Richard Hallas¹ YOU PLAY THE BLACK AND THE RED COMES UP,
first published in 1938, resides comfortably in the noir
pantheon and is accurately described by Lee Server as Œa kind
of tough-guy Alice in Wonderland, if Alice was an
army-deserting, freight-hopping, opportunistic schmo and
Wonderland was Hollywood¹. However there is a strong
suspicion, shared by Server, that Hallas, in reality an
Englishman who also penned LASSIE COME HOME, was gently
guying the genre, albeit with great affection. Parody or not,
it¹s still a fine book and regrettably Hallas/Knight¹s sole
excursion in the genre as he died in a WWII plane
crash.
Nigel
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