Bill S. Ballinger and hard-boiled writing in the 1940s, with a question for readers

1949 was an in-between time in mass-market hard-boiled crime fiction, at least the variety written by men. Black Mask was nearly dead, and Manhunt had not yet appeared. Raymond Chandler was almost done writing, and Mickey Spillane was one book into his career.

Into the breach stepped The Body Beautiful by Bill S. Ballinger, who liked the letter b. (The novel's predecessor is The Body in the Bed, and their protagonist is a private investigator named Barr Breed.)

Photo by your humble
blogkeeper of a kind of
sign Bill S. Ballinger
might well have seen in
the1940s.
============

Appearing as it did in between two well-defined eras, The Body Beautiful looks like a pastiche of trends, motifs, and narrative techniques from the 1920s through the 1950s. Breed is a tough dick who clashes with the cops, one of whom is a friend. The Body Beautiful contains at least one passage as chilling as anything Jim Thompson wrote, but the story takes place in and around a theater, decidedly a nod to an earlier era.

At the resolution, the dick gathers all the suspects at the theater, and he relates in detail how he had solved the crime, like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. But the crime and its rational solution are more in the manner of a traditional mystery.

Breed and occasionally other characters say "coulda" and "woulda" and "gotta" and "lotta" and "kinda" and "outa" and "musta;" you know Ballinger and audience shared a common grounding in the tough-talking 1920s and '30s. The novel is also shot through with the yearning romanticism of the 1950s David Goodis sort.

And I like to think Barr Breed might have had
 drink here. This one's also by your humble
blogkeeper.
============

Ballinger does almost all of this well. (My only complaint concerns the climactic revelation scene, where we know tension is high because Breed/Ballinger keep telling us tension is high.) Ballinger could plot well; the mystery was nicely laid out and would have kept me turning the pages had I not been reading an e-book. Ballinger also knew his way around a theater or else did a convincing job persuading me that he did. The backstage details made for terrific color and background.

OK, now you know Bill S. Ballinger. Your next job is this: Sum up 1940s hard-boiled crime writing in just a few words.

====

The Body Beautiful is part of a useful, exciting list published by 280 Steps. The catalogue includes new books, older ones both neglected and not, and critical works. I've been reading their editions of Harry Whittington, and I have a few more of their titles lines up.
© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Harry Whittington was a cool cat

My recent introduction to Harry Whittington has included A Night for Screaming, A Ticket to Hell, and, best and most recently, Any Woman He Wanted.

Others have done what Whittington did in that book, but Whittington did it better. His embittered good guy is more embittered and more good. The revenge his protagonist exacts is more chilling.

The stock scene where the hero finds a naked or barely clothed woman in his room? Whittington does that better than anyone else, in part because I don't know anyone who could write dangerous, sordid sex scenes as well as Whittington does here, and the characters keep most of their clothes on.

But Any Woman He Wanted is more than just atmosphere. Whittington could plot, and some of the twists here surprised me.  I don't know where this novel ranks with hardcore Whittingtonians. Its odd ending might keep some from ranking it near the top. But Whittington integrates the ending smoothly into what had gone before, and what went before was enough to make the novel the best I've read in this young year.

(Read Woody Haut's Whittington retrospective.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2015