The Black Eyed Blonde
Raymond Chandler is no longer around to write new stories starring his archetypal private detective, Philip Marlowe. So here Benjamin Black steps up to the plate with a mystery meant to follow on from Marlowe’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Does it work? Our reviewer…
Kill Me, Darling by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
As Mickey Spillane’s literary executor, Max Allan Collins has been doing a great job finding and completing manuscripts by the late author. In fact, this is the fourth such book we’ve reviewed, following on from Lady, Go Die!, Complex 90 and King of the Weeds….
Fatale
Written by Jean-Patrick Manchette, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith — It is not fashionable anymore to be a leftist writer of crime fiction. Yet there have been a few crime writers whose works we now consider to be classics who had left-leaning political convictions. Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Dashiel Hammett,…
Knuckleball by Tom Pitts
After last year’s triumphant novel, Hustle, San Francisco native Tom Pitts returns with another hard hitting report from the city’s mean streets. Knuckleball is a novella published by American indie One Eye Press, which was already very much on my radar after publishing Chris Leek’s…
First look: Farrell and Kearns
Thriller author Sean Lynch has republished his book Wounded Prey, given it a dark and moody new cover. He is also to release three further books in the Farrell and Kearns series in the next month or so. Wounded Prey first came out through Exhibit A Books two…
World Gone By by Dennis Lehane
What an incredible career Dennis Lehane is having. Of his American contemporaries, perhaps only Michael Connelly has managed to sustain a similar degree of commercial and critical success in the crime genre. His early, gritty PI novels in the Kenzie and Gennaro series were followed…
The Black Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black
Author John Banville has won the Booker Prize. Here he writes as Benjamin Black, embarking on a homage to Raymond Chandler by recreating Philip Marlowe in a story meant to follow on from the 1953 novel The Long Goodbye. Using a title Chandler might even have used…