Enjoyable 1950's noir
585679
I enjoyed this book, although there are many similar authors and books of this genre out there; guys who've read Spillane and think "How hard can this be?"

Well, it's quite hard to find people who wrote like Spillane. It's easy to find a lot of guys who tried.

On the plus side, Avallone keeps the plot moving, has better than average female characters, and has a good sense of place about Manhattan.

However, neither the plot nor the relationship with various minions of the police rise beyond the standard genre. Like I said, it's enjoyable. After you've finished everything Spillane wrote.
3932542
This is very good film noir. The sassy dialog from Powell is very entertaining. Good story with interesting story and plot. Good transfer of sound and picture.
4928337
This noir fiction is different from my usual read. Mr. Donovan provides a very entertaining, if gritty, tale of thieves, local crime family leadership and corrupt cops. The setting was interesting as I lived in south Florida although I really had no contact with the criminal elements of these communities.

The story is told from three viewpoints; first person from Logan and third person for the others. Logan is a thief who was practically raised into crime. His current theft activities have resulted in more violence than he likes. He is planning to retire, with the continued encouragement of his longtime girlfriend, if only he can find a legitimate job that will allow them to continue to live their comfortable life.

Mambo is a local crime boss, happy with the profits of his gambling and drug networks. He struggles to prove himself to his grandfather, one of the local mob leaders. His grandfather is just partnering with the other competing crime family in the Keys, working towards legitimate business endeavors. In spite of his grandfathers instructions to shut things down, Mambo wants to protect his position against a racketeer from Little Havana who is hustling in on his territory.

Silvana Machado, is a tough officer who was raised in the streets but managed to work her way into a respected position. She is a successful homicide sergeant, known to get results through intimidation and violence as much as detective skills.

Silvana has uncovered clues that point to Logan as the possible killer of three scum criminals in Little Havana. No one would care about the deaths except the third victim was a teenage niece to a commissioner. Even though the girl was obviously where she didn't belong, the family wants the killer found and brought to justice. Silvanas other leads are tying the mess to a local racketeer who seems to be in a contest with the Key West crime boss, Mambo.

The author weaves the characters into a neat crisscross of crime connections and consistent action. The story is well plotted and skillfully written in a tight, direct style that is appropriate to the noir genre. The emotions of the characters and their reactions create interesting elements for the reader to contemplate. Although the story is full of grit, crime and corruption, it is entertaining in somewhat a perverse manner for a reader like me who prefers good forces and heroism. I recommend this to readers who enjoy crime novels and the darker edge of noir fiction.

I received this from the Author for an honest review.
4052569
Admittedly it is tough, very tough to make a modern film noir in color that gives that gritty feel of something like Bogart and Bacall in the 1940s classic age of film noir in the "Big Sleep". And this small film doesn't try to do that. However, its does have a very bluesy feel to it as advertised. The plot line is a familiar one of a good guy (here in the guise of a debt-ridden nightclub owner dealing with his father's mysterious death) of greed , intrigue and treachery, in this case involving the nefarious doings of covering up a crime in the process of  cornering the electric market of an obviously corrupt and wide open city (and state). The dialogue is also somewhat stilted. One would think that such a combination calls for a thumbs down. Not so. Why? Go back to that bluesy feel. From the two fetching femme fatale torch singers who vie for said night club owner's attentions, to the chorus girls doing, well doing their thing, to the black dancer/singer/narrator who holds the whole thing together (and puts on amazing Michael Jackson-like song and dance performances to boot). And here's the topper- a sound track with the likes of Etta James and Doctor John in the back. My friends, this is a no-brainer in these quarters.
4953777
It's been a while since I read a PI hard boiled detective book that caught me up so completely.  The usual cast of noir characters are here:cranky, maybe senile client (with a past), a crazy Mafia enforcer, Yakuza, the sweet young thing who is the light of the detective's life, drugs and Mexican cartels and all clash over a vinyl recording made by Frank Sinatra.

While it is definitely in the Philip Marlowe genre, HOT SINATRA also showed flashes of Burn Notice.  Which is not a bad thing at all.
978235
What I liked: Quick, zippy chapters that kept up the pace and made reading fun and easy. Main character Dick Moonlight is not your typical noir detective.  He keeps dying and coming back, with all the resulting disorientation.  This keeps you as the reader guessing. I appreciated this new angle on the old private eye schtick.
What I didn't like: The other characters were a little too much cartoonish  for me.  I did like the sidekick Vietnam vet character.  He should hang out his own shingle and get his own series.  I also did not like some unnecessary repetition in the narrative as Dick remembers things.  This clashed with the otherwise fast pace.
I recommend as a fun quick read if you are a noir detective genre fan.
632453
For fans of the movie-created world of 50's New York Society, this one's a real treat.  However if you are looking for a taught, hard-edged noir thriller, this ain't it!  Tune in for the costumes, the hilarious over-the-top acting, and the stagey apartment sets all done in glorious color and Cinemascope as only Fox could do in the 50's.  Apparently someone at Fox thought this little potboiler deserved the same cinematographic treatment as "Ben Hur"!  Gene Tierney is lovely, Ginger Rogers is delightfully catty, and most of the rest of the cast is window dressing.  Unfortunately, the mystery unravels a little too early to hold interest till the final frame.
2168189
Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep is a first person narrative about private detective Philip Marlowe. The novel is considered a classic crime detective fiction story. Chandler perfectly builds the setting of the underworld of Los Angeles in the 1930s with memorable character, dialogue, and an interesting plot.

