I Wake Up Screaming by Steve Fisher

For some reason, author Steve Fisher rewrote his 1941 novel, I Wake Up Screaming, and republished it in 1960.

Sources on-line say he wanted to update the book from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.

This is the beginning of the 1941version:

It was a hot Saturday night and I wore white flannels and one of those blue sport shirts and sat in the Roosevelt Hotel’s Cine-Grill drinking Bacardis. The bar stools were white leather, and the wall decoration was a maze of old film cuts blown up – Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Milton Sills, Harold Lloyd, Wallace Beery and like that. Across the street at The Chinese they were having a minor premiere of the newest Dr. Kildare picture. Arc lights were swinging back and forth, limousines arriving, and cops holding off the crowd.

And this is the update:

It was a hot Saturday night and I had on a Sy Devore suit and a hand-knit tie and sat at the bar in Mike Romanoff’s drinking Canadian Club old fashioneds. The bar stools were leather and the wall decorations had that ultra look and Zsa Zsa Gabor was at a closeby table, her head thrown back in laughter, and Gary Cooper and Bing Crosby and Bill Holden were at other tables and a couple of blocks away, on the corner of Wilshire and Beverly Drive, they were having a premiere for the latest Jerry Wald epic: arc lights swinging back and forth, limousines arriving, and cops holding off the crowd.

A lot of pop references are different in the later work, but the story is essentially the same.  

I Wake Up Screaming is about a young writer working at one of the big studios who meets Vicky, a beautiful young woman who also works there. They start going out together, but Vicky is murdered and the police jump to the conclusion that the writer did it.

One detective, Ed Cornell, has it in for the writer and makes no secret that he wants to put him in the electric chair. Cornell is a ghostly presence, he looks like death, skeletal, pale and sickly. The man is dying and knows this is his last case and promises to live to see it through. Cornell shadows the writer and appears out of nowhere in unexpected places to haunt the writer.

Fisher does an expert job of plunging the reader into the dark, murky, nightmarish world in which the writer finds himself.

“The Midnighters” is a Movie to See

Until recently, a little crime film from 2016 called “The Midnighters” was unknown to me.

It is the story of Victor, an older man who spent the last 30 years in prison. No sooner is he released than he is pulled back into crime.

The guy pulling him is his adult son. The son is mixed up with some very bad guys who want to pull off a big heist. All the son and his cohorts need is an ace safe cracker. That is where Victor comes in.

Leon Russom plays Victor and he is terrific. In fact, all the acting in this picture is top notch.

“The Midnighters” was written and directed by Julian Fort, and for a first feature, it is extremely well done.

The movie is available on the streaming site, Kanopy.

The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

Forty-five years ago, master craftsman Lawrence Block kicked off his long-running series of novels featuring Matthew Scudder with The Sins of the Fathers.

The compact book starts with hard drinking, former cop turned unlicensed investigator, Scudder in a bar and meeting with the father of a murder victim.

A young woman was slashed to death in her Greenwich Village apartment. The man she lived with was found moments later out on the street, covered in blood and shouting obscenities. The guy was arrested and taken to the city detention center called the Tombs where he committed suicide. Case closed, as far as the police were concerned.

But the father, who had lost touch with the girl when she dropped out of college, pays Scudder to find out what his daughter’s life had been like in the past few years. The newspapers called her a prostitute.

Scudder learns the girl had been a prostitute, the man she lived with could not have killed her and the case was not resolved.

Block’s prose is tight and his dialogue natural. This lean book provides readers with everything they need to know about the girl, the father, the suspects, and about Scudder, including why he quit the force.

The Sins of the Fathers, with its blunt descriptions of sex and death is still hot read today.

There are 11 novels in the Scudder series, which you can see at Lawrence Block’s website. Over the years, I’ve read a bunch of them, but not in order. Now, I plan to work my way through the books.

Film Noir “Thieves’ Highway” from Bezzerides novel

Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb

Last week, I posted a piece about A. I. Bezzerides’ hard-boiled 1949 novel of independent truckers, Thieves’ Market.

The same year the book was published, 20th Century Fox released a film version of the story re-titled, “Thieves’ Highway.”

Bezzerides, in an interview, said the studio did not want to offend the city of San Francisco by using the original title.

The producers made other changes as well, the biggest of which was making Nick Garcos a hero rather than the nasty anti-hero of Bezzerides’ book.

In the film, he no longer steals from his mother to set himself up in the trucking business, but becomes an independent hauler partly as an act of vengeance to right a wrong done against his father.

