Dodge & Burn

 

Ellen Crosby came through Santa Fe a little while back, to promote her new novel, Dodge and Burn.  I’d met her some years previous, at the Edgars, and I wanted to show my support, so I went to her very lively chat and signing, and came home clutching a brand-new copy of the book. 

I’d read a couple of her Lucie Montgomery wine country mysteries – there are twelve, set in and around Virginia and DC, and wine-making is the underlying theme, the mysteries character-driven and on the edgy side of cozy; they steer away from graphic violence, but the consequences of that violence are full frontal. 

This is true as well of Dodge and Burn, the fourth in the Sophie Medina series.  Sophie’s a photographer, who’s spent time scouting war zones and natural disasters, and the fractures of domestic collapse.  Her husband Nick was a CIA covert officer, murdered in the line of duty.  Dodge and Burn, in fact, is more thriller than mystery, strictly speaking.  There’s a killer unmasked at the end, but the story’s really about Sophie’s moral doubts, and a climate of shifting loyalties.  There are moments when she’s in physical danger, yes, but the real danger is inward. Betrayal is corrosive; Sophie wants badly to trust, and her trust is too often treated carelessly.

Our tale begins with a dead guy out at Dulles airport, and his unclaimed baggage turns out to be a load of looted Ukrainian artifacts from behind Russian lines, ready for sale on the black market.  Then there’s the noted collector and philanthropist with an icon of the Virgin of Vladimir in his basement safe, who invites Sophie to take some head shots, later found dead on the floor with Sophie’s camera tripod the murder weapon, and the icon gone, putting Sophie very much in the frame.  And the half-brother Sophie never knew she had, a by-blow of her absent and long-dead dad, the brother a modern-day Robin Hood who steals back – wait for it – stolen black market artifacts, and he’s hot on the trail of the Virgin of Vladimir. 

I’m giving you the hook, and a little extra.  It’s worked out, more or less, but there’s a cloud of ambiguity at the end.  Good is served, but at what price?  Sophie’s left, to my mind, with an unsatisfactory resolution.  It isn’t tied together neatly.  Sophie questions herself, and she doesn’t come up with easy answers.  At least she knows to ask.

I was struck by the notion of how a different writer might write a completely different story, in fact a completely different kind of story.  We know the rule that you can only write your book, that it’s a book only you can write, so I’m in a sense comparing apples and oranges.  But if you take the initial plot element of Dodge and Burn, not its theme, or execution, you may see it develop in other directions.  If it were me, for instance, I’m pretty sure I would have leaned into the Ukraine end, and the war as enterprise, probably Wagner Group, and former KGB behind the looting.  Off the top of my head.  If it were a Don Westlake, it could be a comic caper, the Dortmunder crew, figuring out how to boost the stolen icon; or if it were a Westlake, but one of the Richard Stark books, it would be dark and nasty, and the gang would turn on each other, in a murderous circle.  This is what’s the most interesting to me, the way Ellen Crosby chose to write her book.  The conflict isn’t with Sophie Medina trying to foil the bad guys; the conflict is Sophie trying to figure out where she herself falls, on the moral spectrum.  Would she do the wrong thing for the right reasons?  And which reasons are those?  Sophie doesn’t have to choose, as it turns out, but she’s led to the edge, and she has to look over. 

The Ipcress File

 One of my Facebook groups, The Deighton Dossier (link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/deightondossier), put up a flare that The Ipcress File was newly available on a KL Studio DVD, and I immediately snapped it up.  I’m happy to report that it’s a fine color transfer, with nice, deep blacks, something the picture requires - and it’s a deal at $14 ($20 for the Blu-Ray).

 

It’s worth remembering that this was a ground-breaker when it was released.  Dr. No had dropped in ‘62, From Russia With Love in ‘63, and Goldfinger in ‘64.  The Ipcress File slipped in just ahead of Thunderball, in late 1965.  Bond was a huge phenomenon – and Thunderball was the picture where Bond turned the corner toward eye-popping FX set pieces: stunts and spectacle.  Not to diminish how flat-out terrific they were, and the vigorous confidence that Sean Connery brought to the table.  I was just as ga-ga for Bond as anybody, and Bond set the bar high.