Chandler builds this world with a sparse-style that is of the same mold as Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver. His writing is tight and crisp, which keeps the speed of the plot moving fluidly, and rapidly.

The story begins when Marlowe is called on by a crippled millionaire, General Sternwood, to investigate Arthur Gwynn Geiger; the General wants to know more about the man with a blackmail attempt against one of his two 20-something year old daughters, Carmen Sternwood.

Seems simple enough? Well, lets just say the plot is complicated. Geiger turns out to be running a pornography racket, ends up murdered in his house with a naked and drugged Carmen sitting next to him. The next morning the Sternwood's chauffeur turns up murdered.

The pornography racket leads to Joe Brody, a two-bit hustler, who tries selling naked photographs of Carmen that were taking minutes before Geiger was murdered. But before Brody can get even more involved in the story, he gets murdered.

If that isn't plenty, the plot gets further complicated when you toss in a casino owning gangster, a hit man, a few missing people, and another hustler with a lead to Silver Wig. Marlowe eventually solves the blackmail situation, but soon gets on the chase for a missing ex-husband, which leads to a wild grand finale - A murder mystery. The plot is so involved that Chandler forgets to mention who killed the chauffeur!

Today, most readers would not even wince at the storyline. But, Chandler's novel must have been considered controversial to audiences when it was printed in 1939, especially because the story included themes such as pornography, homosexuality, and inter-racial relationships; even the 1946 film version starring Humphrey Bogart had to change some of the plot to make it suitable for the audience.

But what makes the novel such a great read is the character Philip Marlowe, the wisecracking, heavy drinking, and chain-smoking private eye. The character, like the plot, is also complex. Marlowe acts tough throughout, but also has a heart. Instead of calling the cops on Carmen, which he could do for a number of reasons in the story, he just wants her to seek help; and he doesn't even take advantage of her when she's lying naked in his bed. He just throws her out. He also plays chess and likes poetry.

Marlowe's quotes are also memorable. When the General asked him how he liked his brandy, Marlowe responds "In a glass." But my favorite line was: "You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling." Wisecracks like these are constant throughout, which makes the story a fun read.

If you appreciate them, you will also appreciate Chandler's metaphors with lines like "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts." I recommend The Big Sleep; it's a classic. A definite must read.
2390170
In This Dame for Hire, Faye Quick becomes an ersatz private eye when all able-bodied men have been drafted by Uncle Sam. 1943 New York can be a rough place: Claudette West, a student at NYU, is brutally murdered on a cold, snowy night, and Faye is the one who literally stumbles across her body.

Filling in for her boss Woody Mason, Faye and her trusty secretary Birdie are hot on the trail of Claudette's killer, but the case quickly becomes more than the open-and-shut case expected. Claudette was having affairs with a number of men, including a lecherous literature professor, a sinister, controlling actor with a disreputable side profession, and other, more shadowy suspects. Claudette's upper-crust family insists that Claudette's most recent boyfriend, Richard Cotten, killed her in order to grab a share of her family's money, but the evidence (and Faye's gut instinct) leads her elsewhere across the city.

Faye's WWII New York is filled with popular WWII standards, automats, and vintage slang that really give life to the setting. The supporting cast includes a group of gamblers, Faye's spunky Yiddish-spouting neighbor Dolores, with her crazy outfits and changing wigs, and Anne the psychic. She also strikes up a relationship with the handsome detective Johnny Lake, and the two share information on the case.

There are several delicious twists and turns that kept me guessing until the very end. The numerous red herrings add to the sense of mystery as Faye tracks down every possible lead, only to find that most of her tips fizzle out, and that the father of the murdered girl is trying to sabotage her investigation by trailing her and reinterrogating her suspects.

A delightful read that felt right at home with a strong cup o' joe and some Frankie tunes on the radio, This Dame for Hire will delight fans of film noir and WWII pop culture.
1039806
For those who like noir, this is a good read.  The characters are gritty and streetwise, and the pace of things is brisk.  We've not heard the last from Matt Spears or Barry Crowther.
2295017
I enjoy the noir atmosphere in the Black series and Russell Blake is a good story teller with characters you can see and care about. The tone is that of the golden days of radio drama ala Sam Spade and Richard Diamond. Good read and fun escape. Recommended.
149319
I'm rounding up significantly here -- but I suspect I won't need to do so when I read subsequent books in this series or by this author.

The book presents a possibly-unique blend of noir-style hard-boiled detective fiction with small-town ambiance. I look forward to spending more time with the characters. The extended "coming down the mountain" passage, with its gradual transformation in the POV character's state of mind, was masterful (and, to use one of my husband's favorite phrases, "worth the price of admission").

