Noir fiction for the modern reader.

YOU’LL DIE NEXT by Harry Whittington

Review by Mike Dennis

Henry Wilson’s got it made. He’s sitting in his little kitchen eating popovers, carbing out on the sugar juices stirring in his mouth. Meanwhile, his wife Lila is whipping up his bacon and eggs. She’s absolutely gorgeous and she fawns over him nonstop. He knows he’s homely, and he can’t believe how lucky he is that a guy like him could land a girl like her.

Yes, everything is perfect in Henry Wilson’s world. But then the doorbell rings right while he’s chomping on a popover and he gets up to answer it, immediately plunging him into a hell from which he may never emerge.

Harry Whittington churned out nearly 200 novels during an incredible career that spanned the 1950s and 60s. He was one of the first exclusively-paperback novelists, appearing on the scene almost as soon as the medium was created. His strength was plotting. “I could plot, baby. I could plot,” he used to say, and could he ever!

That talent was never so forcefully confirmed as it was in 1954′s You’ll Die Next!. In this noir tale, which comes in this 1992 edition with a splendid introduction by Bill Crider, Henry Wilson’s life becomes a nightmare, shot through with terror, and with treachery awaiting him at every turn. The reader will feel like taking a long shower after trailing Wilson through the ash heaps and filthy alleys of Whittington’s dark, animated imagination.

Like most of Whittington’s novels, it’s short. The paperback publishers of the day apparently didn’t want to waste a lot of money on ink, paper, and shipping, so they accepted a lot of work that would today be considered “too short”. None other than Anthony Boucher, however, reviewed it for The New York Times Book Review, stating he was glad it was so short because “I couldn’t have held my breath any longer in this vigorous tale whose plot is too dexterously twisted even to mention in a review.”

And twisted it is. All I’ll say is, just be careful the next time you answer the door.

WEB OF MURDER by Harry Whittington (1958)

Review by Mike Dennis

Charley Brower is a pretty smart guy.  That’s what he thought, anyway.  Shoot, a big, smart lawyer like him?  Shouldn’t be any trouble at all to kill his rich wife for her money, then make off with his secretary.  No sir.  No trouble at all.

Turns out Charley is maybe a little too smart.

That’s the general idea in Web Of Murder, a tight little noir novel from 1958 by one of the masters of the genre, Harry Whittington.

Charley saves guilty clients from the electric chair and has every material possession he could want:  a Cadillac, cashmere jackets, and a big home.  The home, however, is in his wife Cora’s name and that bothers him.

Cora spends her time straightening out her house and getting on Charley’s nerves.  They’re both in their middle thirties, but are already starting the physical slide into middle age.  You know Charley’s brain is ticking when he says, “I was showing my age, but with Cora, I had to look at it.”  You can’t sink any deeper into noir than that.

He becomes obsessed with Laura, a coy little babe who takes his dictation and types up his briefs.  Soon, they tumble into bed together and before the sheets are dry, Charley realizes that Cora has to go.

Harry Whittington, unfortunately, has been nearly forgotten in the sweep of time.  He was an incredibly prolific author, cranking out upwards of 200 novels during his career, which tapered off in the late 1960s.  At one point, he wrote 85 novels in twelve years, seven in one month!  He wrote under his own name, as well as some fifteen pseudonyms, and easily crossed genres from mystery into western and even pornography.

But his forte was noir.

Web Of Murder is a slim little book, probably fewer than 35,000 words, but it tells its tale extremely well.  The characters are well-drawn and the plot is never really rushed.  When it came to old-school paperback authors, Whittington was one of the best, and he holds up to this day.

FIRES THAT DESTROY by Harry Whittington (1951)

Review Copyright 2009 by Mike Dennis

Some guys have all the luck.  Blondes have more fun.  You’ve heard the cliches.  But at the faceless corporation where Bernice Harper works, pretty girls get all the promotions.

And it pisses her off.

That’s the central theme in Fires That Destroy, a tight little noir novel from 1951 by Harry Whittington.

Year in and year out, she watches through her thick-lensed glasses as sexy babes in tight skirts use their attributes to glide effortlessly up the ladder while Bernice, plain and stringy-haired, stays mired in the steno pool.

She builds up a reservoir of resentment, which eventually morphs into self-hatred when her boss recommends her for the position of private secretary in the home of an important client.  Problem is, he’s blind.

She knows they foisted her off on a blind man, almost as a joke, and she doesn’t like it.  Things are made worse when she learns he’s a heavy drinker who never tires of making passes.  This intensifies her hatred, as she knows that he wouldn’t come near her if he could see.

And so begins her descent into hell.

The novel opens with Bernice looking down a staircase at the blind man’s twisted corpse.  She’s just pushed him down the stairs to his death.  In the dark silence of the house, a grandfather clock chimes, freaking her out.  She thinks, “The sound of a clock and I’m paralyzed.  How will I stand the rest of it?”

Not very well, actually.  Whittington ratchets up the stakes for Bernice in nearly every scene.  But she’s so consumed by her hateful obsession with the world she inhabits that she can’t rescue herself.  Her unraveling forms the spine of the story.

In a masterful stroke, Whittington takes the reader deep into Bernice’s mind, as she slowly disintegrates into “the most depraved and sinful woman on the face of the earth”.  Her interior dialogue with herself evokes Jim Thompson at his most dangerous.

Whittington wrote over 170 novels in his astonishing career, hopping around through various genres.  Most of his work, unfortunately, is out of print, but noir aficionados should make a point of locating a copy of Fires That Destroy.

Plots.  You can’t live without ‘em.  And I’ve got to say plotting is the toughest part of the writing process for me.

Okay, that’s not a shocking revelation, and I’m sure not a single jaw is dropping right now, but I keep reading about authors who dash off outlines so complete, the actual writing of the book is easy. I don’t remember which author said this, but he said that his outlines are longer than the novels they spawn!  I am so envious of those who can come up with fully-formed stories before ever writing a single word. What’s worse, these people seem to be everywhere, especially in the stables of major publishers.

Meanwhile, I seem to be congenitally incapable of creating an outline, or even of envisioning a story from start to finish. Instead, I slog along from line to line, not knowing what’s coming next. I may or may not have a hazy image of an ending, but that’s about it.  I wrote my last novel from an opening line, without having the slightest clue as to what the next line would be, or what the story would be about.

I know, I know, there are no rules. That if writing without an outline works for me, or for anyone else, then that’s what we should do. Okay, I accept that. But here I am whining about not being able to outline or to even come up with a semblance of a story up front, and I’ll just bet my little old bottom dollar that there isn’t one single outliner out there who envies me. I once read a piece Harry Whittington wrote about his own writing career, and he said, “I could plot, baby. I could plot.” I’m quite sure he spent no time wishing he couldn’t plot, and had to instead rely upon limping from one line to the next. In fact, Harry Whittington aside, I’ll bet that no one who uses an outline wishes they could do it the other way.

How about it? Am I really doomed, or am I wasting energy wishing I could fabricate plots in advance?