 

The Ipcress File is sly.  It has the confidence of the ordinary, of homely detail.  It begins with Harry making coffee.  He’s a little fussy, and fastidious.  He wears a pair of rather thick-framed glasses.  You’re not thinking some smoothie at the baccarat table, you’re wondering if he’s wandered into the wrong movie, or you did.  And then the focus begins to skew.  Otto Heller’s camera angles and Sidney Furie’s fey direction, a sort of oops, we led you to think one way, when actually you should have been looking at the fish tank off to one side (this is a rhetorical device, there are in fact no fish tanks, for which we could be grateful), and we begin to pay closer attention.

 

The device that Ipcress File uses is to make the ordinary sinister.  Simple details seem to gain weight.  And then they don’t.  Bluejay writes a phone number down for Harry, but it’s disconnected.  Harry’s aggravated.  Dalby takes the scrap of paper, and turns it over.  It’s a program for a musical recital.  Not the number, Dalby points out, but the piece of paper it’s written on.  The tradecraft isn’t a mystery.  It’s elemental. 

 

All of Ipcress is like this.  Half the time, it seems like everybody’s scoring points on each other.  The class issues are worn on their sleeve.  “You’ve got a good job for a passed-over major,” Ross tells Dalby.  “A word in your shell-like ear,” Dalby says to Harry, putting him in his place.  This fuels the whole story.  Ross and Dalby are offering Harry a place above the salt, and both pretending it’s of no consequence to them.  Dalby and Ross wear regimental ties, but Harry, in the end, really doesn’t give a shit.  One of them betrayed him. 

 

The Ipcress File made Michael Caine a star.  I know, Alfie, but that just confirmed it.  He’d done Zulu, a couple of years earlier, and he’d read for the part that went to James Booth, the slyboots lower-class enlisted, private Hook.  Cy Enfield, the director, cast him as Bromhead, the aristocratic officer.  Only because Enfield was a Yank, and didn’t know any better, Caine later said, because a Brit director would never have cast me.  Class is cast in stone.

Accent is destiny.

 

The sound of Bow Bells.  Caine is a Cockney.  So is Roger Moore, point of fact.  He had to pretend to a kind of generic mid-Atlantic, that wouldn’t fool a Brit, but might work on the rest of us.  When the two of them worked on Bullseye! together, they were clearly having a lot of fun.  Bob Hoskins once remarked that Michael Caine opened the doors ‘for the rest of us.’  I think you might go back to, say, Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.  It was a time coming.  Rita Tushingham in A Taste of Honey.

I don’t think there was any one single moment.

 

The Ipcress File comes close to that single moment.  It doesn’t date that badly.  The brainwashing parts are pretty lame, but the personal and political tensions are vivid.  It gives us immediate difficulties.  We might make fun of those contrived shots through the cymbals, but the revealed accidents are sudden and genuine.

 

In my opinion, a great movie. 

 

Fracture

A while back I did a post here about neo-noir films that I liked. One of them was Fracture, with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins.

Today I’m going to go into more depth about that film, which also stars David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike and Billy Burke:

No, not that Billie Burke, this Billy Burke:

And, you know I did that just to show pix of both and (hopefully get a laugh)…

Written by Daniel Pyne and Glenn Gers and, and directed by Gregory Hoblit, it’s one of those movies that I find myself watching over and over – I’ve seen it a few times now. And want to watch even more, but talk myself out of doing so so I can see something new or that I haven’t seen in a long time.

The movie’s opening credits roll over a sort of super hi-tech Rube Goldberg contraption which sets the tone for the twists and turns that will be delivered later. And the story revolves around Ted Crawford (Hopkins), a hotshot millionaire aerospace guy, and Willy Beachum (Gosling), a hotshot Deputy District Attorney in L.A., who wants to move into the big bucks world of corporate law. Crawford knows – we’re not sure how but he knows from before the movie starts – that his wife is having an affair with a man, who’s also an LAPD detective. He wants revenge. He wants to get away with it. And he has very ingenious plan to try to do so.

It’s hard to talk about a movie like this and not give away plot twists or spoilers, so I feel like I’m being a little vague. But the movie is a clever cat and mouse game between the very shrewd and brilliant Crawford and the equally good DDA. Two matched equals gunning for each other and isn’t that one of the things we’re told do in writing – the villain and the hero must be equal to each other. And, boy, are these two. It’s like Sleuth or Death Trap on a bigger canvas.

