Review: Crime Novels Five Classic Thrillers 1961 - 1964 (Library of America #370)

 

By the time the crime novels collected here first appeared in the early 1960s, the popularity of the type of crime fiction pioneered by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and others had already peaked. Now, as Geoffrey O'Brien points out in his introduction to the collection, "the best crime writers reinvented the genre." That was probably the only way the genre had much of a chance, according to O'Brien of competing with powerful competition from a burst in popularity of science fiction novels, fantasy novels, spy novels, and political thrillers.

Represented in this volume of Crime Novels are five very different writers, writers who found varying degrees of success during their lifetimes. Whether or not all of them lived to enjoy the success and respect they deserved, all five are recognized today as some of the best crime fiction writers of their day.

The collection opens with Fredric Brown's The Murderers, a story about a group of sociopaths in Los Angeles who will do just about anything to keep themselves financially comfortable. When two frustrated actors decide to swap murders that will benefit both their careers, innocent people will die but nobody really seems to care. Brown's novel is a scary look inside the mind of a true sociopath.

Next comes The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, another psychological novel that follows a bank robbery gone bad after one of the three robbers is shot dead, one escapes with the all the cash, and the narrator goes into hiding until it's safe for him to rejoin the other surviving gang member. But after the man with the money suddenly cuts off all contact with the main character, all bets are off. Much of the character development in this one occurs through flashbacks that illustrate just what a pure sociopath our hero is.

Third in the collection is probably the best known of the group, Dead Calm. Some twenty-six years (1989) after Charles Williams published the novel in 1963, Dead Calm was turned into a successful movie starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, and Billy Zane. The novel tells the story of a young couple alone on their yacht who pick up what appears to be the only survivor of a sinking vessel on which the survivor claims everyone on board has died of food poisoning but him. It's easy to imagine the tension that will build over time as the stranger's story begins to unravel.

Then we have The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, the only novel in the collection written by a woman. Hughes is largely ignored today, but Geoffrey O'Brien's introduction calls her "one of the most important crime writers of her era." Hughes dared to tackle racism in the heat of the racially turbulent 1960s by making her message a major factor governing the behavior of her main character, a young black doctor who happens to have picked up a young female hitchhiker who is later found dead.

The last novel in the collection is Richard Stark's (Richard Stark is a pen name used by Donald Westlake at times) The Score. This one is actually the fifth book in Stark's twenty-three book "Parker" series. The most unusual thing about the series is that Parker is not a cop or a detective; he is a successful criminal. The Score serves as a reminder that even the best mind can become a little overconfident and overambitious. The caper-gone-wrong here is one in which Parker and his gang decide to simultaneously rob multiple locations in one small town.

This volume of Crime Novels  is the first of two volumes soon to be published by Library of America. The second collection will feature similar fiction written in the second half of the decade.