Goodis's books have been described as being long suicide
notes. His post-Hollywood paperback originals, set in an
unnamed Philadelphia, are elegies of tragic lives with little
to no redemption.
Dark Passage is different. More of a suspense novel, it is
less bleak and poetic, but still a good yarn. An innocent
man, framed for his wife's murder, escapes from prison,
alters his appearance through surgery and sets out to clear
his name.
Goodis, in his last few years, litigated the producers of the
TV show The Fugitive for plagiarizing Dark Passage and won a
settlement.
I had held back on reading Dark Passage after seeing the
Bogart film on late-night cable. The film employed a
camera-as-first-person perspective for the first twenty
minutes until the bandages came off revealing Bogart's
mug.
Dark Passage, serialized in The Saturday Evening Post before
being published as a hardcover, was Goodis's entrance into
Hollywood. After three years as a Warner Brothers
screenwriter, he left and wrote paperback originals including
Down There, Cassidy's Girl, Street of No Return, and The
Burglar.
A.I. Bezzerides also worked as a screenwriter. Aldrich's Kiss
Me Deadly comes to mind.
In the back of my Bantam paperback of Thieves' Market, it is
listed as a "novel" twelve numbers down from Kenneth
Fearing's The Big Clock, which is listed as a
"mystery."
Thieves' Market reminded me of proletariat fiction like the
Fruit Tramp story in the Hardboiled anthology. Set in the
world of produce truckers, Thieves' Market depicts a world
where everyone is out for themselves and willing to do
anything for a buck. A man uses his late father's insurance
money to buy a truck and try to work his way up, hauling
produce loads, to owning his own fleet. An American Dream he
shared with his father who died before ever realizing it.
Thinking back on the story, no one, not even his own mother,
deals fair and straight with the entrepreneur. Just con men
and women looking to work an angle on him. With all his money
invested in his first haul, his situation grows increasingly
desperate as he tries to get to the market.
Who knew all the trouble to get us an apple a day? Another
great read introduced to me by Rara Avis. After I finish
Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (fits the HB
definitions?), I plan on reading Bezzerides's The Long Haul
(AKA They Drive By Night).
Chong
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