For the first time, the best work of a distinctive master of American noir is available in authoritative e-book editions from The Library of America. In Nightfall (1947), David Goodis explores the theme of the innocent pursued, as artist Jim Vanning becomes accidentally embroiled in a violent robbery and must evade criminals and police alike.

A native of Philadelphia, David Goodis’s signature style was a pulp expressionism who brought a jazzy edge to his spare, passionate novels of mean streets and doomed protagonists. His big break came in 1946 with the publication of Dark Passage, which was made into a film starring Bogart and Bacall. He wrote seventeen novels (including Down There, adapted by François Truffaut for his 1960 film Shoot the Piano Player), numerous short stories, film treatments, and scripts for such radio serials as Superman. He died in 1967.

Nightfall is also in the Library of America collection David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s & 50s.