Hardboiled American Crime and Worldwide Noir Fiction discussion

So, what Hardboiled School of American Detective and Crime Fiction published between 1920 and 1965 shall we read for December? Please make up to two nominations of any hardboiled author's work that we have not read in 12 months. Thus Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James Cain come back in to the picture if you wish to nominate another of their works.

What about.

David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s (LOA #225): Dark Passage / Nightfall / The Burglar / The Moon in the Gutter / Street of No Return: Dark ... Return

or Dark Passage

These are ... Dark Passage by David Goodis, has been on my want to read list for a while. Tis a 1947 book so it fits the timeline.
or Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s by David also, just choose one of them.

It's amazing how many of these great writers there were. I am learning of more every day. This really looks like a great choice!

Just pick one of the two though and will consider another later. Dark Passage seems the stronger story but the other book gives us five sep tales (Including Dark Passage). So what has more value?

I will read them both sooner or later anyway.

I like Dark Passage. It's his first well-regarded novel and the first in-genre. (The other, five novels in a single month, seems overly ambitious. We tend to keep reads shorter in this group. Maybe we'll come back to Goodis in future years. If so, that means it might take us five years.)

Then Dark Passage it is :)

I want to nominate The Knife Slipped by Erle Stanley Gardner. Gardner, I am sure you know, is more famous for his Perry Mason books.

Originally written in 1939 to be the second book in the now 30-book-long Cool and Lam series, this novel was rejected by Gardner's publisher. The Knife Slipped was found among Gardner's papers and published for the first time in 2016.

Assigned to prove a philandering husband's infidelity, Donald Lam uncovers a scheme to enable a certain type of municipal corruption. As well as a dead body.

Donald Lam is nobody's idea of a hard-boiled detective. He is about 5'6", weighs 130 pounds soaking wet, and gets beaten up frequently. While he does get into several fistfights, he loses all but one — a single fistfight against an insurance investigator in Double or Quits. His employer, Bertha Cool, is the tough one.

two nominations so far :)

I'd like to run the classical hardboiled group read every other month for a while instead of every month as I have been. Nominations for classic hardboiled American crime fiction are thus now extended and have a November 15 deadline (instead of October 15). I'll run the next classic poll then.

Maybe it's time to consider Double Indemnity by James M. Cain.

This is you baby Dan and I will bow to your views on it :)

I have read a few but I am usually a buyer of what I find on junk and second-hand stores. Until recently anyway so I have huge blackspots in my knowledge.

Dark Passage is a good recommendation too, and one I hadn't heard of until you mentioned it. Two heads are always better than one. And you know what's better than two? Three and four. Come on folks! Feel free to get your nominations in for the group to consider. We're down to the last three weeks.

Hi Dan

Just bought the hardback from Dan Goodis with the five stories in it, looked to good to miss tbh.

I would read it anyway, whether it wins or loses anyway.

The Dan Goodis Hb arrived today, a good quality hardback of almost 800 pages and it looks good. Expensive at £24 but still not bad for what I am getting.