One of the underlying themes (and where I believe the title comes from) is finding the flaws or cracks in a person. Crawford tells Beachum the story of how he grew up working on his grandfather’s farm. His job was to candle eggs – check the eggs and look for hairline fractures and flaws and remove any bad eggs. Well Crawford did the job so well that none of the eggs made the cut. It’s a brilliant piece of writing – a clever way to have the audience see what a sharp and ruthless man Crawford is and how he can’t tolerate weakness in his unfaithful wife or the hapless police department or anywhere else. And how Crawford, like the predator he is, is able to find the flaws in the cops, the system and the DA – to find Beachum’s hairline fracture – and take advantage of his/their weaknesses:

Ted Crawford (Hopkins): You know, my grandfather was an egg farmer.

Willy Beachum (Gosling): This isn't going to be about your, uh, "rough childhood," is it?

Ted Crawford : No, I used to candle eggs at his farm. Do you know what that is? You hold an egg up to the light of a candle and you look for imperfections. The first time I did it he told me to put all the eggs that were cracked or flawed into a bucket for the bakery. And he came back an hour later, and there were 300 eggs in the bakery bucket. He asked me what the hell I was doing. I found a flaw in every single one of them - you know, thin places in the shell; fine, hairline cracks. You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later.

Willy Beachum : You looking for mine?

Ted Crawford : I've already found yours.

Willy Beachum : What is it?

Ted Crawford : You're a winner, Willy.

Willy Beachum : Yeah. I guess the joke's on me then, isn't it?

Ted Crawford : [grinning]  You bet your ass, old sport.

Hopkins is of course magnificent in this role. And Gosling is likeable and earnest and believable. The casting of these two is a great move.

As with all movies, there’re some things in the movie that defy belief. But what movie doesn’t if you really look at it. If I was an attorney I could probably tear apart the courtroom scenes, but again, you have to suspend disbelief and go for the ride. So, as with all movies, you have to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride. And Fracture, for my money, gives a hell of a fun ride as these two antagonists jockey back and forth with one having the advantage and then the other.

I never get tired of watching them play the game and I always see something new each time I watch it that I didn’t notice before, even though I know the outcome. I rate it five out of five .50 cal BMG rounds straight up.

If you’ve seen the movie, I’d be curious to hear what you think – just don’t give away any spoilers. And if you haven’t and decide to check it out, I hope you’ll enjoy it even half as much as I do.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

The third story in my Ghosts of Bunker Hill series, Fade Out on Bunker Hill, appears in the March/April 2019 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. If you like the movie Sunset Boulevard, I think you'll enjoy this story. In bookstores and on newstands now:

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Do You Want Cheese with That Whine?

We’ve all heard successful novelists mention the grind of hours-long book signings and months-long book tours, and many of us secretly (or not so secretly) wish to experience them for ourselves, but it isn’t just time-consuming public appearances that eat into our writing time.

Michael Bracken (left) at Bouchercon 2018.

Being a writer involves much more than actually writing, especially for moderately productive short-story writers. The more productive we are, the more ancillary tasks chew up our writing time. This is something I wish I had known when I began writing, and one of the things no one ever thinks to mention to beginning writers.

Research. Each completed story requires market research to determine the best market or markets for the story.

Format. Though a few of us older writers and editors pretend there is, there is no longer a standard manuscript format, and some manuscripts have to be reformatted before each submission.

Rejection. Each rejection must be recorded to prevent submitting a story to the same publication multiple times, and then it must be filed (as I do) or discarded (as some writers do).

Acceptance. This likely involves some response to let the editor know that, yes, the story is still available and, yes, I’d love to see my story in her publication, and, yes, I’m looking forward to receiving the contract.

Contract. Have you seen some of these things? I’ve received contracts that were longer than the stories for which they were offered, and I read every word before I sign. Sometimes, terms of the contract require negotiation, which requires even more time.

Payment. These days payment doesn’t often happen before publication, but God bless the publications that pay on acceptance. Regardless of when payment is received, it has to be recorded in some form (ledger, spreadsheet, accounting software) and then deposited in the bank.

Copyedit. Many publications let contributors review copyedited manuscripts prior to publication. This is when I realize the editor is a freaking genius or I decide the editor’s third-grade education did not prepare him to edit my work. Either way, copyedits require time to read and time to generate a respectful, professional response explaining exactly why I disagree with some or all of the changes.

Page proof. I know many people refer to these as galleys, but they aren’t. (Most of the people who refer to these as galleys aren’t old enough to have worked with actual galley proofs. If what you’re reading is formatted and presented to you in page form, you’re reading page proofs.) Like copy edits, these take time to read and to generate a response.