With the revisions to the character, the studio cast one of its up and coming players, Richard Conte, in the role. Conte was a good – if underrated – actor. He later slipped into supporting roles, perhaps because his stoic demeanor fell out of style with the influx of emotionally charged Method actors arriving in Hollywood.

Lee J. Cobb, a gruff stage actor (he played Willy Loman in the original Broadway production of “Death of a Salesman”), was cast as the crooked produce buyer who attempts to hijack Nick’s load. Cobb was great in this kind of part. He also played the union boss in “On the Waterfront.”

Millard Mitchell, a character actor who usually played sheriffs and generals, was cast against type as Nick’s unscrupulous and untrustworthy partner, and he does a great job.

Valentina Cortese played a hooker with the heart of gold who is hired to distract Nick while the buyer commandeers his load.

Jules Dassin directed the picture in an almost documentary style. Dassin at that time was known for making tough, hard-boiled films like “The Naked City” and “Brute Force.” Later, after being blacklisted, he directed the heist film “Rififi” in France, and the comedy-heist film “Topkapi” in Greece and Turkey.

Bezzerides may not have minded the changes the studio demanded of his book since he has the solo credit for writing the screenplay. Besides, “Thieves’ Highway” was a lot closer to the book than the Warner Bros. production of his 1938 novel about truckers, Long Haul, re-titled, “They Drive by Night.” But that is a story for another post.

Thieves’ Market by A.I. Bezzerides

The harshest, ugliest book read last year was Thieves’ Market by A. I. Bezzerides.

This 1949 novel is about independent truckers and the many scams and rip offs that they pull, and that get pulled on them.

Nick Garcos, a young man with a miserable job, a miserable girlfriend and a miserable widowed mother, steals the insurance money the old lady got when his father died and buys a truck so he can be his own boss as an independent produce hauler.

He teams up with a hardened trucker and together they buy two truckloads of apples from a farmer. When his partner tries to cheat the grower, Nick steps in and pays the man.

The two truckers head north to San Francisco to sell their combined loads at the produce market.

Along the way, there are mishaps with the old trucks and Nick arrives in town first. While waiting for his partner to arrive and negotiate a deal for the apples, a tough, crooked buyer sizes up Nick as easy prey. He pays a local hooker to distract Nick so the buyer can hijack his load.

Bezzerides knew his subject either from experience in his youth or from a great deal of research. Thieves’ Market feels like the real deal from the plot to the characters to the dialogue.

As he did in his earlier novel about the tough life of truckers, Long Haul (1938), Bezzerides writes in scenes that are vivid and alive. He makes the reader feel every bump in the road.

An unforgettable section is when Nick, on a lonely, dark stretch of highway, blows a tire. Not sure how far behind his partner is, Nick decides to change the flat himself. While under the truck, the jack slips and the truck comes down pinning Nick into the soft dirt. Unable to move and having difficulty breathing, he watches as the few vehicles on the road pass by without slowing down while he is stuck and dying.

Albert Isaac “Buzz” Bezzerides, (1908-2007) wrote three novels. Both trucking stories were bought by Hollywood and produced as movies. Bezzerides spent most of his career writing film and TV scripts.

Thieves’ Market is well worth the time to find and read.

Flawless is a clever heist film

In the 2007 movie “Flawless,” a night janitor has an improbable plan to rob his employer. The employer is the headquarters of a diamond cartel.

To help him, he recruits a woman executive who is pissed at the company.

The challenge is overwhelming and the twists and turns here are clever and will keep a viewer guessing.

The always terrific Michael Caine as the janitor and Demi Moore as the executive propel this unusual heist picture.

The film was directed by Michael Radford and written by Edward Anderson (who I am pretty sure is not the Edward Anderson who wrote the 1937 crime novel Thieves Like Us.)

“Flawless” is available on the streaming site Kanopy.

A Film Noir Christmas Carol

This week, I am looking forward to watching – for the umpteenth time – the 1951 version of “A Christmas Carol.” It is the one starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge and the one I consider the best of the bunch.

Sim looks like he is having the time of his life playing the old skinflint. Director Brian Desmond Hurst keeps the actor on course and the sentimentality under control, especially in the Tiny Tim scenes and the flashbacks of the young Ebenezer. He also keeps the action clipping right along as he shoves Scrooge into some wonderfully nightmarish sequences.

The fright and anxiety of Scrooge, the high contrast black and white photography and the moody sets, place Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella in the world of film noir.

