#Noirvember is upon us, so you’re getting two reading lists for the price of one. Here is our Noirvember reading list we made a while back (it’s grown since we last talked about it so give it a look-see).
And then there’s this list below. Which can be found (along with all other book collections) here. Enjoy:
The Big Nowhere — James Ellroy
Kicking off this Hardboiled, Noir-themed list with a bleak one from Ellroy. This and White Jazz are my favorites out of the LA Quartet. It’s the second one in the quartet so if you’re like me and you have to go in order, get Black Dahlia first. But, if you want to give Ellroy one shot and only read one book, pick up this bad boy.
It follows three characters: Danny Upshaw, L.A. Deputy Sheriff who becomes obsessed with his investigation of a brutal serial killer. “Buzz” Meeks, ex-cop, now “Private Investigator” and fixer for both Howard Hughes and mobster Mickey Cohen. And LAPD lieutenant Malcolm “Mal” Considine, whose life is coming apart at the seams but that doesn’t stop him from trying to rise the ranks to captain or DA. It’s brutal and bleak and that’s the way we like it.
Farewell, My Lovely — Raymond Chandler
I liked this book better than The Big Sleep. Sure it has some problematic racism, and the whole “marihuana cigarettes” portion is Reefer Madness-esque laughable. But the story is great and the prose is classic.
Sometimes, if you’re reading a book that was written long ago and has been copied and aped countless times, you can see the plot twists and the killer a mile away. This isn’t one of those stories. The mystery element still holds up, and I love how Chandler could shine a light on the seedier side of Hollywood.
Down for the Count — Martin Holmén
This is the second of the Harry Kvist series (the first one, Clinch was in our March 2021 Reading List). Taking place in Stockholm in 1935, Kvist is released from prison with plans to start fresh with a lover he met in the clink. But this is Sweden 1935, and that means… Nazis are about to come in and mess everything up.
Instead of becoming the sole proprietor of a tobacco stand, (he loves cigars), he’s got these goosestepping assholes mucking up Stockholm. To cap it all off, an old friend ends up dead. So Kvist does what he does best, he sniffs out the people behind his friend’s murder, taking him into all the corrupt polite circles of Swedish high (and low) society. He’s like a Nordic Marlowe fighting Nazis. It’s great.
The Score — Richard Stark
We already talked about this book and all the other awesome Parker novels in this article about Donald Westlake. But it’s a hardboiled classic. Career criminal Parker and his team are back at it, this time not knocking off a bank or a stadium, but an entire town. On payday. This is the first time we meet another regular character of Starks, Alan Grofield.
Dark Passage — David Goodis
I say Dark Passage but if you click on the link you’ll see it’s to five Goodis novels. Dark Passage, the film with Bogey and Bacall was a pretty big influence on us with our upcoming novel Under the Knife, and more than likely an influence on Westlake’s Parker novel, The Man With the Getaway Face.
Goodis’ jazzy prose is more in line with Ellroy than anyone I’ve read. So, we’re ending our list with a guy that brings it all full circle. Prose like Ellroy, plots like Westlake, and a Pulp and Noir titan, like Chandler.
You can find all of these books in our online bookshop, where we have other collections like Hardboiled Crime novels we love and influences on our novel, Under the Knife (coming March 2022).
