Back Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s

The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson | The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith | Pick-Up, Charles Willeford | Down There, David Goodis | The Real Cool Killers, Chester Himes

Edited by Robert Polito

“Beautifully bound and arranged—often following rare first-edition design blueprints—Crime Novels contains some of the best crime writing of the genre’s golden decades. They should give much pleasure to lovers of film noir and readers addicted to original and eclectic writing. And for cineastes, Pick-Up and The Real Cool Killers have yet to be made into films noir. So you’ll have to read the books first.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

Overview
News & Views

Overview

The Moviegoer Improvisation on a noir theme: The jazz of François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player
November 2, 2016

The Moviegoer Purple Noon: A superior take on The Talented Mr. Ripley
October 6, 2016

News Geoffrey O’Brien and Robert Polito on David Goodis, “our most crafty and elegant crime stylist”
February 5, 2016

Save $15 when you buy the boxed set of both volumes of mid-century crime novels.

This Library of America volume, with its companion devoted to the 1930s and 40s, presents a rich vein of modern American writing, works now being recognized for the powerful literary qualities and their unique, sometimes subversive role in shaping modern American language and culture.

The five novels here are authentic underground classics:

Published as a paperback original in 1952, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, is one of the most blistering and uncompromising crime novels ever written. Written from the point of view of an outwardly genial, privately murderous Texas sheriff, it explores the inner hell of a psychotic in daring and experimental style.

Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) likewise adopts a killer’s perspective as she traces the European journey of an American con man with a taste for fine living and no conscience about how to attain it. Highsmith’s gift for diabolical plotting is matched only by the cool irony of her characterizations.

In his nihilistic early novel Pick-Up (1955), Charles Willeford follows the pilgrimage of two lost and self-destructive lovers through the depths of San Francisco, from cheap bars and rooming houses to psychiatric clinics and police stations.

David Goodis’s Down There (1956) is a moody, intensely lyrical novel of a musician fallen on hard times and caught up in his family’s criminal activities; it was adapted by François Truffaut into the film Shoot the Piano Player.

With its gritty realism, unrestrained violence and frequently outrageous humor, The Real Cool Killers (1959) is among the most powerful of Chester Himes’s series of novels about the Harlem detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones.

Each volume features newly researched biographies and notes, and an essay on textual selection.

Robert Polito, volume editor, is a poet and the author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award and an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He directs the writing program at The New School for Social Research in New York City.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

The Moviegoer Improvisation on a noir theme: The jazz of François Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player
November 2, 2016

The Moviegoer Purple Noon: A superior take on The Talented Mr. Ripley
October 6, 2016

News Geoffrey O’Brien and Robert Polito on David Goodis, “our most crafty and elegant crime stylist”
February 5, 2016

Interviews Robert Polito on the “melancholy and yearning” of David Goodis, who “always seems poised for rediscovery”
February 5, 2016

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ISBN: 978-1-88301149-9 892 pages

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N° 95 Library of America Series

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