en las van hem. Het boek is geschreven vanuit de auteur, terwijl een thriller of misdaadroman normaal vanuit de speurder of de dader geschreven wordt. Bij deze gelegenheid heeft de auteur zich gehuld in het personage van prof. Victor Cox. Het heeft niettemin een spannend boek opgeleverd. Spijtig van de twee fouten in de tekst (een patiënt lijdt maar hier leidt hij).

[Belladonnabooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you liked Suspects, the novel by the great film critic David Thomson, then you might get something from this masquerade of a crime novel. Don't get me wrong, I love movies and I love mysteries, so I should have so relished this, but it was just too clever to be enjoyable, and the character of the stunning beautiful young girl who falls for the unlikely older man was just a ludicrous wish-fulfilment fantasy by the author. Even if he tried to cop out of it at the end, the damage has been done. It gets the stars for the film anecdotes, most of which I already knew, but they bear repeating.

[Jon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jeez, Professor Conrad, you sure know a lot about American film noir.

OK, does that do it for you?

Because this strained, overlong, overly complex, wannabe thriller involving a series of murders aping those of some classic American films noir adamantly does not do it for me. It comes off as the work of a film noir expert showing off his knowledge. To those reading it in the original Dutch, it must seem even more dismissible, although it won some sort of Dutch crime novel award.

Do yourself a favor: watch the movies, bag the book.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

supposed to be noir's noir

lots of humor, twisty little plot, and sardonic dutch internationalism make for a fun and intriguing read about the films professor slash serial murderer. or IS he? reminds me a bit of james hamilton-paterson, so if you recognize that name, you see the high praise here. Cooking with Fernet Branca

[David Bernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this thriller (another great title from Bitter Lemon Press). Well written, full of cinematographic references, not entirely what it seems on its surface, intriguing psychological twists.... Well worth four stars.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very unusual book. Excellent read, particularly for movie fans.

[Kathlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too full of film plot references and totally predictable ending. Boring.