Contributor copy. Most publications provide a contributor copy. (Many amateur publications provide a “free copy!” because the publishers don’t know the proper term for what they’re doing and think providing contributor copies is somehow doing contributors a favor.) It takes time to reread my story in published form. It also takes time to record the date of publication and to share the news with supportive family and friends.

Reprint. A story might later be reprinted in a best-of-year anthology, a themed all-reprint anthology, a collection of my own work, or licensed for publication in another language, licensed for other media such as audio, or optioned for movie or television, and each of these reprint and licensing opportunities comes with paperwork and ancillary tasks similar to that listed above for an original sale.

Every step in the process, and maybe even a few steps I’ve overlooked, requires time and takes it from writing time.

And none of this includes optional tasks such as maintaining social media and engaging in blatant (and not so blatant) self-promotion, nor does it include semi-optional tasks like developing and maintaining good relationships with editors and other writers.

A writer who produces only a few stories each year may never realize how much time they spend on ancillary tasks, but even moderately productive short-story writers soon find themselves spending more time on the ancillary tasks than the primary task that creates all this extra work.

When I get overwhelmed with all the ancillary tasks and complain to my wife about how much time I’m working but not writing, Temple brings me back to earth by noting that I’m only complaining because I’m living my dream, and she asks, “Do you want cheese with that whine?”

My story “Remission” appears in Landfall (Level Best Books), “Deliver Us from Evil” appears in issue 2 of Thriller, and “Christmas Wish” appears online at The Saturday Evening Post.

The Broken Windows Tour of L.A.

“It is through that broken window that we see the world…”

                                                                                                  –Alice Walker

A while back I did a tour of some of the locations in White Heat. Now, since it’s Hot Off the Presses—it came out yesterday from Down & Out Books—it’s the Broken Windows Tour of L.A. One of the things I really enjoy is writing about Los Angeles in the context of a mystery-thriller. In Broken Windows, P.I. Duke Rogers and his very unPC sidekick, Jack, are on the hunt for the killer of an undocumented worker.

Briefly, a little about Broken Windows: While the storm rages over California’s infamous 1994 anti-illegal alien Proposition 187, a young woman climbs to the top of the famous Hollywood sign—and jumps to her death. An undocumented day laborer is murdered. And a disbarred and desperate lawyer in Venice Beach places an ad in a local paper that says: “Will Do Anything For Money.”—Private Investigator Duke Rogers, and his very unPC partner, Jack, must figure out what ties together these seemingly unrelated incidents. Their mission catapults them through a labyrinth of murder, intrigue and corruption of church, state and business that hovers around the immigration debate. And that turmoil is not unlike what’s roiling the country today—in fact it might be seen as a precursor to it.

Hope you'll give it a read. And Reviews would be greatly appreciated...especially if they're good ones :-) .

Realtors say the most important thing is Location Location Location. I wouldn’t go that far in terms of writing. But location is important. So, hop on the bus for a handful of the many SoCal locations in Broken Windows:

View from behind the Hollywood sign (1)

The Hollywood Sign:

The story opens with a young woman climbing to the top of the Hollywood Sign.

The Hollywood Sign beckoned her like a magnet—or like a moth to a flame. The sign glowed golden in the magic hour sun—that time of day around sunrise and sunset when the light falls soft and warm and cinematographers love to shoot. Like so many others, Susan Karubian had come here seeking fame and fortune, hoping to make her mark on the world. Oh hell, she had come to be a star like all the others. And she would do it, just not quite in the heady way she’d anticipated.

When a friend and I hiked up to the sign before the fence was put around it,
 so you could actually get to the sign

The Santa Monica Pier:

Duke, looking for a little R&R, takes his new dog, Molly, to the pier:

The Santa Monica Pier used to be one of my favorite places to go to while away time, do some thinking on cases when things weren’t breaking right. I still liked it, but not as much as before. They’d remodeled it, turning it into a mini Disneyland, new rides, new chain restaurants. Just another mini-mall-amusement-park, but with a saltwater view, with kitschy chain restaurants featuring Cowabunga Burgers and a food court, for crying out loud. And a lot more people. Tourists. Families with their kids. Freaks of all kinds. Still, the air was clean. And I thought Molly should get a taste of it.

A view from Santa Monica pier of Santa Monica looking north (2)

At the pier, he runs into Marisol, whose brother Carlos, an undocumented immigrant, has been murdered. Later, Duke takes on the case of trying to find out who killed Carlos and why.

