Noir fiction for the modern reader.

CASSIDY’S GIRL by David Goodis (1951)

Review by Mike Dennis

When you open a David Goodis novel, you can be pretty sure of two things: it’s probably going to be set in Philadelphia and it’s definitely going to be populated by characters whose lives have no significance, often not even to themselves. And that’s exactly what you get when you open Cassidy’s Girl, a 1951 effort by the master storyteller of doomed human beings.

I say doomed because even in this book, which has Goodis’ twisted version of a happy ending, the characters are all lost souls, thrown out with the bathwater into the filthy streets of the Philadelphia waterfront.

Jim Cassidy drives a bus from Philadelphia to Easton three times every day, back and forth, back and forth, because that’s the only work he can get. As a ruined former airline pilot, he’s well into his downward spiral, and his monotonous job only sets him up for his evening activities. He hangs around a slimy waterfront bar where all the hard case drinkers go, he gets in fist fights, and he’s completely under the spell of his wife Mildred, a breast-shaking, hip-swaying drunken nag who would rather cheat on him than make him dinner.

Well, one night while in an alcoholic stupor in his favorite dive, he spots Doris, a twentysomething girl who is, as she puts it, drinking herself to death, and she looks it. Sallow-complected and vacant-eyed, she makes love to the bottle every day and every night. Cassidy falls for her, more out of genuine caring than lust, and he eventually moves in with her. As he falls more and more in what passes for love in a Goodis novel, he tries his very best to get her to quit drinking. In one wild fantasy, he even envisions a proper, straightened-out life for the two of them, dining in fine restaurants and sipping an after-dinner sherry. “There would be no need for the other kind of drinking,” he thinks to himself.

Mildred, however, has different ideas, and Cassidy’s problems start multiplying.

This is why Goodis was such a great writer. He can take the very lowest players on society’s scale and make you care about them. Even when you know they have absolutely no shot, which is usually the case, you still care. Cassidy’s Girl reads like Goodis’ love letter to these people, and for that matter to all the losers who ever appeared in his novels. Anyone who appreciates great writing should make a point of locating a copy.

When I was a kid, and that was a long, long time ago, I couldn’t get enough of TV. And I’m talking about being in Boston (from age 1-9) when the city only had two channels. My earliest memory of it is never even coming on the air until about 5:00 or so with Howdy Doody. Up till 5:00 there was only a test pattern, which I even watched on occasion, wondering if people in other cities got the same test pattern and if not, was theirs cooler than the one I was watching.

Anyway, within a couple of years, TV started airing in the morning as more and more programming came on line. I used to regard school as an intrusion on my TV time, and I would occasionally note the time in the classroom, telling myself, “Break The Bank is on right now, followed by Strike It Rich“. Actually, Strike It Rich was one of my favorites. Movie serial star Warren Hull (The Spider) was the MC, presiding over a trail of tears flowing from the contestants. They told their sad stories, then had a chance to answer questions for money.

I always liked the game shows, but I also liked baseball, certain variety shows, Saturday morning shows like Super Circus and Mighty Mouse, even some soap operas, and cop dramas. The cop dramas were invariably on late at night, however, like 8:30 and beyond, so my parents didn’t let me stay up that often. When I could, though, it was Dragnet, The Lineup, Man Against Crime, and later Peter Gunn, M Squad, and all the other great cop shows.

I especially liked Racket Squad, a low-key show from the early 1950s (now out on DVD) starring the great Reed Hadley, which focused on swindlers, embezzlers, and other practitioners of the confidence game. It showed how ordinary people can be easily taken in by clever con artists. I never forgot this, and after knowing a few grifters in my adulthood, I saw how some of these people found themselves in way over their heads as a result of their own poor choices. Many times they would get desperate and cross the line, and presto! Then you had noir.

These days, I don’t care for series cop shows at all. They all look alike. They all have the model-handsome hero, the pretty girl (or “strong woman”, to use their euphemism), the black guy (or girl), the Asian guy (or girl), the crusty-but-benign supervisor, the same camera work, same ol’, same ol’.  The closest I can come is Justified, an outstanding maverick of a show starring a smoldering Timothy Olyphant, and based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. Beyond that, I go for Mad Men, Dexter, and American Idol (I know, I know). I loved The Sopranos and Deadwood, but I’m afraid they’re gone forever. And that’s pretty much it, besides great movies on TCM.

