WRITERS BORN TODAY: Jim Thompson, American Master of Nasty Noir

 It's the birthday of Jim Thompson, born 116 years ago today in Oklahoma. Raised in the hard scrabble oil fields of Texas and abandoned by his father for a time, Thompson struggled from a young age to help support his family. There was no odd job he wouldn't take. His stint as a bellboy introduced him to the seedier side of life as he used his skills to procure women, drugs, and bootleg alcohol for the hotel's clients. 

Along the way he turned to writing for the pulp publishers who flourished after World War II. It was during this time that he produced some of the most vicious characters ever put to paper in American crime literature. His villains were corrupt cops, con men and psychopaths. His protagonists were little better. If someone asks you how to tell the different between the good guys and the bad guys in one of his novels, don't answer; it's a trick question. In many of his stories, there are no heroes. 

Thompson wrote most of his best work in the 1950s and 60s. Eleven novels were written and published just between 1952 and 1954 when he was at the height of his creative output. The two things that drove him to write were his desire to tell a story, and the need to pay his bills. He had a brief and successful fling with Hollywood with Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, and The Getaway starring Steve McQueen. But like most flings. it ended badly. Though Thompson and Kubrick wrote the screenplay for The Killing, Kubrick cheated him out of the credit. After The Getaway, several promising Hollywood options faded away.  Thompson was treated almost like one of the failures in one of his novels, short-changed by grifters and con artists who wore suits and ties instead of cowboy hats and jeans.

By the time Jim Thompson died in 1977 after suffering a series of strokes he was broke, and all of his books were out of print. But he never gave up hope that his literary reputation would be rehabilitated. He told his wife that someday his work would be critically acclaimed. It didn't take long. By the 1990s, Hollywood had discovered him again, and his work was being produced on the silver screen. One of the most notable was a film based on The Killer Inside Me, starring Jessica Alba and Casey Affleck. Most of his books are back in print.

One final mystery surrounds Jim Thompson's life, and it's a doozy. Kubrick commissioned him to write a novel for a future film project, and Thompson delivered. The manuscript, titled Lunatic At Large, was send to Kubrick and then misplaced. Thompson didn't make a copy. But after Kubrick's death, the novel was found. Rumor has it, filming has already begun.

This short documentary on Jim Thompson's life includes great commentary by Donald Westlake, who needs no introduction. 

Writers Born Today - Natsuo Kirino

It's the birthday of mystery novelist Natsuo Kirino, born October 7, 1951 in Kanazawa, Japan.  She obtained a law degree after college but couldn't find a job in her profession. Various jobs followed, including stints as a magazine writer and movie promoter. She began writing in her thirties in the romance genre. But as she put it, "there was no market for it". When that didn't work out she turned to mysteries with an emphasis on hard boiled suspense.

Here she found her footing, and wrote several mysteries that focus on the psychological undercurrents of criminal behavior. Her first novel to be published in English, Out, was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2004, the first translated work by a Japanese writer to achieve that milestone. It tells of four working class women who struggle to maintain their families and finances until one woman murders her husband. She seeks help from the other three to help cover up the crime. Their actions lead to disaster.

When she published her ground breaking novel Out, it was a shock to Japanese readers. The idea that a wife could kill her husband was still new in Japan due to its traditional culture. As a result, it got a lot of attention. That it was written by a woman was another surprise. It became a best seller and won the Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year and the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Novel. She has won six awards for her crime novels.

Her work has been described as 'feminist noir' because many of her female characters live ordinary lives yet become capable of extraordinary action to protect themselves, actions which include murder.

Writers Born Today - Tapani Bagge

It's the birthday of Tapani Bagge, born October 2, 1962 in Kerava, Finland. He has written dozens of novels in several genres, including children, Young Adult, espionage and historical. In addition he has written for television, the stage and even comic books.

But he is best known for his crime novels (18 and counting), which lean towards hard-boiled noir. They contain considerable black comedy and have won numerous awards, including the The Finnish Whodunnit Society’s annual award in 2007 for his novel Black Sky. Some of his historical crime novels (Black Vortex and Red Shadow) explore the tension and conflicts which arose from the Finnish War with Russia and its effect on a nation struggling to maintain its freedom in the shadow of the Russian bear. Despite their historical setting, they speak of the same crises that trouble Europe today.

As a crime writer he counts among his important influences Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, and Joe Lansdale . He was 10 years old when he read his first hard-boiled novel, The Lady In The Lake by Raymond Chandler. "That book really started my never-ending love story with tough guys and dangerous dames, at least in fiction," he said in an interview with FinPop, a website devoted to Finnish culture and the arts.

Bagge's work can be hard to find, but Thrilling Detective has posted two of his short stories on their website, The Face in the Concrete, which features Onni Syrjänen, a drunk lawyer forced by lack of funds to do his own detective work. Another story featuring his protaganist Onni is One More Shot.

You can read an entertaining interview with Bagge where he is interviewed by...Tapani Bagge. It's entitled Dancing With Myself.

Based on the limited number of stories I've read, I can say this is a writer worth getting to know. His novels aren't yet available in English. That's a crime that needs to be solved, and soon. Justice delayed, after all, is justice denied.

Bagge on Writing:
"The best part comes when the characters take the story and run, and leave you wondering if they really know where they are heading. That's the most high I've ever gotten, and it leaves no hangover whatsoever."

Writers Born Today - David Goodis

It the centennial birthday of crime novelist David Goodis, born March 2, 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He wrote of down and out men and women searching for the American Dream but not finding it. Pulp stories were his bread and butter and many of them found their way into magazines like Dime Mystery and Gangland Detective Stories.

Described as the "Poet of Losers" his novels are considered classics of noir fiction. With titles like Retreat From Oblivion and Street Of No Return, his work described a bleak landscape of urban decay and the impact it had on the men and women who struggled to break free of it. Despair led to crime, but rarely escape. As one reviewer put it, "Goodis didn't write novels, he wrote suicide notes".

Goodis became a best selling writer with the novel, Dark Passage, which first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post as a serial and was later made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The novel is considered his masterpiece. It tells the story of an escaped convict who undergoes plastic surgery to disguise his face. His days are puntuated by loneliness and fear of being discovered as he searches for his wife's killer, a crime for which he was convicted.

He worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood for a while but never duplicated the success he achieved with Dark Passage. He returned to Philadelphia and lived with his parents in their downtown rowhouse. He continued to write novels whose themes turned ever darker as time passed.

David Goodis died of a stroke in 1967. Depending on who you ask, he was either killed because of a robbery attempt, a bar fight, or as a result of shoveling snow. It was as if he was overwhelmed by the forces that had destroyed so many of his characters. He was 49 years old.

His reputation and influence grew after his death, and he received the ultimate tribute in 2012 when the Library of America released a collection of his best work, Five Noir Novels of the 1940s  and 50s.

Film maker Edward Holub created a haunting and sympathetic documentary on the life of Goodis which you can view below. It's well worth your time.