Thread by @Kathy__Gee

Every day last #Noirvember, I tweeted out #noirnovelsbywomen: a total of 30 novels by 30 authors, in alphabetical order by author.

The first tweet in that thread is here <> and a list of all 30 novels is attached.

https://x.com/Kathy__Gee/status/1455135712181882885

Gonna do something similar this month. This time it will be 30 #vintagenoirnovels, by both men and women authors. For "vintage" my cutoff date for publication is 1965, though I realize that is somewhat arbitrary.

DAY 1 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

First up: Bill Ballinger's Portrait in Smoke (1950)

Poring over some old files, the young owner of a two-bit collection agency finds a photo of a beauty contest winner and is immediately smitten. Obsessed, he spends years tracking her down.

Let's just say he shouldn't have bothered.
Suspenseful, full of compellingly drawn characters, and brimming with authentic midcentury Chicago locales (yes! it's a #Chicagonoir), this is a great read and a masterful treatment of a classic noir theme.

And if you don't believe me, listen to James Ellroy. He is a huge fan of Portrait of Smoke and has called it "the ultimate evil woman novel." Coming from him, that is high praise indeed.

One of the things I like most about this novel is its nuanced portrayal of the femme fatale character. Some of the chapters are from her point of view so you understand her motivations and even sympathize with her. It's a refreshing break with the conventions of the genre.

DAY 2 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

Gil Brewer, A Killer Is Loose (1954)

Steve Logan is a poor bastard with a bum right eye, a pregnant wife, a stack of unpaid bills, and no job. But when he saves the life of a stranger his real troubles begin.

The stranger turns out to be a dangerous psychopath, and for the rest of the novel he essentially holds Logan hostage.

Gil Brewer is excellent with character and suspense. I read this entire harrowing novel with a tight knot in my gut.

One of the most unnerving things about this novel is the way the killer keeps calling the narrator "pal." I'll never be able to hear that word again without giving a shudder.

Brewer was a prolific pulp novelist who published under the Gold Metal imprint, one of the premiere publishers of noir fiction of the era. There are a number of Gold Metal titles on this list.

Note: this novel bears no relation to Budd Boetticher's excellent noir, The Killer Is Loose (1956). But the film was released two years after the novel so they might have ripped off the title.

DAY 3 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)

If you only know this novel via the classic 1946 movie, you may be in for a shock.

The movie is a glossy MGM product all the way. But the novel is much rawer.

The lovers' passion is downright feral, and it reads like a fever dream.

Postman is a classic of American literature and perhaps the most influential novel in the noir canon. Read it and you'll immediately grasp why it was such a sensation. It's the book that changed everything

DAY 4 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

Bernice Carey, The Man Who Got Away with It (1954)

In the twenty years that have passed since the unsolved strangling death of a young woman, her killer has become a respected member of the community.

But when an outsider starts asking questions about the case, the killer begins to unravel. He may even strike again.

Bernice Carey was a woman of the left (she'd been a member of the communist party) who, in the late 1940s and 1950s, wrote a number of critically acclaimed crime novels, many of them set in her native California.

Author Curtis Evans notes that “the most significant contribution of Bernice Carey to mid-century crime fiction was her commitment to exploring realistic social conditions in her novels.” That is certainly true.

Carey has a keen sociological imagination, which among the crime writers I've read is unique. She is acutely attentive to issues of race, class, and gender, and her portrayal of the modes and mores of various mid-century American communities is fascinating.

For years, Carey was all but forgotten. But recently the invaluable Starkhouse Press has brought her work back into print, in ebook and paperback formats.

The ebooks in particular are dirt-cheap: only 5 bucks apiece for ebooks that contain two novels each. You can find them here: starkhousepress.com/carey.php

DAY 5 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953)

This is everybody's favorite Chandler novel, right?

Ross Macdonald said that "Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence."

Macdonald's description is especially apt for this, the greatest of Chandler's novels. Not only does The Long Goodbye contain some of Chandler's most gorgeous prose, it also has greater richness and melancholy.

The characters have more depth and Chandler's critique of the moral rot of Los Angeles (and by extension the entire modern world) is more far-reaching, and has more of a sting.

Interestingly, we still don't have a film adaptation that's faithful to the source material. Robert Altman's 1973 film adaptation is wonderful but very different from the book. If you only know the film you will be in for a surprise when you read the novel.

DAY 6 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock (1946)

"How does a man escape from himself? No book has ever dramatized that question to more perfect effect than The Big Clock, a masterpiece of American noir."
-- from the book jacket of the NYRB edition

The firstthing that will grab you as a reader is this novel's ingenious plot: hard-drinking writer George Stroud is sent by his media mogul boss to track down the identity of a man seen with the mogul's mistress on the night of her murder. The only problem: Stroud *is* that man!

But what will keep you reading is the gut-churning suspense, the stylish writing (in addition to being a crime novelist, Fearing was a well-regarded poet), and its gimlet-eyed view of mid-century corporate life.

Fearing, a man of the left who'd worked for Time magazine, on which the giant media conglomerate in the novel is based, clearly knew this world inside out.

I like John Farrow's 1948 film adaptation of this novel very much. But I prefer the novel. It's tougher, bleaker, and brimming with the kind of sharp social commentary and details of mid-century urban life that the film omits or tones down (including a fascinating gay subtext).

DAY 7 #Noirvember #vintagenoirnovels

Celia Fremlin, The Trouble Makers (1963)

Women trapped in desperately unhappy marriages turn on their own in this haunting, darkly hilarious, slow burn domestic noir about the hell of family life in the pre-feminist 1960s.

The Trouble Makers is one of Fremlin's most chilling and original works. As Chris Simmons notes in the preface of the 2014 Faber edition, its disturbing theme is "the whole community being complicit in the destruction of an individual."

Celia Fremlin is an insanely underrated master of domestic suspense. Between 1958 and 1994, she published 15 witty, elegant, unsettling novels that unflinchingly exposed the dark side of 20th century British domestic life. She deserves a far wider readership.