My Bouchercon 2015 panels: The Blank Wall

I've read two books in recent months that expanded my conception of noir.  One was Craig Rice's The Lucky Stiff. The second is The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.

The first is a hard-boiled screwball comedy whose ending turns a running joke on its emotional head and lends the book unexpected poignance. The second is a domestic murder mystery whose poignance lies in the protagonist's remaining at the novel's end exactly what she was at its beginning.  If that sounds unpromising, think of David Goodis' Street of No Return.

The Blank Wall is included in Woman Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and 1950s, a two-volume set edited by Sarah Weinman and newly published by The Library of America. Weinman will discuss Elisabeth Sanxay Holding as part of a panel I'll moderate next month at Bouchercon 2015 in Raleigh, N.C. The panel is called "Beyond Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, and Macdonald," and it features authors, editors, and other experts talking about their favorite crime writers from the paperback-original and pulp eras.  The panel happens Thursday, Oct. 8, at 2:30 p.m. See you there.

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Sarah Weinman will discuss the new collection and other interesting subjects with Megan Abbott on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 6:30 p.m. at the Mysterious Bookshop in New York. See you there.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015 

Craig Rice, crime, humor, and empathy, with two questions for readers

I picked up Craig Rice's 1945 novel The Lucky Stiff because someone had put it on a "Ten Best Noirs" list.  It's not noir*, but it is a high-water in fast-talking, hard-boiled crime fiction with far more empathy for the accused than most crime writers try, let alone pull off.

The protagonist is Rice's impecunious Chicago lawyer John J. Malone, so you know the laughs will be there, but with a hard edge. (Of course, the best comic crime novels have always leavened the jokes with profound sympathy, or at least empathy, for victims, dupes, and even criminals. Think of The Thin Man.)

I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book, and only twice, for a total of two or three words, has a laugh line seemed even slightly forced or cheap.  The rest to the time Rice juggles humor, suspense, domestic interludes, and dark empathy, and keep all the balls in the air.

And now, your question: When does humor become too much in a crime novel or story? When the humor is just right, and what makes it so? 

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Here are two previous posts about Craig Rice (Click the link and scroll down). And here's an article about the Craig Rice touch from the Rue Morgue Press website.

* OK, maybe The Lucky Stiff is noir. I shall be happy to discuss this further once you have all read the book.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015

Why I'm making Craig Rice part of my crime fiction diet

If a crime writer made the cover of a major news magazine these days, the event would probably divide the crime fiction community because the honoree would be someone like Stieg Larsson or "Robert Galbraith."

I don't know where Craig Rice (Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig) stood in the public mind when she made the cove of time in January 1946, but my first reading of a solo Rice story suggests that not only did she belong on Time's cover then, but she belongs on the cover of reprints now (much of her work appears to be out of print). Working with raw ingredients well established in the crime canon, she managed to fashion work that feels like nothing else in crime writing until then or since.

The story in question, "I'm A Stranger Here Myself," first appeared in Manhunt in February 1954, has Rice's impecunious lawyer protagonist, John J. Malone, moving like a dream through as unlikely a mix of humor, snappy dialogue, and dread as anything I've read in crime fiction. I cannot remember the last time before this story that I'd read a crime story that made me think, "By God, I have read nothing like this before."

I don't quite know why, but I find dialogue such as this absolutely beguiling:

"`That Malone, he thinks good,' Joe the Angel said proudly, delivering the rye.  

 "`Go away," Malone said dreamily."

What's so special about that exchange?  The bartender's humorous nickname and diction? The unexpected proudly?  And what about dreamily, not the sort of word one normally associated with hard-boiled crime protagonists? For me the word worked like a bang-up ending to a miniature short story, like a pail of ice water to the face, leaving me alert and needing to know what happens next.

And now I'm off for dinner with a side dish of Rice. While I sip sherry at the local press club, I leave you with this question: What was the last crime novel or story you read that made you feel you were in the company of something utterly new?

 © Peter Rozovsky 2014