We headed back down the pier. In the distance a woman with coal black hair sat on a bench staring out to sea, her back to me. The wind pitched her hair over her face; she swept it away with a backhand. Something seemed familiar about her. When we got closer I saw that it was Marisol. She didn’t see us and I debated whether to approach her. “Days like this are my favorite time at the beach,” I said. She turned around, looking up at me through a tangle of hair. It looked like she had been crying…

Venice and the Venice Beach Boardwalk:

The bad part of Venice is where Eric, a disbarred lawyer, lives in a not so nice place compared to what he had been used to:

He opened a window, could smell the briny ocean air and hear the waves booming in the distance. This was Venice, California—crammed onto the SoCal shore between tony Santa Monica and haughty Marina del Rey—but not the Venice of the tourists and beach people. And this certainly wasn’t what Abbot Kinney had envisioned when he wanted to recreate Italy’s Venice in Southern California, complete with canals and gondoliers. No, Kinney must be rolling over in his grave these days. This was the other side of Venice. No canals here. No bathing beauties. Unless cockroaches had beauties in their midst, maybe to another cockroach. Miss Cockroach of 1994. Would she want world peace too? Or just a crumb of leftover bread?

Venice Beach (3)

Eric puts an ad in the paper. At first we’re not sure how he ties into the main story of Duke trying to find Carlos’ killer…

And he [Eric] opened the L.A. Weekly underground paper. Today was the day his ad was due out. He scanned a few pages until he came to it:

“Contact Eric,” it said, and gave his phone number. So far the phone hadn’t rung, but it was early. Breakfast time. He figured he’d sit by the phone today and hope for the best. If something didn’t come along, he wouldn’t even be able to pay the rent on this hell hole.

He looked at the phone, willing it to ring. When it didn’t, his eyes shifted back to his ad, to the headline: “$$$ Will do anything for money. $$$”.

At one point, Duke also finds himself down in Venice:

When Abbott Kinney founded Venice, California, south of Santa Monica, in the early nineteen hundreds, he had big dreams for it. Modeled after Venice, Italy, complete with canals and gondoliers, it was supposed to be a place of high-minded culture. Maybe it was, a hundred years ago. I don’t think so. And certainly not today. Now it was divided between the Hollywood Haves, who filled many of the little, but exceptionally expensive homes along the canals, and the low-rent people a few blocks away, whose homes were the gangs they belonged to more than the houses they lived in. Los Angeles Schizoid Dream.

Man on Venice Boardwalk (4)

The Café Noir:

A down on its heels bar on Sunset Boulevard, where Duke hangs out sometimes:

I opened the Café Noir’s door, a flood of velvet blackness enveloping me as I entered. The transition from daylight, even overcast daylight, to the Noir’s dimness made me close my eyes for a few seconds. Nat King Cole’s “The Blues Don’t Care” sinuously threaded its way from the jukebox. The bartender nodded. I nodded back. I settled in a corner at the far end of the bar, hoping no one I knew would join me. It wasn’t crowded at this hour, but you never knew. And right now I just wanted to get lost in a drink and the shadows, in the music and the anonymity of a dark corner.

The Cafe Noir

Smuggler’s Gulch:

In the 1990s, Smuggler’s Gulch near San Diego was just what its name implies, a major smuggling point for people coming over the border. Jack and Duke have a “meet” there that goes bad and later Duke returns to the “scene of the crime,” so to speak:

I figured Jack wouldn’t be back and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep so I packed Molly in the Jeep and hit the freeways. Southern California’s become one long rush hour for the most part, but at that time of night, traffic moved at a good clip. We drove south, toward the border. Landed back at Smuggler’s Gulch. Rocky Point. I surveyed the area with night-vision binoculars, making sure no cops, Border Patrol, or even some of Miguel’s friends were there. I knew Jack had hidden the body well, but you can’t be too careful. When I knew the coast was clear, we walked to the rock. I sat there with Molly on the same spot where I’d been shot. She’d been getting stronger by the day and I thought she might enjoy getting out of the house.

Smuggler's Gulch / Tijuana River Valley, San Diego, CA (5)

***

So, there’s a mini tour of just some of the L.A. and SoCal locations in Broken Windows. Hope you might want to check the book out—it’s available now.

***

And now for the usual BSP:

Broken Windows released on September 10th and is available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble , Down & Out Books and all the usual places.