Thing is, almost all these shows have, at one time or another, provided me with some kind of material for my writing. Maybe even a scrap of information or an unusual plot line that some writer sneaked past the producers, or just a sharp line or two…I’ve always managed to glean something from these shows every now and then. I’m even talking about the old ones, too, that I have on DVD.

How about you? Ever get any ideas from TV shows (not counting CSI or Law And Order)?

Over at the Ink Spot blog today, Darrell James posted a very interesting piece on song lyrics and how they influenced his writing. I would’ve left a comment, but Ink Spot doesn’t take URL signatures, and for some reason they have never accepted my Google ID, so I don’t bother commenting there.

But Darrell’s blog is worth noting. He had met the 1960s folk-rock group the New Christy Minstrels in a parking lot one day and, since he was a longtime fan, happened to have a CD of theirs in his car. They all signed it gladly and promised to buy his book. He went on to say that, as a child of the folk-rock generation, where it’s all about the lyrics and the story, music has played an important role in his writing.

Amen. I spent most of my adult life as a professional musician (piano), playing rock & roll, rhythm & blues, and country for decades. When I first turned to writing, I sat in front of a blank sheet of white paper with a pencil in my hand (I didn’t even own a typewriter in those days) for what seemed like hours. No ideas, no story, no character, nothing. Then, a line from a song flew into my head. It was from The House Of The Rising Sun, a big hit in the 1960s for the Animals. In fact, it was an old folk tune about a girl who is forced to choose between a life of poverty and one of prostitution, knowing that either way, she’s doomed. The line was this one:

I got one foot on the platform, the other foot on the train

I’m goin’ down to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain

Bingo! I was off to the races. I had my lead character, my story, and my setting. Of course, the novel went nowhere, but at least I had one under my belt.

Other novels of mine have started on such flimsy threads. Cadillac’s Comin‘, a rock & roll novel about a one-hit wonder from the 1950s, is about to go up on Kindle as a self-pub. It grew out of two famous lines from the Eagles:

Freedom, oh freedom, that’s just some people talkin’

Your prison is walkin’ through this world all alone.

I have a print novel coming out in a few months from a traditional publisher. It’s a noir effort called The Take, and sprang from possibly the greatest noir song of all time, El Paso by Marty Robbins. These were the lines that gave me the basis for the novel:

Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina, wicked and evil while casting a spell.

My love was deep for this Mexican maiden. I was in love but in vain I could tell.

You know, it just doesn’t get any more noir than that. (I blogged about this song sometime back. It was called “Music Would Play And Felina Would Whirl” and you can access it by clicking on “Personal” under the Categories.)

The thing is, I used to do all of these songs back in my playing days, and those lines always stood out for me. When it came time for me to write novels, the lines just found their way to the front burner and inspired three different books. Maybe there are others waiting their turn. I sure hope so.

THE SQUEEZE by Gil Brewer (1955)

Review by Mike Dennis

A fortune in illicit cash, a sinister gambling joint operator, a gorgeous redhead, and enough double-crossing to last a lifetime…those are the building blocks of The Squeeze, a fast-moving novel by Gil Brewer.

Written in 1955, The Squeeze is centered around Joe Maule, a Chicago transplant to the southwest Gulf Coast of Florida, the site of many Brewer tales. Joe is in debt to the tune of $12,000, a fortune at the time.  He owes it to Victor Jarnigan, owner of a nearby illegal casino.  Jarnigan, who has cheated Joe out of the money, has concocted a plan to allow him to clear his debt.  All Joe has to do is get cozy with Caroline Shreves, local femme fatale.

Caroline lives with her sister and her husband, who has apparently squirreled away $300,000 in cash.  She’s eye-popping, and likes to hang around local cocktail lounges on weeknights. Joe’s instructions are to develop a relationship with her, then get into the house and try to grab the money.

Well, Joe gets tight with Caroline, all right, according to the plan, but he falls in too deep.  As with most Brewer protagonists, he’s blinded by his lust for this alluring woman who knows all the moves.  She appears to fall for him, too, and before you can say “Judas kiss”, the two of them are plotting to grab the money for themselves and split town.

This is the kind of well-written book that made pulp work back in the day.  It immediately draws you in, continuing its hold over you with a steadily building story line and no-frills plotting.  It’s pure noir:  Joe is screwed from the first page, but he’s the only one who doesn’t know it.

Brewer’s formula of lonely-guy-meets-beautiful-dish works again, thanks to clever variations in his theme.  He pushes all the right buttons in this little gem, which unfortunately has been left in the dust of the last half-century.