I was just going through my 100's of undeleted e-mails,
deleting most of them when I flashed past some discussion of
YOU PLAY THE BLACK AND THE RED COMES UP & I thought about
how the title was one of my all time favourites when it came
to noir/hb books. Other titles that I particularly like are
THE LAST GOOD KISS (and the snatch of poetry that the title
is quoted from); Michael Avallone's THE BRUTAL KOOK; Gil
Brewer's SATAN IS A WOMAN; Fredric Brown's THE FABULOUS
CLIPJOINT; Mickey Spillane's MY GUN IS QUICK; but the king of
cool titles, IMO, was Aussie phenomenon Carter Brown (aka
Alan Yates) with some of the most gloriously silly titles in
hb history. The best were titles that were published in Aus.
in the 1950's - the later novels which were picked up by
Signet in the US sported titles that were far more sedate
& sensible. Some favourite examples of 50's C Brown
titles: VENUS UNARMED; A BULLET FOR MY BABY (I stole that
title for a song my band used to do); THE HOODLUM WAS A
HONEY; SINNER YOU SLAY ME; BELLA DONNA WAS POISON .... there
are scores more. Carter Brown was so successful that his
style in titles was widely imitated in Aust. popular fiction
of the time. The other great Aust. hb publishing phenomenon
from that era was "Larry Kent" (most of these were written by
an American ex-pat living here - his name escapes me at the
moment). The Kent novels had their own spin on these types of
titles, the early ones often featuring the word
"cutie", e.g.: COOL-KILL CUTIE!; CUTIE, QUIT CALLING! There
was even a short-lived western series with Carter Brown
influenced titles such as SINNER, YOU'RE IN MY SADDLE;
STAMPEDE ME BABY; MEET LADY HOT LEAD, etc. Australia may not
have made a huge contribution to the body of hb lit. but I
can safely & proudly say that no nation on Earth has
churned out so many gloriously silly hardboiled titles. I
could quote literally hundreds of these titles but I'm sure
everyone has the gist by now. Seeing as how the list is very
quiet at present & people don't seem to be very
"talkative", (especially if we're talking about staying on
topic) I thought I may as well ask if anybody else has any
particular favourite titles of hb books, knowing how creating
lists gets a lot of people excited enough join in. So, any
other great/funny or otherwise memorable titles people are
particularly fond of?
Rene
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