Peter Anthony Holder interviewed me for the Stuph File. It’s short, 10 minutes. You might enjoy it. It’s episode 0471 at the link below. And check out the Stuph File too:

https://tunein.com/podcasts/Comedy/Peter-Anthony-Holders-Stuph-File-p394054/?topicId=123713643

www.thestuphfile.com

And I was also interviewed by Dave Congalton at KVEC radio:

http://www.920kvec.com/davecongalton/posts/air-date-aug-27-2018-seg3-mystery-writer-paul-d-marks.php 


Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website www.PaulDMarks.com

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____________________

Photo attributions:

(1) Hollywood sign photo by Caleb George (https://unsplash.com/seemoris), Unsplash.com: https://unsplash.com/photos/5NslKuaHTJo

(2) A view from Santa Monica pier of Santa Monica looking north photo by Korvenna

(3) Venice Beach, photo by InSapphoWeTrust from Los Angeles, California, USA 

(4) Man on Venice Boardwalk, photo by Sean Stratton seanstratton - ttps://unsplash.com/photos/dEEMyIa4zPc

(5) Smuggler's Gulch / Tijuana River Valley, San Diego, CA, USA, photo by Roman Eugeniusz, https://www.panoramio.com/photo/127934179

High Contrast, Low Key: Film Noir

Images of Film Noir

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought

they were detective stories with low lighting!

                                                                      --Marie Windsor, noir icon

Murder, My Sweet

I thought I’d do something a little different for my post this week. Instead of writing about this or that I thought I’d make it visual. Images from film noir. Images that inspire much, though not all of my work. And I don’t think I’m alone. I think a lot of us have been inspired one way or another by film noir and much of noir is its visual look.

The film noir aesthetic is full of iconic images – some might call them tropes. Either way, they’re striking, they affect us, and they hit us on a subconscious level. Iconic images of shadows, rain, fog, neon, darkness and night, dark streets and alleys, Venetian blinds, oblique angles and reflections, low key lighting, guys with gats, femme fatales and plenty of cigarettes, smoke and smoking. They’re mostly urban, though one of the best, Out of the Past, is largely rural. And, of course, pretty much all are in striking black and white.

I’ve broken the images up into various categories. Of course, one pic might fit into several categories and pretty much all have low key lighting, so there’s no category for that.

It’s hard to narrow down all the great images to a reasonable number for a blog, and I’m sure I’ve left out some good ones. But here goes. And feel free to add your own choices in the comments. I don’t think you can put pictures in but you can tell us about them and the movies they’re from.


Oblique Angles and Striking Images

D.O.A.	Fear in the Night	Born to Kill
The Big Heat	Sunset Boulevard	Strangers on a Train
Sunset Boulevard	D.O.A.	Fear in the Night
Phantom Lady	Fear in the Night	The Lady from Shanghai
He Walked by Night	The Lady from Shanghai	The Maltese Falcon
Nightmare Alley	Black Angel	Dark Passage
The Postman Always Rings Twice	The Third Man	The Third Man

Touch of Evil

Shadows, Reflections and Venetian Blinds

The Killers	Crack-Up	Double Indemnity
Fear in the Night	He Walked by Night	The Maltese Falcon
The Narrow Margin	The Narrow Margin	Pitfall
Somewhere in the Night	The Crooked Way	The Woman in the Window

Fog and Rain

The Big Combo

Follow Me Quietly

The Narrow Margin

Scarlet Street

The Blue Dahlia

Smoking

The Postman Always Rings Twice

The Maltese Falcon

Out of the Past

Out of the Past

Pitfall

Streets, Alleys and Neon

Act of Violence	Act of Violence	Act of Violence
The Blue Dahlia	Born to Kill	Criss Cross
The Crooked Way	Cry Danger	Cry Danger
Dark Passage	Dark Passage	D.O.A.

Kiss Me, Deadly

The Lady from Shanghai

People, Femme Fatales and Guys with Gats

Gun Crazy

Crack-Up

Scarlet Street

The Big Sleep

Born to Kill

D.O.A.	Dead Reckoning	Detour
D.O.A.	Double Indemnity	Double Indemnity
The Postman Always Rings Twice	I Walk Alone	The Blue Dahlia
Laura	The Big Sleep	Out of the Past
Out of the Past	Out of the Past	The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

The Crooked Way

Too Late for Tears

In a Lonely Place and Detour

Lobby Cards, Title Cards, Posters

***

The author as a boy with gat, lucky rabbit's foot and the
shadow of noir over him.

###

And now for the usual BSP:

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