David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s

In 1997 The Library of America's "Crime Novels: American Noir" gathered, in two volumes, eleven classic works of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s--among them David Goodis's moody and intensely lyrical masterpiece "Down There," adapted by Francois Truffaut for his 1960 film "Shoot the Piano Player." Now, The [...]
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In 1997 The Library of America's "Crime Novels: American Noir" gathered, in two volumes, eleven classic works of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s--among them David Goodis's moody and intensely lyrical masterpiece "Down There," adapted by Francois Truffaut for his 1960 film "Shoot the Piano Player." Now, The Library of America and editor Robert Polito team up again to celebrate the full scope of Goodis's signature style with this landmark volume collecting five great novels from the height of his career. Goodis (1917-1967) was a Philadelphia- born pulp expressionist who brought a jazzy style to his spare, passionate novels of mean streets and doomed protagonists: an innocent man railroaded for his wife's murder ("Dark Passage"); an artist whose life turns nightmarish because of a cache of stolen money ("Nightfall"); a dockworker seeking to comprehend his sister's brutal death ("The Moon in the Gutter"); a petty criminal derailed by irresistible passion ("The Burglar"); and a famous crooner scarred by violence and descending into dereliction ("Street of No Return"). Long a cult favorite, Goodis now takes his place alongside Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett in the pantheon of classic American crime writers.