Volume 32, Number 5 · March 28, 1985
The Gentrification of Crime
By Luc Sante
Four Novels: Nightfall, Down There, Dark Passage, The Moon in the Gutter
by David Goodis
Zomba Books (London), 513 pp., £5.95 (paper)
Pop. 1280
by Jim Thompson
Creative Arts (Black Lizard), 215 pp., $3.95 (paper)
The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
Quill, 188 pp., $3.50 (paper)
A Hell of a Woman
by Jim Thompson
Creative Arts (Black Lizard), 182 pp., $3.95 (paper)
The Getaway
by Jim Thompson
Creative Arts (Black Lizard), 183 pp., $3.95 (paper)
By Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark (in chronological
Glitz
by Elmore Leonard
Arbor House, 251 pp., $14.95
The Hunter (also published as Point Blank)
Avon, 156 pp., $2.50 (paper)
The Man with the Getaway Face
Avon, 157 pp., $2.50 (paper)
The Outfit
Avon, 159 pp., $2.50 (paper)
The Mourner
Avon, 155 pp., $2.50 (paper)
The Score (to be published in August)
Avon, 156 pp., $2.75 (paper)
The Jugger
Allison and Busby/Schocken, 160 pp., $13.95
The Seventh
Avon, 144 pp., $2.75 (paper)
The Handle
Allison and Busby, 160 pp., $13.95
The Rare Coin Score
Allison and Busby/Schocken, 160 pp., 13.95
The Green Eagle Score
Allison and Busby, 144 pp., $13.95
The Black Ice Score
Allison and Busby, 160 pp., $13.95
The Sour Lemon Score
Allison and Busby, 160 pp., $13.95
Deadly Edge
Allison and Busby, 160 pp., $13.95
Slayground (to be published in August)
Avon, 158 pp., $2.75 (paper)
Plunder Squad
currently out of print
Butcher's Moon
currently out of print
Although they are frequently lumped together, mystery fiction and crime fiction are two very different fish. Mysteries attribute a superior logic to virtue, and turn the pursuit of evil into a civilized and often bloodless game. Crime fiction, on the other hand, acknowledges that law tends to be an attribute of power, rather than virtue, that its exercise can be messy and its boundaries ambiguous. It suggests that the protagonist, and by extension the reader, might just as easily be on the wrong side of the law as on the right. Such representation, literary or otherwise, has rather infrequently been encouraged by those who legislate such things. The myth of Robin Hood was cleaned up; that of Jesse James was made banal; the arch-criminal Fantômas was replaced by the superdetective Judex. The Hays Code set a long list of specific prohibitions for American movies, e.g., the sympathy of the audience was not to be thrown to the side of crime; revenge was not to be justified; methods of crime were not to be explicitly presented.
Review, 3976 words
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