Read a few for fifties month, but nothing I found exciting
enough to comment on. Until now.
Bill Ballinger's "Portrait In Smoke". It's a gem that
shouldn't be. It ought not to work. At all. Yet somehow, it
does. I don't understand....
Part of the problem is in the character motivations. They're
very, very poor. The reason, for instance, that the
protagonist, Dan April, a collection agent, starts hunting
down Krassy Almauniski (the femme fatale, who's debt is paid
in full), is simply that he saw her once when he was a kid
and thought she was beautiful. Er, right.
Anyway, as I said, the fact that Krassy is a female Lou Ford
makes quite a bit of difference (to me, at least). Almost as
much as the narrative technique. It's highly unusual.
Particularly for 1951 noir. For most of the book the
viewpoint characters alternate chapters between Dan (first
person) and Krassy (third person). Dan lets us know how his
search for Krassy is progressing, and then Krassy provides us
with facets of her character Dan knows nothing about.
If Goodis had written this, the conclusion would have been
inevitable. And Ballinger deliberately leads you down that
same path. Utterly smitten, utterly used, poor old Dan looks
like he's going to end up with nothing. But Ballinger's
ending is very clever.
A nicely written novel. My first taste of Ballinger and I'll
be back for more.
Al
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