Aussie pulp

That hard-working Karen Chisholm at AustCrime, who reads more books and keeps more lists than you could shake a stick at, posts an especially interesting article about author Joe Blake and his resurrection of Australian pulp tradition.

The first of Blake's two novels has one of the great titles ever: Murder is Never Pretty ... Even When the Corpse Is a Blonde, and the title of the second is no slouch either: Warning Shots Last. Here's an excerpt from the latter: "You can shoot a man hard or you can shoot a man soft. Hard would have been in the guts or the nuts or the knees. Considering what he had done I shot him soft, too soft for the rabid mongrel dog he was. I shot him right in the middle of his forehead."

Blake also paints vivid nocturnal word pictures. Here's the opening of Murder is Never Pretty ... (excerpt available on Blake's Web site):

"I was cruising west along Great Eastern Highway, going nowhere in particular, waiting for the call. It was one of those nights. It was hot, the moon was full and the dregs of society were restless. Black clouds hung over the Perth hills to the east and we'd had a drizzle of rain. It was enough to bring out the smell of hot tar."

Doesn't that convey a sense of place? And isn't that one reason to read international crime fiction?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Joe Blake
Australian crime fiction