I mentioned I was reading WILD TOWN (1957) by Jim Thompson.
It's set in Ragtown, in west Texas, about an hour's drive
from Westex City, during oil boom years in the 1910s or
1920s. Thompson was born in 1906 and lived in Texas during
those years. His father worked as a sheriff, and Thompson
hopped bells in hotels, gambled, drank, took drugs, and had a
wild time. He had a hell of a life--read about it if you can.
(He and Chandler were in the Texas oilfields at the same
time, but Chandler was an executive who was drinking too
much.)
For all his experience, not a lot of colour comes through in
the book. It could have been set in any open city through to
the 1960s or 1970s, and there's not much sense of Texas.
There must be more of that in his autobiographical books like
BAD BOY (1953).
The book's tight in on a handful of people who are right at
home in a Thompson novel: a slightly dopey ex-con working as
a hotel dick; the aged wheelchair-bound hotel owner; his
sexpot young wife; a repressed schoolmarm; and sheriff Lou
Ford, a smart man hiding his brains behind a drawl and
cornpone dialogue. They're thrown together with some other
strange people and the pressure goes up high. Result:
murder.
I quoted a bit from Polito's biography of Thompson where he
says this takes place in an alternate universe to THE KILLER
INSIDE ME, which has the crazed psycho Lou Ford. This book's
Lou Ford enforces the law and keeps a sensible lid on a town
full of booze and money. It's odd reading about this Lou Ford
if you're used to the other. All in all, this is minor
Thompson, but he's good at cramped, fast-moving noir and
minor Thompson is still worth reading. But read THE KILLER
INSIDE ME before this one.
A while later I noticed THE BROKEN GUN (1967) by Louis
L'Amour on my shelf, beside THE HILLS OF HOMICIDE (1983) (a
collection of revised versions of pulp mysteries he wrote in
the late '40s, including one from BLACK MASK). I'm not much
for western novels, but since this was set in Arizona I
thought I'd give it a shot and see if it was at all
hardboiled. It's the first western L'Amour set in
contemporary times, I think: it's about a writer who gets
mixed up with some bad ranchers because of research he's
doing into something that happened in the Old West.
He's not just a writer, though, he's a former cowboy who saw
action in two wars and worked as a spy in Europe. He sure
surprises the ranchers, who are expecting a sissified
tenderfoot. With his Apache friend, he takes on everyone, and
puts everything right. There's action, with guns and horses,
and the hero's a tough hombre, but it's a solid western and
not hardboiled. There is a lot of description of the hills
and desert, though.
I have a bunch of Frank Gruber's westerns, but haven't read
any. Are they good?
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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