Its depiction of 19th century England could also group it with director David Lean’s two terrific Dickens films, “Great Expectations” (1946) and “Oliver Twist” (1948).

Anyone who has not seen it, should look for it and watch it. Anyone who has seen it will probably watch it again.

Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season. Hope you will visit this page again in the New Year.

Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller

If Bob Wade and Bill Miller (writing as Wade Miller) set out to create one of the most noir of noir novels, they achieved their goal – although they came perilously close to parody with Guilty Bystander.

The writing partners poured everything into this one. There is a drunken, down-and-out detective, a seedy hotel, a femme fatale, a good girl who could be more “fatale” than the other woman, a kidnapped child, a fortune in missing jewels, a bunch of rival gangsters, a couple of mysterious murders, and a lot of violent action.

Oh yeah, and rain. It rains all the time in this not-so-sunny California setting.

One morning, Max Thursday, wakes with a world-class hangover to find his ex-wife in his shabby hotel room with bad news. Their little boy has been kidnapped and her new husband, a doctor, has disappeared.

Max sets out to find the boy. The clues he picks up keep leading him back to a woman named Angel who, coincidentally, lives in his hotel. Angel knows far too many shady characters.

In the course of the 144 pages of the Signet paperback I picked up somewhere for a buck (original price, 25 cents), Max gets framed, beaten, tortured, and dunked in the ocean – twice – before putting the puzzle together, recovering the child and solving the murders and the mystery of the jewels.

Bob Wade (1920-2012) and Bill Miller (1920-1961) wrote more than 30 novels together, including Kiss Her Goodbye  (see here) and Kitten With A Whip (see here). There is more about them at Thrilling Detective.

(For more posts on books, head over to Todd Mason’s blog.)
(And remember, my book, Lyme Depot, would make a great gift for a crime reader.)

Moive “A Man’s Head” from a Georges Simenon novel

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece about one of Georges Simenon’s best novels featuring Paris police Superintendent Jules Maigret. (The post is here.)

Days after finishing the book, I had the chance to see an early French production of one of the Maigret books.

The 1933 movie, “A Man’s Head” (“La tête d'un homme”), was well made and had just about the best Maigret I have ever seen playing the part of the detective.

The movie takes its time before bringing Maigret into the story. It starts in a boulevard cafe where a broke bon vivant muses out loud that he would pay 100,000 francs to have his aunt killed so he could inherit her money. Moments later, a note is slipped to the man from someone taking up his offer.

The criminal is engaged and a man supplied with a key and map of the old lady’s house enters only to find the woman dead. The wannabe killer has a sneaky accomplice who tells his frightened partner to leave town and hide while he cleans up any clues. The first man runs but the second man cleans up nothing, giving the police all they need for an arrest.

But Maigret sorts things out and before arresting the real murderer spends time with the second man to understand him and learn his real reason – beyond the money – for killing the old woman.

French actor Harry Baur played Maigret and I do not think he ever played the Superintendent again, which is too bad.

Director Julien Duvivier, who was one of the best filmmakers of his era, captured the tone and pace of Simenon’s books, with some poetic realism and a dash of German Expressionism thrown in. This 87-year-old film still works.

Maigret and the Headless Corpse by Georges Simenon

 

The first week of this month - which included Election Day - required a good, calm crime story, a book that before opening it a reader knows the mystery will be solved and order restored. 

 

It called for a visit with methodical, introspective Chief Superintendent Jules Maigret, author Georges Simenon’s fictional Paris police detective.

 

The mystery in his 1955 novel, Maigret and the Headless Corpse, as the title explains, begins with the discovery of a dismembered body in a canal. All the parts of the murdered man are recovered, except the head. Based on the medical examiner’s findings and the section of Paris in which the body was discovered, Maigret quickly comes up with a possible identity of the man and a possible suspect.

 

The suspect is the man’s wife. As Maigret learns about her, a second suspect and then a third come into focus. The wife is a puzzle to him. She is a woman who seems numb to the world and Maigret spends a considerable amount of time figuring out what makes her tick. His process is fascinating.

 

For a man who wrote at breakneck speed, Simenon’s novel has an almost leisurely pace.

 

Maigret and the Headless Corpse is considered one of Simenon's best, and I agree, although I have only read a fraction of his 390 books. Included in that output are his 75 Maigret novels.

 

(For more posts on books, see Todd Mason’s blog.)

(And, if you haven’t already, please see my book, Lyme Depot. Thanks.)