I did have problems with the book, as follows:
--The author consistently broke his paragraphs in a manner that made it difficult to keep track of who was speaking.
--A satisfactory mystery ends in the reader simultaneously exclaiming, "Wow! I didn't see that coming! and "In retrospect, the clues were there all along." I could only say the former. I may have missed the hidden trail, but to me it seemed that most or all the information that made the culprit plausible was presented at the same time as the culprit's identity.
--The post-climax material struck me as a bit out of character.
3801352
Dated but crazy Seattle Noir (filmed in Vancouver, CA, I think) It's John Wayne depicted a bit differently from his "Hero" movies. Enjoyable.
2203022
I liked this 50's era crime and who-done-it tale. Henry, the private detective is determined to solve the mystery of who killed his partner/friend. It was complex and well thought out. Likable characters with lots of twists and turns kept me reading on. It was enjoyable. I'm not a fan of the "closet" clue thing however as it just isn't that believable and in my opinion the story would have been better without its use. But it's a key part of the series now and unfortunately Henry needs the clues the "closet" provides. Still, it's a good story.
2721811
The Big Sleep is the first Raymond Chandler novel (cannibalized from some of his previously published short stories) to feature the famous private detective Philip Marlowe, and to this day stands as a classic of crime fiction noir. The locations, characters, and atmosphere are as colorful as they are dark, a captivating portrait of the underbelly of Los Angeles that has been luring readers since it was first published in 1939.

I find that fans of straight mystery novels don't enjoy Chandler's works as much as others; the convoluted plots full of double-crosses and long-shots tend to defy traditional logic, resulting in dubious conclusions and the occasional loose end. The Big Sleep actually contains the perfect example of the latter, as it is never clearly explained - or indeed, even known by the author - who killed the Chauffeur. Most mystery fans prefer air tight solutions that show meticulous attention to detail, and look at leftover issues like this as lazy craftsmanship.

Of course, the reason for all of this is that the mystery isn't really the story. Raymond Chandler's true interest is in the players, not the game. Philip Marlowe is an enigmatic character, a lone private detective who seemingly drifts unattached through the high and low ends of L.A. society, an aloof spectator who seems to leave a wake of chaos when he actually attempts to get involved in the affairs of others. The schemes and alliances of everyone from high society down through the criminal underground may seem archaic to the reader, but they are almost as confounding to us as the human element is to Marlowe, as his own personal code of ethics - some may even call it warped chivalry - is constantly at odds with everyone he confronts. I've always found that the scene between Marlowe and his client's younger daughter Carmen at his apartment perfectly encapsulates this fractured relationship between him and society. Entering his apartment to find the playfully crazy Carmen naked in his bed, Marlowe tells her to get dressed and attempts to ignore her by studying a chess puzzle already set nearby. During his multiple attempts to reason with Carmen, Marlowe at one point examines the chessboard and, replacing a move, muses that "Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights." It isn't that Marlowe isn't the only one playing a game in The Big Sleep, but he seems to be the only one interested in why the pieces move the way they do, and one of the few looking beyond the board.

I could stretch the chess metaphor for three or four more paragraphs. Honest. The point is that novels like The Big Sleep are, like the title itself, about far more than solving a mystery. Through Marlowe, Chandler exposes the human condition in all of its illogical and unfathomable ugliness, with the full realization that there most likely is no real solution. Marlowe's chess puzzle remains unsolved, and even the solution of the case is not revealed to anyone for whom it might make a difference. It's this existential undertone that separates classic crime noir like The Big Sleep from your standard whodunit, and the mesmerizing dilemma of the human condition that guarantees the book's place in literary history, in spite of any flaws.
4206723
False Impressions is a Film Noir style crime drama. In this respect it is about a murder, an aggrieved widow, a police investigation, the suspects, and a new romance. The heroes are the newly widowed ghost writer and her mysterious and resourceful crime reporter and writer client. 

False Impressions is relatively light, has a neat ending, and is good fun. I did enjoy reading it. I liked the French element of the book being set in Montreal. I understand that there are sequels as well.
4268953
Edith Caroline Rivett, aka ECR Lorac (Lorac is Carol spelled backwards in case you didn't notice) takes us on a journey to London in November 1944. Air raids are common and it is during a late night blackout that murder most foul occurs in a London park. A stranger walking along stops to light a cigarette and in the illumination of his match, another stranger standing behind him appears and it's curtains for the cigarette smoker (see....all those doctors were right, smoking can kill you!). The dead fellow is one John Ward, a mysterious chap whose real name may or may not be Timothy O'Farrel. Enter Inspector McDonald ( a fixture in the numerous mysteries written by Ms Lorac) who sifts through the clues, and of course gives us the solution. This is a brief novel, coming in at under 200 pages, making it a quick read. However, the trade off is the lack of any character development and some very skimpy background information that would help understand the suspects as well as the investigators. The solution is simple, but somewhat surprising. I would not necessarily classify this as a "fair play" mystery because the reader does not have all the information to formulate a solution, some of that is held back and revealed after the murderer is "unmasked" (you'll understand why I have that in quotes after you've read the book).  This is a pretty good, satisfying book written during the Golden Age of mystery writing by a prolific writer whose many books are somewhat difficult to obtain these days.