Noir fiction for the modern reader.

Ah, let’s see, now. What are those rules for writing we’re all supposed to memorize and live by? Always have a strong narrative to go with your dialogue? Isn’t that one of them? And how about the one that says we’re not supposed to overdo the dialogue? And of course, absolutely no point of view shifts. Oh, and let’s not forget the draconian Cut down the dialogue tags as much as possible!

There are probably some people out there who think George V Higgins should’ve heeded this advice. But then, if he had, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle wouldn’t have become one of the greatest crime/noir novels ever written.

In this 1970 Boston-set masterpiece, Higgins unfolds virtually the entire story through dialogue. Cops, thieves, snitches, hit men, gun runners…they’re all just regular guys in Higgins’ eyes, just doing their jobs. A major part of their tedious lives requires that they sit around talking to each other in grimy bars and coffee shops and parking lots, each one of these guys with his own agenda, each looking to one up the other.

And each one is aware of the stakes.

Eddie Coyle is a lifelong small-time crook. He’s got a sentencing date coming up for being caught with a truckload of stolen whiskey and is looking at two years inside. His lawyer tells him he’ll be out in eight months.

Problem is, Eddie doesn’t want to do the time. He’s a world-weary 44, a veteran of prison time, and he feels the clock ticking. He wants to be with his family and is determined to avoid going back inside. So he makes a deal.

Dave Foley is a cop looking to make busts any way he can. When Eddie comes to him looking to give up some info on a sale of machine guns in return for a phone call to the judge and perhaps a suspension of his sentence, he agrees.

What Foley eventually suspects is that Eddie is buying guns from the same person. Could Eddie be supplying these weapons to a crafty crew of bank robbers who have been terrorizing the Boston area?

The plot is in fact a mixture of noir desperation and basic cops-and-robbers, but what sets this apart from all other crime novels of the 20th century is Higgins’ stunning use of authentic dialogue. It takes up approximately 80% of the entire book, which would pretty much do away with the “must have lots of narrative” rule. By the way–rule Nazis take note–he uses dialogue tags after nearly every single line of dialogue. Not only that, the tags are always “he said” or “Eddie said” or whoever said. Oh, the humanity!

But you know what? It’s riveting writing. I dare you to take your eyes off the page.

Higgins’ Boston underworld is very much a blue-collar kind of place, totally devoid of any Godfather-like opera. Boston itself is December-cold and dreary, lacking any romance whatsoever. You can almost feel Eddie Coyle and his “friends”, lunch pails in hand, lining up to punch a clock before starting their work day. They’re all kindred spirits, to be sure, but their loyalties are thin. And there’s no telling who’s ratting out whom.

This edition, published by Picador, contains a top-flight introduction by Dennis Lehane who rightly points out that many other authors were profoundly influenced by The Friends Of Eddie Coyle. Even Higgins himself tried (too hard, Lehane says) to duplicate its success and failed.

If you have not yet read this outstanding work, go buy it now.

Oh, and as for those writing rules? W Somerset Maugham said it best.

There are only three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Episode 2 of HBO’s dazzling new series Boardwalk Empire opens in 1920 Chicago, as thousands gather for Big Jim Colosimo’s lavish funeral. Now, with Big Jim and his objections out of the way, the Chicago mob can turn their primary attention to selling booze, and you may be assured these ambitions will force themselves into the daily life of Atlantic City’s county treasurer/godfather Nucky Thompson. Read my review of episode 2 here.

Anybody out there see the premiere of Boardwalk Empire, the stunning new HBO drama? Well, I did. You can check out my review of it here.

Anybody who has been driven away from series television by the likes of The Michael Richards Show or Homeboys In Outer Space can safely turn on the tube now, at least on Sunday nights.

For those who have somehow missed the onslaught of trailers for this high-quality show, the story revolves around Atlantic City, NJ, at the beginning of Prohibition. In other words, plenty of gangsters, corruption, and illegal whiskey.

The premiere was written by Terence Winter, who wrote so many of The Sopranos episodes, and directed by none other than Martin Scorsese. They’re both executive producers, insuring a high level of quality throughout.

I’ll be reviewing each episode as it comes out, and the reviews will appear on the Spinetingler Magazine website.

Roy Bonario, the Bon himself, just sent me a link to some of the great film noir movie posters. You can check it out by clicking on the link below. They’ve got some great ones, including the posters for both Hollow Triumph and The Scar, which of course were the same great movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IJdk9oYG8g&NR=1

Over at the Do Some Damage blogspot today, Joelle Charbonneau noted that with the rise of self-published e-books, the authors of those books have taken to calling themselves “independently published”. Apparently, “self-published” is too stigmatizing or too…whatever, I don’t know.

KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE by Horace McCoy

Reviewed by Mike Dennis

Where do you begin with a novel like Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye? Horace McCoy’s 1948 noir journey through an unusual criminal mind is at once spellbinding and aggravating.

Spellbinding because it’s an intense, hard look at a very different kind of criminal, and because it’s supposedly the granddaddy of all first-person-criminal novels, eventually bringing Jim Thompson face to face with his own hellish visions.

Aggravating because it’s not as easy a read as one might wish. You’re in for a slog through long, forbidding paragraphs and lots and lots of casual, throwaway conversation among the characters.

But beyond all this, the meat of the novel is as noir as it gets.

Paul Murphy, aka Ralph Cotter, is incarcerated on a prison farm, picking cantaloupes. The first two paragraphs, which take up the first two pages, deal with the overpowering odor in the barracks of “seventy-two unwashed men” and how it triggers a sense memory from his long-ago youth. These memories, we soon learn, are always with him, and they’re troubling.

With the help of Holiday and Jinx, two confederates on the outside, Murphy escapes and the three of them make their way to an unnamed city. Holiday is the woman in Murphy’s life. She sees to his every need, and usually lounges around naked under an open bathrobe. Jinx is straight out of the Hollywood School for Sidekicks.

Anyway, before you can say “all points bulletin”, Murphy is completely set up in the new city. He has a place to live, money in his pocket, access to a car, and a few shady contacts. Pretty soon, he’s plotting another job, this one a supermarket robbery. It doesn’t come off smoothly, and this brings on a sequence of events that lead up to a very choppy ending.

The ending notwithstanding, the novel moves right along as we follow Murphy through his odyssey of newfound freedom. One of the stops he makes along the way is the company of a bewitching beauty, Margaret Dobson. You just know that his involvement with her will come to no good.

What makes Murphy unique is that he’s a highly educated criminal. He’s a Phi Beta Kappa, in fact, and he takes an extremely dim view of the average stickup man. For him, people like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson are beneath contempt, nothing more than mouth-breathing Neanderthals who happened to make a few lucky scores before getting themselves killed.

He also sees himself as far above the man on the street. There’s a telling passage in which he’s riding a bus, during which he observes that people who habitually ride buses are “cheap, common, appalling people, the kind a war, happily, destroys”.

Moreover, when he’s not slapping Holiday around or pissing off crooked cops, he’s tossing out words like propliopithecustian and integument and at least a half-dozen others just like them.

I told you it was a tough read.